My Once Upon a Time...

  I've been dreading writing this post for a while now, and while I could've just shoved it under the carpet and never mention it again, I figured it would be best to write my feelings down and share about this sad time in our lives. A few weeks ago we lost our first "baby", our dog Zuma. Zuma has been with us since he was a teeny tiny puppy, leaving diarhea piles in our house, biting our ankles and chewing up our couches. For the last six years, he has been an important part of our family and it's hard to imagine life before him. He was the weirdest dog you would ever meet, he never let anyone but us and Ashlie pet him and he was deathly afraid of everything. Sometimes you would pet him and if he didn't see it coming he would cry like you had just spanked him.  If you followed my blog for a while, you know that Zuma had epilepsy. He had his first seizure when he was two years old and we've been dealing with multiple seizures ...

A lot of people have asked me how our dogs are doing with Fox. When I was pregnant, I was REALLY nervous about bringing a baby home to our crazy dogs. As you know, Zuma has Epilepsy and any type of stress will cause him to have a seizure, which usually results in a long (and expensive) vet trip. He is the weirdest dog you will ever meet, on one hand he is scared of everything and on the other, he will bark his head off when people enter our house. Cosie is super loyal and sweet to us, but unpredictable in his own way. In the past, he has attacked multiple other dogs and has tried to go after a couple of people as well, mostly landscapers. He is also very jealous. I was so scared thinking about how he would react to Fox and the plan was for him and Fox to never meet, because we didn't want to risk anything, based on his past. We installed a ton of dog gates everywhere in the house, to separate different areas, so the dogs could be apart. We not only had to separate the dogs fro...

With Zuma's Epilepsy, I've never really felt comfortable leaving him alone at home. I was always wondering if he was okay, always worrying, always anxious to get home. Obviously there is no way I can be with him at all times (someone has to be part of bringing home the bacon to afford all of his vet bills...haha), so we did the next best thing: We got a security camera!  It's amazing! It only cost $80 and we can now watch him wherever we are by accessing it through the internet or Katie's phone. Not only that, but it has night vision and we can hear everything that's going on at our house and even speak to the dogs if need to.  We usually lock one dog in the kitchen with access to the dog door and the other one in the living room with access to the rest of the house. At lunch time, we swap them. So when Zuma was MIA for like an hour the other day, I started to call him over the camera and sure enough, he came inside to see what's up! I love our new toy!...

We used to call Katie's parents backyard "Dogpark Smith".  Zuma and Cosie would go crazy, every time we would ask them if they wanted to go to Dogpark Smith. It truly was a paradise for them. 3 acres to run around like crazy fools, play in the fountains, swim in the pool and Cosie just loved to chase bunnies.  Unfortunately, Katie's parents sold the house a couple of months ago and the dogs had to say goodbye. We recorded their last moments on video: Wir haben den Garten von Katie's Eltern "Dogpark Smith" genannt. Jedesmal, wenn wir Zuma und Cosie gefragt haben, ob sie nach Dogpark Smith wollten, haben sie sich immer wie verrueckt gefreut.  Es war wirklich ein Paradies für sie. Drei Hektar um wie bekloppt herumzurennen, im Brunnen zu spielen, im Pool zu schwimmen und Cosie hat es geliebt, die Hasen auf dem Grundstueck zu jagen. Leider haben die Eltern von Katie das Haus vor ein paar Monaten verkauft und die Hunde mussten sich von ihrem P...

If you've been reading my blog for a while now, you probably know that our dog Zuma was diagnosed with epilepsy in December of 2011 . I mentioned a few weeks ago that he had another mini seizure while we were on vacation, his first one in 1.5 years. The doctors told us back in 2011, that epilepsy can't be cured and that he will probably have a seizure every 1-2 months. I remember being on edge for weeks, just waiting for the next seizure to come, but eventually we stopped worrying and just kept giving him his Pheno pill every 12 hours. Our vet was surprised as well, that Zuma had been seizure free for such a long time, and when we brought him in after his mini-seizure in May, everything seemed great and we were supposed to keep doing what we've been doing. Tuesday morning, at 5:45am, I shot out of bed because something was off. We've been locking Zuma in our room at night to make sure we hear him if he has a seizure, and I'm so glad that after such a long time, ...

Remember this ? I posted this picture almost two years ago when our dogs decided to use our couch as a chew toy. It was also the day I almost gave them up for adoption. Just kidding. Kind of. Seriously, I cried when I saw this and had no intentions to let these rat bastards  sweet dogs destroy more furniture. Erinnert ihr euch an dies hier?  Ich habe dieses Foto vor fast zwei Jahren hier rein gestellt, als unsere Hunde beschlossen, unsere Couch als Kauspielzeug zu benutzen.  Es war der gleiche Tag, als ich sie fast zur Adoption freigegeben habe.  Scherz. Oder auch nicht .  Mal ganz im Ernst, ich hab geheult, als ich das gesehen habe und hatte nicht die Absicht, die Idioten süßen Hunde noch mehr Möbel zerstoeren zu lassen. So this is the solution we came up with! Classy huh? We seriously lived like this for months, maybe even a year. I don't remember, I clearly blocked this lovely part from my memory. Und hier ist die Lösung unseres Problems...

One month has passed since Zuma was diagnosed with Epilepsy and a lot of people have asked me about him, so I thought I would give an update. The first weekend at home with him was stressful. Cosie was so aggressive towards him and we needed to keep them separate at all times, but also wanted to give them the chance to get used to each other again. We had to have Cosie on the leash, watching him like a hawk, and every time he showed any signs of aggression, we would put him in "time out".  I was so incredibly stressed out about going back to work on Monday. I felt worried, anxious and guilty. We had planned to leave Zuma in the backyard and Cosie in the house, but it was pouring rain that day, so we needed to have Zuma in the house, while we locked Cosie in the bedroom. Poor Guy. The following days we locked Zuma in the laundry room, which has a dog door to the outside and Cosie stayed in the house, which was also making me feel guilty, but was the only option we had. Un...

This week's challenge over at I Heart Faces is "Furry Faces".  This is Winston, Katie's parents dog, in his usual pose with his tongue hanging out. You will find him like this on any day of the week.  I took this picture a few months ago, but still like it, since it is SO "him"! Check out all of the other entries HERE!

Zuma has always been a very special dog. Now, you probably say that everyone will say that about their dogs, but he is truly special. Some would call it weird or odd, I call it special.  I think I like him so much because of his weirdness. In fact, that’s exactly the reason we picked him when we went to the pound to adopt a dog. There was a cage of about 8 or 10 of his brothers and sisters and everyone was playing, but he was sitting in the corner looking all depressed... I knew that’s the one I wanted to bring home. I told you before how scared he is and he always had very bad anxiety. He would run up to strangers, nudge them in the leg and when they try to pet him, he would bolt. He would never let anyone touch him, it took a very long time until he would even let us pet him and I would describe him as very suspicious. Yes, he’s one special dog.  I didn't know if I should write this post and was thinking a long time about it, but in the end, it's still my diary and why...