Tag Archives: puppy

Veterinary euphemism.

Last week, our sweet little puppy, Holly,

Image: photo of golden retriever puppy's face, close up.

hunted down, killed, and partially consumed a bird.  So while that photo may look cute, it’s really a MUG SHOT.  This has predictably caused stomach problems of the kind that has me running after her with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Nature’s Miracle.*  The problems became serious enough by yesterday (I’ll spare you why) that we took her to the vet, who asked, “how long has it been since her dietary indiscretion?

Which means, apparently, “how long since she ate weird shit.”

But I love the new terminology!  Here, I’ll use it in a sentence:  “No, I didn’t eat the entire bag of potato chips.  I merely committed a dietary indiscretion.

The term could be especially useful for Tim, who regularly commits dietary indiscretions by pouring A1 sauce — often followed by hot sauce and salad dressing — on random food:  pasta; salad; cereal.  (Love you!)

So while few of us are indiscreet enough to prey on innocent but apparently disease-ridden birds, I thought the term was useful enough to escape its veterinary origins for wider application.

Holly  is now on the mend on antibiotics and a “bland diet” which is vet-speak for “foul-smelling glop in a can.”**

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* While this may sound like something that cures cancer or allows humans to fly, it is in fact just a cleaning fluid that removes dog poop stains and odors, which is, indeed, sort of miraculous when you have a puppy.

** Originally typo-ed “fowl,” which would send Holly all the wrong messages in this situation!

 

More puppy pictures.

I’m giving up trying to generate interesting prose and just turning the blog over to Holly!

Holly x 4

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And big brother Saguaro with his favorite tennis ball.

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Funny Girl!

We registered Holly with the American Kennel Club.  When you register a dog with the AKC, you can’t just register her as Holly, or even Holly Fox, or Holly Robertson.  We learned this a long time ago, when we decided to register our childhood dogs.  When we attempted to register Jenny

{Image:  small white poodle sitting in the middle of a grassy yard, panting.}

the AKC would not accept “Jenny” as a name.  So Jenny became “Jennifer of Little Falls.”  (We lived on Little Falls Road.)  When our next dog came along, Tasha*

{Image:  slighly blurry close-up of a German Shepherd dog wearing a straw boater had with an "Impeach Nixon" sign around the crown.}

became “Lady’s Natasha Samsonova.”  (Her mother was Lady, her father was Sam, and Mom had a master’s in Russian lit.)

When we got Chinook and Saguaro, we got all the papers to register them, but never got around to it, so they were just plain old Chinook and Saguaro.

We got Holly from the same wonderful breeder, Linda Francis, who asked us this time to please register Holly for reasons related to the fact that Linda is now a Breeder of Merit with the AKC.  And since Linda has brought such immeasurable joy into our lives, we would do almost anything for her.  She also suggested that since Holly was one of a litter of 10 girl puppies, the litter theme was “girls.”  “Holly” will be her “call name,” but she’d need a registered name that includes the word “girl;” it would go with the name of Linda’s kennel, Fly’n Hi.  We thought of and rejected a couple. Riot Grrls seemed appropriately transgressive, but turned out (upon Googling) to be sort of dark.  We had settled on Mighty Girl, which seemed cool but sort of obscure, when I realized that I was spontaneously calling her by what would become her AKC name:

{Image:  Album cover from the movie "Funny Girl."  At the top, "Barbra Streisand Sydney Chaplin."  Below that and on the left of the cover, a sketch of a woman in roller skates upside down.  Her dress is made up of the words "Funny  Girl" in yellow letters, her face and hair are pink.  her legs are pink and orange.  She has a big white grin.  The remainder of the cover contains the other credits for the movie.}

So, everybody, meet  Fly’n Hi Funny Girl, a/k/a Holly:

{Image:  close up photo of the face of a golden retriever puppy.}

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* Yes, I have better photos of Tasha, but I thought the Impeach Nixon hat was a classic!

Puppy Keep-Away

Saguaro spent a couple of days being a very grumpy old man about the introduction of a new puppy into our family.  He’s adjusting, though, and they now play a very cute game of puppy keep-away: