Minne Monday - Doggie Dash

A few weeks back our Minne girl ran her first Doggie Dash, Woofin Hoofin a fund raiser put on by some local high school students to raise money for local animal shelters and organizations that combat animal cruelty. The event itself is a small event but knowing that the proceeds are going to a good place and Minne really wanted to run a race, it seemed well worth it.

I think Minne's urge to run a race came from the training I was doing for my first race that I completed in June and the hubs has been training as well. Any time Minne sees our running shoes on, she runs to the door and waits. It's as if she stores all her energy all day by sleeping so that when we get home and take her for a run she can run fast...really really fast.

The hubs can usually take Minne on a 3mile run, however it's been very hot and humid the last few weeks so runs with Minne have been shorter (she likes to run but we don't want to injure her). Luckily, the Doggie Dash was only one mile. Minne was sold on placing but not until she was fully hydrated.

When we got to the race, the Hubs and Minne had a special pep talk. After wards, the two sat across from the finish line, sizing up their competition.

The two wanted to start in the back so they could try to count how many people they passed. Apparently they passed a lot of people just at the start of the race because the hubs couldn't remember how many people they had actually passed. You can see Minne fighting through the crowd here.

It was amazing that when the race started, many of the dogs turned on their race face and bolted. It was crazy to see such a thing. Minne was included in this. It was as if she had been training her whole life for this one little race and nothing was going to get in her way. Not even a stinky shoe.

Check out the form!

 

It was only about a Minute into the race that Minne and the hubs went for the 1st place position. Here they are about to pass the current number 1.

The race went by so quick and some how Minne and the hubs got passes and they were left to run on their own. No on was catching up with them. Not even while they were going up hill.

Or down hill into a gross wet swampy grasslands (by the way did I mention our dog is allergic to grass?)

As the finish line was in sight, the hubs knew that he was the one that was preventing Minne from getting first. She was just too fast for him. But, he put on a smile and kicked his legs up a pace to guarantee Minne a 3rd place spot.

You can't even see how fast she is, she's that fast

And in less than 9 minutes the race was over and Minne got her first ribbon for her first ever race.

A 3rd place finish for a first time race dog seemed pretty good to us. It didn't make sense to punish her for the hubs not being able to keep up so we did what any parent would do and told her she took first in our book. Here's she is singing "All I do is win"

Can't wait to sign up for next year's Woofin Hoofin!!!

Missed Minne Monday?

Did you miss Minne Monday? Me too! Work is crazy and the hubs is out of town but I was able to pull together some photos of Minne with her arch nemesis, the chipmunk.

Minne stares out the window all day watching the chipmunk running and playing. Sometimes, the chipmunk will come right up to the window and put its face up against Minne's and then he will run away.

After living here for over a year, I just feel bad for the pup. So last week, we were on our walk and the chipmunk got super brave and ran out right in our path looked at me and looked at Minne and then walked away. No he didn't run, he literally walked away! I was so mad that this bully was teasing Minne girl. I don't know what came over me but I let go of the leash.

Minne chased the small sneaky bully all the way around the building. I was running as fast as I could gasping for breath while I tried to catch up (we'll talk about me being out of shape another day).At this point my biggest fear was "what will happen if she catches him."

Luckily for me anyway, Minne didn't catch up to him. We rounded the corner and the bull ran under the AC unit to hide. Minne got thrown for a loop. She couldn't find him. Can you?

How about now?

What a sneaky little booger. Minne finally caught on but at that point the Bully was gone. So the adventures of Minne and the Bully continue.



Minne Monday

Happy Minne Monday. I should note that the last 2 weekends have been spent moving and unpacking. We've also had the in-laws up back to back weekends. First to help us move in last weeks blizzard and this past weekend to celebrate Landon's mom's birthday. Between work, moving and being sick, it's been nice to have the family around so that Minne has had lots of times with cousin Buddy, or as we've been calling him, cousin Eddie (think Christmas Vacation), to keep her occupied and not so stressed with the move.

We've nick-named him cousin Eddie because of a few things. The first weekend he came up, he was outside playing and tried to run inside and ran right in through our screen. Following that there was a poop on the stairs issue (think "shitters full") and there was some clothing items that cousin Eddie pulled out of the boxes and ate. He physically ate holes in 2 of my shirts and we later on found a shirt of Landons.

Despite Buddy's behavior issues, we still love him. He's really is a great dog and we need to take steps back and remind ourselves that he is still just a puppy and he was in a new environment and well puppy things happen. Just like cousin Eddie, there's so many things to love about cousin Buddy. Minne especially loves the times when she has a cuddle bug to sleep with.

More cuddle time:

As much as Minne enjoys and loves her cousin, she also likes when the family leaves (I think we all can relate). After Buddy leaves, Minne usually finds herself doing a lot of this:

Since we've moved, Minne's struggled finding things that smell or feel like our previous home. It's a comfort issues for sure. This comforter was from our old place and old bed. It got half way down the stairs as we were trying to get it to the washing machine when Minne claimed her territory. With everything else in our house being so new (since we have finally opened our wedding presents) we figured we might as well let Minne have this blanket for a few more days, just until she starts to feel settled.

More on Minne in the new house later.

Finalizing The Bridal Party

Photo Found Here

It seems as though I have left some very important mini attendees out of my bridal party entry. As soon as we picked an outdoor venue and everything was falling into place we knew we wanted to include our Boston Terrier, Minne. We're a young couple that doesn't have kids but we have been touched by the most awesome lovable creature who loves us no matter what and we couldn't imagine not having her part of our big day. The venue was great and said that as long as we didn't allow her inside and picked up after her, she was more than welcome for the fun. Since the reception was in a tent that was considered "inside" Minni could partake in photos and the ceremony.

Photo Found Here

As it turned out, we got married on one of the hottest days of 2009 and poor Minne was hot. We have some good photos of her. However, most of them she looks hot, really really hot. But there are some good photos with and we will always remember her being by our side on our big day.

I know you're asking yourself...But how did Minne walk down the aisle? That part was simple. We knew there were 2 very special people that we hadn't included yet in our wedding, our flower girl and ring bearer. We asked them to be in our wedding in those roles with the addition of walking Minne

Photo by Katherine Salvatori

We hadn't really thought through how that would work, it just sounded like a good idea and the kids loved it (both being animal lovers and all). We made a visit with each kid separately leading up to the wedding and the thing we kept hearing was "I can't wait to walk Minne all by myself."

Ut oh...how could both of them walk down 1 dog? Solution - 2 pink and green leashes from Old Navy latched to one harness, as seen below:

I love the way the hubs is calling Minne down the aisle

When you asked either child what their role was in the wedding, they say dog walker. Completely precious right?

Adorable huh?

We probabaly didn't need "dog walkers" but it was nice to know that if something scared Minne or if she saw a rabbit or a chipmunk, both kids were there leash in hand to take control. If one let go, there was still the other. They felt important, we felt important and it was one less thing for us to worry about on our wedding day.

Photo by katherine Salvatori

Side Note: If you chose to have your little one in the wedding it helps to assign one person to be in charge of them - to clean up poop, give them water, ect. If you have a wedding cordinator remember they have other responsibilties and the watching of the pup should not be on their list. We had a family neighbor at the wedding who we asked to bring Minne home after the ceremony and join as back at the reception. It ended up being a huge sigh of relief.

Minne Monday

Our Boston Terrier has a very hard time with stuffed animals, Actually stuffed animals have a really hard time with our Boston Terrier. Minne loves them so much, that within a matter of seconds the toy is unstuffed and in pieces. Case in point, the "supper tough toy" Rant the Ant:

One day we were walking through our favorite pet store, Two Bostons when we heard a lady talking about these less destructible stuffed toys. The trick is that the toy is filled with layers of a tough mesh material rather than being stuffed with the cotton like stuffing pictured above. The makers of the toy went one step further and attached each of the body parts separately. Which means, once part of the toy is gone, there's still some more to play with.

The toy was $22 but we love our pup and feel bad that she can't enjoy toys like other dogs, so we forked over the cash and brought the new toy home. Once we walked into the house with the blue Two Bostons Bag Minne came running in waiting to see what was inside. (Over the past 3 years she has learned that different colored bags mean different things. Grocery bags mean nothing. Vet bags usually mean medicine. But the blue bags mean toys and treats from Two Bostons.) After tearing the bag apart and finding what a stuffed raccoon that we had named Rowdy she seamed pretty pleased.

She walked around the house all day with Rowdie, chewing and biting the beady little eyes and all the limbs. We woke up the next morning and Rowdie was still fully in tact. In was astonishing the thing made it a few minutes yet along 15+ hours. The next few days Minne brought Rowdie everywhere. He slept in our bed with us. (my husband has what he thinks is an amazing photo of this..I'm still waiting for him to send it)

Rowdie even got to join Minne in her favorite ritual. After we take the laundry out of the dryer, Minne leaps into the pile and lays there until the pile is warm (we don't allow this ritual on whites, she knows it too). So for the next 2 weeks Rowdie would also lay on warm laundry piles with Minne. At this point you can see Rowdie's face has about had it.

At the start of 3 weeks, Minne had completely torn the face off and dragged around Rowdies body. It was only a few days later till only the limbs remained. I recieved this very pathetic looking photo while I was on my work trip to Atlanta.

1st Minne Monday

I have been thinking about creating a day about one of our favorite pride and joys, our little Boston Terrier Minne. After reading this lovely blog by Jenny Lee I have decided to copy her awesome idea where she uses her dog for Winston Wednesdays. Since my dog isn't named Winston and I need more inspiration and cheering up on Mondays, I am going to with photos of our Minne girl, hence Minne Monday.

So Happy 1st Minne Monday everyone!

Photo of our Minne girl exhausted after an Indiana weekend

Pretty sure she thinks the down comforter is her new bed, she really likes it.

This little gem is from the weekend, can you spot Minne girl?

Minne Monday

Can you guess what's different?

We were at home watching the Blackhawks game on Friday with some friends, when someone noticed that Minne wasn't really decked out for the occasion. So the nail painting began, against the hubs will.

Minne girl sat patiently as if she was getting the best manicure of her life. Check it out.

The hubs only let Minne have one paw painted but it looked pretty good. She pranced around all night as she flaunted her red paw. How could the hubs not love this? Despite all the pretty red, the Blackhawks still lost but Minne had her time to shine.

Do you paint your dog's nails? How do they like it?

Happy Minne Monday!

Minne Monday

When we first moved into our house, our Boston was a wreck. High anxiety, hives, shaky legs, fast heart rate, ect. After being in the house for a few days Minne made her self at home in every room of the house except the kitchen. It was and to this day is the scariest room in the house for her. We couldn't figure out why since the kitchen is where her toy box is, it's how she gets let out to go potty and to play outside, it's where she gets dinner and it's where we give her treats. Sounds like dog heaven to us but we're people so what do we know?

After being in the house for about 3 weeks, we decided that she was terrified of the sliding glass door in the kitchen. We're still not entirely sure why but we've narrowed it down to the door itself because it slides or it could be all the shadows and reflections the big glass door makes (we're thinking that's it). We still don't have curtains up and Minne is still terrified of the room. But the other morning I walked into the kitchen to find Minne laying in front of the window. Perhaps she was sun bathing? Either way there she was calm, collected, not shaky and looking the glass door right in the eye like they were bffs.

2 hours later, Minne was terrified again. I'm not sure if she does this every day or if this was a weird one time occurrence. I'm not sure if I'll ever know, but I am happy that for at least 10 minutes of on Saturday morning, Minne made peace with the sliding glass door. 

Minne Monday: Atopic Dermatitis

A few weeks back we realized that Minne's white paws and belly kept looking more and more pink, her hair loss was getting worse and her mood wasn't her happy go lucky self. We finally bit the bullet and decided to take her to the dermatologist. After the first consultation visit we were out $500 and we had to schedule another visit which was going to cost us close to $800.

Yeah yeah we know it sounds really expensive, believe us, after just buying a house and the holidays, it was really expensive. But you know what else is expensive? Every time Minne would have a bad allergic reaction, we would have to rush her to the vet, where they would run tests and then inject her with steroids.

Do you know how much that costs? About $150 (sometimes more) every time we went. In the summer, some months we had to take her to the vet 2 or 3 times a month. Poor Min. After doing the math if these bills were a one time thing, and if the dermatologist was able to diagnose her, we would only be paying $70 a month for shots (the first 2 months of shots would actually be included in the $800 of the 2nd visit). Long term, it looks like we could save money and have a happier dog and since she isn't even 4 years old yet, it was time to bite the bullet. We also learned that the steroid shots that she was getting every time she had a bad reaction were part to blame for her hair loss and they also effected her anxiety and mood overall. Enough said.

So over the holidays I took a morning off work to take Mine to the dermatologist. There, the doc took her from me for an hour. They shaved her and marked her and injected her with little amounts of antigen. Afterwards, they observe the surface area to determine if she was allergic to any of the agents they gave her. This is called Inradermal Skin Testing. It's the same practice that is done on people.

This was taken a few hours after her tests. As you can see, there are a lot of red/discolored marks showing everything she is allergic to. Ready for the list?

• Kentucky Blue Grass
• Anything sheep related, especially wool
• Tobacco, all things smoke related
• All bugs that bite (from flies, mosquitoes to tics)
• Mites
• 3 kinds of trees
• 2 kinds of weeds

and more that weren't ranked as high, but these are the majors.

The result is she has Atopic Dermatitis, which is essentially environmental allergies. This is common among people and pets, who knew? The solution - The vet spent some time building some formulas based on Mins allergies and they packaged them into these cute little viles. I take these files and that I inject the formula into Minne on a scheduled basis. I was a little worried about having so much power of these shots in my hand. I mean, I didn't want Minne to hate me every time I gave her a shot and I didn't want to hurt her. Luckily, 3 shots in, she doesn't seem phased. We'll see how she's doing in a few months, as the doctor said it can take awhile for the shots to build up her immunity to all her allergies and we may not see results for up to 9 months.

MORE ON ATOPIC DERMATITIS via WebMD

• Susceptible breeds include Golden Retrievers, Labrador Retrievers, Lhasa Apsos, Wire Fox Terriers, West Highland White Terriers, Dalmatians, Poodles, English Setters, Irish Setters, Boxers, and Bulldogs, among others, although any dog may be affected. Even mixed breeds may suffer from atopy.
• Atopy begins in dogs 1 to 3 years of age.
• In early canine atopy, itching is seasonal and the skin looks normal. Dogs scratch at the ears and undersides of the body. The itching is often accompanied by face-rubbing, sneezing, a runny nose (known as allergic rhinitis),watery eyes, and licking at the paws

Minne Turns 3

Today one of my pride and joys turns 3 (or what we would like to say is 21 in Doggie years). I haven’t had the chance to introduce you yet to my 17 lbs Boston Terrier so I thought today would be a prime opportunity.

I believe this was taken during our drive from Minneapolis to Indianapolis for the NFL opener in Indy a few years back.

I went my whole life wanting a dog, but I knew with my families fast paced life style and small home, having a dog didn’t seem to fit in. While being in college I started doing research on breeds and every dog who walked by I would have to introduce myself too. I did some nannying along with some dog sitting and overtime knew I wanted a dog. Especially a French Bulldog or a Boston Terrier. After college, I moved up to the twin city areas with my ex boyfriend and soon moved in with a few girls in a cute townhome style apartment in Minneapolis (don’t worry he's only my ex boyfriend because he's my husband).

While in Minneapolis I was browsing the local paper puppy for sale ads and guess what I found? A brand new litter of Boston Terriers that would be available in a few weeks. After getting roommate approval and talking to the ex boyfriend, I decided I would go look at the dog, but I promised I wouldn’t bring one home...I lied. Well not really. At the time, my intention really was just to see the puppy.

I thought I took this photo from the Indy Star years ago, but I could be wrong, if I am please let me know.

After playing with the litter for a few hours, we ended up driving home with an 8 week old female Boston Terrier. While thinking of the names, Minneapolis seamed perfect, yet a little long. Minneapolis was the place where I took my first job out of college and it was the place where my little girl is from. After a few days, we decided to call her Minne short for Minneapolis.

Minne's First Snow at about 10 weeks old, about 4.5 lbs

Since that day she has brought nothing but happiness to our hearts. Don’t get me wrong, the dog training was a pain in the but and there are times she still acts out but for the most part she is a great dog who gives us nothing but love. So for her Birthday last year we wanted to do something really special for her, so we threw her a doggy party.

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All her local friends came to sing to her! It was such a fun Party!



We wanted to do the same thing this year, but we downsized our apartment this past year and our apartment doesn’t allow “visiting” pets so a dog party is out. We opted for the next best thing, we made a visit to our favorite local pet store, Two Bostons and let Minne pick out some goodies for her big day. I think she'll be getting her Birthday donut tonight.



We will also be doing a trip to Elwood this weekend so Minne will spend her Birthday weekend with her new cousin Buddy (a 4+month old French Bulldog Boston Terrier mix). We are sure there will be plenty of new videos and photos to share soon.

Final Four, 1st Stop BU!

The hubs, Minne and I drove back down to Indiana Thursday post work. I say back because we were just there the weekend before, I spoke about it here.

We woke up early Friday and the hubs, my big sis (in law) and I headed to Indy to meet my girlfriend and her new beau! I just realized I didn't get any photo of this occurrence which instantly made me super sad ::sigh::

After some yummy coffee at Starbucks, the hubs, his sister and I made our way to Butler University. I should add, my hubs went to Purdue and his sister to Indiana University, so we are Team Indiana School all the way. Our first stop once we arrived on campus was to visit the Butler Bookstore. Licencing for Butler gear is strict so finding items to suit our needs could only be done here. We did quite a bit of shopping as you can see here (you would be amazed at how many items can fit into each of those big bags):



Outside of the Bookstore was an awesome good luck banner for the Bulldogs, I had to sign it:


Right after we saw the banner we notice a boy setting up a table with lots of Bulldogs "decorated" and some plain. I asked what they were doing and he said that they were in a business class working on a business project. I looked at the hubs and said, can we buy one? His response was that we just spent lots of money in the bookstore so did we really need a stuffed animal. I obviously said yes, so we ended up with BlueGirl:


The last time the big sis was on campus, she recalled the star fountain, so we made a quick stop there. To our surprise we saw that all the fountains were filled with blue water! It was fun till the wind kicked in and the hubs and I got sprayed, hence the super goofy photo. When we brought Minne girl down, all she cared about was the food she could smell from Atherton, hahaha:



The next stop at Butler was a "Butler Have To Do" we made our way to the bulldog statue in front of Atherton to get some photos. Minne girl didn't make the trip down with us Thursday, but over the course of the weekend she got her photo op too:



From here, we crossed the street over to the Kappa house, since my sis in law was a Kappa at IU, it was only fitting to check out the Butler chapter. She immediately fell in love with the Kappa Bulldog outside the house:


While we were at Butler with Minne, we went to try to get a photo with one of the custom bricks that Butler sold when they did the construction on the new rec center.My awesome parents got me one as part of my graduation gift, cool right? Unfortunately, it started pouring so we didn't get the brick photo and Minne didn't have many photo ops on campus. However, she loved looking out the window as we drove into campus, especially at the TKE house. It must have been those loud boys hahah