I'm Fine and Thank You All

While you're up, get me a Bud?

I really didn't mean to raise concern for my immediate health, although your good thoughts and well wishes mean the world no matter what. I haven't been sickies in a while, but I do have to have my blood checked twice a year because of being on the medication. Now, this does worry the Moms a little, because if the day comes when my white cells or red cells or some cells or other aren't right then they'll want to take me off colchicine and that would be very bad indeed.  Anyhoo, we got the results of the blood tests already and they were all good. So, no worries for another half year. 

Now a few people asked about Shar Pei Fever which is really called Familial Shar Pei Fever, so I figure I should talk about it a little. Basically, it's a major occupational hazard of being a Shar Pei. It's congenital and I should never have been bred, but I was - before I moved here, of course. Responsible breeders are trying to breed it out, but an awful lot of breeders are not so very responsible.

Dr. Vidt, Shar Pei vet, does explain it very well. It's also called Swollen Hock Syndrome and it HURTS! When I've had an outbreak I get feverish, and have no appetite, I'm lethargic and I hold my back leg up because it hurts. Hero has this, too, and has a picture of how we both look when it flares up. Some Pei go to the Rainbow Bridge way, way early because of this. Obviously neither Hero or I have done that.  The complications that could come later and result in kidney failure - well, none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. I pawsonally plan to be around until I'm 13 or 14 at least. Gotta think pawsitive.

I'm editing this post because I forgot to mention the most traumatic moment of the whole Vet experience. The doctor said I have cankles! I do not. I have a well turned ankle that I choose to decorate with attractive folds is all.  

Twinkie's National Dog Week Show Us Your Tongue Contest

Twinkie is having a giveaway contest to celebrate National Dog Week.  She asked for suggestions  for what kind of contest but didn't get a lot, and finally came up with "Show Us Your Tongue" as a theme for the competition. Sounds easy, right? Not for us so much. We keep our tongues firmly in our cheeks most of the time. Oh, mine comes out to apply generous licks to my humans, or any humans who stand still long enough for that matter. But it's hard to take a picture while you're being licked. The rest of the time all you get is a glimpse of my tongue. There are like three existant photos that include a decent image of my tongue. This is probably the best of them. It's an action shot, as  you can see.

 

I don't know if it's a breed thing, but  it might be. We're not even sure we've really seen Franklin's tongue. He seems to have been taught not to lick by his former humans. I'm working on unteaching him. Now I get an occasional kiss from him and once in a while he'll lay a quick one on one of the humans, but not often. That's a shame, because we Pei are very good at kisses. We approach it very seriously. As for our mostly hidden tongues, I think it might be that our mouths have plenty of room for our tongues so even if we're panting  the most you'll usually see of it is just the tip. So, even though I can't really compete with some of the world class doggy tongues out there, this is my modest submisison - the best I can do.

Assessing Brooklyn

I've been doing some serious reflection and soul searching on the subject of my new little brother. I was a little startled at first, you understand. The biggest thing I was planning  to cope with last Saturday was a bath and it turned out that major life changes were in store. Plus the bath. But the fact is that I was rescued. Yes, I also rescued my humans. I rescued them from a life without me, Lola, which was simply not nearly as good as life with me. Be that as it may, I was the one living in a crate waiting for a furever home and I have been so very happy in the one I found. It would be wrong, wrong, wrong to be unwilling to Pei that forward and Brooklyn represents an opportunity to give someone else a bit of what I've got. Not to mention that giving him a home might get another doggy a little more time to find his or her forever home at the shelter. That doesn't mean  it's all peace, love and understanding every minute. And it doesn't mean I'm not going to call him Dorkface Boy from time to time, because sometimes that's what he is.

When you can take the pebble from my paw, Young Grasshopper, you will be allowed on the couch.

Of course there's rather a lot of distance between deciding that I should welcome the chance to make a pawsonal sacrifice and actually enjoying my little brother.We're just starting that journey. I hope it doesn't turn out to take forever. In all honesty I have to admit that he's going to be a pretty good dog if he learns a few things and gets a little more life experience. I just don't know how long that's going to take.

From the human perspective he's quite a find, like most Pei. He doesn't chew anything he's not supposed to. He doesn't think he's allowed on the furniture so he doesn't get up on it even though I do. We don't actually have that rule, but we're not telling him quite yet. He's totally housebroken.  Blog Mom was a little worried about that but charged ahead anyway. What's the matter with her? What happened was that on Saturday, while Alpha Mom and I were both getting groomed (same time, different shops) she sneaked went down to the shelter. It seems she'd been looking at the Petfinder site again and when there was a Shar Pei at the local municipal shelter she couldn't stop herself.  She got there, asked for him and he was brought out into this room they have for that kind of meeting. She wasn't worried when he went all crackadaisical, running all over, because she knew he was living in a crate and not everydog can handle that situation with the kind of poise that I did during my time in shelter. She was a tad concerned with the fact that he lifted his leg and marked in the room - indoors, pawple - every 15 seconds. Obviously, this didn't stop her and she went ahead and dragged invited Alpha Mom and me down to meet Brooklyn that same day. In fact, turns out our stop at Petco was to get him something to wear around the house in case this behavior continued at home. Not needed. Once in my our home he did not lift that leg once inside. He sits, and he even stays if you tell him just right. Not for long, but then I'm not one for the long stay myself unless I didn't want to get up anyway. He's barkier than I am, and they have mixed feelings about that. More of a guard dog, but also more of a nuisance. I don't much care either way.

That's the human angle. From the canine perspective he's a bit of a dunce. First off I had to demonstrate the purpose of a dog bed. We dragged out my old one for him to use for now. He seemed to think it was a giant stuffy.   He did pick that lesson up fairly quickly, I must admit.

Is this right, Big Sis?

He doesn't know anything about chasing squirrels or birds. Birds just walk around the yard , not even bothering to fly, when he's out there without me - and if he's out there it's without me if I have anything to say about it. I saw a squirrel just hanging out on a tree trunk not more than 3 feet from the ground with Brooklyn just standing there a couple of yards away. I think the squirrel was taunting him.

What I found out last night was that despite his constant and noisy demands that I play with him, he doesn't actually know how to do that either. He gets into play stance - you know, front down, haunches up and make all kinds of "C'mon, play with me. Let's go! Please, please, please!" noises,but he's all talk, no action. That was most clearly demonstrated in what will live forever as one of his most embarrassing  moments if I have anything to do with it. I was feeling expansive and lively after dinner so when he started I rolled over and made the appropriate noises indicating my willingness to do a little bitey face. He just stood there looking confused. But wait! It gets better. Being confused didn't stop him from starting the whole routine over again when I got up so I got in play position myself, only with haunches down and said, "OK, bring it. You want to romp? We'll romp right here in the living room."  Do you know what he did? He looked like a deer in headlights and very slowly lowered his back end onto the ground and then pretended that he just wanted to take a little rest anyway.

I think that was even funnier than the other day when I was interrupted from my morning nap by the sound of a terrifed "Yelp!!". Simone was chasing Brooklyn down the hallway and he was running as if for his life. Simone may be getting older but she's still got it. Happy's way of coping is different. He just sought higher ground until Simone schooled Brooklyn in the ways of the feline.

 It didn't take long and Hapless is already back in his basket. Simone doesn't mess around. I don't want you to think that Brooklyn is a total wuss, though. He did take down a moose.

 So, that's where we're at right now. It's a mitzvah to take him in and I'm OK with that. He's good raw material but needs a lot of molding and educating. And right now he's a pain in my tail.

The Biggest News Ever for Me, Lola

Yesterday was the most amazing, surprising day ever since the day I moved in here. I'm still in a bit of a tizzy over it, although you can't always tell that with me. I guess I'll just tell you about it from the beginning.  The day started out normally enough. I went for my bath. Alpha Mom picked me up and brought me home. Blog Mom was out, but came home shortly after. I sniffed right away that she'd been with another dog. Well, of course that happens once in a while, but I studied the smells on her pants very carefully. (This is foreshadowing.) Quite soon after she came home all three of us ladies got into the car to go out again. I couldn't imagine where we were going. It was pouring rain. I hate that. It was no weather for a noseventure, but here we were, heading out someplace.

Our first stop was a Petco store. I love shopping so that was fun. For some reason there was no flashy beast to capture me adorably standing up and putting my paws on the counter while we were checking out. I wanted to pawticipate in the whole shopping experience. After that  it was time to head home, right? Not so much.

Our next stop was a building that I'd never been to before. Or rather the parking lot of the building. There was a lot of barking coming out it and some very interesting smells in the air. Blog Mom went in alone and then came back out and then we all just sat in the car for a little while. This is just not making a lot of sense to me. Finally a lady came out the door, with a doggy on a leash. Normally I'm delighted to meet new furiends, but I don't care for hanging out in parking lots in the pouring rain and this is what it seemed was expected of us. The doggy sniffed me like mad and was all, "Hey, you're a Shar Pei! I'm a Shar Pe! How cool is that? My name's Brooklyn, what's yours?  Let's be best friends right now! We'll sniff each other and then we'll sniff some more and it'll be great!Please, please please." And I was all, "Some other time young dude. It's freaking raining cats and, er..cats out here. "

Next up in this whacked out scenario was to walk over to a fenced in spot, with an awning, thank Dog. There was also lots and lots of mud in there. Once in there, it was leashes off . I was interested in two things: Staying under the awning and climbing up on a bench that was there to get away from the mud. Young Brooklyn, despite clearly being a Pei, seemed oblivious to the rain and mud and just want to advance the friendship that we had not established. He sniffed me. I pretty much ignored him. We both had to jump up on the Moms from time to time to check in and cover them with mud. Served them right, seems to me. About this time, Blog Mom stepped backwards and into a sizable hole that was there. With her bad foot, of course. She yelped like she'd been bitten and, oh it was bad for a little while there. It's still bad today but not AS bad.

Ok, finally time to go home for really truly. We got our soaked, muddy selves back into the car, but hey, wait just a freakin' minute. Three of us had arrived and by my count there were four of us in the car now. What was up with that?  Could it be?

Hi I'm Brookyn! I'm very glad to meet....EVERYONE!

Yes, it could. It seems I've got myself a little brother, like it or not.  He's about a year and a half old and we got him from the town animal shelter. He was given up, according to his owners, because they had to move to a place where they couldn't have dogs. I'm sure they didn't mean to screw up like that, but he hadn't been neutered - the shelter did that. He needed entropion surgery, which you have to figure could happen if you get a Shar Pei puppy, and the shelter had to do that, too. He should have been treated for it as a puppy, but it didn't seem he was. In fact his eyes haven't finished healing from that yet. We're taking him to the vet next week to follow up on them.

You can kind of see here that they look funny, but you can't see how red they are all around the rims and I think there might be a couple of stitches still in.

So how did this happen? I gather it was Blog Mom's idea, but she was supported in this by the others. They give reasons - wanting another doggy to help me stay young and active and wanting to give back to the Shar Pei community, seeing as I turned out to be so nearly perfect that they didn't feel they'd paid enough dues or something. The people at the shelter were pretty happy that Brooklyn was going to a home with another Shar Pei. I do have to say that.  But I know the real reason. Shar Pei are like potato chips. It's really hard to stop at just one.  Of course, no one asked me, Lola. Oh, I suppose that meeting in the rain was supposed to be where they asked, but I don't think they explained the question very well. I'm still considering what I think of it all. I don't dislike him. He's kind of sweet, it's sort of interesting having him here and he's submissive to me, Lola.  Oh, and he loves, loves, loves me. Those are some of the positives.

Checking him out, trying to decide what I think.

 He always wants to play. If I play with him a little, he just wants to keep it up way longer than I feel like it. He loves, loves, love me and he follows me everywhere. EVERYWHERE. That can get old fast. I have a lot of work to do if I'm going to get him trained to suit my lifestyle. Those are a couple of the negatives.

C'mon! Play with me! I wanna play. I love you! Please, please play with me!

He barks when he's trying to get me to play. You see what I have to put up with? Life was very peaceful. However, it seems the family has made a commitment to Brooklyn already, so sending him packing is not going to be an option.

When I say he's always up my butt, I'm just telling it like it is.

 As you can see from this lovely shot, he's a different type of Shar Pei from me, Lola. He's more like the traditional Pei. He keeps all his wrinkles on this head. None on his body at all. And he's teeny bit taller than I am but he's a lot lighter. He has long thin legs. He looks skinny compared to me, but you can feel my ribs and not his. He'll probably fill out a little more by the time he's two, but not all that much. He does have a nice meat mouth, though. It's his best feature.

The kitties, of course, are none too pleased. He's not too bad about them. He doesn't mistake them for prey or anything, but I think he mistakes them for puppies and tries - you guessed it - to play with them. They don't want to play with him and they never, ever will. I tried to explain that but he doesn't get it yet.


Other general impressions are that he's as much a goody two paws as I am when it comes to house manners. He's also just as picky an eater. I like that. On the other paw, he does slobber rather a lot. I only rarely slobber. He seems to foam up at the drop of a leash. He's not doing it as much today as yesterday, though. So maybe it's the excitement and stress of moving into a new pack.

A decision was made by the human contingent that I would continue to sleep upstairs with Alpha Mom as always and Brooklyn would sleep downstairs. Blog Mom fully expected to have a fairly sleepless night with a young doggy in a brand new situation, whereas everyone was sure that, being given a break from Brooklyn, I would happily fall into bed and sleep deeply until morning. Well, you know the old saying, "Man plans, Dog laughs.". Turns out that Brooklyn totally gets lights out and spent a quiet night. I, on the other hand, could not seem to sleep. Which meant that Alpha Mom didn't get much sleep either.

I guess you can stay as long as you understand who's top dog. And I see that you do.

 So that  my furiends, is my big news. Life here is never going to be quite the same again. I'm leaning toward being OK with it, but I expect it'll be a bit of a rocky road while we adjust to our new situation. I do think that Brooklyn has some potential and if there must be little brother, he's probably as good a choice as any. I'm just not sure whether I wanted one or not. I suppose I'll be posting about our progress in establishing our new family configuration quite a bit for while. And I hope to get some advice from experienced older siblings like Ranger, Mango, Asa And  you can bet I will be turning to Twinkie's Advice Column quite a bit in the coming weeks, I think.

Date Night Was Pawsome

First, I'd like to thank Twix, who is still working like a dog to get all the photos up. What a hostess! Twix, please accept this cheese assortment as a token of my appreciation for all your hard hostessing work. I hardly ate any of it. It's mostly all intact. Really.

I took the liberty of making off with a copy of the photo of Bolo and me, Lola, and had it framed.

It will be hanging it on my new scrapbook page, along with the beautiful song Bolo and his Dad wrote for me, Lola. Thank you for being a pawsome, dashing date and a true gentledog, Bolo.

A Happy Song and a Sad

Well it took all day to get on the computer, and I'm not even on the right one, but that's a whole other story. When I logged on I saw this wonderful post at Bolo's blog. A song for me, Lola. If it's OK with him I'm going to copy it and put it on a keepsake page, which I just decided I need to have. That was such a gallant gesture. It just makes a bitch feel really special, you know what I mean?  Thank you so much Bolo. I needed that, because here comes the sad in the next paragraph.

My Daddy is in the hospital. He just had a regular vet appointment this morning. He has lots of those. Blog Mom thought he didn't seem totally well so she decided to drive him there and he lost something called consciousness while he was there and apparently no one could find it. The vet called an ambulance to take him to the hospital and that's where he'll be, probably for a couple of days while they do lots and lots of tests on him. So, if in the next few days I don't always get around to visit everyone, that's probably why. I'll try to keep you updated when I can. I'm going to try to catch up with as many friends as I can right now.

Date Night

Well, I guess most everyone knows about the Date Night that Twix is hostessing. Well, I'm not sure if I completely understand it myself, but I thought if my furiends were going then it must be a good thing. And I thought about who I'd like to go with and, well, Bolo came to mind. He's a looker, you have to admit. I just can't resist a guy with a magnificent nose and a meat mouth. But then, who can?  And besides his dashing good looks he seems to be a gentleman of sterling character. So, I asked him. And he seems to have accepted.

He did want to make the point that his heart belongs to Mom and his responsibilities at home are considerable. That's fine because I'm just the same way. I have to take care of Daddy when he's not well, which is quite a lot, unfortunately. On days when he has bad pain and a hard time getting out of bed, I have to run into his bedroom and launch myself onto the bed and lick his face all over. He always smiles, albeit weakly, and says, "Good morning, Lola."  And if not for me, Alpha Mom would probably sleep to close to 6 AM or even later. When Blog  Mom comes home I have to give her undivided attention for a half hour or more and some advice on preparing dinner. I don't know what they ever did without me. Neither do they.

But back to date night - We don't know what the plans are, but Bolo and I agree that our idea of a great date involves chasing squirrels and doing mad fast laps in the back yard. I hope that kind of thing is included in the agenda. Anyway, thank you for accepting the invitation, Bolo. It should be fun.

Monday - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The Good - I want to thank everyone for their good wishes on my Gotcha Day, which couldn't really have been any better. And then this morning, Mayzie had this for me -

Is that a fabulous cake or what? I didn't even know she could bake! Lots of wags and nose licks coming in your direction, Mayzie!

Now I have to skip to The Ugly, which would be the nasty stuff in my ear. As Bolo will attest, we Shar Pei are subject to ear infections and the like. He's having problems, too. It was a bad night and I was forced to prevent Alpha Mom from sleeping much. As it happens my ears are up to date on cleaning and since this didn't really improve as the day went on, even with antihistimine, I'll be spending my evening at the Vet, instead of visiting with all of you as I'd planned. That's The Bad. We have a 7:30 appointment, but it's only about 5 minutes away. And, of course, you know that this means that the Moms will be chasing me around with that ointment to rub in my ears for days and days after this. I really do not like that. Ah, well. As long as they don't have to leave me there. I don't have a lot of issues in general, but I still get a little nervous when my humans leave me somewhere that is not home.

Anyway, I'll be around to visit as soon as I can, but if this runs late it might not be until tomorrow evening.

LolPei

When the Loldog is a LolPei a Shar Pei must take note. It's an unwritten rule.

see more dog and puppy pictures

What A Day!

I really didn't intend to post so soon again. I figure to post once or twice a week most of the time, but today , which is almost yesterday now, was kind of special. Right after we got the first post up I got quite the upset stomach. It's been pouring rain all day, which is something we Shar Pei don't care for. With so much rain I just couldn't bring myself to go outside and eat some grass to settle the stomach. Instead I licked the floor and the carpet for quite a while before vomiting on said carpet a couple of times. In fact, even though my humans cleaned it up and applied carpet cleaner I do believe you can still see the spots. Ah well. Blogging Mom really could use a new carpet anyway.

All this sent the Moms into a tizzy, trying to decide if I was really sick and should go to the vet or if we should proceed with our usual Saturday plans, which include a trip to the groomer for a bath. Baths are another thing we Shar Pei don't care for, but I have skin issues like a lot of my breed and the vet recommended weekly baths. Sadly, I started to get better and they decided to go ahead with the bath plans.

Even after we arrived there,  I strongly suggested that we turn around and take me right home and skip the whole thing, but to no avail.

Once we finally got home the rain had turned into a full fledged storm and the wind is still gusting hard right now. Some of the shrubs in the front yard are now in totally different places from where they were this morning.  As a result of the weather our internet connection has been on and off and it wasn't for the longest time that I learned that I'd been welcomed into the canine Blogaverse.Wimsey himself left a welcome and a comment, even though he's still recovering from his injuries. Gallant, I call that. Another Hound named Bernie, who I didn't even know about before today, also left a lovely welcome message and became a follower. When you're being followed by a Hound, you're really being followed, too. As he mentions in his comment and on his blog, Bernie is also originally from Animal Control It's like we share an alma mater, even if it wasn't the same campus. All this really got my tail wagging and I want to thank them both so much. It even made up for the bath...this week.

A Blog for me, Lola!

Hi! It's me, Lola.  Blogging Mom (I have two Moms and a Daddy, but it's not what you're thinking.)  and I have been working on setting this blog up for quite some time.  After getting it pretty much the way we wanted it, Blogging Mom was just getting to the part where we write out a sort of formal introduction telling all about how I came to live with my humans and other biographical details. But just before we did that she said, "Oh, look! Blogger has a  new Template Designer thingy. Let's try that out before we go live."  I finally had to put my paw down and tell her to stop being distracted with the shiny objects. I'm seven years old - or so they say - I don't feel or look a day over five. But the point is that I'm not getting any younger and, believe me, neither is Blogging Mom. Let's do this while we still can. Blog now, tweak later.

So, on with the introduction - short version. I'm a Chinese Shar Pei, now living on Long Island. I've been living with my humans for not quite a year now.  We can't be sure of my birthday because my papers seem to have been lost in someone's haste to surrender me to NYC Animal Control,  so we'll be celebrating our first Lolaversary together on April 4th.  My place of residence when we all met was the Sean Casey Animal Rescue in Brooklyn, NY. More about that when we get around to the full bio, but suffice to say it's worked out beautifully, especially for the humans. I'm very happy, too, of course. For one thing, they're crazy about me. It's hard to be dissatisfied with constant adoration.

Blogging Mom and I got interested in this project after noticing that quite a lot of dogs were doing some marvelous blogging. One of my particular favorites is by Hero, a Shar Pei in Malaysia. In my mind he's kind of the Indiana Jones of Shar Pei. He has such amazing adventures and no fear as far as I can see. He hikes up mountains, walks over teeny tiny bridges, boats, swims and all without any stress reaction at all. He's also pretty easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean.  

Another favorite blogus canis is by Wimsey. He's also handsome, in a totally different way. Well, a Bloodhound way, to be exact. He's no Shar Pei, but he's got his own special wrinkles. Wimsey lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. That's where Alpha Mom and Blogging Mom come from originally, so he's created a lot of interest around here. By the way, Wimsey was attacked and injured this past week. He seems to be recovering well, but it was a terrible thing to have happen. He may be sardonic, but that's not a reason for an assault.

Now I don't live the adventurous life that Hero does. Nor am I a hip, urban show dog like Wimsey. Well, I used to be urban, ergo hip, but now I'm all suburban.  Still, I think that each dog has his or her own contribution to make and here I hope to make mine.