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Daisy's First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my 3rd favorite holiday of the year. For Daisy, it's like heaven. The smell of the turkey cooking all day long, the smells of pies and cookies being baked.... ahh yes, life is good when you can smell 40 times better than a human, especially on Thanksgiving Day.

This year, my girlfriend and I drove out to Tucson, AZ to visit family for Thanksgiving. Of course Daisy had to come along too. Daisy is a traveling dog, ya know. Back in June, Daisy came with me on a boating trip at the Colorado River and she has also been boating with me at local lakes here in Southern California. So I figured, she can handle the 8 hr. drive. I pulled out Daisy's crate from storage and decided to bring that along. Daisy has been without her crate for about 3 months. She's 99% house trained. The only reason I say 99% is because no dog is perfect. Anyways, we packed her crate, along with her other Kong toys and headed out. Daisy slept in the back seat of the car the whole way. I mean, we stopped every 2 hrs. so Daisy could go to the bathroom. Daisy went to the bathroom once, about 2 hrs. into the road trip. GREAT! Then, she decided she could hold it the rest of the 6 hrs. we had to go. We'd stop whenever we'd get a chance, but she'd just sniff around. Whenever we travel, Daisy decides she's not going to do her "thing" anywhere while we're on the trip. She suffers from "Temporary Constipation". I heard this affects a lot of dogs that travel. The readings I came across said that when dogs don't feel comfortable in an unfamiliar territory, they won't go to the bathroom, until they are comfortable. So, Daisy held it from 10:30am until about 6:30pm.

We got to the house in Tucson and I immediately took Daisy to the back yard, so she knew that's where she goes potty. Daisy sniffed around a while and finally went pee and poop. After that, it was no problem the rest of the time we were there.

This is where Daisy met Roxy! Roxy is a Black Labrador/Dalmatian mix that my GF's family got just 2 days before we were due to show up for Thanksgiving. Roxy was going through her house training, so I think it was kind of good that Daisy was there. Daisy could show her where the place was to go potty. I think dogs watch each other and in this case, Roxy was always watching Daisy. So I think it helped the process along. We found Roxy sometimes standing in front of the back door with that look on her face. So we'd open the door and out she went to go potty. She was doing good.

Thanksgiving Day went great. Daisy loved the smells. You can just tell these things, by the way she kept jumping up to smell the food being cooked (We're working on staying down when in the kitchen, don't worry.). When dinner time came, the 2 puppies didn't even try to jump up and get the food. I was shocked to be honest. I thought for sure that Daisy would go around from person to person, begging. But, she didn't. It made me look good, like I raised Daisy right. LOL. Whenever I wasn't eating leftovers, I'd be outside playing with the dogs. They were so hilarious playing with each other. Daisy was definitely getting a taste of her own medicine though. Brandy used to get nipped by Daisy's sharp puppy teeth. Roxy's teeth were still tiny, sharp razors and they seemed to find Daisy's ears pretty easily. Daisy played really well and didn't show any aggression towards the small pup. This was her first time playing with a dog younger than her. So it was a new experience for Daisy and I. Daisy did get a few little punctures in her big ol' floppy ears from Roxy. Nothing too bad though. I didn't notice them til we got back in LA, when they scabbed up. Now, the scabs are falling off, so they're healed.

There was a lake a few blocks away from the house we were staying at. The afternoon after Thanksgiving, we took a walk down to the lake to check it out. I put Daisy in her harness and off we went. We showed up to the lake and the first thing I saw was a duck, just sitting on the edge of the lake. I got Daisy's attention and said, "Daisy, what's that?". This was Daisy's first encounter with a duck. She saw they duck and immediately became interested. So I started running towards the duck, thinking Daisy would get as pumped up as me and charge the duck. Of course, I wouldn't have let Daisy attack the duck, for you duck lovers out there. I was running and so was Daisy, but as we got within 15 feet of it, Daisy hit the brakes and she became cautious. She stood there, then slowly walked towards the duck. She got about 6 feet from it and began howling at it. Thinking the duck would freak out and fly away, it didn't. It just stood there looking at Daisy go howl crazy. Two things made this really funny. The fact Daisy was howling like crazy at a duck rather than attacking and the fact that the duck was holding it's ground and not flying or swimming away. After about 5 minutes, the duck finally swam away. Another first for Daisy!

The road trip home was an interesting one, filled with bad luck. I woke up at 7am the morning we were leaving to come home. I fed Daisy right away, hoping she would do #2 before we left, this way I wouldn't have to worry about it and she wouldn't have to hold it. Well, she didn't do #2 before we left. I waited until 8:15 and she never did it. So I figured I'd take my chances and hope she'd do it somewhere when we stopped. Daisy slept the whole entire 8 hr. drive home. We stopped after 4 hrs. of straight driving until we reached Blythe, CA. I let Daisy out to go potty and nothing happened. She wouldn't go. I'd even see other dog owners stop, get out of their car, let their dog out, the dog would pee, and they'd get back in and leave. Daisy wouldn't have it though. She did nothing, so we hit the road. Daisy fell back asleep once we hit the road again and didn't wake up until we were about 20 mins from home. We stopped again to let Daisy out to go potty, but nothing. We got back in the car and headed home.

We exited the freeway and were on side streets for about 5 minutes and we had about 5 minutes to go before we got home. We're at a red light and all of a sudden Daisy starts the girgly, puke sounds. The same sounds I talked about in 2 Months o'Pukin'. Quickly, I grabbed the pieces of paper I had printed my Yahoo! map on and told my girlfriend to hold it out for Daisy to puke on, so puke wouldn't get on the carpet. I figured Daisy hasn't eaten in 8 hrs. since breakfast, so there would only be a little stomach acids. No big deal, right? WRONG! She lets it rip. ALL of her breakfast comes flying out all over the carpet in the car. I mean, it was a lot of throw up. It was bad. Remember, this was 5 minutes before we were going to be home from this 8 hr. road trip. I pulled over and tried to clean up as much as I could with what I had to work with. I felt so bad for Daisy. She had this real sheepish look on her face, like she knew what she did was wrong. It was sad. I couldn't get mad, it wasn't her fault. It was as if her body just decided not to digest food while she was in the car.

We stopped at PetsMart on the way home and picked up a can of Pet Stain and Odor Remover. It worked really well and got out the brown throw up, along with the smell. It still makes me wonder to this day, what would have happened if we made it home just 6 minutes earlier. Overall it was a nice trip and I don't regret bringing Daisy. When we did get home, I let Daisy into the yard and she headed for the grass. She did both #1 and #2 right away. Home Sweet Home.