Brandy's Adventures

I wanted to go on a morning Meetup hike and didn’t know how the group would feel about Brandy. She especially enjoys sniffing and exploring, so I thought it best not to risk it. I walked Brandy in our neighborhood around sunrise so that she wouldn’t miss her walk. I fed her and told her, “Bye, bye”, which she understands to mean I’m leaving without her. Because it was early morning, she seemed to sense that I was leaving for a hike, not an errand. She’s normally quiet when I leave, but this time she was somewhat animated.

I had an enjoyable, relatively short hike around Lake Poway, with a side-trip to Creekside Trail in Blue Sky Preserve.

When I returned, Brandy was ecstatic. Shirley told me she had taken a video of Brandy’s reaction to my leaving without her.

We had a light sprinkle last night but this morning the weather was darkly overcast with rain close by. We decided to go on a walk at Lake Poway since Brandy was still recovering from her split nail and the grass would be easy on her foot. It started to rain just as we started our walk. We took shelter under the eaves when it was raining the most, then continued our walk.

Soon, I heard  Brandy eating something and tried to get it out of her mouth but she wouldn’t let me do that. She appeared to have swallowed but then kept on mouthing for a bit. Less than a minute later, I saw something hanging out of her mouth and then my eyes focused on the swivel of a fishing leader. The line was difficult to see but I quickly understood the situation, carried her to the car and rushed her to her vet. I was careful to see that there was plenty of slack in the leader.

The vet sedated Brandy in order to see the fishhook, but was unable to see it. The vet took an x-ray (see image above) and determined that the fishhook was in the esophagus. We were sent to an urgent care facility in Escondido that was equipped to perform an endoscopy.

After discussing the situation with the urgent care vet, we left our phone numbers and went to Shirley’s sister-in-law’s home to wait for the results. About two hours later, the phone rang and we heard, “Good news!” Such sweet music to our ears!!! There was no major damage to the esophagus as the barb hadn’t caught. There was no perforation.

I picked up a groggy dog who wasn’t especially happy to see me as I had taken her to the vet so many times recently. I think I lost Brandy’s trust. She has to be kept off food for twelve hours and needs medicine—one of which can’t be in her food—for about a week. It’s difficult hearing her whimper while searching for food in the kitchen.

She’s now asleep curled up on her blanket.

Brandy went to bed last night licking her bandaged paw. About a half hour later she woke me up and held her injured paw to me to fix. When Brandy gets a sand burr in her paw on a hike she limps to me and lifts the paw waiting for me to remove the burr to ease the pain. I felt sad that I couldn’t relieve her pain. I loved on her and she soon went back to her bed.

After another half hour, she was back at my bed holding out her paw to me again. I lifted her into my bed and for over an hour slowly rubbed her head, side and the leg above the injured paw. She repeatedly licked the paw, occasionally throwing her head back on the bed with her eyes closed. I knew she was in pain. We went to sleep after a couple of hours. Several times, I half-awakened to hear her licking and would rub her for a while to ease her pain as best I could.

We went on an evening walk about 9:30pm, originally planning to walk in the olive-tree filled median on our cul-de-sac. We decided to go to the aqueduct and on our return spotted a coyote on the edge of the street about 150 feet ahead. We quickly saw that there were two more coyotes across the street. Brandy was pulling hard and whining to get to them but I held her tightly and waved my free arm in attempt to frighten them. I had a 2-cell flashlight and it wasn’t powerful enough to see at a distance. Two coyotes moved slowly into the bushes that we needed to pass and the remaining one disappeared into the cul-de-sac where we live. I trusted that it would be afraid to approach us, as I couldn’t locate it, and we entered the cul-de-sac. I looked behind me to see if the two were following, saw nothing and we continued home.

I was in my office about noon loading my GPSr with geocache waypoints when I heard Shirley’s panic-stricken scream quickly followed by a shrill, “There’s a coyote!”

Brandy (~28 pounds) was in the back yard and came immediately when called. Brandy apparently never saw the coyote. The coyote had disappeared behind shrubbery, and perhaps over the back fence, by the time I got to the patio door.

We went outside to look for the coyote but never saw it again. The coyote had scaled a 5-foot fence between our neighbor and us. It’s not clear whether the coyote was looking for Brandy or had been trying to avoid our neighbor when he went into his back yard. It has been unusual to see coyotes on our street during the day.

We had seen the same (or similar) coyote late afternoon about a week ago in “Coyoteville”. This one was brownish, unlike all the others that we have seen that were grayish.

There was no way to avoid it; it was raining and we had to do our evening hike. I wasn’t sure my jacket would keep out the rain and, besides, it was cold outside. I bundled up and off we went. As we approached the narrow trail to “Coyoteville”, Brandy was ahead and as soon as she was beyond the solid wood fence and could see the trail she suddenly ran down the trail to the end of the retractable leash. The fence was blocking my view so I couldn’t see what Brandy was chasing. Two or three seconds later, I was past the fence but by then whatever she was after (rabbit or coyote?) was gone.

We took the wider trail on the south side of the creek and explored the creeks in “Coyoteville”. Water was flowing over the trail in one place and the creeks were full. The ground wasn’t muddy due to the grass and debris from the trees although it was soft in places due to the myriad gopher holes. We explored a bit more and then returned to Summer Sage Road.

Brandy didn’t seem to notice that it was raining, as she was poking, sniffing and exploring as usual. We stayed on the pavement and didn’t go on Espola Trail as we usually did because of the mud. As it became dark I shortened the leash and we walked on the left side of the road facing traffic, jumping on the curb or into driveways as cars passed.

We have begun calling the open area off Summer Sage by our home Coyoteville, because we know the coyotes live there. We go there frequently to enjoy the meadow, creek, shrubs and trees as well as to look for the coyotes. We were there late this afternoon and Brandy either picked up a scent or saw a coyote as she suddenly started pulling hard. I didn’t see anything immediately but in a few seconds a large coyote appeared from behind a small hill and was running from left to right toward the trees and creek. I took note of the long, flowing tail as it ran; a beautiful sight for me to see. I don’t remember having seen a coyote running fast before. I’ve always seen them either stopped or moving just fast enough to stay out of my way.

Actually, it was our first vacation away from Brandy and Brandy stayed (and played!) with Woody, our son’s Labradoodle. We understand that they did well together for the week. We missed our Brandy and, since we had some of our pictures with us and to relieve our “separation anxiety”, made some Brandy wallpaper for our computer. (Picture is of Brandy and her Poway Dog Park friend, Dallas.) We were hoping that Brandy didn’t forget us and she didn’t! She was so happy welcoming us on our return. We’ve now had two walks and are disappointed to have found out that Poway Dog Park is closed for maintenance. Perhaps, RB Dog Park is in the cards for this evening.

We decided to hike to Lake Poway this afternoon instead of going to our usual afternoon playground, Poway Dog Park. Brandy enjoyed chasing lizards and peeking into the various drains and culverts. We took the hiked the high road counter-clockwise around the lake only as far as Warren Canyon Trail, because we had to be back to the park entrance no later than 6:45pm, the park’s closing time.

As we were leaving Lake Poway Park, a truck was coming very slowly through the entrance and I heard a low voice saying, “Brandy”. To our surprise, there was Brandy’s playmate, Thumper, with his red kerchief, and his dad looking out the open truck window. Thumper might also have missed his usual afternoon visit to Poway Dog Park. Unfortunately, it was too late to play with Thumper.

Picture: Brandy frequently steals Thumper’s soccer ball at Poway Dog Park. Then, they play tug-of-war.

Brandy was putting her muzzle deep into the dog park water bowl yesterday so we decided today to see how she liked more water. We filled a kiddie pool about half-full of water and she immediately jumped into the pool. Brandy was biting and pawing at the water, swirling it around with her muzzle and occasionally biting at the debris floating on the water. Then, she tried chewing at the edge of the pool. Unsuccessful at getting a good grip on the edge, she jumped out, turned abound and grabbed the curved lip of the pool, bending it up until we stopped her.

We have a lap pool and we can hardly wait until the water gets a bit warmer so that we can see if she likes deep water. It should be exciting!

We have been unsure about Brandy having the run of the house when we were away, as we were concerned with her chewing and potty habits, so a few times we have been putting her in the bathroom for an hour or so with her toys, open crate and a food-filled Kong. We twice found her on the counter-top when we returned and she would cower a bit. Most recently, she resisted somewhat going into the bathroom so we lured her, a real chow-hound, with food.

We wanted a better solution and, especially, a happy Brandy, as she has built our trust. Yesterday, as a test, we thought we’d leave her alone in the house for twenty minutes as we took a drive through the Old Coach area of Poway, admiring the homes, as well as a bit of country. When we returned, we were met by a happy Brandy and no destruction or soiling. We were ecstatic!

We later in the day went to our grandson’s, Hunter’s, 6th birthday party leaving Brandy with the run of the house for about three hours. Again, Brandy was simply happy we were home and had been a good girl while we were gone.

We would like to have the option of leaving Brandy outside while we are away and will soon work on that. Our concern is that she will bark, which is intolerable. We live in a very quiet neighborhood and will do our best to keep it that way.

I don’t like tight collars on my anthropomorphic family members; I remember all the years that I wore neckties. I thought Brandy’s collar was too tight so Shirley adjusted it. Sometime later, Shirley exclaimed, “Look at Brandy! She has her collar in her mouth!” Sure enough, Brandy had been able to bite the very loose collar and then couldn’t get it out of her mouth. The collar was all the way to the back of her mouth and, try as she did, she couldn’t expel the collar. I struggled to release the strap from the buckle tang and she struggled to expel the collar. Just as I thought I would have to quickly cut the collar, I was able to unfasten it. Brandy and I were both relieved. Now, we’re looking for a collar with a snap fastener.

Shirley and I went to Helen Woodward Animal Center today to see “Basil” and “Foxy”. We would have taken Basil but then we met Foxy! She’s a Shiba Inu mix, about fifteen months old and weighs nineteen pounds. She was skittish when we first approached her kennel but we quickly became friends.

Shirley kept throwing out names and eventually we narrowed her new name to a choice of Ginger and Brandy and, then, finally to Brandy. Now that we had a name, Brandy needed a website so she was quickly online.

Brandy had surgery last Monday so we are being careful with her. Brandy’s very inquisitive, a bit jumpy with new things and stays relatively close in the pack. This evening, she growled and barked at the TV when Shirley turned it on (Brandy must be my dog :).

She ate well after her fifteen-minute walk this evening and seems to be settling in.