This past week we watched Zach and Sarah's dog, Lily, while they were on vacation. I'd hadn't entirely realized that having two dogs would end up being more than twice the work of one, mostly because there was some work to be done integrating Lily into the household. To that end, quite a few questions came up and were answered over the course of her stay.
Is this food? Lily largely refused to eat the food that was placed in her bowl. Or rather, she refused to eat it for long enough that either Kina or Onyx would get there first. We spent a lot of time telling Kina no, telling Lily yes, and attempting to lock Lily in one part of the house with her food so the other animals couldn't get it. At one point, I was sitting on the couch in the basement telling Lily she was a good girl and generally cheering her on every time she took a bite of food. Unfortunately, that strategy only worked once.
Despite snubbing her own food, Lily was eager to experiment with other forms of food. I caught her attempting to eat grass and other plants on our walks. I'm fairly certain she followed Kina's example at least once and grabbed a "treat" from Onyx's litter box. She ate our spatula because it had egg on it, and we foolishly left it on the kitchen counter without supervision. I stopped her from going after an empty tuna can that had been left on the counter. We quickly learned that we had to be a lot better about keeping our kitchen clean than we usually are. No more leaving the dishes out overnight.
Lily eventually started eating a little more. I gave her these stew-like dishes that were more liquidy a couple of times and she chomped them down. On the last night she even ate most of Kina's food, which we were perfectly happy to let her do by then.
Just who's in charge around here? The hierarchy of pets in our house very definitely goes: Onyx -> Kina -> Lily. Lily mostly knows this, from having visited before. But the cat still felt the need to enforce it. This was most notable at bedtime, when Onyx would claim the bed. Kina would lay down on our floor between the bed and the door, and Lily was forced to stay in the hallway. If we called her in to cuddle with us, the cat would protest loudly. We did get her into the bed once or twice while the cat was distracted, but Onyx was never happy about it. Once Lily knew that Onyx was in charge, though, everything was pretty peaceful, and the cat even came downstairs to hang out with everyone and keep an eye on Lily. In all the time they've known each other, that's a first.
How absorbent is that diaper? This was one of my first questions upon Lily's arrival. She's been sick so, as a precaution, Zach and Sarah bought a doggy diaper to help prevent (or at least contain) accidents. It's basically a maxi-pad and Lily hated it. I wasn't entirely sure it would be effective. Still, we kept it on whenever we were asleep or out of the house. A few days in, we woke up to discover Lily had had need of her diaper. The answer to my question? Not quite as absorbent as we'd like. The pad had soaked through to the diaper and we had to run the diaper through the washing machine, which also meant leaving it off Lily for a few hours when we were gone. Luckily, Kevin was able to get home around noon that day, and there were no more accidents.
Is this drool or pee? Closely related to the previous question. After we woke up to Lily's sodden diaper, we were worried that it hadn't fully contained the mess. This led to two separate searches of the house to determine if and how badly the diaper had leaked. We checked the usual places (is it bad that there are usual places for this? Each animal has basically claimed a room to have their accidents in) to no avail. Then I laid down on the couch and immediately found a wet spot underneath my foot. We tried smelling it, but we couldn't determine what it was. So we cleaned it to the best of our ability without ever knowing what the mystery liquid was. It was probably drool.
Which way are you going? Walking two dogs at once is a whole lot harder than just walking one. Lily is easy enough, but Kina isn't always. I had to keep an extra sharp eye open to avoid potential problems with other dogs. I even ended up altering when I walked them to avoid other dogs as much as possible. The biggest challenge ended up coming from getting tangled in the leashes. Kina and I have a system built on her preference for passing people on the left. Her consistency means that I always know where she'll be and can pass the leash around accordingly. On our very first walk, Lily initially passed me on the right. I thought, Great! That makes it easy to keep them separated. But it turns out that Lily has no system like Kina's and will pass on either side, willy-nilly. I was never really expecting this, and ended up tangled in the leashes several times per walk because I'd incorrectly assumed Lily would a different way than she did.
Am I allergic to dogs? Very Probably. I spent most of the week congested and even more sneezy than usual. Though that could have also been a mild cold, since Kevin experienced similar symptoms. But it doesn't matter if I'm allergic to Lily and/or Kina. They'll still get all the love.
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