It's time to start anew.

It's mid-April, and I think the post-vacation entry from July 2007 was our last update to the DogBlog. Perhaps with overdue arrival of Spring, it's time to recognize that this blog is overdue for some updates.

Living in the Northeast, it doesn't always feel like Spring arrives quickly enough, but it does get here eventually.

What has happened since my two faithful readers last checked in? Hmmm...That's a tough one to answer!















Boykins pretty much looks the same...She's gotten a bit of gray around her muzzle, which I find quite endearing. She also spends a lot of time staring into space, as illustrated in the photo above.

One of the biggest milestones for Ms. B was her first trip to a boarding kennel. This happened in August, over the weekend that Q and I had our end-of-season Ultimate Frisbee tourney. We took Boykins to a place in Waltham where dogs are pretty much kept in crates all day long. They keep a LOT of dogs at this place, so I can understand why they take this approach. I don't think Boykins liked it, but why would she? Having said that, we did feel she was taken care of, and she returned to us a bit stressed, but otherwise okay.

In October, we were invited up to Vermont for a weekend with friends. Boykins loved being there, and had lots of room to roam around and explore. Our friend Dave has a very nice camera, and he took some great pictures of our girl.























































As you can see, she loves to play.

As the seasons changed over from Fall to Winter, we were excited to get some real snow. Last year, Boykins' first Winter, was very mild, and we were left wondering how she would manage in deep snow. As they say, one should be careful what one wishes for...we got several significant snowfalls this year, and Boykins loved every one of them!














































She often ran right out of that little red coat she has, as the excitement of all that snow was more than she could handle. When she gets to an open expanse of snow, she has this apparently uncontrollable urge to runrunrun. She also needs (NEEDS!) to eat snow. It's just comical. And because the snow was sometimes up to her wee shoulders, she would have to bound through it like a bunny. She loved it. Every single minute. And we loved that she loved it.

Christmas came and went. January arrived with more snow, and things were great.

Then in late January and early February, Boykins got very sick. And of course, her sick days happened on weekends, when our only veterinary option was $130 just to walk in the door! (But I won't complain. We're very lucky to have an emergency animal hospital nearby, especially one that is so great.) In January, she was initially diagnosed with a stomach flu, but after her symptoms returned in February, the vets thought perhaps we were dealing with something more serious, like Irritable Bowel Disease. Yikes!















After several tests, an ultrasound, and a night at the hospital (to help re-hydrate her and give her some meds to make her feel better), the recommendation was to have Boykins undergo an endoscopy procedure, during which her stomach and small intestine would be examined. They'd also take some tissue samples for biopsy (as this would help diagnose Irritable Bowel Disease). We weren't sure what to do, so we sat down with our regular vet.

I told him about changes we'd made to Boykins' diet (she'd been on a special prescription food until December), and we discussed what had been going on. He felt that the endoscopy, while being a good diagnostic tool, was probably more than we needed to do at that point. That was quite a relief (for many reasons, including the stress on Boykins, on us, and on our wallets)! We agreed to put her back on her prescription food, as her stomach issues only presented themselves after changing her food. We did that, and she's been MOSTLY okay ever since! Phew. Having a sick doggie is stressful and sad.