Puppy Journal

May 2000: Somewhere in the Jacksonville vicinity, a cute little black lab mix was born.
July 3: Deciding that they had too many puppies to take care of, the owners of the cute little black lab mix took her and her siblings to the Jacksonville Humane Society.
July 8: Teresa and I went to the JHS, looking for a puppy. Unfortunately, we slept late (never again!!), arrived at 11:30, and found all the puppies had been adopted. ALL BUT ONE (actually two, but ONE sounds more dramatic). One little black lab mix named Sam. Her two siblings (which were golden) were both adopted, but not her. Alas, someone had put a hold on her a scant half hour earlier, but we were allowed to put a second hold on her, just in case.
July 10: The first person to put a hold on "Sam" wussed out (loser), thus opening the door for us to adopt. We did the Happy Dance.
July 11: We officially adopted "Sam". The battle over her name began. Joxer? The name we wanted for our dog for years? Nooooooooo. Female dog, male name. Teresa nixed the name. She then proceeded to nix the names "Gabby", "Smooch", "Squish", and "Stuff". What is wrong with the name "Stuff"?! Glorious name. But no. We ran through food names, went to Cajun food names: Gumbo, Rue. Remulaude was too long, but if it's shortened to Remi, then that is a cute name. Remi it is.
July 13: The dog soon to be known as Remi got spade or neutered, whichever happens to a female.
July 14: We picked up Remi. Remi was low-key and scared at first. Teresa had to go back to work, so I took Remi home. She peed in my car (Bad Remi!). At home, she pooped twice on my watch (Bad Remi! Bad Dan!). She can't stand the leash, and so I had to pick her up and carry her when we went "walking" to pick up the mail. But overall, she was cute, playful, and well behaved, especially since she was still very young. We put her in THE CAGE at bed time, which made her bark and howl for about a half hour.
July 15: Teresa woke up at about 3:30 and took care of Remi. She (Remi, not Teresa) had already peed and pooped in the cage (Bad Remi!). At 9:15, we went to the vet. Remi behaved well. We got medicine for her cough ("kennel cough", or maybe due to the surgery), and several other medicines. And we signed up for "Puppy Package #2". And then, the fateful event occured: we found out that Remi had worms. And thus Teresa was mortally scarred for life. A couple of very disgusting moments later in the day made Remi a lot less cute in our eyes. (Though she became cute again the next day.)
July-ish: It should be pointed out now, that worms totally and completely disgust Teresa. I can't say I like them myself, but Teresa has a mortal fear, a phobia of them. What that means is that she cannot deal with anything that may involve worms. And this means:
TERESA IS AFRAID OF PUPPY POOP!!!
Which means I get to clean up every time Remi leaves a package. Joy (Bad Teresa!).
July 17: The first accident free day!!! Cage training is a god-send. Not to mention that we take her out every chance we get. Now we just need Remi to actually signal us when she wants to go outside. Remi, by the way, is a smart puppy. Teresa has already begun to teach her a few tricks. And Remi ain't too bad at them.
July 18: NOT an accident free day (Bad Remi!). So, I found out a weird thing about Remi today. If I whimper like a puppy, she goes crazy. Just a small, little bit of whimpering like a sad dog makes her perk up and take notice. Wags her tail, jumps up on me, sniffs me, licks me, just acts like a super happy puppy. I don't get it.
July 19: She didn't cry at night!! No barking when we went to bed!! No peeing in the cage!! Hooray!!! Now just do that for the rest of your puppy life, and we are set!!!! Though, the tapeworms reared their ugly heads, or tails, or whatever actually comes out of Remi. BUT, Remi went on tapeworm medicine today, and all will be better soon. Again, I should point out at this time that Teresa has a morbid fear of worms.
July 20: First, an email from Ghassan. Second, because Remi is eating all the felt off of her tennis ball, Teresa bought her this butt-ugly doggie ball. I'll have to get a picture of it. But, even though the ball is butt-ugly, and it's bigger than Remi's head, she likes it. And that whimpering thing. It makes Remi so crazy that it is a more effective way to call her then... calling her. If we want Remi to come over to where we are, just a little bit of whimpering will do. Of course, she's all excited when she arrives, and she jumps all over us, but that's CUTE!
July 24: The stitches came out today. No more stitches!! Hooray!!! This was supposed to be a happy thing. Puppy baths!! Clean Puppy!! But NOOOOOOOO, not a good thing yet. No, puppy had to get ringworm. Ringworm being totally gross. Ringworm being something that disturbs Teresa more than tapeworms. Now Teresa is afraid of both the puppy poop and the puppy itself. Not good. And there are web sites out there that are doing nothing but making her even more paranoid, if that's possible. Basically, if we don't burn down our house, we won't get rid of the ring worm, and we'll get it all over us. GROSS!!
July 25: Before I get to the lastest infestation, check out the newest pictures, including pictures of Remi with the butt-ugly ball. In case you haven't figured it out yet, Teresa takes most of the pictures.

We performed the most extensive cleaning of our house since... ever. Sure, tapeworms are infinitely more disgusting than ringworm, especially when you think ringworm is on par with athelete's foot, but there is enough paranoia to convince us that WE MUST GET RID OF THE SPORES!!! Which is really hard to do. So we cleaned. And cleaned. And scrubbed. And bleached. And generally did our best to get every possible trace of contamination gone. Teresa threw away Remi's tennis ball, so you should pay your last respects on the picture page. We also gave Remi a bath with anti-fungal stuff, and of course she is incredibly cute while wet. She was very very good, she didn't fight, but her heart was racing while she was being rinsed off. Pictures to come, of course.

And the latest infestation? Well, Remi has had dandruff ever since we've had her, and that's kind of weird. She had serious dandruff this morning. Teresa researched, and she has diagnosed "Walking Dandruff". Which, of course, is another insect. Mites this time. Barely visible to the human eye. The good news is that WE CAN'T GET THEM!! And they are easy to get rid of. And they are not hideously gross. Finally, nothing to get scared about.
July 26: Today, Remi was adorably cute.
July 27: Today, Remi was adorably cute.
July 31: Today, Remi was adorably cute. More pictures, including pictures of her bath. Amazingly, Remi is cute when wet. The picture pages have been put into a more "modem friendly" format.

Ghassan has published an alternate puppy journal (Be warned, naughty language). I don't know what he's talking about. Remi loves us.

Remi is becoming more and more active. She loves playing ball, she loves cuddling, and she loves taking walks around the neighborhood. On last night's walk, she ran into Simba, a freakin' huge German Shepard. Simba weighs about 10 times the amount of Remi, but fortunately she is very gentle. Especially fortunately since Remi tried to jump on top of her head. And yes, Remi would have fit up there. She would have been nothing but a midnight snack if that's what Simba had wanted. Yikes.
July 31 - later: EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW!!!!! She ate a frog!!! Remi ate a sun-dried road kill frog!!!! She picked it up off the street during her evening walk. Teresa made me dig it out of her mouth, since she wouldn't touch it. I got it out of her mouth, threw part of it on Teresa's shoe (Bad Dan! "EW EW EW EW EW" from Teresa), and part of it dropped down below Remi's mouth. She promptly grabbed the frog leg below her and chewed like a mad puppy.

Ew.
August 1-5: Remi spent the loneliest days of her (short) life, as I flew across the country to LA, leaving poor little Remi ALL ALONE! Well, yeah, Teresa was still around, but Remi missed me!! I think. Maybe. She was all cute and cuddly when I came back home. But then again, she is always cute and cuddly. With everyone. At any time. Hm.
August 14: It's our one month, um, month-iversary with Remi!! Hooray!! And we celebrated by taking Remi to the beach. She seemed to like it. She trotted alot, and wanted to go see all the sunbathers, but no, she was denied. Fewer people come up and pet her at the beach than in our neighborhood. Don't know why. Anyways, we wore her out, we let her romp, we did NOT let her in the water (wet puppies smell). She slobbered alot afterwards (in an adorably cute way, of course).
August 14: Remi is now 18 pounds, and has thus doubled in weight since we got her. She still has about 30 pounds to go.
August 16: Remi took her heartworm medicine. Interesting? No. The consequences, however, were nasty...
August 17: So, came home from work, took Remi out, she took care of business, and a TON of roundworms (which were supposed to be all gone) appeared. Heartworm medicine kills roundworms also. Much drama and angst. If this had happened while Teresa was walking her, Teresa would have been traumatized for life. As for me, it caused me to collect it all up and run down to the vet so he could analyze it. SHE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE ANY MORE WORMS!!!!!

Later that night, Teresa came home and made spaghetti for dinner. I looked at it, and then we decided to go out and eat burgers.
August 18-20: Remi went to Virginia!!! Remi, world traveler!! We went up to my parents house to pick up some furniture, and we brought along the puppy. She didn't like being locked up in a cage in the car; she wanted to roam around and jump on our laps and stare out the windows. But no. She performed her biggest accomplishment to date: she peed in five different states in one day. Go Remi.

Northern grass kind of freaked her out. It's all soft and comfy, unlike the razor blades they plant down her in Florida. But she got used to it. And my parents adored her, and threatened to keep her. Which is not surprising at all, since Remi is sweet, loving, and adorably cute.
Sept 2-8: And then Remi got to meet her other set of grandparents. Teresa's parents came down for Labor Day, and so Remi got to hang out with more people than just Teresa and me. And of course, Teresa's parents found Remi adorably cute. Remi definitely enjoys being around people, and the more people the better. For a couple days, we were a little concerned, because Remi became Mellow. Very, very Mellow. Slept alot, came over and just cuddled, no jumping, no running, no nipping, just Mellow. Adorably cute, but a little weird. But she was fine, and she's back to her jumpy happy puppy self.

She lost a tooth a couple days ago. I've been told that this is normal, and usually you just don't notice, because the dogs will eat the teeth. But I got it before she had a chance to eat it. Freaked me out. She got blood on her rawhide. Ick. But she's still a hyper happy puppy, so I assume everything is ok.
September 9: Remi went to the vet again. And she now has her rabies shot, and she now has her rabies tag, which officially makes her, in the eyes of the government, an Adult. Our little puppy is growing up (sniff)! She's four months old now!!! She is now a whopping 25.4 pounds, which means her weight will have almost tripled in about two months. She's losing all of her puppy-ness!!! NOOOOO!!!!! She is still adorably cute though.
September 14: Two month monthiversary!! Hooray!! Two months of joy, love, and adorable cuteness. So, we've gone through fifty pounds of Iam's puppy food, twenty rolls of paper towels, eight different medicines, three balls and four rawhides. Go Remi. Some day we may even update the pictures!! Maybe.

She also took her heartworm medicine last night. Last time she did that, BAD things happened the next day. Hopefully nothing like that will happen this month.
September 23: It was a bad, bad day in Remi's short little life. Teresa decided to clip Remi's toe nails. Something she had done several times before. But this time, I wasn't around to help hold Remi, and Remi moved a bit. Teresa cut a bit too high, and she hurt our poor little Remi. Poor, poor, Remi. Bad, bad Teresa. Much blood. Lots of effort to keep Remi off the carpet, lots of effort to stop the blood, blood all over us, much freaking out. Remi took it all quite well. We finally called the vet, and they said to put flour on Remi's wound to help stop the flow. We did, and then we had to put Remi in her cage for the entire day. Remi was sad. We let her out, and she was happy, but she was a little TOO happy, and she romped, and she opened her wound again. No romping for Remi. Back in the cage. Fortunately, all is well, and Remi has forgiven Teresa, thus showing once again that Remi is the best puppy in all the world.
Septemberish: Remi is getting very rambunctious nowadays. Much leaping, much running, much need for human contact. We can't sit on the couch now without her trying to join us. And even if we let her up, does she settle down and sit on our lap? NOOOOOOOO. She still wants to move around, wants to lick our faces, wants to eat our hair. Bad Remi. A cool thing: she has now lost her baby teeth, including the two vampire teeth in the front of her mouth. Why is this cool? Because now she can't get a good hold on her ball, and it's easy to take it from her when we're playing fetch. I like it. It's also funny, because now when she romps through the house with her ball, she can't hold on to it, and it keeps falling out of her mouth. Funny.
October 5: Finally, a new picture of Remi. It's on the front page, so you've seen it already. It's a picture of Remi doing one of her tricks, namely "staying" while holding on to one of her treats. It's really impressive how long she'll do this. We can also make her "stay" while holding a treat in her mouth. That, of course, is adorably cute. We can't do the "put the treat on her nose" trick just yet. She always wants to watch us, and she moves her head too much to balance something on there.
November 9-13: Wow, I haven't updated this for a while. Well, Remi continues to grow, and I continue to promise new pictures of her. She's up to 40 pounds now, and still adorably cute. We went to a wedding this weekend, and so Remi had to go in the kennel. This was her second trip. She doesn't even fear the kennel, and while we're trying to have a sad, heart felt goodbye with Remi, she's romping away with the kennel person so that she can go bark at other dogs. At least she jumped all over me and peed on the floor when I came to pick her up. We had her bathed before we picked her up, and the groomer put on a cute little bandana. Quite fetching.
November 13-19: Ick. Double ick. Change in the food caused Remi to have digestive problems. Then she ate a piece of a ball, which did not agree with her. So, a little bit of diarrhea turned into a LOT of diarrhea. After two explosions in the house (and I mean explosions: she got it on the walls) and some blood in her stool, we took her to the vet. Fortunately, it seemed as if nothing was lodged in there or anything, but the vet did put Remi on a diet. No food for a day, and then just a little bit for a couple of days.
November 20-22: That diet was so sad. Poor puppy. Poor, poor puppy. Poor HUNGRY puppy. She acted like she was in trouble the entire time. She was so sweet. She didn't bark, she didn't complain, she just gave us sad puppy-eyes. When we fed her her measily two tablespoons of food, she looked at us and ask "Is that it?". Very sad. But it worked, so things are good.
November 23: Oops. So, I graded some quizzes for my calc class, and then I finished, and I went to go read, and Teresa was asleep on the couch, and my father-in-law was working on the computer at the kitchen table. Half hour later, my father-in-law came in and told me there was paper all over the floor. Uh-oh. Guess Remi was really hungry. So the next day I got to announce to my class:

My dog ate their homework!
Well, actually their quizzes, but the homework sounded better. I was able to salvage most of the quizzes, and I was able to reconstruct all of the grades, and I was able to tape together some of the more damaged quizzes. Some were just laid to waste.
November 26: Remi went to my parent's Florida house. Many leaves were eaten. The house really freaked her out. The lot is completely wooded, so there was no grass. The floors were hardwood, so there was no carpet. My cousin Deon was also at the house. She thought that Remi had a handsome butt. Nice pantaloons and all that. It's hard to argue about the cuteness of Remi's behind. Judge for yourself.
November 29: In a milestone of Remi's short but adorably cute life, we let Remi sleep outside of the cage. She was as good as gold. She was a terror the next day, but at least at night she was a good dog.
November 30: So, I went to bed, and the next morning I woke up to find an adorably cute puppy cuddled up on top of the bed between Teresa and me. I thought she had just crawled up on the bed in the morning, but it seems that she crawled onto bed the same time Teresa went to bed. So I slept the entire night without knowing she was there. Cool. But we are not going to let her do this on a regular basis. It's hard to cuddle up under that covers when there is a forty pound fuzzy paper weight lying on top of the bed.
December 10: Christmas pictures!!!! It took her about two hours to eat half of that candycane bone. For some reason, everyone looks at these pictures and says that Remi is no longer a puppy. Huh. Shows what they know.
December 22-31: This was REMI'S GREAT CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE!!!! Remi got to travel the world (well, at least Virginia again), and had her first extended visit with other dogs. First, a trip to Teresa's parents, where she got a cool dog toy (and destroyed it two hours later). Then, on to my parent's house (where she had been before), where she got a vanilla rawhide from my sister and a hedgehog from my parents. The rawhide lasted for ever (cool), but the hedgehog got its face ripped off by another dog. If they created a dog toy that was a hedgehog without a face or belly, that would be a perfect toy.

Then, Remi faced her biggest adventure yet: hanging out with another dog. First, there was Bailey, a small beagle about a year older than Remi. Remi dwarfed her, being 2 1/2 times Bailey's weight. And Remi kept beating her up. Supposedly it was just doggie play, but it scared the bujebees out of Teresa and me (Bailey's owners said it was normal). The only time Remi settled down was when Bailey and Remi both had chew toys to play with.

Then, both Remi and Bailey got to meet Ceili (I think that's how it is spelled; it's pronounced Kay-Lee). Ceili is some healer type dog, and she didn't take no crap from any hyperactive pup, even if that hyperactive pup outweighs her. It was really funny watching Remi bounce back and forth, trying to play or something, while Ceili just stood her ground and barked at her. Remi was completely overwhelmed.
January-April: Ok, I've been very bad at updating this. So, we'll do a broad sweep of the important Remi-events during these months:
- The puppy-sleeping-on-the-bed stuff has now ended, and not in a cute and cuddly way. We were not inviting Remi onto the bed, but she would wait for us to fall asleep, and then SOFTLY crawl onto bed. Didn't disturb us at all. We'd wake up in the morning and find her there. However, Remi and I had a tussle one morning over her right to be on the bed, and this tussle left both Remi and I very unhappy with each other. Now she sleeps on a sleeping bag in the corner of our bedroom, and I believe everyone is happy with this arrangement.
- We also decided to let Remi roam free when we were at work. Again, things started out fine, but then one day she found a pen and decided to eat it (Bad Remi!). Of course she got ink all over our carpet (some of which is still there). That can be forgiven, except then she got in the habit of actually EATING the carpet. She has dug up several holes now. I believe she knows that that was a Bad Thing, but we can't trust her right now, so she is again in the cage all day while we are at work. Poor puppy.
- I'm not really sure if we started the park during this time, but it was a highlight anyways. Remi was introduced to the wonderful world of PARK. Trails to walk on! Dog smells to sniff! Children to be petted by! Ducks to chase! It is a glorious thing. It has also become a requirement on the weekends. Remi cannot survive a weekend without going to the park. She gets depressed if we don't go. And if there seems to be any movement that might lead to us going to the park, Remi goes bonkers. She escaped the house one day. Did she go roaming around the neighborhood? Did she go sniff our neighbors? NOOOOO. She went to stand by the car and wait to go to the Park. One of the January 29 pictures if from the park.
- We also tried puppy class during this time period. In a word, no. Remi is way too interested in other stuff to bother with puppy training. It is really weird, because Remi listens to us quite a bit, and she knows lots of commands and stuff. But make her walk around in a circle with a bunch of other dogs and people, and she doesn't hear a word you say. Probably didn't help that the class was right after we got home from work, so it was right after she got out of her cage. The instructor (who I didn't really like) got every other dog to listen to her with no difficulty, even if the owners couldn't do a thing with their dog. We felt much better when the instructor tried to deal with Remi, and Remi ignored her just as much as she ignored us. We quit taking Remi to class about two weeks before class ended. Remi is a puppy school drop-out.
May 1: Remi's birthday!!!!!!!! Remi is one year old!!!! Of course, we don't really KNOW this is her birthday, but it is close enough, so we decided May 1 is the best day to celebrate. And what a day it was! First, we made Remi homemade doggy treats: carrot/cheese biscuits and frozen yogurt pups! Needless to say, she LOVED both of them (though the biscuits got all moldy very quickly; I didn't cook them long enough). Second, we took Remi to the park. On a weekday! Quite exciting. And finally, we took Remi to Petsmart for a new doggie toy. We got her a canvas chew toy (destroyed in about 2 hours) and a little rubber thing with a bell in it (currently lost underneath the couch). We believe it was a good day in the life of Remi.
July 8: One year ago today, we met a little puppy named Sam...
July 14: ONE YEAR WITH REMI!!!! The day before the anniversary, we went to a fund raiser for the JHS. They had a silent auction, and we get a basket full of homemade doggie biscuits. Expensive, but it was for charity, so why not? And Remi luuuuuved them. And I mean, luuuuuved. Pure and total obedience when one of those treats was around. We will have to check out the store someday (called Petibles, a local store in Jacksonville).

In honor of the anniversary, I decided to carry Remi to the mailbox and check the mail, just like I did on the first day. On the first day, Remi weighed 9 pounds. Now she weighs closer to 60 pounds. And ya know, it is a LOOONG way to the mailbox when you're carrying a 60 pound dog.

And now that we have covered a year in the life of Remi, it is time to quit updating the journal. Obviously, I haven't been doing to hot for the past few months anyway. So, thanks for reading about Remi's life, and you can look forward for the kid journal coming someday.