Miss me?

Hi there.

Remember me?

Yeah, I'm that crazy dog who this blog is supposed to be about.

I'm filling in for the hu-mom today because she can't quite figure out what to say these days.

She has figured out one thing though: she wants to talk about me.

She doesn't want to turn this blog into a business. She doesn't want to sell stuff. She doesn't want to research the most effective times to post or the best social media tools to help manage her cyber-life. She doesn't want to Pin and Tweet and G+ and Stumble or "Learn 20 Ways to Get More Followers".

She wants to talk about me and dogs like me.

She wants to help me and dogs like me be they scared or left on their own in the streets and shelters.

She says she lost sight of that in all the hoopla about how to be a better, bigger, bloggier blog.

But that's not why she started this blog. She started this blog because she wanted a place to tell my stories and all the fun and crazy stuff I do. And she says she feels like she hasn't done that in a very long time.

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As for me, I'm doing really well physically and behaviorally. Mom and dad have been taking me for lots of walks to strengthen me up after having been incapacitated for so long due to my injuries last year. But I'm sure mom's looking forward to writing about all the things we're doing together these days since, as she says, that IS the point of this whole blog thing. So I won't spoil that for you here now.

For today, I just figured I'd stop in and say hello. I know you all must miss my pretty face.

Mom says she really misses your pups, too and looks forward to catching up with everybody very soon.

Be well.
Bella

On the Road (With a Crazy Dog)

Casa de Bella is preparing for a much-needed getaway celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary at a little house on a secluded lake somewhere off the beaten path in Mid-Coast Maine.

Sounds romantic, doesn't it? Yeah, not so fast.

There's a reason we are renting a house so far away from civilization and it has little to do with romance. It has to do with our crazy dog.

Who? Me?

Traveling with Bella can be a test of patience and fortitude. She is highly reactive in the car, afraid of all things new and, while crate-trained, not super-cool about being locked in her crate left by herself in a strange place. (She's a "run and hide" kind of girl and views the crate more as a trap than a treasure.)

Planning a vacation with a scared-y dog - and let's face it, we can't really plan a vacation without her - starts early and requires more than a modest amount of planning and effort.

First, we choose the locale. Since Bella will be joining us, we have to be able to drive to our destination and the search is limited by travel time. I usually pick a nearby state we haven't visited (or haven't visited recently) and begin digging deeper into various areas to explore.

This year I boiled it down to Maine or Vermont. I love Vermont but we've been there recently and Jan has never been to Maine so Maine it is. Now, we not only have to accommodate the crazy dog in our travels, we have to please the humans as well and Jan and I, while having much in common, are also more than a little dissimilar in our vacationing tastes.

"I'm a little bit country, he's a little bit" city-boy.

Jan loves to peruse art museums and antique shops. I prefer hiking and beautiful, natural vistas.

Luckily we both love to eat so as long as I can find a really good foodie culture with a few art galleries and a lake or ocean view, we're good to go.

This year Camden, Maine looks like it will fit the bill nicely.

Or rather Hope, Maine since Camden will be busy with people and tourists and other dogs and we want to survive this vacation. So we're staying in Hope, Maine.

Never heard of it? Good, that's the point.

Bella will have her own private yard with a private dock and a large pond to play in. Jan will have antique tools to browse and I'll have the natural beauty that is Mid-Coast Maine at my disposal all while enjoying an exciting, locally-focused culinary jewel.

Did someone say "Food"?

So that's the effort that goes into planning where we'll go. Getting there and being there offer their own adventures in organizational dexterity.

Some of the other preparations I have planned include:

• Before we leave for the 3-hour drive up, we'll take our crazy beast for a nice long walk near home so she should be good and tired when we pull into town somewhere around Ogunquit, Maine to grab some lunch.

• I've already found a few 'clam shacks' on the drive where we can get good old-fashioned New England take-out and sit on the rocks by the ocean with the pupper safely tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the tourist scene.

• Once we do arrive at our destination, I've taken GoPetFriendly.com's advice and prepared a zip-line for Bella that we'll hook up between the house and the pond so she can explore to her heart's content without us having to dig her out of the bushes every 5 minutes.

• We've been crate-training Bella since March and she's doing well but not great. But I've still got a few tricks up my sleeve to help make her crate feel more like home than the couch in the home she'll be staying in. Lots of Kongs and my famous "Peanut Butter and 0% Fat Yogurt" stuffing are on the packing list as is our homemade chicken jerky.

• And I'm making sure her stuff smells like her stuff for the trip. No lilac-scented bedding here - I want her bed to smell like home. HER home. Which means I'm not washing her bed before we leave. I did that a few weeks ago and now it's just sitting there soaking up all those good Bella smells to hopefully make her stay a little less stressful.

A few other "must-haves" for our travel itinerary: medications including those infrequently administered, a list of what those medications are and the dosages, her Storm Defender cape and of course, all Bella's vaccination records and the number of her ID chip.

Getting around

The house we'll be staying in is secluded and private but we do intend to take Bella into town with us and on some scenic drives but we'll do so with treats at the ready to distract her from anything that spooks her. We've also put up sun shades in the trusty old Subaru to help lessen her visual stimulation.

While we're on the subject of car travel, Bella wears an EzyDog harness that is securely fitted to the car's seat belt system and we also have a front-seat barrier to keep her safely in the back seat away from the driver.

We're planning to spend a day in Acadia National Park and will take Bella with us when we do. Again, we'll seek out less popular trails and empty beaches on the quieter side of the island. And I've found a kennel on the island that will provide Bella a private, quiet place to rest if Jan and I decide to lunch on our own. (I see this as highly, HIGHLY unlikely but you never know.)

It's funny, as I was planning this vacation, I realized we don't, in fact, search for "dog-friendly" places - too many dogs visit those spots. Instead we look for the "road less traveled" when traveling with Bella. It's easier and more enjoyable for everyone that way.

Thanks, mom.

Jan and I are private people who like spending time with each other rather than hob-nobbing about town with the well-heeled. Traveling with Bella may take some extra planning but really, she just gives us an excuse to seek what we enjoy most in a vacation anyway: peace, quiet, and privacy.

Wordless Wednesday 133: Eyes. Window. Soul.

Wordless Wednesday 132 - Oh those ears!

Pardon the unmade bed. Bella got to it before I did and I just didn't have the heart to kick her out.

Bella's list of fears grows shorter

Waaaaaayyyyyy back when I first started this blog, I wrote a post about all the things Bella was afraid of.

It was a pretty big list.

In the same post, I listed how many of those fears she had already managed to overcome.

I couldn't have been more proud of her for facing all of that.

But it's time to update that list once again.

There are still a few things that Bella needs our help and encouragement to face but her list is so much smaller now I almost wonder what I'm supposed to do with a blog about a scared-y dog when she's not so scared-y any more.

Here's where we left off back in April of 2012:

Things Bella was still afraid of

• People (general)
• Dogs (general)
• The vacuum cleaner
• Bugs that buzz (flies, bees, etc)
• Beeps/alarms
• Storms (wind, heavy rain, thunder)
• The snow-blower
• Things that fall on the roof (acorns, stones, branches, snow...)
• Agility obstacles (in progress):
• Teeter-totter
• Tippy boards

And here's we are now:

Things Bella is still afraid of

• People
• Other dogs
• Beeps/alarms
• Thunderstorms

She's still not fond of bugs - but only when they are harassing her and that's not fear, that's annoyance and rightly so.

Bella's also still not thrilled with the squirrels who seem to think the shortest distance between two points is over our bedroom roof at 6 o'clock in the morning. She still gets up and leaves but it's not the distressed, frantic scamper that it once was.

And while she's learned to self-sooth for small storms by going to the basement by herself, the considerable storms we've been having here in Massachusetts as of late have proven she will always seek our comfort for the big bad booms that go bump in the day or night. 

(To be fair, there was a thunderclap so loud and house-rattling the other day that, even though I was in the basement with her, I jumped out of my skin. I think her nervous reaction to such is what one would have to classify as, uh, normal.)

But here's something new, something that jumped out at me when I looked at the pictures in that original post. When I first wrote these lists, it never occurred to me to put something like "toenail trimming" on them because it was so far outside our realm of possibility - as you can plainly see by the dagger-like talons she's sporting in those pics.

Yikes!  Look at those claws!

Well, guess what, folks? Toe-nail trimming? It is now on her "I'm not afraid of this anymore" list!

Prior to putting Bella on Gabapentin as we did in January this year, in the 5+ years(!) I had been working with her to achieve the toenail trimming milestone, the closest I had ever been able to come was holding her foot in one hand with the Pedi-Paws turned on in the other. Any attempt to bring the buzzing tool closer to her was met with a dash into another room. (I never pushed beyond that point because it was clear she was "over threshold" and I'd be doing more harm than good.)

What follows is a tragically uninspired video of Bella getting her toenails trimmed. While it will mean little to the vast majority of people who come upon it, it represents a once unimaginable step in Bella's development to me and Jan.


There has been more than one occasion in the last 6 months where Jan and I have looked at each other and said "What happened to our dog?" Not in a bad, "oh no she's broken" kind of way but in a "how did she get to be so normal?" fashion. Her reaction, or lack thereof, to the vacuum cleaner surprises me each and every time and the fact that I can trim her toenails with (relative) ease is something I never expected to witness.

She is my brave little girl even if she did need some pharmaceutical assistance to get there.

Now that we have her under threshold as a general rule, it is incumbent upon us to teach her the coping skills she needs to survive whatever life throws her way in the future. We finally feel that's a real possibility. She is a good student, quick and eager to learn. We just have to have the patience and persistence to guide her in this journey.

And now we know, it is at least truly possible.

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Author's note: We learned today that Brewster has rescue in San Diego. We are in awe of our friends, Tim and Lorrie, for the incredible heart-ache they have assumed in order to give Brewster a real shot at a happy and fear-free life. We are saddened by their loss but so incredibly happy for Brewster as he engages in this new journey. Best wishes, Brewster! Here's hoping your new family will drop a line every now and then so we can watch you flourish.

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Disclaimer: If you happen to click on that link to the Pedi-Paws and decide to buy one for your own pup, I'll get a small commission. I'm pretty sure I'll not be getting rich off the deal but for the sake of full disclosure, it needs to be said. Same thing with the treats in the background: Zuke's Mini Naturals if you were wondering. Both were purchased by me and are not part of any promotion or advertisement.