Attention: Long Lost Blogger Found

It's been awhile. I realize that. Things have been so crazy around here since we got this puppy. It almost feels like we brought home an overly hyper and curious toddler last weekend. Things actually got pretty stressful around these parts.

Mack came home last weekend and by Monday morning he was running a 104 fever and very lethargic. I took him to (a very expensive) vet appointment to find out that his kennel cough had progressed into a secondary bacterial infection. He's been taking antibiotics (which are *so* fun to shove down his throat twice a day) and he seems to be almost over it. His cold like symptoms are still around but I think he's at the tail end of it.

Daisy got sick, too. The same day I took Mack to the vet I brought home some Nylabones for the dogs to chew on. Daisy chewed hers up into chunks and was throwing them up by 4:30am the following morning. We were getting pretty worried about her, praying that she didn't have a blockage. Two days of vomiting later, she had gotten over it.

Mack is doing awesome in the house training department. He's had no accidents in the house over the past 4 days and is the sweetest thing. Daisy seems to be tolerating him for the most part, but when Mack tries to initiate her in play, Daisy goes ballistic on him. We have no idea how to handle that. I know we have to let her assert herself as dominant dog, but my gut tells me that we should only be letting her "respond" to him to a certain aggressive level. We were given the number of a animal behaviorist when we adopted Mack and I'll be calling her tomorrow. Those times stress us out a lot and we really need to figure out how to deal with it if we want Mack to work out.

Last, but not least - we all have horrible head colds. For the last few days I've thought that maybe Ashley and I were fighting allergies, but Bret and Ryan both started getting the whole sneezing, head congestion, stuffy nose thing today. I'm hoping we're over it by Christmas later this week.

Three days until Christmas Eve. How the heck did that happen? It seemed like it was so far away and now all of a sudden it's about to be here and gone. The kids are starting to get really excited. We caved and opened up gifts between each other tonight which made the kids really happy to get a gift each ahead of Christmas.

Thankfully, we're ready for Christmas to come. We're anticipating that it may be a little sad and hard at times since this will be our first Christmas without Bret's mom, but we've worked hard to make sure it's a good one.

If I don't get back here before - Have a Merry, Merry Christmas!