The Ladies Won!!

As I posted earlier, Dustin and I competed on separate teams this weekend in a triathlon. What a blast!! In spite of the sunburns we received, we both had a great time!

Dustin was in the men's team division and I was in the women's team division. I am happy to report that my team won FIRST PLACE in the women's division, and Dustin's team came in 7th place for the men's division. Here are a few pictures. We had a friend take pictures of various parts of the triathlon, so as soon as I get those pictures I will be sure to post them.

Cocoa Is Feeling Well Again!!

I woke up in the middle of the night Thursday night to find Cocoa laying on her back with all four legs in the air. You can guess my distress when I caught sight of her. My puppy has been terribly ill for a wek and I find her with her legs straight up in the air. I yelled at Dustin to come and check on her with me. We instantly decided that she was finally beginning to get back to her normal self. He reminded me that before she was sick she liked to lay like that. WOW!! What a relief. Throughout the day Friday she began to gain strength and seem slightly more lively. Finally, to our amazement, Friday night she walked over to the food bowl and began eating! Maybe she was sick and tired of being fed with a syringe so she knew she was going to have to eat on her own, but my theory is that she just felt so much love that it made her better....along with the antibiotics of course.

Anyway, Cocoa is back to her normal self and has been for 3 days now. Here you will find our puppy playing like a puppy should. She is still very skinny, but she is beginning to pack back on a few pounds. It will take a while for her to get to normal size as we are just slowly getting her back up to her normal amount. Too much food at once can cause her to relapse and we would be back in the same terrible place we once were. Thanks for your well wishes!! Our house is back to its state of puppy growlings and horsing around between Koda and Cocoa. They didn't miss a beat. It is as though they were raised together from birth.

Baby Steps

Cocoa seems to be making baby steps. She is certainly fighting hard against whatever she has! For about 24 hours now she has kept everything in her body; no vommiting. That is a huge plus. She had not drank anything for a couple of days on her own. She only got what Dustin and I surringed into her mouth, and that was a limited amount because we did not want to put too much into her at first. Yesterday she walked over to the water bowl and took a few laps of water. Last night I also heard her lapping the water again. That is a baby step, but a step in the right direction. She has been slightly more alert this morning and she walked around the living room a little sniffing at various things. That is another great plus!!! Her senses seem to awaken when I put things in front of her like Doritos, cheese, and peanut butter. Those are not the things she is eating, but they seem to intrigue her senses. Right now I have mashed up her food and have been surringing that into her mouth. She is swallowing it which is better than she was doing at first. At first she would spit it out. It will be a long recovery for her, but she certainly seems to be heading in that direction.

We have the triathalon this weekend so I will be sure to post pictures! It should be a fun event. We kayaked a trial run last weekend and my partner and I left Dustin and his partner way behind. We will see how race day goes.

Cocoa Is VERY Sick

Pray for Cocoa!! She has been terribly ill since Sunday night. The vet is recommending that we hospitalize her, but that is $400 each night, so that is not going to be an option for Cocoa. We can be successful though if we give her a baby dropper full of hydration every 15 minutes or so, which was the recommendation. Dustin and I are working around the clock to try to revive her. She is having bloody stool, vomiting, and will not eat, drink, or hardly move. The vet ruled out Parvo Virus, but is still unsure of what it is. She thinks it might be an intestinal bug of some kind. She is on antibiotics right now. We will keep you updated. Sorry it has been a while since the last blog, but we have been nursing Cocoa back to health. My hope for her is gaining, but she is so weak and skinny. You wouldn't even recognize her. I can't lose another one.

Irresistible: Nose to Nose

This was just too cute not to post. Nose to Nose

Getting Adjusted

From the first picture you will see that Cocoa is just a little bigger than a water bottle. From the second you will find Cocoa's cozy resting place...on Koda's cushy back. You will also see that she is dirty after rolling around on the ground.

Dustin and I are amazed at how easy of a transition it has been to move in a new puppy onto Koda's territory. They have been playing hard together since the moment Cocoa arrived on Tuesday. She follows Koda and stays very close to him or Dustin and I. Koda occassionally plays a little rough, and she is sure to let him know. There has been no fighting, just loving! Belle and Koda both only ate small bits of food throughout the day, but Cocoa is another story. She will eat an entire bowl in one setting if we would let her. She checks the food bowl about every five minutes to see if there has been new food poured, and if she has no luck there, she searches for the bag of food that we pour out of. She seems to be a pretty smart one and very agile for her age. She has jumped off the couch numerous times and usually lands on her feet; however she has taken a nose dive a couple of times. We are starting to train her, so sometime soon we will put a video on here of them both during training. I will try to master uploading a video because my last video was not a successful upload. Check back soon. I will add more pictures.

The weather is beautiful. It is forcasted to be about 75 degrees for the rest of the week.

Also, Dustin and I are competing in a triathalon next weekend. I am on a team with two other girls and he is on a guy team. That's right....we will be competing against one another. I will for sure keep you posted on the winnings of that triathalon.

The Lewisburg Chocolate Festival

What an event!! You can imagine that I loved every minute of it. The event consisted of going to various locations downtown to taste a variety of chocolate assortments. What a yummy day!

The second picture is of the busy street of downtown Lewisburg as people tasted from the various shops.

I brought home a bag of extra chocolate that I was not able to eat at the festival. My stomach was beginning to ache after too much chocolate. One thing that I did not anticipate bringing home with me was a chocolate puppy!! The humane society was at the event and Dustin and I adopted a 9 week old puppy. We are trying to think of a name for her. We are thinking about something chocolate related because we got her at the chocolate festival and she is black. We bring her home tomorrow (Tuesday) or Wednesday. I'm hoping for Tuesday. Let me know if you can think of any names. We have thrown around the names Cocoa, Mocha, and Truffle. I like Cocoa best, but Koda answers to it because it is so close to his name. We will see!

Stormy Picture

Here is a picture Dustin took with our new camera. We had a thunderstorm roll in Friday night with crazy winds and lightning. We just thought it was a great picture. This is looking out our backyard at the shed and the field adjoining our backyard.

Dustin's New Look

Here you will find Dustin's latest look. He finally went to get his eyes checked and found out his vision was very poor. Many people have commented on a new and even smarter reputation to uphold now that he has a "smarter" look. Ha Ha

In Loving Memory of Belle

Monday evening Dustin and I spent our last moments with Belle. This will be brief as it is tremendously difficult. I have just now barely gained the composure and guts to write this.

One year and a couple of weeks ago Belle and I met. At first glimpse I knew that she was born to be loved by me and enrich my life as well. I brought her home and instantly fell in love with her funny personality and silly quarks. It was love at first sight for Dustin as well, especially since I surprised him with a puppy. He was shocked, but knew she was the perfect choice.

Belle played outside most of the day as Dustin and I have been able to be home more often with his lightened class schedule. She would always play chase with Koda and happily run around the yard. However, on Monday afternoon in some freak happening Belle took of down the driveway in a sprint too fast for Dustin or I to catch or call her back. We gave every effort to catch her, call her, and stop traffic, but at that point it was too late; our Belle had been in an accident.

There is no doubt that she loved every minute with us as a part of our family, and we adored her more than anything. The past few days around the house have been difficult. It is hard when we pull in the driveway because she is not looking out the window waiting for us to return, she does not jump into my arms the instant I open the door to the house, and no longer helps me cook meals by catching the yummy food that I "accidentally" drop on the floor for her. My other cuddling partner is no longer there to wake me up in the morning or to play tug of war with my laundry. I'm glad that I was given the year that I had with her. There was never and will never be another Belle. Here is a picture of her latest trick (balancing on Dustin's head), taken moments before she rang the bell to go outside one last time to play.

Visitor

As Dustin was preparing to load the stove with firewood, he heard noises coming from within the stove. He opened the door and to our surprise we had a bird visitor for a little while. The bird flew around the house and perched on everything tall, until Koda's bark scared it out of the house.

Signs of Spring

Signs of spring are being seen and smelled as we begin to mow our lawn, plant a garden, and enjoy the outdoors.

Coach Dustin

Dustin has been coaching a soccer team through the YMCA. Here is a far away picture of Dustin being a coach. He seems to really enjoy it. However, I think Belle enjoyed practice more than anyone. Here you will see just a glimpse off the attention that she received. She was quite the hit with the little ones. She was played with so much that as soon as we returned home she was ready for bed.

So Now I Put My Plants In Pots

My lettuce has really been growing, and just yesterday a tomato plant and an one of Dustin's onions budded up from the ground. Rather than planting these in the area designated for plants, Koda has forced me to plant them in big pots on the back porch, where he never goes. My hope is that he will not bother them!! Maybe soon we, Koda not included, will be eating fresh veggies.

P.S. The last picture is of my new waterer. However, the real reason I put the picture on is to show you how brutal our basketball game was two nights ago. Dustin and I are playing basketball intermurals and our last game grew somewhat rough. Under my left eye you will see a small shiner. That is the only evidence of my head being knocked around causing me to go dizzy. I pulled through and kept playing, of course, what else is there to do. All I have to show for it is in this picture.

Tulips Mistaken For dog Toy

I mentioned on the last blog that growing plants has been my newest past time. Well, I bought some tulips and nurtured them to great growth. I knew it was time to let them grow free in the outside ground rather than in my pot in the house. So, a couple of nights ago I decided to finally do this. Well, the next morning to my disappointment, some creature (named Koda) must have thought the flower on the tulip was a ball or a toy because you will see in the picture above all that is left of my tulips. It was a sad day to see the plants that I had taken care of get eaten by the monster we call Koda.

Lesson learned.... I will plant my lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach in a large pot on the porch and bring it inside when Koda is let outside to play. Hopefully these vegetables will make it and we can have some fresh salads this spring and summer.

Richmond was a blast!! We were there this past weekend at a Mary Kay conference, and even Dustin admitted that he enjoyed his time there.

Dustin and I just got a new camera, so in the next couple of days we will have several pictures posted. Keep checking.