France @ Kaiser

France and I went to Kaiser to pick some things up from the pharmacy. We sat down to wait our turn and saw a little boy sitting with his mom just across from us. The boy was shy, his mom said he was afraid whenever he left home. France just kept looking at him; the boy kept looking at France. The attraction was irresistible.

Good boy France!!!!

France at 15 months

I've been totally remiss about posting about our little BLM, France. He's a big boy now and ready for recall. Rumor has it he will be on the list for the May 21 recall. That has to be confirmed, so the actual date may be later. We're making plans, though, for May 21.

Here is France on his 15 month birthday. He's very long, tall and weighs 70 pounds. He's by far the largest puppy from his litter. His brother, Fred, went to Oregon with the April 19 recall. Their sister, Filly, is in San Rafael at breeder evaluation. Their other sister, Fiona, was career-changed.

I hope to post some pictures to "fill in" many of these past months. France has been a delight to live with -- he's a soft dog with a sweet personality.

Puppy club outing at the Hamilton Fire Station

 Our puppy club visited the Hamilton Fire Station in Novato. The folks there were great -- they led the puppy parade through the station, started engines, blew sirens, opened up the ambulance for the puppies to walk through and showed us all their gear. We had a great time!

 Lovely group photo. For more pictures of the outing, click on this link:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/112987909984668507901/albums/5682127833676116113
It will take you to a Google+ photo album.

I'll try and upload all the pictures from there to this blog later this weekend.

France and Half Dome

Here's a picture of France and me in front of Half Dome. It was pretty cold -- for us coastal folks. France did really well on his first trip to the mountains. More later.

Silky's 2 today!

Happy Birthday, Silky. Remember our trip to LA and how much fun you had with Dylan in Santa Monica? That trip was in January '11 -- not quite a year ago. Seems like a lot has happened since then -- especially after returning Silky to GDB in March and raising France since then. Best wishes, Silky, for a happy year and lots of kongs.

Big improvement

France is much better! Hooray!

His tests came back negative for parasites, so his digestive upset must have been caused by something he ate. I wonder about that little spider he snarfed up on one of our walks. Or gnats - he loves to grab gnats and little flies. I suspect we'll never know.

The combination of Flagyl and ID dog food/bland diet have worked their magic. France has given us a normal looking stool and we're back to work today.

Handsome boy -- hard at work!

Poopy puppy

France has diarrhea. Yuck. Poor guy. He woke us up at 3:30 Sunday morning, whining in his crate. He'd pooped in there and was super contrite. Needless to say, this started about 12 hours of mad dashes for the relieve area outside - usually about every hour or so.

We went right to the bland diet protocol, cooked up tons of rice, bought out the local grocery store's stock of cottage cheese. We started France on Pepto Bismol, which seemed to put a stopper in the pup. No more diarrhea for the next day and half so we stopped the Pepto. Guess what returned? Big time.

Today, we took a trip to the vet. They'll run a couple of tests to see if they can find a cause. And France and I came home with Flagyl and some ID dog food.

So what did he eat? Leaves? Sticks? Rocks? He's never off leash -- even to relieve. We live in a condo so we don't have a yard. It's a mystery. Whatever it was, it certainly upset his digestive system. Hopefully, the Flagyl and ID will calm it down and France will recover quickly. After all, we have an outing on Saturday at the Jelly Belly factory in Vacaville.

If you've had similar experiences with your pup and/or have a good remedy, let me know. France, especially, will appreciate it.