Our little cone-head

Friday was a big day in the Butler household. Our dear little pup turned 6 months old. Below you can see her in her normal morning routine. It's amazing how she has gotten herself into a routine. It goes roughly as such:

• Run out of her crate with a little excitement / joy to be free.
• Walk with you right to the back door to go do her business.
• Come back inside and hop up on a few people.
• Sits patiently and waits to find out what's next (either on a kitchen mat or the living room carpet right by the kitchen.
• Follows someone off to a bedroom to say good morning or help wake them up (she loves to go upstairs and wake up the girls).
• Investigate the rest of the rooms and look for Dad (if I'm at work and not at home).
• Eat breakfast (unless she needs to go #2, then she usually waits to eat until after she has gone back outside to do that).
• Makes her way over to her toy bin by the kitchen and chew on / play with a few toys.
• Once every 3-4 minutes make a sweep of the kitchen floor for any food that has fallen there.
• Back to her toys.

And she seems to love every minute of it. Here she is with one of her toys (a toy phone that Emma thought she was getting for herself) on this Friday morning...



Well, today was a bit out of her routine as we had an appointment with the vet for her to be spaded. We had no desire to mess with being in heat, pups, and all that entails. My only fear was whether or not she would be the same pup afterwards. I took her at 7a to the vet and dropped her off. Right on cue as the technician came around to pick her up and take her back, she dropped a little happy water on the floor. Since she hadn't had anything to drink in 12 hours, it wasn't much (Does this ever stop???). And off she went. No goodbyes... No see ya soon... No it'll be ok.

We went and picked her up around 4:30p and the vet came in to see us. This was to let us know how to take care of her... what to expect... etc. She said that the procedure went fine, but for some reason, Bailey was being really whiny. Her surgery didn't go any different then the other dogs there... so she said either Bailey has a low pain tolerance or is a drama queen. She gave some extra pain meds (which in turn cost us more) and sent us on our way.

On Friday night, she would barely walk, take 2 steps and then sit right back up, couldn't get her to go potty at all. We took the cone off of her head for most of the night thinking that it was bothering her (and she wasn't moving much), and we just sat next to her to make sure she didn't mess with her stitches. Amazingly, she slept through most of the night on Friday... until Abigail came walking in our room on at 4:45a saying she had "throwed up". Having known that the roto-virus / stomach bug was going around, we had wondered when it would be our turn. Anyway, that's for another blog... But getting Abigail back in bed did wake up Bailey, so I got to sit in the office with her, my cup of coffee and the Saturday newspaper. Below is a picture of her on Saturday morning looking all pathetic with her little cone around her head.


Bailey finally got better on Saturday afternoon, walking around a bit, even trying to play baseball with Emma in the back yard. She did whine from time to time all through Saturday, but for most of today (Sunday) we haven't heard her whine at all. You do feel for her though when she tries to scratch an itch on her head.

So, I vote for 25% low pain tolerance and 75% drama queen... fitting right in with the females of the Butler family.