What a trip!!

Brian came home late last week….Friday night, we loaded up all the dogs in the van, and headed 9 hours south west to Alamogordo, NM for a dog show. Saturday was fun, Domino is a baby baby 6 month and 1 week old Cardi puppy, and he did as well as I can expect him to (including his “OMG!! Feed Me!! Touch Me!!” dance on the table! LOL) and he was the only class dog, and went WD.

Gravy was the only Pointer I had entered, and won the breed by default of being the only one entered. We are still working through his butthead phase….. silly adolescent Pointer boys!!

Saturday night, we walked everyone a few times, got everyone fed, walked them again late before turning in for the night…work up at 5 am to get everyone out and pottied again so we could catch a few more hours sleep (had late ring times – Pointers at 11 and Cardis at 1!) and realized that out of the 8 dogs that were with us, 5 were sick. Nasty sick. Make you want to puke just getting a slight wiff of it sick. Got everyone walked, got the crates cleaned out. Got everything somewhat calmed down. Looked at Brian, and all I could manage to say was “Lets get them home before this gets worse.” So we packed up, and hit the road. We left at about 6, didnt get home till after 4 in the afternoon. Stopped and walked dogs every hour. By the time we got home, most of them were under control, but still acting sick. Got all the crates scrubbed out, all the nasty dirty blankets in the laundry, and got all the dogs re-bathed so they were clean and not covered in stuff. We were both exhausted, but spent most of the night up watching , checking on, and letting sick dogs in and out of the house. By morning, 4 of the 5 sick ones were perfectly fine, back to normal. In another 24 hours, the fifth one was also. Who knows why sudden and severe things like this can crop up suddenly (we know the fifth was due to the chunks of blanket she had been eating – but the other 4 had no diet or water changes to attribute)

Sometimes, the kids pick up bugs along the way. We’ve done a LOT of traveling this year, put a lot of miles on the van, and the dogs have been along for the ride. More often than not, healthy dogs fight off those bugs without issue. Until something happens to drop their immunity. Between Brian coming home, rapid temperature drops, the home schedule changing, a long trip to the show, and hanging out in their crates for 2 days on the road, it was probably enough stress to drop their immunities enough that the bug kicked in. Between preventative measures, and coming home to their familiar area, they rallied back to normal, like good, healthy dogs would. They had no changes in diet (we’ve been feeding from the same batch of food for a month now…) and no changes in water (brought water from home for the road)…so nothing to attribute to but stress. Oddly enough, the young puppy and the old girl were two of the three that didnt get sick….