The weather is pretty miserable here today…unless you’re a duck or a Newf. It started raining at 6:30 am and isn’t supposed to stop until tomorrow. Joy. I don’t have a problem with Ayla wanting to play outside in the rain. It really doesn’t bother me in the least that she will eventually want to come inside soaking wet. We have plenty of dog towels and no carpets in this house so it’s not such a big deal to clean up a bit of water. But I am not a fan of taking her for walks in the rain (so we cut ours short this morning) and I’m also not too keen on standing outside in the courtyard throwing toys for Ayla when it’s raining. I could stand on the covered steps instead but they are marble and I don’t really like her running up and down them when she’s wet. Just too risky since she is a total spaz most of the time!

Today Ayla has decided she will spend some time indoors trying to make me crazy. She’s been in and out a few times and has drug her towels all over the house. We need to clean anyway so perhaps she will mop up some dirt with her towels…who knows 🙂

In addition to wet dog syndrome, we are finding a massive number of ticks on Ayla. We pulled off two pretty huge ones yesterday and I’ve already found two more on her this morning. Since we came back from Bavaria, I would guess we’ve pulled off 10 or15 ticks…versus 4 before we went down there. It’s just tick heaven down there! We just gave her another dose of Frontline as well so hopefully that will at least start killing them off soon. We had a very mild winter so they are going to be out in force this year, I’m sure. But every time I pull one of those suckers off her, I wonder what sort of purpose those creatures serve? I mean really – why do we need them? Or mosquitoes?

Ayla is also going back into heat. Her appetite has slacked off a bit and she was turning up her nose at her regular food for a few days. She’s still not digging into her food now but at least I don’t have to convince her that it tastes good anymore and she is eating the canned food mixed in again which she wouldn’t touch over the weekend. She is also peeing more frequently on walks, leaving pee-mails for all her friends so they know she’s looking for some private party friends….and she has to sniff anything and everything on the walk. That’s not to say that she walks along without stopping usually, but now she could stand in a 10 foot square area the entire day and sniff every blade of grass.

We haven’t seen any blood drops yet but she didn’t have much during her first cycle either. We are hoping that she won’t be cleaning herself so obsessively this time though and doesn’t cause another urinary tract infection. Then again she might like that since her pills are coated in cheese when we give them to her… 🙂