Hooray!

We have had some difficulty lately with Miss Samantha's eating. Shortly before spring break, she became very finicky. She would eat maybe 1/2 of what was in her bowl. It seemed to happen quite suddenly. Then, after being gone from her for about a week when we visited my family, she was very clingy upon our return and would only eat if we were in the eat-in kitchen part of the kitchen. At first, she wouldn't even eat if I was just a few feet over at the stove making dinner, for instance. We finally got her back on track with eating and the clingy-ness, only to have our kumquats become quite over-ripe. She loves to play with any and everything in the backyard, including these rotten kumquats. She chews on them, ingesting the juices and pulp, and then gets sick. We've had puppy throw ups at least every other day for the past almost 2 weeks! YUCK! Often, she didn't eat well because she wasn't feeling well or we didn't give her much food to make sure her stomach had settled, but then there was nothing in her stomach to buffer the kumquat juice. Great. :)

Yesterday morning she had all but finished the most recent bag of dog food. She turns 1 year old this month (awww), so I suggested to Matt that we go ahead and buy her a bag of "big dog" food. :) Our obedience class trainer from PetSmart was earning her Master's in animal nutrition, so she gave a nutrition lecture one week of our course. Matt and I are not exactly willing to pay $20/bag of dog food. However, we ARE willing to carefully look at each type of dog food Walmart manufactures :), and choose the healthiest of what they offer. We read the ingredients, and going by Rachel's (our trainer's) rules we settled on the healthiest option. And really, it's pretty healthy!

We mixed Sammy's dinner last night as part of her old food and part of her new food. She LOVED the new food! Her tail was wagging and she sat SOOO expectantly as I set down her bowl. At one point as she scarfed down her food, she got a bite of just the old puppy food, and she spit it out! Then she rooted around in her bowl for more of the new, tasty morsels. :) After dinner I was folding some laundry, and she came in the laundry room, sniffed out her bag, and started nosing around the top corner of the bag we cut open to scoop her food. I think we found a winner!

We are hopeful that this perked appetite will help offset the kumquats. We can't always rake them up as fast as they fall. We're very glad our Sammy is getting back to her usual self (she always ate RAVENOUSLY as a young puppy). And also, we want to wish her a happy birthday.... sometime this month. That's the only downside so far of rescuing--we don't know her real birthday. I guess we'll just have to give her a special pat on the head and a treat now and then all month to celebrate. ;) hehe