Happy Birthday Mad Max Nugget G

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday Dear Maxi-Poo,

Happy Birthday to you.

Max is finally 1, well 7 if you're counting in Doggy years. 

Fresh little nugget. Only 6 weeks old.

At Daycare.

Sick with Pneumonia and HODS. Worst experience ever.

He never sits up straight. It's always a little to the side. 

I bought him this bone and he could not get it to break up and he was very upset about it.

He would cry, bring it to me, then pick it up and try again. It was pretty funny.

He HAS to rest his head in my lap every time I sit on the sofa.  

"Why do you always have to take my picture while I am trying to relax?"

Max's destruction of his bed in the backyard. 

Mad Max G

I know everyone is on edge waiting for a Max update...

I look crazy pants in this picture!! I can't believe I'm posting it. 

Excuse my turkey neck. You have to click the picture to make it bigger so you can see Max better. His face says it all..."whatcha lookin' at? Isn't this normal?" It's funny because everyone that comes up to us to tell us about their Doberman tell us that theirs does the same thing, climbs up on the sofa and relaxes like it's no big thing. 

Chris and I can not sit down ANYWHERE without Max climbing in our lap, especially mine. I sometimes stand up to watch TV so I don't have 88 pounds sitting right on top of me. It actually cuts down on the time I waste watching TV so I guess I can't complain too much. This particular day I was not up for a fight over the chaise lounge so I gave in and left him cuddle up. 

Speaking of the 88 L.B.'s...the vet told us for the second time that he is overweight. 

Apparently he is supposed to be super skinny by his hind legs like this...

he definitely does NOT look like that right now.

We're working on it though. We've been walking in the evenings about 2.5 miles around our neighborhood. He likes it but whenever we walk past anyone they get as far away from him as possible because I guess they think he is going to bite their hand off. I feel so bad for him that he gets such a bad rap. If they only knew all he wants to do it love on you. Don't get me wrong, he has a really fierce bark and I'm sure bite. He just hasn't had to use the bite. 

Ahh we just love him so much. My poor friends...whenever they tell stories about their kids I follow up with a story about Max. I finally apologized to one of them the other day for comparing their kid to my dog. Oops! I was reading House Rules by Jodi Picoult the other day and the narrator was talking about what changes when you have a baby and one of them was "the dog goes back to being just a dog" and it made me laugh. It made me think about how we baby him so much and buy him something like every other time we leave the house. Whatever, he is our furbaby.

baby Max Nugget

Rachel took this picture of Max one day while he was at her puppy daycare.

I just saw it on her phone the other day and immediately sent it to myself! 

Oh I love him.

It's hard to believe he was ever so small. Especially since he is large and in charge now!

See what I mean?

Max is BACK!

Chris has been bugging me to post about Max's near death health scare so I figure now is the time.

**Warning: Long Dog Post Ahead**

For those of you that haven't heard we had a very ROUGH week and a half with Max. 

It started on Friday 9/24. I bought him a new rope toy on Friday night. Well last Friday night he started making this noise like he was choking on something and trying to gag it up. I was certain that he  was choking on a thread from the rope. Little did I know this is what a doggy cough sounds like. I called first thing Saturday morning and got an appointment. We took him to the vet and they told us he had a form of Kennel Cough. Poor Max. If you didn't know this already apparently it was an going around the city. It already like the 10th sick dog he had that day. I was freaking out a little but they said that with antibiotics he should be 100% by Monday. 

Well no such luck. On Monday night when I got home from work he was 10x worse than he was on Saturday. I took him back to the vet that night and Dr. Anderson (my favorite vet) told me that he had pneumonia. I was by myself and she kept telling me how it could get worse but it shouldn't and that she would need to observe him on Tuesday. Needless to say- I burst into tears and wailed "Is he going to be Ok?!?!" The vet assured me that everything should be fine but it was just a precautionary measure to watch him for the day. 

She gave him a shot of intravenous antibiotics and this is what I came home with...

He didn't move from that spot all night. 

It was a little weird for us because as we all know this is what we are used to...

(hahaha, this picture still makes me laugh so hard!)

I had breakfast with my mom, nana, and Rachel early Tuesday morning and asked Mom and Nana to come home with me just in case I couldn't Max into the car. He was able to make it OK himself so we headed for the vet. He spent the day hanging out in the nurses station. (Let me just say that Max is a ladies man and no lady can resist him charm. He got super special treatment all day I was told). They also gave him a catheter so they wouldn't have to keep pricking him with the shots they were giving him. He was a little better by the time I picked him up that night. 

 On Wednesday he was 100x worse. He could not even pick himself up out of his kennel. He was in so much pain that he had tears running down his face. I immediately started crying. Mom came over to help me load him, kennel and all, into her car. I drove him to Petsmart and then cried all the way inside while I tried to explain to someone that I needed help to get him out of the car. He was OK after all that day. His shot for the fever had worn off by that morning so it had gone up again. They told us that the fever and the pain made hims just too weak to move. Break my heart. 

On Thursday morning we woke up to this...

 His paw was so swollen it looked deformed. I FREAKED out! I called my mom and she came to help me load him up again. Apparently the bandage wrapped around his catheter was too tight. In the meantime the vet noticed that he kept dropping his hocks. She finally figured out that he was suffering from Hypertrophic Osteodystrophy. It's when the growth plates of young, rapidly growing, large breed dogs become enflamed. IT WAS TERRIBLE. By Thursday night he couldn't walk at all. 

Can you tell how swollen his joints are?

It was just his front legs. We were carrying him around like a reverse wheelbarrow for THREE DAYS. My back was so sore from trying to carry him around.

I was also his personal chef. It must have been good because he is licking his lips. 

He is back to himself now. Thankfully. 

Can you tell?

We took him for his check up and he was being SUCH A HAM for the vet. You could obviously tell that she gave him everything he wanted every day that he was there and he was trying to get more of whatever that may have been. Would you really want it any other way though? We told her that we were having some problems making him listen and behave and she admitted to spoiling him a little too much during his stay. It was worth it. 

I guess Max thought he was in a hotel not a vet's office. 

If the shoe fits...

I was at my Mom's house the other day with Max to show her some wedding stuff and noticed that she had a little rug with witch legs. It was perfect size for Max. 

You know what that means... it was time for a little Halloween photoshoot.

This one is a little blurry but still hilarious. 

I was laughing so hard I could barely hold my side of the rug up.

He is back to full health so he is back to his witchy ways.

Our Happy Little Family

In my Education class this semester our teacher was telling us a few tricks she had up her sleeve of easy yet very interesting ways to learn information about your students within the first week. Instead of waiting until you have trouble with the child, requesting a parent/teacher conference, pulling information out of the parent as to why the student is so disruptful/unwilling/etc, and then adapting your teaching for that child based on the issues. You can gather information from the exercise she told us to use to skip the middle part and go straight to the adapting.

One thing she suggested was asking them to draw a family portrait. This may not sound like much but it can be very telling about the child's home life. For example, if they draw the parents far apart from each other this could mean that the parents are divorced or they don't spend time together or aren't loving towards each other in front of the kids. If they draw the Dad sitting in a chair and the Mom standing it could mean that the mom is always on the go and their Dad watches TV. If they draw a picture of themselves with their grandparents it could mean their parents are absent and that can create a whole bag of issues. All of these can be very traumatic to a child which in turn affects their performance at school.

On a happier note if they draw the parents standing together with the kids and hearts and flowers and rainbows and kittens this probably means they have a wonderful home life. Dr. Hale (my prof) said that one year she had a little girl that drew a picture full of those things and when she had her first parent/teacher conference with her parents she said she was pretty sure she saw hearts and flowers and rainbows floating around their heads because she could "feel" their love for each other and their daughter during the conference. So sweet!

This is exercise seems like it is a little more geared for elementary kids (which I do NOT want to teach) but I think I might try it out and see what I can get out of the junior high kids. If it doesn't work it's OK, it would be good to try though.

Our homework assignment was to draw our family portrait and bring it to class the next week. Here is my family portrait* (you can click on it to make it bigger):

I originally thought I would draw my whole family (mom, dad, brother, sisters) since we're not married yet but 1. My family tree is too complex and 2. Chris and I ARE our own family now even though we haven't been hitched. We have a house and a puppy baby together, I mean how much more of a family can you get? Haha.

Do you think my teacher will see hearts floating around my head from this picture? It was funny because after she assigned us the homework she said "Now I know everyone is going to go home and draw hearts, flowers, rainbows, and kittens on their family portrait so that I don't try to analyze your pictures for any disfunction." Everyone laughed and agreed. 

*This was Chris pre-haircut. His 5 o'clock shadow is pretty funny. Chris made fun of me because we don't any noses. I've never been able to draw stick figure noses. Do like Max' occupation? Cutest puppy Ever! He kind of looks like a fox in this portrait. 

Max Loves Reading and Sleeping

This past week Max decided he wanted to do a little online reading with me. 

Then we decided to watch TV, only he got bored and fell asleep.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Just in case you were wondering, he weighs SEVENTY pounds now and he isn't done growing!

Maxy Max

Our little Max is growing so fast! He is 5 months old and weighs 62.5 lbs! Chris took him to the vet on Friday while I was out of town and they told him that Max is overweight. Join the crowd Max. Poor Max is on a doggy diet now.

I found Max taking a little cat nap (err doggy nap) on the sofa Sunday. It was SOOO cute. 

I felt like I should tuck him in or something.

Max got his posts off today. Due to Hurricane/Tropical Storm Hermine it took us an hour to get to the vet since no one knows how to drive in the rain. It took me another hour just to get back to work. Anyway, Max was not a happy camper. I opened the car door and he almost ran down the street.

I couldn't snap a picture quick enough. He kept trying to get my phone in his mouth.

He lays in the kitchen while I'm cooking. I was singing him a song to get his attention. 

Can you tell how much he loves my singing?

He has almost lost all of his baby teeth. His adult teeth are way more ferocious than the baby ones but they are thankfully a lot less sharp. We have quite a collection of teeth that we have found around the house that Chris insists on keeping. I told Max we would put them in his baby book*. 

My mom thinks Max is getting jipped because the tooth fairy hasn't brought him anything for any of teeth. Haha.

**We don't really have a baby book for him in case you are wondering. 

we got the boot from the sofa...

we've created a m.o.n.s.t.e.r.

so handsome

Isn't he so cute without those silly old bandages on his ear?

Chris has just picked him up from Dr. Wood's office and snapped this picture for me.

Unfortunately I had to take him back to the vet on Tuesday to get them re-banaged because they wouldn't stand up. His left ear fell down on Saturday while I had him at my office. He was SO GOOD!

I pretty much couldn't believe it since he is a crazy wild man at home. 

Well anyway, I will leave you with a few baby Max pictures that I downloaded from Chris' phone...

P.S. Sorry this is turning into a doggy blog. I can't help it. He is just so cute!

best seat in the house

According to Max...

He is SOOO bad. He is NOT allowed on the sofa so when you go towards him to get him off he turns into a wild man. He is pretty much doing everything but double back hand springs on there. Then you can't help but laugh so the discipline goes out the window...so bad, I know. DO NOT be fooled by his perfectly posed photo. He likes for people to think he is well behaved little doggy.

For example, when I took him last month for his vaccines the vet commented on how well behaved he was and I told her that he was usually not so calm and she didn't believe me. Sure enough AS SOON AS she turned her back to leave the room he got crazy. Thanks for making me look like a liar Max. 

After he is done with his gymnastics routine he jumps off of the sofa and lands on the ottoman as the grand finale. It's ridiculous. 

Today I took him to get his last set of vaccines. The vet obviously thought I was a horrible disciplinarian because I was letting Max twist me around on his leash so she was giving me tips on how to control him. It was kind of funny. 

Max is going to soon be enrolled into puppy obedient school.