My First Post!
Hey there everyone! This is my first post, and I thought I'd start by telling a short story of our most recent adventure. Last week my family took a trip to Nags Head, NC. While we were there, Indy and I did our fair share of relaxing, but we also went exploring in the sound as well as the ocean. The weather was quite nice during our trip, which made the ocean surprisingly calm. The calm waves gave Indy an opportunity to try out swimming like the big dogs do it. At first, she was a little afraid, but after some coaxing and me running into the ocean, she followed me in. She swam around a little and seemed to enjoy it for the most part. It was definitely a great way to cool her off from the summer heat. It was during this swim that I learned that even though my dog is adorable and I want to hold her all the time, (especially when she looks like she wants me to come to her rescue while swimming in waist level deep water) it is not a good idea to do so. Needless to say, I let her climb on me, and while this made her happy, I was left with scratches all over my thighs and sides. Oh well, skin heals, and my dog was happy. :)
Besides the great swim we had, there were opportunities to romp around in the sound with my cousin's dog Daisy, and Indy loved all the moments where she could just smell the ocean air and look out at all the people. We even got a few chances to try out our new Ruffwear gear! I bought Indy the grip trex boots for the sand, and I was thrilled that they fit her comfortably and protected her feet from the blistering sand. The sand was so hot, I thought my toes were going to blister off when I wore flip flops. All of the discussion of toes burning among my family led to almost everyone who went to the beach wearing some kind of slipper shoe instead of a flip flop. A bunch of them even went and bought slipper type shoes just so they could better enjoy the beach with my brilliant idea. I personally wore my Sanuks, which are uber comfortable, but what they bought from the drug store was cute too and worked just as well.
Indy's boots were a huge hit everywhere we went. In particular, we had two or three families comment on them at the beach and ask me where I got them. Then, while shopping at the strip mall, I had like 20 or more different groups of people stop and ask me about them, or just comment on how cute Indy was with them on. Two other people even told me something along the lines of how great it was that I was considerate of my dogs paws. This really made me feel good! Of course, taking care of my dog came before looking cute, but it was darn great to be able to do both!
After almost all fun had been over the course of about 4 days, my sweet Indy didn't have so much fun. I noticed that she had been acting itchy and scratching her back a lot. When I looked closer, I noticed that she had some scabs and ran all down her back, about a span of like 4-5 inches. So of course, after my doctor dad acted like it was nothing, and my vivid brother told me it was probably fly eggs under her skin. I was convinced to take her to the vet. My evil brother scared me enough to forget my doctor dad's basic recommendation which was it's probably nothing, but just keep an eye on it. So I took Indy to the vet that afternoon and it turns out that she had developed a hot spot. Now, for those of us that didn't know, a hot spot is just a term meaning that the dog as decided to obsessively scratch or bite a part of their body. Sometimes, the itchiness comes from an irritant, other times it just is bad luck. In this case, I'm thinking that Indy had gotten a little sandy while we were having our big swim at the beach, and since her hair was wet and gross, when I put her harness on her took her back home, it was just enough rubbing to start a minor irritated spot on her back. Then she scratched it until it became a real problem, a hot spot. The vet was cool and he shaved her spot and cleaned it up and gave her a steroid shot to make it stop itching. Then he gave me stuff to keep it clean with and a few sedatives to keep her from scratching it and $300 later we were on our way.
So I still love the outer banks, I love Ruffwear and highly recommend their stuff, and I learned not to use a harness after a salty, sandy, swim at the beach, as that was likely the cause of Indy's itchiness. I hope you enjoyed reading about my latest adventure with Indy, hopefully my next one won't include a trip to the vet.