yay no dog poopies to clean up!

Today when I got home from work, Sedona's crate was poop-free!! I'm not holding my breath, but I think her digestive system might be getting back to normal. I did do a lot of reading last evening about diarrhea and possible causes, and stress is probably it. (I highly doubt she picked up any of the strange parasites or other weird things that could cause diarrhea...) She's pretty high-strung most of the time, and I would venture to say she also suffers from a bit of separation anxiety, possibly due to the breed of dog she is- like the breeder told us, Shelties always want to be where "their people" are. Sedona follows that pattern- she's underfoot or right next to us most of the time. (Not that there's a lot of other places to be in our apartment- lol!) She also gets really frantic and overexcited when we come home from being away... we have to keep it really low-key, or she'll piddle all over without knowing it. I'm going to feed her a "bland diet" dinner of cooked hamburger and rice tonight, just to help things along, and hopefully the "poop-free crate" trend will continue! This pic is just a nice pose from a few weeks ago- her coat has really filled out, although since she's female I don't think she'll ever get the really full, shaggy coat that is typical of the male dogs. (it does blow in the breeze really nice when she runs, though- and her tail is like a flag waving when she's really paying attention to something- it reminds me of a whitetail deer!)

Another thing I did a little more reading about was crate training- since she's now in her crate all day long, a couple sites suggested all day and at night is sometimes too much for a dog to handle. Last night, to help alleviate this, I let her stay with me on the bed- she was pretty settled, for the most part (this is probably because we played ball and tag for over an hour!)... she slept next to me till about 1 am, when she started getting restless- I took her outside to pee, then put her in the crate for the rest of the night. We probably won't let her sleep with us all the time, and it's not like I got the best sleep in the world, but once in a while is okay with me.

Thanks, Jackie, for the comment about Doggie Day Care- we do want to find something like this for her, although we'll probably only be able to take her there occasionally for a "play date" instead of every day.

I got my first paycheck from Kelly Services today! They spelled my last name wrong, though- hopefully the bank will still let me cash (oops- I meant deposit! LOL!) it!!