Barking & Barfing

Barking. Sometimes I think Chili loves the sound of her own voice. Bark, bark, bark, bark. What was that? Should I bark? I should bark. What do you mean no? I’m pretty sure I should bark. That’s it, I’m barking. Bark, bark, bark, bark. Then she looks back at you all proud of herself.

Luckily she doesn’t bark at everything and it’s more or less confined to inside the house. She doesn’t bark at the doorbell or someone knocking. She just barks at imaginary sounds and things outside. OK, she probably does hear something that we can’t, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. She has a very big bark for a little girl, an 80lb little girl. She’ll go for a while where she just ignores everything, then it starts up again. She’ll casually walk over to the French doors and stare out the window. It’s quite amusing, especially since we now know her body language. She looks back and forth, searching for whatever. We know when she’s ready to start because her head starts to jerk, her body stiffens and leans forward. She does look quite remarkable. I really have to get a picture of her in her intense stance.

It’s one thing to be barking in the middle of the day. It’s another when it starts in the middle of the night. That really sucks. Imagine yourself, dead asleep, then being woken up as if you were just shocked. Sometimes being kicked in the head as she jumps up to defend against .... whatever. Not a pretty picture. What could make it even better? Add some barfing.
Yes, barfing. It’s been a tough month for the Chill. We noticed that she had a crack in one of her canines. Now, I like to be proactive about these things so we had to get it dealt with right away. Anyway, a few days before she was supposed to go in to have her tooth fixed, she stopped eating, got diarrhea, and started barfing. Now, instead of waking up in the middle of the night to bark, she was waking up to barf. Poor girly.

Somehow we’ve been able to train her to do her best to go outside if she has to barf. She really does try. Sometimes she doesn’t make it all the way, but at least she makes it to the tile. Once she get sick I don’t really sleep, I just go to bed and stay in this half sleep, half awake state. I know the signs. She starts to pant, and lick her lips, then smack her lips. When she’s ready, she jumps up and off she goes. I want to be there for her when she has to go. I think she likes the moral support. She relies on me. She just has to move the right way and I’m half way down the stairs before I’m completely awake. Right by her side.

She did manage to get better before she was put under anaesthesia, only to be sick again from the anaesthesia. Another couple of nights go by where we’re running outside in the middle of the night. Finally she started to feel better. I was looking forward to getting a good night’s sleep. I did, for a day or two. Then she got sick again. I don’t even know why I bothered going to bed. Again, poor girly.

After a tough month, she’s almost back to normal. Almost. We did find out that she has mild pancreatitis which might explain the occasional barfing. As a result, we’ve switched her food and stopped sharing. The last one has been tough on her and us. We’re all used to the sharing ritual but when it comes to her health, we can be strong. It’s not over, but at least she seems to be feeling better.

I’ll take the barking any day or night, it that means she’s well.