Life - October 17th 2015

well hello October! the smell of fresh crisp cold weather coming and the beautiful colors of all the leafs

don't you just love the leafs all over (I'm sure if you have a ton a trees you want to give me a dirty look for saying that!) I love the sound of them blowing across the street, the sound they make when you step through them, watching them gracefully flow as they tumble out of the trees! although I love heat and hate being cold, there's just something so fresh about this time of year, it makes you want to have a fresh outlook!

anyways, I wanted to give you an update about life!

my handsom lil Kushie 😉

my sweet lil Koopie 😉 totally skeptical about my camera!

Its been a crazy busy years with a lot of ups and downs.

I just want to give you all some updates about, Life! 😉 Specifically about this summer as well as some additions I am going to be making to the blog!

So let’s start with our pups we had some crazy-ness going on, specifically I would like to talk about a crappy time that we are just getting over…

Since last summer we have been giving them both hypoallergenic food because Kooper had some serious food allergies I’m talking runny bloody horrible stools (I know this is a food blog but this is LIFE and it’s serious sometimes) anyways when we changed their food I cut out any un-necessary things and one of them things being a flea control treatment called Frontline Plus! They had not gotten any flea treatment or any fleas until July 2015… that’s when we found a couple fleas… panicked we put the Frontline Plus on them both right away to nic the fleas in the butt before it got out of control… last summer we noticed Kush always got a little crabby the first few days after applying it so we thought we’ll just be careful! WRONG!

Pause: we also switched to ivermectin for heart disease control when we switched the food so they never got ivermectin and Frontline at the same time…

Continuing: well he got crabby alright, actually lets re-phrase that he got vicious! Not towards us but towards his brother! After they got in 2 fights it finally clicked the Frontline Plus was causing it… now after heavy investigation apparently we aren’t the only ones that have experienced this, Frontline works by over stimulating the nervous system of the flea and thus killing it, well it also affects your dogs nervous system as well, it seeps into the glands of the dog and slowly releases as the hair grows out…

Fipronil is the active ingredients in Frontline Plus and it can last up to 90 days after application while Frontline starts to loose potency at day 30 and they tell you its completely gone by day 45 that’s not the case with the last standing ingredients that hasn’t worn off yet!

So here we are at about 75 days and things are SO much better! Thankfully! We started seeing relief at about day 45 but I can not express how aweful the 45 days were, miserable, playing police with my own two dogs, worrying he would attack his brother at any moment, anxiety, stress, tears were spread through those days. At certain points I thought I was never going to get my babies back to how they were!

Now let me express its still not 100% how it used to be but oh my gosh I can breathe now! Literally!

Now I am not telling you this story to put out bad things about Frontline but I do want to put my experience out there for everyone to read because I feel its extremely important and maybe it will help someone else!

As for a flea preventative, we have decided what’s best for us right now is to give weekly baths while the weather is warm and bi-weekly in the winter so as to not dry out their skin. We also plan to spray the yard for fleas and mosquitos frequently and not walk where there is a heavy population of other dogs!

also we plan to spray the yard frequently and keep humidity under control in the house, eggs need 70-75% humidity to hatch and they need at least 50% humidity to live so we are going to attempt to control that to help keep them away!

As for a heart disease preventative I am honestly weighing pros and cons of the likelihood right now, which I know some people would dis-agree with but while on the Frontline we gave the monthly dose of ivermectin and within hours he got worse and more aggressive so the interaction of the two at least in my dog was horrible! … I’m not sure what to do for the heart disease preventative but I have until spring to figure that out (as they do not get it in the winter months, ivermectin is the active ingredient in hearguard that prevents infestation from the mosquitos only)

Any input about the heart disease preventative or whether or not you give it to your dog would be greatly appreciated!

I’m hoping and praying with my fingers crossed that everything continues to get better!

p.s. we also know one other person that had the same experience with their dog.

moving on to a more fun note! we put up some Halloween lights in our back yard along the top of the fence! I love the bright orange and purple colors! orange is my favorite this time of year!!!