It’s that time of year again and Lilly, our basset hound puppy wishes everyone a Happy Halloween! Dressed in her costume, Lilly is ready to practice safe trick or treating… and she wants you to do the same.
Happy Halloween from our basset hound Lilly
Got home after a long day at work the other evening and sat myself down to a nice cold beverage. Got to talking to my wife about the events of the day for several minutes and noticed that I had seen my labrador and dachshund roaming around the house, but I hadn’t seen Lilly, our basset hound?. I asked my wife if she had seen her and she said “Oh she’s probably in the back yard”. Went to look in the backyard and she was nowhere to be found. Looked in the house, again she was nowhere. Now I began to panic.
I went out into the front yard and started calling Lilly’s name. Within 30 seconds, a teenage asked “Are you looking for your dog?” I replied yes and asked if she had seen a basset hound puppy. Right around the corner comes her friend carry Lilly in his arms. “My dog got hit by a car a few weeks ago. I didn’t want it to happen to this little one”.
I profusely thanked them for returning Lilly. The two teens had found her about a block away! She was safe and sound, thank goodness!
My family and I have no idea how she escaped. We suspect that she ran out the front door when I came in the house from work. We are now in the process of getting her a dog tag on her collar. When she’s older we will look at implanting a chip.
Bottom line… a potential tragedy was avoided.
One thing we’ve noticed with our Lilly, our basset hound puppy, is that she loves to play rough. It doesn’t matter how big, strong or tough you are, she will play rough. Our 50 pound white Labrador, Nala is no exception.
Take a look at the video below and you’ll know what I mean!
Last Friday, my wife came home from work to find our basset hound Lilly not looking too well. She looked kind of puny and weak. In fact her eyes seemed to be rolling in the back of her head. It looked very scary and really alarmed us. After looking around we found out that she had vomited a time or two throughout the house. This didn’t look good.
We called our veterinarian’s office and they instructed us to bring her in immediately. Our vet felt her stomach, drew blood and took her temperature. Everything was normal. Our vet suspected that she must have ate a bug or something and got a little nausea. He gave her a shot to help prevent the vomiting, sent us home and instructed us to monitor her the rest of the day. If the symptoms continued, we were to bring her in the next morning.
Good news! As soon as we got home, Lilly pepped up, went straight to her feeding bowl and pigged out! She was looking and feeling better and back to her usual silly self.
Now to get rid of some of those bugs in the backyard…
It’s been about a month now and Lilly seems to have settled into her new home just fine and getting along with her new “sisters” Macy (a dachshund) and Nalla (a yellow labrador). With the fun and playfulness comes everybody’s favorite “doody”, house training.
So far the house training has been fairly painless, I believe thanks in part to our current two dogs who are already house trained. Went it comes “potty” time, Macy and Nalla simply go out the pet door and do their thing. Lilly simply follows them out and does her thing as well. Kind of a “monkey see, monkey do” type learning environment.
Every morning we let the dogs out in our backyard to take care of their business. Again, Lilly simply follows Macy and Nalla outside and knows that it’s potty time. It seems to help to have other dogs who are more experienced in their “doody” be the puppy’s “mentor” and Lilly has two of them!
Of course there has been the occasional “accident” from time to time, but nothing to really fret about. As in any dog, house training a basset hound takes practice and patience.
Second hand Smoke can be dangerous for your pet
ABC’s new hit comedy Middle (Wednesdays 8:30 pm ET) has introduced a new basset hound to the show.. and boy does she have troubles!
Doris, a female basset hound, who has spent years living with two chain smoking aunts has developed emphysema. Frankie, the mom stuck in the middle, takes Doris to her house which is a smoke free home. What happens next… well you’ll just have to watch the show.
Yes, the above is fiction, but it does bring up a concern with pets in smoking homes. Studies have shown that just like humans, second hand smoke can harm any pet. Emphysema and other respiratory diseases can be related to second hand smoke. And long nose breeds, particulary basset hounds have a greater chance of getting such diseases.
Fortunately in our home, no one smokes, so this is not an issue. However, in some homes it is an issue. If you are a pet owner and smoke, I encourage you to stop and think not only what you are doing to your pet, but more importantly, what you are doing to yourself. The data is out there and the research has been done. Smoking is extremely dangerous to your health.
For more information on the effects of second hand smoke on pets, please visit Science Daily.com
For an effective system that will help you quit smoking TODAY, click here.
We just took Lilly to our vet the other day for her checkup. Found out that the little bumps on her left ear may not have been the result of fire ants, but simply a minor fungus. The bumps are turning into scabs and that clued our vet into thinking this was fungus related. Not to gross anyone out, but it kind of looks like athletes foot for the ears!
Our vet prescribed an antifugal cream called Tresaderm to apply to her ear once a day. Still too early to see any results as this is only the second day she has been treated. We will keep you updated on her progress.
We did notice that Lilly’s large ears tend submerge in her water bowl when she takes a drink. I wouldn’t think that this would be a cause for the fungus, but who knows? Short of using a clothes pin to pull back her ears, anyone have any ideas?
During the past couple of weeks, we have had a lot of much needed rain here in central Texas. And with the rain comes fire ants afterwards. A real pain to deal with, but hey… this is Texas.
We all know that basset hounds are by nature, very curious dogs. They like to get into everything and Lilly is no exception.
Well, Lilly learned a lesson last week that there are some things you just do not stick your nose in and one of those is fire ant hills. The other afternoon after coming home from work, we noticed Lilly had some bumps on her left ear. After further observation, we determined that these were possibly fire ant bites. A trip to the vet confirmed this. Lilly did not seem to be in pain or discomfort, she just had these bumps on her left ear. Our vet gave us some hydrocortosone cream and told us to call her if the bites look worse or Lilly has some sort of discomfort. Well, neither happened and we are happy to report that the bumps have disappeared and Lilly is doing just fine.
I have already declared war on the fire ants. A trip down to the local home improvement store for some fire ant granuals has already “fried” those pesky little devils!
It’s been over a week now since we’ve gotten Lilly, our new basset hound, and boy can we tell a difference in how much she has grown! She seems to be getting more longer and taller all within a week! Of course basset hounds usually grow this way. According to professional dog trainers and veteranairans, basset hounds usually get all their height within the first year. A year or two after that, they fill out. Basset hounds can grow up to 60-70 pounds! We love holding and carrying Lilly as much as possible, because in a few months this is going to be almost impossible to do!
Lilly tends to eat a bunch. We have to limit her food to 1/3 cup, three times a day. We are currently feeding her Royal Canin Baby Dog 30. She loves it and comes recommended by our veteranarian.
In the meantime, we just keep watching our “Baby Lilly” grow and grow.
This is our new basset hound puppy Lilly. We’ve only had her for about a week, but she has been a joy to our family. She is five weeks old and of course, still a baby. She has seemed to adjust to her new living quarters just fine and loves to play with our labrador. I believe the lab, whose name is Nala, seems to think Lilly is her “baby.” They play together all the time. We have to remind Nala to take it easy from time to time. She’s 65 pounds, but the basset puppy is only about 5 pounds!
However, with six year our dachshund, Macey, it’s a totally different matter. Macey is very shy and doesn’t want anything to do with her. Dachshunds by nature are very territorial and jealous. She reacted the same way we got Nala about a year ago, but now Nala and her get along just fine.
Our hope with this blog is to journal our experiences with our new bundle of joy. We are told basset hounds are very lovable dogs. This is our first one and we are looking forward to what we hope are many years together. We will be updating this blog every few days sharing with everyone our experiences with Lilly, both good and “challenging”. Please be sure to check back often.
Wayne the “Hound Owner”