Monday, January 28, 2013

Riley Is Home.

Our sweet Riley is home!  His liver enzyme levels are still elevated, but are headed in the right direction, so the vet was comfortable with us bringing him home.  Zoey was so excited to see him!  I thought her tail was going to wag off!       

With his new haircut, it kind of looks like he's wearing shorts and Ugg boots.  So stylish.  



As soon as I sit down on the couch, he's on my lap.  It's made for a rather unproductive evening, but work can wait.  I've missed these sweet snuggles more than you could imagine.  He's sleeping in my lap as I write this post, while my laptop is teetering on my knees. 



They sent him home with his cute birthday sign . . .


And a ton of medication.  Riley will be taking a bunch of different pills for at least 4 weeks.  Most of our evening was spent trying to figure out a way to disguise the pills in different types of approved food.  He's quite a persnickety eater and will do anything to eat around the pills (no matter how small you make them).  One thing is certain, he is not a fan of cottage cheese.  If anyone has any tips for getting a dog to take pills, I'm all ears.  We aren't looking forward to giving him 10 pills every day! 


Thanks for your sweet comments and thoughts and prayers.  I really appreciate it!  I'm so thankful he's back at home with us.     

9 comments:

  1. Poor Riley. What a sweet little boy. I hope he makes a speedy recovery! Is he an airedale? I am obsessed with those dogs!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think I need a little welsh terrier to be BFFs with my airedale. Big and little!

    My boxer is weird about licking pills to death and picking them out of things. Pill Pockets were the best thing I ever bought. They were expensive but worth it to make him eat it without knowing he was getting a pill. I also learned to get him excited about his "treat" so that he swallowed it fast. Asked him to do a trick...sit, hand shake, speak...GULP and it was gone!

    Glad your baby is better! How scary! My puppies are my babies!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I hear you on the pill giving - it is terrible especially with a picky eater. We fostered a dog (and then adopted her) and she would not eat a pill wrapped in bacon, cheese, anything. But eventually she came around. And what really worked was what Madaline wrote above - we do the exact same thing and give both of our dogs "treats" at the same time and it works almost every time now. The picky eater seems to think everything is fine when her doggie sister gets a treat.

    Good luck and I'm glad he's home!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yay for your pup being home! I hope he feels better soon!



    http://nninwonderland.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  5. as was commented before "pill pockets" work pretty well, as does peanut butter.

    one trick. let him see that he will be getting 2 treats. put the pill in the first treat. he will hopefully gobble that down so that he can have his second treat. so that you don't overload him on treats (but really at this point what difference does it make) make the second treat small. maybe a piece of cheese, or just break a treat in half.
    for some reason they think that second treat is just the best thing ever so they grab the first one and just swallow.

    just be creative. good luck and i wish him all healthy days.

    ReplyDelete
  6. What a sweet pup. So glad he is doing better. Having a sick animal is absolutely awful b/c all you want to do is help them and it's so hard figuring out what's wrong. Glad he's on the road to recovery.

    ReplyDelete
  7. So glad he's okay!!! Happy belated birthday, Riley :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm so happy Riley is home with you! Nothing compares to those snuggles!

    ReplyDelete
  9. peanut butter or cream cheese works great. glad your baby is doing okay.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment! It's great to hear from you!