LOVE this picture of Steel, so I just had to share. B

Rambunctious Puppy

Look at this goof ball.  We met his girl friend, Cayman, at auditorium shores this morning and the got to run all around!  It was the quietest I've ever seen it.  Steel made friends with a few passing dogs along the way, but he loves Cayman.  He gets tired/lazy/doesn't want to chase her too much, so he just waits until she is close.  She knows it's coming so stops a ways off and it's a stand off until he decided to pounces on her.  They are too funny together. 

Now he is passed out on the bed.  He loves his play dates just as much as his momma does! 

Photo Shoot

Last week one of the oh-so-talented photographers in town emailed me about Steel being in a photo shoot she was doing.  She saw a picture of him on Facebook and thought he would be the perfect subject for the look she was aiming for.  He is pretty cute, so I agreed to bring him to the shoot. 

He is pretty good at listening when there are not distractions.  He was so ADD during the shoot and would only sit for a treat for about 5 seconds.  He is still a puppy after all, not that he looks like it.  We were downtown at the Chateau Bellevue, so tons of traffic, and all he wanted to do was eat the rose petals off the ground.  Silly pup.  She did get this amazing picture of him and the model. 

Isn't he beautiful??  The poor model - he can pull like no other if he wants to, so I told her to just let go if he gets to be too much.  It's an art to look good and man handle a 90lb dog. :o)  You've got to see the rest of the pictures she posted - amazing!  I love them!!

Before we left, she also snapped a few candid shots of Steel, because she is just that sweet.

Now an update on our sweet Bella bear... Her surgery leg is doing much better, and she is walking a ton better on it.  The swelling has gone down, no more bruising, and now we just have to wait until Monday to get the staples removed.  Sounds great right?  Yea, except Bella is never that easy.  I compare her to D and all of this random health surprises..

I know I mentioned her other back foot was swollen in my last post.  Well of course that didn't just go away nicely.  The swelling started to go down, but then her pads started peeling off.  At this point I was really worried about an infection and who knows what else.  We took her back to the specialty hospital last Saturday and had an internal medicine doctor look at it.  I go through the run down of events and say that she hasn't been licking it, but it is leaking (the best way to describe it) from the bottom of her paw.  She takes her back and Bella was not running a temperature, but she says she thinks it's just from the swelling and that it's peeling because she has been licking it.  At this point I was extremely frustrated, because I just sat there and told her that we've been watching her closely and she HADN'T been licking it.  Ugh. So we leave with some antibiotics and I keep watching it.  Well the pad was not getting better.  In fact most of the large pad was completely off and the full pad was off of one of her top toes.  We asked if we should cover it or clean it and they just say to keep it clean by wiping it with a warm water rag.  Okay we were doing that - still no change. 
Finally on Monday, I take her out and wipe her foot off and see this.  {warning - it's not a pretty picture)

Immediately I thought, this is not right.  To me it looked like some kind of growth, terrible bacteria, grossness!  I had Scott help me take this picture, because it hurts her to touch her pad.  I'm talking about that black/brownish thing on the pink tissue, not me pulling back the pad.  I send this picture to D and I send it to the specialty clinic via email.  I get a call that afternoon and they still don't think it's really anything but an infection.  Again, no additional treatment, just the antibiotics.  When it continued to peel off and still nothing had changed in that day, I finally called my regular vet.  I tried to describe it to him and he had me send him this exact same picture to his phone.  He called me back and said that it was not normal and asked what medicine she was on.  All 4 of them are good, but he said we needed to get an antibiotic cream to get rid of something like this.  When I asked him if we should be wrapping it or cleaning it, he said absolutely.  He understood that it's impossible to keep her foot clean and actually get this heeled. 

FINALLY.  I felt like we were headed in the right direction.  I don't think it was that hard of a stretch to understand that something was going on with her foot.  So, it will still take a while to fully heal, but I feel better about it.  The more we see our regular vet, the more I love him. 
xxoo B

Collar

I finally got Steel his own shiny new id tags in the mail.  I found it on Etsy, of course.  Right now the long tag is a little large for his body, but I know that won't last long.  The punched holes for his name are more masculine, accompanied with our numbers and 'Bring Me Home' on the back.  I thought it turned out pretty darn cute manly.

 
It was hard to get him to sit still - sorry it's a little blurry - he's been a crazy head lately.  All that puppy energy coming out of him!

Love B

Meet Steel

That's right, Bella bear now has a new little brother.  We picked him up from San Antonio on Friday.  He's an 8 week old Great Dane.  How cute is he?

D and I had the hardest time picking out a name - we are going to be in real trouble if we ever have kiddos.  We were looking into Greek god names, words that pertained to 'huge' {since his daddy is 140lbs}, and D had to look into some game related characters.  We liked Ajax and Orion, but Steel just seemed to fit him given his blue coloring.  Out of the 11 in the litter, he had 3 other brothers and 1 sister still left, but we decided to go with him mostly because he was the most calm.  He also had the most coloring on his belly and some white on his paws as well.

D was sitting on the ground, and the pups were all about him.  The girl was the most nuts and was running and jumping all over the place.  She also welcomed D by jumping and biting his nipple.  Hilarious.

The first thing we did with him was bring him home to see B.  She was SO happy when he got here.  She had the biggest smile I'd ever seen and was running around like a crazy face.  The video is pretty hilarious and ends with the first pee on the carpet by Steel.  We then surprised my parents and brother when we brought him over to their house - Oops, I must have forgotten to tell them we were getting one. :o)  Apollo, my brothers pup, was really good with him as well.  He's small at the moment, but they aren't going to know what to do when he gets big, in about oh... a month.

We already had a beach trip planned, so we brought him along.  He basically was in someone's hands the whole time since he is such a snuggle bug.  Bella loved the beach and playing in the sand.  Here are some great moments from our trip down to Port Aransas.

The dogs were SO excited to play in the water

Our nice little set up - that's right we all fit into Scotty's FJ - all 5 adults 2 dogs and 1 pup.

This is by far my FAVORITE picture from the trip.  B is such a silly head - I love her.

Steel's ears were hilarious in the wind

We spent the rest of the weekend recovering from the trip.  It was a long drive home, but worth it.  We all had such a good time.  I even talked them into stopping at DQ for some much needed soft serve on the way home.  Sunday was great because B and Steel could really play and get to know each other.

B's face is so funny - I placed Steel by her and that lasted for a few minutes.

 Steel loves to bite on her face and jowls and she doesn't even care.  This sums up their time playing together.   

Have to end with the video of them playing as well.  Love these two.