Festivity and Update

It's about time mama let me post the Christmas picture! Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, she puts up lights and decorations for Christmas. Here's what this year's outside looks like:

She didn't take any of the inside, but most of her 32 nutcrackers are in the kitchen, on the window ledge behind the sink and above the range on the ledge up there. I can't reach them :(.

Now for the really exciting news. Mama took me to the v-e-t last Saturday because I've been vomiting a bit more than usual. Not a lot, but more than usual. See, for those who might not have known or forgotten, I have a GI issue called Inflammatory Bowel Disease, and sometimes I throw up (sometimes it comes out the other end in a watery explosive way!). Don't worry, though, with medication I am completely stable on the rear end and mostly but not quite all stable on the upper part, hence the occasional barf.

Ooops. I guess I should have warned you about the graphic nature of this post. I hope you're not eating! Anyway, the vet has always instructed mama not to give me any food except my hypoallergenic food and the hypoallergenic dog biscuits the vet carries. She's followed that dictate almost to the letter, with the only exception of a weeeee bit of peanut butter to take my meds. The bad news is, I started throwing up occasionally about the same time as mama started using peanut butter to pill me, so now it's no more peanut butter and more fingers down my throat every morning to get me to swallow my pills!

The good news, though, is that mama beggggggged the vet for some idea of what she can give me to chew on instead of me choosing paper, wood, plastic, socks, etc. See, the best way to teach a dog not to chew things he can't chew is to give him something he can chew. But with my GI issues, mama couldn't give me nuttin else TO chew (I tear apart stuffie toys in seconds and EAT the stuffing, so that rules THAT out). I play with a ball sometimes, but that's not really a chew thing. Well, the vet told mama to try giving me a small-ish unflavored rawhide to chew on and see if I tolerate that. It's been four days now. Do you think I enjoy the rawhides?

Something weird comes over me when I have a rawhide, though. I start to chew, then roam from spot to spot in the house, carrying the rawhide around, whimpering. Mama hates to hear me whimper, and she looked in my mouth to be sure I didn't cut myself. She thinks I do this because she thinks I'm trying to find a place to bury the rawhide (I dig in the blankets and on my bed while I whimper and roam).