The Sewing Mom

This post brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition. All opinions are 100% mine.

At our dog’s last vet checkup, she had actually managed to lose a couple of pounds!  This was great news because we’d struggled to get her to lose any weight at all.  She’s pretty active, but truth be told, we should be taking her for walks and playing with her more than we have been lately.  Then maybe the weight loss wouldn’t be as difficult for her.

Hill’s Pet Nutrition is hosting the Hill’s Healthy Mobility Challenge.  Overweight dogs, especially as they get older, can have difficulty with their mobility which would make me feel guilty to know that my dog isn’t as healthy & happy as she could possibly be.  With cooler weather finally coming to Texas, she won’t be getting in the pool and swimming which is one of the primary ways she managed to lose those couple pounds this summer.  It’s important for her that we find other ways to keep her active and healthy.

By registering for the Hill’s Healthy Mobility Challenge, we can receive $30 in Hill’s Healthy Mobility Coupon offers plus be entered into the Sweepstakes where 30 lucky winners will receive free pet food for an entire year!

You can track your dog’s progress and then go back to share your success story.  Don’t forget that you can also check out Hill’s Pet Nutrition on Facebook.

Seriously, we want to keep this little baby around as long as we can!

As I’ve said, we were out of town all last week, attending my nephew’s wedding and then visiting family and friends. We spent half of our time staying with family and the other half we were in hotels. Because none of the hotels we stayed in accepted pets, I was forced to board our dog at a local kennel near home for the week. We really missed her, but, I have to say, when we picked her up on Friday, she was so soft and smelled so good, and even her nails had been nicely trimmed!

Seriously, does your dog ever get stinky beyond belief? My daughter is pretty good about giving ours a bath, but sometimes she gets a bit more stinky than I’d like and she reminds me of a fish market! We use an all natural gentle shampoo on her and her fur is usually soft, but I can’t get over how soft she is after being bathed at the kennel and it’s left me wondering just what dog shampoo they use at the kennel. I’d really like to get some of whatever it is!

So, I’ve started doing some research and comparing dog shampoos. One I found on the internet is from Dinovite, it’s called Dogosuds ® and it’s an all natural dog shampoo that contains 100% pure, therapeutic grade essential oils that have natural, healing properties and don’t irritate a dog’s skin. It has no chemicals and no perfumes, after all, who wants a dog that smells like strawberries or coconuts?

If you’re interested in an all natural dog shampoo, you can find Dinovite on the web or follow them on Twitter.

As Be Kind to Animals Week comes to an end, I am reminded of a couple of an incident that happened to our Siberian Huskey several years ago, something I will never forget.

My husband and I purchased our Siberian Huskey puppy when he was only 6 months old and we loved him from the first time we laid eyes on him. He was a beautiful dog, with blue eyes and he was so intelligent. He was very easilty trained and so lovable, he was so happy just being with us. Well, that is, unless he was given the opportunity to run. I had never really thought about Huskies as being a running dog, but let me tell you, if he was given the chance, he would run at break neck speeds, for miles. We learned early on that we could not let him off the leash when we were out at a park or beach because he would immediately take off running and, no matter what we did, he wouldn’t come back.

Not to long after we had moved to Houston, something terrible happened. By this time, our dog Dakota was about 2 years old. He’d been in the kitchen with me keeping me company when he decided he needed to go outside. So, I let him out in the fenced back yard. What I didn’t realize was that the phone company had been out and had left the back gate open. Of course, Dakota took the opportunity to escape without me even realizing it. After several minutes, I opened the back door to see where he was and realized he was gone. I was devastated. It was pouring rain and I took off on foot looking for him, unsuccessfully. I spent the next few days calling and visiting shelters, vet offices and clinics and didn’t find him. Finally, after just about giving up, a vet called me to let me know that a huskey, matching the description of Dakota, had been brought in several days earlier after being hit by a small truck and he would have the guy that brought him in give me a call. To my amazement, the guy did call and it was indeed Dakota. I was so thankful that the guy driving the truck had stopped, picked him up and taken him to the vet. Dakota had a broken leg, but he was back home.

Back then, I had never heard of microchipping an animal. This is a method of tagging a pet with a permanent chip that can’t fall off or become illegible. It gives the pet an amazing chance of being returned to its owner if it should become lost. I really think it could have helped me find Dakota more quickly and saved me so much worry. Visit the Home Again Web Site to learn more about microchipping and their national pet-recovery services. I can tell you from personal experience, it’s a terrible, gut wrenching feeling when your beloved pet goes missing.

Because this is Be Kind to Animals Week, you may also want to visit www.bringpetshome.com a fundraising Web site specifically created to help shelter animals. A portion of every purchase made through their website goes directly to help shelters around the country provide food and medical care to the hundreds of thousands of pets brought into shelters every year. Plus, for each pet registered, HomeAgain will make the donation through www.bringpetshome.com.

I wish I had a photo on this computer of Dakota, he passed away about 4 years ago, in his sleep, as a result of old age. We miss him every day and we were always thankful that he was returned to us.

So, I’m still thinking about all these photos I’ve got loaded on my two computers and wondering how I can possible narrow down to come up with the cutest one to submit to a contest. I could sure use some prize money, so I’m going to have to give this some serious thought. Here is just a small sampling of the photos I have of Plinko, our puggle.

If you haven’t heard, we have an awfully cute puppy. You can scroll down a few posts and you’ll see just how cute and spoiled our little puggle really is! I’ve probably got more picture of this dog on my hard drive than of any other thing, I just can’t bring myself to delete any of them. Maybe that’s a good thing because now, if I can just decide which one of the photos is the cutest, I can enter it in the Anamigo FREE Pet Photo Contest! I could even win $300 and that would buy a Christmas present or two! Check out this press release: