Caring for My Chaos

There have been a lot of changes around this house this week. The biggest being that I do not have any more dogs around here. If you follow my Facebook page or Instagram, you know that we made the extremely hard decision Monday to have our beloved Kojack put down. He was 16 years old, we think, and was having trouble getting up and down here lately. I thought it was his hips but the vet thought it was arthritis in his back fusing the vertebrae together. Either way, he was in pain. And we couldn't keep him that way. He was also losing weight for no reason, which the dr said could be systems shutting down slowly. Me and the girls went to the vet with him and loved on him until the last breath. In my life, I've never had a dog as long as we had Kojack and he was such a sweet, kind soul. Another change is Bolt went to go live with Izzie. Where we live, the dogs had become mostly outside dogs and he was unhappy. It wasn't fair to him to live on a chain, but we couldn't h...

This is our Rottweiler/black lab mix, Kojack. When we first got him, he was so skinny you could see his ribs and was infested with fleas and ticks. He was 1 year old when we got him and has been the best dog we've ever had. He is my favorite child. About 3 years ago, we started having problems with him getting hot spots from what we think is an allergy to fleas. That first year, he got a hot spot that became infected and we almost lost him. Hot spots are serious business. I have been determined that we were not going to get any hotspots since last year he was naked from about his midsection down he lost so much hair. I had read on Pinterest about a recipe for a homemade flea shampoo that fleas just jump off the animal and it's ok to use on cats or dogs. It's 1 cup blue Dawn, 1 cup vinegar or apple cider vinegar and 1 cup water. You pour this mixture over the animal and scrub it in. You let it set about 5 minutes while trying to keep the animal in the tub. Then rinse. I...

This is Bolt! I know you've heard me talk of this beast before, but he is part pit bull, part bassett hound. This is as big as he's gonna get. But, the point of this post is to teach about how to get rid of fleas. I dose both our dogs every 3-4 weeks with topical flea medicine, but they still somehow get fleas every once in a while. This time, Hubby took Bolt up to his parents' house where they have tall grass and he came home covered. Now, we have to nip this in the bud because our older dog, Kojack, is allergic to fleas and will get hot spots from them. The first step you need to take is to bathe them in a flea shampoo. This will help to kill a lot of them fast. Also, make sure to wash any bedding they lay on regularly. You can also get spray that you can use on the dogs, but what I like to use is diluted apple cider vinegar. 3 parts water to 1 part vinegar. Fleas hate it. This is also a good fix if your dog gets a hot spot. You spray it with the vinegar and with the an...