Meet Ameya!

Ameya: Japanese for rainy night

This is our little Ameya. She is our 7 week old American Eskimo/Shiba Inu mix. The hybrid name for such a dog is "Imu Inu". Her name is a tribute to her part Japanese heritage; her Shiba Inu father. 

Right now she is tiny - 2.2 pounds to be exact. She is small enough to fit in Hunter's pocket and is actually quite content there. Eventually though, she will be somewhere between 15 and 20 pounds which will put her a little bigger than Jimmer when they are both full grown.  

It was pretty much love at first sight for Jimmer and Ameya and they have become inseparable. During the first few nights when Ameya was inconsolably wailing, the only thing that would bring her some reprieve was having Jimmer's crate by her. And boy can that puppy wail! You wouldn't think that too much noise can come out of a 2 pound dog but you would be very, very wrong. Since we got her on Monday however, she has gotten much MUCH better and can even sleep through the night now. 

If we try to take one out without the other, there are immediate repercussions. Jimmer will bark until he is able to join her and Ameya will wail until we cannot stand it anymore. The problem with this is that it is almost impossible to take them out to the bathroom together. They get too excited at the prospect of being able to play more and outside that they forget why they are outside in the first place. Jimmer is the worst at this, at least Ameya will go the bathroom eventually. We are hoping that this issue will resolve soon. 

She has taken really well to car rides and found her favorite place in my car - on top of the emergency brake. Every time we would sit her down she would go right to that same spot, pass out, and sleep until the car stopped.

We had been debating the idea of another puppy for quite sometime. After this past couple weeks, we decided it was a definite go. Our hope was that it would give Jimmer a companion and help him to enjoy himself more than we are able to. Ameya has met and surpassed all those expectations. We are pretty sure that Jimmer hasn't stopped wagging his little tail all week long. While this pst week has been an adventure to say the least, getting another puppy has (and will continue to be) very much worth all our effort. 

Jimmer quickly taught her how to play and wrestle effectively and it is quite humorus to watch them go at it until one or both of them is too tired to go on. Ameya quickly reminded Jimmer how much easier it is to go to the bathroom on the carpet instead of waiting to go outside. haha. I think this is the only unfortunate side effect. Jimmer has done well today to remember his potty training so hopefully that will stick. 

All in all, we are very excited to have another puppy. Ameya is the perfect addition.

oops...

This morning I woke up before Hunter (which is not at all unusual) and decided that I would make him breakfast and take it to him in bed. A very cute wife thing to do, no?

The menu included chocolate chip waffles and bacon (pretty much the only thing I make for breakfast besides cereal - if you can even count cereal). I pre-emptively opened our sliding glass door so that the smoke could all go outside and not set off our suuuuppper sensitive fire alarm. The last waffle was cooking and the last couple pieces of bacon had just come off the pan when guess what? The fire alarm went off.

Perfect.

A couple minutes later Hunter came walking out of the bedroom.

Good morning Husband, your breakfast is ready. Haha.

More Jimmerisms

Over the last couple weeks we have started to trust Jimmer inside more when we aren't home. His potty training has been going very well and accidents are rare - even when we leave him inside for hours at a time by himself. Every time when we get home we quickly inspect the house to make sure that there are no messes waiting for us.

Due to our work schedules, I am almost always awake before Hunter. This morning was no different. I woke up, took Jimmer out, and we were just hanging out in the living room.  Jimmer was a little distraught because he is used to being with Hunter in the morning and me in the evening and I was breaking the routine. As such, he was running around and not really sure what was going on. I wasn't watching his every move, but I had a general idea where he was most of the time. After one of his excursions into another room he dropped something on the floor by the couch I was sitting on. I looked down and there was poop on the floor. My first reaction was "seriously dog? we JUST came in from a potty break!" However; after looking more closely at the poop it looked old. When I picked it up it was cold and crumbling. There was no way this was a recent poop. It had to be at least days old. I have absolutely no idea where that poop came from. I look so carefully whenever I get home and he's inside alone (I am paranoid with slight trust issues) and have never found anything other than pee. It completely baffles my mind that I didn't find it before.

At least he cleans up after his messes, right? Even if it is a few days later.

Child Prep

My new secret ambition is to be like the guy on Marley and Me who writes columns on nothing but the behaviors of his dog. If only I had become a Journalist (Columnist?) instead of a Medical Laboratory Scientist...

Alas, I think I will stick to my day job. It seems to be working for me. 

Anyway, onto the point of my post. One of the tech's that I worked with who is now on maternity leave repeatedly said how much preparation her dog had given her for her soon to be child. She would say things like "he gets into the trash, eats onion, then we have to take him to the vet when he is violently ill" and "he poops and pukes all over but I still can't help but love him".  

I have come to appreciate those sentiments so much more after this past weekend. Jimmer got horrible gastroenteritis - sparing you all the details, that means that he had it coming out of both ends and there was a lot of blood involved. We took him to the vet and after a slew of tests including stool cytology, parvovirus, and blood chemistries (we had to stop ourselves from asking the vet if we could have the leftovers to run other tests of our choosing, haha, yes, we are nerds), we got our diagnosis. She gave him a subcutaneous pack including water for rehydration and meds to lower his fever and cure his nausea. $300 later and a large tumor-like hump on the side of Jimmer's little body, we were on our way home. By that night he was showing signs of improving and was back to his normal happy self within a couple days. 

Through this experience, I came to realize how much I really love having our little Jimmer. Even though we have only had him for a couple months, he is an integral part of our lives and I don't know what we would do if something happened to him. I far prefer coming home to Jimmer than an empty house when Hunter is at work. His little personality is soooo fun! He has us wrapped around his little puppy finger, but don't tell him that, I'm not sure how much more attitude he could handle. 

We love our little Jimmer so very much. I never would have thought such a bond would have formed in so short a time. I can only imagine how much deeper that will be when the time comes for us to have a baby. When that time does come, we will be all the more prepared compliments of our puppy.

Should have named him Davies!!!

Well Tiff has been trying to get me to write a blog entry for a while and I kept procrastinating cause there was never anything I wanted to write about. Obviously that changed because here I am giving you all a little update on our wonderful puppy Jimmer. As you know we love him very much aside from all his mischief like peeing on Tiffany and such. Recently he has discovered a new way to get into trouble......puppy humping. I honestly don't know what else to call it. He basically will hump any dog he can get his little legs around. The bigger the better.

A few days ago I took him to the dog park to help him get some energy out and to his delight there was a multitude of dogs to play with. He frolicked among dogs 7 and 8 times his size. After a few minutes he seemed to zone in on one in particular. A 100+ pound Wolamute. For those of you not familiar with dog lingo that is a hybrid between a Malamute(Husky like) and a pure Rocky Mountain Timber Wolf. Honestly if I came across this dog in the wild, I would not be able to tell the difference between 50% wolf and 100%. To Jimmer on the other hand, who thinks he is as big as any other dog in the world, this dog would be the prize notch in his proverbial bedpost. Yes, he chased the wolf hybrid down and started pumping away. Just about every owner at the park could not help from laughing at the little 9 pound JRT try to have his way with the wolf that could quite literally have Jimmer for breakfast. No seriously, I asked the wolfs owner how much he eats in day......10 LBS!!!! Seriously!?!?!?! We are lucky if Jimmer eats a cup a day. Anyway, as you can imagine size is a bit of an obstacle for little Jimmer, so most of the time he has to settle for humping the other dogs legs. Although there are some smaller dogs he seems to manage just find, in absence of a larger breed. All embarrassment aside, I wish I had been able to take a picture of him trying to mount the wolf.

The next day we made another trip to the dog park. Much to Jimmers dismay there was no Wolf to be found; so he settled for a 90 pound German Shepard.

The Shepard kept trying to escape under the picnic table, that doesn't work too well when you are trying to escape a dog 1/10th your size.

Apparently, Jimmer knows how to share. Pour German Shepard, victim to 2 tiny little pimps.

It was a good thing the Shepard was in a compliant mood or else I'm not sure Jimmer would have survived this very very very embarrassing behavior.


Due to his dog park excursions we frequently need to bathe him once we get home. He is really very tolerant of the baths and he is just so cute that its hard to hold his puppy humping against him.
Apparently acting like you are a big dog and the non-stop humping makes a dog tired as he always crashes for a puppy nap after taking his bath. This last picture was taken right after he woke up just seems to really capture the inner Jimmer. While the previous pictures of the humping make us think he is at least part Davies. HAHA

-Hunter