Bozzy Bear!

Boz is 12 weeks old as of yesterday and he's been with us for exactly one month today. He has changed and grown so much in that time! Here is Bozley on July 26th (in the middle of the night after we got home from picking him up and gave him a bath), August 10th, and August 20th. He weighed only 5.2 pounds when I took him to the vet on July 27th. Now he weighs 15 pounds! He's gotten a lot taller...his paws and legs seem to be growing the fastest! And I love those adorable floppy ears. <3 

We are very much in love with this little guy. :) He has such a cute personality...so sweet and goofy. He loves to spend the day hanging out with me and follows me everywhere. He hasn't figured out getting up on the couch yet...but he will sit in front of me and bark so that I'll pick him up to lay on the couch beside me while I'm working. He's spoiled. ;) 

Bozley is a good boy...and very smart! By August 2nd, he had already learned sit and shake. That same week, he also learned down...and sometimes roll over. Stay is taking a little bit of time, though. :P He has done really well with crate training and potty training. He generally sleeps through the entire night until between 8:30-9:30am. He only had a couple accidents in the house in the beginning when I wasn't paying attention to how long it had been since he'd gone outside. But he hasn't had any accidents since then. And now he has even started alerting us at the back door when he needs to go out. I think it helped that he could watch Linken whine at the back door to go outside. It took a long time to get the chihuahuas to alert us at the backdoor! 

Boz really likes wrestling around with the chihuahuas. Neko loves it too, but Linken gets irritated with him a lot still. And Bozley wants to play with the cats so bad...but they rarely play. Sometimes they'll run around the backyard with him...but usually they'll quickly get to the point where they swat at him when they've had enough of his orneriness. :P 

Bozley's health has been good as well. He is gaining weight and doing well on his new food. After I found Purina Just Right and created Bozley's Blend, I found Purina Pro Plan Sensitive Skin and Stomach puppy formula with Lamb and Oatmeal. It's basically just like Bozley's Blend with a few small changes. It's also little bit cheaper, of course, than the custom-made blend. We just finished transitioning to the new food and he still loves it. His skin is doing much better now...and his fur is looking and feeling better, too. I also found some training treats without chicken that we have been using as well. 

The vet called us shortly after our last visit and let us know that he'd talked to a veterinary cardiologist about Bozley's heart murmur. The cardiologist said that the kind of musical sound it makes is typical of a physiological murmur and not due to a pathological source. That means it's more the structure of his heart than a disease causing it. The cardiologist also said that it is likely to resolve on its own as he gets bigger and we just need to make sure to check it out again in 3-4 months to see if there is any change. 

We're excited to start taking him on walks soon. We want to wait until he is fully vaccinated before we have him walking around in strange places. He goes for another round of shots again by September 7th, so we're getting closer! And hopefully the weather will be cooled down a bit by then. :P 

We are so glad to have Boz here with us. He is a really great dog. :)  

Happy Anniversary to Candi & Johnny!

This is one of my favorite pictures of me and Johnny. It was taken at my grandparents' house on Easter in 2016. It's hard to believe that we have been back together for EIGHT years...and married for three. It feels like we have been together forever, but it also still feels like just yesterday. 

Our relationship -- and our life -- is very calm and content. We have very little drama in our life. I mean...we're raising teenagers, so there's a little bit of drama. :P But he and I don't have drama with each other. It's just really nice to have such a strong connection with someone and to still be so in love after all this time. And even more than that...we still LIKE each other. We like talking to each other. We like spending time together. We like doing nice things for each other. I believe that's how relationships SHOULD be, but so many times...it's not. I feel very lucky to have such a wonderful man in my life. 

Here's to many more years of happiness! <3 

High School Graduation?!

I still can't believe my baby girl has already finished high school!

The school put together a wonderful ceremony for the 2020 seniors at the high school football stadium. It was neat that they did something different to make "graduation" special for the kids despite all the craziness during the last semester of the school year. The students even got to keep the lawn chairs that were provided for them (and spaced out according to social distancing).

photo taken by one of the event photographers 

Because of guidelines for large gatherings, there was a limit of 2000 attendees including students. So each student had only 2 tickets available for guests. However, because quite a few students were not able or chose not to attend, there were a few tickets available to be picked up the day before the ceremony. Luckily we were able to grab enough tickets so that me, Johnny, and my mom could be there. The rest of our family and friends were able to watch a live stream of the event on YouTube so we were thankful for that, too.

And notice the honor cords? :) We are SO proud of Aubry and all of her accomplishments so far. <3

JL Kraft Marinades VoxBox from Influenster

I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes.

 
I joined Influenster back in 2012. Every so often, I get free things to try and review. This week I got a box of marinades in a bag from JL Kraft. They are pretty handy! We tried the Smoky Mesquite marinade with steaks last night. They come as a resealable bag so you can just put the meat in the bag, put it in the fridge for awhile, and then cook it.

 
I actually cooked the steaks in the pressure cooker. It was the first time I'd made steaks that way. They turned out pretty good! And the Smokey Mesquite marinade had a really good flavor. It would taste great with chicken or pork chops, too...there was just a sale on a family pack of steaks. ;) I also made baked potatoes in the pressure cooker as well. It made a pretty yummy dinner! :)

 

Here we are...first post of August!

I kept meaning to post sooner...but then I'd get busy with something else and forget about it. :P 

Johnny's birthday was at the beginning of the month! Johnny had to work so we had a late dinner. And he taught Ashlyn how to cook barbecue chicken and hamburgers out on the grill! She did a great job and they had fun. :) 

Right after work, Johnny helped Aubry with her car. She bought her first vehicle...and it's had some problems. It pretty much broke down on her way to work and she was so upset. :( But hopefully we'll be able to get it all figured out and running better for her.

Also on Johnny's birthday, Bozley learned how to sit and how to shake! It's so cute...every time you ask him to sit he will automatically put his paw up to shake now. ;) He also does it when he wants attention. It didn't take long at all for him to pick it up! Since then he has also learned down (and it's so cute how he plops on the ground) and we're working on roll over.  He's such a smart boy. And I just can't get over how adorable he is. 

We took Bozley and Linken to the vet on Friday. Linken had gotten fleas from Aubry's boyfriend's house and had an allergic skin reaction pretty bad. It was kind of a widespread splotchy rash. So he got some antibiotics and an allergy shot. And Boz has started getting some scabs in quite a few places. He got some antibiotics as well. He started itching a lot more Friday night though, so we took him in to get an allergy shot on Saturday as well. 

Since Boz had fleas really bad when he came home to us, at first we thought that was the cause of his allergic reaction. However, now we're thinking it is actually his food. One of our cats has the same reaction to chicken (especially when she sneaks the dogs' food). So we decided to switch Boz from a chicken-based food to a lamb-based food...we're hoping that will help! We'd been giving him Iam's Smart Puppy Large Breed kibble, but he wasn't really that interested in it. He would eat a few pieces and then walk away...and do that throughout the day and there would be food left in his bowl. We started using a FreshPet food as a topper and that helped a little bit. But since both of those have chicken in it, I started trying to find a good kibble with a different protein source. I spent a lot of time trying to research different foods. I looked at a lot of dog food subscription boxes but they were quite a bit more expensive and most of them either included ingredients we didn't want or didn't have certain ingredients we needed (or didn't have them in the amounts we needed). 

During my search, I ran across Purina Just Right* where you can customize a kibble to fit your dog's needs. It asks you a series of questions about your dog. It starts with basics like age, breed, and weight. Then it asks some more specific questions like how active your dog is, how quickly they get to their feet, what their skin and coat are like, and how quickly they eat their bowl of food. They also let you choose whether you want grain-free food or not, if there are ingredients you want to avoid, and what kind of animal protein. For Bozley's blend, I chose lamb as the protein. Since he is a large breed, I made sure to pick the option for optimal joint health. And with his skin and coat issues, I included those as important issues as well. They put it all together and shipped it in a bag with Bozley's picture on it! :) 

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A post shared by Candi Pride (@tinycandi) on Aug 12, 2020 at 9:54am PDT

So far the food is working out great! Bozley will actually sit and eat his bowl of food instead of just picking at it. He even gets excited when it's time to eat now...where he didn't really care that much before. He is gaining weight as he should be and his skin even seems to be clearing up a bit. :) Hopefully we've found a food that is a good fit! 

And now I need to get back to work! I'm getting the hang of the new platform. I think I'm really going to enjoy the switch. :) 

* This is NOT a compensated post...it was a purchase I made.