'Nuf said.

Ich liebe den Schnee!

Juli. Posterior.

Juli strutting her stuff.

I almoth goth my thongue sthuck on tha methal stheps.

Juli with a case of the snow “zoomies”.

I’ll cut to the chase and give you the end of the story first: Juli has Giardia.  Last weekend she started having, to put it nicely, some intestinal distress.  We thought she had just eaten something bad because she wasn’t displaying any other symptoms.  By the next evening she was getting seriously lethargic and was getting up every 2 hours to poop.  It became pretty apparent that something was seriously wrong.

Kris took her into the vet on Monday morning and they were able to diagnose her Giardia pretty quickly.  It’s a disgusting parasite that is passed through drinking infected water or stepping (or eating – yuck!) in infected poop.  Around 30% of dogs are carrying it at any time, but most are just carriers and are never affected.  But for the lucky few, it multiplies in the dog’s intestines and wreaks havoc.  It even looks evil:

This could be the lead character in a horror film.

It can be pretty difficult to get rid of, so we have 10 days of medicine, then we’ll have her poop tested and if it’s not clean we’ll have to do another round of medicine.  The medicine is really bitter and getting her to eat it twice a day has been a big challenge.  At first we could hide it in hot dogs (our usual sneaky trick) but she’s started pulling the pills out before eating the hot dog.  So we’ve resorted to soaking her food in water, then dissolving the pill with her food.  She gives us a look before she eats it – she knows something’s not right.  Smart dog

After the first week of medicine she’s doing tons better and her energy is back, but she’s not 100%.  Hopefully the test on Thursday will show that the evil Giardia is totally gone and we’ll have our wonderful happy puppy back.

Juli did her best Bear Grylls reenactment at the North Avenue Beach this afternoon.  She successfully climbed into and out of a snow and ice crevasse*.  These amazing photos and a short video document her mad skills:

Juli meets the mighty crevasse.

She tries to traverse the crevasse....but to no avail.

Juli's motto: go big or go home.

A possible exit point?

Point of no return?

There's no looking back.

Safe.

*This was not a real crevasse.

The hike with Juli and Violet went great!  We walked through Schiller Woods near O’Hare for about 2 hours.  It was Violet’s first hike, but I don’t think it’s going to be her last.

The girls were super wound-up at first and ran all over the place chasing each other.  Once the initial excitement wore off, the rest of the hike became a game of “where’s the stick?”  And trust me, there’s lots of sticks in the woods.  So one would find a stick, then the other would chase the one with the stick, then they’d play tug-o-war with the stick, then the stick would break and they’d lose interest.  It apparently never got old, and I think if we had kept hiking they could have gone on looking for sticks all day!

Stick #12

Stick #38

Stick #415

Stick #415 Continued

Juli and Violet met up at the North Avenue beach for some fun in the (partly cloudy) sun.  They had a great time chewing on sticks, digging holes, and chasing each other.

And what could possibly be better than 2 swissies?  2 swissies + a berner!  We met an adorable 6 month old berner puppy walking on the beach and chaos ensued.  The berner and Violet played a ton; Juli was curious but she wasn’t quite sure what to make of the fuzzy puppy.

How awesome is this shot of Violet? She looks so happy.

Digging in the sand is Juli's new thing. We had a hard time getting her out of her "fort."

Juli and Violet checking out the berner puppy.

A quick break during playtime.

Violet looking like a true mountain dog.

Now we just need to figure out how to hook them up to a sled...

Look who found another hole!