July 27, 2013

Day 2 with A.J. started around 4 AM. He’d had a lot to drink the night before, so I was on the alert for any movement from him. I woke up around 4 AM and he was up and moving around, so I took him out. What a beautiful night. The moon was almost full so it was very light out, and it was nice and warm. A.J. went potty and we came back in. He settled down quickly, and I went back to sleep.

He was up again around 6:00. I was still sick, plus I want to get him on a schedule, so I planned on making him just hang out until 7:00. But Greg decided A.J. was ready to get up, so he got up with him. I fell back asleep and woke up at 7:30. I got up and dressed to take A.J. for his walk, but it turned out Greg had already walked and fed him. I went back to bed and didn’t get up again until after 9:00.

We were supposed to go to a baseball game today. The Boise Hawks only have two day games this year, and today was the first one. It started at 10:00. I was too sick to go. I guess it worked out well for A.J., we stayed home with him all day.

We had a quiet day. I laid around a lot. Greg went for a couple of bike rides and took A.J. for a walk in the evening. I discovered that at some point during the day A.J. had wandered into the guest room and chewed the plastic ends off of the draw string for the blinds. Bedroom doors are now closed.

Later in the day A.J. started being sick. His poop had still been runny in the morning, but now he was coughing up all his water. Being a Saturday evening, the vets are closed. I looked up the symptoms and it appears that either he’s gulping his water too fast or he has kennel cough. Unfortunately it’s most likely the latter.

We tried restricting his water, but it didn’t help. It must be kennel cough. He continued coughing up water and mucus all night. When he ate a little food, some of that came up too.

At bedtime we had the same bed vs. floor argument, which he once again finally lost (but a little more quickly than last night). In the meantime, he continued to cough up disgusting things. I kept getting up to chase him around with paper towels, but he was coughing up faster than I could clean up. Eventually he settled down, and we all went to sleep.