Welcome to the AKC/Eukanuba National Championship!
This weekend I’m at the AKC/Eukanuba National Championship in Long Beach, California. Eukanuba has sponsored this show for 10 years, but this is the first time I’ve attended. The stars have just never been in proper alignment to allow me to leave home for a long weekend to go to the dog show until this year.
I’ve been excited about attending. I am not the top social media dog for this event—that honor belongs to my teammate Jen who writes/edits the Eukanuba Unleashed blog. My chief duties will be to provide Twitter support and maybe write a blog post for Eukanuba Unleashed. Jen and I are also meeting up with some other bloggers who will be attending the show (Details here).
This trip has not been without its worries—Tyler decided to have some poopy issues on Wednesday. I’m lucky that he had a wellness exam appointment scheduled for Thursday. I do my best to keep our yard leaf-free, but Tyler seems to have no problem in finding old, dry, crumpled up leaves and other bits and pieces to chew up and swallow. I hope he will soon grow out of this need to taste everything he comes into contact with.
Tuesday night he had some horrendous gas, so I knew he had ingested some enticing tidbit from outdoors. Wednesday morning he woke me at 5:30 when he jumped off the bed—I didn’t even have time for my feet to hit the floor before I could smell the malodorous aroma of nasty loose stool. I am so thankful that I opted for higher-end bathroom mats for my bedroom that I could just toss in the washer.
Ready to Blitz!
I was feeling sorry for my poor boy—obviously he must have been feeling terrible to have made such a mess on the floor when he’s gotten so good about pottying outside. That was until he went into a play bow as I tried to wipe up the mess. Five thirty in the morning, and Tyler wants to blitz around the bedroom he just littered with numerous puddles of very soft wet poo! I had visions of him running through it and tracking it all over the house!
Lucky for me I was able to snag him before he took off!
So Thursday afternoon we saw our favorite Dogtor B who prescribed some anti-diarrhea medicine. And also some antibiotics because it turns out Tyler has an infected anal gland. Dogtor B told us it’s not uncommon that when a dog has a series of soft stool episodes for one or both of the glands to become infected.
Here’s where I made my mistake: When we got home I immediate started Tyler on his meds, forgetting that his tummy was empty because Tyler seems to be on a 48 hour eating cycle instead of a 24 hour cycle (like the rest of the world). I’m kicking myself over this because I know better. Right after the meds, Tyler ate a meal. And 30 minutes later he threw it up. I gave him his meds again right at bedtime—kicking myself again here—and he woke me at 2:45 AM by vomiting on my bed. HELLO??? STUPID MOM????? Antibiotics on an empty stomach??? Tyler, I’m so sorry I caused you to have an upset tummy!!
Since my alarm was set for 3 AM (plane out to California leaving at the crack of dawn), I got up, cleaned up Tyler’s mess, and got ready to drive to the airport. Tyler went back to sleep in my mom’s room. I called them when I changed planes in Denver—Tyler is doing fine, had eaten some food and kept it down, and was listen to my mom talk on the phone as if he knew it was me calling. I also checked in with the Dogtor—we’re going to get Tyler back on track with his food first and start the meds in a couple of days.
Flat Tyler says, "Welcome to the Show!"
So my worries about Tyler eased, here I am in Long Beach at the AKC/Eukanuba National Championship!
There’s more going on here besides confirmation judging. There’s the AKC National Obedience Invitational, and the AKC Agility Invitational. There’s an expo area where I hope to find some breed rescue groups (and do some shopping!). There’s Dock Dogs and detection and criminal apprehension demonstrations by the California Narcotics Canine Association. I can hardly wait to see what trouble I’m going to get into!
One last thing: Since Tyler had to stay home and guard the house, I’ve brought his doppelganger with me–Flat Tyler. You’ll be seeing him popping up in my blog posts this weekend!
Flat Tyler and Fluffy Tyler--which is which?
This trip to the AKC/Eukanuba National Championship has affirmed something I’ve long suspected: Every time my job takes me to an event, I absolutely MUST set aside a couple hours every day to blog about it. If I don’t, I end up with a backlog of blog posts that may never get done. I tried to do that while I was in Long Beach–I’ve got six or seven articles under construction–but I still have several hours of work ahead of me before anything will be fit to post here.
