Maggie's grandparents came up from Florida for a visit this past weekend. Over the past week or so we've really been trying to take Maggie wherever we can with us, whether it's running errands (where we're both there and don't have to leave her in the car) or other rooms in the house where we're working. So, with that in mind, Mags went for a ride down to Midway. I wasn't sure how she'd be in the car with two people she'd never met, but she was great.

I brought some treats for my parents to use to bribe her, which seem to have worked out well. My mom sat in the back with her and at one point Maggie was sitting up next to her and leaning on her.

We went on lots of long walks around the neighborhood. Of course, Maggie insisted that everyone walk in front of her, instead of some behind her. She also is really not fond of hoses, sprinklers or little American flags. Otherwise the walks were great and uneventful. On Sunday Maggie even walked with her grandpa holding the leash.

Maggie got two presents - a new safety harness (she probably won't love this, but it's for her own good) and some new beef treats. She really likes the treats - and they fit nicely into her Kong. Maggie had a great visit, and her grandparents got to see she's even more adorable in person! :)

Speaking of the Kong, Maggie has become a real pro. The Kong sat untouched for months, but now she pretty much empties it out every day while we're at work. She's also taken to playing with it more while we're home with her. She's so good at the first one that we bought her the "beehive" version to give her some variety and a new challenge.

I don't know if it's because we've had a few days off, we're bringing her more places, or what, but we've seen some small, yet noticeable progress. A few areas where we've seen some improvement:

Pupcicles - She loves these things, and pretty much has it down to a science knocking them out of the container and gulping them down. Unfortunately these are now about 2 minutes or less of entertainment.

Dinner - The last couple of days she's gotten much quicker at getting up to eat. We put her food bowl in the rack just off of her bed. Typically she'd think about going to it for at least several minutes, sometimes waiting until we left the room. At least for now she's getting up right away and going to it.

Basement - She's learning "let's go to the basement". She still has some work on this, with about 50% of the time her ending up upstairs, but she's getting there. The biggest thing in the basement though is that she doesn't have a bed or brown towel. She doesn't exactly get up and wander around, but so far she's shown that she'll expand her territory somewhat and has ventured across areas larger than her towel allows. We're trying to combine this area with her Kong and hope she chases it further (right now if the Kong goes off of her towel, most times that's the end of the game).

Coming in the house - In the evening we sometimes still have to tell her to come in 8-10 times, but she's getting better at it and is definitely better other times of the day. She's also gotten good about going to her bed no matter the time of day. There for a while at nighttime she'd just run straight upstairs, which wasn't good when it was muddy out and we didn't have a chance to wipe her paws down (this is done when on her downstairs bed).

The car - Kat discovered this one. Because it's harder for Kat to get Mags out of the car, she started pulling her feet out to hang out of the door to try to get her out. Reluctantly, at first, Maggie worked her way out of the car. She still hasn't gotten out on command, but seems to be getting better at it. She really, really loves car rides. Today, Kat decided to bring Maggie down and pick me up from work in the Loop instead of me taking the train. It was hilarious watching Maggie watch all of the pedestrians heading to the train station. She was just very interested and curious watching the masses pass by. I guess this is probably the most people Maggie has ever seen at once.

We're really hoping and expect that with even more time and attention Maggie will just continue to improve. We're looking forward to taking some time off next month to spend another extended stay in Michigan with her - and hope that this time she's not injured for our vacation and we can spend it focusing on her.

We finally took Mags to Montrose Beach today. The city has an enclosed portion of the beach which allows dogs off-leash. We've been dying to take Maggie to the beach, either here or in MI (but after the paw injury, our plans for the beach in MI were postponed).

First we got Maggie to go into the water on the leash. It was good she was still on leash the first time as the noise of her walking in the water scared her, which caused her to make more noise, and led to a minor panic. Once she calmed down, she wouldn't walk anywhere until we finally made a move to walk out of the water.

We walked around the beach a bit with her and tried to get her to go back into the water on the leash. She wouldn't go at all. Eventually I picked her up and carried her in a ways and put her down where it was still very shallow. She was still on leash and refused to walk with us through the water. We decided to see what she'd do if we took her off leash in the water. For a few minutes she looked longingly at the shore, and we both were sure she was going to bolt back to dry land. Finally, after many "let's go Maggie!"'s, she took a few steps toward us. Before we knew it she was following us around through the water, just like on land.

After a while we walked her back out onto the beach and walked around some more. Then we decided to try coaxing her into the water. Shw sniffed around some of the other dogs, and seemed like she might want to play, but ultimately never fully committed to it.

Still off leash, Kat & I went into the lake and called to Maggie. She did her little Maggie dance at the edge of the water. You could see the wheels turning as she tried to psych herself up and talk herself into going into the water, and trying to find just the right spot to go in. Sure enough, after a minute or two she walked into the lake after us and followed us out. We walked back and forth many times to get her used to it and just enjoying the experience. We were all feeling pretty brave at this point so we coaxed her out just to the point where she couldn't touch any more. And our little Mags swam!

She won't be appearing in the Olympics in August, but she gave it a great first effort. She looked like a little sea otter floating out there, doing little baby doggie paddles. She was a little nervous, but we were both there to hold her and guide her back to where she could touch down again. At one point she was paddling like crazy in probably 6 inches of water before we stopped her, pulled her feet down, and showed her that she could stand.

We got out of the water and back in with her one more time just to reinforce the act of getting into the water, and she did another brief swim.

We were both incredibly happy for Maggie, and you could immediately see a difference in her self confidence. When we were on the beach, her tail was wagging - not just swinging back in forth in tune with her gait, but really wagging. The only other time we've ever seen her wag her tail was while running like a mad dog at the park with the other dogs. She was so happy and confident, it was such a great feeling to see.

We also met a woman there with her dog who was also rescued and we were able to swap very similar stories. She had her dog about a year and had dealt with many of the same challenges we are, so it was good to hear and get some more advice.

We can't wait to get her back to the beach - if the weather holds out we'll try to go again tomorrow. Maybe we're imaging it, but ever since the beach we feel like Maggie has a whole new level of confidence and seems happier, so we want to keep reinforcing it with her.


To Carla, that's awesome that you rescued a dog from the same mill. We'd love to get together with the dogs and exchange notes. You can write us at katbrangan AT hotmail dot com.

Two more quick notes from our vacation that we forgot to tell you about -

First, Maggie got a pillow from the new pet store in New Buffalo ("Beach Tails"). We end up stopping in here pretty much every trip now. They keep telling us to bring Maggie, but we opted out of taking "Boots" (Kat took to calling her that this past week) just yet. Anyway, she always ends up with something - usually edible - but she really seems to like the new pillow. Kat picked it up our first night there to try to make Mags feel better. One night as I was going to bed I looked over and she was sleeping with her head perfectly resting on it - dumb luck I'm sure, but it was still adorable.

Second, well, I guess this also involves a Beach Tails purchase. Kat bought some doggie yogurt "Yoghund" for Mags. We gave it to her in a bowl, which she licked a few times before deciding either to move it, or that she wanted to eat it all at once. It was very funny when she picked up the whole chunk of frozen yogurt and jammed the entire thing in her mouth. She looked up with this giant frozen mass in her mouth, which then began to melt at the same time as triggering her saliva glands. Huge drips of now not-so-frozen yogurt and saliva ran down her face before she finally dropped it on her towel. The look on her face during all of this was priceless.

Maggie is doing much better now that she's had her paw-tectors on for a little over a week. Her paws are looking much better, but we're going to give them a few more days before taking her booties away.

We started taking her on some longer walks down along the Marina to town and back over the past couple of days. Maggie was fine with the longer distance and it really helped to improve her mood to be back out and about. Her boots were quite the attraction in New Buffalo.

Everyone we passed either stopped to ask us about them or we heard "Did you see those boots?" behind us - or the kid who exclaimed "Mommy! That dog has shoes on!". Most people I'm sure thought they were goofy, but a few people asked where we got them - maybe Mags will start a trend in New Buffalo and we can make fun of the other dogs in their boots this summer.

We took Maggie to the Michigan City dog park both Thursday and Friday. Thursday was just us there for a while, and then some creepy guy came with his two Newfoundlands. Those dogs were either aggressive or they played very rough. Maggie clearly didn't like the way they were coming at her (she boxed one in the face with her bootie) so we got her out of there. Their owner did nothing to try to control his dogs and didn't pick up after them either. We considered that day kind of a bust - and figured that's what we get for going to the dog park during a work day - that's when you get the creepy unemployed guy.

We tried again Friday which went much better. Some of the friends Maggie made during her first trip to this park were there, along with several other friendly pups. She made a couple moves like she would play but then backed off. Maybe next time when she isn't in her booties she'll come back out and play. She seemed to enjoy the park though and this put Mags in a better mood the rest of the weekend. Oh, and of course, Maggie really just lives for going for car rides, so we probably could have driven her in circles around the block and she'd have been happy.

Maggie was completely fine with the fireworks. When she was at home alone, we turned the fan on which drowns out nearly every noise from outside, so she just slept through those (we can tell when she's been sleeping from her "bed head"). Everyone and their brother in New Buffalo likes to shoot of their own fireworks, so she had plenty of exposure to them on walks. This is another Maggie mystery - you sneeze or make one funny move, she jumps out of her fur - but an M80 going off 100 yards away doesn't phase her one bit. We're not sure if she just equates it to thunder, which she also had zero reaction to, or what she's thinking, but we're very happy that they don't bother her.


Maggie was really in a good mood by the time she got in the car for the ride home. She finished off a tendon that she had in progress over the past couple of days. She drank plenty of water out of her travel water bowl (shown in the first picture). Up until now she's not really taken to that. She even drank some water while Kat was pouring it out of the bottle, which she's never done, but is another one of those normal dog behaviors we love to see.

All of these pics are from the car ride home and our cheery li'l pup.

For these kinds of stories, Kat tells me I should always start with the end - so to start: Maggie is OK and safe at home with us.

We had a very scary incident with Maggie this past Thursday, and while it's a story we don't really want to share, we feel we need to share the bad as well as the good on the blog. As we've blogged in the past, we like to take her out to the local middle school which has a fenced in area and they don't mind dogs on non-school days. This is the park where Maggie met her friends River, Chip and Holly (the other dog from the running video).

The one problem with this park is that it's 99% fenced in, and there are two entranceways that are always open. The first few times we went there, this was a major point of concern, but Maggie never made a move toward those gates and always stuck within 20 feet or so of us no matter where we went in the park. So we became used to the fact that Maggie was always perfect and stuck close to us. We've both taken Maggie to the park by ourselves and it's always been fine - until Thursday.

Kat called me to say her plane back to Chicago was pulling away and that she'd be home in a few hours. Maggie and I were just walking into the park when we said goodbye on the phone. I took Maggie off of the leash like always, but this time she started moving back toward the entranceway.

I still didn't really think she'd go through, but I was nervous that she was even walking that way. I didn't want to startle her by coming after her, so I took a few steps further into the park using words she understands to follow us like "let's go!". Maggie kept walking further away, and eventually went outside the park.

I had to go after her now so I ran out the gate and called after her. Maggie was doing her fast walk away from me and heading north. I ran a little bit, and as I got close Maggie went into full on run mode. Of course, I had on my sandals too, so the clomp-clomp of those couldn't have helped. I don't know what was going through her head, if it started out as play or what, but it quickly turned to panic for both of us.

This is very scary and I'll skip the details. Suffice it to say, Maggie ran across many streets and I could never get close to grabbing her. This total chase lasted probably 30-45 minutes although it seemed like an eternity, through about a mile and half of streets. At one point she ran fast enough that I lost sight of her. Between seeing Maggie run through traffic, and just losing her altogether, I can't describe the feeling of complete desperation, powerlessness and hopelessness. I really thought we'd lost her.

Fortunately, some complete strangers jumped in and saved the day. I never, ever would have caught her on my own. Three or four guys, who didn't know each other either, all jumped in to help pin her down. One guy finally got hold of her collar and I got the leash on her to take her home. I was so tired, relieved and shaken that I didn't really properly thank the guys who helped or even get a good look at them. I wish now there was a way to properly thank them, but I have no idea who they are.

Maggie was exhausted and bleeding - I thought from one paw. I got her back home, some water, some ice packs and then looked at her paws. She'd torn the top layer off of the large pad on all four paws. I took her to the emergency vet on Clybourn. They cleaned her up, gave her a shot of antibiotics and for the pain and gave prescription pills for both as well.

They also advised that we go to Petco and buy some booties for her. They said normally they'd bandage a paw in that condition, but since it was all four that wasn't going to work well.
Kat got home from the airport a little after we got home from the emergency vet and buying her booties, and I filled her in on what happened - it wasn't quite the happy homecoming she'd envisioned, but at least Maggie was at home.

We feel really bad for Maggie and that she's injured, but we're also incredibly thankful and lucky that nothing worse happened to her and that we have her back.

She's been doing well. She is now used to her boots and walking pretty well in them. The first couple days she was incredibly awkward in the boots, her feet were still raw, and she was sore from her run. Her feet are looking much better now, having turned back to black and are already looking tougher. Her back-left paw was the worst and still is lagging behind the others but not by much. She still has at least the rest of this week in the boots.

We're in Michigan all week and we'd hoped to do all sorts of fun stuff with her, but all of that is off the table while she recovers. There's plenty of time for that though in the future and at least she's safe and sound!

We've learned our lesson. Mags is only off leash now at 100% enclosed places (the dog park in Michigan City is 100% enclosed, so we have that). And we have to remember that we still don't truly know her and as "perfect" as she is most of the time, she can still act unpredictably. 99% of the time she'd probably be fine, but we can't take that chance that she'll run again and I don't believe we'll get so lucky again.

Not to be dramatic, but this was the scariest moment in my life thinking we'd lost Maggie or worse. We can't imagine anything happening to her. Next week will be her 5th month with us and we can't even remember what it was like to not have Maggie in our life.