Yucky Smell

The last few days I've noticed that the dogs have been stinking like something really, really bad. It reminded me of the smell Tori had when she had the tumor in her mouth. It's just a bad, rotten & decaying odor. I told my mother today that I would rather change a million poopy diapers than have to smell that odor again.

Anyway, a couple of days ago when I started smelling it, I decided it was Gigi that was the stinky one. I put on my yellow rubber gloves and dumped her in the tub. I scrubbed and scrubbed and rinsed her for twenty minutes until the water ran clear. Katrina sat with me at the side of the tub and helped me rinse her off. A couple times she wanted to jump in with the dog, but I wouldn't let her. The whole family used towels to dry her down. I think she really loved the extra attention. I wanted to dry her completely so she wouldn't smell like wet dog so I drug out the hairdryer. She hated that, but it worked. No smelly, stinky, wet dog smell.

The next day, I could still smell that nasty smell. I checked Gigi's ears and they seemed fine. Maybe the smell had just permeated the carpet or something. I sprayed a bunch of Pet Febreeze all over the dog beds and the carpet around it.

On the third day, today, I could still smell it. Zoe and Erik were in my scrappy room and I heard Erik make a comment about how stinky Zoe was. I walked in there and YUCK! the smell was there. It was Zoe that was stinky. It was decided she would be getting her bath today, and SOON.

As I was putting the dogs outside, Zoe started shaking her head. It was then I thought maybe she had an ear infection and that was causing the smell. If you've ever had a dog with that kind of infection, you know how stinky that can be. Anyway, I was looking at her ears and as she was wiggling away I noticed her neck was wet. Goopy wet.

I said, "Oh my God", when I saw the mess on her neck.

Trent was right there to correct me. "No Mommy. It's 'Oh My GOSH'".

I checked her collars, they weren't tight at all. I could easily slip my fingers in between the collar and her neck. The ZAPPER collar! That had to be what it was. I took that off and set it down. I then took off her other collar. It was soaked with goopy stuff.

I immediately called the vet and made an appointment. My poor, poor baby dog. I felt so bad.

We use the zapper collar for her jumping. She's been and graduated two Petsmart dog training classes, but we couldn't figure out how to keep her from jumping on the sliding glass door window.

During dinner, Baby Kat would constantly be sneaking her table food and Zoe would be putting her feet up on the highchair tray. It was just a constant battle with those two, so we decided Zoe needed to go outside while we ate. She didn't like that! She wanted in and in the worst way, too. She started out by just simply jumping on the glass door. When that didn't work, she would back up and taking running jumps. She was always scolded through the window for that. When we were done eating dinner, we would always make her sit before we opened the door. We wanted to let her know that only calm, still and sitting behavior would allow her inside.

Well, she still wanted in and would then back up to the end of the yard, start running and jump on the sliding glass door and then sit. **sigh** The door and the walls around the door would shake.

I started researching zappers that I could control with a remote control. We picked one out and purchased it. We found out later that we should have let her wear it without batteries for two weeks or so before zapping her for bad behavior. Because we put the collar on her and then started zapping her right away, she figured out that the new collar makes the warning noise and then the actual zap. So, everytime we took the collar off, the bad behavior would start up again.

After we got Gigi, her behavior toned down a bit and we didn't use the collar for a long time. Zoe just needed someone her size to hang with while we ate, I guess.

It was a few weeks ago when I noticed our back fence was breaking. The dang dog was jumping up on that fence "just for fun". I put the collar back on her and the behavior soon stopped. I never took the collar off and now the poor little thing has a horrible infection from it.

The vet took a look at her and said she has a staph infection from the collar. Zoe is on antibiotics that I have to give her every 8 hours.

I threw away that stupid collar.