Peace, Love & Wiener Dogs

Keeping Pets Safe and Calm on the 4th of July

Thanks to the folks at Earthbath.com for their article on pet safety during this weekend's festivities.

Keeping Pets Safe and Calm on the 4th of July.

Voting is open for the Wackiest Wiener Photo Contest!

Visit us on Facebook and vote for the Wackiest Wiener photo! Click on the "Contests" tab at the top of the page. You can vote once per day. Invite your Facebook friends to vote, too!

Wackiest Wiener Photo Contest

If you follow us on Facebook, join our Wackiest Wiener Photo Contest. Starting June 23 and running through June 30, you can submit photos for Facebook fans to vote on. Voting begins July 1 and ends July 8. Grand Prize winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to our online store, plus $100 will be donated to the dachshund rescue group of the winner's choice.

Second and third places will receive $50 and $25, respectively.

If you are not following us on Facebook, now is a good time to start!

Dog Is My Pilot

My father was a WWII veteran - a proud U.S. Marine. I grew up a Marine's daughter, taught to respect flag and country. My memories of him teem with stories from his wartime service -- stories he carefully chose. Stories that would share an unforgettable part of his life but would spare the listener the grimness of the background setting.

He passed away in the summer of 2005 and I miss his tales. I welcome the occasional story I read about any of the remaining few who shared that time in history with my father. Our webmaster sent me a link to a just such a story yesterday. A tale of a WWII Army fighter pilot. This story has a twist - and is the reason I'm sharing it here on this blog. This story has a dachshund in it.

Thanks to Denise Goolsby of The Desert Sun newspaper for her story "Pilot, dachshund take on the empire" . And thanks to our webmaster, Jerry, for finding and sending me stories of men and women with a binding tie to my father.

It's HOT out there!

  

During these hot summer months, it is crucial to keep an eye on your dog's level of heat tolerance. I found this out last weekend at the end of a very hot, humid doxie event we attended. My Katie, a beautifully coiffed longhair, went into heat stress. We just packed up the van and were headed out of there when Katie exhibited signs of stress.

Fortunately, we still had ice packs and cold water in our cooler. We immediately pulled over and got Katie cooled down with a bandana soaked in cold water. A dog in heat stress needs to be cooled down gently -- not abruptly (such as submerging them in cold water).  

Unfortunately, our van's air conditioner has long since quit working. So we called our traveling companions and asked for them to pull over and wait for us so we could transfer Katie to their air-conditioned car.  

Katie is fine, but had we not acted quickly, the results could have been quite different.

Please read this article from The Whole Dog Journal about how to recognize and treat heat stress and heat stroke in a dog.

During these hot summer months, it is crucial to keep an eye on your dog's level of heat tolerance. I found this out last weekend at the end of a very hot, humid doxie event we attended. My Katie, a beautifully coiffed longhair, went into heat stress. We just packed up the van and were headed out of there when Katie exhibited signs of stress.

Fortunately, we still had ice packs and cold water in our cooler. We immediately pulled over and got Katie cooled down with a bandana soaked in cold water. A dog in heat stress needs to be cooled down gently -- not abruptly (such as submerging them in cold water).  

Unfortunately, our van's air conditioner has long since quit working. So we called our traveling companions and asked for them to pull over and wait for us so we could transfer Katie to their air-conditioned car.  

Katie is fine, but had we not acted quickly, the results could have been quite different.

Please read this article from The Whole Dog Journal about how to recognize and treat heat stress and heat stroke in a dog.

Living in Dachshundom

Welcome to our newest venture into social media -- a blog! While we were among the first wave of businesses to embrace the "new media" of web pages (back then you had a web page), we've been a bit slower in jumping on the social media wagon -- mostly because, well let's face it, it's a lot to keep up with! And the seven dachshunds and one doodle that work here have their own ideas about helping. 

But here we are! We have lots of fans on Facebook (approaching 4,000!) who are quite engaging, so we hope to have many followers here as well. We plan to bring you more in-depth posts, stories, news, photos, and helpful information about Living in Dachshundom.

We want to thank the fantastic folks at Wienertales for giving us permission to use their artwork and slogan "Peace, Love & Wiener Dogs".