A Circus Spectacular: Dolce and Baxter Cope with Baby Ella

Docle and Baxter in Baxter's kennel together!

For those of you who have been around us, you know we love our dogs Dolce and Baxter quite a lot.  They are spoiled to say the least.  Dolce is suppose to be a 5 lb peakapoo, but she has been tipping the scales at over 6 lbs.  She is now on diet food and a strict no table food diet! Hopefully she'll lose her extra pound soon.  Our other dog, Baxter, is a golden-mix rescue from the Atlanta Human Society.  (On a side note, AHS is a wonderful organization if you are ever wanting to adopt a pet!)  Baxter is quite opposite of Dolce.  He is 100 lbs and we call him "Wild Man." I have to be honest- the first year we had him, I desperately wanted to return him (of course I would never do that- Brent loved him too dearly).  But he has grown on me and I love really do love him.  He is Brent's dog all the way, but is very attentive to me too.

Baxter (with his summer shave) and Dolce

We got Dolce about a month after we got married.  My childhood best friend, Laurin, was getting Dolce's sister.  She brought me a picture of the puppies and it was love at first sight! I wanted Dolce.  Brent thought it was too early to commit to such a responsibility and said it would be best to wait.  I left the picture on the coffee table and wouldn't you know it, two weeks later he told me he thought we should get her!  I was so excited.  We got Dolce and immediately loved her.  She was like my baby (so I thought until I had Ella- but don't tell Dolce that).  She thinks she's a human.  She slept in the bed with us, was never left at a kennel (the only place I will still leave her is Kinder Kritters Daycare here in Dallas- they love her and treat her like their own!!), and I shared a small portion of all my meals with her (yes, this is why she got too heavy).  Knowing all these things, you can probably see why we were so worried that Dolce wouldn't react well to a baby.  Another good indicator was that every time she saw a child, she would bark and growl at them.  I did some reading on how to help your dog adjust to a baby.  The reading suggested I buy a baby doll and carry it around and talk to it.  As weird as it sounds, I tried it.  Yeah- it didn't go so well.  Dolce hated the doll and tried to maul the doll's face every time I brought it out.  I decided that the doll idea was not going to work for us and began to worry that Dolce wasn't going to be able to handle our new addition. What were we going to do?


Baxter on the other hand loves children.  A child could bop him in the face and he'd just lick him.  We consider this a very positive trait considering he is 100 lbs.  Baxter is wild.  He loves to run around the back yard at full speed carrying a stick like he's leading a battle charge.  He digs an occasional hole when no one is looking.  Perhaps most frustrating is his fetish for eating socks and anything plastic. If a sock is left anywhere near Baxter, he will eat it.   He eats the socks and a few days later we find them "passed" in the backyard.  He has also been eating Ella's little socks and mittens too when we don't see them fall off fast enough.  But, we love him and are just happy that he has moved on from eating shoes.  The first 6 months we had him he literally ruined hundreds of dollars of shoes.  Like I said, he has a foot fetish!  Rex Ryan's got nothing on him.


This might be a good time to mention we have a cat, Emma.  I did not name her or would have not given her a people name.  She was found outside our sorority house in a dumpster my Junior year of college and my roommate Sarah and I took her in.  No one wanted to keep her when it came down to it, but I couldn't bare to turn her over to the pound-so I kept her.  We are not cat people, but we do our best for Emma.  The dogs chase her back into her "room" whenever she tries to come out.  My friend Misty swears she is a "Closet Cat," apparently a bread of cat that lives in a closet.  I think she's just scared to come out!  Anyway, our house is a circus with two dogs and a cat.  Now add a baby and we might as well be our own three ring act.  (***Note if you are reading this and want a 7 year old cat, please contact me.  Emma is up for adoption to a good home.  I hate that she lives here cooped up in a closet because she is afraid of the dogs.  She really is a pretty, sweet cat!)

This is my favorite picture of Emma as a kitten!

The day we brought Ella home from the hospital and introduced her to the dogs was interesting.  Baxter thought she was a critter and ran around her Pack and Play whimpering trying to figure out what she was.  We had to watch him closely because we were afraid that he would try to "sic"her.  The next day, however, it was as if she had been in the house forever.  Baxter loves being around her and does his best to be close to her.  I guess he realized she wasn't a squirrel!  We have a cute story about Baxter and Ella that I have saved for its very own blog post.  It's so sweet!  Dolce on the other hand didn't seem too phased or interested in Ella.  Brent's parents were here and we all commented about how well Dolce had done with Ella coming home as she seemed indifferent.  I wish I could eat my words!


 After Ella was home about 5 days, Dolce showed us just how not adjusted to having a baby in the house she was. Dolce got sick as a dog.  She had all the flu symptoms (throwing up, diarrhea, listlessness) and refused to drink water.  Brent luckily got some gatorade and fed it to her with a syringe.  It was Christmas, and we didn't want to take her to the emergency clinic because we didn't have an arm and a leg to pay for her treatment.  By Sunday she actually seemed a bit better.  My mom was visiting and took her to the vet Monday to double check that she was doing better. Well, she wasn't.  They ran a battery of tests and found out that she had HGE- Hemorrhagic GastricEnteritis.  Basically, her stomach was lined with bleeding ulcers from the stress of adjusting to a new baby.  If she didn't receive treatment ASAP, she would die.  The doctor said it was fortunate that Brent had gotten the fluids in her or she could have died-Thanks Brent for saving my Dolce!  She spent the night in the hospital getting IV fluids and antibiotics.  My mom picked her up the next day.  She appeared to be doing better, at first, but things took another turn.


After she was home a few hours, Dolce started acting strange again.  We put her in her "playpen"- yes she has a playpen that she's stayed in instead of a kennel since she was born.  That evening my mom realized Dolce had swelling on her stomach.  The swelling became increasingly worse and eventually it looked like Dolce was growing an intestine that was the girth of a tennis ball out of her side.  I thought she was going to die.  She wouldn't sit down and just stood in the corner of the play pen panting and staring straight ahead.  My mom took her to the emergency vet for me.  As it turned out, she had had a reaction to the IV.   They gave her a shot and sent her home.  They told us to take Dolce back to the vet if the swelling didn't go down.  Luckily, it did and $600.00 later, Dolce had recovered.  While I was sick over losing that much money, I was so relieved that Dolce was going to be fine.  Brent tries to be more rational about things, but he was really happy that she was going to be okay too.


It's been about a month since all this occurred and things have definitely improved.  Dolce and Baxter have adapted.  They still hate when Ella cries and Dolce still has bouts of jealousy, but all in all things are much better.  Dolce is still sad that she can't sleep in the bed anymore, but other than that we are relieved that the adjustment didn't kill her!  She actually tries to lick Ella's head sometimes and is growing fond of her (in her Dolce way)!  Bax of course loves Ella to death and wants to be in her face all the time.  I think he gets his feelings hurt when we tell him to get back!  So, the dogs learned to cope and that's a relief.  And you may be wonder, what about Emma the cat?  Emma has seen Ella twice.  She looked at her and returned to the closet.  And so our circus continues, but we wouldn't have it any other way!