Dear doggie.

Look at our cute puppy. Isn't she adorable?


I call her puppy even though she's not a puppy anymore, but anyway.

Despite her extreme cute factor, she likes to scare the heck out of her momma when daddy is gone. She never does it during the day when the sun's shining and you could see any lurking predators and when daddy is there to protect me. Nope, she does it when it's 3 in the morning and mommy has no company in the house other than a fetus and dog.

I went to walk Chorizo (that's her name-mexican sausage, Chihuahua/Dachshund-get it?) in our backyard so she could go potty. Immediately she focuses to the left, gets her little butt in that "you're in my territory and I'll eat you" stance, looks directly at a bush in our backyard, and starts barking. She never barks. Ever. The only time she barks is when there's another dog around that she wants to sniff, or when there's a stranger. So unfortunately for her she didn't get to go potty, because I hightailed it back into our house, dragged her in, slammed our door and locked it.

We went upstairs, me with pepper spray in tow, and she sat in the entry way to our bedroom just staring down the stairs. Why does she do this to me???? This kind of thing only happens in the middle of the night when Kyler's gone, I swear.

I have 1 hour until he's home...which translates to one hour of me sitting here with my pepper spray, looking over my shoulder every 5 seconds, and getting a huge rise in heart rate every time our house creaks.

I'm sorry, doggy :(

Last night we decided Kyler was going to clip Chorizo's nails for the first time. They had been getting fairly unruly and we bought some clippers a while ago.

She was squirming, fairly badly, but honestly she could have done a lot worse. With the past that she has with how people have treated her, I'm sure it took a lot for her to mostly lay there. We got to the very last nail, the LAST one, and we heard a small yelp and she yanked her leg back. I don't know if she had yanked before that and that's why it cut lower or if Kyler accidentally just went too low, but we looked down and saw blood on the carpet.

My immediate thought was oh crap we killed our dog.

Some people are so dramatic. I looked online of what to do if you clip your dog's "quick" (the vein you aren't supposed to clip below or else the nail bleeds) and I don't know how many people made comments about how your dog will die if you don't take it to the vet, etc etc. Then there were other, normal people that said don't worry about it, put some corn starch on it, and it will stop bleeding...just don't do it again because it's painful for them.

So freaking out, we took her into the kitchen and layed her on her back. Dipped her paw in a bowl of corn starch and rubbed her belly for about 10 minutes. Wiped the corn starch off and the bleeding had stopped...so we let her run loose. I started a bath for her and was going to bathe her to make sure all the corn starch and blood would get off. We look down and there's blood on the carpet again.

I return to my lifeline on how to do anything aka google and found out that you aren't supposed to let them run around afterwards or it could start the quick bleeding again. So we repeat the entire process and put a band aid on her nail.

No, I'm not kidding...we put a band aid on our dog's nail.

We sent her to bed after that (with a treat because momma felt bad) so she wouldn't be walking all over it and keep it bleeding. I am not kidding, I had dreams all night about how our dog died or I woke up in the morning and her cage was overflowing with blood...pregnancy dreams fail.

I woke up to a much more pleasant scenario. Her nail wasn't bleeding anymore, it looked normal, and she was fine.

So, my life lesson and advice: if you don't know what you're doing, just go to PetSmart and pay the 5 bucks. If you decide to not heed that advice and end up making your dog bleed, just dip their paw in corn starch, wipe it off after 10 minutes, and don't let them walk on it.

Your dog won't die. Don't believe everything you read on the internets.