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ice cube for the teething pup

I guess Kai is going through a barking phase... he's been a lot more vocal lately.  He barks if a strange cat is in the yard, he barks at Molly, he barks if he sees people with dogs walk by the house, he barks at the neighbor when he's in his backyard... etc.  If it moves, it's worth barking at, as far as Kai is concerned.

Yesterday was borderline ridiculous!  First he was barking his head off after I got home from work.  I went outside to see what he was barking at, and he was staring at the fence.  His little body was shaking (anger?  fear?  I don't know!).  I couldn't even figure out what the hell he was barking at for a while... I thought maybe there was a cat, or even a skunk, on the other side of the fence, but I didn't hear any movement.  I finally realized that there was a small lizard hunkering down right by the fence.  The poor lizard was missing part of his tail (I don't know if Kai ate it or not...) and was definitely alive, but sitting very still, trying to camouflage himself.  Kai didn't want to actually get near the lizard... he stayed a couple of feet away.  But he would not stop barking, even after I tried to hide the lizard by putting some bricks in front of it.  I took Kai inside twice, and both times he ran right back to the lizard as soon as I let him back out.  Finally, I had to lock the pet door for about 20 minutes.  I guess that gave the lizard enough time to make his escape, because when Kai finally got to go back outside, Mr. Lizard was gone.  Whew. 

A few hours later, Kai was having another barking fit in the backyard.  This time, it was over a dragonfly... the dragonfly looked like it was pretty much dead.  But Kai wasn't convinced.  I tried to hide the dragonfly by putting an upturned bucket over it, and distracting Kai, and he eventually decided to stop barking.

About a half hour after that, Kai started barking his head off... AGAIN... this time in the spare bedroom.  I assumed he was barking at Molly, but when I went in there, Kai was by himself.  I was like "wtf are you barking at NOW?!" and then I saw it... it was something very scary... a Q-tip.  Yes, ladies and gentleman, my dog was barking his head off at a Q-tip that somehow had fallen out of the trash and was lying on the floor.  Chris and I laughed so hard we were both crying.

Poor Kai is still teething... I saw some blood spots on his stuffed shark the other day, and he sometimes doesn't want to eat.  But he seems to be doing okay with it overall.  He has his vet appointment to be neutered in a few weeks, and the vet said that any remaining baby teeth could be popped out at that time.  I can't believe he's going to be six months old soon!  Time flies!