We're learning as we go

It's funny how the scientific method sneaks its way into new experiences. Early Thursday morning (about 1:30am), Katy couldn't stop coughing. She had been coughing quite a bit since going to bed (about 10:00pm), but it got progressively worse. Since we've noticed that the coughing is linked to her level of excitement as well as the food and water intake, I felt that if she could be closer to me, she might settle down. So I let the dogs out of their kennel and told them to "go to the other door", meaning, go to the living room door. I drug the fence into the living room and set things up for the dogs. They came in, somewhat excited, and curious, as this was something totally new. They tried to sneak out back to the bedroom, but I secured the fence and eventually they settled down. Max laid down on the cool stones in the entryway, and Katy sat down with a bone. She chewed on it for a little while, walked around for a few minutes, returned to the bone for about ten more minutes, then hopped up on the sofa with me. We must have both fallen asleep, because I didn't wake up until 6:30, when Christa got up. The amazing thing is that Katy didn't cough at all while sleeping on the sofa.

In discussion, Christa said that maybe the floor was too hard for her to sleep on, so we decided to try an experiment last night (there goes that science thing again), and put a couple of pillows in her kennel, along with a bone and a tennis ball. The result? A wonderfully quiet night. She woke up once to chew on her bone, and coughed only once, at around 6:00am, but it was time to get up, anyway. She didn't throw up at all, even when I let her out of her kennel to go outside. In fact, she only threw up a little tiny bit of water when she took a few sips this morning, but wouldn't sit down afterward. We are trying to teach her to sit after she eats or drinks as the angle and gravity will help her food/beverage get to her stomach. So we'll leave the kennel layout the way it is and see if it helps on a daily basis. The bone chewing is a bit annoying in the middle of the night, but, as Christa says, it probably helps her to swallow her saliva, so until it proves to be a bad thing, we'll keep it.

Katy's kennel with the pillows and toys.