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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

My Dog is not a Schnauzer or a Terrier!!!

My dog Noni is a Lhasa Apso Mix. Her momma was a purebred Lhasa Apso and her daddy was a sled dog mutt that was running around the village (we aren't exactly sure which one it was).

We got Noni while we still lived in Iliamna, AK. The family that owned her momma was going around the village to see who wanted a dog. I saw Noni when she was just 3 weeks old. SO CUTE!!!! However, there was some tragedy around it. The litter was starting to get sick. The litter before Noni's got sick with Parvo and all the puppies died except for one, and that is because they pulled him from his momma early. So, we pulled Noni early, in hopes of staving off Parvo. She came home with me, I bottle fed her, and gave her water with some weak echinacea tea in it to help boost her immune system to beat the illness. Turns out that none of that litter actually got parvo, but you don't want to mess around with it. We got Noni at 3 1/2 weeks. (Pictures to follow) She thrived! At 8 weeks, we took a trip to Anchorage to the vet to get all the puppy shot stuff. We found that she had worms, so she got the de-worming stuff. She was extremely healthy. We found out later that her sisters also had worms, but because their owners didn't take them to get vet care, they got really sick. One of them even lost an eye due to the worms.

Noni's been all over the place with us. She's been to Montana, Utah, Hawaii and is now back in her native Alaska (although nowhere near where she was born). We have had to trim her hair in a lot of those places. Her coat is long (that's the Lhasa) with a very thick under coat (the sled dog). She gets really hot in Utah and Hawaii. Due to the hair cut we give her, people keep telling me "What a pretty Schnauzer you have!" or "What a nice Terrier you have!" Then I feel like a creep when I have to say, I'm sorry... but she's a Lhasa Apso mix. They look at me like I'm from another planet. "What's a Lhasa Apso" they'll say... She does look that way with her hair cut, so I can excuse the confusion. She refuses to let me trim around her face, and her paws are usually too bushy because she keeps pulling them away when I try to trim them, so she really does look like a Schnauzer. But still...


This is Noni at a little over 3 years old. She is pretty smart, although she is developing the Lhasa trademark of obstinance...

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