Pictures of Alba

Here a some more pictures of Alba. These are not my photos, but pictures posted of him on Petfinder.com.

The second night we had him, just after midnight we heard this awful hacking, honking, choking sound. Talk about rude awakenings. We had given him a bone (big bone, not chicken bone)earlier in the evening and my first thought was that he somehow managed to bite off a piece and it got caught in his throat. He would have moments of quiet and then start again so after awhile I was pretty sure it wasn't the bone that was the problem. I suspected he might have kennel cough. Together with the lady from the dog rescue place and our horse/dog trainer friend, we determined it was kennel cough (or at least a cold).

We got him some homeopathic concoctions and after adding it to his dinner last night, we noticed improvement very soon afterwards. Last night he did have coughing episodes but the quiet times in between were longer. Hubby and I were able to get a decent night's sleep too.

Yesterday during the day it was quite awful but today he's only had the occasional cough. I am impressed with the natural meds. Since he was a rescue, he was underfed and malnourished and we're going to see that he gets to a healthy weight. As a person who eats a diet absent of animal products (meat,fish, fowl, dairy, cheese), I couldn't imagine a day when I would be feeding my dog a raw diet (meat and veggies), but it seems to agree with him.

Our horse/dog whisperer friend doesn't like crates and showed us how to get him to stay in his bed at night. It worked like a charm and now the crate will only be used for travel. I'm happy about that because I don't want to crate him either.

He's a real sweetie and we love him. :)