Ben Westhoff

Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the Dalmatian mix he and his wife, Anna, adopted as a puppy in late 2009.

After Anna and I woke up the other morning we let Pippi out of my office, where she sleeps at night. She ran over to greet us as she does every morning, her tail wagging enthusiastically. After a few moments of this, however, we noticed streaks of blood across the walls, the door, our legs, and even Pippi herself -- everything that had come into contact with her tail.

We saw that the end of her tail was a bloody mess, and promptly corralled her in the bathroom, where Anna put some Neosporin on the affected area. (I got to work washing off the walls and other areas.) Anna next wrapped a Band-aid around the tip of her tail, which seemed to do the trick for the time being. Before long, however, Pippi began licking the affected area and the bandage came off, so we had to do the whole thing again.

Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the Dalmatian mix he and his wife, Anna, adopted as a puppy in late 2009.

Many readers expressed concern about our post from a couple weeks ago, in which we noted that, despite Pippi's traumatizing experience at the kennel earlier this year -- she got frighteningly sick and lost a bunch of weight -- we decided to bring her there again during a recent vacation. "Please reconsider," pleaded one Doggie Diaries reader. "I don't understand why you would put Pippi back in the same situation that made her so miserable before," said another.

Trust us, we would prefer to board her with a friend or have someone come look in on her at our house, but we just moved to a new town and don't really know anyone here. As for why we returned to the same kennel, well, we couldn't isolate exactly why she had a bad time before, and weren't sure it was their fault -- she'd stayed there previously without incident. Otherwise, we'd had great experiences with that kennel, which is also home to our vet.

Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the dalmatian mix he and his wife, Anna, adopted as a puppy in late 2009.

Pippi seems to be back in good spirits after her illness while boarding at the vet's and the hunger strike we described last week. She hasn't yet regained all of the weight she lost, however. That isn't for lack of trying -- we've been giving her all sorts of extra food since then, table scraps, treats, you name it. Though we can still see her ribs, we thought she was doing better. Apparently, we were wrong. Upon our recent trip to the vet, she gave us a surprising assessment -- Pippi remains underweight.

She's about 46 lbs. right now, down 4 to 5 lbs. from her where she had been before we went on our trip, and this is below average for a dalmatian, which is 50 to 59 lbs. We could hardly believe it, though, when the vet said we should double her food, to 3 cups in the morning and night.

Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the Dalmatian mix he and his wife, Anna, adopted as a puppy in late 2009.

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We recently took Pippi back to the vet for the first time since her traumatic experience boarding there a month back. The poor dog got sick during her stay there -- either owing to missing us, fear of the noisy dog run or a bad reaction to a Lyme disease vaccination (nobody really knows). But upon our return, the workers there told us something we didn't know -- that Pippi refused to eat for much of the time. They had to feed her by hand!

Perhaps this is arrogant of us, but we suspect the reason she wouldn't eat is because she missed us. After all, we've heard of this happening with other dogs when their owners go out of town, including one of Anna's sister's dogs. But the thought that she'd gone on some sort of hunger strike absolutely broke our hearts.

Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the Dalmatian mix he and his wife, Anna, adopted as a puppy in late 2009.

Last night, in the midst of the most brutal rainstorm of the season so far, Anna took Pippi out to do her business. They were out only for a minute or two, but in between going No. 1 and getting drenched to the bone, Pippi sniffed something on the ground and promptly began devouring it. Anna wrenched the item from her mouth, but then she picked up something else and successfully wolfed it down. Whether these were bits of some old pizza, bagel or shoelace, we'll never know.

If you have a dog, you've surely experienced situations where your pup's nose uncovers contraband that is otherwise invisible to the human eye. (Did we ever tell you about the time Pippi stuck her head in the bushes and came out with a dead squirrel between her teeth?)