FREE Pet Symptom Checker and Information Database at PetMD!

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sick puppy

Does your pet have suspicious symptoms or odd behaviour? Don’t just search the web randomly or you will totally stress yourself out! We’ve all been there, done that…either for our pets, our human kids or ourselves! If you want to know whether your dog’s symptoms are serious and when you should call the vet, visit PetMD’s Pet Symptom Checker for informative, helpful, veterinarian approved articles.

Using PetMD is free and super easy. Designed for both cats and dogs, you can search from over 2,000 dog and cat health articles based on the symptoms your pet is experiencing. You start by selecting the type of animal you have and then the body part or behavior you are concerned about. You check off the symptoms and then see relevant articles with information tailored to your search!

This is handy and ideal for non life-threatening situations or to learn more about your pet’s medical condition but is NOT a substitute for individual veterinarian advice, diagnosis or assistance. A pet emergency could happen any time, so please make sure to have the phone number and address of  YOUR local 24-hour Pet Emergency Center or Veterinary Hospital handy at all times. We have the numbers on our fridge and also programmed them in our phones. In case of possible poisoning, you should call ASPCA 24-hour Emergency Animal Poison Control Center at 888-426-4435.

K9 Kamp Pet Blogger Awards 2012!

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doggy step aerobics with Daisy

As our regular readers and fans know, we recently completed 4 weeks of fun and activity in the K9 Kamp Fitness Challenge for Pet Bloggers! You can catch up on our posts from the entire K9 Kamp series here.

K9 Kamp Savviest Blogger Award 2012

Although Kamp has ended for this year, the excitement continues because the K9 Kamp Awards have just been announced and we have been awarded a very cool one! Daisy and I are thrilled to accept The Savviest Kamper Award for “finding the best bargains on K9Kamp toys and fitness supplies” throughout the event! You can head on over to K9 Kamp Headquarters and see the full list of award recipients! Congrats to everyone and we can’t wait to do it again next year!

Take the FREE RealAge Test and Find out How Fast You are Aging!

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Free RealAge Test

Did you know that people with pets often live longer and healthier lives? Regardless of your age,  you can take the RealAge Test for free to find out how old your body and brain are based on lifestyle, family history and other factors. It’s especially important for people age 30 and older but never to early or too late for people of any age!

You can also get free advice and analysis, based on YOUR test results,  on how to make small changes that will improve your RealAge! You’ve probably seen it on TV or in magazines, and millions have already taken it…go here to take the FREE RealAge Test!

K9 Kamp Week 4 Highlights: Kamper’s Choice!

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doggy step aerobics with Daisy

WOW…It’s the final week of K9 Kamp! Hopefully you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have! This week’s K9 Kamp Fitness Challenge was ‘Kamper’s Choice’ meaning do whatever fitness activities you and your dog enjoy most. Well, we did that the first week during the Walking on Sunshine Challenge since walking is our favorite and most frequent activity. So this week we decided to try working on a few tricks and skills, and added a fitness-spin on them by incorporating my fitness ball and aerobic step. For those of you who are young enough to have missed out on the step aerobics craze, here’s a funny and retro flashback. I love that Gilad had a parrot in his workout videos!:

Anyway, this week was mostly for fun. I did a few ab crunches on the ball and made a game of stepping up and down on the step with Daisy.  As usual, I got a pretty decent abdominal workout from laughing so much!

Daisy Step Up

Step Up Step Down: We like to practice climbing on and off of the agility equipment at the dog park so I thought it would be fun to make a game of it at home using my old aerobic step which doesn’t get much use these days (My current favorite is doing Zumba with the Wii or DVD set!) We took turns stepping on and off and once Daisy figured out what to do it was fun to try to get on the step before she got off. She got super excited and bumped me off the step a few times trying to get the treats I was using as incentive!

Daisy fitness ball

Fitness Ball Fun: I use my stability ball fairly often so it’s always sitting out for Daisy to poke at and chase around the room. With Papa’s help we’ve been teaching her to stand on the ball. Her legs still tremble and one of us has to hold the ball so she doesn’t fall off, while the other one encourages her with treats and a helping hand, but she’s getting the hang of it! Since he was busy the day I decided to try to get photos, this was about the best shot I could get on my own! It’s a work in progress…

Daisy on the ball - almost

So, those are our highlights from Week #4! How did YOU do??? We’ve really enjoyed participating in this year’s K9 Kamp Fitness Challenge and following the adventures of the other Kampers, too! A BIG Thank You to the co-hosts over at Kol’s Notes and Peggy’s Pet Place for ALL their hard work putting this together!

Leave us a comment to let us know you stopped by! Don’t forget to visit the other pet blogs in the listing below and remember to stop by the K9 Kamp Headquarters for a chance to win cool prizes for participating!



K9 Kamp Week 3 Highlights: Just One Doggone Minute To Win it!

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It’s week #3 of K9 Kamp and the challenge was Just One Doggone Minute to Win It! We all agree that it can be tough to find time for fitness each day, so the goal was to initiate a fun fitness game with your dog whenever you have a spare minute.

Since I work from home, Daisy usually comes over to poke at me and try to get my attention sometime during the day but I’m often guilty of ignoring her or sending her away with a pat and a toy when I’m busy. By the end of the day, I’m usually stiff from sitting too long, and my eyes hurt from staring at the computer monitor! This week was fun because I had an official excuse to get up and play for a few minutes throughout a day! I wouldn’t say that our games were all that original but they did get me up from my desk more than usual and I’m thankful for that! Here’s a rundown:

 

Indoor Frisbee Toss:

Indoor Frisbee

We took advantage of Daisy’s KONG Flyer and enjoyed a few quick games of indoor frisbee. Daisy was thrilled since I usually reserve this game for the park or beach, but I figured that since the Flyer is floppy and flexible rather than hard like a regular frisbee, that it wouldn’t do much damage if we were careful! After a few times of catch and fetch the flyer, it turned into a game of tug so we had to stop before we destroyed our toy!

flyer tug

 Football Roll:

football roll

This game is also called ROFL (Rolling Our Football and Laughing!) Instead of tossing the football, we crawled around on the floor with it. I tried to roll it away and Daisy tried to bring it back or stop me. She was general fascinated with the way it rolled since she doesn’t usually get to play with it…Don’t tell Papa we used his toy! My exercise was mostly laughing as Daisy pounced, batted and nudged at the football with her nose as she tried to figure out how to pick it up!

football game with Daisy

 

Rope Ring Tug and Toss:

Daisy Tug

I got a pretty good biceps and triceps workout trying out Daisy’s adorable new rope ring toy. This was pretty much your standard game of tug but every now and then I threw it and did some arm stretches and toe touches while she went to fetch it. I know it was suggested that we try to work in some squats or lunges but Mama’s knees just aren’t having any of THAT!

Tug with Daisy

We also played a little Monkey in the Middle with Papa and had a quick game of Hide and Seek but you’ll have to take our word for it. The most difficult part of the challenge this week was trying to take photos while playing!  We’re having so much fun…I can’t believe we are headed into the LAST Week of K9 Kamp! I’ll be posting product reviews and giveaways featuring the KONG Flyer and adorable Rope Ring Toy featured in this week’s challenge so stay tuned for those!

Those are the highlights from our week! How did you do with Week #3 of K9 Kamp Fitness Challenge? Be sure to leave a comment and let us know! Check in on the other featured pet bloggers and add your post to the blog hop,  too!