Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

You Can’t Keep a Good Dog Down

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At Sampson’s vet appointment last week, our vet gave him medication (Meloxicam, 1/2 tablet once per day) and said he needed to take it easy on his paw, specifically, no running or jumping which equates to no off-leash walks.

We can manage his walks.

Hubby and Sampson have been joining Delilah and I on our walks.  I have Delilah on her long leash and Hubby has Sampson on another long leash.

We’ve been keeping the walks to half an hour or so and Sampson is definitely tired at the end of the walk.

The harder part is managing him in the house.

I know the medication is working because Sampson is definitely feeling better.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, Sampson you aren’t supposed to be running. 

Five minutes later Sampson, no jumping!

Of course he has a cohort who doesn’t help matters at all.

Come on Delilah, I’m just about ready to jump on the bed.

 

Relax mom, I’m feeling better.

 

I know he’s not running and jumping when we aren’t home because my mom would tell us.

He’s doing this when we are home and he still has three full weeks of ‘taking it easy.’

Any thoughts or suggestions as how to keep a happy dog quiet?

My All Star is on the D.L.

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On December 1st, this little blog will be two years old.  Back in January I set out the goals I had for this blog for its second year of existence.

One of these goals was to post for 366 consecutive days, at which point I will have written one post per day for two full years (with the exception of the day my granddaughter was born when I just totally spaced it.)

Most of the ideas for posts come from the dogs, specifically things they do or things we encounter on our walks.

Coming into September I felt fairly confident we could accomplish this particular goal. Come on, I can see the finish line from here!

Oh there are other goals that probably won’t get accomplished but two full years of consecutive posting was a given.

Today with only 72 posts left to go, I have to tell you I’m a bit nervous.

My All-Star is on the Disabled List.

Yes, you read that right, Sampson, the Golden Boy, the one whom the sun rises and sets upon,  does not have a lick granuloma (at least not in the traditional sense of the word.).

After he woke up limping on Tuesday I knew he had to go to the Vet.

I fixed Delilah a bone filled with pumpkin and loaded him into the car.

Will it be much longer mom? I’m not getting enough rubbies.

Our vet (Dr. Soutter) was on vacation this week (why oh why didn’t she give me her cell phone number?)  So instead we got to see Dr. B, who was instrumental in helping Delilah when she was having her episodes.

After a quick look at his paw, Dr. B. decided it would be smart to do a skin scraping, to make sure it wasn’t a yeast infection or some other skin condition.

It wasn’t particularly comfortable but he tolerated it well.

 

She examined the scraped skin under a microscope and determined it was not a skin condition

Then she started touching and moving his paw.  Most of the manipulations were okay, but there were a couple of times that it hurt him.  We decided it would be smart to take an X-ray, if it didn’t show anything we’d still have a baseline for the future.

Dr. B. said Sampson was such a good boy she wouldn’t need to anesthetize him. We were asked to wait while the X-ray area was readied.

Did you hear that? I’ve forgotten all the noises you hear in the city.

 

I asked if I could go with Sampson to document his X-ray but was informed the area was tight and they had a dog up on the table getting his teeth cleaned.

That was easy mom, you had nothing to worry about.

 

After his very thorough examination and his X-rays, Dr. B determined that my poor, sweet punkin has a soft-tissue injury.

In layman’s terms, the ligament in his left front paw is sore, she gave us some medicine (Meloxicam) and said he has to take it easy.

Specifically no running or jumping for a month.

A MONTH!

A month without squirrel, chipmunk or deer chases!  A month without running through the field, and rolling over dogs in his effort to reach humans.

A month without the mama getting fodder for blog posts.

My All-Star is side-lined and we’re in the homestretch!

Thankfully I still have my Designated Hitter, who never fails to provide me with engaging and entertaining stories.

What do you think?  Will my D.H. step up to the plate and save my skin? Do you think I can make my goal of two full years of posting or do you think I’ll fall short?

A Plea To Rescue Groups

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I’m not affiliated with one particular rescue organization, seriously, it doesn’t take a NASA engineer to figure out I’m partial to Labrador Retrievers, but Labs aren’t for everyone.

Instead I like to advocate for rescue.

On the rare occasion someone asks me about getting a dog, I like to educate them a bit on the joys of rescuing.   That’s not to say people shouldn’t get a dog from a responsible breeder, I just make sure they know where pet store puppies come from and how much work goes into training.

Rescues have some pretty strict guidelines when it comes to adopting a dog.  The rescues I’ve been associated with do a home visit.

Where will the dog sleep, how will the dog be exercised, where will the dog be when you are out of the house?

These are all important questions.

I get why they do this.   They are over-whelmed with dogs and understaffed with…well staff.

They see the horrors of the rescue world on a daily basis.  The dogs that have been neglected or worse yet, abused.

In many instances they have the unbelievable task of choosing which dogs will live and which ones will not.

Day in and day out they see the result of people not being responsible and spaying and neutering their dogs.

I get it.  I really do.

And yet, I wonder how many more dogs could be saved, if their guidelines were a bit less stringent.

Case(s) in point:

Stay at home dog mom.

When we made the decision to enlarge our pack I went immediately to Petfinder.  Honestly I spent hours and hours on that website searching for the right dog.

I submitted a fair amount of applications for puppies.  I was turned down on each and every one.

Why?

Because I wasn’t home during the day to let the puppy out for potty breaks.

I couldn’t understand that, we both worked full-time and had managed to successfully raise Sampson from a puppy.

Yes it was true someone wouldn’t be with the puppy 24/7, but my mom lived next door and could go over at three and four times a day to give the puppy a break.  By that time we had fenced in our yard so exercise wouldn’t have been a problem, plus there was already an older dog to provide companionship.

A Tale of Two Labs.

I mentioned in my Tick Tick Boom post there were two wildly crazy labs in the drop-in agility class.  The mom told me, they’re sisters and are inseparable.

I questioned Sara afterwards.

This well-dressed, established couple in their mid-fifties, with a beautiful home, a fenced in yard with a pool, applied to rescues and were turned down.

Why?

Their yard was too narrow.

The result was they went out and bought two dogs. The woman said, what else could I do?

Spaying and Neutering:

A young couple I know rescued a 16 week-old lab mix, the female dog was altered before being adopted.

The dog has urine leakage, which I’ve heard can happen if they are spayed too early.  A perfectly healthy dog now on medication, making an additional expense for the adopter, because the rescue spayed too young.

A friend whose rescue dog, came unaltered.  The rescue sent a van out to spay the dog, 15 minutes later the young woman gets her dog back, still groggy on anesthesia. 15 minutes!!

Newsflash, my mammogram takes longer than 15 minutes and they’re just squashing boobs!!

What’s the answer?

I’m not sure I know.

I do know having someone home 24 hours a day does not necessarily make them a great dog owner.

I do know having a narrow yard is not the end of the world and does not mean the dog won’t be exercised.

I do know the numbers of animals in shelters and rescues is astronomical, but I don’t believe creating health problems in healthy animals will resolve the issue.

The key to changing any behavior (as those of us in the dog world know) is education.

Educate yourself and educate others, it’s the only way to stop the bleeding.

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