Heart Like a Dog

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

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.

Heart Like A Dog

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As most of you know, I’ve been looking to take the next step with my blog.  For me that means moving it from the free WordPress account to a self-hosted blog.  My struggle has been what to name the new blog.

The problem is that the wordpress account was www.jodistone.wordpress.com.  Normally speaking you wouldn’t want to change the blog name, just remove the wordpress and make the account a dot.com.

As I’ve mentioned here, there are already at least two authors using the name Jodi Stone, one of which has the website with the dot.com, which meant that I can’t use my name.

I could have gone with, Life With Sampson and Delilah but my plan is to have an official website for all my writings, and some of those writings may not be about Sampson and Delilah.

For months I’ve been popping around your blogs saying, “Just Be The Dog.”

I really did love that saying, but as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts there is already a website with a similar name.

After months of agonizing and indecision, I saw a saying posted on facebook one day and it ended with Heart Like A Dog.  I knew immediately that was the perfect name for my blog.

When I think of a dog’s heart, I think of courage, faith, determination, persistence, generosity, wisdom, devotion, strength and love.  These are just some of the traits I admire in my dogs.

To give of myself to others like my dogs give to me, is a worthy goal in my opinion.

Yes, it’s true, I really want to be more like my dogs.

Great!  I found a blog name.  Then the real agonizing began, I didn’t want to ‘launch’ it until it was perfect. The problem is I know very little about marketing and designing websites and that’s where some of my amazing blog friends came to my rescue.

Without these incredible women, this blog would not be here today.

So I’d like to say a huge thank you to:

Jodi Chick from Kol’s Notes who spent a rainy (at least it was rainy here) Sunday afternoon listening to me whine chatting with me on facebook and who was the one who came up with the tagline, The Life, Loves and Writings of Jodi Stone.  (I think it’s something in the name.) 😉

Julie Melfi (yes, Cali’s mom) from The Daily Dog Blog, who transferred the blog from the free wordpress account to the bluehost server, and has answered many ‘how do I do this’ e-mails.  Maybe you didn’t know this about Julie, but besides writing a daily blog, she’s also a website designer.  You can check her out at legupcreative.com.

And last, but certainly not least Kari Pike from Houndgirl who designed the entire website.  That header, she whipped it up one afternoon.  I can tell you here and now, her child is extremely lucky because Kari has the patience of a saint.  I’m a bit of a perfectionist and she never said a bad thing or told me to shut my pie hole and stop e-mailing her.

These ladies all come highly recommended by me.

Jodi, Julie and Kari, thank you from the bottom of my heart. xoxo

(If I did this right, you were re-directed to this site automatically.  I’m not sure how it works as far as subscribing to the blog or how it is affected in your blog readers.  Please take a moment to add my feed to your readers.  I’ll be working on the subscribe button this week.)

Please bear with me as I figure out the social media buttons and how to subscribe features. 🙂

Lick Granuloma

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Sandy is the wonderful woman who has mentored us with raw food, I’ve found her to be very knowledgeable with all things dog.

A few weeks back I noticed that Sampson had a spot on his paw, I shot Sandy an e-mail and said Sampson was licking at his paw and did she know hot to treat for hot spots.  She responded, wash it with apple cider vinegar and put some aloe on it.

When I went to pick up my order of dog food Sandy said, it’s not a hot spot it’s a lick granuloma, look it up.

I asked how do I treat it, and she said with Witch Hazel.

Here’s what it looked like on August 19th.

8-19-12

 

I meant to google it when I got home but then I couldn’t remember what it was, so I didn’t.  I tried different keywords, but unfortunately my dog’s licking his paw but it’s not a hot spot turned up nothing.

I finally remembered to shoot her an e-mail and asked her what it was.  Then I googled it.

My trusty ‘go to’ source Wickipedia’s explanation was terribly disturbing.

“Lick granuloma is a form of self-trauma in which animals, particularly dogs, continuously lick a small area of their body until it becomes raw and inflamed. The most common areas affected are the lower (distal) portions of the legs. The most common cause of lick granuloma appears to be psychological, related to stress, boredom or compulsiveness. It is often considered to be a form of canine obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

I was horrified, here’s what I took from that: My dog is exhibiting the canine equivalent of cutting himself.  🙁

Do they have psychologists for dogs?

I took a deep breath and did a bit more research.  Web MD had a different explanation.

“At one time, lick sores were thought to be psychogenic in origin and related to boredom and inactivity. It now appears that many cases are preceded by an itchy skin disease (such as canine atopy) that starts the lick cycle. Other possible initiating causes include demodectic mange, a bacterial or fungal infection, prior trauma, and underlying joint disease. The precipitating event focuses the dog’s attention on the area. The licking then becomes a habit that may be perpetuated by psychological events, so behavior may still be a factor.”

I’m pretty sure I can rule out demodectic mange and if he had prior trauma I would probably know about it.

I realize that Sampson and Delilah’s exercise routine has become fairly boring.  With the heat of summer I’ve eliminated any chance of a mid-day walk.  Our walks are either early morning (on the weekends) or early evening during the week.  That can be boring.

Because of Delilah’s reactivity as well as finances their daycare days have been cut.  Again BORING.

In case you haven’t noticed, I am a bit neurotic with my dogs. 🙂

Even with all of that, I’m hesitant to believe that Sampson’s licking is psychological.  This is what jumped out at me from the Web MD explanation.

“Other possible initiating causes include ….underlying joint disease.”

Sampson just turned eight, even with the weight he’s lost, he’s a big dog.  I worry that he has some underlying joint issue.

He’s not scheduled for his annual exam until October and I think it’s too long to wait, so I intend on calling up our vet tomorrow (too bad I didn’t have her cell phone number…) 🙂

In the meantime, I’ve been treating it twice a day with the Witch Hazel and encouraging him to leave it, anytime I catch him licking it.

I think it’s helping.  Here’s a picture of what it looks like today.

8-26-12


Have you ever heard of a lick granuloma?

P.S. Dear Wikipedia, you are no longer my go to source for dog related information.  Please don’t take it personally.  Thank you.

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