Heart Like a Dog

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

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.

Tick Tick BOOM

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Thursday night Delilah and I popped into the drop-in agility class at The Mellow Mutt.

We were a few minutes early so I started my treat shopping, with Delilah’s help of course.

I was checking out the grain-free treats while Delilah tried to steal checked out a pig’s ear.  Sara’s dog, Chuck came over, whether it was to say hello to me or to tell Delilah to back off the treats, I’m not sure.  But before I knew it, they were snapping at each other.

What the BEEP?

I mean it’s Chuck, our buddy, the guy we play with ALL the time.

Chuckers went to sulk in the other room, Delilah and I finished our shopping and then we walked into the agility room.  I looked around and only saw one dog I knew, Brisco a really high-energy little guy.

I walked to the farthest corner of the room.

Dude.  I won’t lie.  That altercation with Chuck really threw me.

So there we are in our corner, Brisco is in one corner, there is a German Shepherd mix in one corner, an Akita named Boots against the wall and this couple walks into the last remaining corner with two Labs, one yellow and one black.

I thought Brisco had a lot of energy, but these two labs had way more and their mom said they’d been swimming and running earlier.  I thanked God right then and there that neither one of my dogs are that energetic.

We were up first and I wish I’d had a video, it was a great run.   All our future runs were mediocre as Delilah was now on the hunt for the treats left behind by the Labs.  In fact, when Sara took the chute up, Delilah spent a bit of time in there cleaning it up.

You can see the little brown treat between her legs, she could smell it but had the hardest time finding it.

During her first attempt at a run the black lab decided to rush headlong into our corner.

That didn’t work well.  She got a face full of chocolate lab.

Thankfully I remembered to scream LOOK, at which point Delilah’s head whipped around and the mom moved her dog out of the line of fire.

After the fiasco with the black lab I tried to keep Delilah distracted with treats.

The A-Frame was set up so when the dogs came over in one direction they could in fact run straight into our corner.

Unfortunately the GSD did not get the memo telling him to avoid the chocolate lab eating treats in the corner.

Yup, he was the next dog that got a face full of chocolate.

By the time we got to our fourth run, Delilah was exhausted and had more interest in cleaning up the leftover treats than she had in running the course again, and I was totally on edge, so we declined a fifth go.

I didn’t get a video of our run, however I did manage to record Brisco’s with his dad.

Up until a few months ago his parent’s were working agility with treats, but he loves the squeaker ball,  so Sara suggested using that instead which works a little better for him.

He doesn’t have the best form but his enthusiasm and energy makes him a joy to watch.  (Mental note to self, don’t hit the stop button quite so soon.)

The Tick Tick BOOM has absolutely nothing to do with this post, it’s a saying I heard on a show and I thought it sounded cool. 😉

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