November 2008Monthly Archives

Does Your Dog Trust You… Completely?

Most of my dogs are rescues. Four of Six are rescues. Two are not rescues, I bought them from breeders back in 1999. Each one of my dogs, current and past, are all very unique and different int how they learn, what they like, their mannerisms, and all their little quirks.

Chase Sleeping

I have been wondering, lately, how much my dogs actually trust me. I think they trust in context… they trust me in certain situations, and not in others. I think they trust me in most situations.

Lucy and Levi are the dogs that I bought from breeders as puppies, and I think they trust me a great deal. They let me trim their toenails and handle them when I need to. Of course I tried to work with them when they were little. Levi doesn’t like it when my pager goes off, and I think he doesn’t trust me that much when it does. Pre-Medication when I got paged I got very upset, and of course he picked up on that. Now, though, I don’t react so badly, but Levi still does react. Even when the same page noise goes off on the TV! Lucy is very stubborn and sassy, and sure of herself, and I don’t think she has any problems trusting me in just about any situation.

I think Angel trusts us now. She didn’t when she came to live with us. She was afraid of everything. And still she doesn’t want her toenails trimmed, but she suffers it for a constant supply of treats. I can’t think of a situation where she reacts now in ways that says she doesn’t trust us. So that is good.

I think Chase trusts us too. He is good at letting us handle him, his toenails, and all over when we need to. When we go to the vet he hides behind us too. Poor boy.

Tatum Sleeps

As for Muffit and Tatum, I think they are still learning. The whole point of this post was to wonder if Tatum trusts me or not. I think Muffit still has his doubts, but he’s only been with us since February 2008… which has been nine months. Angel has been with us for six years, and Chase three years.

Tatum was treated poorly by humans when she lived at the hoarders. When she had contact with humans at all. And I think Muffit, also, wasn’t treated well by people. He’s a bit protective of me now and he’s been known to snark at people he’s not sure of. By snark, I mean a fake snap. I’m 95% sure he wouldn’t actually bite anyone. But dogs do have a bite threshold. Just as we do if pushed.

I wonder if rescue dogs will always have a lack of trust for humans. Be it any other human than their family. Or any human, even those in their own family. I guess it depends on the dog and what the dogs have been through. I like to think that my dogs trust me. That I earn their trust, and keep their trust. i want Muffit and Tatum to trust me more than they do. Of course with Tatum, instead of a lack of trust, she could just be showing off her sassiness! Which she does a lot, now. And I find it interesting with Muffit, that I can touch his feet and toenails just fine when we are sitting together. But if the nail clippers or the dremmel come out, he will not let me near his feet. He will squeal and scream and whine and put his mouth on me. I find it interesting that he associates nail trimming as bad with all humans. Not just with a past human that hurt him. He just thinks it’s bad all the way around. I want to convince him it’s not so bad after all!

So do your dogs trust you? Are they rescues or did you buy them as a puppies? I’m just curious.

Cynthia

November 28, 2008

Daily Posts

15 comments

Chatter, Philosophy, Rescue, Socialization

Dog Shopping Get Shopping!

Ugh.. have you done your Christmas shopping yet? I have not. I’ve bought like one thing, online, and I have to go buy more. But hopefully I’ll be getting that done next weekend. If I want to buy online I’m going to have to get going, since shipping takes a while! And I didn’t go shopping today, which is black friday. Did you? I did not feel like shopping on the craziest day of the year!

Charter

I went shopping on black Friday a couple of years ago and bought my HDTV.. and I think I got a good deal on it at the time. I love watching dog shows in the HD! And actually, most of my Christmas presents I buy are not for people who have dogs. Though most of my friends have dogs, we don’t tend to exchange many gifts. Which really is okay with me since I’m a slacker when it comes to gifts.

My parents are thinking about getting a cell phone and so I’ve been looking around at deals. Charter has some great deals this year and you can see them below in the spiffy image I’ve included in this post! What do you think….? Hrm… they have an internet bundle, a cell bundle, a digital home bundle… all fun toys to use for Christmas. And the more you buy, the more coupons you get!

Post?slot_id=27052&url=http%3a%2f%2fsocialspark

From Dogs to Cat!

Littles

I hardly ever talk about our cats.. and although this is a dog blog, I thought I’d throw in a picture of Littles our cat. This picture is from 2003. She has been with us since about 2000… I bought this house in December of 1999, and then got Littles soon thereafter. She was probably four or so years old at that time. She was adopted from CAWS.

So now she’s about twelve years old. My husband takes care of the cats more than I do. I take care of the dogs (maybe not more than the husband, though!). Littles has been through fatty liver disease too, but she pulled through and is doing really well. She is long haired and we are not sure of her breed. I guess Calico is over used as an estimate. I think she might have some Ragdoll in her but I’m not sure about that either.

She is shy and not very coordinated, but we love having her around.

Muffit at Flyball

Muffit in a Basket

Well, as you might know, I go back and forth about bringing Muffit with to flyball practice or not. Sometimes I think he just has to go, to get over his frantic reactions to the other dogs. And sometimes I think I should just leave him home and work on him more slowly with other dogs.

Well, I’m not really all that good at working slowly with a dog… I don’t have that much patience, unfortunately. And so he doesn’t get worked in the control unleashed manner like, probably, I should. But I still don’t really get it, and the book wasn’t an easy read for me. So we are just going along with my regular trainer, taking her advice, and working as we can.

Muffit and Sundance

I do, however, think he is getting a little bit better at flyball practice. Finally my obedience instructor gave me the word I was looking for, about how Muffit acts at tournaments as opposed to practice. White Noise. There is so much going on at a tournament, so many dogs and activity, that it all turns into white noise and he just deals with it. When we go to flyball practice, it’s very concentrated in one area. The flyball practice area. And that’s what he focuses on and he has a hard time focusing on anything else.

I am doing some work with him on his gentle leader, which I think helps. Rewarding him for looking at me and paying attention to me. I think this is just going to be a long slow road and Muffit is not going to be quickly fixed anytime soon. I’m very glad he’s not being aggressive towards dogs. He just wants to meet them and say hi.. to the point where he will hardly even look at me.

At the dog park, however, is he great. He loves to run off leash and play with other dogs and he acts exactly like a normal socialized dog. It’s just when he’s on a leash and he sees another dog when he gets frantic. And wanting him to focus on a job, or on me, that he has trouble doing. He keeps me active, for sure, so I don’t need a appetite suppressant pill, my adrenaline keeps me from eating!

I’ve been meeting my captain at practice a half hour early and we work Muffit while it’s still quiet. And he’s doing so good! His box turn is nice and high and consistent. And we are starting to put the ball in now too. He kinda doesn’t understand that the ball is pushing out at him, but when it does, he gets excited and goes and grabs it. He does like balls, although not as much as other dogs or just being with me. But it’s a start. He has a ton of potential. I just hope with time his frantic-ness will calm down and he’ll realize that playing flyball is fun, too. Even more so than obsessing about other dogs. And I’ll work with him, reward him for looking at me, and keep bringing him to practice and tournaments, and see if, over time, he relaxes more!

Flyball, Muffit, Training

Ah These Sassy Girls

Tatum Snuggled In

Well, I am learning, yet again, all about dog training all over again! At least it sure seems like it. I didn’t really know how to train Lucy, I will admit. Lucy was a sweet young girl, when she was young. However, she was, first and foremost, a girl. And unlike my sweet goofy dorky boys, Lucy had spunk and sass and I was at a loss.

And now I have another girl I’m learning how to train. Tatum may have started out as a shy and fearful rescue collie girl. But now, she is smart and sassy and no longer afraid. Sometimes she will revert back to acting like she is afraid. And perhaps she is somewhat afraid when I need to get her and she skitters off. And Skitter is the best word I can find for it. She goes into a trot and her tail goes down and she won’t come to any human. Chasing after her is not something I want to do, though then I wouldn’t have to get any Anoretix to help me to lose weight.

Tatum is a bossy girl!

I’m 95% sure that is from her living in a hoarders yard and the only way people could catch her was to chase her into a corner. But now she is not hurt. I have worked very hard over the last year to build up her confidence and give her a great sense of herself. Well, I may have swung the pendulum a bit too far! LOL… though I don’t know if that’s possible, because I love having confident dogs. I want my dogs to be confident and sure of themselves and know they are going to be treated well. I want them to trust me, too.

I have been working a little bit with Tatum around agility equipment. And I’m finding that sassy girl come out. I want to be firm with her. She needs to be able to handle firm humans, not just ones that are molly-coddling her with treats. Because in the agility ring, and the obedience ring, stuff happens. She really has to come with me. With or without treats. Of course I encourage her with treats, but I’m fading the lure. I have lured her for a year and now it’s time to fade those so she knows she can come with me without them. However, she has a lot of spunk now and she’s asserting herself. Which I love! And I have no idea how to deal with! LOL. So with the help of my trainer I am learning.

I was a bit afraid that Tatum would shut down on me and stop working all together. Last Friday we were out on the agility equipment, and she didn’t shut down. Anyway.. here is the story.

In the agility yard Tatum seems to want to go off and do her own thing, unless I have a treat in her nose. And in a trial, no treat will be in her nose. And so we are working on fading out the treats. We have two jumps set up, and she is on a sit before the first jump. Next, she has to do a paw touch to my hand, then she gets a click and treat, and then she goes over the jump to a treat on a target. Next she goes over the next jump, me calling the jump, and then she comes to me and sits before she gets another treat.

She looks so sweet asleep.

The reason I am doing this is because Tatum will tend to disconnect from me and go skittering off. Or she’ll just go hopping off for fun if she sees something more interesting. And yes, even though I use super good treats, she still can get distracted and disconnect. And I really need to work on her staying connected to me while we work. And really she needs to connect to me, not just to the treats.

Tatum is very smart and she’s a good girl. And I woud never have figured this stuff out on my own. I’m so thankful for my trainer. I didn’t know how to train Lucy, and that’s why we never got very far in obedience or agility. Now i have more resources and with Tatum I am determined to go much further!

After we did the jump work with her, we thought we’d see how she did on the tunnel. Well.. this bratty little girl goes cruising into the tunnel as happy as a clam, and doesn’t come out the other end! LOL she peeked out and looked at us like she was going ‘na na na naaaa…’ I laughed so hard I almost fell over. I know, I shouldn’t laugh ’cause it’s a reward, but I couldn’t help myself. She is such a brat! So we gave up on the tunnel and we went to the teeter.

She did great on the teeter. Strangely enough, she has no fear of contacts. We’ve done them before and she just goes right over and down, A-Frame and all. She doesn’t quite tip the teeter on her own, and she’s too square and fragile to slam it down (I’d be afraid it hurt her), so my trainer told me to leash her up to do the teeter. That way we can stay connected again. At the beginning, she sat and did the paw touch, then went over the teeter in a controlled manner, then at the bottom she got another treat and a release.

And since it’s difficult, a lot of the time, to keep the dog connected and engaged between the obstacles (it’s the silence between the notes that make the music) i kept her engaged with me as we walked back around the teeter and we did the same thing again.

Don’t think this training stuff is my idea… LOL I cannot take credit! My trainer is amazing and has great ideas. I wish I could have such ideas. And hopefully with this great foundation work Tatum will come along in her training nicely. And I’m going to start doing the paw touch and the treat in flyball too. Because her speed and her running isn’t the issue at this point. It’s the connection she has with me. And since she never really bonded with a human when she was a puppy, we have to let her know it’s a good thing to bond, and stay connected, to me.

And I know she is bonded to me, when she rubs her head in my hip on the couch at night and I scritch her neck and her ears. I’m still not completely sure what kind of relationship we have, because of her past, and she’s different that my other dogs, both rescued and not. So I am learning. And I love learning how to teach her and work with her and communicate with her. It’s an amazing process!

Sorry this is such a long post.. but I want to record our progress so I can look back in a year and see how far we have come! I have such a rotten memory! LOL

Agility, Tatum, Training

Chase is Missing a Tooth

Extracted Tooth

Well, Chase went into the vet on Thursday for a routine teeth cleaning. I didn’t really think he needed it… but my husband said Chase has been scratching his mouth a lot lately. When Lucy scratched at her mouth a while ago, her tooth ended up being cracked and she had it pulled.
Our vet’s teeth cleanings are usually a month out, but they had a cancellation and so we were lucky to get Chase in sooner.

Chase Frog Dog

Well, when he was under, the vet found a cracked tooth in the upper left of his mouth. It was a molar. And the vet said it was so cracked she could see pulp. Ooo yuck! But more than yuck, poor Chase was probably in a lot of pain. That darn boy, he doesn’t let us know when he’s in pain!

I’m not sure if you can see it well in the picture above… my husband held his mouth open while I snapped only one picture. Chase didn’t like having his mouth opened for a picture but he’s actually a good boy and held fairly still. When I looked into his mouth yesterday, there was a fairly good sized gap with a couple of stitches in the middle. It looked like it was still painful. We gave him a little Rymadil and it seemed to help him. And he was playing with Muffit and Tatum this afternoon, something he actually hasn’t done for a while.

So now he’s on the road to recovery. He’s not going to go to agility practice on Saturday, or flyball practice on Sunday… which, I’m sure, he’ll be displeased about. But I think his mouth needs to heal up and his body needs to conserve energy. And I don’t want him tugging much with those stitches in his mouth. So he gets a break. Maybe next time we’d consider getting the tooth capped, or crowned… but I’m not sure how that works. Maybe it would be better for the dog, when the tooth is a molar. Actually, I didn’t even know that was an option until just recently!

So anyway, I can work with him doing some watch work this weekend, that’ll be good for both of us. Chase is such a good boy. I feel really bad that he was in such pain and we didn’t know! After Lucy’s bladder infection, and now this… it wasn’t a very good week for dog health! Hopefully they will heal up soon and be fat and happy in a few days. As for me, time to sit down with some good Amazon books and have a nice relaxing evening. And tomorrow I’ll stay home too, watch some TV, and drink tea.

Where Were You Five Years Ago?

I was just sitting around and looking at old pictures from five years ago and wondering where life was then. And where my life and dogs will be in another five years.

Five years ago was 2003… and we were fostering a couple small dogs, a silky terrier mix named Jojo and a Shitzu named Sammy. We only had Lucy, Levi and Angel at that time. This picture is of Levi and Angel at an agility trial my husband came to and brought Angel with.

Levi was only four and we’d only had Angel for a year. Lucy was only five and she was healthy and strong, didn’t have the medical problems she has now.. the megaesophagus, the incontinence, and the general not feeling well.

Our family was smaller, but happy. My husband and I had just gotten married in March of 2003. We live in the same house. We have different vehicles, though. I still had my Toyota Pickup as I didn’t get my Outback until 2004. Now my Outback is for sale and I have a minivan, and three more dogs. Wow a lot can change in five years.

I wonder where I’ll be five years from now. Lucy and Angel might not be alive.. hopefully they will, but we just never know. Levi, too, will be old or gone. Lucy would be fifteen and Levi would be fourteen. We don’t know how old Angel is but we suspect she’s around twelve now. So she’d be seventeen, if she lives that long.

Chase will be ten, and so will Muffit. Tatum will be about eight. And it’ll be time for a new puppy, I hope. And I will be retired, or thinking of retiring. Which makes me very, very happy! Maybe we’ll be moving to Richfield, Utah, and getting some property and some sheep or goats.

Where do you think you will be in five years? Where were you five years ago?

Angel, Chatter, Levi, Lucy

Lucy has a UTI

Lucy Camping

Ugh… got back from the vet for Lucy. Angel came with for the ride. Lucy didn’t get any treats at the vet… she throws them up if she does. I feel bad for her because she soooo loves the treats they have at the vet. My poor Lucy girl. The Megaesohagus is such a pain.

They tested her urine and yup, she has a bad bladder infection! I wish we would have taken her in sooner! Usually it’s my husband that insists on taking the dogs in and I say wait. But this time I wanted to take her in. She’s on Baytril for 21 days. And they want to test her again 2 days before she’s done with the antibiotics. The vet said she has a lot of rods, and not many round cells in the bacteria… though I’m not sure what that means, I guess it means it’s a pretty bad infection. My poor girl.

She got in the house and drank a bunch, so I put her in her chair for 6 minutes. Then she just went upstairs and had another big drink. I hope the meds help her soon! Bladder infections are just awful! We got some ground beef from the grocery store and I cooked it up, put it in the blender with some water and a pill, and let her drink it in her chair.

Hopefully the pills will kick in quickly and she won’t be in pain. If this doesn’t stop her incontenence, then we will probably look into meds for that, too. My poor baby girl. The above picture is from a camping trip we went to in April of 2005. Isn’t she a sweetie?

November 2008Monthly Archives

Does Your Dog Trust You… Completely?

Dog Shopping Get Shopping!

From Dogs to Cat!

Muffit at Flyball

Ah These Sassy Girls

Chase is Missing a Tooth

Where Were You Five Years Ago?

Lucy has a UTI

Levi at Collie Nationals 2006

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