LucyCategory Archives

My Dogs Don’t Act Guilty

Chase Little Bed

I am one of those odd people who think that dogs don’t feel guilt. I think guilt is a human emotion. I am more of the mind that the dogs know Safe and Dangerous. And when you come home and your dog has gotten into the garbage and scattered it around, and he cowers… it’s not guilt. He just knows that you coming home with garbage scattered around is dangerous because you might explode for no reason that he can understand.

(oh and this is Chase trying to fit in the teeny dog bed I got for Jet. LOL)

Jet is in his chewing age now… he’s six months old and that’s to be expected. We do not, ever, get mad or punish him for chewing. Ever. We don’t do that with any of our dogs. We just direct him to something more productive. I do want him to know that some things are off limits, like cardboard displays or chairs or furniture, but I just push him away, tell him Leave It, and give him a bone that is a good thing for him to chew.

Lucy has Mega-esophagus and often regurgitates quite a bit. She is also pretty incontinent and will pee accidentally while she is laying down if we don’t take her out frequently. But Lucy never, ever acts guilty for either of these acts. I believe it’s because we have never punished the dogs for there being pee on the floor, or poop, or throw up… or the act of any of these. So none of the dogs think these things are dangerous in any way and don’t show the ‘guilt’ signs that people interpret as guilt… but I interpret that the dog is afraid of something dangerous might happen.

I’m very proud of this. I don’t want my dogs to think there are things dangerous in the world… mainly me or my husband. I want them to feel safe at home. We train in other ways. We encourage success. We DO set boundaries and limits and the dogs have good manners. But a growing puppy needs to chew, an incontinent dog is going to have accidents. These are not reasons to punish… actually, there are not really any good reasons to punish. Redirect, encourage, and set up for success. I love positive training!

Cynthia

October 22, 2009

Daily Posts, Jet, Lucy

7 comments

Jet, Lucy, Megaesophagus, Training

Three Old Dogs

It’s tough having three old dogs in the house. Of course we love them all, and it’s not like we have to spend lot of time exercising them and doing lots of things with them. However, as they age, we have to spend more on medical care. And make sure they get high quality food, a fair amount of exercise to keep them in shape, and good health care.

This picture is from May 5, 2002. We got Angel back in 2002. From left to right, Lucy, Angel (in my husband’s lap), and Levi is with me. All our smooth blue collies. They are such dolls and we love all of them.

Lucy now has megaesophagus and she’s just 10 years old. But we are thrilled that we are managing it okay and she is doing well. Lucy is also pretty incontinent and we need steam cleaners to keep the carpets clean, but we don’t have many carpets so that’s good! Angel is about 12 years old, we are guessing, because she’s a rescue. Angel is very healthy though and so we are happy about that. And Levi is 9.5 years old. He’s also very healthy but he does have arthritis now, typical of an older dog.

I’ll be a wreck when these three go. I love them all. And Levi is my soul mate dog. They are unique and wonderful and we hope they live a few more years with us so we can cherish and love them!

Cynthia

March 10, 2009

Angel, Levi, Lucy

8 comments

Age, Angel, Health, Levi, Lucy

There’s no H in Lucy

Silly Lucy

We have a soft-tile floor in our basement and we often have to tear it up if one of the dogs has a peeing accident on them. So quite often the tiles are up and being washed, some of them are scattered around drying. The tiles have our dogs’ names spelled in them, and our cats. Though we don’t have Muffit and Tatum’s names because they came after the floor.

So Lucy is feeling better! When she feels good and she wants dinner she brings me toys. With her megaesophagus she hasn’t been bringing me many toys in the recent past. But last night she was bringing me the H out of one of the floor tiles. I kept telling here there is no H in Lucy but she didn’t want to listen! I had to hide the H under the tv stands and then go and get her some dinner.

Oh but before I hid the H, I threw it for her a couple of times and she went and fetched it. She had fun and was prancing around like she used to. I’m so glad she is feeling better. We have been feeding her smaller meals, too, and she’s not throwing up quite as much.

She is still quite incontenent though and so can’t sleep on the bed with me. I really want to find some good diapers for her but I haven’t seen any that I really liked online yet. Anyone have any recommendations?

Lucy and her Megaesophagus

And as the days go on, we continue to deal with Lucy’s Megaesophagus. It’s not fun.. and each time we have to sit her up in the chair to feed her, I am saddened that she has this awful disease. And each time she regurgitates on the bed frames, I feel bad for her.

Her weight is holding steady at about 61 pounds, which is good for her. We don’t want her to get below about 58 or so. She has been up to 65 in the past, but 61 is better for her anyway. My Husband has been taking her for walks to the local park about three times a week, which is great for her muscle tone and strength. Plus, she loves getting out!

She usually still regurgitates on a regular basis though. Mostly after she sneaks a drink of water that we don’t know about. Sometimes her food doesn’t seem to go down, though, and she’ll regurge the food too. But for the most part it stays down.

She just turned 10 on February 15. And we realize that once a dog is 10, they are considered getting old. I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since little puppy Lucy came to live with us. I wish she would live as long as us.

We are managing the megaesophagus okay, I think. I wish she wouldn’t ever regurgitate, I need to look it up and see if it’s normal for dogs to continue to do so, or if there are ways to prevent it entirely. All in all, our Lucy girl is doing pretty good, all things considered.

Lucy Made It To 10

Lucy Is 10

Yay! Lucy is 10 years old today! I’m so happy… last year this time when we were trying to figure out why she wasn’t keeping food down, and she lost so much weight, I was so worried she wasn’t going to live to 10 years old. We found her megaesophagus though and she’s doing so much better now! She’s still a bit skinny and she has bad days where she regurgitates a lot of her food. But for the most part, she’s doing well.

She loves to eat, and we feel bad that we can’t give her solid treats anymore. We do give her some, sometimes, just before we feed her a liquid meal. Kibble blended with water, mostly.

Sometimes she plays with the other dogs, and my Husband has been taking her to the dog park on a regular basis so she gets too exercise. So she is doing well, and we are happy for her. Hopefully she’ll have a few more years with us. Though we realize 10 is getting up there for a big dog. She seems healthy otherwise. Well, she does have calcification of the lungs, still, but that doesn’t seem to be bothering her.

Yay for Lucy! Happy Birthday Funny Faced Baby Girl Lulu.

Health, Lucy, Megaesophagus

Lucy Had A Bad Day

Lucy didn’t have a very good day yesterday. We always worry about her when she doesn’t eat, and she skipped two meals yesterday. She ate her first morning meal and her second noon meal, but after that she just didn’t want to eat. And she seems to drop weight if she eats less than four meals a day, and we don’t want her to drop weight.

Lucy and Tatum

My husband reminded me of how her organs might end up shutting down… starting with her esophagus, and maybe now her bladder. She’s doesn’t want to go out to pee much. And so she leaks in the house. It could be just because we have snow outside now and she doesn’t want to go out. But we worry that it could be something wrong with her body, too. The megaesophagus could be just stage one of her falling apart… she needs some new performance parts instead of her old falling apart parts… but that is too sad to think about and so I just love her and hope she has a few more years left with us. This first picture is kinda cute… Lucy is eating in her Bailey’s Chair and Tatum is thinking she really wants to take a lick. But Lucy usually gives a nice solid growl and Tatum keeps her distance. Lucy is a good girl and is very appropriate with her growls. We love it when Lucy eats well.

Lucy Likes to Eat

Fortunately this morning she ate all her breakfast and even some raw honey, keifer, and coconut oil. All good things that, hopefully, will keep her strong and as healthy as possible for as long as possible. She also ate her lunch meal and she seemed to be hungry for both, yay!

Lately we’ve been changing our dog beds. We have to have washable beds now. I did buy a water proof liner the other day, and so now perhaps we can buy a cheap dog bed from Costco and put the liner on it so Lucy won’t ruin it. We can’t have dog beds with cedar in them, because we can’t throw them in the washer and they get ruined.

Anyway, so yesterday was a bad day, today seems like a better day. She’s eating and keeping her food and water down. Going out to pee a bit more than yesterday too. All good things that we take advantage of with our healthy dogs. We do love Lucy and we do all we can for her as long as we can.

Health, Lucy, Megaesophagus

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?

Lucy Goes to the Vet

I seem to only get pictures of Lucy in her chair anymore. I need some of her standing… as she does stand and walk around too! But she is just so cute in her chair.

Lucy gets to go to the vet today. She’s been drinking a lot, and urinating a lot, and her urine is pretty clear, which means she is drinking too much. She could have a urinary trac infection. Or the vet said she could have diabetes, so we are going to test for that too. And if both are negative, then we will look into some incontinence medication for her.

She’s always had spay incontinence but lately it’s gotten pretty bad. She doesn’t seem to know when she has to go potty. If we make her go out (with much grumbling and growling) she will pee just fine. But if we don’t, she will just lay around and leak. And I’m quite tired of having to clean the bed and wash my sheets. I have one of those water proof mattress covers on my bed, I think it’s the only thing keeping my mattress alive. Maybe something we are feeding her is like a diuretic…? Aren’t diet pills a diuretic sometimes? We don’t give her those though!

Lucy was at the vet on Saturday too… she sounded like she was breathing heavy with something stuck in her breathing tube (what is that called anyway? hrm..). But it turns out she just has a cold, or so they said. So she’s on benadryl. None of our other dogs seem sick in any way. I wonder if Lucy’s immune system is just weak now that she has the megaesophagus. And we always worry about her because of that, too. My silly collie girl. She’s too young to be sick. She’s not even 10 yet.

Health, Lucy, Megaesophagus