The Nauseated Dog Steeplechase
Racing to get a dog who is about to barf to the door should be an Olympic sport. Seriously. It takes speed, agility, obstacle avoidance, and more than a few miraculous leaps and bounds.
Take Monday, for example. …
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M is for Motivation
A poem about how I feel after taking 2 weeks off from dog training
and behavior modification work with Lilly so that she could recover from her rattlesnake
bite.
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Veterinary Expectations
Monday, Dr. Patty Khuly at Dolittler posted a piece called “Top 10 Reasons to Break Up With Your Vet”. Here’s one I’ve been pondering lately based not
only on Lilly’s recent experiences but on those of a friend: How much follow-up and genuine concern (outside the 15-minutes in the exam room) do you expect
from your veterinarian and the staff at the hospital you use? … -
Lilly, The Larva Rancher
Fair warning … if you are at all squeamish, stop reading now. But, if a little gross humor sounds like fun, pull up a bale of hay and listen to a story about Lilly, The Larva Rancher. …
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Shelter Shopping
While putting together our evacuation plan, I needed to look up some phone numbers of local shelters. As I clicked around, I realized that one of them uses old-fashioned, dominance-based, often inhumane strategies to train shelter dogs. Apparently, they offer classes in this method to community members. They even claim that issues like fear, aggression, and such are quickly and easily solved using these methods. I FELT SICK. I’ve always known that all shelters, humane societies, rescue groups, or whatever are NOT created equal, but this came as a tremendous shock to me. …
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Who me? Getting OCD?
Lilly’s regimented behavior modification plan may help her overcome her generalized anxiety, social phobia, sound sensitivity, and other fear-based issues, including snarking at other dogs. BUT, I think it’s making me obsessive-compulsive. I feel like I’m developing OCD. …
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Taking Dog-Dog Issues Seriously: Another cautionary tale
Last Friday, one of my canine nieces underwent surgery to repair a compound fracture in one of her rear legs. Daisy, a poodle-yorkie mix (apparently known as Yoodles in some circles), had a run-in with a bigger dog with whom she shares a fence line. The other dog is already “red flagged” by animal control for some aggressive act, but since it’s unclear which direction the fence breach originated, the encounter, which broke Daisy’s leg, doesn’t count as another strike against him. From my perspective, there are many lessons here.
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On the Scale of Dog Loyalty
By now, you’ve likely heard news reports about the German Shepherd who stayed with her owner’s body for 6 weeks, after the man committed suicide in a rural part of my home state, Colorado. It’s very sad. At the same time, it got me wondering — On the loyalty scale, where would my dogs rank? …
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Curses Upon Their Cheesy Heads
Cheese plays a tremendous role here at Champion of My Heart. I hide pills in cheese for easier medication dispensing. I use cheese as training food. We’re a cheese eating bunch. So, my head just might explode thanks to new industrial packaging on Frigo String Cheese because it’s impossible to open. If you’ve ever unzipped a stick of string cheese, you know that happy sound. This new stuff, I swear, was designed to survive a nuclear attack. …
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Why the Focus on Sit-Stay
Loyal reader and occasional classmate Claire asked in her comment Friday: “Just curious — what’s the idea underlying all of the sit-stay work?” I bet a lot of you are wondering that. …