Lilly’s competition-grade agility tunnel spent most of the summer stacked up in the shade near our chimney. But, with winter coming, I figured I’d better clean it, condition it, and get it stored inside — away from the brutal, high-altitude snow, wind, and sun. Except, it turns out that cleaning a full-sized, ribbed tunnel isn’t a simple thing. …
Sorry to say I don’t have much to report this week. My motivation lagged seriously as other worries loomed large. So, we did not get any Lilly work done this week, except to take morning walks and enjoy snuggling at night. It’s hard to say since I’m not challenging Lilly with the usual stimuli, but while we’ve been taking time off, I can say that she seems really, really happy. So, perhaps the drugs work well, when it comes to regular day-to-day stress. There is one thing, however, that I don’t think made any difference. …
As part of building back Lilly’s strength, I developed a little routine. I thought you might find it useful. …
Despite a seriously lagging motivation after 2+ weeks recuperation time, following
Lilly’s rattlesnake bite, we soldiered on with our behavior modification work. Here’s how it went. …
This week was all about Lilly getting her strength back, following the rattlesnake
bite Saturday. I asked nothing of her. The good news is that she doesn’t seem to have carried any hospitalization anxiety home. She has not seemed fearful or upset all week. Granted, she
clearly doesn’t feel well, but she doesn’t seem freaked out or anything. Then, again, I did not challenge her with any noises or actions a la our behavior modification plan. I do wonder, however,
if me breaking some of the rules might mess things up. …
Based on Lilly’s regression (door refusals, hiding, fleeing, panic) and negative response to the sink window counter-conditioning I mentioned in the Aug 15 training update, Jennie (our behaviorist) and I decided to make some changes — both in training challenges and in medications. …
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. …
After I read this entry over at Days of Speed & Slowtime Mondays and after interviewing veterinarians who made it through summer floods in Iowa, I decided to develop a dog evacuation plan. Around here, the danger is primarily wildfire, which generally means a decent amount of notice to evacuate. Here are the details:
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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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While this is technically week 5 of the new plan, it is the first week with Lilly on the full therapeutic dose of clomipramine. So, she’s up to 60 mg twice a day, plus the .5 mg of alprazolam twice a day (that dose has been the same since we added it). So, we’re up to ramming speed in terms of brain chemistry. Like me, you might be wondering: Now what?
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