The dog musing/vent thread

[Southpaw]

Cajun just tried to kill herself and gave me a heart attack in the process. I'm on lunch, decided to just take her for a walk. I work along a busy road and theres a tiny field in front of our building, so while walking on the sidewalk I let her have all the leash and she was jumping through the tall grass. Somewhere in her frolicking I think she got tangled and panicked a bit, and in her maneuvering she slipped her collar. And started running through the grass, right next to this road where people are cruising at 50+mph.

She came back and let me grab her thank God. But that was terrifying. I had visions of her just running right into the road.

 

[Beanie]

The neighbours behind us don't take care of their property. There's all kinds of plants and weeds and junk growing behind their shed (same shed where groundhogs like to move in and have babies underneath it.) One of them has become a large tree that reaches over our property.
Today it's super windy so the tree dumped a bunch of little berries in the yard. Not knowing what they are or if they're safe, I picked them all up while I was walking the yard looking for poop. I assumed they were probably safe, but knew if I DIDN'T pick them up, sure enough, they'd be horribly toxic and all my dogs would eat them and then die a horrible death.
Of course because I was picking them up the dogs were all interested so I had to keep shooing them away. Pepper of course hovers constantly anyway, and Payton was easy enough to just send away looking for a squirrel. Auggie wandered off and stayed away, which I THOUGHT was just because Auggie is a good boy and follows directions.

Got done, dumped everything in the trash bucket, it's starting to rain so I'm ready to take the dogs inside... there is Payton, there is Pepper... where is Auggie? I started looking around the yard. Where is he? Then I see a big orange butt. Is he on the back side of the garden?
No, he's on the INSIDE of the garden. The wind helped open the gate to the garden JUST ENOUGH that he managed to push it open the rest of the way with his big dumb fat nose and got into the garden to poke around. And he was standing there between rose bushes and some butterfly bushes with this LOOK on his face like "Maybe if I just stand here and don't move, she won't see me... nope... nope, she sees me... oops."
BIG
DUMB
STUPID
DOG
GET OUT OF THE GARDEN
GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT.

Hopefully he didn't have enough time to actually EAT anything in there, because of course there IS stuff inside the garden that IS toxic, which is why my mom has it all fenced in and gated off... to keep out the puppies as well as rabbits.

And of course as it turns out the berries which were distracting me are mulberries which are TOTALLY fine, the worst they'll do is give the dogs diarrhea if they eat too many.

STUPID AUGGIE.

 

[teacuptiger]

There was a chipmunk in the yard and Roxie did nothing. A red-winged blackbird chased it off, but my dog did nothing.

This is not a proper dog.

 

[Paviche]

Several months ago I emailed (and called/left a message) a local dog sport facility about becoming a member. I never heard back. I checked their website again recently and saw that they have a new operations manager, so I figured I'd give it another shot. I heard back in less than an hour. :banana: They have very open member hours where you can drop in and practice on their equipment, which is exactly what we need while I wait for the class I'm on a wait list for to start up again. So excited!

 

[Maxy24]

So yesterday our door broke and now won't latch properly. Dad "fixed" it and it appeared to be latching fine. Then a few hours ago Tucker started barking at something, slammed into the door, and it opened

Out he went. My first though is that he saw a dog which he was now going to attack so of course my heart sank into the pit of my stomach. As luck would have it it was a cat which he chased across the street (but didn't get by a car, yay!) and cornered behind a bush. When I ran across the street to get him he had realized that he might lose to the cat so his hackles were up and he was doing the whole slow head bob from side to side thing. I knelt down, said his name and he immediately turned and ran to me with his tail down, checking over his shoulder as he came because he was terrified of the cat he just tried to eat.

Why must he terrify me like that? Now the door has to be locked until we figure out how to fix it. I'm just glad it wasn't a dog...or exercise man or UPS guy...or a rabbit who would have just run and run and run.

 

[teacuptiger]

I've gone ahead and bought a 48in x-pen for Roxie. It will be here Thursday.

Wish me luck. I'm working splits this weekend, and my family will be in and out the entire time (they won't be able to stick her in the van, either). I really hope this works out.

 

[Beanie]

I almost used my Amazon rewards money to order a leash for my next dog.
I DON'T EVEN HAVE A NEXT DOG YET.
WHY AM I DOING THIS.
STOP.

He definitely has a name though. And I've started to refer to him by his name instead of PaytonBaby.

 

[nikkiluvsu15]

Harleigh needs a new slip leash because the one she has is getting dingy and old. (Okay, so main reason is I just want a new one haha).

Went to Zumi Lead to see what they had and to order one, but they are in the process on moving and are closed for now. Guess I'll have to wait....

BOOOOOOOO!

 

[AgilityPup]

Just when I am thinking about how good Simi has been she goes and acts like her good old self.

She has a room that is dog proofed to her. Has a gate in the doorway we built specifically for her. She is in there when I can't be watching her, since she has been really struggling with city life and can't be trusted. She was just loose for an hour while I slept on the couch, but then when I woke up I needed to go do something. Only took me like 10 mins. I come back down cause I can hear her making noise in her room. And she has stuck he'd paw out the gate, grabbed my floor mats and drug them into her room to attempt to destroy.


Grrrrrrr. Dystructo dog!

 

[Laurelin]

I could really do without Mia's vendetta against Beau. That would be really nice.

I have no idea why she hates him so much.

 

[Babyblue5290]

Talon is under strict crate rest for 4 weeks. Vet I went to, was recommended to them, said he believes it's an Iliopsoas (sp?) tear. Looking at the symtoms online definitely line up. He also showed a bit of pain when the vet was stretching/prodding him, which is unusual for Talon to show any pain so it must really hurt. Poor boy.

On the other hand, poor me. It's only the first day of him being under crate rest and I'm already going to kill him. lol He keeps trying to run around the house doing "zoomies" on the couch and bed. Now he's either in his crate or on leash.

 

[teacuptiger]

Talon is under strict crate rest for 4 weeks. Vet I went to, was recommended to them, said he believes it's an Iliopsoas (sp?) tear. Looking at the symtoms online definitely line up. He also showed a bit of pain when the vet was stretching/prodding him, which is unusual for Talon to show any pain so it must really hurt. Poor boy.

On the other hand, poor me. It's only the first day of him being under crate rest and I'm already going to kill him. lol He keeps trying to run around the house doing "zoomies" on the couch and bed. Now he's either in his crate or on leash.

Hope he heals quickly!

 

[CharlieDog]

Talon is under strict crate rest for 4 weeks. Vet I went to, was recommended to them, said he believes it's an Iliopsoas (sp?) tear. Looking at the symtoms online definitely line up. He also showed a bit of pain when the vet was stretching/prodding him, which is unusual for Talon to show any pain so it must really hurt. Poor boy.

On the other hand, poor me. It's only the first day of him being under crate rest and I'm already going to kill him. lol He keeps trying to run around the house doing "zoomies" on the couch and bed. Now he's either in his crate or on leash.

Get in touch with elegy. I think she went through that twice with Steve.

And I don't think four weeks is advisable. I think crate rest is longer than that, plus PT, and cold lasering is how she handled it.

 

[crazedACD]

I was just reading a post on FB about something, and someone that I would..respect? mentioned that it is believed genetic mutations in dogs occur due to airplane rides near the South Pole. Because of magnetic fields. What.

 

[ruffiangirl]

Bristol has finished the first two practicum visits, only one more and then she can hopefully be a full fledged therapy dog, yay.

 

[Babyblue5290]

Hope he heals quickly!

Thanks, but from what the vet said and what i've been reading it doesn't seem to be a quick thing.

Get in touch with elegy. I think she went through that twice with Steve.

And I don't think four weeks is advisable. I think crate rest is longer than that, plus PT, and cold lasering is how she handled it.

I'll PM her, does she still come on chazhound? I don't think I've seen her post in a while, but I could be missing it.

Well, four weeks was with no activity and we get to stretch him and give him some movement/flexibility things. After that he'll be ok'd for some light duty walking and having him stretch himself out plus us still stretching him. I'm not sure how long before we get to go back to normal activity at this point. I'll definitely see if I can get ahold of Elegy though. I don't know of a vet her that does the cold laser treatments, and I didn't talk to my vet about that either so maybe I'll put it out there with my vet and see what he says.

At this point, I don't know how we are going to manage this. For one, we live on the third floor walk-up. I don't know if I can carry his giant butt up and down the stairs without falling O_O I didn't think to ask about the stairs either if they'd have a big effect on him.

 

[elegy]

Ugh, 'psoas pulls are such a frustrating injury to deal with.

I wrote a blog post on Team Unruly awhile ago about them for those interested http://teamunruly.com/?p=459

With Steve, it took a long time the first time around to get a diagnosis, which I think was a big contributing factor in why it took so flipping long to get him healed. It was literally like three months. It was terrible. The second time around, I caught it early, and it was only 4-6 weeks.

Is Talon on muscle relaxants at all? That was a big thing with Steve. Muscle relaxants, heat pack the area and do passive stretching 2-3 times a day, STRICT FREAKING CRATE REST, no speed faster than a walk on walks. We worked through a series of increasingly more challenging exercises with him as he got better. He went to rehab once a week and got cold laser, massage, and new exercises. It was expensive, but we finally did get him fixed up.

There's a rehab therapist locator website here: http://www.caninerehabinstitute.com/Find_A_Therapist.html

 

[Southpaw]

Why is it that when I'm cutting a dog's nails, in the moment I feel like I am taking off inches of nail, but then when I'm done.... I feel like they look exactly the same as when I started.

In other news, I just dremeled Cajun's nails without having any drugs on board. I had to sit in her crate with her, and it's not like she was perfectly cooperative, BUT I got it done, by myself to boot! Hopefully this is a technique I can take advantage of so that I can do her nails more often than "once every few weeks, or whenever it's convenient to sedate her."

I also cut Juno's nails and spent 10 minutes trying to fish a nail sliver out of my eye.

 

[Beanie]

So I got out my foam roller to try and hit some sore spots. I was basically laying on the floor in cobra pose, rolling back and forth over my legs, trying not to scream and cry because it hurt so bad...
and here is Payton trying to climb on and do a backstall.
which is of course hilarious so I'm laugh-crying because ohgodthepain and then there's Payton.
My life.

 

[SpringerLover]

Is Talon on muscle relaxants at all? That was a big thing with Steve. Muscle relaxants, heat pack the area and do passive stretching 2-3 times a day, STRICT FREAKING CRATE REST, no speed faster than a walk on walks. We worked through a series of increasingly more challenging exercises with him as he got better. He went to rehab once a week and got cold laser, massage, and new exercises. It was expensive, but we finally did get him fixed up.

There's a rehab therapist locator website here: http://www.caninerehabinstitute.com/Find_A_Therapist.html

We don't/haven't had luck treating iliopsoas injuries with anything other than therapeutic ultrasound. Laser seems to work like a band-aid.

Also, I'm sorry! Musculoskeletal injuries are SO hard to deal with