skyisadog's blog

Our Three-Month Anniversary

Sky today

Huh. It definitely seems longer than three months. Our progress on everything has been great, and we have almost no problems at all... she's happy, healthy, funny, fun, affectionate, playful, sweet, loving, wonderful. The only issue that we need to deal with now - and it's not an easy one - is separation anxiety. We have possibly a Perfect Storm of circumstances that make this a difficult situation. First of all, it's a condition that is apparently not unusual for rescue dogs, and compounding this is the fact that I work from home, and we take her with us almost everywhere, so she hasn't had a chance to become accustomed to spending time without one or both of us... Totally our fault. She's my little shadow, and follows me everywhere, except for once or twice a day when she goes to take a short sunbath in the courtyard, or if she decides that I'm just staying up way too late, and decides to go off to bed by herself. So, this is a thorny problem to deal with, and will make house training seem like cake (which it was, actually).

Complicating matters is that we plan to take a transatlantic trip of a few weeks in the Fall, and we hope to have friends staying here to care for her, and want to make that as painless as possible for both Sky and friends. So. I need to start going out without her for short periods, and gradually lengthening that time, and try to assure her that everything will be okay if she isn't with us every second. Tough one.

You realize you've become the crazy dog lady when...

• To start with the most obvious: your dog has a blog
• You decide you need to go shopping for a toy box, for the dog.
• You've had your dog's teeth cleaned, but not your own
• Your dog wears more jewelry than you do
• You go on a romantic date with your husband... and you mostly talk about the dog. Plus you bring the dog along.
• You find yourself slapping your husband's hand when he tries to steal some of the food you're cooking for the dog
• You haven't been to a hairdresser in years, but after trying to give the dog a haircut, you decide you better just take her to the groomer
• Everyone in the neighborhood knows your dog's name, but not yours
• You start shopping only at the places that let you bring your dog in; extra shopping at the places that also pet her and give her a treaty
• You start wearing only clothes with pockets so you can always have your handy-dandy plastic poop bags at the ready
• You hate the heat, and it's 100 degrees outside, but you still cuddle up on the couch with your husband - and the dog draped over both of you - to watch TV
• You used to try to catch "CSI", or "Lost", or reruns of "The X-Files"; now you never miss an episode of "It's Me or the Dog"
• All the photos on your flash card are pictures of the dog
• You spend your time writing lists of Crazy Dog Lady signs and symptoms

GoogleDog?

I really love Google. I love the search engine, I love my Gmail, I love Google Notebook, and now I love Google Calendar.

Google as useful pet app

These last couple of weeks I've realized that I need more than the Vet booklet to keep track of things I want or need to remember for Sky, and decided that I needed to buy a diary/agenda sort of thing... but I sort of dragged my feet, because I didn't feel like spending 20 Euros on a cute diary from the local bookstore with the year half over, and I didn't feel like using some hideous wall calendar or other free thingy. Then I remembered Google Calendar, which I had checked out long ago, but didn't really have a use for. Great idea! Much better than a paper version because you can search, you can look at everything at once by day/week/month, as well as four-day period, and an agenda list - and you can have it send you alerts for things you need to remember. Perfect!

one view of my Google calendar

So, for example, if I make an entry for each time Sky is weighed at the Vet, and put "Sky Weight - (howevermany) kilos", and I want to search and see her whole weight history, I just enter "Sky" and "weight" into the search field, and each of those will come up in a list. Very, very handy. And you can have as many calendars as you like, so you can have one just for your pet if you'd like, and be as obsessive or as casual as you'd like about what you keep track of. I have Vet visit information, baths, medication (just eye ointment at the moment - to see about clearing up her very persistent eye goobers), anti-flea/tick applications; diet info; weight info; Vet blood test results; vaccinations. And alerts for things I need to remember. I love.

I also love Google Notebook, because I am always coming across internet information I want to keep track of and sort into useful piles, and bookmarks just don't cut it for me for various reasons. So I have several Google Notebooks - one for recipes, one for art and images, one for health-related items, one for Greece and Athens related info, one for web design and CSS, one for stuff my husband would be interested in, one for books, and of course - one for Sky. In her notebook, I have several folders: Vet (things to ask my Vet about; articles to send her, etc.), Grooming, Food, Health, Training, Local resources, and Blog (for things I might want to include here). Very helpful for taming information overload and tucking away all sorts of things I'll want to refer to.

Made me LOL

Okay, The Poodle (and dog) blog made me laugh today, with Jan's "Real Classified Ads from Real Papers" entry:

• For Sale -- Eight puppies from a German Shepperd and an Alaskan Hussy.
• FREE YORKSHIRE TERRIER. 8 years old. Hateful little bastard. Bites!
• FREE PUPPIES: 1/2 Cocker Spaniel, 1/2 sneaky neighbor's dog.
• FREE PUPPIES.. Mother, AKC German Shepherd. Father, Super Dog...able to leap tall fences in a single bound.
• FOUND DIRTY WHITE DOG. Looks like a rat. Been out a while. Better be a big reward.
• STAR WARS JOB OF THE HUT - $15
• GERMAN SHEPHERD 85 lbs. NEUTERED. SPEAKS GERMAN. FREE.
• Great Dames for sale.
• Dog for sale: eats anything and is fond of children.
• 2 female Boston Terrier puppies, 7 wks old, Perfect markings, 555-1234. Leave mess.
• Shawawa pups for sale, from cute and intelligent parents
• Lost: small apricot Poodle. Reward. Neutered. Like one of the family.

I was initially puzzled by the "Shawawa pups for sale" - after all, pretty much every time I search for anything related to dogs, I run into new breeds I've never heard of before... But a search for "Shawawa" only turned up a city in the Congo. Finally, the coffee kicked in: Chihuahua. Chihuahua. Duh. Cute and intelligent, indeed. :)

And speaking of funny pet-related classified ads, I was forced (forced!) to look up this old one, in case anyone reading this blog was living in cave for a few years and never happened across it:

I wonder how it turned out

thedogfoodproject.com

This is a great site for drilling down to information about ingredients in commercial dog foods - what to look for, what to avoid, how to identify better products.

But what is most useful for me is this "short list" of beneficial food items that include important vitamins, minerals and trace elements for a healthy dog. We are pretty much on top of everything with our home cooked, I find - though after perusing this I've decided to add the occasional egg to Sky's diet... and ongoing is my search for nutritional yeast, which I want for both her and us. (Not too many retail health food options in Athens, that I've been able to ferret out so far, anyway.)
.
The only thing we seem to be mostly missing is this:

Chloride: kelp, tomatoes, celery

and to a lesser degree:

Sulfur: eggs, garlic, lettuce, cabbage

I do include garlic in her cooked meals (just a bit of raw, minced garlic - not a lot), but adding some egg here and there will help with the latter... and I suspect that the chloride is a non-issue, since chloride is found in table salt, which is how we humans get most of ours, and though I don't add salt to her food, I'm pretty sure it's probably included in a lot of the dog treats she gets. However, I'd like to mostly stop using commercial treats for reward training, and try healthier items if possible, so I'll add a bit of tomato to her diet. This is something we always have around, in season, anyway.

So, at this point our usual home cooked meals consist of either turkey/chicken/liver/fish (I'd love to include beef - but we hardly spend the big bucks for beef ourselves - it's become very expensive!) and veg mix (carrot, zucchini and/or green beans, spinach - and soon to include some tomato) and brown rice (roughly 1/3 each, but a bit more veg than meat and rice), plus some grated apple or pear usually, a bit of minced garlic, and a small splash each of olive oil and apple cider vinegar. In addition, she gets a couple of large tablespoons of yogurt separately most days, plus the occasional peanut butter treat or bit of cheese.

If we ate only what we feed her, we'd be in super great shape, I think. :)

At the moment, we're out of kibble (and the only place we've found so far that has minimally acceptable dry food is quite a walk away - and it's hot out!) so she's eating the home cooked for both meals, and I'd actually prefer to feed her only this all the time, but I worry that she will refuse the dry food eventually, which would make things difficult while travelling, say, or if someone else takes care of her.

Pet owners and potential owners: Protect yourself from scams!

keep some info back

If you ever lose your pet, beware of those who would try to take advantage of your pain and distress to extort money from you. Read this list of lost pet scams, and perhaps do some thinking now about what kind of information you might hold back about your pet, in case s/he is ever lost, that would allow you to verify that the person claiming to have your animal isn't just out to rip you off. Apparently the Trucker-Has-Your-Dog scam is on the upswing; Western Union even has a warning on their site (PDF) about this rip-off.

And if you are thinking of getting a dog, there are hucksters just lining up to prey on you as well. Check out some of the various ways you might get scammed here.

I also noted this article about two women who evidently responded to ads looking for temporary pet care, who left all the dogs in an abandoned house with no food or water, or care of any kind.

And be sure that inventive minds are even now plotting new and unforeseen ways to take advantage of kind-hearted pet lovers, so be careful and be smart.

Speaking of dog communication...

I read a very interesting article in Dog Star Daily that argues against training your dog not to growl. In a nutshell, the author's theory is that dogs have a variety of ways to warn of or broadcast fighting/biting intentions and that these signals allow parties to "stand down", and avoid more serious altercations - and thus, training your dog never to growl could be a big mistake, as it might actually encourage attacks without the traditional warning.

I'm just summarizing and paraphrasing very loosely here, so you should definitely go read the whole article. And, in case you are wondering: in terms of teaching your dog not to growl at you when you take away a toy or food, for example, she has a reward strategy to deal with this.

Something to think about. I just discovered Dog Star Daily today, and it seems to have quite a lot of good information.

Woof?

Have I mentioned that in the first weeks that we had Sky, we weren't sure she could bark, or make any noise at all, really? This is a very quiet dog. Soon enough we learned that she did have that functionality, but it was only employed in the rarest of occasions. The first time was when we were sitting all together in the courtyard around dusk one evening, us chatting over our wine and beer, and Sky resting calmly at our feet. Suddenly there was a disturbance in the force. We have no idea what happened, but something apparently rather upsetting occurred, because all the dogs and cats in the neighborhood seemed to erupt into a cacophony of anxiety for about five minutes - and Sky joined them, to the degree that she barked anxiously once herself... and that answered that question.

yes, indeed I'm talking

The second time was when we were again all together at an outdoor cafe. Sky was tethered to my husband's chair, and resting under the table when someone with a dog on a leash walked by, and the dog started barking and snarling and straining at the leash to attack our Sky. Now, everything we had seen of her up to this point would indicate that she would be frightened, submissive and cowering (which is probably how she survived on the street with much bigger stray dogs), but she was just the opposite: she leapt forward in an instant, barking aggressively herself. It was very odd. I've seen other seemingly aggressive dogs around her, and she hasn't behaved that way. I've seen her attacked by two dogs (we were walking by someone's house when the person opened the door to go inside and the dogs rushed out and attacked Sky) and she was even bitten by one (it was only a scratch in the end, but it broke the skin), and she just curled up into a ball at my feet. (Cue imaginary comical video of me beating off two dogs with my sandal in my hand. Funny now, but not then.)

I've deduced that the reason that she reacted with the violent dog on the leash, was that this dog was balls-out in attack mode, and realizing this, she knew that no submissive body language was going to deter him (had he been off the leash) - so in that case the only defense was offense. In the instance of the two dogs, I imagine that she didn't react the same way because she wouldn't stand a chance with two of them, so she just tried to protect herself by making herself as small as possible and protecting her vital areas.

Anyway, while not quite as rare as hen's teeth, barks from Sky are pretty rare indeed, so imagine my surprise these last couple of days when she's begun to occasionally WOOF at me. The first time it happened, I think I jumped a mile, it was so unexpected. I decided that this was a new  way of telling me that she needed to go out, and thought that was a mighty good thing... but no. I did take her out, but she didn't pee or poop, so that wasn't it. The next day, I had been playing with her with some of her toys and she had been racing back and forth through the house chasing things before I sat down on the couch. She looked up at me expectantly from the floor, and I invited her up (she usually, but not always, waits for the invitation) and she jumped up and sat there alertly, intently watching my face, when suddenly, again, WOOF. Again, the single woof. Ahhhhhhh!

Now I got it. This is obviously Sky-speak for "Let us to have happy wacky fun time now, plz?" Wow. This is really so lovely. She's still not a big barker, which is great, because we don't want that - but I love that she talks a bit now, and that what she says is "let's play!" Playing and frolicking is another behavior that she just totally Did. Not. Have. when we got her. She never seemed interested in my attempts to play and tease her with toys (though she would participate a bit, to be polite, it seemed), never galloped about or chased anything... never even really chewed anything. While not exactly morose, she was certainly a sedate dog. She loved cuddling, but just didn't seem to have that spark of curiosity or playfulness. This began to develop with my husband, who initiated physical play with her, gentle roughhousing and teasing which seemed to break the ice with playing in general... and these days she doesn't need to be coaxed to romp. When she's in the mood she'll grab one of her toys and get frisky wit' it - and now she's decided to be quite clear about things when she wants me to join in. Woof!

Sky slays monsters... and fuzzy bunnies.

i eats its noses and earses

Two things of significance happened this morning. The first was a cockroach the size of a Cadillac strolling through our kitchen... at which point I screamed and poked ineffectually at it with a mop and it skittered off somewhere under the fridge or the stove or somewhere else inaccessible. Where, for its own welfare, it should have stayed. But since I was  freaking out, Sky turned all Great White Huntress, and went sniffing around the kitchen for the next half-hour. I didn't pay too much attention to that, since I was so busy trying to keep my feet off the floor - but sure enough, she found it... and immobilized it by dashing at it, then jumping back. Which was just the ticket actually; she got it flipped over on its back, allowing me to smush it with the broom, sweep it up and flush it down the toilet. My hero!

The next big thing was a package from our friend iconomy, with real Crayola Crayons plus puzzle books for me, hair baubles for my husband (long story there, but never mind), and for Sky - peanut butter flavored chewy bones; filled, rolled rawhide chews; and a cute, cute plush bunny! Sky loves her bunny. Really.

Click here for big version!

White dog is white again: The bath thang.

Après douche

Well, kids, our mission was a success. Insanely hydrophobic, greyish dog is all sparkle white and silk fluffy this morning.

Yes, we did it. We. Bathed. The. Dog. And all it took was a tub, a hand-held shower head, two people, five towels (two for us, three for her), a bottle of dog shampoo, a jar of peanut butter, and a pig's foot.

For anyone else with desperately bath-shy dogs, this was our technique: For the past few weeks, we've been putting her in the  (dry) tub, where I wipe her down with a wet washcloth (which doesn't frighten her at all) and praise her, and then we give her a big-big treat afterwards, and more praise. Then we were going to try it with just a trickle of water running directly into the drain, and maybe try wetting her a tiny bit if she seemed okay... but since I had a fall and injured my foot, I've been limping around, and we ended up missing this step. In fact, today was going to be that step - but since we were already armed with towels and treats, and I could stand fairly well for more than five minutes at a time, we decided that if we could get by with it (putting just a little water on her) and she didn't totally freak out, we would go for broke and try to do a real bath.

So, we started with the water just at a trickle, tepid-warm, running into the drain, while I rubbed her as usual with a damp washcloth. Then we got the washcloth very wet and continued to wash/stroke her this way. Finally, we took the plunge and gave her a gob of peanut butter while simultaneously wetting her down directly with the hand-held shower head. We had a put a towel on the bottom of the tub to give her some traction, and keep her from slipping everywhere, but it wasn't that effective; it bunched up and also kept slipping towards and clogging the drain. Next time, we'll get a rubber mat.

This is helpful

She struggled a bit at this point, and started scrambling to get out, but she wasn't out of her mind with desperate fear as she was the first time at the groomer's. (We had only had her a few days at that point, and didn't know about her water problem.) This re-occurred about three or four times during the process, and each time one of us would hold around the neck with her head in the crook of our elbow, gently but firmly, while stroking her and speaking soothingly and praising her. Plus liberal use of peanut butter, which was a great help.

In this way, we managed to get her wetted down, sudsed up, and the shampoo thoroughly massaged in. We left her head for last (in hopes of minimizing the freak-out factor), careful not to get any soap in her eyes, or water inside her ears, since a moist environment there can encourage ear infections - especially in dogs with floppy ears. The next tricky part was turning up the water pressure so we could rinse her off, and this was a rough patch, because in addition to the water itself, we now had the sound of the water, which is a big part of what she hates. So, yes - she began struggling again at this point, and  we just mostly had to hold her during the entire rinsing process. (Plus, peanut butter. Thank god for peanut butter.) She didn't like it at all, and really wanted OUT - but she wasn't in a frenzy, and her efforts were partly just-giving-it-a-shot, and partly reluctant submission to the inevitable.

Then we wrapped her in a big towel and took her outside to let her shake it out... but failed to properly close the doors behind us - so she did one quick shake outside, and promptly dashed inside and did a nice big shake in the bedroom. Oy. The pig's foot reward got her back outside where we were able to dab at her with another towel. And viola! She's a clean girl! With a pig's foot.

This is really, really helpful

Our strategy now is to continue to put her in the tub for wet washcloth sponge baths and some occasional light wetting with the shower head, with praise and treats every time, so that she doesn't develop the idea that the only time she's in the tub is for an actual scary bath - and we hope that by making it fun with lots of attention and rewards, she will eventually decide to love the tub, and even the baths. For next time (and whenever we put her in the tub), we definitely need a rubber mat or two, because the towel on the bottom wasn't a big help, and it's important that she's not slipping and sliding a lot, for her own sense of security, and so that she doesn't hurt herself.

Anyway, she's all lovely and white (with patches of apricot) now, and managed to forgive us our trespasses pretty much immediately (upon getting her doggy-crack fix - ye olde piggyfoot)... though it did take at least 30 minutes for her to get over her adrenaline rush, and she was none too keen on having her photo taken afterwards, either. I mean enough is enough, right?