Happy Halloween!

From Ashke (some of my friends insist he's a vampire)


...and Rowan (my demonkitten...check out those eyes...I KNEW it!)


...and Chandler (some days, your dog just gets possessed by forest spirits).

Third Birthday

My overgrown puppy is three years old today. :)
Happy birthday Chandler!
(Yes, he does love his cake.)

Here's some recent pictures of him(wearing hiking bell) playing with Bridget(wearing bandana).

Chandler's sire is dead :(

Goliath was euthanized on his 10th birthday.
I'm hurting for Chandler's breeder today,
and sad because I see some of the things she's said about Goliath in Chan.
Their vet thinks he had leukemia, or some kind of tick borne disease.
*cry*

Feline Update & Graduate School!

Almost two weeks ago I totally shocked the staff at my veterinary clinic.

I brought in Ash and Rowan for their annual physical, despite the fact that they didn't need shots.
I keep on hearing that cats in general get less veterinary care than dogs (ie, that care is neglected);
perhaps this is evidence that that is true. I think I had to mention three separate times that I was there even if the cats did not need shots.

The results of the visit turned out pretty well. Ashke has gained weight back after his mystery illness last year. He's 14.8 lbs...and I'm thinking of watching his food intake as he seems to want to add to that.

Rowan was a bit more problematic. Her IBS has been acting up, and she'd even started vomiting her Instincts canned cat food, and the cooked chicken has not been working well. I decided that we'd probably gone as far as we could controlling her IBS with diet, and it was time to try something else. She's been on prednisolone since the vet visit, and seems much less fussy. She's eating more at one seating and symptoms have disappeared.

The only problem is getting the pills into her. So far it involves a wrestling match. I'm really glad she's not prone to using her claws.

Not bad for 13 year old kitties. :)

I've also started graduate school again, this time for Library Science.
I'm hopeful this will be the right thing for me, considering how much I love books,
and also like to help people out.

Anyway, I have three internet classes, and one on site at SCSU. They're all looking interesting.

Give your heart to a dog to tear...

This post is dedicated to Chan's friend Duffy, who died one week ago today.
It is also dedicated to both of Duffy's families, who miss him terribly.

I recall a friend once expressed to me her surprise about how owning a dog was actually a very social thing. We had been talking to a bunch of people in a dogpark near her home while Chan tumbled with another puppy. I hadn't thought about it, but she was correct. I've met many wonderful people because of Chandler. Susan is one of these.

She was one of the people that announced the happy arrival of her family's new English Shepherd puppy late last winter. Seeing as she lived in the same state I did, I finally caught up to her in the spring and emailed a suggestion that we meet to take a walk together. She happily agreed, but then the event was delayed, because Duffy was exhibiting some troubling behavior-growling and lunging at the neighbor's children.

When we finally met, Duffy and Susan were standing about half a soccer field away from the training center that Chan and I were exiting (the very same place that Duffy had puppy class), and he was barking nervously at the class now entering the building. I'm not sure how much time it took to get over to them; I didn't want to put too much pressure on Duffy if he was nervous, but when we did get over there, he decided that anybody who carries cooked chicken must be ok, and that Chan was pretty cool too, despite the fact that Chan wasn't about to let a pushy puppy get away with much. The dogs got along well during our short hike, and Duffy apparently had to copy almost anything Chan did, which was quite amusing. We only had problems when we encountered anyone else on the trail, as Duff would tense up and start barking again.

This would be the first source of my new friend's heartbreak, as that reactivity and barking got worse over time. Despite working one on one with a trainer, going to the dog park and daycare for socialization, attending three separate obedience classes (over time), consulting with Tufts behavioral department, and a prescription for buspar to calm him down, Duffy's behavior became more unpredictable. Quite honestly, suburbia was too stressful for him, with too many perceived threats and not enough of a job to do. With her family situation, there was no way that Susan could guarantee that Duffy would not get out and possibly bite somebody, so she made the difficult decision to take him back to his breeder, who promised to find him a farm home that he would be better suited to. She and her husband made the trip, and Susan was somewhat comforted to be able to remember Duffy joyously running free playing with his sister.

A month or so went by and the news was good. Duffy had settled into the routine of the farm, made a place for himself, and his breeder had decided to keep him. She was very impressed with all the manners Susan had taught him, and he had actually become her star herder. He had found his work and place in life, and was helping to bring his sister out of her shell. Susan missed him, but was happy that Duffy seemed to be a happier dog. She kept up the link with me, now bringing her older ES, Bridget, for walks with Chan.

I wish it could have lasted longer, for everyone's sake.

Some time in the early morning of last Tuesday, something attacked the farm's chickens, killing at least two. Duffy was unlucky enough to be struck by a car on the one lane gravel township road while "seeing off" whatever predator caused the problem. We're proud of him for doing his job, and sad that a farmdog's life is not without risks. At least he had a brief period of happiness without stress.

Cheerio & Who moved my bone?

Chandler had an eventful Sunday, as we drove up to my parents' lake house in MA and took a side trip to see another ES named Cheerio.


After seeing Cheerio, we arrived at the lake for an afternoon of relaxation. I'd brought a couple of his recreational bones for hanging out by the water, but unfortunately a couple got covered by ants-so I chucked them over two retaining walls and down into the lake to get rid of the ants. Chandler's reaction was along the lines of "*gasp* MY BONES!", leading to a charge down two stairways and into the water to find them.

I waded in to get the one that had landed in deeper water, then turned around to find out that Chan had come up with an interesting solution to getting the other one. So of course, I threw the larger bone in again and filmed it. :)



What I found interesting in this segment is that he makes a mistake and then immediately corrects himself and gets back on track. Sorry about the video quality...Sunday was the first time I used the movie function on my camera. I just regret I didn't get any footage of Cheerio and Chan.

Chandler & cats updates

Chan's obedience classes are going quite well. His biggest problems are probably his enthusiasm, and the fact that he is "environmentally challenged" as the instructor says. As far as the latter goes, he finds EVERYTHING interesting and gets distracted, although this has improved greatly through Family Dog 1 & 2. For the former, he just gets so excited, and will have difficulty listening. If he's revved, he'll just start throwing out a bunch of behaviors in the hopes that one will work, and never hear that you were asking for "paw". However, he is listening to me much better, and has been offleash several times in the last week and listened to my "leave it" when people were at the foot of the neighbor's driveway; this is a big improvement from charging while barking. Unfortunately he did decide on Tuesday to take off across the street after the mail truck. Thankfully we live on a dead end. In the fall, I'm going to have to teach him that he must wait politely at the mailbox for his biscuit from the mailman, instead of chasing after the truck barking.

His socialization seems to be going quite well. We were up at the lake two weekends ago, and he crashed the neighbor's party. Well, he did hold out until they cut the cake, and then he broke. He was fine with all the men that were guests, and even the yorkie that doesn't like other dogs...but of course, he was focused on mooching cake. Sometimes I wonder if he comes from a long line of farmdogs that hung out in the kitchen. *laf*



We went for a walk with his second cousin Addy two Wednesdays ago. She's about 5 months old, and a little spitfire. I think her owner was glad to finally find a dog that would play with her. Apparently they have an older lab that just goes "ugh", and another dog in the extended family has started hiding when he sees her coming! Well, she never got to jump all over Chan, because she couldn't catch him at first, and then he started chasing her- which I think emphasized that he had decided to be in charge. They did end up having a blast. :)
Rowan seems to be doing well on her chicken diet, although I've been trying to slip her some of Ashke's canned food because the chicken is not totally balanced. Sometimes she wants it, sometimes she doesn't. Mixing in bone meal seems to be working well, and I've been investigating cat vitamins. Most of them seem to have stuff mixed in that would probably upset her digestion. Soy is common enough, but cellulose seemed a bit strange- its not like she's a termite. I'm probably going to go with Wellness Welltabs for cats, as those ingredients seem to be absent.

I've been struggling a bit with the recipes in the Strombeck book. It's not the most user friendly. I finally found that clams were added to the recipes for the tuarine...three chapters after the main chapter of recipes. Clams are out due to my mother's allergies, so I'll have to look into a taurine supplement for safety, if the Welltabs don't cover it. I tried adding hard boiled egg and vegetable oil on Saturday. She ate it then, and then "foofooed" it this morning. *sigh* I'll have to try again later, and meanwhile stick to the plain poultry recipe. Hopefully she'll actually eat the vitamins.

Ashke is fine...except he seems to be getting rounder. I think I need to cut back on his calories. He's put weight back on with the Instinct cans, but I don't want him to overdo it.

Heh...their fall checkup should be interesting...