I took Henry with me to a lot of social events over the past few days. On the list that I’m now sure that Henry is good with:
- Infants (he belly crawled up to her and licked her toes and made her laugh)
- Rambunctious pre-teens (mutts are durable!)
- Cats (Cat wasn’t so sure about him, though.)
- Bunnies (Took one sniff, the bunnies ears moved, and he backed off with a “WTF?!” expression!)
- Fish (He didn’t try to jump in the pond and eat them like Eo would’ve.)
We still need to work on generalizing “don’t jump on people” and “no begging for food”, but those are easy in comparison to the problems we dodged above.
Winter in Texas brings some gentle showers and cooler temperatures. 55 degrees made for a pleasant and very un-sweaty walk with the dogs this morning.
However, the rain showers in the backyard loosened up some of the dirt, and loosening up some of the dirt meant that Eowyn and Henry running and playing turned some of the yard into mud… or really, red clay. Which meant they tracked mud into the house. Mud isn’t allowed in the house since we have white berber carpeting… which meant that I had to pick Eo up and give her a bath.
When she was a baby, we called her “Munch Rat” because she was always chewing on something and had a tiny little skinny tail. She came out of the bath looking like a drowned rat and wouldn’t let me dry her head off. I provide for you, in full color, the Drowned Munchrat!
You know your love of dogs is becoming a problem when you set up some Coyote Point Systems load balancers and a Trac instance in the same day — and one of your coworkers quips, “I know how to get Karl to buy anything! Just put a pawprint on it!”
Wow. We had a great day today. First, Eo and Henry stayed in their crates all day. As far as I can tell, Henry did not leave a giant puddle of drool in his crate. Eowyn didn’t act aggressive towards Henry at all, and she didn’t carry on for a huge long time when it was time to go for a walk. And the best was yet to come — the feeling I had when we were done with that walk.
The walk started out as a disaster. Every last thing that Eo is reactive to, from joggers to other dogs, arrived at once, right as we went out the door. And every time I got her calmed down again, another one would appear. I almost turned around and went back in — especially when I saw the woman walking the hellaciously reactive border collie that lived at the end of my block towards me. I know for sure that I let a few choice words escape my lips. (In a calm, quiet tone, of course.)
I’m not sure if tonight was the culmination of two YEARS of training Eowyn, or if it was just that I got REALLY stubborn and pissed off at the dogs, and managed to focus and control the seething grumblies in a way that led to success. Either way, I managed to do the “dances with dogs” training exercise tonight to a point where not only were both dogs doing it and doing it well, but we were actually having fun with it! Eowyn was heeling on lead (a first!) and only halfway reacted when a woman with some other dogs was walking them out to get the mail.
(For those not following along at home — Dances With Dogs is what I call the “lots of quick direction changes” training — it’s intended to teach a dog that consistently pulls and doesn’t watch the handler to heel on lead. Eowyn has pulled since the day she was born. Tonight was the FIRST night I have ever had her watching me and ignoring other people, dogs, and for ’scary things’ to jump out from under every car.)
The change was in my attitude. I don’t know how to describe it, but we’ve been working a lot on “calming” activities recently. I’ve been working to control my behavior, and I’ve been working to get the dogs to reliably get excited or slow down. The purpose of any command from the handler should be to calm the dog and focus their energy on the task at hand. (Thank you, Jennie.) That’s what I’ve been missing all these years. Sheesh.
Started with the clicker training again. Spent five minutes with Henry and Eo each. Just simple stuff, working with Henry and Eo on not being grabby with food and treats to refresh the click-and-treat. Henry’s getting it for the first time, but is SUCH a fast learner (really, he’s easy to please … Eo couldn’t care less unless there’s food) that I didn’t have to do much with him.
As for the exercise that we’re using to get back into clicker training, I’m briefly using this post from dogforums.com — Doggy Zen — to provide some basic structure to Eo and Henry’s training sessions.
Need to get more pupperoni or some chicken lunchmeat tomorrow.
Now that Henry’s had things going right for him for a few months, his health issues are pretty much taken care of, and his separation anxiety is under control, I’ve decided that it’s time to rehome him.
Why rehome Henry, my happy jogging and napping buddy? There’s a few good reasons. Mainly, Eowyn isn’t happy with him in the house, and he’s not happy when he’s around Eowyn. Having him around forced me to address some of Eo’s issues and we’re doing better in a lot of ways, but she needs some intensive training now and I can’t do that when my time’s split between her and Henry. Of course, he’ll have a home here whenever he needs one, but he and Eowyn would be happier with him elsewhere.
I’m very selective about where I will adopt him to. He’s got to go to a home that has or has had dogs before and uses (or is willing to learn) positive training methods. He will need to be able to stay on his medications, which can get expensive. And I’d prefer if he didn’t have to be crated all the time (~ 8 hours a day like he does here) and if there were some young boys for him to belong to.
I absolutely love Henry, and rescuing him has had a hugely positive impact on my life. With love, it’s not so much about holding on as it is about making sure those you love are happy.
I’ve been doing some experimentation, and Henry seems to be OK with being left alone inside of Eowyn’s crate — even when I’m not in the house. Her crate is the warmest, deepest, darkest, most cave-like part of the house — it’s in my closet, buried inside all of my clothes on hangars and underneath the crates that hold my paperwork files and pictures.
For the past month, we’ve been working to ease Henry out of his rather extreme crate anxiety. (See picture.) If you missed it, he chewed his way through a Bargain Hounds brand crate in less than fifteen minutes while I was working with Eo out front of the house. It was a major d’oh moment and a major setback to his training.
He’s been on Reconcile (aka puppy prozac) for nearly three months, he’s been eating breakfast and dinner in his crate and sleeping in there at night. His crate has a soft floor, has his favorite chew toys and nylabones, and most importantly, Eowyn isn’t allowed in it. 
But … we had some thunderstorms the other day, and he took refuge in Eowyn’s crate. (She, of course, doesn’t care about t-storms.) Interesting!
Experimenting a bit, I left him in there when Eo and I went to the vet the other day. He wasn’t even breathing hard when we got back, and we were gone for over an hour. Even more interesting! Today I pulled the swap — I left her in his crate (which is too small for her, but won’t cramp her style if she isn’t in it too long) and him in hers, and ran to PetCo to get the biggest X-Large wire crate they had so that she can stand to her full height with her head up in it. I’ll have to move my bookshelf out of my room … probably into the living room, but there’s room for her new crate in my room. Barely.
We’ll see if this lasts… I’ve jinxed myself before!
Go watch these videos at SmartDogs! Man, if that happened at the dog park I used to take Eo (who, as a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix, is descended from african dogs — although a different breed) there’d be owners running everywhere, (human) tears, and lots of bruised (human) egos. I don’t do dog parks much anymore.
As I was watching these videos and typing this, Eowyn (the huntress) disemboweled another Bad Cuz. I had to give her something to chew on because she was hunting for more geckos to hunt after she caught one that slipped in under the back door. Henry is cowering in mortal fear underneath the kitchen table as she tosses the Cuz around. After she’s torn the squeaker out and crunched it into tiny plastic pieces, she runs throughout the entire house biting down on it and then plugging the hole with her tongue. Note to self: Dog likes sucking chest wounds. Do not piss dog off.
You never know what you might learn. In this case, It’s a fascinating little bit over at One Bark at a Time about alarm pheremones and dog reactions with the link to the original article at Ars Technica in the first paragraph. Now that, that’s just plain ol’ fascinating and it points out yet again why having control over your dog’s level of arousal is so important in social interactions. Oh, and I found One Bark at a Time via Caveat.
I wonder if there’s an “antidote” to this fear pheremone that can be sprayed in high stress areas like kennels and shelters to subdue anxious dogs? I mean, one that works on a scientific basis, as opposed to the snake oil misters that are currently on the market.
I’m sure there’s going to be a big chunk of that building with my name on it.
Eowyn kept waking me up last night (with a cold nose to the eyesocket and a lick to my chin) to let her out so that *she* in turn could go outside. I went out with her a few times and her poop was completely liquid — total diarrhea, punctuated with a few noxious farts. (I know it wasn’t her the night before because she slept in her kennel with the door closed that night.) When the vet opened in the morning, I called and got a walk-in appointment for this afternoon…
With Eo, our suspicion is that she’s caught Henry’s whipworms. (Once you get whipworms into an environment, it’s almost impossible to keep a dog from getting them. Even if you pick up poop immediately from the yard, it’s not possible to pick up the liquid stuff and eventually a dog will run through that patch of ground, and while cleaning their paws later will ingest some of the eggs.) I was probably irresponsible in letting her stay on Heartguard, which doesn’t worm Whipworms, and not switching her to Interceptor. The problem is that Interceptor, Revolution, Sentinel, etc. — none of those touch the eggs, and still allow them to hatch in the dog’s system… they just clear the worms as they hatch. Ivermectin, the active ingredient in Heartguard, won’t even touch them in nonclinical doses.
So — worm her with something that will definitely flush all the worms out, 24 hour fast to settle her stomach and let anything that’s gotten bloody in her intestines heal, and then a soft/wet diet for two days followed by getting her gently back on her regular food.