The Katzke Dog Diary

Yet another article on why you shouldn’t take your TV’s approach to dog training…

I’d get off the soapbox, but I can see so much from here.

Two weeks later, we finally got Henry’s tooth out of his head. The poor thing. He’s had to go two weeks with this

But! The cool part? THE VET SAVED IT FOR ME! Oh my god, cool.

(I’m such a nerd.)

In all it's gory glory. Only the right 1/4 or so is normally exposed.

For the veterinary nerds, that’s tooth #204, the upper left canine. I didn’t realize how far it normally sits inside his jaw. (He’s gotta feel like he just lost three rounds with a mack truck right now.) The vet also said

For everyone else, this is why it needed to come out. Check out the fracture. The purple/red spot near the tip is the root of the tooth, and you can see where the outer enamel fractured off.

Root and enamel fracture

Poor guy. He’s lived with that for the past two weeks.

As part of my ongoing education campaign against the drugs that veterinarians regularly give their patients in handfuls without telling them the risks they’re running (i.e., Previcox), I present this dolittler.com article about the risks of NSAIDs. Humans can eat NSAIDs like candy. Pets cannot!

Henry’s going under for an extraction next Wednesday after he broke his #204 canine (upper left) when attempting to bust out of his crate. For the near future, days when I might need to crate him are definitely ‘work from home’ days. We couldn’t do the extraction right away because his CBC showed a high white blood cell count — which a physical exam confirmed. His stomach was a bit distended, hot, and grumbly. It probably would’ve gone unnoticed otherwise, but anesthesia would have been a huge risk with the infection like that. This is why you always pay for the pre-surgery blood panel! Every time!

In the meantime, he’s not enjoying life that much. I’m soaking his food and trying to make life as pleasant as possible for him. He WANTS to chew on stuff, but his mouth hurts too bad for it most of the time.

After deciding he needed a ‘job’ … I’m hoping to start volunteering with a local volunteer search and rescue team. They provide resources for people who think they have dogs who would fit in; considering that he’s bred to track and hunt and he ‘tracks’ here in the neighborhood on walks (not to mention tracks where I go and tries to follow me through doors and walls…) I think he’d be well-suited seeing as he’s already mastering most aspects of off leash obedience. If not, the volunteering will still be worthy for me and I’ll gain a lot of training knowledge from people who have to work with and lead their dogs.

A link was posted on a behavior mailing list that I monitor to this PDF about “leadership vs. dominance in dog training”. After some intense discussions with some other dog owners who can’t seem to stop using “alpha dog” and “dominant” for the life of them… well, please forward the link on.

Edit: A few more resources:

• THE DOG WHISPERER CONTROVERSY: Dog Psychology, Flawed From It’s Foundation
• (pdf) The Effects of Combining Positive and Negative Reinforcement During Training, Nicole A. Murrey, MS Behavior Analysis UNT