The Katzke Dog Diary

I made a post on my tech/personal blog about my techie and personal goals for 2009, but it’s time I sit down and take a hard look at what I want to do with the dogs.

Henry unexpectedly came into my life in July, and has been the bane of my pocketbook and social life ever since. On the other hand, he’s been such a rewarding personal experience that I’m loath to quit while I’m ahead — and I refuse to dump my problems on someone else. Henry’s goals for 2009 are:

1. Start trailing off of the prozac. At my vet’s directions, he’s on a 1.5x dose of Reconcile right now. I can get generic prozac in 20mg capsules for much cheaper than the Reconcile, but since he’s on about 52mg a day right now and attempts to back that off have not met with great success, I need to wait a little bit on it.
2. Build his confidence with obedience training. This is in progress and going well, thanks to Jennie. We’re working on retrieval right now.
3. Build his confidence by exposing him to new social situations. This is meeting with mixed, but mostly positive results. He will happily enter elevators now, and he can walk through a lobby full of students on campus without flinching. I’d like to expand the number and level of social interactions that he’s comfortable with.
4. Decide if I’m going to keep him or adopt him out. A lot of this decision depends on how well Eowyn does, because if she’s still in pain after the FHO recovery, then I need to put her down for her sake and I’d prefer to still have Henry at that point.

Eowyn turned 2 this past year, and she also had both hips operated on. After her rehabilitation period this year, we’ll hopefully be able to start training out some of the dog and food aggression that she’s picked up along the way. Experimentation with painkillers has shown that her tendency towards aggression drops markedly when she’s not in pain. (Go figure.) My goals for her this year are:

1. Finish her recovery from the FHO following the crate rest and physical therapy guidelines.
2. Get a solid and immediate ‘down’ command trained in that I can use to redirect any time she gets into an aggressive pattern.
3. Start redirecting her aggression using the ‘down’ command.

Here’s to a happy new year for you and yours!

I spent a day with Miles, who I know via the motorcycle community I hang out in. I’ll post more pictures later, but Miles and his wife breed Ridgebacks (and they are one of the good breeders — unlike the several Ridgeback puppy mills you’ll find in Texas). It was great to see his pack and watch the dynamics of how they work together, respond to different situations and train, and the variations in coat and markings that you find within dogs just out of his own litters.

Below is a picture of Miles and his two females. I’ll post more pictures to my Flickr gallery shortly.

Speaking of which, if you’re looking for a Ridgeback and you’re in Texas, I would advise talking to the people at one of the many rescues in the state for their opinions on different breeders (and yes, they know them all). The people at the Texas Independent Rhodesian Ridgeback Rescue and at the national Rhodesian Ridgeback Rescue who have experience with breeders in your area and can guide you to responsible, ethical breeders that will make sure you have a healthy and well behaved companion.

Eowyn’s second Femoral Head Ostectomy is done, and she’s recovering at Boonville Animal Hospital. The doc called a little while ago to tell me that the surgery went much better this time and she should have an easier recovery. Woohoo! Merry Christmas, Eo. Sorry, I promise that you’ll feel much better soon!

We’ve got two crates in the house for Eowyn, and I’m thinking about adding a third. Each comes with all the modern conveniences — water, a nice soft place to lay down, enough room to turn around in, a Nylabone or two for those immediate chewing needs, and a door that closes and latches.

For a little bit of review, Eowyn has two problems: Dog/Food Aggression, and Hip Dysplasia. The more research, reading, training, and practice I do with Eo, the more I realize that these are very closely connected, intertwined, interlinked, cause-and-effect, systemic issues and NOT discreet behavior problems that can be treated empirically.

There’s currently one in the bedroom, where we all sleep, and in the kitchen next to the table, where we spend most of the rest of our days. She eats in the crate, she naps in the crate while I cook and eat dinner, she’s in the crate when Henry and I are working on obedience… all the usual stuff.

Magically, she has no problems eating in the crate when Henry’s eating his dinner two feet from her. No growling, signs of aggression, stiffness in her posture, whining, barking, or other vocalizing, no lunging and gnashing — nothing. If she is out of the crate and I try to feed him, she will attack him for his food. What’s the difference?

The seat of the pants doggy psychologist in me says that she feels threatened because of her hip pain. She can’t back up a warning (growling, baring teeth) because it’s patently obvious that her hips are bad, so she just attacks without notice. With the crate between her and the other dog, she doesn’t feel like her food supply is threatened. It’s her comfortable place that other dogs don’t go into.

The usual approach from here I guess would be desensitization. I’m wondering if I can’t just AVOID the behavior for now and just not allow her to make any mistakes for now so that she “forgets” the aggressive stuff, and then after her hips are fixed, start working on the actual desensitization work with a chance of it getting results this time…

Henry was happy for his bed last night and today — especially because it snowed last night! This is a rare event in College Station. My coworkers can only remember two times it’s snowed enough overnight to last…

Henry went out, peed, and came straight back in… no photo opportunities. Eo ate some of the snow and gave herself a brainfreeze, I think — the look on her face was priceless.

It’s official. For her Christmas present, Eowyn will be getting her other hip done. I started talking to our vet about two weeks ago about doing it. This morning, we ran down the list of reasons for Eo’s lack of progress with the behavior modification plan, and ended up with hip pain as the last possible cause short of her being untrainable … which we know is not true.

A month ago, we switched Henry’s food and ran him through the parasite wringer again … the result, just one month later, is a dog that shows anxiety but few signs of panic. He will heel off lead, will come on command, will go to the bathroom on command, is my jogging and napping partner, and believe it or not, he no longer snores. The change came and his confidence started building as soon as we fixed his last medical (digestive) issue. After his confidence built up a little bit and he was sure he wasn’t going to rot in a crate all day with no water and no company, he became a new dog.

I have mixed feelings about doing Eo’s other hip so soon after the first. On one hand, I feel like it’s too early. We hadn’t planned on it until May. On the other hand, X-rays show that the head of her right femur continues to degrade and calcify. The pain has to be excruciating. I’m hoping that performing the second FHO (and the ensuing month of bed rest and the reduction in pain) will finally help us get a handle on her reactive behavior.

Apologies for no posts over the holiday; Managing four dogs instead of two can be just a touch tiring.

Basil and Henry:

(Basil is a Lowchen, and it’s traditional to shave their hindquarters and legs for show/conformation purposes.)

That’s Mouse, a ~150 lbs Greater Swiss Mountain Dog.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

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!

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.

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.