The Katzke Dog Diary

Our motto with Henry is “A little bit each day”… actually, with Eo’s hips, that goes for her too right now. We’ve overcome a big struggle for Henry: his toenails.

They’re long. And they’re hairy. They click and clack and they’re very sensitive. A month ago, he wouldn’t let me even hold his paw to trim them without a major tug-of-paw battle that usually ended up with me having trimmed a sum total of two nails and the two of us having skated across the entire wood floor in the kitchen and the living room (the entire length of the house sometimes!) as he struggled to get away and I struggled to hold on to a paw long enough to get ONE snip of the trimmers. It’s clear that, along with everything else, nail trimming day used to be a traumatic event for poor ol’ Henry. (If, on his limited nutrition diet, he even managed to grow more nail regularly.) His nails are black, and I can imagine that he’s been quicked a lot.

And don’t even start with me about the joy of nail trimming with Dremels. The second he hears the Dremel box, he’s hiding.

We started doing one claw a day sometime about three weeks ago, with a treat after each “snip” — and now he’ll sit still for an entire paw, as long as he gets a treat after each nail. He knows where the bread is buttered! Pushing him too much will still set us back, though.

I’m planning to keep up a regular routine/rotation of doing one paw every other day for the next month or two. Not having a giant fight on my hands with a wiry, springy 55 lbs dog every time I want to touch one of his paws is a giant bonus in my book.

Today marks six months since I pulled Henry out of his previous living arrangements. One full quarter of his life.

What’s weird is that he seems to have realized the difference, too — in just the last two or three days, he’s become far more independent than he had been before. I’ve been sick, so my sleeping schedule has been all disrupted. Last night, he was asleep on his nice, soft bed in the office/computer/sewing room, and I actually had to *call* him to bed.

That same dog that I had to call to bed? He once ate his way out of a crate when I was out of the house for ten minutes. He had a nervous breakdown if he can’t see me or can’t get to me, even with other dogs and people around. He’ll sometimes blow a gasket if I walk to the mailbox and the blinds in the front of the house are pulled.

But he’s getting better. It’s been four months since we last had to deworm him. It’s been three months since we solved the last of his health issues and he started pooping solid. It’s been over a month and a half since Eo last took a swipe at him because she was hurting. It’s these little milestones that make a rescue. It’s being able to mark the calendar and smile that makes life with a “rescue dog” into a life worth living at any cost.

Welcome home, little lemon brain.

Yikes! Henry had a bit of intestinal bloat last night. He’s OK now after a quick application of Gas-X and Pepsid AC (both of which are available over the counter, and both of which are OK with my vet). I didn’t realize that smaller dogs could get bloat though, and I’m really only familiar with it while taking care of Jennie’s Swissie, Mouse.

Bloat is basically gas — but left unaddressed, it can mean gastric or splenic torsion, which usually creates internal bleeding and can mean quick death for a dog. Large breeds like mastiffs, great danes, and swiss mountain dogs are especially prone to it. If you have a large dog, it pays to be prepared for bloat. Here is one link, and here is another — assemble a bloat kit before you need it.

In Henry’s case, it wasn’t that severe. The spell started out with hip hiccuping and vomiting into his mouth — and then swallowing it back down. He still had an appetite and would still drink water. His abdomen was swollen, but not to the point where it was as tight as his ribcage. He was whining a little bit and looking away from me, and any time he put his head down to sleep he’d burp and vomit, so he was having to hold his head up. I called Jennie up to get her take, since she deals with this constantly — we checked his capillary refill rate, and his gums were normal, unlike the time that we discovered Eowyn’s allergy to Previcox, and his heart rate was normal without any lethargy, so I wasn’t worried about internal bleeding or torsion. She suggested just treating with Pepsid AC (famotidine) and Gas-X (simethecone) and seeing if that helped.

And it did. No vet call required, and no harm done. If it hadn’t, you can bet I’d have called the vet right away and would be bundling Henry off to the doggie ER as fast as we could go. He’s sleeping peacefully right next to me right now with his head buried in the pillows I’m leaning against!

I’ve had a tough time finding dog beds I like. It seems that they’re all very cheaply made (and they cost $80), or they’re made with all kinds of danglies and edges and tags that I know Eo is going to chew off right away. On the other hand, Eo needs something to lay on because her hips cause her constant discomfort, especially in cold weather. This leaves me with a rough choice — pay over a hundred dollars for something I’m pretty sure she can destroy right away, or let her go without, or … make something myself!

Last year, I bought myself a Singer sewing machine (link goes to the 7467; I bought the 7464 but that one doesn’t seem to be available.) It’s one or two notches above very basic, and so far I haven’t hit anything that it can’t sew that easily. I bought a walking foot because one of my goals in buying the machine was to produce items for the dogs — and dogs, especially mine, LOVE soft, fragile surfaces… and really don’t care for surfaces (like, say, kevlar reinforced titanium) that will actually stand up to the abuse they dish out.

The entirety of the planning I did was to take one square yard of fake sheep fleece and one square yard of ripstop Nylon plus a few linear yards of fake suede (which is pretty tough stuff), and start sewing. I figured I’d quilt the top of the fleece and nylon to strengthen the fleece, and would make the sides and bottom out of the suede, which is pretty tear resistant by itself and is skid resistant on our wood floors. In my mind, I would end up with a dog bed that was a bit less than a yard on each side, which would be large enough for Eo to lay comfortably on in her crate, and hopefully tough enough to resist her chewing.

I started by trying to freehand feed the two layers through. This … didn’t work so well.

I ended up cutting the edges down and after two or three tries figured out that if I pin the ever-loving crud out of it, I can keep the two layers from stretching at rates that are too different. Sweet. I sewed around the edges of the remaining fabric in as close to a square as I could get given my limited experience, and then started to quilt the middle of it into squares at a 45 degree angle.

And done quilting! You can see how it looks on the front and back in this shot.

The next experiment was figuring out how to put the zipper on. I didn’t want it to become a chew toy — Eowyn can crush ANYTHING with her jaws, up to and including metal pipes. Taking a page from some of my old rainy-weather gear, which keeps the zippers covered in various ways to keep them from leaking, I created a pocket for the zipper head and bottom to fit into. Clever human fingers can easily get the zipper head, but claws and teeth SHOULD have a tougher time.

It took me maybe two days of working with it part time to attach the edges, and then another day to attach the bottom.

Given a few minutes with some scissors and some bed foam I got at Tar-jay (I can get bed or camping foam cheaper there than I can get upholstery foam from the sewing or craft store.), I quickly cut two squares and stuffed them in — but it needs three. The bed’s about three inches high on the sides. That, by the way, is the one dimension that actually came out as planned!

My original planned size was about 34 inches on each side, which would give Eo plenty of room to lay. Since it actually came out about ten inches shorter than that on each side, the bed became Henry’s. He wasn’t so sure of it at first…

But he warmed up quickly enough.

Since it became Henry’s bed, the next stop is going to be to waterproof it (or at least the foam inside…) so that I can put it in his crate with him and just shake it out when he pees on it!

Total cost: $25 in materials or so, and I can make two whole beds out of the materials that I got. That’s way cheaper than any other bed I could find or buy.

January already. Sheesh. Can you believe it?

In December, I slacked off seriously on Henry’s training and exercise. Both of us have gotten fat as a result. We started to rectify that yesterday with a nice long walk. We’ll do another couple mile walk tonight. I’m in the market for a good pedometer that works with Mac … I might end up with the nike/ipod unit but would prefer something a little more broadly applicable. I’m gonna look pretty silly wearing my iPod everywhere.

Jennie came over at lunch today and helped Henry and I get started on more training exercises that they use in formal obedience classes, which she just started doing a year ago. Henry did GREAT (even if I screwed up half the time) and it’ll just be a matter of repetition. Unfortunately, I’ve got a consulting gig coming up that’s going to crunch my time at home. Walking and training breaks should be good for relieving stress.

With the walk last night and the training at lunch today, Henry didn’t wet his crate today for the first time this week (Which is the first week I’ve been back since I got home at Christmas.) Talk about milestones.

In some ways, training Henry is really difficult. Even after six months of recovery, it’s so easy to trigger a panic attack that you can go straight from the most positive training session in the world to him cowering under the couch in less than a second if you’re not careful.

The things a dog experiences during puppyhood are, to an extent, indelible. It’s not so much that older dogs can’t learn new tricks, it’s that older dogs have to overcome their pasts to learn new things. In Henry’s case, his past is intentional and unintentional abuse.

One of the training exercises we do is designed to teach him patience and watching hands and face for signals. We move a treat slowly from our eyes to his mouth, and if he jumps for the treat we pull it away. We did this exercise in five minute mini-trainings for a few days just fine … and then yesterday, we did it right before dinner and after a walk and all of a sudden his lips start quivering and his head bows down into the “sad Henry” that he acted like when I first rescued him. Checking his heart rate, it was very elevated. Classic case of Henry Panic Attack. This dog’s on so much prozac that he shouldn’t be able to wake up in the morning, much less actually have a panic attack!

It turns out that visitors to the house he lived in used to play “keep away” (intentionally or not) with food, which Henry would try to grab from them … while Henry is quietly starving due to parasites and malnutrition. One of two things would happen — he would be smacked and put back in his crate (hence the fear response), or he would be given some food for laying on the ground and looking REALLY pitiful.

Yeah, that’s going to short-circuit the exercise we were trying to do. *sigh*

Henry had an extreme anxiety attack last night, the likes of which I haven’t seen since I first got him.

Realizing that my juvenile neighbors were going to be playing with explosives regardless of the city laws that forbid fireworks within city limits, I decided to bring him with me to the bonfire. I also brought over 100 flying fireworks with me. I figured that if I was there, he wouldn’t freak out too badly. Boy, was I wrong!

Things started out OK. He didn’t like the cold, but welcomed the fire and was happy to stay by my side. He was on edge and was doing his guard dog thing when anyone joined us around the fire, but there was a young boy to play and run with and there were lots of happy people talking and chattering. I put the boy (Fred, Jr.) in charge of him (don’t let him eat anything!) and they were playing and running together.

After I shot off about 10 bottle rockets of varying sizes and was about to start playing with mortars, Fred, Jr. ran up to me and said Henry wasn’t doing OK. I took his pulse and it was around 3 beats per second, which works out to … gulp… roughly 180 beats per minute. That’s not good. He was standing with the tip of his tail tickling his ribcage, his back arched, and was just shaking. Not good. I know better than to take him inside and try to leave him alone… I gave him about three minutes to calm down, and then checked his pulse again. Still way too high. We got in the car and left. He stayed in the back seat down on the floor the entire ride home. When we got home, he immediately passed out when he was in one of his “safe places” at my feet.

Since he’s already on 50mg+ of prozac daily (Reconcile) for a 55 lbs dog, the vet said not to give him anything else like Benadryl or Acepromazine. He’s been OK with thunderstorms so far, but we haven’t really had a good one in six months… I think I might ask her about something to use in that kind of situation in case I CAN’T remove him from the environment.

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!

We were settling in for an afternoon in front of the computer when I heard a familiar “schlurp, schlurp, gnaw gnaw gnaw gnaw” from the corner that Henry was laying in. Sure enough, he was gnawing on one of his paws. And sure enough, when I sat down next to him and looked at it, he had a hot spot on one of his toes.

Here's what a foot that hurts looks like.

Zoomed in, see how pink it is

For comparison's sakes, here's what a healthy foot looks like.

Before I get into this post, let me say this in really really really big letters: I’m not a veterinarian, I have no veterinary training and I take my dogs to a vet if I’m at all concerned or if they’re bleeding. Don’t take this advice as gospel, and if you have ANY worries, call or see your vet as soon as possible.

That being said, Henry and Eo get hot spots between their toes (either on the bottom of their foot between the pads or on top of their foot between the claws) all the time. I think it has something to do with the sandy soil or some of the sharper natural grasses that grow in the backyard where we didn’t sod. They usually won’t leave it alone and gnaw and lick at it constantly, which of course makes it worse and won’t allow it to heal. (more…)

After Jennie invited me to a party at the training facility she uses in Houston, I finally have something to call Henry’s attitude and behavior: Learned Helplessness.

About a month ago, I felt like I hit a brick wall with his training. He’s no longer wetting the crate on an hourly basis. He’s no longer trying to escape the crate or the house. Yes, he’s anxious as hell if I’m not present in the house. Yes, he’s on a behavior modification plan that includes plenty of social interaction and positive reinforcement of confident, sedate behavior and appropriate greetings.

So. Learned Helplessness (aka clinical depression) is usually overcome in humans with drugs and cognitive therapy. When no longer receiving negative stimuli, dogs usually recover quickly. However, Henry continues to claw at the inside of (although doesn’t make a huge effort to escape) his crate, continues to wet his crate (although now he pees out the door instead of wetting every surface inside the crate), and otherwise continues to demonstrate helpless, hopeless behavior … even though the consequences that taught him that he was helpless (laying in his own waste with an empty stomach and whipworms gnawing his insides) have been removed. Frankly, he *is* helpless — he can’t get out, and I’m not present. I know he can hold his bladder because he does sometimes. His entire attitude of the crate is negative even though it’s as positive (warm, dry, soft bed, lots of white noise and a radio, treats, stuffed kongs, fed in crate, etc.) an experience as can be made.

So now the question is… keep going, or try something different? There’ll be a slight reset soon as I go visit my parents over the holiday and leave Henry in a high-attention boarding kennel and Eowyn gets her second FHO…