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*

To me, the natural rythms of the dogs’ needs are one of the best associated benefits of dog ownership. To fulfill their own needs, the mutts enforce a schedule on me. My natural tendency is to get up somewhere around noon and go to bed whenever my eyelids get too heavy to support conscious thought. This isn’t the best schedule for a number of reasons. It keeps me from going to work on time and going to bed in time to wake up rested.

As soon as the sun comes up, the dogs are ready for breakfast… which leads me to get up and eat too. As soon as the sun goes down, they’re whining and putting their heads in my lap for dinner… which leads me to notice that maybe I should feed myself. Bedtime isn’t an abstract concept, it’s bedtime, with all three of us curled up in various corners of the bedroom. It’s another reinforcement of the symbiotic nature of the relationship between dog and human.

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.

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!

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.

First, gather your materials. You’ll need a paw glove, some tape (I like the CVS gentle tape, pictured below) a square of gauze (to keep the infection from getting on the inside of the glove), neosporin or whatever your preferred antibiotic is, and something to clean out the inside of the hot spot with — an alcohol pad or cotton swab with alcohol.

CVS gentle tape -- it has no adhesive and only sticks to itself.

The first step is to clean/flush out the wound. You want to make sure that there isn’t anything left in there like a splinter or some sand that will continue to cause irritation. The second step is to goober it up with Neosporin. I use a liberal amount.

Goober! Goober!

After it’s all goobered up, I wrap it in a piece of gauze that will keep the gooberage and any residual liquids or slime from getting onto the paw glove. The paw gloves are re-useable, the gauze is not.

Wrap it in gauze

Then I secure the gauze with some of the CVS gentle tape. Since it only sticks to itself, it’s perfect for use on our furry friends.

Secure the gauze with the gentle tape.

Since Henry absolutely hates having the paw gloves on, I secure it with tape too.

The paw gloves are Paw Tectors Paw Protectors. Eo’s hooves need the large, Henry would do better with the medium. The supplied velcro really only works if the dog wants it to stay on, so I usually supplement with tape if it’s for medicinal purposes.

I usually leave it on for about 36 hours, and then take it off and bathe the foot. If the pink is gone and the dog stops licking at it, I don’t worry about it any more.

Again, I’m not a vet. It could be that this is totally wrong … please speak up in the comments if this is true. But it’s worked for both the dogs for a few years.

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.

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…

Just given our local examples, the PetSmart is clean, the staff is friendly and adult, the displays are always neat and organized, there’s a lot of beneficial services right in-store, and where they do offer things like cat adoptions, they get the animals locally through a rescue or shelter, not through a puppy mill like the mall store does. They offer grooming, training, veterinary services, and everything else you need right in the store.

PetCo on the other hand always looks like something exploded in the store, and they don’t seem to have enough staff to put it back together. It’s difficult to get to a lot of the products (i.e. crates) that are stacked high on shelves without help, and help is sometimes hard to find. My local store offers only grooming; I don’t personally think it’s a bad thing to limit the services in-store because the staff is very good about referring people to the diferent types of services that are available in the general community. PetCo invites several animal rescues to hold weekly adoptions. PetCo refers people to several veterinarians in the area that I respect highly and guides people away from veterinarians that overcharge or seem to be in it for profits and not the animals. Our local PetCo is about half the size of the local PetSmart but manages to offer the same services — and it offers them in a way that’s good for the animals in most cases. For the most part, instead of being in cages in the aisles, birds are in a separate (soundproofed) aviary room where they don’t have to deal with the stress of people walking by constantly. It’s the little things that seem to matter.

Personally, I stick with whichever one has the products I like best. PetCo carries high-end foods like Solid Gold, Wellness, and several other minor brands, PetSmart does not (with very few exceptions like Royal Canid, but that’s no longer a very good product.) PetCo’s crates are of higher quality and can contain Henry during a panic attack. Henry’s destroyed three plastic and two wire crates from PetSmart. PetCo’s prices are usually more reasonable.

Hotly debated topic, but PetCo has really worked hard to be a better citizen than PetSmart has in a lot of ways… PetSmart provides services through the pet’s entire lifetime at a mediocre level whereas PetCo educates people about services that are already available through other small businesses in the community. While the former might be best for new pet owners, I respect the latter a lot coming from a large, national company.

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…