Posts made by lvoss

No she is not too old to train. She is still a young dog and young dogs chew. My 10 1/2 month old will chew almost anything if not given good outlets for his energy.

One way to help increase the amount of mental stimulation she gets and give her an outlet for appropriate chewing and extra energy is to stop feeding her from a bowl and start feeding her from Kongs and other food dispensing toys. You can also set some of her daily ration aside to use as rewards for calm behavior. The stark contrast between the more work to get food from the Kongs and toys and the easy to get food from paying attention to you and being calm should help to make her more responsive to your training efforts as there will be more motivation to figure out how to get the easy food.

My old man was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma in September. The primary tumor is on his soft palette and he has a metastasis on his neck. Some days he does not curl his tail much and when he does it is a loose curl, he just doesn't have the muscle tone to curl it any tighter any more. We were given 2 options for treating him, the first would have required him to go in weekly for radiation treatments that might have bought him 3-6 months. He would have had to spend 4-6 hours at the vet and undergone anesthesia at each appointment. He hates vet visits. The second option was treat with piroxicam, an NSAID that has shown some activity against this type of cancer. We have opted for giving him the piroxicam and doing our best to make him comfortable. He still likes to eat but stretching his head all the way to the floor to eat out of a bowl is no longer comfortable so we bought him an elevated feeder. He is losing muscle tone so getting in the bed is hard so we got him his own ottoman to use as a stepping stool or his own bed, whichever he chooses. Right now, though we have good days and bad days, the good days are more often. He still seeks out the best sunny spots to lay, begs for tasty morsels, and comes down stairs eagerly for his breakfast but he moves slower and it seems each day he ages more than I thought possible. I know he will let us know when it is time but it is hard especially on the bad days, when the cold makes his old bones stiff and he doesn't move around so well.

Let Tayda tell you what she wants. Do the best you can and cherish the time you have. It doesn't sound like she has checked out but she may not be in it for the long fight anymore either.

My old man was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma in September. The primary tumor is on his soft palette and he has a metastasis on his neck. Some days he does not curl his tail much and when he does it is a loose curl, he just doesn't have the muscle tone to curl it any tighter any more. We were given 2 options for treating him, the first would have required him to go in weekly for radiation treatments that might have bought him 3-6 months. He would have had to spend 4-6 hours at the vet and undergone anesthesia at each appointment. He hates vet visits. The second option was treat with piroxicam, an NSAID that has shown some activity against this type of cancer. We have opted for giving him the piroxicam and doing our best to make him comfortable. He still likes to eat but stretching his head all the way to the floor to eat out of a bowl is no longer comfortable so we bought him an elevated feeder. He is losing muscle tone so getting in the bed is hard so we got him his own ottoman to use as a stepping stool or his own bed, whichever he chooses. Right now, though we have good days and bad days, the good days are more often. He still seeks out the best sunny spots to lay, begs for tasty morsels, and comes down stairs eagerly for his breakfast but he moves slower and it seems each day he ages more than I thought possible. I know he will let us know when it is time but it is hard especially on the bad days, when the cold makes his old bones stiff and he doesn't move around so well.

Let Tayda tell you what she wants. Do the best you can and cherish the time you have. It doesn't sound like she has checked out but she may not be in it for the long fight anymore either.

For most dogs any microbes in the food aren't going to be a big issue but if you have one that is immune compromised then it is a while different story. I use lots of whole foods in my feeding program but with one dog with late stage cancer and another recovering from an immune mediated disease, I don't feed raw. Honest Kitchen is the closest they get to raw. I also have two that puke anytime they get uncooked egg whites so many of the pre-made raw foods won't work with them.

3 out 3 of my black and whites have pink in their ears. Rally's are the blackest and Kyo's the pinkest but all have pink in their ears.

As I had said, I have seen dominant blacks with some interesting color variation in their black. It is not brindling but perhaps a sabling that causes and intermix of reddish black in the coat. One owner of such a dog noticed that the each hair actually seemed banded with a black and the red black. Another seemed to have a black over coat and a lighter undercoat. In my own dominant black, she seems to have expressed a single stripe of red in her coat so perhaps there is something in those cells deactivating her black gene. So I agree that there is plenty we don't understand about genetics that can cause variations that we don't know how to explain yet but I do think that we have a pretty good grasp of black, brindle, and red and it is exactly as I and then CongoMama explained.

You are not understanding what I am saying. Wili is a black carrying brindle, he has a black parent and a brindle parent and therefore inherited the black gene from his dam and brindle gene from his sire. When he produces offspring he can only pass on the black gene or the brindle gene to each offspring. If the other parent is red and white then the black offspring do not carry the brindle gene since they inherited his black gene, his brindle offspring did not inherit the black gene they got the brindle gene. This is based on genetic research that identified the location and mutation that causes brindle in dogs, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17483404

Black and brindle are at the same locus so a dog can only pass on either black or brindle to its offspring not both. The fact that Damisi inherited her father's black means she could not have inherited his brindle and therefore had no brindle gene to pass to her offspring.

I will say that my black and white Sophie has a single clear red stripe on her thigh. It is very clearly red, but she is a black and white and produced two lovely black boys bred to a red and white stud dog. I have also seen black and white dogs with red banded hairs so there is variation in black coats that is not brindling.

Arlene, looking at Johnny's pedigree there is no way he could be a black brindle. The only brindle in the pedigree is behind his dam's sire. Since she inherited her sire's black, she could not have inherited his brindle, they are inherited at the same loci, so there is no place for Johnny to have gotten brindle. Why do you think that he is a black brindle?

I would definitely find a different vet. If the techs are not good enough to give a vaccine in one go, I don't think I would trust them with any other procedure they may need perform during the life of my dogs. It is really hard to find good vets. I have 3 vet offices that I use and am lucky to have found some wonderful vets who hire great staff. All the vets I go to listen to me about my dogs' care which is top of the list in finding a good vet. One who dismisses you as a pet owner who doesn't know anything but thinks they do, will not work with you to meet the individual needs of your dog.

Did you administer benadryl prior to Oakley getting the vaccine? We had to do that with a vaccine reactive cat though we rarely had to vaccinate him after his severe vaccine reaction.

If I have a dog that is a flight risk then I set up extra security measures to prevent bolting like putting an ex-pen around the door to add an extra barrier.

Accidents happen but blaming them on the dog is not right.

You put a leash on her and walk her until she pees. My first basenji usually waited until he felt we were both equally miserable when he was younger. In his old age he has finally decided that running to the closest tree, peeing as fast as possible, and dashing back in is the best plan.

Yes, he was well behaved.

We met Tucker in June, it would be nice to meet his owners too.

Also, with hearing loss it isn't always all or nothing, they usually lose certain ranges first so they can hear some things but not others. Also, your vet may not diagnose the vision loss. We were very surprised to find out how near sighted our eldest female has become but the only reason we know was because the vet opthamologist used her in a study he was doing on a new diagnostic tool. It does explain why she is really grumpy about the other dogs jumping up around her, she can't tell who it is all the time especially when they are moving quickly toward her.

The reason why Flexi leads are discouraged or disallowed by many nose work instructors is that they can be unsafe for both dogs and humans. When dogs are in odor they often start to speed up to get to source and can accelerate to the end of lead giving at best a leash correction for going to source, which is counter productive to building value in source, or at worst injuring the dog. Flexis also pose a significant risk to humans as there have been many reported incidents of injuries ranging from things as minor as line burns to as severe as severed achilles tendons.

It is therefore recommended that nose work handlers learn to use a long line, a 15-20 foot leash, for their dogs if they feel they to give them more space. When using a long line correctly the owner must focus on the dog's speed to feed in and out the line and tend to be better at keeping up with their dogs and preventing the leash corrections that happen on flexis. The long lines are also far less prone causing human injury.

I have been working in nose work for going on 3 years, and work my dogs in most spaces on 6 foot leashes but mine don't pull me all over the search area. If we are working a large open space where they are more likely to want to get further away from me to work then I use a long line. It works for me and my dogs but I also have many students who work their dogs exclusively on long line and in doing so they have developed truly awe inspiring leash handling skills.

Though Lepto does exist in this area the serovars in the vaccines sold do not give immunity for the ones present in this area so my vet does not recommend it. Also, though administered only once every year it is often only effective for 6 months giving people a false sense of security that their animal is protected when it may not be.

The only vaccine that states mandate is Rabies and each state is different in how often is mandated though most are now 3 years.

As far as I know there is only 1 brand that has been challenge tested effective without a 1 year booster, Continuum DAP. All other brands are boostered at 1 year then good for 3 years under the current protocols.

I think rat terrier is more likely