She can sing this to John.
Little dogs are experts at the oooooo choruses!
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Lily, Open Threads
She can sing this to John.
Little dogs are experts at the oooooo choruses!
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Lily, Open Threads
In my ongoing effort to keep and maintain a high quality and classy website, I am pleased to announce that during our morning constitutional, Lily finally, after 60+ hours, did a #2, and it was a beauty. Quite honestly, I’m not sure where she was keeping it. At any rate, that is a relief, as I was beginning to get concerned. I guess she is starting to get relaxed, which is good.
I’m startingto see some of her personality come out. She still spends most of the day willingly in her crate (I never shut the door, figuring she needs her safe personal space) or down at my feet under the desk, and doesn’t explore the apartment much, but I’m sensing a real difference. When I woke up this morning, she was passed out in her crate, but unlike before, she had a very open body posture. When I go to get her out of the crate, she doesn’t look petrified, and when I talk to her, her ears perk up and I see recognition.
For those of you looking at the picture and saying “She doesn’t look very relaxed,” well, she does by comparison, and also I just violated her before taking the picture. I rammed a pill down her throat, then gave her a beaker full of liquid penicillin, and then inspected her for ticks, so she is wondering what is going on.
She also is much more animated when we go for walks, and is starting to explore while we are out, sniffing and what not. She still has moments when she startles and tries to make a break for it with her tail between her legs, but this is happening less frequently. She is also not freaking out as much when a biker whizzes by us on the trail.
She still doesn’t recognize her name, but I am spending a lot of time just saying it when I am around her. I figure if I just keep saying Lily when she is looking at me and I am looking at her, she will figure it out eventually.
At any rate, getting Lily is turning out to be the best decision I have ever made. I’ve got work to do, you are on your own till later this afternoon (unless Doug, Tim, and Anne have something to say).
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Lily, Open Threads
For those of you sick of the dog already, my apologies, but it is only going to get worse. Maybe we can work with Cleek to make a pie filter for Lily posts and I will just put something in every post so that it automatically skips it. At any rate, some pics from Day 2 on the rails to trails path.
These aren’t the best pics, because juggling a camera while trying to get a timid dog who doesn;t know her name to look at you while people are whizzing by on bikes is not the easiest thing, but here she is with her timid face:
I was really excited about this picture, because her tail was up and curled and you would get a look at it, then at the last second she tucked it down between her legs in timid mode:
And here she is, for some reason, riding on the floor on the way home. Normally she sits right on the passenger seat, but who knows what she is thinking:
At any rate, I am seeing signs of life and I can see her becoming less timid by every minute. other than my parents Jack Russell’s, I am so used to willful and disobedient dogs that Lily is a weird experience so far. The entire time we are walking, she is looking to me for affirmation. I have a hunch she is going to be really easy to train.
I got stuff to do, I’ll be back this afternoon.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Dog Blogging, Lily
Day one finished, no fatalities.
As I write this, she is lying at my feet under the desk, her second favorite place other than the crate. Although, I will say that she seemed pretty fond of the bed. She seems a little bit better, but I am starting to think she was either abused by men or is just used to being with her crazy cat lady, because she seems more afraid of strange men than strange women.
I measured her food, and all she has eaten was 1/4 cup. I’m no longer going to just leave the food out, though, and will put it out tomorrow morning before our walk on the rails to trails. She did, however, eat a treat tonight, so that was a step. I will also say this- I have never met another animal that takes pills this easily. I pop it in her month, and it is gone.
I took her over to my brother’s house so I could check on my garden and they could meet, and she behaved ok. She is just really shy around new people. On the upside, she does seem to really perk up when we go out. Her ears go up a bit, she gets a pep in her step, and her tail comes up and curls a little bit. Sometimes she looks like a fox, other times a little deer.
The funniest thing is her car habits. She already loves the car, but not like any other dog I have met. She hops right in, sits down in the passenger seat, curls up in ball and passes out. No sticking the head out the window, no panting and slobbering in the wind, just popping in the seat and konking out.
Also, Tunch has already settled down and is no longer acting weird every time she comes into a room. As we speak, he is back to his busy schedule of holding down the futon. I’m giving it a month before they are spooning.
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Lily
A quick Lily update. She spent the whole night in her crate, and she doesn’t like to get out of it much. I got her out of it at 6:30, and she immediately came into the home office with me and hid underneath the desk. I had to get her out, took her down to the Rails to Trails paths, and we went for an hour walk.
I haven’t seen her eat or do #2 yet, but she did do #1 and there were no accidents anywhere in the cage or elsewhere, so I guess that is good. She is just really, really timid. That isn’t a concern for now, and is to be expected. I’d be timid if I were in her shoes, and it doesn’t help that she has a guy who walks like Lurch at the other end of the leash and a ginormous cat sizing her up as a tasty snack. If she continues to stay in her shell, I will worry about it in a couple of weeks.
She really has no clue what to do on a leash, though. Sometimes she walks right by me, other times she runs around in a circle looking like she is trying to get away from me, other times she acts like a normal dog. She also does not seem to care for any of the doggie treats (although this will surprise no one to learn that Tunch absolutely loves them), and she is not chewing her bone and doesn’t know what to do with bones. I’m really guessing she has never been socialized at all and has no clue how to be a dog.
She swallowed her pill with no problem (Prednisone), and she didn’t fight me when I gave her her liquid medicine (Cephalexin). I measured out her food last night, so when I get home from work I will measure what is left and see if she has eaten anything. Hopefully she just needs to reach a comfort level. As I type this, I hear Tunch in the other room trying to get at the treats I have on a shelf, so I need to wrap this up.
Other than that, things are going well. I’m just going to give her some time and try to balance giving her space with making sure she knows who the leader of the pack is around here.
Any thoughts?
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Dog Blogging, Lily, Open Threads
As I write this, there is a wet dog running around my place who is being very closely observed by a very shrill cat.
Pictures when the bleeding stops.
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Lily
So I spent a couple hours planning things out this morning, and I have compiled the following list of things I need to have, provided everything turns out ok at the vet:
food and water bowl
night-time crate
travel crate for car
harness
leashes (getting a buddy system)
dog brush
Steeler’s collar
id tags
kong toys
sleeping pad for crate
I really don’t intend to turn this into a stimulus package, so I am going to use one of my parents crates that they used for G&G. Is that ok? Or should I just break down and spend the money on a new one that has no scent?
Regarding feeding, what is the best way to feed a dog? Twice a day? Once a day? Should I feed her in her crate? Or should it be in the pantry with fatbody’s Tunch’s food and water machine?
Also, I checked Barnes and Nobles for books dealing with dogs with anxiety issues, and I really could not find very much. I did find these two books that looked worthwhile, but did not deal specifically with animals that have anxiety issues: the first was The Dog Listener by Jan Fennell, and the second was How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend by the Monks of New Skete. Of the hundreds of books there, those looked to be the best. Any thoughts on that?
Finally, I’m thinking about trying the Comfort Zone thing out. It is relatively inexpensive, and if I use it in the same room as her night crate, it might help. Or is this a load of nonsense? And if it does work, do I risk creating a situation where I have to have the damned thing and she becomes addicted to it? If it works and I can just use it for the short term until she is more stable, that would be worth it, but I really do not want to have to spend the next ten years buying this crap.