Lessons From and For 4 Legs

One time I heard an illustration about the difference between a plan and a purpose. For the purpose of dog training it would look like this:

Your purpose is to have a well mannered, well rounded, skilled pup. Your plan to do so is to train that dog the necessary amount to pass her CGC and be able to perform the skills for Rally Obedience.

But on the road to your purpose there are a lot of “road blocks”. Reactivity rears its reactive head, other 4legged friends get Degenerative Myelopathy and require much more daily care, your pathetic 2legged body just doesn’t cooperate (ok thats a wimpy road block, but honest), real life just does get in the way of your plan.

Here is the superiority of having a purpose. A purpose is not so rigid that you can’t take a different route, bypass the road blocks and move on towards your ultimate goals.

A plan get derailed by the roadblock, not having a contingency plan to keep the purpose in focus the whole plan is derailed and failure looms! (Dramatic thunder and lightening booms here.)

I have a purpose so I do not feel failure loom, but I take a lot of refocusing to stay on the road to my ultimate goal of a well rounded, well mannered Maizey. It seems to take many adjustment in my plans that allows for contingencies.

It was only on August 11 that I did the last of these get organized and giddyup posts. Time for a new one, sorry! Maybe I should just make this a regular monthly feature to give forewarning to everyone!

Since this is the month of the walking challenge the plan is to work the rally skills we both know the basics of into our walks.

For an easy example, HALT: Handler stops, dog sits in heel position team heals forward. Should be pretty simple as we stop for each road crossing and can do random halts in any walk. Simple enough!

Another example, HALT DOWN: Handler stops, dog sits in heel position, then downs from sit. Team heels forward from down. Same application of above and all skills she knows well.

Okay, for the enactment of this plan I think I am going to need more flash cards! The same way I keep the TL’s skills for that session on a carabiner to my belt I can choose a couple Rally skills for that day/walk and put them with the TL’s ones. Ahh. . . now the plans are flowing.

For the CGC skills I want to focus on: obviously we will meet plenty of strangers walking so Test 1: Accepting a friendly stranger, can continue as aforementioned, with the addition of some increasing distraction level by walking past the elementary school near here, she LOVES kids! This also works nicely for Test 2: Sitting politely for petting and obviously for Test 4: Out for a walk (walking on a loose lead) also for Test 5: Walking through a crowd.

Again I can see the usefulness of more flash cards for this too. YAY! (I do love flash cards you know!)

Also this month I would like to work on Test 10: Supervised separation as the trouble spot to focus on. Having this nailed down more would have made our trip much easier on both of us. . . but that is its own post in itself!

Of course we will continue to work on Ricky’s Training Challenge, and finishing up our last 5 L2 skills:
distance, stand, stand-stay, target, trick.

So in conclusion I have a good purpose, which is what keeps me going and a lot of plans and contrivances. Perhaps a month in review may be in line here too! Goodness its, plans, contrivances and purposes, Oh my!

"Do you think she is biting off more than I can chew? Good thing I'm such a snarf hog!"

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of NMEDA. All opinions are 100% mine.

Years ago when I worked 60 hours a week instead of playing with 4legged friends full time I was in home health care. I helped people who had Cerebral Palsy, were disabled from age or injury and for most of my working years I did hospice care.

It is incredibly hard and rewarding work. Lately around here I have been doing caregiving of the 4legged variety. I find it mostly just hard, especially as I feel the hospice part of our 4legged care is looming in the future.

All this has me thinking about the challenges of being a caregiver and the enormous challenges of having a disability. On the Training Levels Yahoo Group many are training their own service dog. And a challenge they have too! Yet they are really stepping up to the plate and asking for guidance to do so. But how unique their challenges are. I know how hard it has been for me to teach Maizey to LLW, can you imagine doing so with an electric wheel chair?

Perhaps we could all learn something from NMEDA. A non-profit group that helps educate people on equipment and safe driving for disabled persons.

Working in home health care I saw first hand how all equipment is not made equal. So it’s nice that they do personal interviews to help people be fitted for their personal needs.

Too bad they don’t do the same for our 4legged friends. One of the most important things you can do for a pup that has Degenerative Myelopathy is fit them for a supporting cart before they are paralyzed. Believe me it is complicated! Of course with Meeka’s further complications it doesn’t look like she will make it long enough to need a cart, but it’s always nice to know your options!

Who knows if that ends up being a need for her maybe I can find a company that is as informative as NMEDA!

First a Meeka update: Meekers ate!! And drank!! And asked to go outside!! Such simple things but such good news. This morning I gave in and hand fed her. I knew she didn’t want to eat but because she is her she would if I asked her. So she ate about a cup, which I was happy with. Then tonight I boiled her a mahi mahi fillet and fed her about a cup of the broth with her normal dinner-all gone!

What does it mean? I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s good news to me. She even ruffed at the dogs barking outside, which is more alert than she has been for days. So for tonight we will take the relief she is showing and maybe I won’t worry, well not as much anyways!

The walking challenge: I’m not too much in the mood for a walking challenge, but Maizey is. Who knows maybe Meeka will feel better enough to take a stroll too. (How’s that for positive thinking?)

Basically I feel that if I don’t commit myself to doing something healthy for us I may just sit around here and go even crazier and we all know, if not believe, that exercise is good for us. Plus I just don’t feel like it’s fair to the Turbo Maizey to be cooped up around here. Add to that how winter is looming and I figure its time to get in gear.

Also I think we can combine our walking challenge with Ricky’s Training Challenge by working in some routes with more dogs and other distractions that are challenging. Plus with the fowl mood I have been in lately just getting out the door should be a challenge to me!

However I am nothing if not a realist so this won’t be a huge challenge as miles go. I have settled on 15 miles in 30 days. Which puts our start date today, September 1, 2010 and the end date September 30, 2010.

I know its sort of wimping out on the miles but between the week of wedding commitments coming up (yes I know another wedding and we all know how I feel about them!), the weekend conference in the middle of the month, and various and sundry other 2legged commitments 15 miles is about all I think we can be successful at. And if I am supposed to always set the girls up for success, shouldn’t that be a 4legged lesson for me too?

So if you want to join us the rules are as always, which means there are none. Want to walk, run, blade or bike through a mile? Go for it! Want to do 40 miles? Rock on! Let us know if you want to join us in any comment and I will add your names to the list, then just keep us updated on your progress and I will update the list. Of course all good-on-ya’s and well wishes will be appreciated. Especially on that, okay those, days when the “just don’t wanna’s” get in the way!

Walking Challenge 15 miles in 30 days is on!

My big girl is still not in good shape. She looks old. I don’t know how she could age so in just a week but she has.

I think it is in how she is carrying herself and the weight she has lost. My emotional brain is even convinced she has grown more gray in the last days. Or maybe thats me who has grown more gray from worrying about her.

There have been several 4legged friends we know who have gone suddenly over the last while, and each time it is like a kick in the gut. So shocking. And I think what could be worse? But now I wonder if watching her waste away is what is worse. Of course either is tragic and unfair and the cause of much grief.

Yesterday was vet day. We saw the other vet at out clinic. He is, as our regular vet is, very experienced and very thorough. He did a solid ortho exam and found. . . not much. She did react to the flexing of her hip, but it was extreme and he felt it was less out of pain and more just, “HEY! What the heck are you doing to my hip?” I too read it that way.

All the symptoms he did see he felt were more from a neurological problem. Most likely Degenerative Myelopathy. One test that indicates D.M. is to turn the back foot over so the dog is bearing weight on the tops of its toes. As you can imagine a healthy dog would quickly right this uncomfortable situation. Not Meeka. It’s as if the messages aren’t getting through to the brain which is exactly what happens with D.M.

An autoimmune disease, D.M. causes the body to attack the myelin, the sheath that insulates the spinal chord. As the myelin degenerates the brain can not send or receive messages from the lower limbs. Weakness ensues, and eventually total paralysis. There is little to no treatment.

Here’s the catch, D.M is not painful and normally an animal will continue to live out their life with little personality changes, although with their back end continuing to worsen, not Meeka. She is obviously in pain, extremely lethargic, reluctant to eat and go outside to do her business, and appears generally miserable.

All indicating a complication beyond the D.M. A complete senior blood panel was taken yesterday. All normal. One liver enzyme was slightly elevated. Not enough to indicate anything other than her seniorness.

Which puts us back to cancer. Bleh. A slight chance of osteosarcoma, so very common in Rotties, but more likely a tumor in her abdomen somewhere. Most bone cancers by the time they are detectable in x-ray have already spread to lungs and other organs. The Melanoma she had last year makes a tumor even more likely, although in dogs they are a tumor that is less likely to metastasize. Ultra sound would be the next option to find a tumor. Also x-rays for arthritis and lung tumors.

Can you see the dollar signs spinning in my cartoon eyeballs?

I hate that money comes into this, but I have to live in the real world and we are talking a major chunk of change just for diagnosis of what may not be treatable for her. And then things get really complicated.

For D.M. which there is no test for but symptomatically she has, one of the main things to slow the progression is to limit stress. Makes sense from the autoimmune disease standpoint. If your body is attacking you the last thing you need is exterior stressors. All I can think of with diagnosing these other complications is how stressful they would be. So with the likely hood of cancer and her age is it fair to put her through that when she may have only a matter of months left from the standpoint of D.M.?

When she faced the Melanoma we frankly examined what would be fair as far as cancer treatment and we feel that although there has been much progress in the world of canine cancer treatments it still is not fair to an elderly dog to put them through that.

Meeka lives in the now. She already cannot understand what is happening to her. She already seems confused and depressed that her body does not work right. Today she tried to play with Maizey and I and when she couldn’t she just collapsed where she was and refused to try to move again.

I can’t explain to her the treatment that will make her feel worse will hopefully eventually make her better. Dogs don’t live on hope as humans do. Dogs don’t understand the why’s, just the realities of what is now. Perhaps a superior way of being sometimes? But not in the issue of why she is laid out from chemo or radiation.

So I am stuck in the what to do’s. I like to know why’s and I hate uncertainty. Without the D.M. I almost surely would proceed with diagnosing the other symptoms, what ever the financial cost. But what about the costs of further stressing her and aggravating the D.M.? Is it worth it when it is most likely something we won’t treat anyways? I don’t know.

Is there a point when you just love them and make their lives peaceful and as comfortable as possible and work on letting them go? How do you know how much to fight for them if fighting for them could make them suffer more? I don’t know.

All I do know is she is still my awesome big girl and is loyally trying to comfort us as we struggle to figure out what she needs. The best 4legged lesson of all? Sometimes the why’s don’t matter as much as loving each other through the realities of what is.

Anyone who has 4legged friends knows how much time is spent finding good chewables.

There are various criteria ranging from will the dog eat it to how fast will she eat it. I mean if it’s not more appetizing than the kitchen table then it’s not much good.
Our first dog trainer introduced us to the Nylabone when we brought home our big boy, Summit. After we told her how the first night home he decided the arm of the dining room chair was the best chew toy available to him she said get him a Nylabone. We did and he loved it. We still have that old bone around here somewhere.

Since then Nylabone has come out with other chewable chewies. One of the new ones is Nyalbone Nubz, an edible dental chew. 

Another thing anyone with 4legged friends knows is that dental work is expensive and preventative care is the best way to go. Since not all pups love getting their teeth brushed but they do all love chewing, a dental chew can be a helpful thing for cleaner teeth and fresher breath.

Another cool thing about the Nylabone Nubz is being able to break the 18 larger sized bones into smaller treat sizes.

So I guess the next time I hit Costco I’ll be checking out the $3.50 coupon to see if these new Nylabone treats will be one of the best chewies for my girls!

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Hampton Hotels. All opinions are 100% mine.

Traveling really got me thinking of the pro’s and con’s of where to stay. We were camping on the way to South Dakota and back which had us driving through Wyoming and obviously there wasn’t a hotel in sight.

Maybe I should have entered the Hampton Chain of Friends Sweepstakes. With a grand prize of having the entire hotel for a weekend even my whole family of 17 could have stayed there with us. Of course first prize of a weekend stay for us and three friends would have saved us setting up camp in the rain on the way home!

Of course there are always pro’s to staying in a hotel. A private bathroom, instead of the common area shower stalls we had at the campground not being the least of it! I’m thinking wifi would rank way up there for me too.

Although I’m not sure how Hampton Inn would feel when mehusbandy set up his smoker and made us fall off the bone baby back ribs for dinner one night. And while I should be too mature to love toasting a marshmallow over the camp fire I admittedly am not!

Still by the time we got home having had a few more of the comforts of home I could have had at Hampton was looking mighty nice! So maybe I’ll be checking out this contest for my next family trip and maybe you should too!

As stated in the last challenge we posted for there were two areas of CGC prep that will be challenging for Maizey: Test 1: Accepting a friendly stranger and Test 10: Supervised separation.

On our trip there was plenty of chances to work on both but for this weeks training challenge I thought I could show you some of the progress made in Accepting a friendly stranger.

Ahhh. . . this greeting a friendly stranger thing is nice!"

Technically for the CGC Maizey will need to sit and ignore a stranger that is friendly to me. I felt this was going to be too big of a lump for her to train all at once so we started with helping her develop more manners and self control when people greeted her.

I felt this especially important for in our real world interactions people generally bypass me and head straight to her, making it important she knows how to respond appropriately. I can’t say I really blame them, I mean who am I compared to her glory?

It was suggested that since she has such a good leave it that I apply that to help her not greet people that may not want greeted. (A totally foreign idea to my little social butterfly!) I started this when it would be easiest to help her succeed, while we were walking past people. It worked well, as I could keep her moving and use natural rewards of a destination along with treat rewards.

I also worked hard to be assertive in talking to people that wanted to greet her. Maybe I am so used to people crossing the street to avoid greeting my Meeka that the liberty people take to greet Maizey never ceases to amaze me. I mean I can understand people wanting to greet her pretty princess face, but the way people swoop in over her with their high squeaky voices to grab her long ears makes me want to jump on them!

So before we left I scripted some brief sentences I could use to direct the 2legged members of the meetings in more appropriate behavior. I tried to use language that helped them feel like they would be doing her a favor and not me, since it is her they love so much.

“Ooohh your dog is so cute!!”

To which I respond with a simple, “Thank you, she really likes to be petted under her chin.”

But the most successful was a simple, “Thanks! She is practicing for a test to help her be a good girl so could you please pet her only when she is sitting?”

Obviously we all know 4legged members of our environment often prove themselves easier to train then the 2legged ones so this wasn’t always successful, but it was good practice for me and I think my assertiveness helped Maizey feel more confident that I had things handled.

You can tell in the pictures she is not always sitting, but she is learning self control. I also tried to adjust the the criteria to the circumstances so if it was a high distraction situation I lowered the criteria from sitting to just keeping all four feet on the ground.

While still need to practice in a formal CGC Test type setting I am happy with the lessons we bothed learned and confident we will be able to practice enough to pass that area of her CGC, eventually.

"Sitting isn't as much fun as smothering you, but thanks for petting me anyways!"

TRAINING CHALLENGE WEEK 3,4
DATE and TIME: August
LOCATION: South Dakota
SKILLS TRAINED: Sit for greetings from 2legged friends and strangers, sweet solitude
SUMMARY: While still need to test in a formal CGC Test #1 setting, using a “leave it” to prevent greetings altogether and assertive direction on how to greet her to the people involved we saw good improvement. Her supervised separation may prove more challenging. Left her with mom several times, will bark if she can see me. Left her in trailer, and on long line all supervised by family. Does settle eventually. Big test was day took mehusbandy and meeka to city to go home, was gone from 8:00am-3:00pm. She did good. Went on walk, had two reactive episodes, but was calm on my return, not stressed and happy to see me.

Where to start? And we aren’t even finished yet!

Today we said goodbye to mehusbandy and Meeka. They had to go home early to be responsible. So on the road they go for a looong drive home just the two of them.

"I'm goin' HOME!"

That leaves me with the family and the princess of the shrill bark. I think that must be the theme of this trip so far: barking.

Reactive barking, plain old, “There’s a person! HEY! There’s another person and way down there is another person!”  Barking for the sake of baring.

Ah, but I could go on for days just with that.

Meeka is heavy in my thoughts today. I knew this would be a hard trip for her but I had no idea how hard. But the second day of driving she had to be helped into the truck. She is in so much pain. I called our friend the vet doubled her Tramodol dose. It seemed to ease her pain a bit.

"Do I look drugged to you?"

The hardest thing is knowing how she would like to be running around these beautiful mountains and instead seeing her sleepy from the medicine and unwilling to move much at all. A visit to the vet is in order as soon as I get home to her.

Traveling here was certainly an adventure. Meeka, Maizey and I had close quarters. But if there is a 4legged lesson in that that it’s that dogs manage to get as comfortable as they can no matter where they are. Meeka seemed to think the most comfy spot was to suspend her head on the front seat with her tail end on my lap and her front feet swinging free.

"This sure is a long drive crazydadman."

They were troopers, not complaining at all. But after about an hour of driving on day two Maizey summed it up well for the three of us.

"This wackadoo idea MUST have been my crazymomladys'!"

Then later in the day Meeka and I started with the “Are we there yet’s?”

As I have always been answered by my crazymomlady, “What did the monkey say when it’s tail got cut off by the lawn mower?”

“It won’t be long now!” (I know enter groans and eye’s rolling here, but it’s a family tradition and always does make us laugh.) Although Meeka did not like that joke too much, as her nubbin’ has never been long.

We followed two days of driving with a lot of fun packed sitting, eating yummy gourmet meals, some more sitting and relaxing, some more eating and some more sitting. Summed up well here:

"Huh? Why would you want me to move?"

So now I head back down the road with good company, though short 4legs and a mehusbandy to finish my hard work of sitting and keeping up with the turbo-maizey.

Coming soon will be a post of actual training and an update on Ricky’s challenge. But it will have to wait until I get home and we finish this hard work of relaxing!

It is the wee morning hours, where dark is darkest before dawn.

Why am I awake at this hour? Worry. I am not the best traveler and the “what ifs” weigh on my mind today.

What if Meeka is not okay? She has been crying in her sleep a bit lately. She takes a lot of care and I know she hurts a lot. What if this trip is too much for her? What if I shouldn’t have waited to do x-rays? What if it’s almost time for the biggest what if any can face with their 4 legged friend. . .?

And then there are the ridiculous what ifs that my brain dreams up: what if we get attacked by a bear? What if a giant owl swoops out of the sky and snatches my Maizey? Ridiculous I know, but this owl thing really did happen to a fellow Cavalier owner in Australia recently. Still I would say it exists in the realm of unlikely to getting struck by a meteor.

And then there are the the good things that don’t require what if-ing. The getting to spend 10 days with my little brother whom I never see enough of. Getting to swim with my sister in law. Seeing the rest of my family that live so far away. Spending seven days out of the hot, busy, crowded city. My mom’s breakfast! Mmm mmm good!

And the training opportunities abound galore. Meet and greets of the 2legged variety will be everywhere. I am declaring a new kind of zen: grandma zen. I’m not sure why but Maizey seems to think that she has a special mission to teach my grandma that Maizey hugs and kisses are essential to life. My Grandma does not share this view. Thus, Grandma Zen. LLW, car manners, swimming, stays, park it’s, truly the list goes on and on.

And so I leave on this note, there may be many what ifs to traveling and lots of work, but in the end the opportunities for 4legged lessons our weigh the need to stay in my homebody comfort zone.

A post of miscellany.

Miscellaneous item 1: Dog food I could really do a series on our dog food adventures, but this bit will have to do for now. Due to a very long story involving Meeka developing a miserable skin allergy that took us a year and half plus to get soothed down, I am quite paranoid and cautious when it comes to dog food.

I supplement kibble with things they need at the time, but the base is California Natural Herring and Sweet Potato. Meeka can have NO turkey, lamb, or chicken.

California Natural is a Natura product. However, recently Natura sold out (wether literally or not remains to be seen) to Proctor and Gamble. Personally I am not thrilled with this. Having already experienced one disaster due to dog food company changes thinking of my food going “corporate”, so to speak, doesn’t thrill me.

So when I picked up dog food yesterday I asked what they knew about quality, plant, source product and other changes that may have happened. I was happy to hear that as far as the retailer knows Natura’s contracts for all source products and their plant is still under contract until the end of the year. So for now things should be staying stable. As for later that will have to wait and see.

Miscellaneous item 2: Traveling I had all these good intentions to leave posts ready to publish while we are gone these next 10 days or so, but that just doesn’t seem to be happening. Man, traveling is a lot of work!

So I may be able to check in once while we are gone, but overall I guess I will be on a blogging hiatus. But certainly not a training hiatus. There should be plenty to work on with many, many challenges for Ricky’s challenge.

"Were ready! Lets go get dirty!"

And lots of play and fun. One thing I am sure Maizey is looking forward to? Swimming and swimming, oh ya and rolling in the dirt to get dry. (sighs and eye rolling from the crazymomlady, it’s my bed the dirty little mutt has to sleep in!)

Things Meeka is looking forward to? Lots of time with the crazymomlady and crazydadman.

Things I am looking forward to? Coming home! (Yeah I know I haven’t even left yet, but thats just the way I am!)