Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Sol has mastered the sit command, so we have started teaching her "leave it" because that is a completely foreign concept to her. We have completed a few training sessions so far and they have gone really well.
We cover the treat with our hand, to indicate "leave it" and then we tap twice next to the treat to let her know when it is OK to "take it".
Here is a little video of a training session. There are a few sits in there as well.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Whenever Sol does something a bit different from Benjamin, Henry & Luna, I always remark that she is "old school". Of course, now that I am sitting down to write this post, I can only think of one less than flattering example, but I will share it anyway.
When the pugs go out to go potty in the yard, Benjamin, Henry & Luna all sniff out a good spot to pee and then pee on the spot they were smelling. Sol however, likes to just smell the spot and pee at the same time, so she isn't actually marking the spot she smelled.
Now perhaps this is how most pugs do things. I don't know. My survey sample is only 4 pugs, so I could be off base here, but since she does things differently than the other 3, younger pugs, I always think to myself that she is old school.
Then the scenario plays out in my head that there is a whole generation of pugs out there, like Sol, that have their own way of doing things that differs from all those young, whippersnapper pugs of today. And I am sure all the younger pugs have it so much easier nowadays than the pugs of Sol's generation. After all, their walk to the dog park isn't up hill, both ways.
Oh, the things that run through my mind while I am waiting for the pugs to go potty! Have a good weekend, everyone.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Yesterday, we held another swim camp for the pugs. The format was a bit different, but I think the pugs got their fair share of exercise so all was well.
It is really hard to keep the pugs on track and get video, so I focused on getting some video of Sol during swim camp. Look at the little girl go.
Sol Swimming from obp on Vimeo.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Despite having her very own pillow on the bed, Sol seems to always take mine. I'm not really sure why she is so confused. It's not like I don't have my name on it or something. Do you see those red letters on the pillow Sol? You know, the ones that say R-I-N. Well, that means that this is my pillow. Somehow, I don't think that matters much to her.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Friday, July 10, 2009
About 2 weeks ago, Sol began having a "rumbly tummy". Just out of the blue you would hear sounds like her stomach was growling but (yikes) she wasn't hungry. She began pacing and couldn't get settled to rest. She only wanted to eat grass. She did end up throwing up 2 times but her poopy was okay. After she she vomited, she seemed to feel better. And while it only lasted about a day, we ended up taking her to the vet. He put her on Flagyl and Pepcid AC and we began a low residue prescription diet (Iams canned). She seemed to be doing just fine and we chalked it up to little Solsey baby having a "bug" in her tummy.
She finished her week on the special diet, took all her meds and we weaned her back to her regular (home cooked) food. Well, that lasted only about 3 days before her symptoms began to re-appear. Her stomach began churning again. Since it began exactly the same way, we decided to take her right away before she ended up throwing up and/or having a loose stool.
So, off to the vet we went again today. She's back on the Flagyl, the Pepcid, her special canned Iams (low residue variety) and a chewy called ProstoraMax (which helps build and maintain a healthy digestive system). He also wanted her to have an Immodium (one pill with 1/2 when we got home and the other 1/2 eight hours later.) The main problem, though, was that while she was prescribed all these medications, she had no interest in eating. (Now, you can imagine, a Pug with no appetite?! Does such an animal exist?) Well, fortunately, we took great strides in helping her eat. It was quite messy but we ended up hand feeding her wet dog food. (Ew.) She managed to down all her meds and by her later night "dinner" she was again pug-excited to eat.
As for the long term diagnosis....? Well, it is sort of a wait and see type of issue right now. The vet tech drew blood at the vet's recommendation and our satisfaction. The vet said that the first bout probably just wasn't treated long enough and that we probably weaned her back to her old food a little too quickly. Sol is on the meds for 2 weeks now instead of one week. Fearful as usual as we are with Sol, our minds wondered to the "what if its cancer again?" worry. We spoke to the vet in depth about this concern. He cautioned that it was too early for us to be paranoid. (But hey, for us, its never too early! Ha!) He did say that he will pay close attention to her bloodwork and compare from previous drawings. While he was optimistic that there was nothing to get overly concerned with yet, he did caution us about possible maladies that we would further explore if the current plan to heal baby Sol doesn't pan out. We are trying to stay open minded in all of this. Yet this is probably the hardest of all things to deal with for us because we have no idea about her history. (Heck, while we're pretty sure she is at least spayed, we really don't even know that for sure.) But she has only been in the family about 7 months now and while it feels like we have had her forever, she had so much life before us that we know nothing about. We just want to do the right thing by her and keep her well and have her live out her golden years as sweet and lovingly as possible.
Get well sweet Solsey.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
As the months pass we are learning more and more how to communicate with Sol. Sol isn't just hard of hearing, she is completely deaf. At first I wasn't convinced, but after observing her since she arrived there have been numerous occasions when she doesn't even flinch an ear when loud sounds occur.
The main thing that we have learned is that Sol is very in tune with vibrations. Before we learned this, if she was looking away and we wanted to get her attention we would have to walk over to her and giver he a little tap so she would look our way. But through a little experimentation we quickly learned that if you stomp your feet, she will pick up on the vibrations and turn your way.
The only problem with the stomp your feet attention method is that it freaks Luna out. Feet stomping, kicking, or any other sudden movement with your feet causes Luna to immediately drop to the floor, her bellying touching the ground, and cower. The fast moving feet issue is the lone issue that has carried over from her previous life. As an added bonus, Luna has very poor vision, which makes it even easier to startle the little one.
So, the method to get the deaf dog's attention sends the blind dog into a panic.
As much as I love the feet stomping method to get Sol's attention, you can only use it if you are 100% sure that Luna is not in the room. I feel like a Venn Diagram is in order to help illustrate when it is appropriate to use the feet stomping method to get Sol's attention. Then I could file it away with all the eye drops spreadsheets we have for Luna.
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