MaggieDog

One of my friends has an old dog (16yo) just diagnosed with a vestibular disorder. It's been about a week with very little improvement and she's starting to think about "the big decision" but I told her I might have some resources for her via you guys. If you have any suggestions for things she should look into it'd be greatly appreciated. This dog is her heart dog and she wants him to stick around as long as possible, though she's also very aware of his quality of life, too. her dog is currently on several meds and gets weekly acupuncture, but she's pretty open to anything at this point.

Talk to your vet but I'm pretty sure I've heard of idiopathic epilepsy in dogs Mike's age, though generally it does show up earlier, around age 3. My parents' dog developed epilepsy around age 3.5 and hers seemed to be triggered by her food (low quality Cycle at the time), ivermectin heartworm preventative, and stress.

It really depends on the dog - most who get the intranasal at the Humane Society I work at snuffle at least a bit. I know some vets that just do one nostril btw, and I've heard it doesn't require a lot of the vaccine for effectiveness so as long as some gets in there I don't usually worry much.

I get my dogs used to muzzle handling outside of vet care type situations when I *have* to do something - it's actually accomplished by playing "got your nose" courtesy of my DH most of the time lol. Once they're comfortable with playful muzzle restraint, then i'll do the KC vax: hold the muzzle, tip the nose up, and squirt. I generally will hold their nose up for just a few seconds after administration and then they're free to go. They don't love it, but they do tolerate the restraint and squirting with much melodramatic sneezing and snorting afterward.

Honestly, Beneful SUCKS. Do a search of this forum for dog foods and you'll find a LOT of much better options. Whole Dog Journal also released their annual list of good dry foods in the most recent issue, so that would be a good resource as well.

Maggie ate tons of birdseed when we lived with my parents with no ill effects, but the droppings can contain some icky stuff (bacteria wise), so now if I was putting up a feeder I might try to block that area off from the dogs.

Maggie likes rabbits too - and when she gets totally wrapped up in the "game" the rabbit ends up dead. It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Maggie used to "play" with my guinea pig and she seemed quite gentle, until the one time I put the pig on the floor and Maggie was after her incredibly fast (trying to play with the pig using her feet and mouth like she would with another dog) - luckily I body blocked her from the pig before anyone got hurt, but my heart was racing by the end of it and that was the end of her "playing" with the piggie unless the pig was in my arms and Maggie was in a down-stay.

Itchiness w/o fleas or signs of irritation suggests allergies of some sort. Worth talking to your vet about for sure. Allergies can create hotspots as well, so it would fit in with what his former owners mentioned. As for the limping, that's another thing to talk to a vet about, but just off the top I would say it might help to keep her on the thin side - she's looks a little on the chunky side from the pic you posted and any joint issues will be worsened by extra weight. If they constantly want to play, even after a yelp, it's likely just rough play and if it were me I'd prob let it continue. If you can't deal with the play for some other reason, consistency is going to be your best tool. Have Sophie drag a leash so you can remove her from the room EVERY time she continues play after being asked to stop. To work you need to enforce the rules each time the behavior occurs, you can't be wishy washy about it.

I'd agree with Melanie - my BS in Animal Science has opened sooooo many doors for me in the animal career realm. I wouldn't have gotten my current job, behavior coordinator at a shelter, without my degree to be completely honest; that degree helped my come out on top of people with just hands on experience. 8 years experience *plus* the degree was very impressive to many people and I ended up with 3 offers on the table. With the job market the way it is right now, having a degree really helps in general.

Yea college life can be waaaay different than you anticipate and adding a dog right at a key changing point in your life can really complicate things, not the least of which would be finding housing with 3 dogs on a college student's budget if you don't live at home. I loved having my Maggie with me at college, but I honestly can't imagine keeping up with three dogs and classes and maybe even part time work. One was plenty for me.

One of my coworkers' dogs, Abby, has something that sounds similar. She describes it like Abby has restless legs syndrome. They did a spinal tap to rule out side effects from distemper infection as a pup (Abby's history is unknown before 1yo when she came to the humane society as a stray) and they just got the negative result today. They've also considered Chinook seizures and other nervous disorders. I think they put Abby on Neurotonin and it has minimized the twitching - it used to be so bad that she couldn't fall asleep.

I've not heard of Parris' books, but one I really like for teaching competition level exercises is Morgan Spector's "Clicker Training for Obedience". It has some great exercises for teaching a solid retrieve as well as covering all the other basic and advanced exercises.

The worms that are coming out are dead and dying and it's not unusual to see them for a few days after deworming. Many vets will want to do several rounds of dewormer just to make sure they got everything, so you may want to check with your vet about the worm load you're seeing. She could easily reinfect herself by being in an area where she pooped before the deworming, so be aware of that possibility. If you have your dog on a heartworm preventative, most will cover roundworms so you'll never have to deal with this mess again. I know Interceptor covers everything except tapeworms and I think Heartguard covers everything except tapeworms and whipworms.

Bleck - there are soooo many better methods out there. Honestly, you'd be better off looking for a good trainer who can help you one-on-one with your dog. A great place to start would be the Association of Pet Dog Trainers Trainer search at wwww.apdt.com.

Thanks for the reply! I did go ahead and started working on the auto-"leave it" today using bottled scent (deer, fox, and raccoon) and it's really going well - went from heavy sniffing to completely ignoring in only about 6 reps on the most distracting scent (total of about 12 reps over all three!), uncued. I got my DH to help us with a few runaways with some scent in the field and she was back to her normal performance level if not better; completely ignored the scents I set out *and* some animal scat. We'll keep working up in difficulty and probably doing a refresher periodically, but if I can keep her at the level of motivation she showed tonight we'll be right as rain soon. She's getting pretty good at recalling off moving prey, but I am building another more carefully implemented recall cue for emergencies just in case. I'm honestly not as worried about moving prey as that's easier to spot; critter scent is more problematic because at this stage I'm still learning her signals for being on and off her target scent and thus it can throw us both off more easily.

I did this with a client's dog who had been trained using VERY heavy handed methods (they even managed to turn the clicker into a conditioned punisher! ). They switched to hand signals primarily (had to use new ones too), but also started giving cues in Spanish vs English. The dog blossomed and her general outlook on life greatly improved. I routinely suggest that my students change their recall cues if the dog has ever associated it with negative consequences.

My 9.5yo's eyes have a slight cast to them as well. My vet confirmed that it is normal age related hardening of the lens and will not interfere with Maggie's vision. Be aware that some vets will call this cataracts, when it's def not. Another vet we had used for dental work had mentioned that Maggie had cataracts and that's why we scheduled an appointment with our regular vet. Dr. Mitchell (regular vet) has no idea why some vets do this, but she said it's not uncommon, so be advised.

Good thoughts from SC as well!

Some of you may remember that Ziva's in training as a SAR dog. Two weeks ago, Ziva treed a cat at a training and at training today showed a lot of interest in wild animal scent (scat, bones, etc.). It was interfering enough in her work that our training director brought up the dread "wash out" phrase. He's not too concerned, but he did mention that dogs can be washed out for excessive crittering. Crittering is also absolutely unacceptable if I ever want her to get involved in human remains/cadaver detection. I *know* Ziva can do the work, we just need some help proofing against scent distraction. She's got a decent leave it cue already, but this needs to be uncued; ideally such that she actively avoids checking the scent out and/or just completely ignores any scent other than applicable ones. I'm thinking about buying some scent used by hunters (deer, bird, maybe rabbit and/or squirrel if I can find them) and using the products from my cat's litter box to set up initial training sessions so I know where the "off" scents are and doing some work teaching her just to back off at first, but after that I'm not sure how to make this skill an uncued default behavior and that's where I need help. Does my initial plan sound like a good one? And how do I make it a *rock solid* default? Thanks for any suggestions you can offer!

It really sounds like the issues you're having are such that you really need some in-person help. If I were you, I'd consult your puppy class instructor since they know puppies well given the classes they teach and should be able to interpret what you're seeing more easily than us on a message board. That being said, I have seen puppies show aggression this young, especially over food and other resources, and whenever this is the case I take it quite seriously. Please do not brush this off as a "phase" get help sooner rather than later. If your trainer isn't able to help you, you can do a search for a Certified Pet Dog Trainer at www.apdt.com.

I'm waffling on insurance right now - leaning toward trying a year with PetPlan since they get good reviews vs. the others. I'd only insure Ziva since she's in SAR and thus way more likely to get injured than Maggie, plus some of the insurance companies will no longer cover her since she'll be 10 in May/June.

I do this for several reasons, though none really have any scientific reasoning behind them, they make sense to me. 1) To provide some variety in their diet. Since the toppers (yogurt and supplements) don't change, I can at least change the flavor every month or so. I'd get bored eating the same thing day after day, so that's part of my reasoning there. 2) To keep their tummies accepting of new dietary things. Both of my girls can switch foods cold turkey, but neither came that way. I noticed that I no longer needed to d a gradual switch a few months after I started rotating foods when I accidentally ran completely out and was forced to go cold turkey. It makes sense to me that if you're used to variety, then your system will adjust more easily and my anecdotal knowledge seems to support that. 3) To ensure that they get complete nutrition. I'm sure each food has it's own unique balance of nutrients and therefore it is possible that a single diet could be slightly incomplete in some form of nutrient. Switching brands and flavors of food would up the odds that the dogs never have a longterm lack of a certain nutrient. This is a reason I hear cited by other rotational feeders as one of their main ones for rotating foods, but it's kind of a nice side effect for me since I do doubt that a food would be so significantly deficient that it could cause issues.

In addition to a tech or vet friend, if you have any people you trust that work for a shelter it's possible that they could be of service. Maggie's going to be 10 in May as well and I've thought about this stuff briefly - still don't know how I'll handle it, but probably some Rescue Remedy since she's not petrified of vets, just nervous and hopefully someone at the house 'cause I know I'll be in no shape to drive...

I considered the veterinary field (tech or DVM) and did a ton of shadowing in the process. I gotta say shadowing was the BEST thing I could've done because it let me get a handle on what the job entails and in the end, though I loved the idea, I felt that I would be better suited for some other animal related job. I work in behavior at a shelter and LOVE it and I really can't see doing something else right now. Tech work can be great, but it can also be a lot of hard physical labor, tough days, dealing with people all day every day, and handling animals that aren't happy to be with you, plus all sorts of bodily fluids.

I wimp out way before my dogs generally, but that said I will let them tell me when they've had enough in extreme weather. If she's having fun, not limping from cold feet or shivering, and you're game, feel free to continue your play sessions as usual. If you're like me and don't like the temps for yourself, just up the mental activity, maybe give a meal or two from a treat dispensing toy (kong, Busy Buddy line, treatball, etc.), and you should be just fine.