Happy Halloween from the Pups and the Pig

It's gotten crazy - the amount of money you can spend on Halloween costumes for your pets. Emma used to be a great sport about wearing whatever we got for her. Now that she is an elderly lady - she is not so excited about the prospect. The puppies - well - they are wild children who have be photographed one at a time or else they eat each others costumes. And then there is the piglet - who is fairly cooperative but not a huge fan. Then there are the kitties and the ferrets - I gave that one up several years ago. So, this year we went simple, and cheap. Happy Halloween from the gang:

Juliett - with her pumpkin hair bows

and her pumpkin fairy tutu

Charli with her witches' bow

and her witches tutu that rendered her paralyzed

Tango looking quite dapper in his tuxedo bandana

And - the ham himself - Prince Winston:

And last - but most definitely not least - the Divine Miss Em with her Merry Halloween bandana

Hope you have a happy and safe Halloween!!

Happy 2nd Birthday to the Puppies

I haven't blogged in ages but I can't think of a better reason to do a post than to wish those three crazy puppies a happy birthday!  I can't believe they are two years old. Here is what they looked like as babies:

In the car on the way home

My favorite puppy pic

They had a good day filled with play time, new toys, tons of attention and lots of treats. I took a few pics of their birthday cupcakes:

Juliett

Charli

Tango

We shared birthday cupcakes with Emma and Winston as well:

Winston

Emma

I had to chuckle - in addition to their cupcakes the whole gang got a pumpkin spice dog treat. I think that September 21 is the one day that Winston is happy to have canine siblings:

I can't imagine our crazy household without these three - I love them to pieces!  Happy Birthday Tango, Charli and Juliett!!

They're Baaccckkkk.....

Oh my goodness - I am so happy that my little zoo is complete once again.  We picked up the puppies from school this morning and I am thrilled to have them home. This first week is going to be tough with trying to acclimate them back into our environment under a who new set of rules. Here are the primary focuses we have for the next week:

1. No paws on people, no paws on stuff - this means no jumping, scratching at the door, getting on the furniture, etc.
2. No teeth on people (play biting) and no teeth on stuff that is not theirs - this means no chewing up shoes, paper, etc.
3. Dogs under human control at all times - this means on a leash or in a crate 100% of the time this week - ugh.
4. CALM - the theme of the week is calm - don't stir them up - don't talk to them in a crazy, excited 'dog voice', don't yell at them - just conversational corrections and interactions.

So - I didn't love the idea of that much crate time so luckily the kitchen is large enough that we can have three 'dog stations'. Each gets a dog bed, toys, a bone, a water bowl. They are connected to a leash that is connected to something stationary.  For instance - Juliett's leash is hooked to the leg of the kitchen table. They are far enough apart they can see each other but cannot interact. So far it has gone well.

In addition, I am keen to get them better at going in the car so I have decided that my Starbucks run will have a dog in tow each time. Today I took Charli (because she hates the car the most). She did okay, she did not get in trouble for being afraid and the return trip was much calmer than the way there. We will keep working on it.

All in all - the change in the dogs is remarkable. They are much more calm. They were always fairly mellow, but they are calm as well. Their leash manners are amazing - they had none when we started as we were terrible and never leash trained them. Obedience has vastly improved. If you tell them to do something or stop doing something they listen. Now, there are still times they need corrected and they are only three weeks in to training so its not perfect but its great.

All in all - so far so good.  Thankfully I have a long weekend and can spend a good bit of time doing dog things over the next few days. In the next 7 - 10 days we will head back to training center with all three pups to do another session and expand the scope of their world slowly but surely.  By August - they should have a good amount of freedom and be in the beginning stages of maintenance mode.

Emma is thrilled they are home.  Winston hasn't seen them yet - that is a few weeks away....

I will keep posting as we make progress - I will try to get some pictures over the weekend as well.  Happy Friday!!

Tango

Charli

Emma

Juliett

Camera Trap Shots

So - there is lots to share this week for a couple of reasons.  First, the weather here has been amazing so there has been lots of activity. Second - somehow the camera in the meadow reset itself and its internal date. I knew something was funky because I could never find the shots after I downloaded them.  Took me a few days to figure out that the photos were being saved in January of 2017.  So - enjoy - there are some fun ones in there:

Wild collies in their natural habitat - Tango (closest) and Juliett

Bunny

Fox

 

 

Fox again

Squirrel

 

Again with the fox

Love this one

Crow

Juliett's Trip to the Vet

It was an interesting critter week this week.  Piggy and ferrets are all fine. Ollie and Phoebe (kitties) were supposed to go to the vet on Wednesday for a thyroid panel to check their levels so we could renew their hyperthyroid medications. Fast forward to Tuesday evening when I get a panicky call from the hubs to report that Juliett has a giant lump on her head.  I get home and check her out and indeed, there is a large lump on the top/back of her head. She has a scratch on her nose so my suspicion was that she had an abscess similar to what Phoebe went through a few months ago.  Juliett was behaving like she was fine - great appetite, very active, no issues to suggest we needed an emergency vet visit. 

On Wednesday morning I called the vet to let them know that I was bringing one dog instead of two kitties. The lump on her head was not an abscess it was a hematoma. Evidently while roughhousing with her puppy siblings she whacked her head on something and a hematoma developed. The vet pulled the fluid out of it and looked under the microscope. There were red blood cells present but only a few white blood cells indicating there was no infection. We decided out of an abundance of caution we would do a week of antibiotics just to be sure. We didn't take any action on the hematoma - hopefully in the next week or so the body will reabsorb the fluid and it will go away.  It's already significantly smaller than it was.

We also decided while she was there to do all her annual stuff as she was due in March anyway. Her physical went well and her fecal and heartworm tests were both negative. We did have some concern that she had an elevated BUN number - the high end of normal is 27 and she was 38 and an elevated CREA number - while it was still in the normal range it was at the very top of the range. These elevated numbers can possibly indicate kidney disease. The vet recommended an additional test called SDMA which is a more sensitive test related to early detection of kidney disease - which we sent her blood sample over to the lab to run.  We had to wait overnight for results but the vet let me know on Thursday afternoon that her numbers on the more sensitive test were perfect and that the elevated numbers from the first round of testing were likely incidental and we didn't need to worry. Whew - she is fine and I am relieved.

Here she is at the vet - you can see the little scratch on her nose

...and chilling out before bed with her sister - Juliett on the left and Charli on the right

There are lots of camera trap photos to share from this week.  I think the warmer weather brought the critters out for sure.  I will post them over the weekend.  Happy Friday!!

The good news and the bad news...

So, this weekend there's been good news and bad news. Not really news I guess but more like happenings. Let's start with the bad news first:

Yesterday morning, when we were getting ready to let Winston outside to go potty we had in an occurrence of dog on pig violence. While we've done this a million times, yesterday for some reason Tango decided that he was going to go after the pig. I'm not sure what prompted this. My guess is that it was related to the fact that Winston was inside and Tango was inside which doesn't happen very often. We were very fortunate in that Winston was fine. He was scared and tried to get away from Tango but he was uninjured. Winston has a couple of little abrasions on his back which we have treated with both colloidal silver and Neosporin and they are healing up just fine. I immediately got in the car and drove to Home Depot and purchased a gate that we can put across the walkway in our front yard so that we have a second area to put critters outdoors. This will allow for either the dogs or the pig to be in the front while the others are in the back. I have let the pig out with the dogs since the happening and it was a non-event. When they went outside in the backyard the puppies displayed their usual behavior of being intimidated by the pig. That said, I don't trust Tango so Winston will not be outside with him without me being present and ready to intervene. I'm not totally surprised by this happening. It's been said a million times that you should never leave your dogs who are predators and your pigs who are prey animals alone together without supervision and this just demonstrates why. We were incredibly lucky that Winston wasn't hurt and that we were there to break up the fight and put them in their respective corners and everyone is fine and no worse for the wear. Tango has been challenging both of the girls Charlie and Juliet for dominance for some time now and I think this might be related to that. But, when they go to the vet for their annual checkup in March I will definitely be discussing with the vet whether he thinks we have an issue with  Tango being aggressive or if this is just a case of boy dog trying to find his place in the pack.

Okay- on to the good news now. We have signed up for a project that's happening in our state that uses camera traps to count the number of wild animals in a particular location. We have purchased three cameras that are battery-operated and are motion sensitive. We are going to put them in three spots on our property where we have seen deer, turkeys, possums etc. I am excited to get the cameras set up. The original plan was to do that today but it's raining cats and dogs outside so it's not a very friendly weather day to go tromping around the woods to strap a camera to a tree. Tomorrow will be better to get them hooked up and I will start to post what we capture on the blog. I'm really excited to see what additional animals come through that we've not seen before. Stay tuned and will be sharing the pictures soon.

Hope you're having a great Super Bowl Sunday. We're not rooting for either team but we're looking forward to the commercials. We'll have to see if Winston was right in his prediction that the Eagles were going to win.

Houston....we have mutants!!

On Friday we received the results from the genetic testing we had done on the puppies.  The news was not what we were hoping for.

Our fingers were crossed that they would be Normal/Normal meaning they had two normal copies of the MDR1 gene.  Sadly, the results were that Tango and Juliett were Normal/Mutant - meaning that if they were to have puppies they would have the potential to pass the mutant gene on (which can't happen as they are both fixed) and they COULD experience issues with the list of drugs related to this condition.

Charli was Mutant/Mutant meaning that if she ever had puppies she would definitely pass along a mutant gene (again, she is fixed so not a concern) and she will  MOST LIKELY experience issues with the list of drugs related to this condition.

While it was not the news we were hoping for, in the big scheme of things there are far worse things the dogs could have.  I think that knowing they have this condition is the largest part of the battle here - we can manage around it by using drugs that are not on the list and if for some reason we need to use something on the list we can dose accordingly and monitor closely.

I am really glad we got the testing done.  It's not free ($180 total cost for the three pups) but if you have a dog that is classed as a herder, in my opinion, it is well worth the money to know if they have the condition.

Our post about the testing (in case you missed it) can be found here

The link to where we got the testing done can be found here

The link to the list of breeds that could have this mutation can be found here

MDR1 Genetic Testing

On the 2nd of January, I sent off samples to Washington State University to test the puppies for MDR1.  Multi-Drug Resistance is a genetic mutation that is found in herding dogs.  As I understand it - if they have this mutation they are missing a protein that processes medication which allows the drug to build up in their system, essentially causing an overdose or toxic condition.

There are three possibilities for the results of this testing - first it could come back negative (two normal copies of the gene in question) - that would be the best case scenario.  Second, they could be carriers - meaning they COULD be sensitive to the drugs in question - it would mean they have one mutant gene and one normal gene.  Third - they could have two mutant genes which would mean they most likely WOULD be sensitive to the drugs in question.  The good news is that if we know about the condition we can manage around it - making sure the vet prescribes meds that are not on the list or - if we need to use a medication that could cause an issue we can manage the dosing accordingly.

The tests should be run next Monday and we should have results next Friday, January 12th.  Fingers crossed they are negative...I will post again once we have results!


Drugs Affected by the MDR1 Gene Mutation:
Acepromazine
Butorphanol
Doramectin
Doxorubicin
Erythromycin
Ivermectin
Loperamide
Milbemycin
Moxidectin
Paclitaxel
Selamectin
Vinblastine
Vincristine

Happy Gotcha Day

Oh my goodness - one year ago today we brought these three crazy munchkins into our world:

Tango, Charli and Juliett have turned our world upside down and we wouldn't have it any other way.  They have turned into giant, lovely, sweet, unruly babies that we adore.  It's hard to remember what our pre puppy world was like....

Juliett

Charli

Tango

And - here they are now - big, beautiful babies:

Tango on the left, Charli in the middle and Juliett on the right