PuppyLog

Stats:

age: 24 weeks (5 months, two weeks)
weight: 30 pounds

A lot has happened in the last two weeks.

Ipo and Lila are getting along better and better. There is still a ways to go but the play together more, Lila is biting Ipo less, and Ipo is becoming more tolerant of her approaching him, and will even ply with her in the house.

Teeth

Lila has lost all of her baby teeth (the last one came out yesterday) though there are still some adult teeth that have not yet broken the through the gums.

Danger! 

We had a difficult incident yesterday. While on our morning walk Lila grabbed a piece of fiberglass insulation that was lying by the side of the path. I tried to distract her with a treat, ordered her to drop it, and picked her. None off these things worked, though they usually do. Perhaps the fear in my voice had something to do with it. I reached down her throat as she was swallowing it but could not get it out in time and down it went.

She did not like being grabbed and having her mouth forced open, nor did she like my reaching down her throat.

When we got home I gave her a couple of tablespoons of psyllium seed husks mixed with plenty of chicken stock so she would eat it. Psyllium is soluble in water, helps push everything through the intestinal tract. It also becomes quite mucilaginous when wet which I hoped would help protect the intestines. I gave her more chicken stock and then an hour later, some food.

A soggy mucilaginous wad of fiberglass etc. did come out a few hours later, then some more (I hope the rest of it) came out the next morning. She seems to be fine. Whew.

What I hope is the biggest problem here was the effect on her trust. She appeared to be quite afraid of me after that incident. This was the first time I had manhandled her like that.

I spent a good part of the rest of the day trying to rebuild her trust in me. I fed her her meals by hand, something we had stopped doing recently. I treated her as gently as possible and only approached her with treats and/or praise. She would not come to me, something she has been very willing to do up till now, even when I was calling her away from playing with other dogs.

S_ and I took her to an agility lesson later that same day, at the end of which she was acting more normally. Having fun together where she had to pay attention to me seems to have helped enormously. Holding her in my lap on the car ride to and from the lesson also seemed to help.
This morning everything seems to be back to normal. Again, whew.

Agility

The agility lesson itself was great. Ipo and Lila both had a lot of fun. Ipo got the Zooms in the middle of it which hasn’t happened much since his arthritis got bad (it’s been getting better since we changed his diet and given him acupuncture and homeopathy)

The things we had already taught Lila seemed to stand her in good stead for agility. She knows “touch” (touch the end of my finger) and how to keep her attention on us, both of which helped with going the right way through or over the obstacles. She even liked the see-saw!

Ipo did extremely well also. He will never do high jumps or full height A-frame but he had a great time doing what he can and learning how to follow our directions. It was all a great play time for him and we will keep him going with it!

They both slept well.

Soccer

 We are now soccer moms.

I bought Lila a soccer ball a while back. She loves it! At first she would just chrge after it and run right over the top of it, tumbling herself upside-down and wait for us to kick it again. Now she can knock it around herself and will herd it frantically around the field. She still likes it best when we kick it for her though.

She will herd the ball to the exclusion of all else. When other puppies come by she will run towards them for a few steps but then turn around and "eye" the ball. She wont leave it.

This was an opportunity. We started to call her to us before kicking the ball. She will now come away from it. We have her come to us, then we "stalk" the ball together, running a couple of steps then stopping, then moving slowly towards it again. Finally I'll run up and kick it for her. Yay!

I think this game helped with the agility training as well as it is similar to approaching the obstacles then being sent somewhere else. In any case it's big fun.