Starting The Countdown

I will be getting on a plane about 2 1/2 days from now. Almost everything has been taken care of. Oh, there are few loose ends but I'm whittling the list down every day.

Today my car is being washed and detailed. I will take some photos of it and create an online ad for it before I leave. Given the popularity of Honda Elements (try to find a used one--they are pretty rare), I don't expect my mother to have any problem selling it. (If you know someone in the Richmond/Williamsburg/Norfolk Virginia area who might like the car, have them get in touch with me!)

My Element was a really great car. I got a bit teary when I was taking out the dog crates for the last time yesterday. I'll miss it.

On a more positive note, I think that we may have found a home for Jack. It's not a done deal yet, but my SFT friend Julie is confident that our lovely Mr. Jack is going to charm his way into his new family's hearts in short order. The plan is for her to drive him to meet this new family this coming Saturday.

I have been so worried about Jack and since I left him with Julie in Nashville, he is never far from my thoughts. In the past few years, he has mellowed, calmed, and become the most loving, sweet dog, perfectly happy to float around in the middle of the pack getting pushed around by all of my bitches. I know that I've mentioned in other posts how in the past couple of years he and Harry frequently slept spooned together at night. Jack deserves his own perfect new family. It has been hard for me to be patient and even harder to think that I might have to get on that plane not knowing what was going to happen to our Jack. I had to reject several leads that Julie came up with because it always seemed something squirrely came up once I started talking to them. But so far, this new family in Alabama sounds perfect, "smooth fox terrier heaven."

Just to make sure I don't jinx anything, I'll move on to other topics but say that I hope to be able to post photos and good news soon.

I spent the weekend with another of my dog friends, DSL, who lives in Fredricksburg. She also has a smooth fox named Meggie as well as a big BC named Crash. On Saturday I watched DSL do some herding practice with Crash. Here is a picture of them with a small group of sheep. It was raining lightly but of course that never stops herding practice!

DSL's Meggie is a littermate to one of Julie's bitches, so it's all one big happy smooth fox family!

Shelob in the window.

I'm staying these last few days with my mother and her husband in Williamsburg. A small sunny room upstairs has been designated as the cat room. It took no time at all for Mimi to figure out that she could watch the front of the house and the driveway from the cat perch. Every time we leave the house, she is in the window watching us, and every time we return, Mimi is in the window still watching. We think that she stands there the entire time we are gone! As soon as she is sure we are heading for the front door, she streaks out of the room, down the stairs, and sticks her long nose out the door as soon as it is cracked open. She's a very silly girl.

Jack Playing Ball with Dyna

Here's a silly video of Jack and Dyna playing ball in the backyard earlier this summer.

Grooming The Smooth Fox Terrier (2)

Here is the second grooming video featuring Jack's butt and Mimi's tail. I decided to break it into two pieces to make sure it would display on everybody's system.

Here are some helpful hints for keeping it simple:

• Never groom a dirty dog. Dust and grime will dull your knives and scissors.
• Never strip a wet coat.
  
• Good thinning shears are worth every penny you pay. Don't scrimp on this tool.
• A grooming table makes the entire process so much easier.
• Learn how to trim nails. Be patient. Be confident. Be zen. But keep the Clotisol close by in case you fail at patience, confidence, or zen.
• The tail should look like a smooth, even cylinder with a rounded tip when you are finished. Hold your thumb over the end of the tail so you don't nip it with the shears. Better that you cut your thumb than the dog.
  
• Groom outside if you can. Less mess to clean up.

Grooming The Smooth Fox Terrier (1)

As soon as I got sucked into the world of smooth fox terriers, I got sucked into grooming. The coat on these dogs lies tight and flat to their bodies. Nothing shows off a fit, muscular smooth fox terrier like a clean, well groomed coat. I showed in conformation for a while and learned how to groom them up to their eyeballs. A careful show groom on a smooth fox might take as many as 8 hours spread over two or three days and requires an entire box of tools and equipment. You'd think a dog with such a short, smooth coat is a "brush and go" sort of affair. Oh, my, no. Grooming a smooth fox requires shaping and trimming every hair on their bodies. Every single hair.

Fox terriers are double coated, with a coarse, tight outer coat and a much finer under coat. Stripping pulls out the loose guard hairs and thins the under coat, giving them a clean look and greatly reducing shedding. I used to strip with a fancy German stripping knife but I'm all for using the Furminator these days. You can cut the dog's skin and damage their coat just as easily with either tool so stripping knives are not for the total novice. However, the Furminator is very easy to use.

Even as a dog sport competitor, having my dogs show up to a trial looking trim and clean is always important. Because they are not that common of a breed, I wanted my dogs to always look their best every time they went to a tournament or trial. I always groomed my pack before a trial, even the dogs that were just along for the ride!

Grooming your dog yourself gives you a chance to examine the dog closely on a regular basis, allowing you to run your hands over their entire body. Any irregularity shows up quickly. And some aspects of grooming help keep the dog healthy, such as clearing their coat of loose hair.

Once I stopped messing about in the conformation ring, I devolved my grooming routine into something much more simple. Every week I clean their ears, trim their nails, and clean their teeth. Every month or two I strip their coat and trim fuzzy butts and flaggy tails. (I don't worry anymore about the lizard feathers on their necks, even though the neck gets a lot of attention in a show groom.) They get bathed every couple of months unless they are particularly dusty or smell doggy.

Here is the first of two videos on simple grooming of the smooth fox terrier. This one features Mimi. And yes, isn't that a lovely purple smock I'm wearing? If you ever once got itty bitty sharp-tipped fox terrier clippings into a sensitive place, such as, oh, under your sports bra, you too would own this particular fashion accessory.

Health Worries (2)

Jack had 10 teeth extracted today. Yes, that isn't a typo. TEN teeth.

This traumatic dental event was precipitated when I noticed this past weekend that the tip of one of his canines was broken off. Really, it was more like half of the tooth was gone. He was acting like it hurt, and since these fox terriers are insanely stoic, if they act like it hurts, on the 1 to 10 scale, the pain has to be 11.

Jack went through an episode about 4 years ago where he tried to chew through a wire crate. I finally moved him into the plastic crate he still uses now but the damage had been done. He had fractured nearly all of his teeth.

If the fractures penetrate to the pulp inside the tooth, bacteria find their way in and eventually the tooth dies.

As a result of the wire crate incident, quite a few of his teeth (really, the roots of the teeth) had deteriorated beyond repair or salvage and the only option was to remove them.

Ironically, the broken canine was a healthy tooth with a healthy root and it took almost an hour to extract it. He was under anesthesia for a total of three hours which is a very long time even for a healthy 8 yr old dog like Jack (he will be 8 in almost exactly 1 month).

He's not in great shape right now. He did eat some canned food mixed with warm water for dinner (with his meds cleverly hidden inside). But he's leaving bloody drool wherever he lays his head. His eyes don't quite focus. He totters and weaves like a drunken sailor. He's in quite a bit of pain. His face is swollen and tender. He's having trouble staying warm.

In short, he's a mess.

Harry on the left, Jack's nose barely visible on the right. Jack is under three layers of fleece and on top of fleece covering a dog bed on the couch.

It's going to be a long night as I will probably check on him every half hour or so. (He sleeps on the bed anyway so I'll make him a cozy nest next to me.)

Of course, he will get to go to work with me for a few days, the privilege of sick and recuperating dogs. And he'll get to eat super special food for a while too--I bought one of those roasted whole chickens at the store on the way home from the vet.

In other news, it's been raining since 5:30 this morning. It is much needed and appreciated although we are not dealing with as severe a drought as they are in central Texas. It rained about an inch in 12 hours and has continued to rain steadily since I got home from work.


Post Script: Jack is doing much better this morning. Still pretty subdued and his face is swollen, but his eyes look clear and he's getting that fox terrier spring in his step.

Also, it rained another inch last night.

The Boys

It is week 17/18. Cap has been a busy boy. He grew an inch this week! He now stands 13.5" at the shoulder and weighs around 13 lbs.

He's visibly bigger and longer and he's starting to develop a little more muscle. All that wrestling and chasing with the sisters, who are as muscular as young Arnolds, is certainly not hurting.

Harry is starting to feel better. His toes no longer bleed with the slightest activity and he seems to be more willing to walk. He even had a bit of a lilt to his step yesterday! Two nights ago he brought me a toy as we were heading for bed.

He seems to be past the dry heaves but I continue to give him famotidine twice a day. He's still got a bit of diarrhea from that nasty castor oil but I think we are moving past that too. We're shooting for a March flyball tournament.

I haven't mentioned Jack much lately. He spends a lot of his time with Dyna on the fringes of the main pack activity. In fact, these two are the only pair that I can play with together. Jack retrieves a ball and Dyna chases him and barks in his ear.

Jack doesn't care for the puppy much. Jack's all about finding warm spots to take naps and humping Bix. Jack is a sweet, affectionate dog. Doesn't cause much trouble or fuss.

The Incident (A Tale for Halloween)

The Incident occurred on July 27, 2005. It involved Jack and Jen. Jen was the bitch I had leased to breed to Jack. She was three weeks pregnant at the time of The Incident.

Jack and Jen were a lovely pair of fox terriers and I think I'll save the story of their relationship for other posts. Let me just say that they got along extremely well. So well, in fact, that I kept them together in an expen in the kitchen when I went to work. The black and whites were crated in another room.

I came home from a long day at work on July 27, 2005, to be greeted at the door by a strong smell of blood and Jack and Jen running loose in the house, covered from head to toe in blood.

I panicked.

But the real hysteria didn't start until I walked into the dog room off the front entry to find this:

Lola sniffing the blood on the wall. There were two more crates
on the left that I removed to take the photo. This pic was taken
later that night as I faced the clean up job.

A nice gory close-up.

I had just brought a new kitten, Lola, into the house and my first thought was that they killed her. There was no fur in all that blood but there were certainly paw smears arcing across the wall. In a tearful frenzy, I put Jack and Jen outside--even though they were covered in blood they weren't covered in fresh blood and I figured I had a few minutes--and started looking for the cats. I found Bix. I found Bhumi. But I couldn't find Lola anywhere. I called my friend Gosia and left her a horribly garbled hysterical message. I called my vet--it was only minutes before they were to close for the day and I lived half an hour from their office. They said they would wait.

Finally Lola ambled out of some hidey hole, blinking from being woken from her nap. I made sure the black and whites were more or less okay (no obvious wounds), shoved Jack and Jen into the crates in the car, and zoomed off to my vet. Gosia called when I was on the way. Action had cleared my head a bit and I was able to talk to her all the way there. I doubt I was rational but at least I wasn't sobbing hysterically. I had a plan: get to the vet. After that? I took a deep breath. I would figure it out.

When I pulled up to the vet office, a swarm of techs rushed out the door, threw open my car doors, grabbed both dogs, and whisked them inside before I had even gotten out myself.

About an hour later, I brought these two sad dogs back home:

Jack on the left, Jen on the right being sniffed by Dyna

What happened that day? We know that nearly all of that blood came from Jack, mostly from his left ear, which Jen just shredded (most of his ear is scar tissue now and the tip is missing). He also had a nasty puncture bite on his paw. She had a bite to one ear but was otherwise unscathed. Over the next few days, I found blood in every room of the house, on walls, on furniture, on the carpet. I can only guess that I didn't latch the expen, they were running around the house loose and something set them off--Jack being hapless as usual, a squirrel running across the yard--and they started fighting.

When I got home, I discovered that all of the black and whites had bleeding gums and lips from biting at their wire crates as Jen did her little smackdown on Jack just inches away.

The carpet was never the same.

What did I learn from The Incident?

1. Jack and Jen needed to be crated like everybody else. Separately. And the latches double checked. (That is a habit that I still maintain today for all of my dogs.)

2. Do not, repeat, do not mess with the pregnant bitches. They will kick your ass.

3. Fox terriers are tough little buggers.

4. The pictures of the bloody walls still make me queasy but I can laugh about this now. So even as bad as things were that afternoon, they did get better.

A very chastened Jack.

Doggy Day Spa

(all that white stuff on the ground is hair...)

Today was grooming day for the fox terriers.

Smooth fox terriers have a short, stiff outer coat and they are supposed to have a soft undercoat as well. Harry and Dyna, my black and whites, have almost no undercoat at all. Jack could double as a yeti--both his outer and undercoats are insanely thick and fluffy. Gracie got her lovely coat from her dam--very nice, very correct. Mimi, Gracie's sister, has some weird, old fashioned, throwback-to-ur-terrier coat. The outer coat is strongly waved, almost like a jheri curl.

The outer coat is dense and the hairs pack together tightly because as working farm and hunting dogs, the breed needed protection from brush and moisture. Because of their tight outer coats, it is extremely difficult to wet the tan and whites to the skin.

Anyway, for fox terriers to look their best, they need regular grooming, something more involved than just a bath or a brush.

All dogs need their nails clipped, their teeth cleaned, and their ears swabbed on a regular basis. I do this every couple of weeks.

But today, in addition to the usual, they all got the doggy day spa special. When you groom a smooth fox, you remove the fur on their butts and necks with electric clippers and thinning shears, you trim off the flaggy hairs from their tails, and you strip their necks and backs. Stripping removes the loose outer hairs and pulls out the undercoat and moves the oils from their skin out along the hair, keeping their skin and coat healthy.

The doggy day spa special takes about half an hour per dog. So I invested almost three hours in grooming my dogs today, including setting up all my equipment, then cleaning it and putting it away afterward. That's nothing, really. I used to show Jack in conformation and it would take about 8 hours over a couple of days to get him ready for the show ring. I used more products on him than I used on myself.


But no longer. These days I go for a basic strip and clip and call it good.

I have all kinds of expensive grooming tools but the most fabulous one of all is the one I acquired after I stopped showing in conformation: the Furminator. This is a stripping knife for Everyman. No show ring snob would be caught dead with one, but it is so easy to use, so incredibly functional. I can pull what seems like a pound of hair off each dog in minutes. And best of all, the dogs just love this thing! A professional stripping knife is extremely sharp and if not pulled through the coat at the correct angle, can cut the coat and even the dog's skin. Instead, the dogs line up at the foot of the grooming table for their turn to be Furminated.

And on a nice day like today, I move the entire affair outside so the dogs lounge around in the sun waiting their turn on the table. It was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon.

Sleeping With Dogs

I can't remember sleeping alone. Or peeing alone, for that matter, but that's a story for another day. There's been a small cast of human partners sharing the bed stage now and then, but for the most part I've been sleeping with dogs for the past ten years.

Iz always slept with her head on the pillow next to mine. I have terrible insomnia, sleep lightly when I do sleep, and wake frequently. It was always a comfort to open my eyes, turn my head, and see her head next to mine. I could feel her warm body stretched out next to me, and I could smell that special dusty smell on the top of her head that was her smell. But as she became sicker, she needed to pull away and find her own space on the bed at night. I started missing my Iz sleeping next to me long before she actually left us.



Dyna has taken over that prime sleeping spot now. She moves around a lot at night but some part of her is always tucked into the space next to my pillow.

Harry has always slept on the bed with me (except for a few months when he was banished to a crate after he broke Lola's jaw at 3am--yet another story for another time). He continues to mourn the absence of his sister, and ever since Iz died, he has been glued to my side at night. No matter how much I toss and turn, Harry is velcroed to me like a burr. It is a comfort to be able to put my hand out and hug him to me, knowing that he understands, that he doesn't mind my waking him up for just a moment to make sure he is still there, still warm, still right beside me.

I've been crating the puppies from the beginning. Jack's daughters were just too wild to have on the bed at night. And after a while, it seemed reasonable to reduce the dog load and crate Jack at night too. He doesn't mind, really, and has been a very good sport about it.

But now that Iz is gone, the dog load has been reduced too much. Harry and Dyna are always pressed up against me, but with Iz gone, it just hasn't been enough.

So I've been hauling the pups into bed at night, one at a time, just for a couple of hours each. (I call them pups even though they turned three on September 1.) Both seem to understand what I want--they snuggle in right next to me (on the opposite side of me from Harry, of course), throwing off those deep terrier sighs of contentment as they drop off to sleep. Neither moves a hair for as long as I let them stay next to me--I always have to pick them up off the bed, warm and relaxed with sleep, and ease them back into their crates.

I can't imagine ever sleeping alone again. I sleep with dogs.