The Cats (3)

The final gathering of the cat pack in Texas.

Bixter
Okay, so you guys absolutely have to check out the pics that Gosia posted on her blog! She reports that Bix is now acting like he owns the house. He has certainly taken charge of his harem of lovely girl kitties. He even rolls on the bed in the morning with the BCs! No doubt that he's settled in nicely. Bix was originally from Salt Lake City--he's done quite a bit of traveling before ending up there again.

Lola
After a lot of worry, I finally found a home for Lola--it's literally cat heaven. Marla and David live out near Waxahachie (south of Dallas). They have two goldens, two BCs, and a lovely cat named Smokey. There are cat scratching posts and climbing castles all over the house--even in the bathroom!


They even built an enclosed cat yard with ramps and snoozing spots up off the ground for maximum fresh air exposure. The cat yard is bigger than some rooms in my house! Lola has never been outside so she might need some time to get used to that perk.


Marla reported that Lola is greeting her and David with enthusiasm and much purring. Lola is of course eating well but that little piglet would never miss a meal. Marla has already started introducing some of the other animals. Smokey is a super nice boy and was very curious about Lola when we arrived, not at all hostile or worried.


What a relief to know that Lola is going to have a wonderful life in her new home.

Bhumi
After a tiny bit of arm-twisting, my mother agreed to take Bhumi.


I thought he'd make the best fit into her household. She has a very old male cat named Freckles. Bhumi is the most gentle of all of my cats and should create the least amount of drama for the old guy. He will also do well with her dogs. He'll get to see his new home in about a week. When Bix left for Salt Lake City, both Bhumi and Lola moped around for days. But I don't think Bhumi misses Lola much. He seems to be relishing his new role as the only cat. He's following me around with the dogs just like Bixter used to do.

Bits, Oddments, and Loose Ends

On Sunday, I worked Mimi in the field with our little PA system. The sound quality in the video below is kind of crappy because it was really windy (that's why I cut out all of the sound from the clips of Gracie and Cap). Still, you can tell that Mimi is flicking her ears back, standing up, and generally getting uncomfortable on the table as I'm counting down (the volume was up pretty high and I'm sure my neighbors were wondering what the hell the crazy dog lady was up to). But I was able to reinforce her on the table quite a bit and she went on to perform nicely.

I believe. . . dare I say it? . . . that she is slowly desensitizing to the PA sounds.

Enjoy the video. I shot it on Sunday morning. It was cool and breezy and all three pups enjoyed doing some work outside.

On Friday, I had my first lesson in TTouch (this link is reasonably informative). I am willing to try anything that might help my girlie and I figured TTouch could perhaps give me some tools to maintain a connection with Mimi in the gate area at trials. The idea is that with time, she will learn to associate a calm, relaxed, but focused state with my touching her and that perhaps I can recreate that state in the gate area before she becomes so stressed. My friend Denise suggested that I can also use TTouch after runs when she is also pretty worked up.

It will take a while for me to learn how to do it correctly and for her to learn to associate the touches with a calm state. Fortunately, I have an entire house full of animals who will line up to let me practice on them! I'll get a second lesson in a few weeks.

Harry is still feeling super crappy. I can hear his poor little gut rumbling and roiling. My friend Denise, a regular font of information tonight, suggested famotidine. Iz took that too. I'll get some tomorrow and see if it doesn't help Harry. I gave him some carofate tonight before dinner in the hopes that it might help him rest more comfortably tonight. He got me up twice last night to go outside with diarrhea, poor little guy. I spent many long months with Iz sleeping with the light on and one eye open. It is not a skill I am pleased to have. On the bright side, sick pups get to go to work with me and he's enjoying that special attention. I can't tell yet if his feet feel better--his GI distress is masking any change there. Today is day 5 of the nasty meds.

Lola is still fat. Maybe she's photosynthetic.

Cap went to my vet today for his "puppy wellness" exam. He has tapeworms and I wanted a course of strongid to treat him for all of the other kinds too. Puppies get worms and he's been in at least half a dozen foster homes so it's not a surprise or a big deal. Still, worms. Ew. Need to be dealt with.

The vet told me some very interesting things. Foremost of these, he said that in his experience, twice the weight of a pup at 16 weeks is about what they will weigh as an adult. The more accurate scales at the vet told us Cap now (at about 17 weeks) weighs 12.8 lbs . . . so he may only be around 24 lbs as an adult! Gracie weighs 22 lbs (but as I've said, she's a big, strapping bitch).

I already knew that Cap only has one descended testicle. The vet said the other one is up in his body but that it probably won't drop. Since Cap won't be bred, having only one testicle is not of itself a problem. But those undropped testicles often become cancerous. Now, his neuter operation requires more invasive surgery, more like a spay than the usual snip-snip. I'm glad I convinced the rescue group to wait and let me take Cap intact. I'll feel more comfortable having my own vet do this more complicated surgery.

Health Worries

My petsitter was nagging me late last year because she was worried about Lola, who was looking swollen and apparently getting bigger by the day. Lola was eating and drinking just fine and was in fact quite playful. But I had to agree, Lola was decidedly bigger than a couple of months ago.

I dragged her to the vet and had a full blood panel and some xrays done. The verdict? Lola's blood chemistry looks fabulous. Her organs are in the correct place and are all about the right size--except that they are all nestled in a huge bed of FAT.

She had gained 4 lbs in four months.

And how did this happen?

Well, all the cats were looking a little rotund in the fall so I had started restricting their portions. They don't free feed but get measured portions of food twice a day. Lola was chowing down on her kibble then shouldering one of the other cats out of the way to eat most of his food.

The trick was to first switch to low-fat kibble then cut the portions to the point that even the pushover cat sucks his meals down right away, leaving little extra but crumbs for the voracious Lola.

My bigger worry is Harry. He tore a claw in November at flyball practice. I thought it was healing but as December progressed, more and more of his claws started deteriorating. The nails flake and crumble off, separating from the soft tissue underneath, and the nail beds of the affected nails would tear and would bleed often. Like, bleed all the time. I took him to flyball practice in early January which in retrospect was a mistake. Although his hind feet were wrapped, his front feet were not and he tore off parts of two nails on his left front foot. His feet hurt so bad on our return home that he was unwilling to walk.

I took him to my regular vet who passed me on to a dermatological specialist. My regular vet did run a full blood panel and nothing unusual showed up there. Many days of worry passed. I pulled Harry from the January flyball tournament. Whatever was going on had affected all four feet and all but two of his nails.

At last we got in to see the specialist. He seemed quite excited to tell me that Harry has an extremely rare condition called alopecia areata with trachyonychia (that second part is the nail disease). It is an immune related disorder in which his immune system is attacking his nail beds and the special cells that make nail material. He is now on cyclosporine, an immune suppressant (anti-tissue rejection). It is dissolved in cod liver oil castor bean oil in gel caps. Castor bean oil smells really nasty.

The castor bean oil is causing Harry significant intestinal distress (diarrhea, dry heaves) but the specialist said that he should develop a tolerance for it in about a week.

Harry is still in a lot of pain. I found out that when his nails fall off, the bloody stub that is exposed is HIS BONE! My god.


And some of you might recall that he has almost no hair on his ears. That is in fact another expression of this immune condition, which he has apparently had for many years. It suddenly moved into his nails. Typical of immune diseases, it can wax and wane.

This condition is so rare in dogs that there is very little information on its progression, if there are recurrences, etc. However, the dermatologist was remarkably upbeat about treatment and prognosis.

The dermatologist said that I should see improvement in his feet and a reduction of the pain and the nausea and such in about 7-10 days. It's only been four days and it will be a very long week ahead. My boy is suffering and I can't do anything about it except wait.

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.

Four Short Stories

1. Organic Gardening
Five of these giant mushroom colonies grew up around my seedless mulberry. I pulled them all up and put them in my compost bin.





2. Co-lateral Squirrel Damage
I live in a fairly densely wooded area. Most of the trees are 20+ years old and support a prolific squirrel population. I also keep a bird feeder, a Squirrel Buster, which I can say truly does work as advertised, but the birds are picky and thus messy and the squirrels (and the doves and other ground feeders) eat the seeds that get tossed onto the ground. I'd have squirrels running around anyway, but the free food does tend to attract them. Imagine my horror last weekend when I discovered a piece of siding that had been either pulled out or that had fallen from under one of my roof eaves. It could only mean squirrels were now romping and procreating in my attic! Oh my god. I called a wildlife removal service that offers humane solutions, not traps or poisons. Two guys showed up this morning, one a new trainee. They poked around my roof for a while, then asked to get into the attic. The primary access is from the garage. The trainee proceeded to step off the staircase right through the ceiling of my garage.


At least it was the garage and not the living room or my bedroom so clean up was easy. This is a fixable problem and I didn't get terribly wound up about it. And thankfully, there was no evidence that squirrels, or god forbid, raccoons et al., had taken up residence inside my attic. The hole under the eave is now fixed. The hole in my garage ceiling will be fixed in a couple of days (paid for of course by the wildlife removal company).


3. Who Needs Throw Pillows?
I don't have cable or satellite TV. I don't watch enough TV to justify the expense. But I do watch TV sometimes. And when I sit down on the couch, I am immediately surrounded by dogs and cats all vying for the prime position of my lap. As a result, none of them actually get to sit in my lap. So Gracie and Lola have come up with the best compromise by taking spots on the back of the couch. Lola tucks in behind my neck (a warm, furry, purring pillow) and Gracie likes to drape her front paws and head over my shoulder.



4. Amazing Gracie
In class on Monday night, Gracie got introduced to an Aframe contact. Debbie is having us backchain contact performance. That is, they didn't do the entire Aframe, only the last few feet of it. We either lifted them up and put them on the down side of the Aframe or we lured them up. There was a target on the ground at the bottom of the contact. Because my own Aframe is currently being rehabbed (details to come), I've only worked Gracie at home on a 12" wide plank on the ground. So she'd not seen a slanted contact before. She happily jumped up on it, turned around, and raced down to the target, dropping into the most beautiful down with her front paws on the target, lined up perfectly straight on the obstacle, and repeatedly offered a nose touch for multiple click/treats. I released her with my command "okay!" and she came running off towards me. I turned and stepped into her with the intent of slipping her collar/leash back on, but I've been doing a lot of flat work with her and she interpreted my movement differently. She turned when I turned, ran back up the contact, spun around, ran to the bottom, and dropped into a down, paws on the target. It happened so quickly that I could hardly get treats out fast enough. How can I characterize this sort of learning? It happened in a single session. Gracie is apparently just as scary smart as her sister Mimi but WAAAAY more focused on me from the outset.

So tonight, I decided to test what she actually did learn. I propped one end of my 12" wide training plank up--a terribly shaky set up to be sure. Nothing was tied down or particularly solid. This plank is a 1/2" by 12" board that I nailed some slats to and then painted with primer and sand. Nothing fancy. But it's a versatile training tool to work contacts.

Gracie wasn't sure that a wobbly 12" board was at all the same as a nice, wide, stable Aframe. So I lured her up the board twice, then had her turn on the board--make a 180degree turn on that 12" wide wobbly board, not a trivial move by any means--and when she saw the target on the ground at the end, she SHOT to the end of the board and dropped into a down, paws on the target. Amazing. I didn't get any pics of her on the board but here's my little set up.


I'm going to have to get a personal exercise trainer to keep up with these sisters if they both proceed to make all this potential the real deal.