Horace - Change of Strategy

We have mentioned before that Horace is a problem when it comes to eating. He spends ages eating his food, just skipping around and scattering food everywhere, which he then can't find. It can take him hours to eat his meals, which is why we cut him down from three meals a day to two, because it was taking most of the day with him eating - or not eating. As he is so small and a puppy it's important that he does eat well, but he won't eat anything other than the dry dog food and just isn't interested in food.

So we've had a change of strategy and we're now feeding him outside with the others, hoping that he might sort of catch on to the eating thing just from being around the others. Of course, he won't see the others, and although he does hear some things, I'm not sure what he'll pick up on, however it seems worth a try. This is the first time we fed him outside:

This is typical Horace behaviour, and this skipping goes on for hours, so the new plan is that perhaps he'll be more focused if he is outside with others. This skipping went on for quite a while and then the other dogs (and Pirata) started paying hopeful attention:

And eventually they all gave up and wandered off, and even Rosie got bored and had to sit down while he finished;

Anyway, the good news is that this seems to be working. He did a bit of skipping this morning, but not quite as much and finished his meal within minutes as opposed to the hours it was taking before (but still a long way away from the seconds it takes the rest). So hopefully he'll catch on to the fact he is eating with the big dogs now and we'll be over this hurdle.

The vet has said that his jaw might be misaligned and you can see in the video he does seem to do odd things with his head when he eats. She said to give him soft food, but he just won't eat it. We've even tried sneaking some little bits of sausage into his food, but he just eats around it! Don't think any of our other dogs would do that!

Queenie and roland

Horace has a bath

Actually, Horace has quite a few baths, because he does get quite stinky! However, I thought it was interesting to take this pic so you can see the size of him compared to Pixie when he doesn't have all of his hair sticking up (he also suffers from static)

Horrible Charlie

'Encouraging' Horace to jump down the step...

Asparagus

First of the season!

Butt Cheeks

I bought some baby wipes for Horace. Because his legs are soooooo short and his fur has got so long, he is like a tiny mop head running round on the floor. And of course, he runs through everything, resulting in one stinky hound.

I wash him quite often, but he doesn't like it and it's also making his fur get dry and full of static. So I bought some antiseptic wipes for cleaning him with, mid bath. I read the label and there was a word I didn't understand. When I translated it, it translated at 'butt cheeks' which just make me smile. Apparently these wipes are gentle enough for eyes, ears and butt cheeks. Ah, it's the little things...

We're taking some positive training action with Charlie. Over the last couple of weeks she has become grumpy. A lot of grumbling and barking comes from her, particularly when others come by. But of course, this also co-incides with her breaking her leg and having to wear a lampshade. She got an infection in her leg earlier this week, which meant she couldn't settle and became quite subdued. So her grumpiness is very likely to do with her situation, but we decided that we'd take positive action so it doesn't become a habit.

She gets protective over Ian, she grumbles if she is sat by him and others come and sit near. But she doesn't do that with me, so we've tried to stop this by her now sitting away from Ian. She gets shut out of the room when she barks and Ian is going out of his way to only pet her when he is petting one of the others, so she can see if she wants attention, another animal has to be nearby too. Although we've only been doing this for a couple of days, the change has been noticeable. But this also coincides with her feeling better after the infection in her leg - so who knows. Obviously being blind in one, partially sighted in the other and being deaf means that wearing a lampshade makes life even more difficult for her. So I am sure that this has exacerbated her grumpiness - and she's not even allowed to run round and let off steam!

I am sure she will be looking forward to having the lampshade off and being able to run around again - I know we are!

Hop-along Charlie

Well, it's two weeks since Charlie broke her leg and it hasn't slowed her down. She went to the vet for a check on Tuesday and they said the bone is repairing. The say that because she's a young dog, her leg will repair quickly, so hopefully there won't be too many weeks left of this. It's the lampshade which is the problem. She doesn't realize her head has suddenly got big and she keeps getting stuck!

She's still full of energy and also doesn't understand why she can't play with the big dogs anymore. Well, just stop playing in general! She's nearly six months old now, and I think she may be quite a small collie, unless she has a big growth spurt. She seems huge compared to how she was when we got her, but then see her against Queenie who is a similar dog and she's a lot smaller.

Horace continues to be Horace. He's still VERY odd about his food. It can take him HOURS to eat. I just don't know what is wrong with him - I have never known another dog like it. He will only eat his dried food - if I put something else in there like sausage or cheese he just eats around it (very slowly). He will eat quicker if I hold on to him. I think that's because he can't get distracted.  I've cut down his meal times to two because a/ he is so slow at eating, his meal times were lasting most of the day and b/ I wondered if he ate less he may get more excited about food. It didn't work!

His not liking food is turning into a problem with training him. It's impossible to reward him, so he doesn't know when he's being good. He's doesn't really do anything bad - I put him outside to go to the toilet, and he's quite good as using the puppy training pad overnight. But I'd like to tell him what good behaviour is - like sitting nicely to be picked up and not skipping round like a very skippy lamb. Skipping around isn't something I can tell him off for, but staying still is definately something I'd like to reward him for. But I'm sure we'll get there.

With regards to picking him up, it doesn't help that his coat is like fine silk. He is so silky that he easily slips through my hands. It's like trying to pick up a wiggling bar of wet soap!

He's grown quite a lot, but is still very small. His legs don't seem to have grown much, so he's like a little white mop head running round on the floor. His other problem - well more of a problem for us than for him - is that his fur is now so long and his legs so short - he really is like a little mop on the floor and he gets disgustingly dirty! I'm going to take him to a proper groomer to get his coat cut as it will be good for him to get used to being handled by others - and because of his wiggling and silkiness, I just don't think I could hold onto him!

Sam appears to have recovered fully. He seemed to come round much quicker than last time. Last time he spent a lot of time in the shower room or pacing, but this time he was back to normal within a couple of days. Hopefully that will be it for seizures for a while now.

And the rest of the household are doing OK and have settled down from the onslaught of new puppies followed by new puppy wearing lampshade and banging into everything.

The last couple of days have been rainy. First time for a long time that we've had a run of bad weather - but potentially good news for asparagus... :)