Alki has been worrying me a bit. The other night she didn’t follow me around while I made dinner, and didn’t come sit with us while we ate, which is pretty unusual. Instead she was asleep on the doggie bed in the office. Then last night she was scratching at the front door at 4am, and when I went to see what she was doing she seemed a bit lost and confused. She seemed fine this morning. I don’t know if it’s a side effect of her cancer meds, but I’d swear she’s getting a bit of doggie-dementia. Of course in a few months she’ll be 15, so I guess that’s like 105 in dog years, so she’s entitled!
Big Red and her chicks are mixing in just fine with the rest of the flock (that’s her and her chicks in the back center). I even saw her biggest rooster chick picking a fight with Copper, the baby cochin roo who’s easily three times his size. They fluffed up and jumped in the air and everything!
The cats are never far away when I’m doing chores. Mighty hopped up on the post to see what was going on.
Jack came home this morning, and he and Barclay were so happy to see each other again, they played all day long.
There was lots of humping…
wrestling…
More humping, you can see Alki indicating she wants no part of these shenanigans
Tugging
More wrestling…
Until everyone was tuckered out and ready for a nap
It’s hard to get everyone to sit still long enough to get a family picture!
Jack reminds us a lot of Chester. He seems very sweet. He looks at you with these big sweet eyes, kind of wrinkles his forehead and whines a bit when he wants something. I can tell he and Dave are going to be great couch buddies!
And Jack even knows a trick!
What a beautiful day it was today! Perfect for snapping pictures around the yard.
Mighty
Alki
The Chickens
Barclay
MouseKind of a funny story. Alki is very hard of hearing, to the point where you can stand right behind her and call her and she’ll slowly look around like she thought maybe she heard something (though she can still hear the clink of the cookie jar sometimes). Also she’s getting blind, so she’s never sure if she sees you or not until she’s good and close.
The other day Barclay and Mighty were playing in the pasture right outside the paddock, making a bit of noise, and Alki was in the yard, and she started wandering in their direction. I called her but she didn’t hear, so I followed her until I was right behind her, and called her name again – loudly. She heard me, and looked up, looked straight ahead (I was behind her) and got that look like, oh, I see you! And went trotting off into the pasture, heading for a small sequoia at the bottom of the field. I trotted after her. When she got to the tree she kind of squinted at it confused – wait, that’s not you? Then she looked around and saw me coming up behind her and got that happy look and ran wagging up to me – hey, there you are!
So now I’ve been mistaken for a sequoia.
Dr Cyman is Alki’s oncologist, and she has been wonderful through this whole matter. When I talked to her yesterday after a couple days of phone tag she made me feel much better. She’s very matter of fact about dealing with things. When I asked about the other vet seeing cancer cells in Alki’s urine, the Dr basically said ‘maybe he did, maybe it was something else. It doesn’t really matter, we already know she has cancer.’ Well, true. It’s just that every time someone says cancer I freak out a bit more! But she’s right, that’s no surprise. So she said Alki’s blood tests looked pretty good, but she suspects her bladder is irritated, either from an infection or from the cancer. Again, it doesn’t matter, because we’ll do the same thing either way. I’m supposed to keep track of how often she takes piddle breaks for a few days, then we’ll do a round of antibiotics and see if it helps. It might help, it might not. She said ‘if money grew on trees’ we’d try some other things, but I’m glad she realizes we just can’t. Plus she understood that Alki is getting older and not up to a bunch of crazy treatments. So she made me feel a lot better because she’s so calm and matter of fact that we’ll do what we can to make her comfortable in spite of the cancer. Can’t cure the cancer, so we’ll just deal with it.
She did say that Alki is coming up on two years since her diagnosis and that that is spectacular for her. In fact she said she had a meeting with the other oncologists in the area recently, including the dr who did Alki’s pre-surgery diagnosis and the surgeon, and shared her records with them, because it’s really a success story that she is still plugging along and enjoying a good quality of life.
Some days she mopes around a bit and sleeps a lot or pants like something is bothering her. Other days she bounds around like a crazy hyperactive pup. On the good days it’s hard to look at her and think she’s sick. On the bad days I can’t forget it.
It still gives me chills to realize my little buddy has cancer.
Alki went to the vet yesterday for her checkup and the vet found what he described as ‘sheets of cancer cells’ in her urine. We knew this was coming. The bladder cancer has caused her to strain while peeing, and that has gotten worse recently. It happens so slowly it’s hard to notice, but she does spend quite a bit of time squatting outside. He also said her bladder seemed to be tender, because she didn’t want him feeling around there. The blood tests went to the oncologist. I’m sure we won’t be hearing good news. We’ve been very happy that the cancer treatments gave her an extra year and a half of normal life, and she’s been very happy that whole time. But we knew the cancer would catch up with her eventually. Now we just have to see how this all plays out.
Alki and BarclayI was drawn to Eskimos because they are smart and beautiful, and very loving, but they are not ‘people pleasers’. They kind of do their own thing. Very independent. I have been working and working with Barclay’s training. I know it would go faster if he was a ‘pleaser’ but that’s just not how they are.
When I was a kid we had some great dogs that I loved dearly, and we never trained any of them. How did they turn out to be such great dogs? I have higher expectations for my dogs now. When I was a kid we never took dogs for walks, they never left the big backyard except to go to the vet or maybe on a family trip to the beach. You didn’t worry about socializing them with other dogs, or training them to walk nice on a leash, or crate training, or to come back when called. So dogs today get a richer, more stimulating lifestyle, but to do that they need to learn more skills than ever before.
Barclay disappointed me the other night when he refused to come off the couch in the living room and come to bed with the rest of the family, and when Dave went to get him Barclay started to bite down, a warning to leave him alone. His temperment is overall pretty docile and submissive. I think we just caught him at a time when he was sleepy and thought he’d see what he could get away with. Of course that’s completely unacceptable. We’ve been working on bite inhibition since he came home at 8 weeks, and he’s been very good and not shown any aggression since he outgrew the tantrum phase when he was tiny. We made him get up and come to bed anyway.
The next morning we began instituting the Nothing In Life Is Free program. I was hoping he could do without it, it’s a bit more of a hassle for us. Instead of walking by and seeing your dog laying there and giving them a pet, you’re supposed to call them to you and give them pets. Everything is on your terms, and the dog has to perform to get what he wants. Two days later and I’m already seeing progress. He’s more attentive and is doing better at coming when I call, and generally doing what is asked. Hopefully we can relax this as he improves.
Last night we were working through a new exercise in the Control Unleashed book – Go To Place. In this case it’s a bathmat, and I just let him figure out what I wanted, clicking when he got close. It was very cute to watch him figure out that he was getting clicked for stepping on the mat, then for laying on it. He was doing good at half laying on it, and I waited to click hoping if I held out he would shuffle and get the rest of his butt on it, and instead he rolled over on it! Just trying new things to see what works 🙂 Finally he did get completely on it, and got lots of rewards. Soon he didn’t want to get off the mat! It was a good exercise for him, and fun for both of us.
Steff Does Stuff! 