Snow Dogs

Just after Christmas it snowed! We get fairly big snow here as we are about 1000 feet above sea level so it's also very cold at times so getting lots of snow makes up for the lack of sunshine (well sort of).

Anyway, on the morning of the first day of snow I woke up and went downstairs to let the dogs out and on opening the back door they were just so funny. Neither dog seemed to have seen snow before, both of them usually go rushing out the door in a hurry to get sniffing round the garden but this time they just kept looking at the snow in the sky and watching it fall to the ground. They then tentatively stepped outside and both got snow on the end of their noses as they sniffed this strange cold white stuff that had suddenly appeared.

And then they went into snow dog mode.

Snow dog mode is a super fast accelerated version of a normal dog except this mode only happens when it snows. There is a similar mode for sandy beaches. Both dogs run madly round and round, leaping and jumping and smiling loads. It's so funny and lots of fun. For some bizarre reason Molly kept laying in the snow and rolling in it and then springing back up to belt round the garden again. And the very best thing about snow mode is that there are no muddly paws to clean before they can come back indoors.

More wee problems

At the time of writing this we have had Henry for about 9 months and I am trying to catch up with his story before writing the day to day antics of his life with us. I have decided that I'll come up to date with the wee problems though as in my desperation I have scoured every internet site, brain and book with possible solutions so just in case there is some-one out there with the same problem here is my solution of sorts.

Henry had had a bad start to life and had never been house-trained. He'd never lived in a house before and I think that limited his need to communicate with humans as probably the only contact he got was some food thrown at him every now and then. This meant he didn't really know how to communicate with us and he didn't know when we were trying to communicate with him and no matter how basic we do need to communicate with each other for him to realise that we don't want him to wee and poo in the house.

Henry had also been through a really bad time and going from that to living in a cosy warm cottage with us where we would feed him, love him and give him everything he needed seemed perfect to us but Henry's previous home and life had been nothing like that and he was having to go through a massive learning curve to adjust to his new life. Being young and somewhat mad he is also sometimes easily distracted and so letting him out for a wee is great but if a sheep walks past or the farm dogs bark he instantly forgets why he was outside and goes to investigate. If we weren't giving him 100% attention he would just wander back into the house and wee there.

So. I had a big think about all of this. Henry needed a strict routine, very strict, with no deviation whatsoever. I decided to work out a sort of daily timetable to which I would have to adhere if we were going to be successful.

Every morning I would wake and get up to let Henry out before he had had a chance to wee or poo in the house. For Henry this meant I had to get up at 4.30!!! But if it was going to work then I 'd do it. So up I got, bleary eyed and half asleep and sent him out for a wee. Amazingy he got the idea. When I came down he would still be on his bed and he had wee'd outside before he'd even thought about doing it in the living room.

Gradually I moved the time to 6.00am. this has taken many weeks. I moved the alarm 5 minutes on once every week or so. I figured that if I did it slowly Henry woudn't notice and his bladder wouldn't either as technically I suppose we were training his bladder and bowels more than his brain.

If I got impatient and moved the alarm to far or too often Henry would catch me out and have an accident and we'd have to go back a week or so.

I also changed Henrys breakfast time. I used to feed him and Molly as soon as I got up so they were associating my coming downstairs with food. I now feed them after I've eaten and no earlier than 8.30am, this has calmed the mornings down immensley and I'm wondering if Henry's stomach was waking him which in turn woke his bladder!

During the day Henry is let ouside at 8.30 after his breakfast, 10.30 for a mid morning pee, he goes for a walk around 1pm and is then let out at 4.30 after his dinner, again at 7.30pm and finally 10.30pm.

He has learned to pace if he wants to go out in between times, I think he has learned this from Molly. And he has also learned the phrase "do you want to go outside" to which he puts his ears up and kind of smiles if he needs to go to the loo.

If I stick to this routine he has absolutely no accidents. I can't relax the routine as he will then relapse but it's working really well so far and I think given time he will settle down and have no more accidents.

The only problem we are having is if I go out or we have a change to the routine of the house such as visitors, Other Half working from home, or if the dogs go into kennels when we go away. These type of things usually result in a relapse for either just one incident or could last a couple of days. But just keeping the routine going will get him back to normal very quickly.

Out of all of the distractions the hardest one right now is if we go out and leave the dogs in the house alone. We could be gone for five minutes or five hours and sometimes Henry will wee and sometimes he won't, but more than likely he will have wee'd. I think this is something that will take some time to get sorted and is probably not helped by the fact that I am around all the time usually and he is not used to being left alone. Overall we are getting there but it has been a long and unexpectedly hard slog, something I wasn't expecting to last quite so long but I'm sure eventually I will be able to completely relax and not worry about finding a wet patch on the carpet with my socks on!

Oh and the brilliant carpet wee and poo cleaner I got from the vets is an absolute godsend, it's called Total Care and costs about £5.

Big and Wee Problems

When Henry came to stay he wasn't house-trained. In fact he'd never been in a house before so we had the mamouth task of trying to house-train him.

It's not as easy training a dog that has passed the cute and cuddly puppy stage, even if technically they are still a big pup as they have learned that it dosen't matter where they go and in some cases if they wee all over the house it makes them feel more secure. But I am a patient person and was fully prepared to overcome all of Henry's problems until he became a super-dog.

During the first few days it was miracle if Henry went to the loo outside. Every night and after every meal and playtime and first thing in the morning I would put him on his lead and walk round and round the garden with him until he perfomed. This worked well when the weather was nice but most of the time during the winter here it blows about 60mph winds with sideways rain, I certainly didn't want to be out in it and I have a big winter coat to wear. For a small skinny balding dog it certainly wasn't much fun at all and he spent most of the time outside trying to get back in.

He was also scared of the wind. You can here it coming from the end of the valley 2.5 miles away and it wooooshes up into the side of the house and every time that happened Henry would croutch down and cower so that didn't make house-training any easier.

Henry also seemed to have a bit of a communication problem. Molly has learned that if she paces around the living room we know she wants to go outside. Henry wanders about, runs about, throws himself about, barks, whines, laughs, lays down, trots and bounces all the time. So you spend most of the time letting him out and he dosen't want to go and then you go into another room to find that he has been to the loo in there and that was what the last batch of energy was all about. There was no consistancy about it and we were trying to work him out while he was trying to work us out, it wasn't easy.

Then we started to turn a corner. I noticed that his 'accidents' had pretty much stopped during the day. I work from home so I'm around all the time which I had thought would be great for settling a new dog in. But as soon as I told Other Half that the accidents were getting fewer Henry would go aack 6 steps and start doing it again. I was totally stuck and didn't know what to do.

I tried every solution possible from 'Get Off' sprays to stop him from wanting to wee on things (which worked for about 4 hours and then he just wee'd on them anyway) to wee disolving solutions designed to clear up the wee and destroy the scent left by it, to making home made solutions of lemon juice and spraying that about the place and trying to cover rotten smells with all sorts of anti bacterial air fresheners. Our house was begining to smell like a kennel and I was exhausting myself trying to sort it out while Henry was exhausting himself trying to keep it smelly. If there was a house-training product or technique I had tried it. And Henry had ignored it.

Finally after five months I took him to the vets. I was trying very hard not to burst into tears as I told the vet about the problem. I wasn't being emotional, I was simply worn out by it all.

The vet listened and made nice noises about getting it sorted out which made me feel so much better. She then gave Henry a good going over, taking some samples etc just in case there was a medical problem at the bottom of this - no pun intended!

There was no medical cause. Part of me felt releived, most of me felt totally deflated that the problem couldn't be solved overnight with a couple of tablets, although actually it wouldn't be great if it was medical for Henry's sake.

On seeing my deflation, the vet then had a really long chat with me about routines and feeding and patience and actually this made me feel lots better and on leaving the surgery I felt re-energised and ready to fight the canine sewerage battle anew. I was also armed with two bottles of super dooper industrial strength wee and poo smell and scent destroyer (which were half the price of all the other stuff I 'd tried).

So off home we went, Henry sitting in the back of the car looking rather insulted by the whole experience.

Back home I got to work with the spray. It smelt of marzipan. Rather odd but I didn't care. Once I'd gone around on my hands and knees sniffing the entire carpet for smelly bits and exterminated the smell I felt so muhc happier. I gave it a night and asked my neighbour to come down the track for a smell test. When she walked in she announced that it didn't smell of wee in our house any more yippeeee! It did smell of marzipan but who cared, it didn't smell of wee.

Strangely Henry hadn't had an accident that night either so I had a blissful morning of no clearing up before my breakfast, oh what joy!

Bouncing Furry Legs

It was on my cousins return visit from Durness that we realised Henry had begun to turn a corner with his body.

My cousin noticed that he was ever so slightly less skinny and there was the beginings of fur appearing on his legs. I suppose that being with him every day I hadn't noticed this but it was a major turning point for Henry and his recovery from near starvation. These pictures of him a short while later as for the first few weeks of his life with us my camera wasn't working and so the only really bald pictures we have are on a mobile phone but you should be able to see that his back legs are still very sparse and the lower parts of his front legs are the same.

In fact he was so skinny and so cold because of his lack of fur that he had to wear his lovely thick fleece coat all the time even when he was indoors and he had to wear another one on top when he went outside. Every evening he would curl up next to me, really close and I'd hold his poor skinny bald legs to keep them warm, he was a total heart breaker and all I could do was love him loads.

It was around this time that he started to become bouncy. And I mean really bouncy. He seemed to love having my cousin and family to stay, perhaps it was an extended pack thing but he really started to come out of himself, chasing balls, socks, anything really and it was about this time that he started to perfect his 'wind you in the stomach' leap. This involved (and still does) running at you full pelt, jumping into the air and poking you in the stomach with his front legs. It' a bit hard to describe how he does it exactly as he does a sort of extra jump on his back legs just as he does it, but it just about knocks you out! It seems to be his 'special' way of saying hello and over the last few months I've learned to very skillfully avoid it!

He also learnt to leap onto the windowsill with the skill and grace of a mountain goat. (In fact some neighbours have got goats and the way they move is very similar to Henry) he leaps with all four paws onto the arm of the sofa and then stretches his front legs accross the gap onto the windowsill to look outside. It's quite amazing to watch and rather funny when someone is sitting at that end of the sofa as a rather big dog springs onto the arm.

The main problem with this is having to constantly clean the dog art from the window, left there by Henry's nose and also being ready to clear up spilt tea from suprised visitors.

I suppose he shouldn't really be allowed to do it at all but it is rather funny to watch.

So, Henry the Leaphound was christened.

Full Scottish Breakfast & Black Pudding

A few days before Christmas my cousin, her husband and Mum, plus two rather large German Shepherds were coming to stay on their way up to Durness were they were to spend the holidays.

Once they arrived we tried to get all the dogs together to see how it would go, we had a contingency plan just in case they didn't like each other.

The German shepherds were huge, I mean really huge, much bigger than I remembered and Henry and Molly sniffed around them while they stoated about the garden, all dogs were on their leads,just in case. Molly was fine, she wasn't bothered about playing or jumping around, she just said hello and went off and left them to it. Henry of course was a different case. He jumped about the shepherds, they tolerated him, just. Then the big male shepherd got fed up with him and we all realised that Henry wouldn't even make a dinner for him, and not even a small snack, he'd just be a mini dog treat as he seemed so skinny in comparison. We decided that the dogs would all end up having a massive fight and a visit to the vets was not what any of us wanted just before Christmas so we resorted to keeping one pair of dogs in another room and the others in the living room with us and swapping them about every half hour or so. Needless to say, the shepherds were incredibly well behaved, so settled and took everything in their stride, I was completely in awe of them and wished my dog training skills were up to that standard!

The next morning I got up early to make everyone a huge Scottish breakfast complete with black and fruit pudding which everyone enjoyed. All too soon it was time for our lovely visitors to get going on their long trip, so we helped them with their stuff and waved goodbye, ready for the next round of Christmas visitors, Other Halfs parents who were coming down the next day.

When I went back into the house I found various contents of the kitchen bin strewn accross the kitchen, hall and living room floors. Then I noticed one of the little plastic strips that they put around the fruit and black puddings. I immediately did a mental calculation of how many strips there should be and found that there were 8 missing! They were nowhere to be seen so the only place they could be was inside a dog, but which dog?

I didn't panic, after all I've had dogs for years and they eat all sorts of things without a problem but I decided I should call the vet just in case. The vet said to bring the dogs straight to the surgery as the plastic rings could get caught in the dogs gut and cause some major problems. So I had to leave all the beds unchanged, bundle the dogs into the car and run to the vets. Molly is often car sick so I tried to drive very badly to encourage her but of course this was one of those journeys where she behaved impeccably and wasn't sick at all!

Once at the vets the dogs were taken straight through to a special room with kennels in it and I had to hold the dogs while the vet administered masses of bicarbinate of soda and water to them. We then put the dogs in the kennels and waited. The vet said the result was usually fairly instant and that it woudln't be long before we found the plastic rings again.

However the dogs had other ideas. They looked extremely insulted at what had just happened to them and stood there looking very indignant indeed. We waited, and waited, the bicarb made the dogs blow up like a pair of odd balloons but still nothing happened.

After a long time the vet said the only thing we could do was try to hurry the digestion process along by trying liquid parafin which the dogs were duly dosed with. After speaking with the vet I decided to take the dogs home, armed with all the symptoms if anything should happen and also a small bottle of liquid parafin. I also promised to try and find the rings once they were expelled.

Thus began the mystery of the disappearing plastic rings. The dogs were fine, no adverse affects to either the bicarb or parafin, most dogs would have been laying with their legs in the air doing impressions of an exploding sewer works, but oh no, my dogs did nothing at all. I then had to spend the next few days (including Christmas day) picking through all expellations (the only polite word I can think of at this moment) to find the plastic rings and they never appeared. Never.

It seems that the plastic rings around black pudding and fruit pudding from Tescos must be dissolvable as several months later the dogs are still alive dispite never finding them....

We wish you a merry Christmas

We'd had Henry for three weeks when Christmas was upon us.

We had deffered putting up the tree for as long as possible as we just knew that we would be wakened in the dead of night to the sound of it crashing to the floor with a dog in the middle of it, but we could put it off no more. This was to be the first Christmas in this house so the first thing we had to do was locate the tree and decorations. Henry of course was very interested in all of this and followed us around while we tried to find the boxes.

We live in a rather old cottage where the upstairs rooms are part of the roof, this means that there is a sort of tunnel which runs around the rooms upstairs, all around the upper part of the house. We found the tree and deccorations just inside one of the hatches to the tunnel. We also saw a stripey tail disappearing into the tunnel once we'd pulled the boxes out.

Thankfully we managed to catch hold of Henrys tail just before it completely disappeared and managed to pull him back through the hatch - I had visions of calling the fire brigade and of them crawling round and round the roof of the house while Henry ran round and round just ahead of them, that and it all being filmed by Animal Rescue and being made to feel like a bad pet owner.

Putting the tree up was actually not quite as bad as we expected. Henry and also Molly kept putting their heads into boxes and trying to work out what was going on but all in all they took to having a mini part of the forest outside all in their stride.

Night time was also a bit of a suprise as the tree remained standing, the decorations along the fireplace had all been removed and thrown around the living room, killed and then left but apart from that we were very very pleased. Fergus always used to wee up the Christmas tree in his efforts to continually terrorise Other Half and we had remembered to unplug all the lights, just in case!

Things were looking promising for Christmas yey!

Two Steps Forward....

After a few weeks of saintly patience we seemed to be getting somewhere with Henry's night time anctics. He had finally quietened down and had stopped all the barking and howling and running around for no reason in the middle of the night.

The difference this made to my sleep pattern was amazing, finally I could go to sleep at 10.30 and stay asleep until 6.00am, just about a whole nights sleep.

The house training wasn't really coming along though, well it was a bit but nowhere near as well as it should have been and I needed to keep my eyes glued to Henry all the time otherwise he would go off and leave a nice smelly present for me, usually in the middle of the living room floor.

One of Henry's other mad habits was eating. I dont mean eating like a normal dog, Henry eats like a mad thing, as if he's never eaten before in his life. I suppose that being starved to within an inch of your life would make you slightly obssessed with getting every morsel of food that you can but Henry had taken this to extremes.

One of my little luxuries in life had been eating my breakfast on the sofa in the living room whilst watching the news on tv. Not any more! On emerging from kitchen with my bowl of cornflakes and milk Henry would do a very good impression of a merecat on his hindlegs whilst walking backwards and trying to get his nose into my bowl all at the same time. Being a rather big dog this meant I had to hold the bowl up above my head.

Sitting on the sofa for breakfast was a complete hazard, Henry had absolutely no manners whatsoever and tried to simply push his way past my fending off legs and eat the contents of the bowl. First thing in the morning just after I had cleaned up the nightly poo and pee and been jumped over the last thing I felt like doing was fighting with a dog for my breakfast so I took to eating in the kitchen with the door firmly shut and Radio 4 for company.

This didn't really solve anything though as it meant that no-one could eat anything in the living room, not even a chewy toffee without Henry on their lap trying to extract it from their mouth so I decided I should persist with the sofa breakfasts.

It took a few mornings but it finally paid off, I started off by standing up and holding the bowl high in the air between spoonfuls, then I progressed to sitting on the arm of the sofa using my legs to fend Henry off. After a couple of days I eventually sat on the sofa, again using my legs to fend him off at one stage he ended up standing on the sofa back looming over me from behind but I still wouldn't give in.

And eventually I could go back to my morning tv and bowl of cereal without a dogs nose in the bowl.