Untitled

Luna was a hard pup to track down we found her and the breeder when my family was looking for an Irish wolf hound we'd had one before, and liked her disposition. we spent nearly a year looking until I broadened my searches, we found Luna through Kijiji, her family was in Saskatoon a province away, on a farm she was raised with small livestock and children as well as cats, both her mum and paternal uncle where at the farm when we were greeted by the sea of puppies that was her litter. Her mum (the Irish wolfhound) was well mannered and her uncle (the maremma) was polite. We took Luna home that night and she's been with us since.

[kangals]

something I’ve noticed about Kep, which surprised me bc I always thought it was instinctual, is that he does not know how to dig. never has. he will paw at his bed or the floor when he’s getting ready to sleep, but only ever with one leg at a time. I have never seen him do the left-right-left-right alternating standard digging motion. it’s always left-left-left-left and sometimes he’ll switch to right-right-right-right but never does he alternate feet. it’s also only with bedding, never in the yard. Stellina has always liked to dig ever since she was a puppy (mostly in water but she also has a nice little scrape under my lilac bush she naps in) and Boone was a big digger who made several upsettingly large holes in my yard. I feel like Kep would love digging based on his general penchant for destruction, so maybe it’s a good thing he’s never figured it out.

[as-old-roads]

i really really like this post

does your dog know how to dig?

ohhh yeah

yes but they are nonpracticing

no. my dog is innocent.

Voting ended onJun 6

[elderdoggo]

Fresh groom we did something different with her face this time

[elderdoggo]

Long time no post Suzi got groomed near the end of February again, a touch shorter than we had hoped (only about half an inch shorter than we aimed for) but hey when your groomer says I ran into a few stubborn tangles you let them do what they need to do. The weather has not been on our side for coat maintenance it can't make up its mind so I would almost bet money the worst of it was on her lower legs, she's still under muscled for my preference but I'm considering contacting the trainer in town for a few sessions in the summer to help teach her the basics of some agility work and then DIYing some basic agility equipment, hopefully focused activity will help her gain some muscle mass in both her hind legs and along her back... Might increase her appetite and make her eat better because she still has a crappy appetite, which doesn't help with the whole muscle situation. The activity might also help work out some of that energy, she's an inherently amped up dog which makes some of her problem behaviours worse because she jumps from excited to anxious very easily.

[elderdoggo]

She has found her spot to lay while we get Christmas food that needs to be started early going. She's doing better this year than last which can be chalked up half to maturity and half to a whole year of practice between them and now, but we have a bag on the floor being taken out after the turkey is in so I'm providing additional visual reminders to stay out of the kitchen by just kind of standing there.

[elderdoggo]

She's uh not very good at this, featuring one of her favourite chews that we are going to need to replace soon because she chewed through a section of it.

[elderdoggo]

We got the suit and I am in contact with the groomer we've been to in the past to get her shaved down In about a month, enough time her incision will be safe for bath time and with any luck I can maybe run some damage control on her fur. Regardless we have an "extreme heat event" forecasted for our area for the next week and we are outside and our only shelter is a camper with no AC... Good news starting Wednesday Suzi might emphasis on might be ready to do stairs on leash and if that's the case I'm going to be bringing her around to the front to go into the basement during the day to hide from the heat, she'll still need to be on a leash regardless but if we can get out of the heat I'll take what I can get.

[elderdoggo]

I realized while I can't take a pic of her in her suit right now because it's dark and I'm trying to encourage her to sleep even though she's upset her cone is back on for the night, I do have pics from the last few days

The pics with the cone and blanket were from the second night she was already wearing her recovery suit but it gets cool in the camper at night so she also got tucked in with a blanket since it was her second night after surgery and you are meant to keep dogs warm for the first day or two of recovery.

[elderdoggo]

We got the suit and I am in contact with the groomer we've been to in the past to get her shaved down In about a month, enough time her incision will be safe for bath time and with any luck I can maybe run some damage control on her fur. Regardless we have an "extreme heat event" forecasted for our area for the next week and we are outside and our only shelter is a camper with no AC... Good news starting Wednesday Suzi might emphasis on might be ready to do stairs on leash and if that's the case I'm going to be bringing her around to the front to go into the basement during the day to hide from the heat, she'll still need to be on a leash regardless but if we can get out of the heat I'll take what I can get.

[elderdoggo]

The world's saddest Pixar lamp, we are going to get her a recovery suit in town today because we've got ourselves set up in the camper for at least the first week of recovery (depends on how she's doing we might push to the two week mark since she also got a gastropexy and her hernia repaired and it will be a lot easier to prevent running and jumping in the camper) and it's tight in here for her with a cone, she's got good pain management on board for at least five days and a little extra if we still think she's in pain. I sat in the back with her on the way home so she had company and didn't need a cone, we folded down two of the three seats so she had more room that was stable to lay down and I sat in the remaining seat mostly just encouraging her to lay down anytime she stood up to shift positions and patting her if she came up close to the seats rather than curling up in the cargo space, she usually gets buckled in when she's in the car these days but we figured the biggest concern was her being comfortable and not stressing her stitches on the ride back plus her car restraint system only works with the seats up, with them folded down there is nowhere to buckle her in and that just wouldn't have been stable enough footing for her with her stitches. The cooling mat was in case she was running too hot because she is usually a hot dog but she was just fine so I just moved it into my foot space to give her more room.

[elderdoggo]

We are trying something new for Suzi's barking. I realized not too long ago she very rarely cares about what's happening in backyards or the backfield (she's only barked when our neighbour was looking after two husky type dogs and they were vocalizing at her first) so what if we get her more used to the front yard and make that feel like it's hers as well. So far we've already seen that this idea might work, multiple people got home and our direct neighbours even walked around to the side of their house that's closest to our yard and she didn't bark at any of them some folks went by on bikes and no barks there either. We are taking a short break because she saw a dog and while she was good she got over excited so I figured it was time to put her back in the backyard so she could calm down a little before we do some more front yard time. The front yard is also nice because it's north facing so it's cooler than out back since it gets significantly less sun.

[elderdoggo]

Something to consider if you are going to have your dog go through a couple heats, not all dogs are particularly tidy about it have a plan if yours isn't, we are using dog diapers as heat pants and putting a replaceable liner in them to keep them clean. Secondarily many dogs in heat need to pee more often have a plan for if your dog suddenly needs to urinate more frequently, I let Suzi out between 1 and like 2:30am regularly anyways to make sure she doesn't wake people up super early so that works well for this but it's a relatively common problem to have a dog who was house trained suddenly start having accidents in the house during heat because they pee mor. This will likely be Suzi's only heat we are eyeballing some dates in the summer to figure out when we want to book her spay and hopefully by Thursday the active discharge phase of heat will be done and we move onto the phase where we have to watch like a hawk when she's outside to make sure no intact male dogs get any funny ideas because I'd really rather not have to care for her on my own after she's spayed I'd rather be able to rotate that task and we can't do that until summer lets out but by God this dog is not having puppies.

[elderdoggo]

I've gotta escalate my hunt for a sighthound collar with a buckle for Suzi the only ones I've found so far are not only incredibly expensive without shipping (plus like 40 dollars shipping because they'd be coming from Europe) but also incredibly boring. I don't mind paying a bit more for a nice looking one but if it's expensive I'd better also like it, and I do prefer metal closures for dogs her size plus she would benefit from a wider collar than she has. Sighthounds and their mixes can be difficult to get good collars for because they have very skinny necks which means the collars you find that fit them tend to be thinner but they also have really long necks so they do benefit from a wider collar. Suzi currently wears a medium collar cinched as tight as it will go and after her haircut that's still arguably too loose for her she might fill out a little in the neck in the next year or so but in the meantime what's a bit of a pain in the neck... literally and figuratively

[elderdoggo]

Little delayed but it was Suzi's birthday on the 21st she got groomed on the 19th and got a hardboiled egg for her birthday that she liked a lot once she figured out how to eat it. Life has been incredibly hectic (hospitalizations are involved in that hectic and caused us to miss her initial grooming appointment when her fur may have actually been salvageable with just a trim down so cut us some slack)so we fell behind on coat maintenance so a shave down it was. Suzi is actually finally starting to understand fetch even if treats still need to be involved

Here she is on the day of her birthday with her hard boiled egg that I decorated because of the proximity to Easter and figured it would be cute.

[apolladay]

Dog owners: where does your dog sleep?

crate

dog bed

outdoors dog house/shelter

your bed (or another human's bed)

someplace else indoors

infinite nuance option

results

Voting ended onApr 22, 2025

[spitzonthefritz]

Do you let your dog lick your face?

Absolutely not

Yeah its fine

Voting ended onMar 5, 2025

no nuance, but you can explain yourself in the tags if you feel like you have to

[hazard-and-friends]

i was told in the throes of puppy blues that because k'seil was a terrible horrible puppy we'd have an easy adolescence--and we have! but i want to know if that's normal

note 1: for the purposes of this poll, a "puppy" is a dog between 2-6 months and a "teen" is a dog between 6-18 months.

note 2: don't vote if you didn't get the dog as a puppy

note 3: if you have raised multiple puppies, vote for the most recent one

Was your dog easier as a puppy or a teen

easy puppy, horrible teen

horrible puppy, easy teen

easy puppy, easy teen (I hate you)

horrible puppy, horrible teen (ouch)

nuance

never raised a puppy/I'm bald

Voting ended onDec 17, 2024

[elderdoggo]

Today I started laying the foundations of scent work with Suzi and she seemed to really like it, at this point it's basically just a scavenger hunt for food. Its not particularly hidden she's just closed into a room I put the container I'm using with a bit of her food in it down somewhere and let her go with a search cue and when she finds it I give her all of the food in the container. When she gets good at actually finding the dish and I can hide it less in plain site I'll start pairing it with a dog safe scent of some sort (probably going to use cotton balls in a medicine container with holes punched in the lid to hold the scent) when she finds the food and scent she will get the food and I will slowly reduce how much food is with the scent while still offering a food reward until she's just looking for the scent and receiving a treat (or just some of her food) for finding it. This will allow her to get some enrichment in during bad weather and we can even do it in the yard during better weather. Once we escalate to just looking for the scent that will also increase my options for hiding it since I won't be worried about her food falling into the couch or anything like that though it will still only be hidden places we want her going.

[elderdoggo]

Here's an incredibly blurry picture of Suzi having the time of her life playing with some small chunks of snow on the shoveled deck. She's been collecting snowballs in between her paw pads so we got a proper pet trimmer and we trimmed the fur sticking out from between her paw pads ourselves for the first time and she did remarkably well for it we will eventually be shaving in-between her paw pads more to prevent snow from building up as much but for a first time with us (we had it done for traction sake when we had her professional groomed) we wanted to make sure it was a very positive experience, probably going to use the trimmer for sanitary trims on her as well eventually but this was the current main focus with how much she enjoys bounding through the snow like a great big Bumble, she even bounces like one.