Tropical Vet School (and so it begins)

I’m going to quickly summarize the last few weeks (6 in school, 7 on island).

Week 1 Orientation-lots of standing in line, and sitting in classrooms. I liked my orientation group but orientation itself was less helpful than I would have hoped.

Now for school, it’s surprisingly less difficult than expected so far especially considering I haven’t really been in school for 5 years. From the amount of bitching going on you’d think it was some sort of torture and these were the hardest classes ever (hint: no. Also more on this later)

The island is a developing country and as such there are some interesting quirks you don’t see in the states. First dogs, cats, chickens, goats, sheep and cattle roam freely even in town. Apparently herds of goats have been known to make students late to class. So far that’s not an issue for me as I live on campus for this semester. Second there is more infrastructure than I expected but it’s still obvious we aren’t in the US anymore. There are taxi’s you can call to take you around it’s typically $20ec (~$8 us) but that depends on the driver you use. The taxi’s aren’t what you are imaging, more like weird crosses between a 15 passenger van and a minivan. The other way to get around is H buses, they are still the weird van crosses but they drive by campus and go into port, it’s $2.50 ec (~$1 us) one way. Which is really nice! It’s not like a normal bus system where it’s all centralized, they are all individually owned and operated but you can tell them from personal vehicles because well they stop for you and they have H or HA on their license plate. They’ll get you to two of the grocery stores and the post office faster than calling a taxi most times. Third groceries are actually pretty expensive, for a tropical island they don’t grow much of their own food. That has a lot to do with the monkeys. Because for some godforsaken reason the European colonists decided that they should bring African vervet monkeys here in the 1600s or 1700s and then they either escaped or were set free and setup shop on this island. I’m not saying they aren’t cute cause they are but apparently they decimate crops to the point the island can’t actually feed itself. They are also tourist attractions and will steal alcohol from unguarded cups on Shipwreck beach. I see monkeys almost every day on campus. Apparently there is also a pretty large mongoose population on the island too but I haven’t seen any of them yet.

Anyways school: so far it’s easier than undergrad or my masters. That could be because I don’t have a job which makes it much easier to focus on classes or because I’ve already taken a detailed physiology class and a domestic animal gross anatomy class. Either way I only busted my ass studying anatomy, the other classes I sort of studied but mostly just breezed through. The result: Bs all around on this first set of exams. Above class average in Anatomy but at or below average in the others. I’ll put in a bit more work for the next round of exams (which starts next Monday) but honestly, Bs are just fine for me.

I’m only involved in three clubs this semester, I’d like to to say it’s because I didn’t want to overwhelm myself but it’s mostly because my Financial Aid didn’t come in until the last business day of September so I didn’t dare pay dues to more clubs lest I run out of money.

I joined the business club (VBMA) and will graduate with a certificate in business because of it. I have my minor in business from undergrad and was running my pet sitting business but I’ll take all the education on business I can get.

I also joined the animal behavior club. So far I missed the first meeting because I had dog walking that week and the events aren’t things I’m going to participate in, they are dog sports days with the workshops taught by other students, which is fine but since I already have experience with agility, nosework, ect I’m going to leave them for people who have dogs on island and no experience with it. Strider will be here next semester but I suspect I’ll avoid bringing him to events like that anyways knowing that he doesn’t enjoy strange humans getting up in his space. I’m hoping they end up having more meetings with talks by behaviorists soon as that’s what I’m most interested in.

I saved the best for last and the tie in to dogs! My final club is Kennel Companions, they play with, train, socialize and enrich the lives of the kennel dogs who live on campus. These are all dogs who are rescued and then trained so upper semester students can learn how to ultrasound, do dentals (that the dogs need), and other procedures they need. The dogs are all adopted out after they’ve been here a several semesters, sooner if they don’t tolerate the level of handling needed. It’s a pretty awesome set up and the dogs are saved from fairly crappy circumstances, like being abandoned under a house. Anyways the club was looking for a junior behaviorist to start this semester so guess who got that position?! Me! I’m thrilled I get to do stuff I love (train dogs) and help other vet students with less experience learn about training and behavior!

No time to add pictures today but I’ll try to be better about blogging so there will be more posts in the future.

Life update

There is a ton of stuff going on right now and it’s all only tangentially related to our pups but I’m going to post a general life update.

I was accepted to Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine! Woo! So at 30 I’m going back to school… Again. It’s fantastic news for my future goals but stressful as well. I have a ton of stuff to do before I going August. Ross is on St Kitts in the Caribbean. It’s also not a fully developed country so this is going to be a change of pace from here.

Chris is not able to come for many reasons but the main ones are 1. He is currently Wyo AirGuard, so he’s committed to that. 2. No jobs on the island for the spouses, it would be extremely difficult for us to have no income for 2.5 years. 3. Our bunch of animals which would be cost prohibitive to move.

So one of the big things I am working on is our wedding! I’m keeping not pretty low-key so it’s only been moderately stressful. Luckily my family is fine with flying by the seat of their pants which isn’t true of other people. I’m nailing down details as I can and I’m planning on sending out invites/announcements in the next couple weeks. It’s a little tricky planning a wedding in Montana from Colorado. I have an idea for where but if winter doesn’t give way to spring soon up there I may be scrambling to change the exact location in July.  We are planning a mountain ceremony, no true venue which I’m happy about. No point in wasting a ton of money and getting stressed by letting other people tell me what to do. I am a little bummed because we’re not going to be able to afford a photographer but it is what it is with me moving to St Kitts less than a month after our wedding. It’s going to be really fun either way though, mountain top wedding followed by showing off places I love, barbeque, shooting and eventually back into town for one reception. We’re having two, we’ll have another here in CO a couple weeks later. Dog related portion of wedding festivities: Strider is wearing a bow tie and the girl dogs are getting cute flowers on their collars.

I’m also figuring out the intricacies of moving Strider to St Kitts with me. It’s partially selfish, I adore him and don’t want to be away from him for 2.5 years but also he is very stressed when I am not home. I’ve been picking up more pet sitting to help pay for these adventures and he’s feeling the effects. If all goes well, Chris will be full-time AirGuard before I head out which will mean Strider and his exercise needs will be better off with me in the Caribbean.  This will also let Chris get a roommate while I’m gone since Strider can be a bit tricky to introduce to new people and men in particular.

I’m likely going to continue to be bad at updating this but I’m going to use it during vet school as well. Probably less dog sports stuff than I’d like but such is life especially when I’m heading to a tropical island.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foster Success

We did it! All the foster babies left our home. We didn’t keep a one. That was a close thing, I adored little Rogue and her brindle coloring, and Chris loved little Storm. They were sweet little babies but we don’t need another dog.

Domino became “Negasonic Teenage Warhead” and went to one of our chiropractors.

Storm was slated to go to the shelter with the rest of the puppies that Kassey and Dani had been fostering. But that day came and Chris was devastated. While getting set up for Denver Comic Con with our good friends, he talked Jenna into adopting her. I’d not so secretly been hoping she would take a puppy but she wasn’t so sure she was ready after the loss of her wonderful boy Dillinger. So I got a call with less than a hour before little Storm was supposed to get picked up for the big trip that “she has a home don’t send her to the shelter!” Storm became “Ripley” and is living it up with Jenna and Rob. She got to go to Rob’s firehouse (her second trip to a fire station for socialization, the pups got to visit with firefighters on their way up to us for fostering) for a 4th of July picnic.

 

Rogue, my little sweet potato, was adopted by one of Chris’s friends Dan. She went off to Oklahoma on July 4th to meet her new family. We drove half way to Hays, KS where we met up with Dan and handed her off.  I was a train wreck and sobbed for a while as we headed back to Colorado. She became “Mudpie” because the small children in her new family thought that her brindling looked like mud spots.

 

Chris and I are unlikely to foster again in the near future. We adored the babies and it ripped both our hearts out for them to leave. And its nice to have space again now that the xpen is gone and a clean house without 3 puppies running hither and yon and peeing every 3 second with their tiny puppy bladders. So adorable, so dirty!

Plus I am working on building my business in the hopes of dropping down to 2 jobs, my business and teaching aerial dance/fitness classes. I’m hoping I’ll be hiking dogs full time as well as a little bit of pet sitting in the near future. Once I am there we will probably revisit fostering, because who wouldn’t want a well socialized dog who comes trained with trail and leash manners as well as normal in the home behaviors.

 

 

Fenzi camp 2017

Strider and I got to go to camp this year… I could talk about how excited I was and how it was a long ass drive. I could also go into detail about how I spent weeks and months vacillating between pulling him and deciding to keep our working spot but really I’m going to talk about the experience.

I went in with extremely unrealistic expectations. Not for Strider but for the other people there. I expected people with working spots especially to be polite and respectful of the rest of us with working spots. It was… only true of many but not all and one person can literally ruin it for you.

Strider has issues with people getting in his space especially when they haven’t been introduced. So there I admitted on the internet that the dog I adore and think is perfect is not behaviorally perfect. (FYI this admission is not permission for you to contact me with unsolicited advice, I’m not interested in any of it, if I want your advice on my dog’s behavior I will contact you outright.) Frankly I prefer him to our overly friendly rescue rottie, he is a more pleasant dog to live with and work with, he is fun and a hard worker and he adores me.  I talked to several people with experience with IPO (schutzhund/bite sport whatever you want to call it) bred dogs and his behavior is typical of these type of dogs so I feel better about that knowing it does have a strong genetic component to it. That information alone made the weekend worth both ends of 18 hours of driving.

I signed us up to work in labs that I felt would be the most helpful for Strider’s struggles as well as the trainers I felt would understand him the most. That meant we were signed up to work with Amy Cook and Shade Whitesel all weekend. Amy has several classes that help with reactive dogs and Shade has lots of really good toy and marker classes targeted more towards IPO. Its excellent information no matter your sport.

Our first day we were signed up for Reactive dog management (Amy) and Toy play (Shade). We made it through reactive dog management with no issues in spite of the lady who obviously did not have a reactive dog and was not interested in learning how to manage him in any way.  I felt really good about it, we were fine and he is a rockstar.

Well reactive dog management was just before lunch and toy play was just after lunch. So Strider got no break because I hurried him into his crate, grabbed lunch ate, and ran him out to give him a chance to pee and go for a walk. I think that was probably not a good choice for him. I should have let him pee and left him up. We went in and tried to pick a spot were there wouldn’t be tons of activity or near other dogs before our turn… yeah so “reactive not actually reactive or managed dog” and his human came in and literally walked up to where we were sitting. Did I mention this dog is the kind of dog, Strider particularly has a problem with? Well surprise, he is! So we fled to another part of the room to avoid her and another lovely lady moves us chair and our stuff over to us so we could sit, which I greatly appreciated. We worked our first round and started fixing my mechanics which is really what needed to be done for us to progress.

The real trouble happened when someone walked up behind us and got into our space before I knew she was there. Strider reacted and barked and lunged (no he didn’t try to bite her because if he had she would have been bit) and scared the crap out of her and really me. I put him up and found her to apologize later. Too little too late apparently. I got a phone call during the last session of the day that I needed to come find someone to talk to them about my dog. My first thought was actually that someone had bothered him and he was barking in his crate. When I realized he was fine in his crate still I knew we were in trouble.  So, we were actually being told we could no longer work for the rest of the weekend. I was upset by this point and I was even more upset at the end of the conversation. I am not going to call anyone out or name names but I still am pretty pissed days later that I was told that I “should get a lab next time”. I didn’t realize I was such a piss poor trainer that someone who has literally never seen us work could tell that my skills are such that I am not allowed to have the breed I adore and instead have to get one I have no desire to live with.  Generally this person is very nice and maybe didn’t realize she came across like she did with that comment which is really why I am not call her out by name.

Honestly I contemplated packing up and leaving that day to come home. I didn’t and I am glad I didn’t. With the help of Sam (our camp neighbor and new Canadian friend) Amy Cook came, found me and talked me down, or actually just talked me into staying a night and sleeping on it. So I stayed and I stewed and I made sure to put Strider in a muzzle to walk him through anywhere both as a statement because I was pissed and because then everyone who was worried about him had literally nothing to worry about. Sarah Stremming and I have been friends since our days in the dog daycare trenches togetehr and she got there at the end of the second day in time to be a shoulder for me to cry on again (sorry! and thank you seriously). And by the time I was going to bed at the end of day 2 I was able to establish that I was more pissed by the lab remark than being asked to give up out working shot though frustrated because of that as well.

On day 2 I attended Judging pressure with Amy, part of Denise’s heeling session (I left early to let Strider go pee before lunch time). Play without Toys with Amy(which was not the lab I’d signed up to work that session but I felt like it might give me more important ideas for helping Stri than Shade’s Location Specific Markers) and Shade’s Reducing reinforcement lecture. I got a lot of good information even if I really wanted to work Strider in a Judging Pressure because that is literally exactly what we needed.

I also found 2 special stones on Strider’s crate on day 2 which I am grateful for today but that day I was mostly still angry. (Hell be happy I am mostly fine now, I have a short fuse and long memory for stuff that pisses me off). I know at least once volunteer found me crying in front of his crate at the end of day 1 and brought me water and another attendee gave me a banana so obviously my distress overall was… noticeable. But that is beside the point, we got 2 so we might be extra special.

 

(encourage mint)

 

Day 3 I attended both of Sarah’s lectures (Is my dog ok? and Behavioral wellness) as well as Lori Steven’s conditioning lab. The other lab time I spent talking to Amy Cook (I really like her, she is a great person) and formulating a plan for Strider to work on his reactivity and sensitivity to humans in his space. Its completely different than anything else we’ve done with our other trainers/friends/veterinary behaviorist. We did a bit of work in Amy’s online class Dealing with the Bogyman but this is still different from that too. We’ll be revisiting some of that stuff too, frankly I got lazy when we started moving last year and Strider matured quite a bit so he didn’t “need” it in the same way so I let it slide.   I’m actually really excited to give it a go and will be dragging local friends into being my assistants over the next little while.

Since we couldn’t participate we loaded up on day 4 and hit the road (after I spent a ton of money on toys and pictures of us from our one day of working).

Overall once I adjusted my expectations it was a good experience. I really prefer working spots because I learn better from hands on doing of stuff but I will manage just fine from my notes and conversations. Because I love training and that is what is most important for me to retain information.  I’m not sure I’ll attend again, not because it was a bad experience but because frankly traveling 18 hours one way again next year isn’t high up on my financial priorities list. If it ends up closer or in a state I’m dying for an excuse to visit I might go in the future but for now its up in the air. I will still do the online classes with FDSA so that hasn’t changed.

 

We’ve lost our minds

We have foster puppies. They are cute and sweet and soon to be 5 weeks old. I’m watching and re-watching Puppy Culture and trying desperately to raise these little girls into amazing pets.

It’s a rather long story how these babies ended up with us but I’ll make it brief. Someone in rural Colorado, with not a lot of money ended up with two pregnant bitches that welped within days of each other. They were accidental litters and the owners reached out to a mutual friend for help and here we are, the X bitches. Chris and I have 3 and each of my two other friends have 3 puppies so 9 total in the care of us, the helpers. All the puppies are names after female X-men characters, we are raising strong and empowered females here.

Our girls are set up in an Ex-pen in the living room. Looks like this: I rotate and add new toys every day. Obviously they also have water in their while they are in the pen too.(their bowl is outside with them in another ex-pen in this picture) They are eating solid kibble well, but I also have been offering softened kibble a couple times a day. If these were my puppies I would be weaning to raw but since they are going to be available to the general public, kibble it is.

The little girls are doing fabulously! All 3 of them are pooping in the litterbox ( the ‘litter’ is alfalfa pellets) 100% of the time they are in their pen, pee is a bit more iffy. Domino is getting in there the majority of the time, Storm and Rogue are hit or miss there.

 

Domino

Storm

Rogue

Strider is doing fabulously with them. He is gentle but also willing to let them know they are being rude. Trixie is being tolerant of them but she just leaves rather than interacting. Arwen… well she is trying but she is young too and wants to play, she is clumsy and not careful so all interaction with her is under extreme levels of supervision. Not that we don’t watch the other dogs but they are a little more careful so if I look away I don’t think they’ll have accidentally crushed the puppies.

 Arwen trying to be polite.

 

We are lucky and puppies are benefiting from joining puppy parties that were already planned with friend’s litter.

Chris wants to do more fostering so we will see once these girls are gone but we have several weeks. In the mean time if people want to help me socialize the puppies just let me know and I will work with you. And if you are looking for a puppy, boy do I have a deal for you! 😉

Strider’s goals

Aka These are all the things I want to do with him. Maybe writing them down here on the internet for other people to see will force me to follow through some more.

Herding lessons – I’d like to enter some AKC trials in the future, I have limited knowledge for this so I don’t have specific title goals

Rally (currently doing a drop in class with our friend Dani) – I’d like to get up to RAE

Agility- I want to put a MACH (Master Agility Champion) on Strider but since we haven’t been training any agility this may be a very lofty goal. Our local trainer Amy is starting classes soon so I need to figure out if she’ll have any evening classes.

CGC (starting class 3/8/17)

Obedience (Preferred track, no out of sight group stays involved) This is pretty lofty too, I really don’t fully understand Obedience so yay making stuff up.

NACSW Nosework (entering an ORT [odor recognition test] in May in Pueblo) We take classes from our friend Jessica.

Trick dog titles( through the new AKC program starting in May) This is an extension of the DMWYD program that already exists online but makes it more recognizable

AKC scentwork (another new program that starts in the fall)

BH (a beginning level IPO/Schutzhund title that requires no bitework, see heeling pattern below) Really outside of my comfort zone but would be so cool.

 

Conformation- I’m going to have my friend Kassey help us with this. I suck at it and feel overwhelmed and stressed and Strider feeds off of that. If Kassey finishes him I’ll die of shock (that tail thing again) but it would be lovely to get a few points at least.

Parkour- This is a cool program where I train and video him and submit the videos for titling. We are going to start by taking the FDSA (Fenzi Dog Sports Academy) online class next month.

We may do some Fenzi TEAM titling as well since it is online video submission with really awesome break down of obedience skills since that will help us title in other venues as well.

Non-title related goals:

Hiking- I try to make it out at least once a week.

FDSA 2017 camp- We are signed up and have a trailer spot reserved. Strider and I are going to road trip out to Oregon this June.

Daily walks to the park- currently our walks are on hold, there is some construction closing down our route right now. The rest of the neighborhood is full of fence fighting dogs make our walks perilous.

Getting his reactivity back under control- He got into it with a friend’s husky in October 2016 and we are still working through those issues. Its bled over to all nordic looking dogs and sometimes other dogs. He also has some intermittent man reactivity that is typically directed at older men or bearded men (makes little sense as Chris has a beard but whatever).

Working on his arousal levels- I suspect this is part of our reactivity stuff, fast movement pushes him over the edge sometime. He jumps and punches his human friends, its lovely.

 

 

 

A new house, a new dog, a new year oh my!

I sort of fell off the face of the earth, or at least this blog last year.

I decided to sell my condo last May and that turned into a hectic mess for a bit. First we got it all ready to go and then discovered we had some legal stuff to deal with because my dad was on the title and he had passed away and the title was held stupidly so basically that ended up taking months to get sorted. And in the mean time we had to keep the house clean and start packing to move to some unknown location. Once everything was taken care of the house sold in 3 days on the market so we were scrambling to find a place to live. Pro tip: Find a place to live early. Also probably not owning a boatload of animals would help. We ended up buying a friends house but that was also a long and drawn out process because of various financing issues. It all worked out in the end but Chris, Trixie, Strider and I ended up camping  out for about a week in various wilderness and not so wilderness areas near Fort Collins. Then we were saved by some friends and we camped out in their back yard/their office for a month in a half before we were able to move into our house, a real house with a back yard!

We are crazy and ended up adopting a sweet female rottie puppy 2 weeks after we moved into our new house. We weren’t even done with the renovations yet! I questioned my sanity for a while but Arwen is a very sweet girl and she is perfect for Chris to learn more about dog training. She is really bright and really easy to train, its nice to not have a real challenging dog.

Arwen is finishing up Smart Dog 1 with our friend Dani at Come-Play-Stay and starting a Recalls and Stays class at Summit Dog Training this week.

Trixie is starting a reactive dog class at Summit Dog Training this week.

Strider went on a hike this weekend and is currently not enrolled in any classes but that will change soon I’m sure. I may sign him up for the reactive dog class once Trixie is done. I fear her influence has left him feeling like he needs to yell at other dogs occasionally. Moving into the new house with a private back yard has helped immensely but the months in the condo with a shared open space and random strange dogs never on leash definitely didn’t help him out any.

Anyways we are getting settled in still but I’ll be better about updates on all the pups this year.

 

Herding Instinct Test

I wasn’t sure I was actually going to try herding with Strider. There is a lot of dog stuff to try! In some ways losing Moose young is making me branch out. I had grand plans with him but really didn’t do anything beyond agility. So when a friend shared the local herding club’s instinct test on Facebook I was interested. Luckily I’ve got Dani (with Fleet) to be my accountability buddy so we went out this morning!
Strider was really good for a puppy who had never seen stock. He has been around horses a couple times but I worked hard on him ignoring them. He barked at then in excitement and frustration at first and did a little bit of chasing and biting vs herding but once he got his brain back he did a decent job of droving. We’ll have to take some lessons! He passed with no problem.

Dani and another nice lady videoed our run for us! Fleet is being very mad the Strider was playing with her goats in the beginning.
https://youtu.be/SSHvJv-gEL0

Strider is staying intact

I’ve been asked about this a few times recently so I thought I would explain why I am not having him neutered. I’m not a guy, and I don’t have the weird over attachment to testicles that some men-folk seem to have. I even know that testosterone is not helpful in social situations. I actually have very good reasons for my decision.

1. Rottweilers neutered before 1 year of ages have an increased risk of developing osteosarcoma, that is bone cancer.  This link goes straight to the paper: http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/11/11/1434.full
   I’ve already lost a dog very young to cancer and ostersarcoma has a much worse prognosis than lymphoma (the cancer Moose had). If I can do anything at all to reduce the risk I am going to do it.
2. Another study in rottwielers found that female’s that kept their ovaries longer than 4 years had increased longevity. They lived longer than both males and females spayed in the first 4 years of their lives. Again here is the paper:
   http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/j.1474-9726.2009.00513.x
   Yes Strider is a male and so this may not benefit him but again I’m hedging my bets.
3. Then there is this study done in golden retrievers, that discusses increased risk of multiple cancers (including lymphoma) and joint/ligament issues which often require surgery to get the dog back in action.
4. Its in the contract between my breeder and myself that I will not nueter Strider before he is 2 and I will discuss it with her first.
5. By far the least important thing to me is Strider is showing in conformation. He cannot be neutered and show.

I am not opposed to spaying/nuetering and I do understand why it is heavily pushed. I’m just not the typical pet owner and I did a lot of research in the time I was losing a 5 year old dog to cancer. I feel comfortable with my decision as the risk of cancer is greater than the risk of Strider accidentally having access to an intact bitch at the exact right time to breed her.

Growing up

Handsome baby boy!

I took some pictures of Strider for my cosplay for charity group. He is one of our “K-9 units” basically he comes to events, hangs out, looks handsome and draws people over so we can chat them up and try to raise money for our charity of choice. I’m not above using my puppy as a lure for this. We don’t have a ton of events in the winter so he has only gone to one huge even when he was 11 weeks old but hopefully when we get over our barky puppy nonsense that is going on he can come to a few more events. His barking seems to be a mixture of not being sure of older men and demand barking for people to pay attention to him. Either way its something we are working on and is improving. Chris works at a male dominated shop in town and I take Strider in a couple times a week to work on barking and general manners. We had no barking or excited peeing (which has happened twice at the shop because the guys love him and do big man hand loving of him) and he made friends with a little girl that was probably 6 or so and her little sister that was just starting to toddle (so maybe a year old?). I don’t have a lot of kids near me, my closest family is in Montana so its nice to get him around some kids so when I get to visit he isn’t worried about my nieces.

We are working on standing and staying standing for conformation so he got to have a play date with Fleet last week after Dani helped me. He loves Fleety and follows her around adoringly but even on a field run he checks in with me often. I’m so happy he will be old enough to enjoy some short hikes as the weather starts to warm up.

 

As far as the competitive dog world goes. Strider and Trixie are both rocking out with Nosework. There is an ORT in southern Colorado that I am considering entering them both in. Once that is passed Trixie will get to do NW competetions as she is an adult and Strider will keep working on NW training, conformation, and learning the basics for obedience and agility. We are going to a herding test on Sunday to see how Strider likes that as well. Basically we are trying a little bit of everything!