Carey Jones’ article in Serious Eats about corn products in human food and her experiments with cutting them out has applications to your dog’s health, too: Have you ever read the ingredients on your dog’s bag of kibble? You should consider shying away from corn products for your dog for the same reasons that Ms. Jones gives as applied to humans.
And it’s worse for cats: Even if the carbohydrates from wheat and corn filler products aren’t in a sweetener form, much like enzymes in the human mouth convert the starches to sugars, the same thing happens in a cat’s mouth. But cats walk on all fours, and regularly regurgitate the sugar into their mouth. Which rots their teeth. If you’re feeding Science Diet t/d (the dental prescription diet): Go read the ingredients label on the bag. And then smack yourself in the forehead with the heel of your hand, and go buy your cat a bag of Innova Evo.
In my continuing efforts to get Henry to be comfortable when I leave him in the crate, I’ve been feeding him in the crate, playing with him in the crate, and having him sleep in the crate nightly for over a month now with nothing negative associated with it. Slowly, I’ve been going outside while he’s in the crate — to the mailbox, to water the landscaping, to pick veggies in the garden, so on and so forth.
On Saturday morning, I left him in the crate with his breakfast and walked to the end of the block and back.
He didn’t eat breakfast for three days. I can only imagine that it’s because he was afraid that once he started, I’d leave and not come back. *facepalm*
With dogs with dysplasia or who are recovering from dysplasia surgery, one of the best therapies you can do is water therapy. Walking the dog in water for the extra resistance, letting the dog swim for the exercise and to take the weight off of their hips for a while, and generally getting the dog to use their injured legs in ways that don’t create impact injuries.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a swimming pool and can’t really afford to put one in at a rental house. And then there’s maintaining a pool to human standards, the extra insurance, and the fences and alarms that my city requires be installed around any swimming pool.
I could just use plastic kiddie pools, but I tried that before. They chewed up two of them ($25 each) last year.
Solution: a 300 gallon, $200 stock tank meant for watering livestock. I’m calling it the “redneck hot tub” …
I think we’ve had a few Jagd Terriers pass through our rescue and have just passed them off as “wire haired terriers” … it’s always nice to be able to give something a name that people can look up!
Two weeks later, we finally got Henry’s tooth out of his head. The poor thing. He’s had to go two weeks with this
But! The cool part? THE VET SAVED IT FOR ME! Oh my god, cool.
(I’m such a nerd.)
In all it's gory glory. Only the right 1/4 or so is normally exposed.
For the veterinary nerds, that’s tooth #204, the upper left canine. I didn’t realize how far it normally sits inside his jaw. (He’s gotta feel like he just lost three rounds with a mack truck right now.) The vet also said
For everyone else, this is why it needed to come out. Check out the fracture. The purple/red spot near the tip is the root of the tooth, and you can see where the outer enamel fractured off.
Root and enamel fracture
Poor guy. He’s lived with that for the past two weeks.
As part of my ongoing education campaign against the drugs that veterinarians regularly give their patients in handfuls without telling them the risks they’re running (i.e., Previcox), I present this dolittler.com article about the risks of NSAIDs. Humans can eat NSAIDs like candy. Pets cannot!
Henry’s going under for an extraction next Wednesday after he broke his #204 canine (upper left) when attempting to bust out of his crate. For the near future, days when I might need to crate him are definitely ‘work from home’ days. We couldn’t do the extraction right away because his CBC showed a high white blood cell count — which a physical exam confirmed. His stomach was a bit distended, hot, and grumbly. It probably would’ve gone unnoticed otherwise, but anesthesia would have been a huge risk with the infection like that. This is why you always pay for the pre-surgery blood panel! Every time!
In the meantime, he’s not enjoying life that much. I’m soaking his food and trying to make life as pleasant as possible for him. He WANTS to chew on stuff, but his mouth hurts too bad for it most of the time.
After deciding he needed a ‘job’ … I’m hoping to start volunteering with a local volunteer search and rescue team. They provide resources for people who think they have dogs who would fit in; considering that he’s bred to track and hunt and he ‘tracks’ here in the neighborhood on walks (not to mention tracks where I go and tries to follow me through doors and walls…) I think he’d be well-suited seeing as he’s already mastering most aspects of off leash obedience. If not, the volunteering will still be worthy for me and I’ll gain a lot of training knowledge from people who have to work with and lead their dogs.
A link was posted on a behavior mailing list that I monitor to this PDF about “leadership vs. dominance in dog training”. After some intense discussions with some other dog owners who can’t seem to stop using “alpha dog” and “dominant” for the life of them… well, please forward the link on. 
Edit: A few more resources:
I took Henry off of Prozac about four weeks ago since he was showing signs of no longer needing it.
Last week, he flipped out and tore up the miniblinds in the front of the house, all his stuffed toys, and some rags that were piled outside the laundry room. Ok, I can deal with that… we’ll just go back to crating him. Yesterday, he tore the door of his crate *inwards*. It’s not supposed to swing that way.
Today, he flipped out inside his crate, and left a giant puddle of drool. He also seems to have fractured the tip of another of his canine teeth, although there’s no blood or root showing. I’ll drag him out to the vet for a look-see at his tooth in the morning, but he’s definitely going back on the prozac.
Poor psychodog.
