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And not to mention the matched set of surgical tape bandages I'm wearing for his accidental puppy tooth lacerations of my forearms; you know, puppy play souvenirs...they say this is par for the course...he has some fight in him...grabs a hold of a sleeve...

But he is a sweet pup, loves everybody he meets. And we have done the rounds! I just notice he gets frustrated whenever he watches me digging in the garden and he isn't allowed to join in. With these kind of dogs, anything we do looks like a game they should be playing! I think he may br the Alpha pup of that litter.

[This message edited by Superesse at 4:40 AM, Friday, June 2nd]

Sup - may want to wear long sleeves until you get this figured out. In the meantimme everytime he bites your arm yelp like a pup so he knows that it hurts, and then give a firm NO BITE, and then give a bone, or chew toy for redirection. I have had labs who are also very mouthy and it takes consistency, and redirection absolutlely never letting the pup get away w/ it.
My current lab pup is NOT a biter, I was fully expecting him to be, his brother was a nightmare.

WR that's wonderful news about your H and the pup.

zebra…I was wondering if you have gotten any lab results for your puppy’s leg? I can’t get that little puppy off my mind.

And Jeanie…an news about the dog that was stolen with the car???

I’m pretty sure my beagle/border collie has a tapeworm. I’m going to take her to the vet tomorrow morning. My vet won’t take anyone without an appt., so you may hear me hollering at them in the morning! I can’t imagine how I’m going to rid my house of all of the little segments of the tapeworm. 🤮

Good times. Not.

Oh well…a dog with tapeworms is better than no dogs at all!!!

Thank you for asking WR. I appreciate you thinking of our little guy with all you have going on. I hope you get your dog into see the vet and get that problem resolved.

Unfortunately his biopsy showed a few cancer cells. The vet said it is very unlikely to have spread anywhere else and he can be treated with oral chemo which he did very well on before. They told my DD that this type of cancer doesn't usually spread so they recommended chemo a couple of months ago instead of amputation but the chemo ended up not working, he had to have the amputation and has cells in his lymph node. I'm not sure what to think at this point.

On a positive note, he can now run and get around really well!!! He still loves going for walks in his stroller and I am not embarrassed at all to take him.

I look forward to reading all the doggie news on this thread!!!

zebra, I'm sorry the biopsy showed some cancer cells, and I'm wondering what the outcome will be, too, as you said the chemo wasn't able to knock it previous to amputating. Perhaps it is a matter of quantity of cells to attack, and the chemo may work on the few they found? Just a hope.

Tapeworms are gross and there should be an over-the-counter remedy sold in the pet supply stores for this. Sorry, WhatsRight!

Mink is officially 12 weeks old today, so according to some experts, his window of socialization will be closing. I think he mastered the big box tours! We put up a sun umbrella in his play yard with a couple of chairs, so we can practice "eating out with puppy" before we try it in the big world out there. He did look at it. I found a new way to tire him out, we have a little hill that slopes down from the front yard to the lower yard. I tossed him a ball down the slope and he ran down to get it and came loping right back up. Did that about a half dozen times and then flopped down. He was worn out! His energy is all mouth, no rear engine, tush!! (Do I have to never let him try to bite? Cause he don't give up without a fight. But he is getting the message....slowly. I hate having to keep after him once he's been shown it's a no-no...)

I forgot the rest of the news! Mink will see the vet when we take Missy back for her 3rd post-op check! They decided to leave the stitches in the mid-back incision, as now IT had started to get infected, even though we kept it dry and covered and kept her inactive for 2 LONG weeks! This isn't the same incision that got infected last week, that one they re-did and it has healed, and all stitches now removed. Then she has had an eye infection, looked just horrible, I was scared she'd done something to destroy her vision! Doc says the cornea was ulcerated, that's why it looked so bad: the stitch from her cyst removal surgery there, had been irritating it! So doc snipped the stitch after doing a dark-room blue light inspection of her poor eyeball. (I couldn't bear to watch this!) with 2 sweet vet techs holding the dear girl as still as they could, backed up against the wall, with me shoving a treat in her mouth.

So Mink will get seen then by our vet, and get some vaccination for leptospirosis, but he will not get a rabies shot until he reaches 16 weeks old. Then on June 16th, Mink and I will have our first hour-long lesson in obedience training...which can't come soon enough!!

You're all right - they grow up so fast!!!

[This message edited by Superesse at 3:05 PM, Saturday, June 3rd]

Sup- i do not allow the labs to bite at all due to their notorious mouthiness and stubbornness. If they get away with something 1 time it takes a zillion more times of correction before they give up.

We took all 3 of our tribe to the vet Thurs evening for puppy shots and annual for the 2 adults. It was quite the show. Vet was impressed with how good our dying girl looked, credited it to the homemade diet shes been getting, I said she's just too stubborn. The puppy is 31 lbs now at 4 mos.

The puppy and his big brother are inseparable currently napping next to each other on the couch. When they wake it will be 2 hours of zoomies and "get me get me" lol.

Sounds like SI puppies all doing well!

Whatsright, the beautiful Husky in the stolen car has not been found. Neither has the vehicle. People are still looking for her everyday. Very sad situation.

Is this a problem? Just fed Mink his dinner as I prepped ours in the other room - because I learned after Missy not to hover over them as they eat, or they will never eat unless we are present.

Mink hasn't liked digging so hard in the pinwheel plastic food bowl for his dinner we tried after he was so ravenous his first couple days, so tonight I just fed him in an old metal bowl and heard him going right to work on his dinner.

Well, he apparently ate all his kibble and "for afters," he started chewing the exterior of that "coated" metal bowl (which has been outdoors, so the coating maybe delaminated but we never saw that!) I heard this odd sound from his crate and went and grabbed the bowl, and now I'm seeing a chunk 3/8ths of an inch by 1 1/4 inch torn off from the bottom outer rim of the bowl. My H says it didn't look like that earlier.

Hopefully if he swallowed it, he chewed it into bits he can digest. (Today he was having several dedicated attempts at chewing gravel rocks, which our girl used to do, too. You have to pry open their jaws and get the rock out!)

Sunday morning update on my food bowl question: Mink seemed to be fine this morning, even though he took his time to do his business. If he ate anything indigestable off that bowl, it seems by now he would either have tummy pain or it should have passed through. So I'mhoping we are past that worry!

Missy meanwhile, has that open wound on her back the vet just wants us to treat with collagen ointment. It isn't clearing up nicely and we are so grateful for PricklePatch's tip about the panty pads, as she needs to have one changed a couple times daily with this darn hole in her hide. (A 2 inch long incision with only 3 stitches, which looked puckered to us from the get-go!)

I am still mad at myself for subjecting her to this elective surgery!! She is tolerating the eye ointment but it takes us both to hold her still and bribe her quick with treats while my somewhat arthritic hands attempt to gently place the steroid ointment just inside her eyelid as she squints it hard shut! Just another humbling experience. Not sure how you all do veterinary care, but it sure isn't my best gift; it takes good hand-eye coordination! She is wailing mournfully this morning, she misses our special snuggle time.

As expected, we are finding potty training to be very challenging. If you look up the most stubborn breed of dogs online, guess which one is number one? If you guessed Dachshund, you win the prize!

There has been no poop on the bed for quite some time. She has a pee accident every day. But I have had a pee pad on the floor in the in the last 24 hours and she has used it each time. Thank God for that!

She and my H continue to bond. No matter how much she loves me, she always goes to him when it’s time for sleep. I love it! Over the weekend he had a couple of bad nights again. But we got through it, and she stayed right beside him the entire time.

How is your new baby, Tush?

How is your new baby, Tush?

He is fantastic, gone more than 7 days no accidents. Has the command back up down now. Which is invaluable. He goes to sleep away camp the week of July 4th. I can't believe it's already almost time.

He is way ahead of where is brother was when he went, because we know what we are doing this time. So hopefully he will get his started passes w/ HRC this fall. He will go from July until late fall, then he will go again next spring late Feb, for the summer for final training. This will achieve 2 things, getting him trained for duck hunting, and to obtain his HRC champion title, and will be highly sought to breed as that pairing of parents will no longer breed due to mom needing c-section w/ his litter.

Anyway way off the subject, he is doing great. He super sweet. Full of beans at time. Loves his brother very much.

So Tushnurse, after your superstar pup gets his title and you can offer him as a stud dog, I hope you will be willing to tell us how that works! Breeding is an aspect of dog ownership that is completely unknown territory for us. (My Mink was not chosen especially for breed betterment but with the relative scarcity of dogs with his line of GSD I felt we should go to the source for original quality to avoid the widespread genetic issues I've learned the breed suffers from in the USA. (Same thing with Labradors, as I understand.)

Anyway just in case we get into competition sport with Mink and he turns out like all his ancestors, might need your wisdom!

As far as potty training goes, Bella is not the sharpest tool in the box. When I can pull her away from her, daddy, and take her outside, we spin sometimes 45 minutes to an hour. Just walking around or me finally sitting down to rest, and she sniffs around forever. Finally, when I’ve got other things to do, or it’s too hot to sit outside anymore, we go inside, and the minute she gets inside she goes over next to her little potty pad, and poops on the pad. So once again, I can say with assurance that she is truly potty trained… Just not to the outside.

We continue to work on it. 😏

One thing I was going to ask, with all of this, talk about training, animals for duckhunting, or what not. I am definitely going to check in to emotional support dogs, like in hospital units for children or older people. Not Bella, certainly, but, my big doofus Maggie, she is part beagle, part foxhound. And she is an old soul. If I am sad at night, she wakes up and comes and crawls up on my chest and puts her head down and just stares at me. I think she would be the most amazing therapy dog. I know there are steps we have to go through as in training and getting her checked out as far as demeanor goes. But I’m really hoping to get started on that.

Does anyone know any specifics about that type of training?

If Bella only wants to poop on the pad right now, take the pad outside with you.

Now there’s an idea.

Whatever it takes!

." Perhaps it is a matter of quantity of cells to attack, and the chemo may work on the few they found? Just a hope."

Superesse, I believe this is how it was explained to DD. Fingers and paws crossed that the chemo works this time. Fortunately it is just a pill and he doesn't get any side effects from it. His incision looks great and he runs to great us.

I hope your girl that had the surgery is doing better. I can't imagine having to apply eye ointment!!

That was a great idea SOS had about bringing the pee pads outside. I hope it works WR.

zebra, that is hopeful! I was just guessing about the chemo, but if the vet says that, it helps make sense of it. Cancer is a war between the good cells and the bad cells, where some weapons can tip the scales one way or the other. (An analogy would be bleach added to contaminated water: a little bleach might kill residual bacteria in drinking water but a little bleach couldn't eradicate all the bacteria in a waste pipe. And yes I was a plumbing inspector in my previous life.)

Paws crossed.

Mink wowed us at the vet's today for his 12 week exam and vaccinations: totally calm and happy, no squiriming, whining, fussing or fear, even when they gave him his first toenail trim (with peanut butter licks from one tech as the other snipped away.) I'm not used to such a calm natured puppy. Proud Puppy Momma Moment!!

Missy had the vet look at her eye and her back incision and he says another week with the damn cone for her, and keep going with the eye ointment twice a day! She isn't fighting us so hard, so it must be feeling better. Her skin wound seems to be healing slowly and they took out the last stitch in it, but again, we must keep going with her collagen ointment for another week, with the panty liners!! Poor dog. I can't wait for the day she can have a bath to wash off all the crusted medications on her coat. And then she and Mink can really get together and make friends. He wants to play with her, but in the one minute we let them sniff noses, he put a paw up in her cone over her wounded eye! Another reason for the toenail trim....

WR how did Bella do with the puppy pad and doing her business outside?

Suppresse, So glad to hear that your two pups are at least anxious to get to play with each other. Maybe the weight will make them appreciate each other more!

Did I tell you all the other day that Bella has gained lots of weight… Well, lots of weight for HER!

Two days ago we went to the vet to get some medicine she was too small for a few weeks ago, and she had gone from 3 lbs. 14 oz. when I got her, to 4 lbs 1 oz at her first vet visit, and now she is 5 lbs, 5 oz!!! At this rate she may hit 10 lbs eventually!

(I know…the GSDs and labs poop bigger than that!) 😊

Still hoping at some explain someone explains to me how to get a picture on to this thread.

Also, still putting out feelers about getting my doofus beagle/fox hound mix into therapy school. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

I don't think we're allowed to give urls? I would google how to get a therapy pet certification - there are videos and advice. If you know of a hospital or retirement home in the area that has therapy dogs coming in, contact them and ask them to put you in touch with someone who is doing this with their dog, a mentor if you will, who can give you advice about the resources in your area.

From what I know, I think that most therapy dog groups expect a therapy dog to be able to easily pass a test like the American Kennel Club's Canine Good Citizen test, so I'd read up on that so you know what kinds of things that they must do.

Oh, thanks…good ideas.

BTW…SIRI was supposed to say "the puppies’ WAIT (not weight) might help with them getting acquainted when the time comes.