Actually we’ve been taking him for walks pretty regularly, both for exercise and for general exposure, we haven’t managed every day, but certainly most days. We make a habit of NOT walking by the psychotic german shepherds, cause not only does that mean I have to convince him to pass them, but also to pass by an elderly chihuahua who thinks he owns the street (damn pipsqueak comes barrelling out of nowhere yapping away, only to stop mid street, about two feet from Apollo’s nose to crouch and shiver, only to break out yapping again if Apollo tries to approach, which happens every time cause Apollo wants to be friends with EVERYONE). The prong collar solve the pulling problem. In-fact he’s walking pretty much loose leash with no problems and little distractions now. Very cool.
Apollo
More thunderstorms tonight.
I’ve come to the realization that folks that successfully photograph lightening have one or more of the following:
1: really good luck
2: really really good reaction speed
3: extra (expensive) equipment
got some cool looking shots, but no actual lightening. I know what’ll be going on my wishlist for christmas/birthday/whatever!!
Apollo thinks its really odd how I sit in the dark with the camera in my hand trying to photograph lightening, he just doesn’t get it!
Prong collar vs Easy Leader head halter
Some asked me why we were using a prong collar vs an easy leader head halter, and the answer is multifaceted. I actually bought a head halter and put it on Apollo. And made some rather annoying discoveries (one of which SHOULD have occurred to me when looking at the package.)
1: the big one…..when he pulls to the point of choking himself he generally hits the end of the lead with some signifigant force. If he does that, even once, wearing the head halter he’s going to potentially do major damage to his neck. Oooops.
2: the package and all info on the head halter says that when adjusted properly the dog can still open his mouth normally. No dice. Maybe its a side affect of the mastiff head structure, but no matter how I adjusted the straps, if it was loose enough that he could yawn then he was also able to pull off the muzzle portion.
3: by the time I put it on him for the third time it was leaving a dent in his nose, even though it was too loose
4: and as soon as I strapped it on he flopped flat and refused to move, I was able to get him to his feet and out the door (so I won not him) but after that third time I said no more.
So onto a prong collar….have you ever actually handled one? They look mean as heck, but those prongs aren’t sharp, and you can even get plastic covers for them, or even plastic versions of the collars. A prong collar thats properly fitted and used doesn’t cause discomfort to the dog unless he pulls against it, especially one with the thick coat of the Tibetan Mastiff.
There are dogs for whom the Easy Leader is a good solution to the problem. I’ve seen it on dogs, and talked to people who use it, but its not a good solution for us. On the other hand I think a prong collar will likely solve the problem, and hopefully once he learns pulling is bad I won’t need it any more.
General update
Lets see.
Broken tooth: has a temporary crown on, while we wait to see what the insurance says they’ll cover. The dentist is of the opinion that there’s some life left in that nerve afterall so we’ll see.
The rest of the plants have arrived, but mother nature is attempting to see if we can grow gills and so they haven’t been planted yet. Hopefully tomorrow.
Apollo has continued to grow at the same insane rate, unfortunetly his leash skills aren’t keeping pace. The more excited he gets the more likely he is to pull, and the more he pulls the more likely he is to end up choking himself against the collar in his excitement. To the point where I worry he’s doing damage. After discussion with the breeder we’re taking a multi-sided approach. More exercise to wear him out, more dog interaction with appropriate dogs (she feels he is possibly lonely, and considering how much he LOVES playing with other dogs she probly has a point), and we’ll be adding a prong collar to his closet this week. Its very difficult to get him enough exercise and interaction when he’s attempting to pull me down the street cause there’s a “PERSON who might PET ME”, so the prong collar will hopefully teach him that pulling is not pleasant, which in turn will make it easier for all of the above to get done. On the other hand we’ve had fun coming up with games to wear him out at home. I’m trying to get video I promise.
puppy comparison
So…..remember this picture? It was taken when he was 10 weeks old the day we picked him up from the breeder:
So here he is today, 21 weeks old exactly:
(he couldn’t figure out WHY we were picking him up…..it was very funny)
Apollo’s pedigree
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| Pedigree of SARAS HIMALAYA’S APOLLO | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 SARAS HIMALAYA’S APOLLO Gold USA 2010 |
AKC Grand Champion LEGENDS KAILAS HIMALAYAN Gold USA 2005 |
LEGEND’S ST. NICHOLAS Gold USA 2001 |
AKC CH TIMBERLINE BARNI DRAKYI Gold 2000 |
| MOLOSSER CHAKA OF LEGEND 1998 |
|||
| BUDDHA’S LEGEND’S DOLLYWOOD USA 2004 |
CH SIERRAS’ MAJESTIC MUFASA Black and Tan 1994 |
||
| DRAKYI BABA YAGA | |||
 QUEENY OF SARAS Black and Tan India 2003 |
CH India HIMALAYA’S TANGO AT SARAS Black and Tan USA 2002 |
ATMA/ARBA Champion HIMALAYA’S LOKESHVARA Black and Tan USA 1999 |
|
ATMA/ARBA/DFUSA/CKC Champion HIMALAYA’S ISIS Black and Tan USA 1996 |
|||
| FIZA OF SARAS Black and Tan |
RUSTAM 2005 |
||
| BALLERINA OF SARAS | |||
| This pedigree was generated by http://www.tibetanmastiffinfo.com/pedigree | |||
Mice
We have a mouse problem. I don’t expect to have one for long though……
Folks we bought the house from had a pair of energetic Yorkies (little guys, I doubt they’re more than 5lbs a piece) which I’m sure the mice were thrilled to see the last of.
We had a minor incursion over the winter, some mouse sign in one cabinet. Some traps solved the problem and we’d not seen them since though we left the traps in place.
I guess the rain has finally flooded them out of their home. Today I looked in the cabinet and discovered that two of the traps had caught a mouse….and just about 30 minutes ago Janie was going nuts trying to catch one in one of the puppy free corners of the house. It escaped her by dodging under the puppy barrier only to be greeted by said puppy who’d been trying to figure out what all the noise was about…..theres one less mouse in the world tonight.
As I type this Janie is attempting to digg her way under a set of shelves and the puppy is sitting ever so patiently outside the puppy barrier hoping for another snack!
Entertaining a teething puppy
Apollo is teething. He’s got adult teeth coming in all over his mouth, so far no baby teeth lost either. And yes, he chews on all sorts of stuff in the process. He’s got the oddest sense of what to pick too. Yesterday he knocked the cat bed off its perch by the window (without a chew mark on it) so he could get at the no-skid mat underneath it. Twice. In about 5 minutes. Sigh. He’s going through rawhide like its icecream, and since there are limits to how much of that its safe to give a dog I had to go find something else.
The breeder suggested the smoked bones from the big petstores, she’s given them to her dogs for forever and they love them. Well that worked for a while….till he got bored with them. Nylabones held his attention briefly. Same for other rubber chews. Today I picked up a bone stuffed with cheese flavored stuff, and a generic copy of the Kong Wobbler. I’ve no problem paying the Kong price, but without a better idea of whether or not he’d go for it I liked the generic’s $8 price tag a bit better. So far so good. He’s been alternating between the two. He chews on the bone for a while, then goes and finds the wobbler, picks it up and shakes it till kibble falls out, eats, then goes back to chewing. Its a reprieve. At least a small one!
Oh, and it turns out hes not nearly so blase about going for a walk when the MALE psycotic German Shepherd is out in the yard. Sigh.
Don’t mess with my pets’ health.
Ok, this is going to be a long winded rant as I get something off my chest that has been building for a couple weeks now. I’m going to touch on (but not get into) a controversial topic in pet health, I’ll get into detail later, because its not the real cause of my upset. For those of you who don’t want to read further, lets just say that my (now) former vet should be very happy I’m not the sueing type!
For those of you who are willing to read further, its a long story…..
Back on 2/28 we took our new puppy into our vets office for his new puppy checkup. We knew going in that we were probly not going to meet a happy vet as we have chosen a non-standard vaccination schedule for our dog. Sure enough the vet walked into the office prepared to administer vaccines (which even under the standard schedule shouldn’t have been the case at 10weeks of age), and then had a fit (I’m a vet, you’re not, I went to school…..), insisted we sign a waiver that we knew we were going against her wishes, then tried to tell us that the blood work we wanted (a vaccine titer, it tests for antibodies for the diseases vaccinated against) wouldn’t tell us anything helpfull, that she didn’t want to do one, and that she had no idea where to send it out to have it tested (which frankly OUGHT to be complete BS, any lab that can test for Lime disease can do a vaccine titer, never mind we’re all of an hour from Cornell). We stood our ground, and insisted that we would have a vaccine titer done between 11 & 12 weeks of age. She finally agreed.
Fast forward a week and a half, I bring Apollo in to have blood drawn for his titer, and they inform me that its going to cost $212 to have done. I took a deep breath and agreed to have it done at that price. I’d neglected to do my research to find out what the going rate was, and since at that point the puppy wasn’t travelling well at ALL I decided it wasn’t worth hauling him home to do so.
I fixed that lack of information as soon as I got home. Online research showed that Cornell charges less than $40 for the titer in question. Calls to several other vets offices resulted in an average rate between $50 to $100 depending on the lab used and their base rate for a vet tech’s time. I was seriously peeved at that point and made the decision that once his titer results came back I would move all 3 animals to a vet closer to where we live now (the former vet was closer to where we were living). And I did.
Apollo’s first checkup went fine. The vet questioned my choice of vaccination schedule, but after determining that I was sure that was what I wanted, and that I knew WHY I wanted it, she agreed that they would work with me to manage what I wanted. They charge $63 for the titer in question.
The first appointment for Trouble and Janie weren’t quite as smooth, or rather Janie’s wasn’t. Trouble has always been healthy as a horse inspite of being a pudgy kitty, and so her portion of the visit was fine. However when we got to Janie we discovered that not only was there no record of what medication the former vet had chosen to treat her thyroid with, they hadn’t recorded her thyroid levels in the records either. Thankfully I knew the numbers that the vet had told me, and I had brought her pill bottle with me to the appointment. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I wasn’t going to have to deal with that vet any further.
The new vet suggested a different medication for Janie’s thyroid, one thats in a chewable flavored tablet that might be easier for us to get down her (and it is!), took another blood sample from her to make sure that her thyroid had settled properly, and we went home.
The next day (!) the new vet called me with the results of the bloodwork. Her thyroid had finally settled at normal, but her kidney and liver numbers were still high, better, but high. News that I greeted with dead silence. The previous vet had never said ANYTHING about her kidney and liver numbers being off. AT ALL, but apparently they had put it in her medical records (but they couldn’t be bothered to record her thyroid levels???). I said as much to the new vet, who promptly had her own moment of silence. She explained then that high kidney and liver values weren’t unusual when the thyroid had been off for as long as Janie’s had been, and that although they weren’t back down to where they should have been they WERE dropping. She wanted to test again in another 6 weeks to check on them, but at the moment Janie didn’t seem to be suffereing from any negetive affects from them so she was willing to leave her be. I agreed and went on with my week.
Unfortunetly a week and a half ago that changed. My husband called me at work to inform me that Janie was puking up everything, AND had diahrea that looked like flem. I told him to call the vet, and I took her in that afternoon. Two Xrays, and more bloodwork later (some of it very expensive bloodwork), and we have a diagnosis of pancreatitus. Thankfully it seems to be responding to medication, and there’s a very good chance that has her liver and kidney numbers return to normal it will become less and less of an issue. Sigh. Poor kitty!! She is NOT happy with the number of pills she has to take, and I don’t blame her. I’m just peeved. Though I’m liking the new vet more and more!