Dogs
Darkness is lying in a corner of the kitchen, moaning. It’s been a really great day.
Even after I yanked some of the bedding out from under Chaos last night so that his brother had something to lie on, Darkness didn’t settle properly. He’d lie down in the crate for a while and then get up and go find a piece of kitchen floor and sprawl there. Then he started whining. At first I thought it was his old pre-diet-change colic coming back—he’s the one spent several days of the hot weather a week ago spouting at both ends, and he was always the one more prone to colic: Chaos preferred simply withdrawing from food altogether—but the other standard symptoms were not present: tender drum-like tummy and roaring gut noises. Eventually he quieted down and we all went to bed, but there was a lot more scrabbling and clicking nails than usual from the kitchen overnight. Which I woke up to listen to, because I’m like that.
This morning it became clear that it was his back/neck/spine bothering him again. He wouldn’t jump in the car and when I boosted him in he squealed. We were in kind of a hurry: today was the day for southdowner to come down again for our ‘intervention’ with Mike. I overslept on account of listening to restless hellhound(s) so we banged out on a short nearby walk. Darkness seemed fine on the level—eager to be going out, tail high, nose seeking trouble—but he didn’t want to get back in the car. And when I picked him up he squealed again.
Got home to message from poor southdowner . . . who had had a puncture. And would be forty-five minutes late. I deadheaded a few roses and fretted.
But it wasn’t a great way to begin our intervention: southdowner does it professionally, so presumably she has a ‘serenity’ button to press when the stress levels are rising. I think the rest of us were done no favours by having forty-five more minutes to fine-tune our worst-case scenarios. But at least we weren’t jacking up a hot car on a motor/highway and wrestling with jammed wheel nuts—many of you will have had opportunity to notice for yourself that those little screwy things holding the wheel to the car are ALWAYS jammed when you have a flat tyre.
Note: I may have got some of the following wrong. I am not a professional dog trainer. Southdowner is. If I say something that you know is bulltiddly, blame me, not southdowner.
It’s a miserable business, going into someone’s home because they’ve messed up so badly they need an expert to tell them how to clean up their act. I felt like a bailiff. Southdowner is brilliant—she just laid it quietly on the line: commit to retraining—serious retraining—or rehome him now. And Daisy does love him—she wants to give it a try.
Most of you dog people out there will already know about NILIF: Nothing in Life is Free. A couple of people mentioned it on the forum when I posted about Mike a fortnight or whenever ago—after southdowner and I went to visit him by ourselves, when Daisy and Roy were away, and I found out he wouldn’t even allow his collar to be put on without a major struggle. I can’t find the site where southdowner printed off what she gave Daisy (and me), but this looks pretty close: http://factoidz.com/nothing-in-life-is-free/
And this is a good example of it in action: http://www.greyhoundlist.org/nothing_is_free.htm
Southdowner recommended this judiciously mixed with Leading the Dance:
http://www.shirleychong.com/keepers/dance.html
. . . But the short form is, they have to keep Mike on a lead at all times in the house for TWELVE WEEKS minimum. The only time he’s off lead is when he’s locked up in his crate. But he wouldn’t be in the state of total four-legged furry disaster he’s in if they were good at drawing lines and holding them, you know? I’m not too bad at drawing lines, but I’d find the twelve weeks Daisy and her family are looking at very hard.
That took about an hour and a half: Southdowner demonstrated, and then invited Daisy and Roy to do it themselves, so they’d know what and how, and what it felt like, encouraged them to ask questions, and pointed out that dog training is really only a spin on parenting skills: and they’ve got three great grown-up human kids, so they obviously can do it. And one question in my mind got answered in one of those ‘duh’ moments. I’ve said—or shrieked—a number of times about the Mike situation, but they’ve had dogs before! What happened! And the answer is . . . Southdowner said, when is the last time you raised a puppy from eight weeks old? They looked at each other. About eighteen years ago. Things change. You change. I’ve said pretty often that the hellhounds are very likely my last puppies: I doubt I’m going to be up to the mania in another fifteen years or so. Zara and I may have pushed Daisy and Roy too far . . . but I keep remembering how happy Daisy was when I gave her the itty-bitty handful that Mike was eight months ago . . .
The thing that I found the most hopeful about Mike’s future is how instant and dramatic the change in him was, just the hour and a half we were there. Southdowner put him on a very short lead and simply held him till he stopped trying to turn himself inside out—he likes making a to-do over new people—and then as soon as he thought ‘well, this isn’t much fun’ and sat down . . . loosened the lead. The moment he started flinging himself around again, the lead was shortened. And so on. The person on the other end of the lead goes through doorways first, and he is not allowed through until he will wait on a loose lead, to be invited. And yes, doorways took a few minutes—a few long boring minutes—but he was waiting and coming through on a loose lead by the time we left. He is so trainable—that’s the other good news in a situation that desperately needs some good news. But he’s been doing the Wild Thing for eight months, and it’s going to take time to establish new behaviour as habit. And while we were there, he didn’t know what had hit him yet: when it begins to penetrate that this is the new system, I imagine there will be some fairly epic tantrums.
Southdowner took off as soon as she’d dropped me back at the cottage: note that she’d clipped the first day of her holiday to come south and sort things out . . . and that her holiday was happening in Scotland. So she drove down from the midlands—and don’t forget the puncture—to Hampshire, and turned around and drove to Scotland. She is a heroine. And please please please let her not be wasting her time with Mike. . . .
Meanwhile. I couldn’t get hold of the animal physio, the acupuncturist she recommended, or my old homeopathic vet who also does acupuncture. Darkness can’t even go up the two steps to the front door of the mews—the cottage stairs are much longer, but each individual riser is much lower—without squeaking. And I’ve managed to give myself backache from trying to figure out the optimum way of lifting him in and out of the car: the usual arms-around-both-ends method does not work. Ordinarily I don’t think this would be an issue—I still lift them both over dog-proof stiles periodically—but my back has been in a tetchy mood since the four-inch heels for the opera on Monday.
I finally gave up on the alternatives and took him to the ordinary vet surgery this evening, where the ordinary vet said that he guessed, by feel (even I can feel how hard and tight Darkness’ neck and back are) and description that we were looking at a slipped disc type situation which, he says, is common in long skinny running dogs, even young ones, and that we treat it accordingly with anti-inflammatories and hope that it fuses, and that if it happens again Darkness had better be x rayed in case there’s anything else going on. The vet said that because dogs gallumph around on all fours, anti-inflammatories usually work better on them than on humans and I said, and if it fuses, do we have to worry about exactly the same thing happening to the next vertebra? And the vet said, we might. –Oh good.
And I brought them home—Chaos had spent his time at the vet trying to make himself invisible in corners: he hasn’t forgotten the diabolically painful and completely useless jab they both got as part of the comprehensively useless treatment for what turned out to be a cereal allergy, from some whippersnapper of young female vet maybe about a year ago, and it still makes me furious that by one piece of ill-judged arrogance I’ve been left with a dog terrified of the vet’s. Grrrrrrr. And they’ve had supper, which included Darkness’ first anti-inflammatory, which ought to start calming things down. And he’s lying in a corner of the kitchen floor moaning.
Remind me why companion animals are supposed to be a good thing. Remind me of all those scientific studies that say that pets are good for you.
I’m so demoralised I haven’t even the spirit for footnotes.
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