I gave Mojo a bath last night and I think that was officially his last bath in our tub. I simply cannot lift him into it any more, and he sure as hell has no intention of climbing in voluntarily. Both he and Lindsy will be going to the do-it-yourself dog grooming place next time, with the raised tubs and ramps. She has a thick double coat and is very hard to rinse so we always do a better job there anyway. They opened a new one in Dallas but I heard it was really expensive. Will have to call and verify, otherwise it’s back to that place in Plano with all the loose dogs running about the shop.
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The humorous side of living with an obsessive-compulsive dog As part of the cleanup for the upcoming property inspection, I have to do something about Mojo’s stick collection, pictured above. This photo represents about a week’s worth of tree branches that he has collected on his morning and evening walks. To Lindsy, those walks mean forging on at a fast trot trying to get as far as possible and explore as much as possible before the humans make her turn back. To Mojo, it is all about finding the ‘right’ branch and getting it home as quickly as he can. For a long time he kept our recycling bin full with empty soda bottles he brought back but he’s moved on to sticks. And as you can see above, not just sticks… large tree branches, the bigger the better, with leaves if he can find one. More than once I have given the neighbors and the road construction workers nearby a good laugh because I appear to be walking a large stumbling bush with a set of dog feet and a tail sticking out of it. Now here’s the weird part: I took the above picture this afternoon right after it had stopped raining. There was still water dripping off the roof, but I was careful to stand away from it so the camera didn’t get wet. What the heck is that white thing (which you can see a close-up of towards the top? The only explanation I can come up with is that I caught a water droplet that was in the midst of falling, and that is the flash reflecting off it, which would be pretty neat. Obviously since this is a digital picture it is not a matter of the film getting damaged, and the droplet is not on the lens — I took a second photo right afterwards and it is not in that one. I was at the grocery store today and scanning the overhead signs in the aisles trying to find something I was looking for. In the pet food aisle, I saw the following listed on the sign: Dog Food Ummm…Dry Cat Litter? As opposed to what other kind…? I realized today that I haven’t posted any updates on how Mojo is doing with his canine compulsive disorder/spinning in quite a long time. I’ve been putting regular entries on the Bull Terrier Neurological Disorders list but hadn’t thought to mention anything here. Actually, he is doing pretty good. Mojo had a trip to the vet today to get a bordetella (kennel cough) vaccine because he will be boarding for half a day Tuesday and no one will let him board without it. Since our new vet hasn’t yet seen him, I also scheduled an exam. He has been doing really, really well the past week or so with the spinning and I discussed with her the possibility of starting to taper the clomipramine (he’s been on it since October 21) off if he can maintain this level of success for a few weeks. There have been maybe one or two actual tailchasing episodes total the past week or so — down from 3+ times a day recently and 20+ times a day when at it’s worst. One of the times Joy told him “knock it off” and the other time I simply held up a spray bottle to show him, and both times he stopped and went to find something else to do. He still tends to glance at his tail now and then but the compulsion to actually chase it is not as strong. He had a bad spell right after Christmas, with Tori gone and the holiday chaos but since then has steadily gotten better. He’s a lot less stressed than he used to be and most of the challenges we are having right now relate more to his being a teenage Bull Terrier (selective hearing, random acts of destruction) than a spinner. Everything checked out OK, I had her look at the weird little growths he is getting at the base of both ears (3 total now — they look like furry little horns) and she said they just looked like harmless skin tags. His demodex is pretty minimal at this point, just the one itchy spot on his side left. He’s been having a yeasty-feet problem that I have been treating for the past week, the vet said it looked like it was clearing up and it wouldn’t even have been noticeable if I hadn’t mentioned it. Dr. Stevens, our new vet, is really great with animals. Mojo was a bit apprehensive in the exam room and tried to hide under a chair. Rather than have me haul him out and put him on the table, she just plopped herself down on the floor and baby talked to him until he came to her, and did the exam there. He was having so much fun by the time it was done he tried to follow her out the door! She did say something really neat: when she was listening to his heart I was holding him and talking to him quietly telling him what a good boy he was being so he’d stay still, and afterwards she said that each time I talked to him his heart rate slowed down noticably, i.e. it was fast because he was still a bit nervous but he was paying attention to me and I was calming him with my voice. We were going to draw the blood today for a thyroid panel for Dr. Dodds but it needs to ship FedEx overnight and Hemopet isn’t open on the weekend so we’re shooting for Tuesday while he is there instead. After the vet’s we went to Petco to find him a new toy. He is in a destructive phase and I am hoping the canvas salmon I got him — rated at “1/2 ton of tug power” will last more than ten minutes. Oh — and the stinker weighed 62 1/2 pounds today! He’s gained another four pounds just in the past couple of weeks and he’s still barely 10 months old! I am going to have to start working out, and buy a truck, just to lug his big butt around!
A few months back one of our neighbors had a yard sale, and we saw that they had a used 15 gallon aquarium with a screen top for sale. We figured we could always use a spare cage and I think we paid maybe five bucks for it. Not having any particular use for it right at that moment, the tank just sat in the garage until a few weeks ago when we decided to move Willow and Lauren to the bookshelf in the office. The cage they were in wouldn’t fit on the shelf so we put them in the aquarium. Joy cleaned the tank up with hot water and some sort of cleaner like pine sol and the rats were soon situated in their new digs. Within about a week, Lauren had broken out all over her neck with horrible itchy scabs and was tearing herself bloody. Off to the vet we went. We suspected mites, like Luna had once had, but he could not find any with a magnifying lense. He did a skin scraping and came back a few minutes later saying “well I’m glad we did the scrape” and then announced that Lauren had sarcoptic mange, better known as scabies. There was a hurried flurry of handwashing, as this is the type of mange that is highly contagious to other animals — and humans! He asked about anthing new in their environment, and we mentioned the aquarium; he confirmed that this is a pretty common scenario for getting something like this. Apparently the little monsters can also survive a pretty long time in the environment and they must have been in some crack or under the loose caulking and made it past the cleaning that way. Poor Lauren and Willow. All 3 rats (Luna’s cage is near those, so we did her too, just to be safe) had to be treated with Revolution; the vet felt one treatment should take care of it so at least it was fairly easy to fix, and didn’t require the poor little girls getting any injections. Because they are not quite as friendly as Luna is and don’t get handled a lot, it doesn’t seem we spread it to ourselves or the other critters. We were lucky. Our cheap aquarium ended up costing us over $80 — and ended up in the trash! |
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