dog thread

[airENOwevEr778]

Dogs taking naps are just plain adorable.

 

I often get jealous with how deep my dog sleeps! He would oftentimes look like he's dreaming, but for a few times he seemed to be twitching, I got worried. It's just him dreaming, but I did some reading on this: https://petsolino.com/why-is-my-dog-twitching-while-sleeping/ and apparently it can be a sign of a health problem?

 

This makes me want to purposely observe him while sleeping. We can never be too careful when it comes to our pets.

[MEC-777]

7 minutes ago, airENOwevEr778 said:

Dogs taking naps are just plain adorable.

 

I often get jealous with how deep my dog sleeps! He would oftentimes look like he's dreaming, but for a few times he seemed to be twitching, I got worried. It's just him dreaming, but I did some reading on this: https://petsolino.com/why-is-my-dog-twitching-while-sleeping/ and apparently it can be a sign of a health problem?

 

This makes me want to purposely observe him while sleeping. We can never be too careful when it comes to our pets.

I don't think it's a sign of a health problem, nor anything to worry about. Pretty much all dogs I've known, twitch in their sleep from time to time, to some extent. My dog will bark, and practically full-out run on her side, while sleeping. Her brother used to do it as well. They're just dreaming. It's no different than us humans moving around in our sleep.

[airENOwevEr778]

9 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

I don't think it's a sign of a health problem, nor anything to worry about. Pretty much all dogs I've known, twitch in their sleep from time to time, to some extent. My dog will bark, and practically full-out run on her side, while sleeping. Her brother used to do it as well. They're just dreaming. It's no different than us humans moving around in our sleep.

Yes, that's my initial thought too. But wow, your dog runs on her side? That ought to be amusing.

[Master Disaster]

13 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

I don't think it's a sign of a health problem, nor anything to worry about. Pretty much all dogs I've known, twitch in their sleep from time to time, to some extent. My dog will bark, and practically full-out run on her side, while sleeping. Her brother used to do it as well. They're just dreaming. It's no different than us humans moving around in our sleep.

Mine does this too. Its annoying when she's on the bed sleeping with me though.

[MEC-777]

23 minutes ago, airENOwevEr778 said:

Yes, that's my initial thought too. But wow, your dog runs on her side? That ought to be amusing.

Oh it is, quite amusing. lol

 

 

[MEC-777]

Mother-in-law's dog, Gideon isn't doing too well. Poor little guy. Hasn't been eating much lately and has trouble keeping things down. He's lost a lot of weight in the last 6 or so months and shivers a lot. With medication, his heart murmur has been kept in control, but he's 14 and simply getting old. Has a vet visit booked for tomorrow to get checked out - but my wife and I both have a feeling his time is close... 

 

Feels like he's been with us forever. Will be hard to say goodbye, but he's had a good long run.

 

 

[paddy-stone]

23 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

Mother-in-law's dog, Gideon isn't doing too well. Poor little guy. Hasn't been eating much lately and has trouble keeping things down. He's lost a lot of weight in the last 6 or so months and shivers a lot. With medication, his heart murmur has been kept in control, but he's 14 and simply getting old. Has a vet visit booked for tomorrow to get checked out - but my wife and I both have a feeling his time is close... 

 

Feels like he's been with us forever. Will be hard to say goodbye, but he's had a good long run.

 

 

Poor little mite, I wish him well.

 

Just a suggestion, don't know if you've tried this already.. but try him with some soft bread soaked in beef broth/stock and cooled, but not too cool. Should be easy for him to get down being soft and moist (just in case it's his teeth giving him trouble eating too), and shouldn't be easy to throw up.

[MEC-777]

Just now, paddy-stone said:

Poor little mite, I wish him well.

 

Just a suggestion, don't know if you've tried this already.. but try him with some soft bread soaked in beef broth/stock and cooled, but not too cool. Should be easy for him to get down being soft and moist (just in case it's his teeth giving him trouble eating too), and shouldn't be easy to throw up.

Thanks. Yeah, we've been trying boiled chicken and rice in beef broth, among many other things we know he used to love (cheese), but he turns his nose up at most of it. This morning he was interested in some treats, but those treats are super-rich. He's been really slowing down lately and has trouble doing the stairs. We'll see what the vet has to say tomorrow and go from there.

 

Hopefully we can get him to eat something, that usually gives him some energy and brings his appetite back for a while.

[paddy-stone]

1 minute ago, MEC-777 said:

Thanks. Yeah, we've been trying boiled chicken and rice in beef broth, among many other things we know he used to love (cheese), but he turns his nose up at most of it. This morning he was interested in some treats, but those treats are super-rich. He's been really slowing down lately and has trouble doing the stairs. We'll see what the vet has to say tomorrow and go from there.

 

Hopefully we can get him to eat something, that usually gives him some energy and brings his appetite back for a while.

Try some soft food, just in case it is his teeth.. if he can just slurp it down he might be more amenable to eating.

I really hope he feels better soon.

 

[MEC-777]

8 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Try some soft food, just in case it is his teeth.. if he can just slurp it down he might be more amenable to eating.

I really hope he feels better soon.

 

For sure. He only has a few teeth left near the front (still has his molars), so he's been on soft food for a while now. He was on mainly primal freeze-dried raw, which softens up when mixed with some warm water. But he's become super-picky with his food to the point where he'd go days without eating anything. We're not sure if he's just being a brat or is actually not feeling well. He has become noticeably weaker in the last few days though.

[paddy-stone]

11 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

For sure. He only has a few teeth left near the front (still has his molars), so he's been on soft food for a while now. He was on mainly primal freeze-dried raw, which softens up when mixed with some warm water. But he's become super-picky with his food to the point where he'd go days without eating anything. We're not sure if he's just being a brat or is actually not feeling well. He has become noticeably weaker in the last few days though.

Yeah, that's really unfortunate for the poor little bugger.. it's unfortunately very common in older dogs and cats though.

 

We give Dink carrots and other crunchy stuff to help clean her teeth. Also we try to clean them manually, and give her chew toys to help... I don't want her getting problems later in life with them. Henry's teeth were still pretty good when he died, but we did notice they had gotten worse, that was the effect of the soft food we had been feeding him the last few years... I won't make that mistake again with Dink. I want them to remain strong and white. Also don't want her to have horrible breath

 

[MEC-777]

1 hour ago, paddy-stone said:

Yeah, that's really unfortunate for the poor little bugger.. it's unfortunately very common in older dogs and cats though.

 

We give Dink carrots and other crunchy stuff to help clean her teeth. Also we try to clean them manually, and give her chew toys to help... I don't want her getting problems later in life with them. Henry's teeth were still pretty good when he died, but we did notice they had gotten worse, that was the effect of the soft food we had been feeding him the last few years... I won't make that mistake again with Dink. I want them to remain strong and white. Also don't want her to have horrible breath

 

With Moses and Olivia, we started brushing their teeth every day from day one. At 2 years old, Olivia's are still super-white (and so were Moses' before he died). Feeding raw also makes a big difference in keeping their teeth clean.

 

Unfortunately with Gideon, his teeth weren't cleaned daily for many years and he only started getting raw (Primal) a few years ago. That being said, we did start doing his teeth every day once he started living with us for the last few years and it has made a difference in slowing the decay.

 

You should seriously consider feeding raw. The benefits are endless. Less gas, drink less water, poops are much smaller and disappear within days, breath doesn't stink, healthier softer shinier coat, less "eye gums", cleaner teeth, faster recovery from sickness, faster healing of cuts and injuries, improved focus while training... the list goes on.

 

I'm not saying this to scare you or anyone else, I'm saying this because it's true and I genuinely care; There is NO "good" kibble on the market. No such thing. Acana and Orijen used to be an actual good brand of kibble. They used to be family-owned and were very transparent with what went into their food. They have since sold the brand to Nestle and who knows now, what they put in it...

 

The vast majority of Vets are trained to sell you their vet-branded food (which is still terrible) and most are against raw because it doesn't make them any money and/or they are simply not properly educated about it. That sounds harsh, but it is often the truth. Vets are smart, knowledgeable and highly-skilled from a medical and surgical perspective, but most are not nutritionists (there's a huge difference). 

 

The dog and cat food industry is very poorly regulated. What they print on the label and what's actually in the food are not well-defined and it's full of "stuff" your pet doesn't need in their diet. It's taxing on their systems and overtime can cause numerous issues. Kidney and urinary tract issues are very common in cats, and some dogs, because the food tends to keep the animal dehydrated. This causes them to drink way more than they otherwise need to and it puts the kidneys into overdrive.

 

When on the vet-branded kibble, our dogs would drink an enormous amount of water (a 5gal jug per week!). They were very gassy and their poops were huge, soft and stinky and lingered for weeks (I had to pick them up in the yard or they would just accumulate). They were also still getting sick from time to time (diarrhea etc.). After switching to raw, they then only needed to drink less than 1/4 the amount of water. The constant farting stopped. Their poops are now tiny, odourless, and breakdown so quickly that I don't have to pick them up, they just disappear. The diarrhea stopped. Moses hadn't had such normal poops in his entire life before the switch. We began to see all the benefits as I mentioned earlier as well. Olivia can lick your face and it honestly smells like... nothing. As gross as it sounds, even when she burps, it's odourless.

 

Sorry for the long post, I just hope everyone at least considers making the switch. It's one of the best decisions we've ever made with our dogs. Vets and nay-sayers will claim many things against raw, but here is the one thing that dismantles all those claims; and that is the fact that domesticated dogs ARE wolves. They have the same DNA and the same digestive systems. It doesn't make sense to feed them anything but what they would eat in the wild. We take great lengths to protect our dogs from parasites, fleas, ticks, worms, the list goes on. If all of those things are so deadly and dangerous for our dogs, which are wolves, why aren't wolves and coyotes dropping dead like flies out in the wild from all these ailments? They aren't being vaccinated, nor receiving medication for anything. The answer is because they are actually healthier than our pet dogs, because they're getting the proper diet which has numerous positive implications, which includes the ability to build up natural immunity to many of those parasites and ailments. Once you start down the rabbit hole of exposing the truth behind the pet food industry and researching the proper diet for dogs/wolves, the information you'll find is absolutely profound.

 

I speak passionately about it because this is so widely misunderstood.

[paddy-stone]

1 hour ago, MEC-777 said:

Snip!

Yeah, I will definitely consider it for sure. I want the best for Dink.. I'd feed her MY blood if it'd help her

 

[MEC-777]

48 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Yeah, I will definitely consider it for sure. I want the best for Dink.. I'd feed her MY blood if it'd help her

 

We often joke that Olivia eats way better than we do.   Some of the slabs of meat she gets, you could throw on a bbq and eat it for dinner (beef brisket and what not). The place we get her food from, they are their own supplier of FDA-approved human-grade meat. 

 

Quick list of the variety she gets:

-Beef brisket, cheek, tongue, heart

-Pork brisket, cheek, tongue, slices (bones, organs and all), heart

-Lamb neck, goat chunks

-Goose gizzards, neck (bones and all)

-Duck neck (bones and all)

-Turkey neck (bones and all)

-Chicken tenders (chunks), chicken quarters (whole, bones and all), chicken feet

-Basa fillets

-Frozen whole sardines and smelts (as a treat)

-Field & stream (ground mix of fish, lamb and pork, I think. Bones, organs and all)

-Goat's milk (raw)

-Quail eggs (raw, whole)

-Cow ears and rabbit feet (as a treat)

-Rabbit slices (bones, organs and all)

-Offal cubes (mix of organs)

-Tripe cubes (mix of stomach lining from various livestock animals)

 

The list goes on.

 

We also add some natural supplements to provide some of the other important minerals, oils and enzymes they need, but can't get from the meat, alone:

-Sh-emp oil

-Phyt'n chance

-Sunday sundae

 

[The Torrent]

[Polyvalent]

My two doodles.  Ones a golden doodle and the other a labradoodle.  Both are snuggly, intelligent, and don't shed.

 

Spoiler

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

52 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

We often joke that Olivia eats way better than we do.   Some of the slabs of meat she gets, you could throw on a bbq and eat it for dinner (beef brisket and what not). The place we get her food from, they are their own supplier of FDA-approved human-grade meat. 

 

Quick list of the variety she gets:

-Beef brisket, cheek, tongue, heart

-Pork brisket, cheek, tongue, slices (bones, organs and all), heart

-Lamb neck, goat chunks

-Goose gizzards, neck (bones and all)

-Duck neck (bones and all)

-Turkey neck (bones and all)

-Chicken tenders (chunks), chicken quarters (whole, bones and all), chicken feet

-Basa fillets

-Frozen whole sardines and smelts (as a treat)

-Field & stream (ground mix of fish, lamb and pork, I think. Bones, organs and all)

-Goat's milk (raw)

-Quail eggs (raw, whole)

-Cow ears and rabbit feet (as a treat)

-Rabbit slices (bones, organs and all)

-Offal cubes (mix of organs)

-Tripe cubes (mix of stomach lining from various livestock animals)

 

The list goes on.

 

We also add some natural supplements to provide some of the other important minerals, oils and enzymes they need, but can't get from the meat, alone:

-Sh-emp oil

-Phyt'n chance

-Sunday sundae

 

Dang, she does eat better than I do (well, she gets more meat than I do)!

 

I really hope things go well for Gideon!

[MEC-777]

So this is really strange and I have no idea how it happened. Best way to describe it is it looks like the fur was pulled out. It’s not as deep as it looks, just the very top layer of skin/fur missing. The small scratch just below the main wound, it’s just fur missing. It doesn’t need stitches, it’s not a cut. Hopefully it will heal ok and the fur will grow back... We'll use some hydrogen peroxide and polysporin on it and keep it clean. She's fine, btw.

 

Images in spoiler because some may find them graphic.

Spoiler

 

 

Here's what happened; This morning I went down stairs to her crate. She was sitting waiting, so I opened the crate and let her come out. Now, if this had happened in her crate, I expect I would have noticed it then. Anyways, she grabbed one of her favourite toys as usual (a big Stitch stuffy), trotted through the kitchen and into the shop to be let out the back door. As she approached the door with her toy, I reached out to pat her on the rump, just above her tail. Nothing I haven’t done a million times. As my hand touched her, she yelped quite loudly, just once. She didn’t spin around as if what I did caused the sharp pain, and she kind of seemed just as confused as I was. I waited for a moment and looked at her, but still saw nothing and she seemed fine. I then let her out into the backyard where she ran over to the fence and barked at a squirrel. She then peed and came straight back in. She didn’t run through any bushes or anything and I had my eyes on her the whole time. It was then that I noticed this wound. The lights in the shop are quite bright and the wound stands out, so I would expect I would have seen it before, if it was there.
Around the back door where she yelped, there is nothing there that could have caused this. Nothing sharp, nothing dangerous. In her crate, I looked over every square inch with my cell phone light and found nothing. No blood, no clump of fur and nothing sharp or that could have pinched her cheek. She’s not the type to try to escape her crate either. She just sits or lays and barks for us to come let her out in the mornings. I think this happened when she yelped just before I let her out, but there was nothing there that could have caused this. It’s just really strange. Olivia seems fine, regardless. Not much fazes her.  

[soldier_ph]

9 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

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What if she just scratched herself really hard and then a nail from her right back leg went under the skin and ripped a bit away ?

[MEC-777]

5 minutes ago, Pascal... said:

What if she just scratched herself really hard and then a nail from her right back leg went under the skin and ripped a bit away ?

She wasn't scratching or itching herself at all, from when I let her out of her crate to when I saw the wound.

[Master Disaster]

26 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

She wasn't scratching or itching herself at all, from when I let her out of her crate to when I saw the wound.

If I hadn't read your post I'd say that was a bite mark but from what you said that cannot be possible.

 

The other possibility is a tick that burrowed under her skin and decided to jump ship when she moved? Not sure if that's even possible?

 

Maybe ring the vets because there is a type of flesh eating bacteria that dogs can pick up, especially in autumn/fall when there's rotting leaves everywhere. It mostly comes from fox poo though IIRC.

[Praesi]

44 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

She wasn't scratching or itching herself at all, from when I let her out of her crate to when I saw the wound.

Poor Doggy. Give her a treat from me.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

2 hours ago, Praesi said:

Poor Doggy. Give her a treat from me.

Poor Olivia! It appears you are doing everything that needs to be done. Hopefully, that will be all that's needed. Polysporin is pretty good stuff; heck, I use it on myself.

 

My German Shepherd came up with a mystery injury like that, only worse. It looked like she had clobbered herself on her forehead (or someone did it to her). When I first saw the big split on her forehead, I hauled her off to the vet since it obviously needed stitches. The vet had a hard time pulling the edges of the split together while stitching up so he had to use far more than usual.

 

I found out what had happened to her around a year later. We were living in a mobile home in a mobile home park back then and I had fenced the yard to remind her of her boundries (she could have jumped that fence if she really wanted to but I never let her so it wasn't a problem, even when a cat was tormenting her outside the fence; she would just bark at it and follow it along the fence until I came out and chased the little varmint off). I extended the fencing under the backside of the mobile home so she could still get underneath it for shade, rain protection, and to keep mice, etc. from getting into the house (she was the best ratter I ever saw).

 

I was crawling around underneath the trailer, doing some work on it, and I spotted a strip of what looked like fur stuck onto a large electrical junction box. I checked it out and it was a strip of the dog's fur from her forehead. She used to race along the back side of the trailer when following a cat and she apparently hit her head of the corner of the box at full speed, stripping off her hide. I'm guessing she cold cocked herself because we never heard her yelp.

[Bitter]

The snuggle bugs before the black and white pointer mix dove under the covers cause she's a spoiled brat that wants to be the small spoon. Thankfully she's like a hot water bottle in the bed so I don't mind it on cold nights.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

3 hours ago, Bitter said:

The snuggle bugs before the black and white pointer mix dove under the covers cause she's a spoiled brat that wants to be the small spoon. Thankfully she's like a hot water bottle in the bed so I don't mind it on cold nights.

Reminds me of the little dachshund i used to dogsit. I'd put him in the bed and he would immediately burow under the covers and would sleep by my feet.

 

I took my kids and my now late ex's poodle on an overnight fishing trip way back when. It was going to be pretty cold that night (our sleeping bags had a light layer of frost on them in the morning) so I let the poodle crawl into my sleeping bag. He quickly burrowed in and slept down by my feet. My ex was horrified when she found out.