One Day at a time

Posted on August 18, 2010 by admin

Last week I lost my best friend, my 10.5 year old Rottweiler, Kaiser. He was the most loyal, well behaved, sweetest dog I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I’m so glad I had the chance to share his life for the time we had. We adopted him from a family member who was no longer able to keep him when he was four years old, and I have absolutely no regrets. He was always sunshine, never once was he a negative part of my life. I can only hope that he enjoyed the time he spent with Matt and I as much as we loved spending time with him.

I’ll miss going fishing with him, he always sat patiently on the beach waiting while Matt cast and I read. His excitement over seeing a bass come out of the water was probably greater than Matt’s, I can only imagine what he was thinking. I think most of all what I’ll miss about Kaiser was the effect he had on everyone, he was a calming force, a smile magnet. There were very few people who disliked Kaiser, and of those I can think of the only reason for that dislike was a fear of dogs in general.

We still have our “little bear” Cooper, thank god for Cooper. I can’t imagine waking up, after losing Kaiser and not having a cold wet nose waiting for me to bring him outside, or watching TV at night without a furry friend’s head on my lap. He’s not as well behaved as Kaiser was, yet, but he’s still young and he’s a good dog, someday he’ll be a great dog.

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Head Halters: A dog owner’s comparison

Posted on July 21, 2010 by admin

Cooper the Red Nosed Pitbull @ 9months

I am not a dog trainer, and my only other experience training a dog to walk on a leash on my own was with my then four year old Rottweiler, Kaiser, so when we adopted 9 month old Cooper, a red-nosed pitbull, from our local animal shelter I had very little experience in teaching a dog to walk at heel.

Kaiser, the Rottweiler was a mild puller, he’d get excited just to go outside but after a minute or two of walking he’d calm down and I could easily handle him. Cooper’s level of excitement is much higher, his baseline level of excitement is probably always running at a 3-4, when he gets outside to interact with things it spikes from 6-8, he’s always interested in everything his nose is always going and while now he’s starting to settle down when I first started to walk him, he pretty much walked me.

We are still working to train him to walk on a flat collar but until I am comfortable that I have control over him when I take him out alone I use a head halter. The first one we tried was the Gentle Leader. It’s very simple, one strap around the nose and a band that loops around the back of the head, the leash attaching under the chin. The control it provides is fantastic, when your dog pulls ahead it makes it rather uncomfortable to be ahead by turning his head back to you, thus he will prefer to walk behind you or at your side while wearing the halter. There were some drawbacks to this design for us. There is no padding on the nose band, and because he is a rather high spirited dog he did pull against it and it was causing some of the fur on his muzzle to be rubbed off. There are also no additional nose straps to keep the collar in place if the dog does pull, and sometimes the nose band, even though it was the proper size for our dog would ride up into his eye and that just looked VERY uncomfortable.

We used the Gentle Leader for about 3 months and then it fell off the hook we keep the leashes on, Cooper got a hold of it and chewed through it. So we set out to replace it this time we took him to Petsmart and tried on Halti brand head collars. The Halti is very similar to the Gentle Leader, it has a nose band, a band that goes behind the head it also has some cheek supports and the nose band is padded with neoprene which is actually quite nice. Cooper weighs 50lbs right now, he’s wearing a smaller Halti than the recommended size for his weight because Size 3 was just way too large. The Halti also has a strap to connect it to a regular flat collar which is very nice should your dog be somewhat of a Houdini and manage to duck out of the harness, you still have him on the lead and flat collar, I don’t see how this could happen if the Halti is the correct size, but I suppose it could, and it’s always nice to have extra security.

We like the Halti quite a bit more than the gentle leader for the padding on the nose strap and it sits a little lower on his nose and doesn’t seem to ever ride up so the nose band is no longer getting him in the eye if he gets a little excited and tries to take off.

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Finish what I start

Posted on June 28, 2010 by admin

When I was a child, I was always told to finish what I started. Finish one project before you take on another, finish your supper before you opt for dessert, just finish. I was also told never to quit. Looking back on it now, I know it was well intentioned but I think perhaps I took it more literally than I should have.  Sitting here typing this out I think of all the projects I never started because what I was supposed to be working on wasn’t done yet, or all the food I ate on that plate that I shouldn’t have just because that is what I was taught to do.

I’ve just embarked on a new project, a project I should have been working on for a long time now, Me. The first phase in this project is for me to convince myself that I am in fact worth it. I am worth spending the time on. I am worth the effort. It’s hard for me to grasp that. It’s hard for me to want to do something just for me. I don’t cook for me, if I cook it’s because someone else asked me to… left to my own devices in the kitchen I will go all day just eating a few slices of cheese and a piece of bread, I’m not worth the effort to actually prepare something. I am worth the effort though, really I am, and so here I go trying to convince myself that it’s true. I am worth the effort.

Now heres where I go getting rather ambitious and working on two things at once, something I was always told not to do as a child. Step 1, as I said, convince myself I am worth it and step 2 is doing something about the weight that finishing everything on my plate has encouraged me to put on. I really don’t want to be this woman anymore. So today, I signed up for weight watchers, dusted off the stationary bicycle and here I am committing myself to doing this thing right.

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Saved by a Pitbull Terrier

Posted on May 31, 2010 by admin

I have been living under a rock, a deep dark cavernous hole under a rock for what feels like years. Maybe it has been years, I don’t really know what happened I just shut down. I dropped my classes a semester away from my degree, I quit my job in the field I was going for my degree in, I got another job that I hated, quit that and then crawled into a hole and stayed there.

I stopped doing everything I loved to do. I stopped doodling, I stopped reading, I stopped riding my bike, I stopped living. I really don’t know how my husband lived with this shell of a person during that period of time. I was miserable, of course I was miserable before I shut down, during this period I guess I was just kind of there.

Here’s where things start to turn around. We have an elderly Rottweiler, named Kaiser, who is my world, my constant companion. Kaiser turned 10 years old this year. The average life expectancy for a Rottweiler is 10-12 years. I can’t let the last years of my baby’s life be filled by a human who isn’t there. A friend of mine told me that another dog in his life might extend his life span, it might re-energize him a little bit for a little longer. I got it into my head that we needed to add a member to our pack. Enter Cooper, 9 month old Pitbull mix (he looks mostly pitbull but we don’t know for sure because he’s a shelter dog).

I didn’t know anything about picking a new dog. Nothing. I’ve always just had dogs. As a child, we had several dogs, I don’t remember a time living at home where there were no dogs around. Our pack was large sometimes, 4-5 dogs and small others, with just 1, but we always had a four legged companion around. We had all types of dogs growing up, Grand Airedale Terrier, Golden Retrievers, Black Labs, an Alaskan Malamute, a crazy sheep dog mix all were excellent dogs, none of them were dogs I had chosen. They were family dogs, some of them picked us, like the Malamute who was dropped off at the top of our driveway by a stranger, I guess “Taking the dog to the country” was something they took rather literally and just left her there. Some of the dogs were my parent’s, like the Airedale and the Golden, and the rest were family dogs a part of the family. So you’re thinking to yourself now, but you said you have an elderly Rottweiler. I do, as a matter of fact have an elderly rottie living in my house. Funny thing about Mr. K, as we affectionately call him, he sort of came with an apartment we rented. The previous tenant, an Aunt of my husband’s, couldn’t take him on her move out of state, he was four years old and we all know how older dogs adopt, particularly large breed older dogs. I couldn’t let him go to a shelter so we kept him. So here I am an adult who has lived with dogs her entire life with no idea how to pick a new member of the pack.

During the discussion about adding a dog to the pack, we decided that we would adopt a dog, a young one but probably not a puppy, puppies have good shots at getting out of shetlers, older dogs not so much. We hit up petfinders.com and called the local shelters really having no idea what we were getting ourselves into. All of this ended up with us taking home 9 month old Cooper from the town animal control office, the day after another pitbull at the same shelter attacked one of the handlers. She warned “This is the same type of dog that did this to me” pointing at her bandaged arm, and I simply nodded, paid the adoption fee and walked Cooper to my car. Now, I realize looking back and knowing what I know today about selecting a new member of the pack I did all of this wrong, and if I were to select a new dog today I would probably not be sitting here today watching Cooper sleep in his open crate beside my desk, but I don’t think I made the wrong choice.

Cooper is a moderately high energy dog. He loves to run and play, he requires several walks a day and a lot of attention. Cooper’s energy level is probably a good deal higher than mine, but I want to be what he needs so I am making an effort to change. Currently, unemployed I have all the time in the world to make these changes for him and while making changes to my lifestyle to accommodate the needs of our new fur wrapped bundle of love I can see only positive things coming from this.

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