Kenzie’s Medical Adventures

Kenzie has an eye infection this week.  She had yellowish-green ooze and her eye socket was really red and swollen.  Mostly she had been keeping the one eye closed.  We used saline solution and warm compresses on her eye.  Kenzie seemed to really like this.  Then Sharon and Ryan brought us some eye drops.  They are the organizers of West Coast Assistance Teams.  Since the vet that West Coast uses is near Metrotown, which is far from us, we really appreciate their driving it in to Vancouver for Kenzie.

Sharon and Ryan are incredibly supportive, sensitive and always available by phone or email for concerns and advice.  (We have already tested this.)  They drive in for 1-on-1 training sessions on top of the Monday night training classes.  If any of the dogs have medical issues they are there and involved and supportive.

This visit of Sharon and Ryan’s included a nice short spa treatment for Kenz – she had her nails filed down, and a pep talk/training tips for me. 

Here’s what I took from the tips –

• Aim for and give rewards for things closer and closer to the desired behaviour, not perfection.
• Outside of ideal conditions don’t try ‘stay’ and walk away from a puppy.  Instead, have her stay and walk in a circle around her, create distractions.  Don’t go more than a max of 6 ft away.  Just work on getting that perfect.
• Set her up to succeed.
• When a dog has done a good job of 2 mid distance stays well, don’t then try another, longer distance stay.  The dog has already done it twice and is likely getting bored and will break.
• Every time a dog breaks a stay, it makes it harder to succeed the next time.  Set small goals and give rewards for those, instead.
• Puppy class is NOT ideal conditions, other dogs and lots of activity are huge distractions.  While she should be able to handle this amount of distraction eventually, she definitely isn’t going to show her best behaviour.

What we already know is that at 6 months Kenz is still enough of a puppy that almost all of her training should be positive with food rewards, verbal and petting.   A redirection to a positive behaviour (for example : Quiet!  Good girl!)  as opposed to negative reaction (for example: Stop it!)

For more fun with a vet, just after Kenzie came to live with us she had a veterinary opthamologist appointment.  Apparently collies have a higher risk of some eye issues than most dogs.  Kenz checked out fine.  While she could get damage or conditions other dogs might get, the genetic worries are ok.

And yesterday (Saturday) Kenz was spayed.  She will need low activity levels and a cone for 10-days to keep her from hurting her incision.  She will have internal/invisible stitches that should be healed after 10 days.  Part of me is sad and feels sorry for the little skiver.  The other part was thanking the universe for giving us a few down days.

Apparently I was delusional about that.  I don’t think she’s even slept more than usual today.  She’s pretty sure that she can do anything today the same as any day.  Maybe even more since she hasn’t gotten any exercise.  So she and I spent a lot of time and a lot of treats building her vocabulary and retrieving skills, to kill time, burn off energy and keep her out of trouble.  The last time she was in this sort of mood I taught her to find (easily) hidden objects and the names of some of her toys – ball, rope and barbell. Today we played so long her rope was quite wet. So we moved on to real objects: my keys, my phone and the TV remote.  They are all gooier than they have ever been before.  But we are on the way to her being able to be sent to retrieve an object or pick up something that has been dropped.  Although we saw an older dog named Ellie pick up a credit card from the floor the other day.  Kenz has a ways to go for that to happen.

It took a bit of work to get her to pick up the keys the first couple of times. I had to bring out the big gun of treats.  Apparently metal is not a dog’s favourite thing to have in their mouth.  But I have a large beaded decoration and lanyard on my keys, so it isn’t actually just metal.  I figure eventually we’ll try it without the lanyard.  She picked up the phone and the remote were pretty easy after that. ***

The only problem with this is that now she brings me things when she’s bored.  She would bring her toys before and now she’s just voluntarily bringing me my keys, phone, etc. and she expects treats or more playing in return.

Earlier in the afternoon when I came home from my event, V was supposed to have already left the house.  But Veronica was still home and very late for her event.  She claims to now understand why people with toddlers are always late and/or harried.  There’s not just the usual play with Kenz and keep Kenz out of trouble occupying her time.  Now we can’t let Kenz be alone in a different room unless she has the cone on.  It is more intense supervision.

Speaking of toddlers, Kenzie had a great find at Jericho the other day.  She found a pair of colourful, striped toddler socks – thankfully clean and dry, too.  They must have fallen out of someone’s bag.  This might not seem like a great find to you but for some reason Kenzie LOVES socks.  She doesn’t chew them up she just like to carry them around, flop them around, throw them and pull on them.  So now she has her own pair of socks. 

Since Kenz isn’t supposed to scratch at her eye, V decided to put the socks on her paws.  Then V sat there beside Kenzie laughing with tears streaming down her face.  I thought it was cute too but not that funny.  More dog humour that has had V laughing so hard lately can be found on

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html

When Kenzie isn’t wearing her cone she tries to sneak her mouth closer and closer to the incision.  She shifts position or stretches and then just casually puts her mouth closer and closer to her lower belly. It is kind of like maybe we won’t notice if she gets there slowly enough.  Sometimes she lifts her back leg to scratch her ear but we think this is really just a ruse to make the quick and easy transition to licking the incision.  It’s a good thing she already knows ‘leave it!’  We are using that phrase a lot to tell her to keep away from her own incision.

After puppy class last week V and I decided these are the problem areas that we would like to work on with Kenz:

Barking (especially at kids)

Jumping up (especially when people are bending down to pat her and they get a head butt from her instead)

Gnawing on people (mostly us)

Nipping at people (mostly us)

Playing with her leash

The barking is the biggest problem and so we are making this the priority.  For barking, especially at kids, Kenz and I have been hanging out around the school a block from home.  Listening and watching the kids will hopefully begin a calmer reaction to small children and then we can hopefully get closer. 

And of course working on not barking in general.  Last week I taught her ‘snap’ (a clacking noise with her jaws that collies do), and ‘speak’ any kind of noise qualifies but usually she works up to barking, and then of course ‘quiet’.  Quiet and a reward comes in very handy.

Sadly with a smart girl like Kenzie sometimes I feel like I am being played, like she’s making noise (or misbehaving otherwise) just so she can be told quiet and rewarded for being such a good, quiet dog.

And post script : Kenzie retrieved my ‘dropped’ wallet and keys at a grocery store!  And when veronica gave Kenzie the remote in another room and told her ‘take it to Jackie’, Kenzie brought it to me.  How awesome is that?!