Jump to content
BC Boards

So last night


Recommended Posts

As I was falling asleep, I heard Piper thrashing around under the bed. This is not that unusual, as she sleeps under there and it has a carpet (the rest of the place is hardwood) and she likes to roll on her back on the carpet and make "ARGH, NHGGG, UGG" sounds. And as she is sandwiched between the bed and floor, she can't get a good roll going, legs akimbo, so she slams into the bedframe and boxspring until she is done. It makes Tweed IRATE.

 

So normally I ignore it. However, for whatever reason I hung my head over the side of the bed and looked and Piper was frantic, over the top frantic. She had blood all over her front paws and mouth and was pawing crazily at her mouth. I had to drag her out from under the bed by her tail and pry her mouth open. She had a small, flat sliver of a bone lodged at the roof of her mouth, between her teeth. I couldn't even pry it out with my fingernails, and had to pop it out using a butter knife. She had clawed her gums all up with her feet in her panic, hence all the blood. Poor Piper.

 

She has the worst luck with bones. She also got one stuck on her face a few years ago - it was an old marrow bone, shaped like a capital D and she got the flat "back" of the D stuck behind her lower canines, while the curve of the D went around her lower jaw. The vet almost had to remove it with a hacksaw but managed to pop it off.

 

I take bones away from my dogs when they are done with them, but Piper is a "stasher." She hides them all over the house. I recently used a knife to pry the bottom hunk of fabric off my leather sofa to get the sand out of it, and found three bones in there too, because she shoves them down the sofa between the seat and the sofa back. She has buried them in my houseplants, and recently I found one tucked neatly away in my slipper, which I had not used for a while since it's summer and all. So I don't know where she had hidden this wee bone shard or why, but that was scary.

 

Anyway - the moral of the story is Throw Out Your Old Bones! And always check to see what Piper is doing under the bed.

 

To repay me, at about 4AM this morning she punished Sport for trying to wake me up for a pee - flew across the room and gave him a beat down. It sounded like "Shut up! Can't you see The Food Lady is sleeping, you @$$hole??" Poor Sporty.

 

RDM

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Scary!

 

I haven't started giving Suka bones yet - In fact, I've never been too big on bones with any of my dogs, before, though I think I'm a convert. But that leads me to ask "what constitutes an old bone?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Shut up! Can't you see The Food Lady is sleeping, you @$$hole??" Poor Sporty.

 

I about spit out my drink when I read this... :rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Poor Piper! How well behaved is she to let you pry the bone out of her mouth with a butter knife?! I imagine I would have lost a finger. I am glad to hear she is ok. I am going to heed your warning when I get home and make sure I have in fact discovered all of Poke's hiding spots as well. I randomly catch him with all sorts of things in his mouth. He enjoys stashing covetted items in the couch much like Piper. It's all for the better, soon to be MIL is coming in town tomorrow and I need to clean. Poor Sport as well for having the Piper hammer come down on him at 4 am. I am sure Tweed was appreciative since Sport "stole," his spot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's a good question. You can start with the definition of "If it's in your sofa ..."

 

Honestly, we have never had a problem with bones and Tweed, or bones and Woo - but bones and Piper are a volatile mix.

 

Often, Piper ends up with ALL the bones. She intimidates the other dogs into giving them up, and then hoards them, and once everyone has wandered off, she hides them all over the place. She is not supposed to even have them under the bed and she knows it too!

 

RDM

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Poor Piper! How well behaved is she to let you pry the bone out of her mouth with a butter knife?!

 

You know, all of my dogs would let me do that - or similar - no matter how panicked. It's one thing I try to instill in all my dogs. My ex boyfriend has a very aggressive dog and you'd need Kevlar body armour to do something like that with him ... and I couldn't live with a dog like that. Me personally, I mean.

 

When Tweed gets a stick stuck in his Aussie Pants (a Very Scary Event, for Tweed) he always comes to me to remove it for him :rolleyes:

 

But yeah, once I told her to calm down, she let me hold her mouth open and pry at the bone. Then of course she tried to steal it back once it was out of her mouth. World's Smartest Breed my fanny.

 

RDM

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You know, all of my dogs would let me do that - or similar - no matter how panicked.

 

When Solo had his first root canal, they gave him Ace as a pre-anesthetic and he had a very classic hyper-aggressive reaction to it. Coming out of anesthesia he apparently woke up "like a shot, and mad" and tried to take everyone in the room out with him, so unfortunately they Aced him again (his vet records now all say NO ACE on them) and then put him in a kennel upstairs to recover.

 

They put a sign on the door of the kennel he was recovering in. It was a clip on sign that said "Dog Aggressive" with the "Dog" part crossed out so that it simply read "Aggressive." When I entered the room I heard low growls coming from the kennel every time someone walked by. The techs did not want to handle him once he started waking up, even with a muzzle on, so I went in and lifted him out of the kennel myself. The techs watched me, backed all the way up against the far wall and holding their breaths. One then told me she could not believe I was not afraid of him. Solo, of course, did not do anything to me -- why would he, he is not afraid of me. I took the muzzle off him and carried him out to the car like a puppy because he was still limp and uncoordinated from the Ace.

 

I can hug Solo, scale his teeth, clean his ears, look deep into his eyes, clip his nails, stuff pills into his face and make him swallow them, roll him over on his back and check his weiner (hi Sheena!), give him injections, whatever. I would not recommend that most other people try this stuff, but I can do it. I think I would have a very hard time living with a dog I could not personally handle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wiener toucher!!! Tweed bites me when I touch his, but only if I tell him "I'm going to touch your wiener!" and he also bites me if I tell him: "The paw monster is going to get you!" But that's fun and games (even though it kind of hurts). In real situations where he is scared or hurt, he doesn't ever bite me.

 

He does forget who I am when I go on vacation though. He quickly believes the dog sitter is His New Mommy and it takes him about 5 full minutes to recognize me. Is it any wonder I don't like Tweed???

 

Briggs had the same reaction to Ketamine - is that similar to Ace? My vet calls it "Seeing Dragons" and he said Briggs saw some BIG ones! ;-)

 

Mark - the Food Lady is glad! And the Food Lady got this email today - AT WORK - which amused her:

 

"I have a weird question for you, because I remember you saying you had border collies at the orientation meeting...at the (considerable) risk of sounding like a weirdo/stalker/other equally crazy person, are you perchance the "Three Woofs and a Woo"/BC rescue Sheena?! If not, oh my, please disregard this and don't remove me from (name of the non profit I work for) in creeped out disgust. But if so, I read your blog regularly, love it, and heartily laugh aloud at it. :-) "

 

RDM

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Once in a blue moon I'll have a stuck bone to deal with on these guys, but I'd way rather have that than a jaw stuck Kong :rolleyes: That is a nightmare to get off!

 

I'm with Melanie. Its one thing to have to work around a dog with stranger fearsand issues, but if you can't handle your own dog in a crisis or for uncofortable but necessary stuff you've got bigger problems than I would want to live with.

 

The Kong finally came loose with the pliers, kitchen shears, and a lot of surgical lube.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just passed "Randomness Part 9, an addition" to a coworker I felt needed a good laugh.

I hope she read the "Well THAT was embarassing" entry first -- to get the full appreciation of the joy of the (expensive) new FIFA!

 

Thanks for the bone reminder, Sheena. Daisy thinks that the directions for bones are as follows: (a) immediately run off behind the compost heap; (:rolleyes: bury the bone; © allow bone to age it for one week; (d) dig up bone; (e) season bone with dirt and leaves; (f) bring bone into house and position it on living room rug; (g) enjoy! That's why she rarely gets bones, and usually only if she steals one from Juno. She requires too much vigilance!

 

ETA: I hate how letters in parentheses turn into things!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not to jack RDM's thread, but what suggestions do you folks have to work with a dog who will bite in pain. Poke is no problem, but the inigma that is Ceana, while improved, has previously been aggressive to all in pain. On the car ride home, last year, after she cracked her toe nail on a hike she would show her teeth to anyone that even looked at her and I have no doubt in my mind she would have tried to bite Chris or myself. Granted that was a year ago, and we have come a long way, we do not even need muzzles at the vet any more. (Although she is still obviously scared and hides her head in our laps during an exam) I am concerned that in a moment of panic such as what Piper was in under the bed she would revert back to "evil Ceana." I guess I will not know her reaction unless something were to happen, but just in case, any suggestions for ways we can work on this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When Tweed gets a stick stuck in his Aussie Pants (a Very Scary Event, for Tweed) he always comes to me to remove it for him :rolleyes:

 

Ha! I know that one. Senneca dived into a bush a couple of weeks back and came out with a bougainvillea branch -- full of thorns -- in her britches. Scary. Very, very scary. Thankfully, she stopped snapping at it and let me help. I've never seen her so panicked before.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

QUOTE(MrSnappy @ Aug 1 2008, 12:06 PM)

"Shut up! Can't you see The Food Lady is sleeping, you @$$hole??" Poor Sporty.

I about spit out my drink when I read this... :rolleyes:

 

/\/\ Ditto! :D

 

I'm now off to search the house and yard for hidden bones... Brassy likes to stare down Jak, growling, and then steal anything he might be chewing on and run off with it (for an old gal she moves pretty fast)... never to be seen again.

 

Glad Piper is ok.

I would have freaked... not good with blood. I'm a wuss.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Geez, you just had to post this today, didn't you? I had to rush Billy to the vet this afternoon before they closed because when i got home from work, he had a bone stuck around his bottom jaw and i couldn't get it off. I managed to pry it off after he was knocked out but before they could get the saw out and start cutting. It was one of those ones about an inch or two long, that i usually won't have around just because of the risk of this happening. It was hanging right there behind his canines and wouldn't come back over.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

but what suggestions do you folks have to work with a dog who will bite in pain. Poke is no problem, but the inigma that is Ceana, while improved, has previously been aggressive to all in pain. On the car ride home, last year, after she cracked her toe nail on a hike she would show her teeth to anyone that even looked at her and I have no doubt in my mind she would have tried to bite Chris or myself. ...any suggestions for ways we can work on this?

 

I can suggest what worked for me when Minnie had a run-in with a coyote during a hike on the trail a few years ago. It dislocated her rear leg, and she came running back to me, on 3 legs and adrenaline with the coyote right on her non-existent tail. She allowed me to pick her up and carry her back to the car, but when I brought her in the house to get a good she nailed me and wouldn't let me touch her. So I threw a towel over her head and carried her into the car until the vet answered her page. I was able to put the muzzle on her when we got to the vet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I would have a very hard time living with a dog I could not personally handle.

 

Same here though last year at a pot luck, my practically perfect Sheltie who is on a terribly restricted diet behaved shockingly bad and stole a corn muffin off the buffet table. I would have had the pilfered food out of her mouth easily if it hadn't been a corn muffin and immediately turned into paste. So in front of a completely silent roomful of people, I was clearing out her mouth and as I worked on the last clump, my generally very soft and submissive dog closed her jaws around my finger and would not open them. For several seconds I was thinking "Well, hell, this is going to end up with me at the ER." I couldn't believe what was happening but Sassy finally loosened her jaws, I got the rest of the muffin out and tossed her into another room in disgrace. My finger was sore for a few hours but had no scrapes or cuts despite the pressure she had been placing on it. As I was carrying her off to the clink, someone commented "What do you expect? She's been eating brown rocks for the past year." :rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did all our dogs read the same memo last night or something? Except Cord got his foot caught in his collar. His back foot. Please don't ask, I have no idea. He was screaming and actually reached around and put his teeth on me twice but as soon as the teeth touched he stopped himself.

 

I was talking about this when I was doing a home visit. I showed him how Trane will let me handle him all over and I told him he'd have to work on that, too. He about fell off his chair when I opened Trane's mouth and stuck my fingers all over his teeth. I start this with every dog I get - I don't know why, but I'm not a big petter - I mess around with ears, rumple hair, put tails in funny positions, grab paws and play with toenails. And I stick my fingers in their mouths. Trane had a horrible time with this - he Did. Not. Want. To. Be. Touched. Bossy little brat. He liked attention better than being the Captain of his own fate, however, so he got over it fast.

 

Anyway, as I was saying to the prospective adopter this afternoon, with Cord I was so scared he'd choke himself or break his leg, that I didn't care at all if I took a bite or two. But Cord showed remarkable self-control even though he was terrified.

 

I'm glad everyone is okay!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow.

 

Something like that has only happened to me once. Thankfully! (Wasn't even a BC - it was my lab mix Sassy) She was a bit of an escape artist, and had gone over the fence (again) after a squirrel. All our neighbors had chain link, and as she was clearing another fence she wasn't quite high enough and caught one toe in the top link. (The twisted parts were at the bottom) It twisted over, and she hung there, screaming, until I could catch up with her. We'd only had her a few months, but my neighbors were all shocked to see me run up and pick her up - she immediately went from thrashing and screaming to limp. I untangled her poor toe, and we moved shortly therafter to a house with a 6' privacy fence.

 

Mostly, I needed to get her out of the situation before she injured herself more, but I was pleasantly surprised to find her so calm once I lifted her.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...