Blondie: Lessons from a Rescue
Part 2
I greatly appreciate all the advice and support our family has received during this rescue pup journey. It has been challenging, but very rewarding thus far. I wanted to give a little update on how Blondie is acclimating to life in our family and share a few things we've learned along the way.
If you've been following along, you'll remember that Blondie came to us 11 months old and never having been properly socialized. She is a big 60+ pound dog who's bark is enough to stop a grown man in his tracks. She is super loving in our home, but turns into a maniac when meeting anyone new (human or dog). We've been working to keep her "under threshold" to give her body sometime to de-stress, especially transitioning into a new home. She's been really fast to pickup new commands at home and now understands- sit, stay, wait, lay down, shake, leave it, grab it, and my favorite "out of the kitchen" With the help of the professionals at Tacomo dog training in Marquette, we've been working on learning to read her body language while out on walks and giving lots of positive reinforcement when she comes across a trigger. We've also purchased a doggie backpack for her that we can lightly weight down. This serves a few purposes.
It gives her a job. Many working breeds enjoy this and it helps give them confidence.
It increases the amount of exercise she gets on our walks. It's also more work to lunge and go nuts with 10 pounds on her back.
After a bunch of research, the backpack I settled on was this one from Tigris
It has these spots were you can add velcro patches. My husband has a Rucksack backpack that has the same feature. So he transferred some of his patches to Blondie's backpack. Our training regimen was going great up until this last week when we had a little hiccup.
One day Blondie vomited in the house. I immediately noticed some foreign objects in her throw up. Upon further inspection, it was not one, but THREE plastic squeakers like would be found in a dog toy! This especially came as a shock to us because we have never given her any squeaky toys in the 5 weeks she's been with us! This means those squeakers have been hanging out in her stomach for quite some time. She seemed fine for a few days but then I notice she was starting to have mucus poops along with some diarrhea. Being that we had just finished transitioning her to a new food, we thought this could be the culprit. We moved her to a bland diet of chicken and rice for a week while we observed. She seems to be improving, but I'm still concerned that there could be (heaven forbid) another squeaker still in there? I'm thinking a trip to the vet for an X-ray might be in order. I guess I'm mentioning this because I can't believe she swallowed 3 of those squeakers whole! Makes you wonder about the safety of squeaky toys in general!?! We for one will not allow her to ever have them for this very reason.
Overall, we are all doing well and making progress one day at a time. Training is a daily practice. Staying consistent right now is the key. I have now doubt that in another 5 weeks we will be praising Blondie's strides. Thanks again for all your support!
-xoxo Michele
Buy purchasing through links in this post, I may receive a very small commission, at no extra charge to you. Your support allows me to continue creating interesting content and I greatly appreciate it!
Blondies backpack:
The coolest collar patterns and designs + they are all made in the USA!
Comments