HI all. I'm sorry for not posting very much (understatement, I know). But I refuse to feel guilty about it and have even unprivatized the blog to make it easier to check up on. So! For those of you who have been out of communication for a while, I wanted to send out a little update.
Ben and I adopted a pup from a rescue in L.A., she's called Grushenka (named after a character from Brother's Karamazov) and she's been incredibly difficult health-wise, but such a good dog in every other way! She had serious bowel problems for the first two weeks or more that we had her-she would throw up, didn't touch her food for the first week, and had really terribel diarrhea (including all over the house). We took her to three different vets and then finally to a critical care hospital, which was like House for dogs, where we were met by a laughably sexy Grey's Anatomy-like diagnostician vet. Soooo...after bunches of medication, a barium series, IV fluids, and more than a month of cleaning up diarrhea and boiling chicken for her, she is much better. The vet says that there is nothing we can really do except feed her this special food, keep her out of all other kinds of food, and watch her stools to make sure they don't change. Apparently German shepherds often have really sensitive colons. Who knew?
The upside of all of this (we've had her for a month and a half now) is that I've learned a lot about my good side from working with Grush. I don't know when it happened, but it's like all of a sudden I've grown up: I know how to be consistent, patient, responsible, and calm with her and it works! She knows her basic commands, responds to my whistle, is house-trained, and walks well on a leash. It really makes me wonder- did we ever even try to train Chags and Buffy or are Cavaliers really that stupid? She was obviously really poorly socialized as a puppy, but she's already learned to be friendly with strangers (although she still surprises me-the other day at the park she REALLY didn't like the homeless guy) and she's not aggressive at all-the real work to be done will be helping her be calm around unfamiliar dogs, because she is really afraid of them so far.
1 comment:
Stella (who doesn't have a violent bone in her body and loves everybody) once snarled and barked aggressively at this Columbus Water guy that came over to our house. This REALLY freaked me out and I was convinced that he had murdered someone and we were next. He was terrified of Stella though and I just stayed in the kitchen with her and the kids. Sometimes I'm really glad to have a ginormous beast in our house.
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