VaxCave

I’ve decided that I’m going to try to push Leela’s training to the next level. She knows most of the basic obedience commands, but she’s shaky on actually following through on some of them. Bridget has agreed with me on this, so I will be working with her over the next few months in getting Leela ready to pass her Canine Good Citizen test. You can read more about the tasks at the provided link, but here are the 10 steps and where we stand on them.

1. Accepting a friendly stranger: This should be no problem. The hardest part will be keeping Leela from taking a quick sniff of the new person.
2. Sitting politely for petting: I’m not sure on this one either. She should be okay, but when people start petting her she tends to wiggle excitedly and lick. This may be unacceptable, so I’ll work on quelling that.
3. Appearance and grooming: She should be fine with the exam. She doesn’t get brushed because she has such short hair, so we’ll work that into our morning and evening routine. I think her current status with the brush is that she wants to play with it as if it’s a toy.
4. Out for a walk (walking on a loose lead): This won’t be a problem. She doesn’t pull. The only problem will be the distractions that are around. If there are other dogs around, her desire to play with them may cause her to stray a bit.
5. Walking through a crowd: This shouldn’t be a problem if I bring her to the test in a tired state.
6. Sit and down on command and Staying in place: No problem. Our stay will be the down position. She’s generally good about the stay command, especially when tired.
7. Coming when called: Of the two or three problem areas in Leela’s training, this is the hardest for us. She is simply more interested in everything else in the world than coming to me. This is going to take some serious work to master.
8. Reaction to another dog: This one is another problem area. She will want to sniff then other dog. She will certainly go into a play bow. I’m going to need some outside help for practice with this one.
9. Reaction to distraction: No problem. I look forward to further desensitizing her though.
10. Supervised separation : There’s a mild chance she might whine a bit when I’m out of sight. If someone else is with her though, she may be fine. Only time will tell.

"Funksta Dangle" by Thought Rhythm Caravan on Prosthetika Everlasting
Filed by AxsDeny at 3:57 pm under General
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They might want to look into actually reading what they wrote. Emphasis is mine on spelling. The grammar is another story.

He then told the crowd he disagrees with McCain on a number of issues, but that he’d given the mater a lot of thougth and if he fought on all the way to the Republican convention, ” I forestall the launch of a national campaign and frankly I’d be makign it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.” Romney added, “If this were only about me, I can go on.  But its never been only about me. I entered this race… because I love America, and because I love America, in thsi time of war, i feel I now have to stand aside, for our party and for our country.”

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Filed by AxsDeny at 5:22 pm under General, Politics
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I took Leela to the dog park on Saturday. Of course, she ran around like a lunatic, harassing all the other dogs for about an hour. As we left, we were about halfway to the car and I noticed that she was limping. I stopped and grabbed ahold of her paw and turned it over. Ick. There was blood all over her foot and there was some flesh hanging from her paw pad. I had a minor freak-out. I called the vet immediately and they said they could see me as soon as I got there.

From what I could tell (it was hard to see with the blood and dirt) it seemed that she had ripped a chunk of her paw pad off. I put her in the car and she laid down and tried to lick at it. I put a stop to that and then continued on to the vet. Leela simply went to sleep because she was exhausted from playing.

We arrived at the vet and we got to take a closer look. It seems that she tore the cover off of the paw pad. The rough covering that sits on top of the pad simply lifted off. It’s much thinner than I imagined that it was. For example, if you’ve ever peeled a grape, the covering is about the thickness of the grape skin.

The vet thinks she might be allergic to something and it caused her paws to become enflamed. Then, the running around on the hard ground for so long caused the covering on her paw to peel back. Similar to how a blister comes off if you run on it for too long. The short term solution is that we will be keeping an eye on her paws to see if they continue to get inflamed.

The vet has her on a short cycle of prednisone to knock the swelling down. She’s also on some Clavomox to ensure that she doesn’t get an infection. Long term, he wants her to take Derm Caps to make the skin on her paws healthier and stronger. Does anyone have experience with Derm Caps? I need to order some from the internet. I see it’s possible to get them in 500 count containers, but I’m not sure how long they last or if they expire.

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Filed by AxsDeny at 2:57 pm under General
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