#spanielantics

Pet Tricks: Tip #5

You might have noticed in yesterday's post that Yvaine had a purple ring around her tag.

No matter how it's attached, an ID tag hangs at least a little off the pet's throat. 

So if they're, say, going around repeatedly licking a metal bowl to check for one more molecule of food, the tag bangs on the bowl with every lick.

If the pet is wearing more than one tag, they jingle against each other all the time.

If you have a spaniel, or other dog who likes to track scents, your dog may spend a lot of time with his nose to the ground...tag hanging low, dragging, bonking into all kinds of things.  Our spaniels drag their tags on tile floors, bang them into doorway thresholds; it's impressive how many things their tags hit and make a nice "clang!"

Basically, tags are noisy.  You can keep them from being quite so noisy by putting a bumper of some kind on them.

I found that "key collars" work really well as ID tag bumpers.  Those are the silicon-ish, plastic-ish rings you can buy to put round the tops of your keys to see which key is which.  Key collars can go onto just about any regularly-shaped ID tag (round, oval, etc, even square). 

They come in two sizes, and the smaller size fits well on my dogs' 1" to 1 1/4" tags.  I haven't seen or tested the larger size, but if you have bigger tags, it might work for them.

Pet Tricks: Tip #4

Our pets need ID.  They might sneak out a door, find a hole in a fence, or just accidentally slip out of a collar and leash.  Even very careful and responsible owners can end up with a loose, lost pet.

Microchips are permanent and don't fall off, but someone who finds your dog on the side of the road and takes him home may not realize that he has an owner who wants him back, may not know to take him and check for a microchip.

So we still need collars and tags, something visible that says, "Someone owns this pet and wants him back!"

But geez, the ways to attach a tag to a collar are really annoying and somewhat unreliable. Generally tags come with a split ring or an S-hook.

A split ring is a pain in the neck to put on.  If it's small enough to go on a pet, it's weak and may stretch out of shape just from putting the tag on it.  It may catch on your pet's fur and pull.  It may catch on fabric or other materials and snag, and either hurt your pet as he tries to get loose, or break and come off.

An S-hook is just as bad, maybe worse.  It's even more inclined to snag on things.  I've lost a lot of tags from S-hook failures, and the pulled-open S-hook looked like it could easily jab my dog.

So here's the Pet Trick.  I found something better than the usual tag hooks and rings.  It's sort of like a carabiner, only tiny (about 7/8" long, about 0.125" thick wire) and smoothly oval shaped.  Nifty! And as a bonus, it is MUCH easier to use these to move tags, say, from one collar to another, or to pull tags off the carabiner and put them back, or swap out tags when you get a new rabies tag, etc.

It's very slightly larger than a split ring or S-hook, but you can see it's not so big it's a problem.  Yvaine (the cocker) is a 20-lb dog, and the clip plus her tag doesn't hang noticeably down from her neck.  Bristle (the cattledog) is a 30-lb dog, and you just about can't tell that he's wearing something unusual.

The small oval carabiners I found are "Coastal Pet Products Ez Change ID Clips" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D078UCK/).  They go easily through the hole in every tag I tried, including county license tags, rabies tags, ID tags, and microchip tags.  The clip's "gate" (the part that opens and closes) is very stiff and a little hard to open, but that's all to the good: it won't fall off easily.

I also tested "Nite Ize" S-biners, because I like them, and they work just about as well.  (There's no pics of these on collars, sorry.)  I'm a little more concerned about them snagging on things, but I use them on my keyring, and haven't had a problem.  The #0.5 S-biners (1.31" long, 0.22" thick) are a touch larger than the Coastal oval clips, but might be easier to find or to use.  They also worked for every tag I tested. 

(Senior) Pet Tricks: Tip #1

We switched to wet food a while ago to encourage one of the dogs to eat more.  Bonus: you can stick meds in wet food, and many dogs won't even notice it's there.  A senior pet who gets a lot of meds is MUCH easier to medicate by just mixing all those meds in with his wet food.

You don't have to use food for this, of course.  There are "pill pockets" you can buy (hollow treats you can stick a pill into).  If you make your own treats you can probably make hollow ones.  Anything wet or sticky can conceal a medication.  Most of us already know we can put a dog's meds in peanut butter or cheese, but those aren't exactly the healthiest snacks for a dog. 

Wet food just makes a convenient package: meal AND medication holder.

(Senior) Pet Tricks: Tip #2

If the pet DOES notice the medication is there, you can try sticking it in an "empty capsule."  They're cheap, and it's an easy fix.  Once the medication is inside the capsule, it has no flavor, and the pet will probably not realize it's there.

This can probably help even if you're just giving a pet a medication he doesn't want to take.  Putting it in a capsule makes it flavorless and slick, easier to swallow, and the pet may be more willing to take it.

(Senior) Pet Tricks: Tip #3

a) You can often purchase an individual or family medication assistance program, through a pharmacy chain, that reduces the price of a lot of generic meds.  (Especially if you are willing to get 3 months' worth at a time.) 

b) Many, many, many of the meds we give to pets can be purchased at a regular pharmacy, with a prescription from your vet. 

c) Some pharmacies consider pets "family members" and will allow you to include them in your medication assistance membership.  For pets who take a lot of meds, it can be very helpful.

We get our dogs' meds at Walgreens; their "Prescription Savings Club" includes pets as "family members."

~ ~ ~

Galahad started picking his Tramadol and Flagyl out of his food.  I really don't blame him; they are both horribly foul-tasting.  (Since he gets his meds at a "people" pharmacy, I know he's getting he same stuff I've been prescribed once or twice--and I thought it was awful, too!)

He's not a big guy, weighs just 25 lbs, and takes fairly dainty bites of his food too.  So I tried to get as small a capsule as possible. 

I tried #3's first; they're nice and small, but too small.  Supposedly they'll hold about 200mg, or 0.3ml.  But the amount of medicine in a tablet doesn't determine its size.  Half a [generic] 50mg Tramadol or half a [generic] 250mg Flagyl tablet won't fit in the #3 capsule.  (See photo above: the 1/2 Tramadol stuffed into the #3 capsule had its edges shaved off by stuffing it in.)

I couldn't find a decent package of #2's (the next size up). 

So I tried #1's.  #1's supposedly hold about 400mg, or 0.5ml.  These look like the kind of pills that, when we get something this size, we call them "horse pills" because they're so big.  I was concerned they might be a bit too big, that Galahad would notice them in his food and pick them out.  But they haven't got a nasty flavor, and they're not bigger than, say, a kibble.  He doesn't appear to notice them.  He eats them along with his food, no problem.

His medication, the half tablets, fit in the #1 capsules with room to spare (see photo above), so #2 is probably the perfect size.  I've got 1000 of the #1's, though, and they're working fine.  If I ever run out, I'll try again to find #2's. 

~ ~ ~

If you've got a smaller pet and a similar problem (pet doesn't want foul-tasting meds, whether in food, or a pill pocket, a treat, or just as a pill), the same trick might work for you, but you may need capsules smaller than a #1.

We get nasty cold winter rains here.  For some reason it's never affected the dogs before, but this year it seemed to make them cold and miserable.  So I took some more of that waxed canvas (see http://spanielantics.tumblr.com/post/58190061913 for Yvaine's) and some eyelets and elastic and threw together a raincoat for Bristle.  It wasn't finished but he needed it right away.  I'm going to try to make it more finished later.

~ ~ ~

It looks like Bristle won't be staying with us.  We know his previous owners would have wanted, most of all, for him to be happy.  He's not happy with us.  We're trying to fit a star-shaped peg into an oval-shaped hole.

When he arrived here, he was a very unhappy little guy. He'd been taken from his happy home [there's no explaining to a dog that the home was gone], and ended up with us. We had two other dogs, and he doesn't know how to cope with other dogs. He tries, but without success. Apparently he was thought to be dog-aggressive in his previous home. He's not; he just has NO idea how to play or how to share, and may injure other dogs in his enthusiam and ignorance. We had all different household rules, that interfered with his idea of the order of the world. And he tries, but it makes him unhappy. For example, I can't let him grab my arm with his forelegs and forepaws and claws when I'm scratching him, and I can't let him come up to me and claw me when he wants attention. It wouldn't hurt most people, but I am not most people. He and I can not work out a way to play together, so he gets scritchies but no real playtime. He had a Job, an Important Job, at his previous home. He "helped" the disabled owner by barking when he needed assistance (and it did help). He was there, with the disabled owner, providing companionship, all of the time.  He has no Job here. Each of us already has a dog who claims us so we don't need the companionship, and his voice is very loud and sharp and aggravates my headaches, so I've worked with him on *not* barking.

I think this makes him unhappy too: not having a Job, not being able to do his old Job. I've tried to teach him some obedience and some agility, trying to find him something he can do that will make him feel like he has a Job, but when I have really bad days I can't work with him. It's been five months and he is still unhappy; his unhappiness has gone from "I don't have my people and my home" to "I can't play and I can't work." He's tremendously intelligent, and has fantastic problem solving skills, but he needs guidance from people on how to use those. I can't find anything he can apply them to in our house; I can't offer him a way to play or work that makes him happy.

I *know* his people would not have wanted him to stay with us if we couldn't make him a happy dog.

~ ~ ~

Fortuitously, there is someone who apparently wanted Bristle and just was hesitant to speak up.  He was a local friend of Bristle's old owners; he already knows Bristle, knows how he plays, knows how he barks, knows his behavior, and is comfortable with it. 

I keep this tumblr because, well, I have all these pictures.  They're not very good, but I have them :) and I am quite fond of the critters in those pictures. 

I'm a little baffled when someone who doesn't already know me and my pups interacts with the tumblr.

I was looking over the activity and I spotted this fella: http://dailycavalierkingcharles.tumblr.com/post/69599304078/my-second-favorite-snuggle-buddy-mommy-is-1

Yvaine hides in a laundry basket when I shower (not the same one every time, just any one that happens to have cloth in it).  I don't know why.  It seems to be the only time she does it.  It's quite adorable, if puzzling.