Babysitting Tula the Longhaired Dachshund

Beautiful Tula.

I watched Tula last night, a longhaired standard dachshund belonging to a friend of mine.
While being one of Link's closest friends, she is also a proper diva, and will not tolerate any rough playing or impolite approaches from Link. She told him off immediately when she came through the door. Link, as usual, tried to get her to play the second he saw her.

Link: Wanna play? Tula: No.

Link: Lets see if she'll be impressed if I show her my "turn off and on the kitchen light"-trick.

Tula: What are you doing!? Stop that!

Link: Oh, ok...

 

 After a while she warmed up to him and even started flirting with him. She appears to be going into heat soon. She never usually flirts with Link, and also she liked my boyfriend last night. When Tula isn't in heat she is afraid of my boyfriend, but last night she was happy to see him, something than only happens when she is in heat.

Link and Tula watching people walking by our apartment.

 The whole playing/flirting got an abrupt end when she peed on the floor... I was not exactly thrilled. Link on the other hand loved it. I certainly hope I was able to clean away all the smell, otherwise this might turn into a reoccurring problem. Apart from that little accident, it was an entertaining evening. I just love observing and taking pictures of dog language.

Elbow Dysplasia in my Golden Retriever - Rehabilitation after surgery

This is the second post of three about my experience of having a dog with elbow dysplasia. Here is a link to the first post:

Elbow Dysplasia in my Golden Retiever - Diagnosis and Treatment

 

The first weeks

The first couple of weeks after the surgery, Link was only allowed out for 5-10 minute walks a couple of times a day. This was slowly increased to about 15 minutes 3 times a day the following two weeks. During this period I also did some flexing and extending exercises with Link every day and I also massaged him.

Before flexing the joint, it had to be warmed up. The first couple of weeks after the surgery this was done with a warmed rice bag held around the elbow.

 Having had pain in his right elbow for what was probably several months before the surgery, the muscles around the joint were very tense, and you could definitely feel a difference between his right and left side.

Rehabilitation Plan

About 4 weeks after the surgery a colleague of mine at the veterinary clinic made a rehabilitation plan for Link for the following 6 weeks. The plan included how many minutes we could add to the walks per week and also some exercises and massage instructions. The plan was that after these 6 weeks the joint should be fine, Link should no longer limp and we should be able to start training him to walk as much as a normal healthy dog.

Link on one of the 5 minutes walks during the first week after surgery. Luckily we lived with my mother in Sweden this week so we could walk directly from the house into the forest behind it.

 One of the exercises in the rehabilitation plan was walking over a series of cavaletti. Originally cavaletti are small jumps, made of wood, used for basic horse training. Cavaletti is an exercise that gives the dog obstacles to walk over. This exercise makes the dog focus on where each foot is being placed and builds coordination.

The cavaletti I used for training Link can also be used as jumps in agility (or obedience). I doubt Link will ever start training agility properly, but I figured that I can at least teach him some agility just for fun, when and if his elbow ever gets good enough.

Link walking over the cavaletti.

 In Link's case, this exercise was also for making him bend his elbow while walking, to increase the mobility of the joint and strengthen the muscles around. In a sense he had to learn how to walk properly again. Below is a video of Link walking over the cavaletti.

We increased the duration of our walks by about 5-10 minutes per week, starting at 15 minutes the first week. So after 6 weeks we were walking about 45 minutes during one on the walks and had in addition two shorter walks a day. Not having gone for proper walks in months, Link had a lot of pent up energy. It wasn't until we passed 30 minutes per walk that I started seeing a change in him. At that point he had started to be able to relax better indoors again. Of course I had trained Link indoors, so he had really gotten to work with his brain, but he never really got physically tired from that. It felt like a blessing when we could walk him properly again. 
The new stretching exercises of the muscles surrounding the elbow, that we started with from week 1 of the rehabilitation plan, gave results pretty quickly. So it was only the first 1-2 weeks that we did that every day, after that we only did it a couple of times per week.
When it comes to the massage, Link really didn't have the patience to lie down for long massage sessions. So I only massaged him one leg at a time. I didn't only massage the bad leg since he had been putting more strain on the healthy legs all along, and therefor the other legs also needed some extra care.

Nutrition

One other thing after the surgery was the nutritional needs of a dog with joint problems. Link was recommended by the vet to start taking glucosamine supplements to prevent the development of osteoarthritis in the damaged joint. In addition to the supplement I also started feeding Link a dog food specifically made for dogs with joint problems. Since they only had Hill's at the clinic where my mother lives, I first gave him Hill's Prescription diet J/D Canine mobility, and the supplement Glycoflex from Aptus. When we came home from Sweden, I changed this to a mix of Royal canins Mobility Large Breed and Specific's CJD Joint support.

Glycoflex to the left (glucosamine supplement), and the tree dog foods made for dogs with joint problems.

End result

So what was the end result after 6 weeks? Well, Link still limped a bit at the start of the walks, because of stiff muscles. The joint was fine however, I was allowed to flex it (as long as the muscles around were relaxed) and Link showed no signs of pain in the joint. So all in all a great success!
I continues to increase the length of our walks for another couple of weeks and now (almost 3 months after the surgery) we walk for up to 1.5 hours at a time and we have started jogging once a week.
Link will need to keep eating dog food for dogs with joint problems and still gets glycoflex daily. I believe he will have to eat that for the rest of his life.

A three dog walk

Lita waiting while the two boys decides who will pee on the light post first. Three leashes can definitely be a challange to manage...

 Today after work, me and a colleague of mine went for a walk with two of her dogs and my dog Link. She has a setter mix called Lita and a Siberian husky called Varg, that I mentioned in a previous post.
It was a bit of a challenge to walk all three dogs, especially since Link tried to get the two older dogs to start playing with him while they all were on leash...

Beautiful and friendly Varg

Sweet Lita

Link just wanted to play, but the other two weren't very interested, and neither were we at the other end of the leashes.

Anyway, the walk gave me hope that maybe one day Link can learn to pull properly when wearing a harness, at least as long as he has another dog to run alongside with. I even asked if I could borrow Varg to train Link, so hopefully in not too long I will write a post about running with two of my favorite dogs!

It was during moments like this that I actually could imagine getting Link to pull alongside another dog.

Visiting the Huskies

Last Sunday, one week ago, Link, Mads and I went visiting my friend Monica, her family and all of their wonderful Siberian Huskies. One of their female dogs just had a litter of seven puppies. The mother's name is Lærke (pronounced [læ:rkɛ]) and she was very happy to have some visitors, not hesitant or nervous having us around her puppies at all. She really is a wonderful, trusting dog!

All of the seven puppies!

I'm not going to get any new dog any time soon, but I must admit one of the male puppies really caught my eye. He has very similar markings and colors as Varg, a dog from a previous litter with the same father, Birk. And I really like Varg a lot. He now lives with a coworker of mine, so I get to see him from time to time. I really like Siberian huskies that has those "wolf-like" markings. They don't look like all of the other "normal" Siberians out there.

Beautiful Varg!

But one thing is certain, if I do get a Siberian it's going to be one from Monica. She had two 3-4 months old puppies there when we visited, from litters earlier in the winter. And I must say: Siberian huskies that are as social and eager to learn as those two are hard to come by! Monica clearly does a good job when it comes to socializing the puppies. Far too many people breeding huskies only have them outside, with the result that they are more dog oriented than people oriented. These two pups clearly demonstrated that Siberians can be trained to do far more than pulling sleds!

Birka, a female pup that was visiting.

Arwen, a female pup that Monica kept from a previous litter.

Weekend at the Cottage

 I've spent the weekend at the cottage with my boyfriend, his parents and our dogs. It has been a fantastic weekend!

Beautiful Link!

Mads, Link and I got there already on Thursday evening, since both Mads and I had the Friday off. We got there late in the evening, so we didn't do much that night. But it felt so good to wake up at the cottage the next morning, so it was worth driving there in the dark.

Mads' parents Danish Swedish Farmdog named Scott.

 Mads, Link and I went out for a walk and some light jogging (to get Link used to pulling when wearing a harness) at lunch the next day, before Mads' parents and their Danish Swedish Farmdog named Scott, came to the cottage. We jogged on the road by the lake, and after a few kilometers we went out on the ice on the lake and walked back to the cottage. It felt almost like spring in the air! The sun was shining and there was hardly any wind.

Link pulling! At least a little...

Link and some "ice sculptures" by the road.

Link making "doggy snow angels" on the lake ice.

 The Saturday was spent mostly outside. The roof of the cottage was heavy with snow and ice, so we had to remove that. Well, I shouldn't say "we", it was mostly Mads and his mom that did the work. Link worked hard too, carrying around big blocks of ice and digging in the snow. But I'm not sure it helped getting the roof cleared...

Mads, his mother Merete and Link working

 Me and Link also went out jogging a little that day. He is really getting the hang of it now, but I could tell he was a bit tired from all the digging and playing. That didn't stop him from resuming this when we got back to the cottage.
 

Link and Scott playing after Link and I went jogging.

Scott.

 The only bad thing about this weekend was that I cut Link's claws right before we went to the cottage. This meant that as he spent most of the Friday and the whole Saturday outside playing and on walks, he wore down the claws too much. When I checked his feet on Saturday evening, he had worn down all the claws to the quick and was bleeding from some of them on his front paws! He had not shown any signs of pain during the day, so I hadn't checked earlier. Poor Link!

Link with bandages on his front paws. He clearly thought I was crazy when I put them on.

So note to self: never cut Link's claws before a weekend at the cottage! I gave him some painkillers (Prescribed by the vet for Link after the surgery, not the same kind we humans use! Human painkillers are often poisonous to dogs!) and only allowed him out when "nature called" on Saturday evening.  On Sunday morning he wanted to go outside again, and he can be very persuasive, so I put some light bandage on his front paws and let him go outside. It worked for almost 1.5 hours, then he managed to get one of them off. I tried to have him stay inside the cottage after that, but he just wanted to go outside all the time. So we decided to head home earlier than planned. It wasn't any fun to be at the cottage when we couldn't be outside with Link.

 Link outside with bandages on.