A Doggie Valentine's Day

What is more fun than showing your dog how much you love him on Valentine's Day?  Pongo urged me out the door early in the morning.  We went to the "woods" near our house which consists of a few short dirt trails through a forested area on the edge of a park.  I am using this more and more as his walk on the weekends to reduce the amount of walking we do on hard cement.  Pongo loves smelling the plethora of layered odors among the ferns, soil and bark along the paths. 

We were home for only about an hour when I got ready to run some errands at the store.  Pongo followed me with his eyes, tilting his head, "Do I get to go?" How can I resist that look?  "Wanna go for a ride?" Pongo got up from the floor and headed for the door.

"You're going to make him sit in the car at Walmart?" my husband asked. 

"We'll go to the dog park first."  It's winter.  I don't have to worry about heat.  Pongo likes to run errands with me because he likes to BE with me.  He doesn't mind waiting in the car if he has already done all his business and gotten a little exercise.  Pongo used run errands with me a lot, but since I got married, I leave him home more often because I'm not leaving him alone. There's always someone else for him to hang out with.

The Bonney Lake Dog Park is not big, but what I love about it is that it has a wooded area with a few trails.  When we first moved to Bonney Lake, it didn't have a lot of dog traffic.  Pongo and I often went and there was no one there, so we stopped going - it made me feel it was a huge disappointment to him.   Bonney Lake dog people are not early birds.  On weekends, people don't show up until mid-morning at best.  Depending on the weather, it might be later.  This is so foreign to me. In Washington, DC, there were always people up early, exercising their dogs before they got on with their day.

Recently, I've noticed that on weekends, at least, the Bonney Lake Dog Park seems to be more populated.  When we arrived, there were about six to eight dogs running around, playing near the entrance.  Pongo loves getting to sniff and say hello to other dogs and the social time is important to him.  He exudes a calm contentedness after dog park time.  Pongo loves hanging out with the big dogs, but he doesn't play chase and run around with them anymore. 

After Pongo had some sniff and play time with the doggie visitors, we went for a walk through the wooded area.  It was quiet and it felt as though we were hiking somewhere by ourselves. Then we looped around and joined the other dogs again.  We stayed for about twenty-five minutes.   In the Walmart parking lot, Pongo lay down happily in the back seat and slept while I shopped.

When we got home, he found a quiet spot and resumed his nap while I began Valentine's Day preparations for my family.  I spent the afternoon baking for Pongo AND my husband and daughter.  I made Pongo's favorite peanut butter dog treats but instead of cutting them into dog bone shapes, I used a heart cookie cutter in honor of the holiday.

This is an easy recipe.  It's one of my staple dog treat recipes.  It consists of 1/2 cup peanut butter, 2 T. oil and 1 cup water mixed together in a bowl.  Then you add one cup of whole wheat flour and 2 cups of all-purpose flour, stirring in one cup at a time.  I added a mashed banana as a special treat.  If you do this, decrease the oil by 1 tablespoon.  Next you roll out the dough and use your favorite cookie cutter.  You can roll it out thin or thick, according to your desire.  The recipe says to bake them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.  I usually like a harder dog treat, so I turn them over when the timer goes off and bake them for another 20 minutes (40 altogether).  This makes them brown and crisp on both sides.

Since dogs can't have chocolate, I melted carbo chips.  I tried to decorate the hearts using a pastry bag, but it was too stiff and I couldn't get the chocolate to flow through the tip.  I gave up and spread the top of the hearts with the melted carob like frosting. But carob-decorated dog treats are messy and we typically make Pongo eat those outside.  Pongo likes to carry his precious homemade treats around the living room, parading them in front of the cats.  "Look what I have!"  The carob-decorated treats leave trails and smudges of brown on the carpet.

You can see that Pongo enjoys the privileges that come with old age. We allow him to stretch out on the couch now, something he was forbidden to do when he was younger.  But as we watch him try to get comfortable and have trouble lying down with the stiff arthritis in his hind legs, we don't mind sharing the couch with him. Pongo enjoyed Valentine's Day afternoon relaxing on the couch with Bella.

I love you sweet boy!  Happy Valentine's Day Po!

Communicating With Your Old Dog

As Pongo’s 14^th birthday approaches, I am struck by the changes in our daily life - how my commitment to giving him what he needs to be healthy and happy has changed.  We no longer go for a daily walk.  Pongo’s arthritis has progressed to the point that he doesn’t always want to go for one.  Occasionally when I put on his leash, he’ll walk to the end of the driveway and then stop.  He pulls back on the leash and refuses to move forward.  Paying attention to his attempts to communicate new ideas is important to me so that I can try to meet his needs. When he pulls back, I listen.  We don’t have to go for a walk, Popo. 

Other days, he wants to go.  He still shows the excitement of his youth, but he fatigues easily.  Our walks are much shorter these days - sometimes only a few blocks. But he shows signs of boredom being in the house all day.  His mind still longs to run, though his body cannot follow.  Even though his arthritis makes activity difficult, he needs to have the opportunity to be outside and smell the world.  Experiencing odor through sniffing is the essence of dogness.  In the past few years, we stopped going to the Bonney Lake dog park, as we spent more time going hiking on the weekends.  Now I find we are beginning to go back where Pongo can just be a dog. He no longer gets the other dogs running in a game of chase, sprinting at full speed.  But he trots after the younger dogs, wags his tail hello, and sniffs a little butt when they stop long enough for him to position himself at their rear.  He tires quickly but the joy is evident in his eyes.

I have started a new routine of jogging at a nearby school track on Sundays.  I take Pongo with me but let him off leash so he can go at his own pace.  Surprisingly, he still tries to run with me, sticking to the track a few hundred yards behind.  The second time we went, I put him in a down-stay in the grass by the soccer goal after he had an opportunity to sniff around and do his business.  He watched me as I made a lap around the track, then got up to meet me as I came around on the other side.  Repeated attempts at down- stays brought the same result.  He always got up, sometimes within minutes, sometimes when I rounded the track.  But each time he’d fall in line behind me, plodding along.  I am breaking all the rules of dog obedience, but then that's not what it's about anymore. I’ve come to accept that eleven years of running together are imprinted on his brain.  Like a professional athlete, it is not easily left behind. 

I am even more attentive to his barks and whines.  As parents do with infants, I try to interpret his cries.  “Do you need to go potty?” I ask.  Or, “Do you want to eat?” His YES is usually evident by excitement in his eyes and movement to a standing position then toward the door or the kitchen.  Sometimes his YES is an emphatic sneeze with a giant head nod.  But Del and I have noticed a new need.  A need for comfort.  He is visibly in pain sometimes and wants to cuddle or be massaged.  Del and I take turns lying on the floor with him rubbing his ears, neck and belly.  I cherish this cuddle time together.

               He seems more sensitive to sound these days, barking at every knock or bump.  When there is a lot of activity in the house (i.e. lots of noise), we have found that Pongo prefers to be in our bedroom with the lights off and a radio going.  I hung a blackout curtain on the window and this space is now calming to him.  It is huge that he will lie down quietly and accept being separated from the rest of the family, and especially Mommy.

                Another recent change is Pongo can no longer make it through the night without going outside to potty.  One day, we found dog pee in the garage near the cat litter boxes and then it was no longer a singular event.  As his ability to hold his urine began to decline, we began to buy puppy training pads and placed them adjacent to the three cat boxes.  Often now when Pongo makes eye contact with us and whines, he is telling us he needs to go outside.  In December we added a doggie door to the garage so he can go outside anytime he needs to whether we are at home or not. 

  

              Meeting Pongo’s needs today are more challenging than when he first came to me from the Washington Animal Rescue League thirteen years ago. But being sensitive to his changing communication continues to strengthen our bond.  I thank God every day for this sweet devoted boy who has given me so much. 

Urinary Accidents

Last weekend, my cousin Jen and her family came for a visit.  We decided to take her kids to a nearby school track for some exercise.  Her eleven year old son, Sam, is on a cross country team and had brought his running shoes.  Selah, who is seven, insisted that she did not want to run and wore her stylish, fuzzy boots to the track.  She wanted to walk Pongo while Sam and I ran.  Selah has grown up around dogs and is a budding dog trainer.  When I was single and living in Seattle, I used to leave Pongo with Jen whenever I went out of town.  Selah has been around Pongo since she was an infant.  She loves to work Pongo, having him "sit" or "lie down" for treats. 

We piled into my Saturn, Selah in charge of Pongo's leash, and drove to the middle school.  As we walked from the parking lot, Pongo stopped to mark on a bush, then we continued along the sidewalk.  Jen pointed out that Pongo left drops of urine on the cement.  I stopped to look.  I had never noticed that before.  Jen explained how her dog, Keone, had exhibited that same trait when she developed Cushing's Disease at the end of her life.  Urinary accidents are one of the telltale symptoms of Cushing's, one that becomes frequent as the disease progresses.  Jen explained that when it first started, Keone would go to the bathroom, and then have trouble turning off the flow, leaving droplets of urine as she walked away. 

Suddenly, I felt shocked and numb.  A couple weeks before, we had thunderstorms in the morning.  It was a weekday and I had to go to work.  Terrified of thunder, Pongo was shaking and on my heels as I got ready to leave. Later, Ashley told us that he had behaved the same way with her when she got ready for school, and had tried to follow her out the door.  During the day sometime, he had an accident in the basement, leaving urine all over.  It was the second time since June that he had had an accident during a thunderstorm.  Now here was another sign that he was starting to lose urinary control.

I thought of the conversation I had with Dr. Lamb on September 5th.  We have been monitoring Pongo's liver enzymes and went in for a blood draw the first week of September.  Dr. Lamb called me back to talk about the results.  His liver enzymes remained very high, but had gone down a little bit since the previous test in June.  She explained that the elevated liver enzyme could be:

• an inflammatory response to something in his body, for example the arthritis in his knees, or it could be a problems with one of his organs

or:

• it could be an endocrine disease such as Cushing's

Dr. Lamb explained that they generally don't treat Cushing's until the symptoms are really bad, so she did not recommend testing Pongo at this point.  Other symptoms for Cushing's include drinking lots of water and heavy panting.  Pongo has already started exhibiting these symptoms as well, but they are minor.  My gut feeling tells me he is probably developing Cushing's, and that his elevated liver enzymes are not due to a problem in one of his organs.  We could spend a lot of money doing testing and x-rays, but Pongo is terrified of the vet.  He is otherwise healthy and happy, and so Del and I have decided that putting him through that trauma is not worth it. Nor will we do any more surgeries.  Pongo's lump is coming back on his penis, nearby where the lump was removed sixteen months ago.  Dr. Lamb says it could be the nerve sheath tumor coming back, or it could be benign.  We have decided not to find out.  Pongo is nearing his thirteenth birthday.   We are now focusing on quality of life and enjoying every moment we have with him.  We hope it will be a couple more years.

I took off running around the track.  Pongo pulled against the leash in Selah's hands.  He is a momma's boy and wanted to be with his Momma.  Selah ran across the infield with him, catching me on the opposite side of the track.  They ran alongside me in the grass.  And so it went, Selah and Pongo sprinting back and forth across the infield to catch me, running with me for a ways, then resting.  He looked like a three year old again, pulling with boundless energy.

      Selah rests with Pongo after running more than a mile.

As I write, Pongo is laying down behind my chair, sighing.  He has his head on the floor between his paws in the way that he does when he is trying to remind me in his quiet way that he needs a walk.  In the eleven+ years that we have been together, I have learned to read his subtle, nonverbal cues.   Sorry, Pongo, I get the message.  I will draw myself away from my computer and put on some shoes.  It is time for us to go outside.  Our time.

Nosework Class

Last night was Pongo's fifth nosework class.  We signed up for it because he loves to work, is getting less exercise these days, yet still needs to have something to occupy his mind.  However, he has already gone through both beginning and advanced obedience, and passed the Canine Good Citizen Test.  He loves training, and gets so excited whenever we pull into the parking lot of the building where he has had his classes.  He can't do competition obedience because he has a repaired ACL, which causes him to sit with that leg off to the side.  I considered agility, but since he is now twelve years old, he has arthritis.  Jumping and sprinting would only aggravate it.  And so I settled on nosework - what dog doesn't like to sniff??

From day one, Pongo loved the game.  Get rewarded for sniffing?  Doggie Heaven!  In the first couple classes, treats were hidden in a food dedicated box that was moved to different locations.  When Pongo found the box with a treat in it, he was given two or three more treats to reward him.  These initial sessions were done off-leash within a sectioned-off area.  For home practice, I gathered a variety of boxes that now are housed in the corner of our living room (to my husband's dismay).  When I first set them up to practice with Pongo, our two male cats, Dewey and Zoumie were thrilled and came to investigate. I had Pongo run through a couple hides just to see what he would do, knowing that it was too early to be introducing a distraction - especially a cat!  Interestingly enough, Pongo ignored the box the cat was in and did not sniff it.  Yeah, the cats rule our house, not the other way around!  It was time to put the cats out so Pongo could work.

 

After hides in cardboard boxes, during subsequent classes, the instructor added a separate area search in a gated area. Next, we began to work on-leash, as trained search dogs do, and the treats were hidden in closed boxes arranged in rows or in a circle. Pongo gets so excited when he's told to "search" that sometimes he's panting too hard to sniff. But when he slows down and uses his God-given nose, he's amazing! I am in awe.

Yesterday, the instructor introduced searching outside on cement (too early in our training for grass). Pongo was unfazed by people or noise or moving scent . . . he found it quickly every time. I find I am disappointed that next week is our last class.