Dog Update
Apr. 30th, 2012 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieFiona is doing well! We took her to the vet today, and he said she looked very healthy. He also said she was probably one, rather than two, which is nice. One more year of doggie!love. AND SHE HAS LOTS OF LOVE TO GIVE. Like, kind of obsessively. She would sit in someone's lap and be petted 24/7 if she could. She also does that greyhound lean (though at nine pounds, you can barely tell she's doing it). I'm really hoping the following behaviors are all due to the stress of her recent experiences (being a stray, staying at the animal shelter, being spayed) and will abate on their own in the next few weeks:
1. She's really attached to my mom, to the point where she whines if she can't see her. She has at least gotten better about this even just over the past few days. She doesn't really care if she's left alone on the couch as long as someone's in the next room, and when she's not on the couch, the whining takes longer to start, and she will be quiet for longer and longer whiles if I tell her to hush. But I tried to take a nap yesterday and had her in my room, and it was basically an hour of "*whine* 'Hush!' *brief silence* *whine* 'Hush!' *repeat ad infinitum*" until I gave up. We haven't tried leaving her completely alone in the house yet. That's next on the agenda, in few-minute increments until she can handle it.
2. She likes to hide her food. Luckily, only the crunchy treats--if she was trying to hide wet food, that would be a problem--but it's kind of sad anyway. Obviously she's still not totally sure the food will keep coming indefinitely. She doesn't ever eat them, but she goes and visits them periodically.
3. Weirdly, she's also super picky about food, to the point where she eats one brand of wet food and ignores dry food entirely. We've been supplementing with cooked chicken, which she does love, at least, but we haven't found an actual dog treat she likes yet. I'm somewhat of the mind that if we stop catering to her, she'll eat at least some dry kibble, but then again, maybe she's just really stubborn about food and that's how she got so thin.
4. I think this is more her personality than anything else, but wow, I have never seen a dog less interested in toys. We've tried a fuzzy squeaky toy, a plastic squeaky toy, a rope, a tiny tennis ball, and one of those rubber Kong toys you put a treat in, and she isn't having any of them. She does at least REALLY LIKE WALKS, so she'll get exercise, but man.
(From the way she looks at the toys, I sometimes get the impression she's a very smart human trapped in a dog's body, and disdains them as beneath her. Hee.)
Anyway, those few things aside, she's a really great, sweet dog. I managed to catch a cold this week, and it's been nice curling up on the couch and reading with her while making a small mountain of used tissue on the coffee table and popping as many decongestants as the box label will let me. Fiona has made herself a little dog cave at one end of the couch she likes to hang out in, like so:
1. She's really attached to my mom, to the point where she whines if she can't see her. She has at least gotten better about this even just over the past few days. She doesn't really care if she's left alone on the couch as long as someone's in the next room, and when she's not on the couch, the whining takes longer to start, and she will be quiet for longer and longer whiles if I tell her to hush. But I tried to take a nap yesterday and had her in my room, and it was basically an hour of "*whine* 'Hush!' *brief silence* *whine* 'Hush!' *repeat ad infinitum*" until I gave up. We haven't tried leaving her completely alone in the house yet. That's next on the agenda, in few-minute increments until she can handle it.
2. She likes to hide her food. Luckily, only the crunchy treats--if she was trying to hide wet food, that would be a problem--but it's kind of sad anyway. Obviously she's still not totally sure the food will keep coming indefinitely. She doesn't ever eat them, but she goes and visits them periodically.
3. Weirdly, she's also super picky about food, to the point where she eats one brand of wet food and ignores dry food entirely. We've been supplementing with cooked chicken, which she does love, at least, but we haven't found an actual dog treat she likes yet. I'm somewhat of the mind that if we stop catering to her, she'll eat at least some dry kibble, but then again, maybe she's just really stubborn about food and that's how she got so thin.
4. I think this is more her personality than anything else, but wow, I have never seen a dog less interested in toys. We've tried a fuzzy squeaky toy, a plastic squeaky toy, a rope, a tiny tennis ball, and one of those rubber Kong toys you put a treat in, and she isn't having any of them. She does at least REALLY LIKE WALKS, so she'll get exercise, but man.
(From the way she looks at the toys, I sometimes get the impression she's a very smart human trapped in a dog's body, and disdains them as beneath her. Hee.)
Anyway, those few things aside, she's a really great, sweet dog. I managed to catch a cold this week, and it's been nice curling up on the couch and reading with her while making a small mountain of used tissue on the coffee table and popping as many decongestants as the box label will let me. Fiona has made herself a little dog cave at one end of the couch she likes to hang out in, like so:
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Date: 2012-05-01 10:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 09:06 pm (UTC)