Visiting the Puppies

Week One

Week Two

Week Three

Week Four

Lost Weekend

In the transfer of web site files from various ISPs, the Ongoing file is lost. Suffice to say, we've had Picard for more than two years now and she is unrecognizable from the puppy we brought home. Instead of biting puppy who tries to be top dog, she's now the most lovable dog in the world. She snuggles and knows her place in the pack. Sadly, that place is ahead of Woodie. Woodie decided that it was too much trouble at her age to fight to be ahead of the new pup. It's not like Woodie is submissive to Picard – she still guards her food – but when Woodie is playing with a toy, Picard can come up and take it from Woodie and Woodie lets her.

Picard is a very handsome dog – she'll never be pretty, but she is striking. Today at the vet, she weighed in at 48.3 pounds. That's her top weight so far.

Here are some of the highlights from the past two years.

When we got Picard home, she had tampons taped into her ears. Why? The breeder did that so her ears would stand up. We left them in for a day and then decided that we didn't care if our dog's ears were perky or not. We gently removed the adhesive tape and tampons and found the tape had caused irritation on the outside of her ears and inside her ears were filled with some maroon-colored gungus. We swabbed the gunk out. We also noticed that Picard was getting what Pete thought was scabs on the outside corners of her eyes. If you go back to one of the first four week descriptions, you'll see that we were putting drops into her eyes. We also saw that her paws were reddish as well.

Eventually, upon the recommendation of our vet, we took Picard to a veterinary allergist/dermatologist and found that the maroon gunk in her ears, between her toes, and causing the eye raisins were all related: an opportunistic yeast/fungus infection, partly brought on by inhalant allergies.

We've been fighting this stuff for the past year or so. Pi is getting a series of desensitization shots once a week. We're too chicken to do them ourselves, so we take the serum, a syringe, and an alcohol swab to the vet and they give her the shot. It's going to be a long haul. Pete believes the infection first came about when the tampons were put in Pi's ears and they couldn't get normal air flow.

By the way, Picard's ears stood all on their own.

Picard is a cold baby – she hates it when the temp drops below 80. She's learned that when she hears the furnace come on that the hottest register in the house is in the downstairs hall. She trots over to it and lays up against it. She has no such affection for either humans or dogs as she does to warm air.

Soon after Pete went back to work, he came home and found Picard out of her crate and sleeping in one of several of her favorite spots in the house: the loveseat. in the sunroom, either of the beds upstairs.

The first time, he figured he'd forgotten to latch the crate. Picard has a collapsible crate. The door on the side lifts and when it is closed, prongs on the outside edge drop into slots. He must have missed them. Picard had also left a little packet of fudge in a corner of the dining room. Well, she is a puppy. It was his fault.

When he left the second day, he made sure the crate was securely closed. He came home to find Picard out again. What's up?

Seems Picard had enough cunning to realize that if she pushed up the door with her nose, she could unlatch it. We didn't know whether to be proud or mad. A double-ended brass clip solved that and her wandering days were over.

About the time Picard was six months old, she began to seriously chase her tail. She was obsessive about it. She's chase for as long as we'd let her. We'd try to distract her with no luck. Even holding her didn't solve the problem: she would try to bite it even as we held her. We took her to the vet, and went through several therapies, including barbiturates. Nothing seemed to help.

Pete did some library research and found a case history of obsessive/compulsive disorder of tail chasing. It was in a bull terrier. At the time of the case, the vet tried several therapies. None succeeded. The bullie would compulsively chase its tail to exhaustion. It had to be destroyed. Oh man; please not our pup.

Luckily, the next time the vet in the book got a compulsive tail-chasing case, there was Prozac available. He tried it and it worked. Pete copied the pertinent pages from the book and we took it to the vet. The vet was willing to give it a try. He warned us, however, that Prozac isn't an instant cure. It could take several days or possibly weeks before it took effect. We crossed our fingers and began dosing her. We had to get the prescription from Marc's pharmacy since vet's usually don't stock Prozac at $1.25 per capsule.

[June, 2003 – I've never had much agreement with the arguments that drug companies are gougers, until just before the company that owned the patent on Prozac lost the patent because of expiration. They jacked up the price from $1.25 per cap to $2.25 per cap for the last six months they owned the patent. After it expired, generic Prozac's cost dropped to 66¢ per cap. Sons abitches.]

We began dosing Picard and within a week she responded. The spinning eventually stopped. She'll chase her tail occasionally when she is frustrated about something, but she's easily distracted and the behavior is interrupted.

This is Picard at the PetSmart puppy class sitting between Mary Ann's feet. Notice Picard's rusty toes – that's the yeast infection Pete thinks started at the breeder's. The class was populated with people who either treated their dogs like infants – especially those with mutants like yorkies and Chihuahuas – or brought their six-year-old kids to the classes and expected the kids to do the training. Seems to us, the kids needed more training than the dogs. There were even some Gen X yuppies there with their completely out-of-control chocolate lab. It was not a good learning environment for either us or the dogs.

After the fiasco of the PetSmart puppy class – it wasn't bad, just worthless with all of the goofs in the sessions – we called Grace Cohera and registered for a real dog training – really people training – class. It was eight weeks and we missed one session. We thought it would be best for Mary Ann to take them with Picard so she could assert and confirm her place in the pack ahead of Picard. Turns out we both ended up going with Pete doing most of the class work. Another reason we both went was Picard gets carsick if Woodie isn't along.

Picard doesn't ride in cars very well. She faces backward and she slides around a lot on the leather seats in Pete's Grand Prix. We'd just leased the Grand Prix and Pete was bringing Picard home from a lesson. Two blocks from home, Picard vomited all over the back of the car. So much for the new-car smell.

We took Mary Ann's Grand Am next time and had better luck. We have absorbent-paper vomit covers over the seats and they give Picard more purchase so she doesn't slide around. Also, have Woodie in the car helps calm Picard's anxiety about traveling.

Picard took the lessons pretty well. She'd have done better if we'd practiced more. We ended up getting a pronged collar from Grace since Picard has such a muscular neck. A tug on a normal leash doesn't get the message to her. Picard actually acted depressed when we put the pronged collar on her: "What did I do to deserve this?"

Actually, it worked very quickly. She no longer tugged on the leash, or stopped and wouldn't go on. The lessons worked: Picard now sits on command, about 75 percent of the time and she heels well with Pete, except when she stops to shake. The only bad behavior she has is jumping on people. My mother, who is dying of lung cancer as I write, is now afraid Picard will knock her over. We can no longer take the dogs to my parents when we visit.

Maybe we'll take the class again in the spring, 2002.

One of Picard's "tricks" is clapping her udders. It's not much of a trick, but it is unique. Unlike the scotties we've had, Picard has "flabby" teats. There's a distinct bifurcation between her left and right sets of teats. It's pronounced enough that we call them her udders. When she shakes – and dog's don't shake all at once, they go from front to back – her udders will smack together making a muted clapping sound, similar to a golf-clap. Very strange.

While Picard can jump on people, she's not much of jumper otherwise. Sure, when we're playing, she'll jump three feet straight up in the air, but she can't jump into the car, and sometimes can figure out how to jump onto Mary Ann's lap.

Picard climbs into the car like an old man and will put her front paws on Mary Ann and then give her this sad helpless look until softhearted Mary Ann pulls Picard up.

If we knew then what we know now, neither Mary Ann nor I would have ever had trouble getting a date. For a guy, simply have a scottie and wait for chicks. For a gal, have a bull terrier and guys will line up for you.

No matter where we go – the vet's, the Petfood Supermaket, walking down the street – guys are abnormally attracted to bull terriers.

Picard is now a big dog and very lovable. She's something of a couch potato, but that could be because of the Prozac or the antihistamine she takes. Either way, she loves to snuggle in bed either with any of us or alone.

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