Mush, Baby

It’s 6 am, Perfect Time for a Maisy Update

Posted on September 26, 2014 by mushbaby

It’s done: Maisy had surgery yesterday for her torn cruciate. She had a TTA or tibial tuberosity advancement, a surgery which changes the geometry and forces acting on the knee during weight bearing and movement. This page has a nice, simple illustrated explanation of what the surgery actually is and does.

A note: This particular surgery was chosen based on her size, the specific angles in her knee joint, and her lifestyle/activities. BUT keep in mind if you browse around the rest of that website that despite its claims there is no “best” way to handle a cruciate tear in dogs with a capital “D”. I imagine it’s probably hard to create and maintain a website called “ttasurgery” that doesn’t do SOME cheerleading, but every dog is different. So it is not my intention to say or imply that anyone choosing a different treatment path for their dog is wrong, that website just happens to have the best illustration of the surgery I’ve seen.

Anyway, she came home last night stoned out of her gourd on pain medication and looking like this:

Normally she sleeps upstairs in our bedroom, but once she got settled into that bed I just let her stay there and slept on the couch next to her. I wasn’t completely sure what to expect but was prepared for a rough night. As it turned out, she had a really good night: I didn’t hear a peep out of her and every time I woke up she was resting comfortably. This morning I took her bandage off, took her outside where she peed for about a minute, and fed her breakfast and her cocktail of pain killers and antibiotics which she ate like a champ. Now she’s sleeping like a baby again and I’m awake at an ungodly hour on my day off.

She is 3-legged when she walks and toe-touches when she stands, both normal at this early stage. She’s getting around fine, not licking her incision, and not overtly acting painful. Such a resilient, tough-but-sweet cookie. She’s just the best girl.

I worried that the hardest part of this would be managing her pain after coming home. I’m kind of a blubbery marshmallow when my pets are sick or in pain or sad. Since that angle seems to be under control, now I think the hardest part will be the game of musical dogs we’re about to be playing for the foreseeable future. (Right now, the boys are still upstairs in the bedroom.) I’d already been letting them out on rotation so that she and Squash wouldn’t play crazy in the yard, but now I’m going to have to keep them separated in the house for a while, too. Which is going to be an inconvenient drag, but infinitely better than her being in unmanageable pain. Fortunately, we live in an old house with lots of little nooks and crannies that are easily baby-gated off from each other.

Before this all happened I had taken some time off work next week to go camping. I’ll see how she does, but while I might go ahead and go with Squash for a few days I’ll probably be spending most of the time home playing nursemaid instead. Well played, universe, well played.

I’ll keep updating in this space. Thanks for all the kind thoughts we’ve been getting over the past days and weeks as we navigate this plot twist, they truly are appreciated.

Posted in Health, Maisy | Leave a comment

PLOT TWIST !!

Posted on September 9, 2014 by mushbaby

I haven’t been posting much lately. It’s been cool but humid, and our scootering has been intermittent at best. The forecast for the immediate future, though, has been cool, cool, cool and I had been getting excited for fall training.

Our rest, water and stretch break from the last time we were scootering.

And then one day last week I came home from running some errands to be greeted by a 3-legged Maisy. She had been a 4-legged Maisy when I left less than an hour previously, and now she was holding up a rear leg. Some of your minds will immediately go to the same place my mind went upon reading that; I’ll spare all the gory details of the subsequent few days and just say that today we confirmed that she did, in fact, tear her cruciate ligament.

The ACL or anterior cruciate ligament is found in the knee. In people, ACL tears are a common sports injury. In dogs, it CAN be a sports injury but can also be related to conformation of the knee or be a degenerative process. I have no idea how she did it. All three dogs are physically separated from one another when no humans are home so there couldn’t have been an altercation, and she was normal when I left her. So I suspect a combination of the latter two categories. That really doesn’t matter for how we handle this tear now, but if the tear wasn’t caused by an injury there’s a significant chance that the ACL in her other knee will tear someday, too. Anyway, we’ll deal with THAT plot twist if and when it happens. For now, I’ve communicated with an orthopedic surgeon and veterinary physical therapist and they are optimistic that she’ll be able to eventually return to mushing. That’s unimportant and important at the same time: She’s my girl and I love her no matter what she can or can’t do, but at the same time… while it breaks MY heart that she is going through all of this, I am quite sure it would break HER heart to not be able to mush anymore. So I’m glad it’s a realistic goal.

The face of a dog who has just heard the word “scooter.”

The estimate is 10-12 weeks total (surgery + physical therapy) to get her back on her feet and in condition to restart mushing, which means she’ll miss most or all of fall training. I admit, in some ways I’m dreading this. It’s no secret that Squash aka “Nosypants” isn’t stellar lead dog material, so it’s going to be a challenge to keep his mind in the game without my Enforcer to help me out at the end of the tugline. I’m trying very hard to look at this as an amazing training opportunity for me to improve his skills. Time will tell. In the meantime, he continues to enjoy his foundations agility class and we’re doing a fair amount of canicross and off leash park visits.

Boy is learning his weaves.

I wish this wasn’t happening to her, but we have access to great care, the ultimate outcome looks good, and hopefully this will soon just be a distant memory we skijor farther and farther away from. We’ll all get through this together.

Team Mush Puppies

Posted in Health, Maisy | 2 Comments

No We’re Not Dead, It’s Just Summer: 2014 Edition

Posted on August 2, 2014 by mushbaby

What a strange trip this summer has been so far. It’s been unusually cool, which I enjoy very much. I’m not a fan of HEAT heat, and it’s been a good summer for being able to hang around outside for hours and have tremendous flexibility about what time of day we go out and do things instead of getting up at way-to-early in the morning to beat the heat. But we’ve also had a ridiculous amount of rain which flooded trails and severely limited our options for where to scooter until just about 2-3 weeks ago. Even now there are long stretches of deep, soft sand, muddy silt, and debris piles deposited by the flood waters making the trails challenging.

Still, we’ve been getting out here and there. At first we had our adventures on the more public public trails (which serendipitously turned out to be a confidence booster for me since the dogs did really great), and now we’re able to get back to our more private public trails more and more. We’re only going a mile or so at a time since the dogs are out of condition, but it’s enough to keep us from getting too rusty and bored and a good opportunity to focus on polishing directional commands and working through distractions. It’s also been a good opportunity for me to shift my mental gears to a more relaxed attitude more in line with the gentle summer we’re having. I started out the summer determined to use this time to really whip the dogs into shape physically. Truth be told, in addition to the monkey wrenches that their back injuries and subsequent rest, the flooding, and some scheduling quirks on my end threw into that plan, in retrospect it made things less fun for us all. I’m focusing more on just getting some fresh air with my dogs, bonding and having fun, and just like last winter when I forced myself to chill out and relax a little the dogs are responding positively… they’re visibly more relaxed and happy, and running better and smarter when we do go out. I’m guessing this is a lesson I’ll probably need to learn at least one or two more times before it really sinks in: This isn’t SRS BUSINESS, so relax and have fun.

We’re doing a lot of non-mushing stuff, too. We all spend a lot of time hanging out in the backyard together enjoying the cool summer, the dogs intermittently wrestling/ keepawaying/ chasing in between napping, sniffing around, and chewing sticks. Now that the flood waters have receded, Pip and I are spending a lot of time at the dog park, where he enjoys swimming and I enjoy taking pictures of him because he’s so adorable.

Squash and I have started a foundations agility course. He’s a delight to work with because he has juuust about zero environmental sensitivity (eg, he’s not scared of any situation or piece of equipment), he really loves to work (if I’m honest, he loves stuff like rally obedience and agility far more than he loves mushing), and we’ve built up enough of a relationship by this point in our time together that we mesh, read, and “get” each other easily. So that’s been fun.

Maisy and I are continuing to mostly work on silly tricks, body awareness, recall, and our continuing journey to get her more comfortable with nail trims. Out of the three, she is the one who loves just hanging out in the backyard the most. She can stay out there for hours just napping in the sun safely behind her privacy fence and its padlocked gates. Much of the time I sit out there with her, reading; sometimes I just let her be and check on her/offer her to come inside frequently.

We are scootering maybe 1-2 times a week at this point. And what would summer be without a nasty scooter bruise?

And as if the world needed more proof of how wonderful she is, here’s Maisy finding the best alternate trail around a debris pile in the middle of our main trail without missing a beat and with zero direction or instruction from me.

I think we’ll continue this laid-back approach to summer this year, and I’ll try to remember it next year, too. Once the weather really cools off in the fall there will be plenty of time to work back up to skijoring condition, and in the meantime we’ll enjoy what we’ve got.

Posted in Dog Talk, Scootering | Leave a comment

Sadface

Posted on July 11, 2014 by mushbaby

Posted in Weather | Leave a comment

Free Play Fourth Friday!

Posted on July 4, 2014 by mushbaby

You might ask yourself, “Self, what do the Mush Puppies DO on their day off?” It depends on the day, but often there is lots of free play in the backyard. This not only provides them with non-repetitive exercise that works different muscle groups than mushing, but they bond and get to just have fun and be dogs.

This is a typical warm up. We hardly ever put tree trimmings out for city compost to pick up because they love to do stuff like this.

Next, some wrestling. You can see (hear) that I’m not joking when I say I’m half-expecting AC to show up on my doorstep to investigate an anonymous tip about my dog-fighting ring any day now. Don’t worry, even though this video makes their play one sided they do actually switch roles regularly and they really ARE just playing.

Eventually they go their own ways for awhile. When Squash feels like playing again, he will usually start to dig a hole. This is actually Maisy-bait, and when she falls for it he does this…

And then, when she’s really REALLY done, he just zooms around for awhile.

They get free play without Pip for awhile first, because he has taken it upon himself to be the fun police. After everyone has settled down, he comes out and everyone does their sedate thing… a stick for Pip, and just smelling/ listening to/ watching the world go by for the youngsters.

We can all only hope to have as much fun today as the MPs. Happy Fourth, all!

Posted in Dog Talk, Not Mushing | Leave a comment

Desperation was the Mother AND Father of my Public Spectacle

Posted on July 1, 2014 by mushbaby

My trails are still flooded. My dogs… really need to scooter. We’re all going slowly insane together despite my attempts to provide alternative entertainment and exercise. So today, driven to the very brink, I did something I never thought I would do: I scootered in public.

Really, I always scooter in public, but it doesn’t usually feel like it; the trails I normally use are sort of privately public, neither densely populated nor highly visible to those not actually using them. So I don’t have to care if my dogs aren’t perfect or worry much about (literally or figuratively) running into anyone. Today’s outing, though, was to a decidedly public public space. We were right out there on walking and biking trails running through a well-used local park along a busy road.

It wasn’t really a spectacle, although a couple of times I thought we were going to cause a rubbernecker to have an accident. It was overcast and drizzly, and there weren’t many other people in the park. Which suits me just fine. The very well defined trail seemed to suit THEM just fine; they did surprisingly well for the amount of time we’ve been off. But, there were a few minor bloopers to be had:

I guess she wanted to be on the left BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. (I particularly like the impatient yank at the end from dogs who usually line out and wait so nicely).

“OMG SIDE TRAIL! Not the left side? Not the right side, either? What if we just mill around aimlessly? No? Alright then.”

A rare break here from Maisy. A sassy little chipmunk lives in that exact spot. It taunted them on the way back, too, to only slightly less distracting effect.

There were some nice shiny moments, too. Like a momentarily distracted Maisy staying on course.

And it’s very hard to hear until the very end, but basically for the entire length of this clip there is an ambulance wailing its way down the highway that is on the other side of that divider across the parkway (on the left). And my wonderful dogs did not react or care in the slightest.

So, you know. We lived. I know it’s a doable alternative, at least on a drizzly weekday morning. And so we might just survive until the floodwaters recede.

Posted in Scootering | Leave a comment

Cani-Walking 4Ever?

Posted on June 27, 2014 by mushbaby

After almost three weeks off from mushing and warming up with some walking in harness this week, I thought it was time to get the MPs back in front of the scooter. We haven’t been down to the Mendota Trail in awhile so I thought we’d give it a whirl.

Alas, Mother Nature had other plans for us.

Did I mention we’ve had a lot of rain lately? Like, a LOT of rain?

Yes, the road is underwater.

No problem, I thought, we’ll go up to the state park and everything will be ok.

OR MAYBE NOT

So I drove home, put the skijor belt back on, and did some more cani-hiking.

Even while walking, she Bumps. God I missed her when she was off. ❤

Then we stopped for a rest in a lovely clover patch.

There’s rain in the forecast for the next several days in a row, so I don’t see the situation changing any time soon. I’m just looking at it as an opportunity for us to practice, practice, practice and for me to get some exercise along with them.

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Back at Square One

Posted on June 23, 2014 by mushbaby

The Mush Puppies are doing great, back to their old selves. They’ve had a good long stretch of R&R, since I rested them for about a week off before seeing the chiropractor, then I went out of town for the week after.

Among other things, we did some fishing.

On the flip side, that also means that they’ve lost some conditioning, and just as we’re getting some humid summer weather that will limit our scootering. Which is maybe a blessing in disguise, because since the ill-fated, Squash-only scooter excursion of a few posts ago I’ve realized that maybe I rely a little TOO much on Maisy as my enforcer and I’ve been wanting to get in some basic ON BY training walking in harness for the summer.

I have some lovely double ended leashes (from my favorite, Karma Collars) that I am able to hook up to my skijor belt thusly:

Playing the part of Maisy today: mushbaby

Which makes it much easier to work on our ON BYs. If he ignores my initial verbal command I can just start cheerleading and jogging and give a little pressure on that collar to keep him moving. When I’m walking just in harness, by the time there’s any pressure on the harness, his nose is already at whatever he’s interested in and he has self-rewarded. Boo. Premack works really well with him, too, so when he successfully responds to a verbal ON BY or if he never shows interest in something at all, I’ll occasionally release him to check it out.

I didn’t go too far with him today, about 3/4 mile out in harness and then let him walk home as a free doggy who could sniff, pee, tree squirrels, and eat grass to his heart’s content.

He did improve over the course of our short walk, but he just doesn’t have the same drive to pull that Maisy does and he is just nosy as hell. Both of these mean that he’s much more easily distracted than she is, so I think he’ll always be a bit of a work in progress. That’s ok for now since I have an enforcer, but with their age differences I sometimes worry a little bit what will happen when she needs to retire and/or a new pup comes along who needs someone to teach him/her good habits.

Posted in Training | Leave a comment

On the Mend

Posted on June 11, 2014 by mushbaby

Well both the MPs have both been improving, and both saw the chiropractor today. As expected, Maisy needed some adjustments in her lower back and Squash needed some adjustments in his neck. They’ve been sleeping off and on since we’ve gotten home, but overall have been pretty chipper and more like themselves. I didn’t really realize how much Maisy was just lying around doing nothing until she resumed her normal “You’re going to the bathroom/ kitchen/ shifting slightly on the couch? I’d better get up and help you!”

And Squash is back to his default attention getting behavior, fooling around with the stool we play perch work with:

I’m going to rest them a little longer, then start them back out in harness just on foot (technically canicross I guess except I won’t be running) at first before I ease them back in front of the scooter and work up their conditioning again. We’ll have to build back up to where we left off, but the important thing is that they are both feeling better and will be fine.

Posted in Dog Talk, Health | Leave a comment

LISTEN TO ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!

Posted on June 8, 2014 by mushbaby

When last we met, Maisy was resting and I had big plans to continue working with Squash alone in front of the scooter. After he and I took the scooter for a walk last week, my next magical trick was going to be to recruit my husband to help build Squash’s pulling drive by being alley-bait: “See dad at the end of the alley? LET’S GO GET DAD!”

Instead, I’ve spent the last few days not-scootering and not-training, intermittently worrying and watching BOTH my dogs resting the weekend away. And between the two of them, this whole experience has gotten me thinking a lot about communication with these beasts who share our homes, lives, and sports but not our languages. How do we listen to what they are trying to tell us? And specifically, how do they tell us when something is wrong?

With Maisy, it was extremely subtle: She was running slowly, unenthusiastically, slack-lined. But in front of the scooter she’s what mushers sometimes call an “honest dog” – she could be tired, she could be distracted, but she will almost always be pulling. What you see is what you get, and if she’s running off then you can be sure something is actually really wrong. As far as her general demeanor around the house, though, she’s inconsistent. Sometimes jolly, sometimes subdued, sometimes worried. Not acting the same way all the time doesn’t mean much of anything.

Squash is honest, but not in the same context as Maisy – that is, not in front of the scooter, where if he’s running off it could be something physically wrong. Or he could have seen something shiny. Or he could be tired. Or he could want to eat some grass. Or a lot of other things. But as far as his general demeanor goes, he is always ALWAYS a jolly goofball wherever he is. If he’s not, you can be sure something is actually really wrong.

Which brings us to Saturday morning, when I slept in long after my husband and dogs. Normally when this happens, when I finally do come downstairs Squash goes crazy-bananas to greet me in the usual YOU WERE NEVER COMING BACK manner of dogs everywhere. But after a half-hearted greeting, he immediately laid down on the ground. All the way down, with even his chin pressed to the floor. When I tried to get him to stand up, he cried and laid down again. He was happy to go outside, he wasn’t limping, he was eating and drinking and eliminating fine, but whenever he was in the house – where he is normally very, very busy – he was just lying there, flat. And the kicker: When they were outside together, he completely avoided Maisy (who is feeling much better), ignoring her desperate play bows in favor of sitting or lying down making sad ears.

Without going into all of the gory details: He’s ok, and as best we can figure he has some neck or upper back pain. He’s had an exam and some normal lab work and some acupuncture, he’s responding well to pain mediation and is doing a surprisingly good job of continuing to rest himself (he’s slept almost all weekend which has been eerily, horrifically calm; I’m never going to complain about him being busy in the house again). I think he probably hurt himself when he took off after that deer when we were scootering alone last Thursday; in retrospect he was pretty quiet on Friday although certainly didn’t yet have the more dramatic signs that started on Saturday.

So, how DO we listen to what they are trying to tell us? We listen by knowing what each individual is like in the first place and paying attention when they aren’t acting normal. You know your dog(s), so trust your gut and don’t be afraid of overreacting. Maisy unenthusiastically greeting me in the morning wouldn’t be a big deal, while for Squash it was a huge red flag. Squash running with some slack barely registers as a cause for concern, while Maisy might as well be screaming SOMETHING HURTS into a megaphone. When something isn’t normal, they’re trying to tell you something. Listen to them.

Posted in Dog Talk, Health | 1 Comment