Sheila has a new dog-related cartoon on her site. She says, of exaggerated resumes,
It’s such a fine line to walk when trying to impress a potential employer…
The cartoon reminds me of the man I met recently who has two beagles that are trained to sniff out termites. Now they have a right to boast about their resumes! I'll bet they've saved householders a packet of money.
Penny seems to feel a bit better today from her current bout of kennel cough, well enough to do her door-guarding duty, but her barking is not up to scratch, because she has to pause to cough and sneeze.
I've been told to get her out in warm sunshine, if possible, but wouldn't you know it, after months of unseasonably dry and warm weather we've been gifted with proper wet, cold autumn weather. Wait a minute. The sun just came out...
Okay, back inside after ten minutes in a the sun. An informative site at Lowchensaustralia says that if the infection runs a normal, uncomplicated course, there's no need for antitbiotics. (That's what the vet at the animal clinic told me the other night.) A couple of points that surprised me, however, were that it is actually possible for this bronchitis-related disease to pass to humans, and that dogs can shed the virus, ie pass it on, for up to fourteen weeks.
The vet who treated Penny at the emergency clinic said an intranasal spray is a more effective preventative than the annual vaccination, but the site at Lowchensaustralia says:
This vaccine is not without its problems. It is a very effective vaccine, but it must be used carefully and is generally only recommended for dogs that are at high risk. If your dog is not shown, boarded, or comes into contact with stray dogs, your dog is considered low risk.
Hmm... Penny spends lots of time in contact with other dogs, through canine freestyle, flyball and pet dog training with Cindy.
However, when I rang my own vet, he said he prefers the vaccination, as the nasal spray is not necessarily that much more effective as to warrant the trouble in administering it to dogs who hate having something sprayed up their nose.
On Tuesday evening, when I was pet-sitting for a friend and Penny was helping me, she started coughing up froth all over my friend's loungeroom and kitchen. Quite dramatic, actually. I decided to take her off immediately to the after-hours clinic near my friend's house - humungously expensive, but worth the peace of mind.
(I did stop to disinfect the house as much as I could before we went, by the way, and my friend was philosophical when she returned, given that kennel cough is passed by an airborne virus and no amount of cleaning the floor was going to do much good.)
Having relieved my mind of the fear that Penny might have a cooked chicken bone stuck in her oesophagus - oh, why didn't we ever successfully train her not to scoff everything she sees in the street? - the vet told me she was ninety percent sure Penny had kennel cough. Okay, not so bad...
We were given a BIG bottle of prescription cough linctus and told to give it two to three times a day for a while. I asked what the point was, given that kennel cough is a virus and basically has to run its course, and the vet said the cough linctus eases coughing and prevents secondary infections developing as a result of damage from constant coughing. (I think that's what she said.)
I was surprised at how easy it is to administer the cough syrup. I just sit behind Penny, hold my hand over her muzzle and lift the corner of her upper lip, revealing a conveninetly placed gap behind her big tooth, and squeeze the stuff in. Penny is a saint of a dog, fortunately, and only squirms around a little. I was proud of her at the vet's where she had to suffer a thermometer up the backside, a lung check with the stethoscope and squeezing of her throat. (As I posted last time she had kennel cough, if you press lightly on the dog's throat just under the jaw and above the collar, she will cough immediately if she has this virus.)
Surprisingly, she didn't cough when the vet did that, but seeing she was spluttering froth around the vet clinic floor, I guess it wasn't necessary to see her cough right then.
Here she is the next day, all tuckered out, and perhaps a bit sleepy from the cough medicine.
The vet was insistent that we do other dogs a favor and stay on our own property for two weeks. Two weeks!!
However, I think it would be two weeks from the time she first showed symptoms - I'll have to check that - and if we hadn't been so silly we would have kept her away from other dogs as soon as we noticed her sneezing and coughing.
Okay, maybe everyone's tired of my enthusiasm for what I learned from Richard Curtis last weekend, but sorry, I just want to show you one more thing...
We've had a big success!!
I was taken aback to realise that dogs can't be too focused on our hand movements, because that limits what the human can do in the routine, so I made one resolution - to at least get Penny doing a counter-clockwise spin on a verbal command alone. (He calls it 'twist' but we already had the word 'spin'.)
After days and days of practising 'spin', we tried it in the park yesterday. First I lured, to get her remembering the move, then shifted the treat to my non-signalling hand, and, finally, tried it with no hand movements. Penny was simply confused, so I went back to a hand signal so she could end on a successful note.
(By the way, we're keeping an eye out for that little coughs she gives - I think it was just a treat going down the wrong way, but we're not sure.)
So, more practice last night to earn her dinner.
And, today, ta dah! Success! Here we are in the garden, taking note of Richard's advice to practise in different locations:
I thought it was particularly interesting that she stopped herself from turning clockwise. (And yes, we did notice that sneezing. We might have to go to the vet to see what it is.)
Slavenka sent me a link to a canine freestyle act in Britain's Got Talent - Tina, with her dog Chandi.
It's a lovely routine, and what I find fascinating is that most of the dog's moves are relatively straightforward.
Having just attended the seminar with Richard Curtis last weekend, I'm more 'tuned in' than usual to what's going on.
Here's my viewing of the first minute and a half of the video, in terms of what I remember from the seminar:
She chose music that fits the dog's natural movements, music with changes of pace. Many of the dog's movements, like the side-step and the lifted paw, mimicked ballet positions, which fitted the music.
She gave the dog a treat before they started the routine, giving the reward from above so Chandi was looking up. (Richard made a big point of correct positioning of treats.) By treating before starting, Tina got Chandi really focusing on her amidst the distractions of being on stage.
Another point Richard had emphasised to us was to have smooth transitions between the dog's series of moves. It wasn't easy to see this in the video clip, because the camera so often cut to the judges' expressions, but I guess Tina would have put in a lot of work on that aspect.
At our seminar we were told to practise frequently with canes, because stick-like objects can represent so many things. In my group, which worked on the theme of a Native American song, we thought canes could be replaced by a lance,or even a rifle, for instance.
Tina, in this sequence, does a lot with the broom. And I was excited to see Chandi doing 'paw around the broom' more than once, yet giving a different impression each time. I can see I'd better get back to working on this one, as we did last Sunday. Here's a picture of us starting to learn it.
Richard Curtis suggested we analyse potential moves in terms of whether they are static or moving (human or dog, or both) and whether they are 'crowd pleasers'. I thought Tina was clever in this respect. She started with a static move where Chandi had her paws crossed, seemingly waiting. The crowd went 'ooh!' - and of course the judges would be influenced by this at some level.
There were other spots the audience loved, and I'm going to look carefully to see what they are. Out of interest, I might add, not in any spirit of trying to do what she did - I can't imagine anything more nightmarish than getting up on stage in front of an audience. The last time I did that I was playing the recorder and I still remember how hard it was to tone down the shakes enough to get my mouth on the end piece, let alone find the holes.
Of course, it's the dog the audience looks at, but it doesn't hurt if the human is graceful, musical and has a wonderful sense of timing. It's a beautiful routine.
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Teacher, writer, dog-lover, gardener, miniaturist, - that's part of who I am. I hope through writing I can discover more about myself and more about the interesting world around me.
