The “dog’s gone insane” edition.
I’ll start with the pleasantries. Here’s Luna on her walk. Because we’re doing Dog Agility, while walking on our property I take the opportunies presented by things like logs and stumps to practice “jump” and “stand.”
Here’s Luna standing on a tree stump.
And now for the less pleasantries. Luna thinks she is pregnant, and because she’s not, she is all sorts of confused. This has caused much to-ing and fro-ing looking for the pups, digging a nest, and keeping us up half the night. She’s currently on a very low dose of tranquilizers.
False pregnancies in dogs usually last 2-3 weeks.
Oh, and yesterday she got my two best pairs of jeans off the line – distroying one and slightly damaging the other. SIGH
Hi keres …
That sounds like a terrible condition to have … poor Luna!
Poor Luna is asleep on the couch at the moment, with her nose tucked into her tail.
The tranquiizer she is using seems to make her a bit cold as well. We are using only about one-sixth of the lowest recommended dosage because Pyreneans have such a low metabolism. I tried starting her on half the lowest dose and the result was that she was extremely drugged for almost a full 24 hours. A stoned Pyr is a thing to behold, with her face so relaxed that her jaw hung and her eyelids drooped.
I’ve never heard of it …
How are you guys doing otherwise and how ’bout the rest of the critters?
The rest of the critters are well. We’ve had some much needed rain – so the Alpacas have been a bit damp, but they don’t seem to mind. Coming from the Peruvian Alta Plano (high plains) they evolved to withstand very low temperatures.
Albert is being a brat – his usual. He’s been moving his litter box across the laundry floor, and ejecting it’s contents, every night, for the last few nights.
False pregnancy is very common in domestic animals. Unlike humans, most animals get pregnant when they ovulate, so they haven’t developed a method of sloughing un-needed uterine lining (i.e. menstruating). Because we control the breeding of domestic animals, they may go several “heats” without getting pregnant. This causes the uterine lining to keep building up – to the point that it triggers the hormonal equivilence of a pregnancy.
Even when not stoned Luna always looks great sleeping. Just looking at the couch shots makes me want to take a very long nap.
doesn’t have the same presence as Luna but he did manage to grab a tiny bit of limelight.
That’s a lovely atmospheric shot. And Sniff (so well named)is always cute.
Thanks. I sometimes feel bad that I have more pictures of Sniff than the other two but it’s not my faults he’s so damned photogenic.
I’m convinced of it seeing photos like these … 🙂
Want to try for empirical proof?
What have you got? 🙂
to find out.
I knew that’s what you were getting at, but I had hoped you were going to give us another photo … 🙂
I’m sad because my greyhound has still not recovered from the mauling she received from another dog about a month ago. Five of the six wound have healed, but one won’t stay closed despite both stitches and staples and has become infected. We are on our third antibiotic trying to get it cleared up. Poor puppy.
I’m so sorry to hear that Kahli. Greyhounds are lovely dogs, with such patient natures.
Keep hanging in there. Medicine is largely a process of elimination, and your vet will eventually narrow down the field of treatments to the one that works.
Thanks. The vet has suggested that we put a t-shirt on her to keep her from fussing at the wound. I haven’t decided if she looks better in my “My Vote is My Voice” shirt or the “Regime Change Begins At Home” one. I guess I’ve turned her into a political animal.
I’m sorry this hasn’t gotten better. But I do like your t-shirt choices and I’m sure she’ll be much happier with that than the lampshade. And everyone will think she is very cool.
That’s cute…and better than those “lampshades” they use at the vet’s.
I hope the third Abo does the trick.
When one of our cats had a bad case of flea-bite dermatitis (we moved into our new home without realizing that the previous owners had an indoor-outdoor cat and the place was crawling with fleas), I made him a denim coat so he wouldn’t lick the raw spots. It worked and within 6 weeks, he’d healed and the fur was growing back. The only problem was that when we took the coat off him, he looked NAKED – like Donald Duck without his sailor suit. {g}
A flock of about ten Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos were just out front a few minutes ago. Here’s a quick photo.
You pictures of birds are always so amazing — you must have some secret power that lets you get these wonderful shots (or maybe it’s that you are a really fine photographer).
I’ve a very good camera (Nikon D70 digital SLR), and a good computer with Adobe Photoshop. Oh, and BFA in Fine Art Photography from the University of New Mexico (which at the time had the second top fine arts photo department in the US).
And yes, I do have a way with critters. I’m very good at not making them nervious, i.e. I avoid acting like a threat by doing things like not staring of walking straight at them, etc. The huge eyeball (the lens) is intimidating enough. Pulling up handfulls of grass and making chewing noises helps when trying to get close to grazers, etc.
anyone interested in unbelievable dog photography should check out:
.
Steve Donohue is unreal! I am sure you will get a kick of out his stuff, keres. Nothing cropped, nothing cut; just shooting with a similar rig to yours, I think.
Anyway, here’s a screenshot of a pic of me and one of my dogs on his site: seespotphoto.com
Steve is just the best!
Of course, if Luna and I ended up in a similar position, the following shot would show the tragic after effect – me felled to the field by a 80lbs furry white missle.
Luna hasn’t quite learned to catch a frisbee. But she’s pretty good at running down and catching her Kong. I suspect she’ll get the hang of a frisbee eventually. She’s the first Pyr I’ve had that would chase or catch anything. The others have all maintained the “you threw it, you go get it” attitude. Unless it was food.
Pyrs are nice dogs.
A bit big, but anything is possible:
Jeff Hoke is almost 6′ tall.
her real name is Leilani. Rokalele is her stage name.
She’s awesome!
She looks like a Landseer, which is the old style of Newfoundland, and one that more closely showed it’s Pyrenean ancestry.
actually rokalele is my little dog in the see spot run photo.
I don’t know the name of that big dog.
He was awesome though.
Like playing disc with a horse.
The lovely tree in the background is a “Native Cherry,” which produces an edible small red fruit that tastes like rose-hip.
as I have actual work (including some photoshoping of images) that needs doing.
Thanks for the Doggy Thread.
Here is a shot of Sylas, our ‘pet grade’ discdog. He plays disc, and is not too bad, but he is really more of a ‘pet grade’ dog; not enough drive, not enough athletic ability, not enough structure to play.
That’s why it was so awesome to see him turn into a MONSTER dock diver.
OK, so he doesn’t jump 25+ feet, but he sure is serious about the game. It’s the first time I ever saw him whine to do something. He would just get on that dock and whine until we release him to go! So cool.
He started with a jump of 7 feet, and qualified as a novice. He was just sandbagging, and wound up busting out a 15 foot jump to win the novice title. He also became a bread winner, a pro-athlete, with his $100 1st place purse. So cool…
Here is Sylas doing his new thing:
That’s me in the background, Apryl was throwing.
Cool! Is Sylas an Aussie?
Sy is an Aussie/BC cross, so he is a Baussie.
We also have Harpyr, who is a Baussie as well.
All of our Aussies have tails.
It’s great when an animal really starts to enjoy something so much.
Luna is too laid back to be a good agility dog, but she has fun nonetheless, and that’s what keeps us going back. Now, if I could only teach her the weave poles are meant to be weaved one pole at a time, not in batches of twos and threes (she is a bit long to make the quick turns).
Inti and Sandy yesterday.
We’ve separated the boys from Nina so that she’ll stop nursing Inti. That way she has more energy for her current pregnancy. And we can be sure she gets all the food and supliments we feed her, without having to worry that the boys are hogging the goodies.
Inti is maybe a little less round than before, but otherwise fine with the arrangement. Mom, afterall, is just on the other side of a wire fence.
Our housemate sent me this by email, under the subject heading “O God it’s me!”
Hi Keres and Luna,
This again is a fantastic picture of Luna! It is amazing how quick and agile these huge dogs can be. My Mafi is a bit too fat (just like everybody in our 2 and 4 legged family, lol) but my hubby and I are also involved in rescue and we had a rescued Great Pyr who climbed from the terrace to the roof and jumped down from there to get free.
I hope that Luna will recover soon, have you ever thought of neutering her?
Cheers
Agnes
Hi Agnes, yes we will neuter Luna, after she’s had one litter of pups. She’s just turned two-years-old, and I don’t like to breed a dog until she’s at least two. The plan is to breed her on her next heat and then spay her about four months after.
And yes, Pyrs are amazingly agile, when they want to be.
Oh, and if you want to see some pictures of Luna doing Dog Agility, check out this post.
Amazing pix!!! Especially the one where she walks so high. Mafi is afraid of narrow corridors, of going down to the cellar, he is sooooo excited and worried when we go down, he is prancing at the top of the stairs until we come up. But Luna obviously does not mind such things :)) What a gorgeous baby she is.
So Luna will be mom one day. Do you plan to keep a pup? Btw. are pyrs a popular breed there? There are hardly any pyrs here and they are not very popular because they are too large and too independent. Pyrs are not working dogs here, we have the traditional Hungarian breeds kuvas and komondor for that.
We are thinking about keeping a girl from the litter, but we haven’t decided for sure yet.
Pyrs are not common in Australia. And there are perhaps only a dozen or so down in Tasmania where we live. Because of that, when Luna’s ready to be bred she will have to be shipped to a mainland breeder.
The more common livestock breed here is the Italian Maremma, which is very similar to the Pyr, and also falls into that group of great white mountain breeds that include the Hungarian Kuvasz, the Slovensky Kuvac, and the Polish Tatra Mountain Sheepdog.
I actually looked at Maremmas when I first got to Tasmania, as they are much easier to come by. But I found them to be very like the Kuvasz that I had met in the US, and too stand-offish for my tastes.
When I lived in New Mexico, I had a friend who bred Komondors. They were a bit too fierce and huge for me, but otherwise lovely dogs.
Well, Mafi is the most stand-offish dog I have ever had. He is also very fierce, you cannot touch him, clean his ears, cut his dew-claws because he growls – I do clean his ears when it is absolutely necessary but it is not an easy thing to do. He loves us but he is very alpha and we had lots of problems with him. We tried everything: obedience training, personal trainer, my heart is bleeding but I must behave as the boss all the time and it is not always easy. Friends, family stopped visiting us because he accepts if we let anybody in but he almost killed our 3 years old nephew because he did not understand that nobody can walk freely in the garden only if accompanied by my hubby,my Mom or my humble self. Visitors should sit down and stay there because he is very protective of his territory and also of us.
He is a huge dog, over 87 kg and standing on 2 legs he is about 2 meters tall. We can leave him with my Mom as he adores her but making long trips is impossible because my Mom cannot take him to the vet if there is any problem.
I don’t know what we did wrong. Before Mafi we had a Tibetan Mastiff, he was also very stubborn and dominant but nothing like Mafi.
The rescued pyrs we had were all lapdogs. Mafi is over 6 now, he mellowed a lot with time but he is still a difficult dog.
I’m sorry to hear that Mafi is such a difficult dog. It happens in every breed, but in big dogs it’s a dangerous combination.
I’ve been fortunate that my more aggressive dogs have all been smaller “pound” puppies. Only one tried to bite people (the other tried to bite dogs) – and that only happened infrequently. We kept her on a very short leash when out for a walk.
Especially with big dogs, when they are young, I start out by taking their food away while they are eating – just to see how they react. If they growl or show any sign of defending their food, I give them a sharp reprimand, and only give them the food back when they act submissive. It’s good to get them used to you taking things away when they are still young. I’ve known too many dogs that will instinctively guard their food and snap at anyone who tries to take their food or a toy. It’s a receipe for disaster, especially with children who may not understand the dog’s instincts.
I’m not sure there is much you could do with Mufi at this stage, other than what you are already doing. Perhaps building him a kennel with a tall fence, where he can be put when you have visitors, would be a good way of keeping everyone safe. And maybe even take him down a peg.