Want to know more about dogs?

As time goes on, more and more websites devoted to dogs and other pets are popping up, some with more valuable content than others.  I have hopes for Dog Channel.com's "Dog College," which appears to be both an informational service and a contest.  You have to join Club Dog in order to participate, but it's open to everyone 13 and over, and free.  The prizes are provided by Petco.  It runs three months, and you get a diploma for finishing, plus reward points.  There is also a special prize for the "valedictorian," which consists of a year's worth of Iams food and 5000 Club Dog points.

I'll take a look at their offerings in my next post.  I expect this to be good, since Dog Channel.com is owned by Bow-Tie, Inc., the company that publishes Dog Fancy magazine (fyi, the website has a lot of the things I enjoy in the magazine, like local directories, for just one example, so it's worth visiting).  I've always loved the retriever (I think) puppy in the Dog Channel logo:  he has a wonderful expression on his face that makes me feel that I can trust these folks, however irrational that effect might be.  We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, there are three interesting items about Petco in the news.  They have a new initiative that is perfect for an Earth Day (today) post, and they are also assisting food banks, according to the New York Times.  However, they are also under fire for selling female guinea pigs (helping to cause an overpopulation problem).  Well, you can't please everyone.

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• 10 Simple Steps to Reduce Your Pet's Carbon Pawprint (prweb.com)
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• Tell PETCO to Stop Selling Female Guinea Pigs! (socialactions.net)

Dogs acting weird

It's been a week since Tony started getting the new food, Royal Canin Urinary SO. I was not impressed when I opened the can. SO (I don't want to keep typing "Urinary"-- kind of a gross name for something edible, isn't it?) is very dense and dry, which surprised me. The Lamaderm Tony usually eats is much looser and wetter, and I guess I expected the SO to be about the same, but it's so dry and solid that you really have to work to break it up. I started by mixing about 2 teaspoons worth into a slightly smaller than usual amount of Lamaderm, added the usual teaspoonful of cooked chopped broccoli (Tony loves this, and it does not produce oxalic acid, thank goodness), and set it in front of him. I'd like to say that he was intrigued by the new addition, but no, he was in one of his moods, and refused to look at the bowl. He does this once or twice a week, just to keep me on my toes, I guess, but I was in a kind of anticipatory frenzy over this, so, instead of ignoring his behavior, I followed him around for a bit, tapping my fingernail on the bowl and chanting, "Eat! Eat! Eat!"
After a few minutes of this, he went into his favorite corner, yawned, and -- very ostentatiously -- went to sleep. My family started drifting into the room, each asking about dinner. I'm now thinking about adding a sock-puppet component to my coaxing ritual.

As usual, after an hour or so of concentrated spurning, Tony deigned to stroll over for a taste, and apparently found it to be acceptable. What a relief! I'm sure I've mentioned that he (like all dogs) refuses to eat at all every so often, and I was really keyed up over the potential effects of the SO. I was so hyped about it, in fact, that on my way back from picking up the food at the vet's, I stopped at a Petco and bought a "Male Incontinence Wrap." It cost $22, which is an outrageous price for what is basically a strip of denim and vinyl with a Velcro closure. I did not buy any liner pads, because they were priced even more outrageously-- $17 for a pack of 12! My sister has been using one of these on the older of her two Great Pyrenees, and she uses Serenity pads (for humans), which are much cheaper, so I'm going that route. For the next couple of hours everyone was watching Tony, but there wasn't much of a payoff. He didn't start drinking copious amounts of water, didn't scratch at the door, no blood-sugar crash, nothing. In a way, it was encouraging, but it was too early to tell anything.

Then, a couple of days ago (he was up to a tablespoon of SO by then), he seemed to stop drinking altogether. I came home from work (I'm teaching an evening class this summer), and my mother told me that she hadn't seen him take a drink in the four hours I was gone, and he hadn't wanted to go outside either. Now we were all watching him, and she was right, he didn't seem to drink, and we had to take him outside, rather against his will. He was, however, sleeping a lot more than usual. What did that mean? Who the heck knows?! Dogs sometimes act weirdly. You try and try to figure them out, but in the end, you're just guessing, and you know it. My best guess is that he was drinking when we weren't looking, ditto for urinating-- it's a big yard, and you can't watch him every second. If he really wasn't drinking, he may have only been adjusting to the reverse-osmosis water that's now in the bowl. Or he may have been registering a complaint about that change. Whatever. Yesterday he was acting "normally" again.

All of this behavioral observation seems to feed my anxiety, so I'm trying to cut back a bit, but at the same time, I have to watch for problems. His latest appears to be stiffness in his right hind leg, which he gets now and then (he is pushing thirteen years old, after all), but it seems to be coming and going throughout the day. Meanwhile, the other dogs have their own problems. Gus's incontinence has expanded to include defecation accidents (this started at my brother-in-law's birthday party, oddly enough). He's always been a bit strange in that area anyway; he prefers to do it on concrete as a rule, on the patio or the deck around the pool. In a way, it makes it easier to clean up, but it's also kind of annoying. Doc is not a patio-pooper, but he does have a problem leg himself (hey, maybe Tony's just imitating him for the attention. Hmm.); he's had surgery on it, without much success. Lately he's been flopping down at odd intervals, but Steve, my sister's husband, says that he's just as lively as ever at the dog park.

We'll see.