A New Pack Member: Trouble Stays!

May 9, 2010

We had a few set backs with Trouble when we got him, but it wasn’t because he’s a bad dog, rather Diesel wasn’t quite ready to accept him into the pack. She was very tense around him and just wasn’t sure what to do. Part of the problem is she is not used to a dog that doesn’t take her shit (she’s a bully) so that’s why she was so leery around him. We took them out to the field to run and play and that really seemed to work in their bonding. Now they’re fine and have a great time with each other and they’re just fun to be around.

The only real issue we have with Trouble is that he wasn’t raised with cats so he doesn’t know that he shouldn’t go after them. When we took Moki and him to the vet on Saturday he snapped at her and we had to run back and get the training collar so he’d stop being so fixated. That worked and he calmed down and we have used it today to train him not to go after the cats. He’s picking up on it well and I think he’ll be fine once he’s here awhile longer but other than that he’s a really good dog.

On a brighter note when we first brought him home his paws were really bad. They were so swollen and it just looked to us painful to walk on. We’ve been giving him his meds daily and we think that his previous owners thought they were being successful when they were putting the pills in his food, which wasn’t really the case. We’ve been using peanut butter and treats to coax him to eating his pills and as a result we think it’s really helped in improving his paws and his skin. When we took him to the vet on Saturday she said he’s pretty young and she believes that his allergies could be because of the food he’s eating. The only way to find out is by changing out his food and seeing if it does any good for him. Hopefully it is food allergies because it really sucks having to give him so many meds, plus our vet thinks he needs to go on steroids to help with the inflammation on his paws, so that’s yet more meds to have to administrator. I feel so bad for him. Poor dog.

Anyway, it’s time to announce the winner of TBQ’s first ever giveaway! I assigned everyone numbers and used Random.org to randomly pick numbers. The number assignments were based on the comments posted. So for instance the first individual who entered was assigned the number one and for each entry after that two, three, and so on and so forth. Therefore after running the randomizer the results were as follows:

And the winner is…