I have made a rod for my own back! For some strange reason Stirling, after she hurt her hips, became nervous of the lady who comes in a couple of times a week to do some of the domestic heavy lifting that Jana and I dont get around to. Margaret has been with us for as long as I have known Jana, and Margaret loves the animals, and would never mistreat them, but for some reason Stirling became afraid of her, and would not let Margaret come anywhere near her. This was obviously a situation that could not continue, one, because we did not want Margaret to be bitten by Stirling, and two, because that type of behaviour in our dogs is not acceptable. Now, I could have handled the situation by taking Stirling to a Behavioural Therapist, I could have asked the very knowledgeable people in our therapy group for help, I could have discussed this with all the people we know on Facebook, and whos opinion we trust, but I did not. To be fair, we did discuss the matter with Stirlings Pet Therapy trainer, who had some ideas, and who made an appointment to come and view the situation, but I must also say that the dynamics of the situation seemed at the time to call for a speedy resolution of the problem, so I decided to use Stirlings own weak point to solve the problem. Anyone who has seen our dogs will know that they are not vastly overfed. We have them checked out for condition by the vets every time we visit, and make sure that they are not overweight. Even Wallace, who as a teenager was a chunky but fit 77kg has slimmed down over the past three years to a svelte and muscular 70kg. I admit that the weekly swimming helps, but we do keep a strict eye on food intake. Stirling is another matter. When we opted, at the advice of our vets and the specialist at Onderstepoort (The South African Veterinary Institute attached to the University Of Pretoria, situated in Onderstepoort) to follow a conservative course of treatment for Stirlings injury induced hip dysplasia, two of the pillars of the treatment were to be that she received regular, supervised, structured exercise, preferably swimming, and that we keep her weight down to the point where people ask us why we dont feed our dog. The first part has been easy, Stirling loves her physiotherapist, and Stirling loves swimming. Stirling will swim in the outdoor horse pool, winter and summer. This is no wimpy Doberman or Great Dane (no offence to either of the breeds) that shivers when the sun goes behind a cloud on a summers day, oh no, Stirling insists on swimming in the “big pool” every week of the year, regardless of wind, rain or freezing temperatures. The only concessions she makes to the cold during winter is she will permit us to dry her with heated towels, and will wear a fleece lined doggy coat for the car ride home. The second part has proved much more difficult, both for us and for Stirling. Her food intake is kept to the low end of the scale, and Stirlings weight is kept down to the point where she is muscle and bone, without any fat at all. If she were to have all her hair shaved off, she would look like a world class body builder. But this means that this hyper active little dog (comparatively) is always hungry, and always on the “mooch”, as it were. This is very difficult for us, as we would dearly like to indulge her a bit, but we cant. I presume by now that some people can see where this is going! Since Stirling is so food driven, and in particular, likes on specific brand of dog biscuit, I came up with a cunning plan. Since Stirling was not THAT nervous of Margaret, and Stirling was THAT fond of those particular dog biscuits, I should have Margaret carry a pocket full of the biscuits around with her, and every time she saw Stirling, feed a biscuit to Stirling. What can I say, Im a genius! It worked like a charm, and Stirling and Margaret are now best of friends. I could leave the story there, and walk away with my halo shining brightly, but the truth is, there were also a couple of down sides to this little arraignment. The first was that Margaret quickly found out that she could not give Stirling a treat without having to give all the other dogs a treat as well. Makes perfect sense, until you work out how many treats come in a 1kg box. We were going through treats faster than I could replenish them, and it was making a severe dent in my disposable income budget. And of course, Stirling quickly realised that the more encounters she could engineer, the more treats she was going to get. Margaret spent a few weeks tripping over a blond wolfhound at every corner. And then there was the little fact that we were pulled over the coals by Stirlings physiotherapist, who sternly warned us that Stirling was putting on weight, and not in a good way! But I could live with Stirlings (temporarily) growing waistline, my rapidly diminishing store of cash, and the fact that Margaret spent much of the day looking like the Pied Piper as she moved around the house with four dogs in tow. The plan was working, Stirling was getting to really like Margaret. What I had not counted on was the shakiness of the biscuit supply chain, and the smarts of a wolfhound looking for treats. Due to the rate that we were going through boxes of biscuits, it was inevitable that we were going to run out of biscuits at some point. When it happened, Margaret came to me and asked that I get some more. I got a couple more boxes, and the treat drought was at an end. Nothing to see here lads, move on. But Stirling must have figured it out. Biscuits finished, go and bother dad to get new biscuits! We managed to get the flood of biscuits reduced to a trickle by limiting treat time to when Margaret arrives and leaves, Stirlings waist line is back to where it should be, and my wallet is not looking quite so anorexic. (Well, it is, but whats new?) Then last night we ran out of biscuits. I gave the dogs the last four as bedtime treats. This morning, Margaret arrived. I can hardly type as I have been clobber pawed so many times. And those “feed me a biscuit” eyes are hard to ignore. Oh well, at least Stirling now loves Margaret!
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 07:46:42 +0000
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