Yelling at the Poo
A few updates for you guys.
First of all, Linus the Greyhound landed safely in Ontario yesterday and is settling into his new forever home wonderfully. The resident cats, after having the house to themselves for six years, are already adjusting reasonably well to the new canine presence in their domain. That's surprising news if you know these cats. One's a KILLER ex-stray with the most dominating personality ever, and I'm pretty sure the other is the wussiest cat in Ontario.
Since he's been adopted by my sister, I expect I'll be able to give you guys regular updates on how he's doing. :)
Spot our current foster cat and Oliver the new permanent Min Pin have been playing like crazy today. Every time I decide that Oliver is just teasing Spot relentlessly, Spot will sneak up and 'attack' Oliver out of the blue. Spot should be going back to the shelter, but the SPCA cats are experiencing a wave of contagious feline Upper Respiratory Infections, so I'm not sure when he'll be able to safely go back.
Oliver's house-training was somewhat neglected while the greyhound was here. It's not his fault, it's ours. We are not cracking down as solidly as we should to get this problem solved. BUT, I partially blame Oliver for having the capability of pooping out huge (for his size) poos like EIGHT TIMES A DAY even though we only feed him 1/2 cup of food per day, total, and we think that's not enough because he looks like he might have lost a little weight recently. Do we feed him more and hope he fills out a bit, or do we feed less because there's been so much, er, output?
It's a bit frustrating to take a dog out for a pee AND a poo every two hours throughout the day, and still have him poo on the carpets when you're not looking. Which is what happened today. I tried a new technique I've recently learned about. Oliver is a small, sensitive boy who gets completely freaked out and scared of us whenever we try to discipline him, so we've had to develop carefully thought out disciplining techniques that will work for him. I found his present on the carpet today, went and grabbed him and returned to the disaster area and, with him standing next to me (I was holding him there gently) I YELLED AT THE POO for being on my carpet. This is supposed to put me and Oliver on the same team, and we're fighting against the poo. He was definitely paying attention, and I made sure to be gentle and quiet with him while directing my ire at the teensy little mess. He wasn't scared of me afterwards, which is progress in my books.
We're going to take Oliver to the vet for a check-up soon, and we'll discuss the pooing-a-million-times-a-day problem and see if the vet has any input. Do small dogs just do this? I mean, seriously, he poops more often than a little puppy. We're also going to form a disciplined plan of action for house breaking, as we've been way to slack about it up until now. Wish us luck.
(Okay, after re-reading what I've written, it sounds like Oliver's a disaster. He's not! And we're averaging about one accident every two or three days, so really it's not that bad. Hopefully we'll be able to fix this problem sooner rather than later though. I'll keep ya posted.)
First of all, Linus the Greyhound landed safely in Ontario yesterday and is settling into his new forever home wonderfully. The resident cats, after having the house to themselves for six years, are already adjusting reasonably well to the new canine presence in their domain. That's surprising news if you know these cats. One's a KILLER ex-stray with the most dominating personality ever, and I'm pretty sure the other is the wussiest cat in Ontario.
Since he's been adopted by my sister, I expect I'll be able to give you guys regular updates on how he's doing. :)
Spot our current foster cat and Oliver the new permanent Min Pin have been playing like crazy today. Every time I decide that Oliver is just teasing Spot relentlessly, Spot will sneak up and 'attack' Oliver out of the blue. Spot should be going back to the shelter, but the SPCA cats are experiencing a wave of contagious feline Upper Respiratory Infections, so I'm not sure when he'll be able to safely go back.
Oliver's house-training was somewhat neglected while the greyhound was here. It's not his fault, it's ours. We are not cracking down as solidly as we should to get this problem solved. BUT, I partially blame Oliver for having the capability of pooping out huge (for his size) poos like EIGHT TIMES A DAY even though we only feed him 1/2 cup of food per day, total, and we think that's not enough because he looks like he might have lost a little weight recently. Do we feed him more and hope he fills out a bit, or do we feed less because there's been so much, er, output?
It's a bit frustrating to take a dog out for a pee AND a poo every two hours throughout the day, and still have him poo on the carpets when you're not looking. Which is what happened today. I tried a new technique I've recently learned about. Oliver is a small, sensitive boy who gets completely freaked out and scared of us whenever we try to discipline him, so we've had to develop carefully thought out disciplining techniques that will work for him. I found his present on the carpet today, went and grabbed him and returned to the disaster area and, with him standing next to me (I was holding him there gently) I YELLED AT THE POO for being on my carpet. This is supposed to put me and Oliver on the same team, and we're fighting against the poo. He was definitely paying attention, and I made sure to be gentle and quiet with him while directing my ire at the teensy little mess. He wasn't scared of me afterwards, which is progress in my books.
We're going to take Oliver to the vet for a check-up soon, and we'll discuss the pooing-a-million-times-a-day problem and see if the vet has any input. Do small dogs just do this? I mean, seriously, he poops more often than a little puppy. We're also going to form a disciplined plan of action for house breaking, as we've been way to slack about it up until now. Wish us luck.
(Okay, after re-reading what I've written, it sounds like Oliver's a disaster. He's not! And we're averaging about one accident every two or three days, so really it's not that bad. Hopefully we'll be able to fix this problem sooner rather than later though. I'll keep ya posted.)
posted by Julie at 3:19 p.m.
3 Comments:
what kind of food is he on?
We feed him First Mate Fish and Potato, which is a high-quality food that we feed our other dog due to his numerous allergies. It would be SOOO NICE if we could keep both dogs on the same kind of food.
Sigh.
i've heard of the first mate food, but i don't personally know anyone that feeds it, so i can't compare the food to poop ratio :p
i looked up the ingredients, and it looks like a good food. the only thing that catches my attention is that beet pulp is in the first 4 ingredients. that's a big source of fibre and perhaps that could be causing the excess pooping?
just a thought =)
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