Bernie Raw Diet Progress

Yesterday my vets office called with the test results of Bernie's recent urinalysis. Everything was completely normal, no crystals, white blood cells, bacteria or red blood cells in the urine. Her pH is still 8.0 which is too alkaline but we're working on that. This is progress from her last urinalysis that still showed some crystals in the urine.

I did breathe a sign of relief that something worked for her issue. Earlier this year she had to have bladder surgery to remove a very large stone. She somehow went into sepsis after that and nearly died. It was a long way back to normal. After trying various foods to manage her urinary crystals I ended up going "whole hog" and having a raw diet formulated by a nutritionist.

Now we're in the routine of making her food every two weeks and she knows when her food is being made. She'll corgi splat in the middle of the kitchen while we make it for her. Might also have to do with me giving her the leftover apples, bananas, kale and blueberries that I don't need. Basil loves it too, especially carrots.

For now, Bernie will be the only one on a raw diet because of time constraints and the fact that Basil's little digestive system doesn't handle change very well AT ALL. Byron and Basil will likely move to Natures Variety food or something like that since I want to get him off of the now Proctor and Gamble owned Innova Evo.

Slow Weekend

The weekend was started off nicely with my boss taking out most of us for a round at the local pub before I headed home.  I tried a new IPA but wasn't impressed with it.  Thus, I didn't remember the name of the IPA and I don't regret forgetting that one.  We had a huge storm blow in right as I parked my car at the pub so my jeans got totally soaked as I waded to the door.  We went out that night for dinner with our friends and then just relaxed at home.

We watched two movies this weekend.  Daybreakers (vampire movie) which I'd already seen in the theater but Ringo hadn't and Harry Brown which was new to both of us.  Ringo liked Daybreakers and we both liked Harry Brown. I'm a sucker for any movie with Michael Caine. The movie is a bit slow to get going but once it does hang on for the ride.

Bernie and Basil always love movie night because they get to cuddle on the couch. Bernie floats back and forth until we stop petting her and then she crams herself into a corner of the couch. Basil gets uneasy with the thunder so he ends up climbing into my lap until the rain calms down.

Saturday we ran some errands before settling at home again. Basil went with us for a trip since he won a photo contest at a local pet store. He hates having to stand still in a crate for a car ride and not be able to look out the window. I just don't feel safe keeping him in a car harness. We got some toys for Byron and a food bowl. I picked out a toy for Basil. Our goodie bag had tons of treats in it. I'm set for agility for a while.

My friend Ella from Iceland was very kind and sent Bernie some fish treats to try out. I'm sure she will love it.

The dogs have been squirreling away toilet paper rolls. Basil has always enjoyed them but now Bernie has gotten in on the action. I'll see her pull out a shredded piece to gnaw on and have no idea where she got it from.

Yesterday I was determined to finish quilting my pinwheel quilt so I got that done. I also had to make Bernie's food for the next two weeks. I was going to make a months worth but realized I was short two eggs and some plain yogurt for the second batch so I skipped it. I did manage to climb onto my kitchen counter to change out the burned out bulb finally. Now to do the other 25 things on my list and I'll be good.

Tonight, if we don't get rained out, Basil will do some agility. Since Byron is coming home on the 15th it cuts into the CPE trial that weekend so I'm just going to enter him in one day and see how we do. Won't cost me a ton of money and I (hopefully) won't be there all day since Byron will be at home with Ringo.

Since we've tossed around a ton of names I still haven't gotten used to calling the puppy Byron. I need to come up with a registered name that is cute. The breeder posted a cute blog showing the pups with their sire and dam having some fun. He's gonna be huge by the time he comes home.

Possible registered names:
Cornerstone's Byron the Charmer
Cornerstone's Three's a Charming Byron
Cornerstone's Byron is Thrice as Nice
Cornerstone's Byron Blue Boy
Cornerstone's Byron the Don Juan

I have plans to make the breeder a wallhanging featuring Cardis. I've got a little bit of it done and decided I needed to re-think the outline stitch. I'm gonna do raw edge appliqué for the first time so that the details stand out. I have two blocks cut and the Cardigan ironed on, need to re-do my third one as I messed it up trying to re-stitch a satin stitch around it. The cutout is small so I can't turn corners easily and have it show up nicely. I did some research and saw that raw edge might solve my problem. Worse comes to worse, I'll hand blanket stitch the whole thing.

Training, or lack thereof

I haven't posted much about dog training because, since Bernie got sick earlier this year, I haven't been doing a whole lot of it. Basil and I do work on agility for fun (we both enjoy it and have fun together) and I do some shaping with Bernie once in a while but other than that we're at the point where we kind of just work on maintenance behaviors.

Her illness just completely wore me out mentally. I wasn't able to do training with her for a while for fear of causing an imbalance with her urinary pH by introducing some sort of treat that didn't jive with her new diet. Even using the treats the vet suggested I use left me with guilt after doing a training session because I knew they were not as healthy as the ones I normally use and I was still scared that she would get sick again and it would be my fault. My brain is evil to me sometimes making me feel guilty for things I cannot control.  My solution was just to not train her.

Even after switching her to a raw diet in May I was constantly scared she'd get worse again. The nutritionist said giving her some baked chicken breast wouldn't hurt her diet but I still wanted to give it time to see how she reacted to it.

Poor Basil was caught in the middle. Agility was pretty much the only thing I did with him during the worst of it. A few weeks ago I did some shaping with him, the same time I did the paper bag shaping with Bernie.

Basil was shaped to sit on a mat so we could work some more on start line stay training. It is still working well. It takes him longer to get an idea than Bernie and I have to use some different techniques. I have to do more luring with him since he gets frustrated with shaping and gives up after a time. I've tended to use more shaping with him when he's scared of an object to help him interact with it than to use shaping to teach a new behavior.

At the agility trial he hated the crate fan I hung on the side of the crate. I ended up shaping him to touch it with his nose in about 5 minutes. Very useful. He hates having wind blown in his face.

Shes Part Shark

Basil does very obvious tongue flicks when he's nervous or unsure about something. So obvious my husband noticed them and he isn't very observant. I caught one in a picture once (right).  I first learned about tongue flicks when reading Dr. McConnell's book For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotion in You and Your Best Friend.  (You can read a excerpt on tongue flicks here.)  He's a great dog to watch to see stress signals since he does them in an exaggerated way, briefly, all the time.  He does them to Bernie.   I see him do it at home for various reasons.  Sometimes he'll do it at my classes when I bring him as a neutral dog.  I've learned a lot watching his body language as he interacts with different things since I know he isn't the most confident dog in the world.  He is very careful, calculating and hesitant.  This made training things like the teeter challenging but still fun in the end when I watch him charge forward with excitement as we work on it.

So over the coming months my goal is to work more on training with my dogs.  Bernie needs enrichment being that she is too smart for her own good.  Even though I can't do much agility with her (due to her left shoulder) she still likes to do training.  I might start writing down some chained behaviors to train her.  I thought about trying out Rally but I just can't afford to compete in two different venues. 

Basil and I are still learning about each other on the agility course.  Thankfully he is very patient with me and doesn't get frustrated as I try to get my cues correct.  He will continue to try over and over.  Bernie would stop, get frustrated and turn off or she'd just bark at me out of frustration.  She has a low threshold for mistakes.

News from the Cardi breeder last night.  Each day it's looking more and more like Sumo is the pup for us.  He was the first out of the whelping box and the first to explore various things.  :)