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  • About Worldly Dogs
    • Our Dogs

Lost and Found

8/12/2017

1 Comment

 
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A lost dog. It is every owner’s worst nightmare. Thankfully, as an adult I have only had this happen once and got lucky. Ari slipped under my dad’s fence while I was out town and I discovered her missing when I went to pick up the pack. In sheer panic I searched the neighborhood on foot, asking person after person if they had seen her. Those that had told me it had been hours before. During my search I ran into a group of kids riding their bikes and asked if she had crossed their path. She hadn’t, but sure enough an hour or two later one of them called me while I was still out searching. She came back in a trailer built for a toddler towed behind one of the bikes. I swear that dog was beaming. Tongue hanging out, panting from her grand adventure, she had no idea she’d almost killed me.

I remember the panic, and the relief of having her in my arms again. This was at least 10 years ago, and unfortunately, even with our advanced technologies too many dogs never make it home. Two recent losses come to mind, a member of our training club, and a family member’s dog. One has been gone over a year and the other about a month. Neither may ever come home, despite their owners continued outreach on social media.

Which is why I think it’s important you do everything you can to make sure your dog is found before they are lost.

​Today most dogs are chipped, and it’s easy to feel like that is a protection, a shield. If your dog gets out, they will get scanned and come home. The problem is not every dog makes it to a scanner. It’s uncommon, but chips can stop working. Or you moved and didn’t update your information. 


Hands down, the most important thing you can do to protect your dog is old fashioned. Get them a proper fitting collar and tags.

Right or wrong tags send out a signal when a dog is wandering the streets. I am loved. I have somewhere I am supposed to be. Someone out there is looking for me. An untagged dog, even a pampered one, can look like it has been on the street for months once it becomes ragged and dirty. If someone manages to ‘rescue’ them they tell themselves that this nice, adorable, dog wasn’t cared for. It’s easy to give it a home if no one ‘wanted’ it.


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Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

1/27/2016

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Luna in Hotel
Recently there was a post on Facebook circulating about what your dog’s sleeping position means. I don’t know how much of it is fact, but it was interesting and it got me thinking about dogs’ sleeping habits, as well as my own.

Since having my first dog (family/childhood dogs not included), Miley, I’ve always allowed my dogs to sleep with me. Miley had her own pillow next to mine, but after I got married and time progressed she started to simply share mine. My next dog, Sprite, never chose to sleep with me, always preferring the floor, even though he had the option. On the other hand my third dog, Ari joined Miley on the bed, always sleeping at the small of my back and under the covers unless it was cold out. On those nights she would burrow down to my feet.

Unfortunately, as they grew older I had to move them both to the floor for safety reasons. The separation was difficult.  I felt guilt as if I had abandoned them and it was harder for me to sleep without them. I told myself that I would never allow another dog in my bed…famous last words.

Boots was already old when she came to live with us, so we emigrated her to the floor next to the bed rather easily. When Luna arrived we maintained a strict “no furniture” rule unless you are invited, which included the bed. (A rule we still abide by – mostly.) Gradually though nighttime cuddles were replaced with permanent residence and once Ella arrived and graduated from sleeping in her kennel there was no going back.

I had forgotten how much better I slept with my girls with me (don’t get me started on how hard it is to fall asleep when I travel) even when Luna has to jump on and off the bed several times in the night to “check on” the cat. While I know I will have the day when she can no longer stay with me, I would never give up the time I have.

So where do your dogs lie at night?


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An Adventure in Hand Stripping

9/29/2015

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Ella is not my first wire haired dog, she is in fact my third, but it wasn’t until now that I took the time to find out what hand stripping was. I had always assumed, for some unknown reason, that this grooming technique was accomplished by removing dead hairs with a special comb…which makes zero sense when the name of the act itself has the word hand in it.




It turns out that hand stripping is a very (at least for the inexperienced) long process of removing the dead hair on your dog’s coat by pulling them out by hand or with the assistance of a stripping knife. The longer outer coat breaks off leaving the softer undercoat. I know what you’re thinking – ouch! Yet it turns out that this doesn’t hurt the dog, although Ella was a little squirmy during the process, but I imagine she would have been if I had shaved her instead.

By now you’re wondering, if this process takes so long, why not just shave her? In the past I shaved both Miley and Ari, and although not a professional groomer I was content with their appearance. For Miley I liked the way she looked cut – and Ari’s coat left untouched gave her a bit of a razorback that was so rough I hated the texture of it. What I didn’t know then was that shaving them was potentially damaging, or at least altering, their coat.

I never saw a change in Ari (but I also only shaved her around twice a year and never very short) but over the years Miley’s coat grew softer and lighter in color. I thought it was due to her aging, but was in fact the result of being shaved every few months for 10+ years.

Fast forward to Ella, whose coat is so unique that I didn’t want to chance losing any of her coloring. She also sheds very little and I love her texture, but she too was getting the razorback – although instead of it being one strip down the middle I felt like it was her whole coat.

Since it was a long process and I was inexperienced we drew it out over several days and in about three to four 30 minute sessions, with an hour break in between. As I said, Ella wiggled a bit, but with my trusty treats she didn’t do too bad. I did cheat by trimming her legs, belly, and tail by hand. Her tail was by far the most difficult as I didn’t want to strip the entire thing short and was forced to attempt to blend it.

All in all I’m pretty happy with the result, although I'm noticing some longer belly hairs in her after picture I missed. I’m pretty sure I’ll do it again in about six months, when I can’t handle the ridge any longer!
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If you’re interested in learning more about hand stripping I recommend visiting handstripping.com, they had a lot of information and great before and after pictures.

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MIA

3/30/2015

1 Comment

 
I have been away for too long. Not just here, but everywhere online that is dog related, including Worldly Dogs. I found that after losing Ari and then Miley I needed a break from stories and photos of dogs. It was too easy for the tears to fall, on some days it still is, but now it is past time to start a new chapter and return.

Luna is doing great, if still Loony (she wouldn't be Luna otherwise). Together we have completed intermediate obedience three times now, still trying to obtain her Canine Good Citizen (CGC). She has become a very obedient dog in the last 11 months; she just cannot manage me leaving her with a stranger for three minutes - or even one. It’s frustrating, but I know it isn't everything. Luna is amazing on a leash and her stays are almost unbreakable, she does so well that despite the CGC mishap we enrolled in Rally two weeks ago. Of course, that was also due to me being unable to have two dogs in class at the same. It became two because apparently my life is a little empty without three dogs.

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This time I really wasn't looking for another dog (unlike when I told myself I wasn't with Luna). My husband and I had decided we would look for a third dog after our next family trip sometime this year and I already felt like my hands were full training Luna. Then the photo of "Binkie" found its way onto my Facebook feed. She was an adorable four month old wiry Jack Russell mix and somehow I knew right away that she was the missing dog in our pack.

I was a little worried that being a Jack Russell mix she would remind me too much of Ari, but when we arrived at Best Friends I was shocked to find that aside from a different coat color she was very much a "Miley-dog". She sat up on her hind legs in those first few moments and for a moment I thought my heart would break. How on earth could I bring home a dog that looked so much like my old girl? Luckily I gave her the chance to be her own dog - because in personality she is a dog all her own!

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I had been slightly worried about trying to introduce a new family member to Luna, but the two of them bonded as soon as we got home and the newly renamed Ella and her have become inseparable ever since. They love to roughhouse, Ella thinking she's one of the big dogs while Luna still thinks she should be allowed on laps.

Life is good again. My pack is complete.

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17 Still Isn't Long Enough

10/2/2014

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This wasn’t supposed to be my next post – in fact it isn’t even about Luna. It is about dogs and that wonderful, unexplainable emotion they bring to our lives – and how empty it becomes when they are gone.

On Monday the time had finally come for me to say goodbye to my dog of seventeen years, Miley. Often called ‘The Elder’, her body had begun to fail in too many ways to ignore. She was no longer comfortable even laying down due to arthritis and no medication seemed to help her find comfort, so I made ‘that’ choice, the one we all as dog owners dread.

I always knew that Miley would be the last of her ‘pack’ to go, Sprite and Ari were each lost within the 15 months before. She was the mutt, the healthiest and the one damned and determined not to leave me. She was the first true dog that was mine and we bonded late in my teenage years, still so early in my life that she was my everything for so long.

Since it has been such a short time since losing Ari the pain from her own death is still fresh. It is strong enough that a few weeks ago I bawled over a happy story about a cat that shared her nickname and had diabetes, the illness that began her downward spiral.

Most can tell you their favorite dog, but I could not choose between the two of my girls, they were one unit and everything to me. So why is it now that I have cried so much less at the loss of Miley? The first day I cried so long and hard that my head would not stop aching, but since then hardly at all. Is it that she was older, her death more gradual? Or, is it simply that I have suspected for a while that it was time for the pack to be together again?

I know the tears will come in their own time, they always do and I want to hope there is a place where they are reunited…but I suspect even if there is after the first initial greeting Miley is sitting on the sidelines patiently waiting for me.

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How Life Got Loony

7/17/2014

1 Comment

 

Luna at Tanner Dog Park

When Ari, our Jack Russell Terrier of 13 years passed in late May I told myself the last thing I wanted was another dog. It had been a rough year. She was the third pet we had lost (all of them elderly) and the second dog. The loss of our American Eskimo, Sprite, had been hard, but it was

nothing compared to Ari who had always cuddled with me at night and was one of my ‘girls’. Several people told me right away to bring another dog home, but I brushed them off. It felt like I would be betraying her somehow – and besides, I still had two dogs. 

One is the second of the two girls, Miley, a terrier mix of 17 years. She’s completely blind and sleeps most of the day, and although I love her dearly she hasn’t been much of a companion for several years. In fact, the day Ari died was the first day I had been able to get her to sit in my lap in at least two. She never sits still when she is awake and being off the floor seems to make her nervous. The other, Boots, a Border Collie that was once my dad’s before he passed is sweet and loving, but she is devoted to my husband. For someone that had been used to having that needy, unconditional love waiting for you when you walked through the door it almost felt like no dog at all.

Then I caught myself ‘just looking’ on petfinder.com. I had said for years that the next dog I wanted was a water dog – either a Standard Poodle or a Portuguese Water Dog. I wanted a larger dog, nothing close to a Jack Russell, a sporting breed, and narrowed it down to those two because they don’t shed. I’ve always adopted or taken pets in that no longer had a home and so of course I planned on doing the same this time around. I told myself it would take forever to find one of these breeds through a rescue or at a shelter so I might as well do the research and start watching for one in my area. Never mind that I began to search for anything remotely close to what I wanted. I believe my eventual search was female, young (no puppies please), and medium to large sized, not at all specific.

This continued for about a week when I saw the face of Lilith at our county shelter. Eyes bright and looking up at the camera with a face something reminiscent of a Brittany and the body of an Australian Cattle Dog. It was a face I spent several days trying to get out of my mind, but finally allowed myself to move from Petfinder to the shelter’s website itself. I needed to know more about her and was shocked to find that she had been there for two months. That was enough for me, I had to meet her and was petrified by the thought that she could be put to sleep after being there for so long. (I didn’t find out until much later that the shelter is now one of the many no-kills throughout Utah).

I called, set up an appointment for her to meet Boots (Miley rarely leaves the house), and made my husband swear to me that he would not let me bring her home if he thought she would be too rambunctious around Miley. When we arrived it was easy to see why she was still at the shelter. A sensitive dog, Lilith was backed up against the wall of her kennel, frightened by the people standing outside of it and ‘grinning’ – a slight bare of her teeth without the sound of a growl.

Despite her initial impression we stayed long enough to take her outside away from the barking, yelping and confining cage. Outside she relaxed with her handler, but remained almost indifferent to us, there was no immediate joy, no head in the lap staring up at you with adoring eyes, but watching her fetch and run back and forth to her handler I somehow knew she needed to come home with us.

It took my husband a bit longer to warm to her – after all, it was his job to keep a steady head throughout the process – but once she met Boots (more indifference) he finally agreed to take her home.

I was asked by the staff, “Why her?”. It was difficult to answer, you can’t tell someone because you just know. I found out that she had been returned once for jumping (bringing her total amount of time in the shelter up to three months) and they were nervous about letting her go into a home that was not prepared for her activity level. I explained I wanted an active dog, one that was smart and could excel in obedience training and eventually agility. It wasn’t about a specific breed for me (who needs a dog that doesn’t shed?). Most of all, I didn’t bring dogs back, I wasn’t going to give up on her. Once an animal comes into your home it’s for life.

Before we reached home the two year old Australian Cattle Dog/Pointer Lilith was rechristened Luna, and had a new collar and shiny tag to prove it. The indifference towards me melted away as we rode together in the back seat, that “knowing” only intensifying. I commented that it was unbelievable that anyone had ever taken her back, and my husband stated the obvious, it was because she was waiting for us.

She had been waiting for my precious Ari to move on, for me to find her and for her to help me heal. Today Luna rarely leaves my side and every day I am more amazed at how much it feels like she’s always been a part of our family. It doesn’t make the loss of Ari any less painful, but it helps to know that if she was still here the two of them would have loved each other. In fact, I’ve often remarked that if Ari and Sprite had had puppies they would be Luna in personality.

I’ve also learned a lot since she came to live with us, first that the crazy jumping was real. She’s almost broken of it, but get her too excited and she’s jumping right in your face, mouth open. I had forgotten how much energy a young dog can have, but how much fun that energy can be. She keeps the whole house livelier. It’s clear she’s never lived with cats, and although she doesn’t chase them she still stares at them continually when they are in the room. Best of all, I hadn’t needed to worry about her with Miley, she came in knowing the unspoken rule of the household – Miley is the elder. They interact little, but whenever they are around each other Miley always gets a little submissive lick on the chin.

Luna is also the perfect dog to teach me basic training. It’s something I’ve never done in the past but she’s an excellent first time dog to run through it with. It never ceases to amaze me that when we are in class or simply out back running through the paces she turns into a working dog, completely focused and ready to please. Training has only strengthened that bond that formed between the two of us on that first day and I can’t imagine where it will take us.


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    Lisa (and Luna)

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