This week is gone and I’m still wondering what day it is. I honestly can’t even remember what I did at the first of the week. Wednesday I went to Farmington with a friend of mine and her dogs to train at the fairgrounds arena where they hold a lot of our trials. It was a fun day. I took Twist and Dare, since I’ve got them both entered in Obedience at the end of the month. Twist was a total dork as usual, but hopefully he pulls it together for that last CDX leg. Dare did really well. I still have some things I’d like to see sharpened up a bit, but overall she’s doing just fine.
Tomorrow we have to drive a couple hours in the other direction for a friend’s wedding. I just hate weddings. I never know what to buy, even though everyone seems to have registries and stuff now. I never find something I like and the stores are always so far away that I’d have to have the thing shipped and I worry that it won’t get here on time. Bleh, just not something I enjoy. Maybe they need some modern furniture for their new place. I bet they are just going to end up with either cash or a gift card from us though, cause I’ve procrastinated so long.
As for the boarding kennel. It’s been a juggling act this week, and today is no exception. On Wednesday I had a plethora of phone calls for boarding this weekend. I ended up having to turn a few people away. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, except for when you have 4 dogs scheduled to be dropped off by two separate clients and today…they’ve both canceled. That is really annoying. Oh well. It’s going to make it a whole lot more simple for the person having to come in tomorrow to take care of the kennel while I’m at the wedding.
I know you’re probably all sick of hearing me complain about the weather, but brace yourselves because you’re about to hear about it again.
Just last weekend when we went to the agility trial I was posting pictures of the dogs running on grass. Granted, it was pretty sad looking grass, and you didn’t want to kneel down because it’s wet where the snow had recently melted, but it was grass!
Yesterday, this is what I woke up to.
and this….
and this…
Before the storm was done, we had about 7 inches of really, really wet heavy snow blanketing everything. It warmed up just a bit again in the afternoon and melted part of that down into more of an icy crusted several inches. 
Now…it’s snowing again! I’m really so tired of this. I just want warmer weather and no more chiseling poop out of the frozen snow/ice. Is that too much to ask? LOL Apparently it is, if you live in Utah.
So, anyone else out there just have the feeling that you’re wasting your time? Not just by reading this blog, LOL but in general? I’ve been feeling that way a lot lately.
I know that part of my problem is that I hate winter. I could ramble on for pages about how much I hate this time of year. I sometimes wish I was one of those animals that just hibernates through the winter only to wake up when spring comes again. Well, enough of wishful thinking, back to reality. The reality is that I seem to find myself at about 5:00 each afternoon wondering how in the world I’ve managed to waste another day. Sometimes, it’s not even a logical thought, (since there are lots of days that I’ve really done a quite a bit before 5:00 rolls around), but nevertheless…5:00 hits and so does this now familiar state of slow motion panic that my day is gone! I scramble to get outside, clean up the yard, train/play with the dogs and start dinner. LOL
Well, I’m sick of it! So, I’m trying to look at things and see what is helping me and what is making matters worse around here. One of the things that I know is a kind of two-edged sword is all the time I spend on the computer. Depending on the day, (and sometimes the hour), reading about what everyone else is up to with their dogs and their training can really give me the motivation I need to get out and try something new with my training. Other days, I just find myself comparing what I do (or haven’t done) with what seem to me to be amazing dog trainers and people in general, and I get so discouraged with my efforts. Do you guys do this too?
So, what’s the solution? I know there has to be a balance, but I’ve never been good at finding balance. LOL I think I’ll work on coming up with something to help remedy my time wasting this week. I’ll let you know if I stumble across anything earth-shattering.
I have a little ranting to do…and a little raving too. Bear with me. LOL I got ahold of Dr. Overall and she agreed that it would be appropriate to add amitriptyline to Rogue’s daily meds at this point since we haven’t seen progress with the fluoxitine alone. I spoke with the vet here in Salt Lake today shared her recommendations, and he agreed to call in the prescription.
Here is my rave. The vet in Salt Lake asked me if I’d considered working with a trainer to help Rogue. I’m grateful that I have a vet who obviously realizes that Rogue’s issues need to be addressed by not only medication, but also through training. I wholeheartedly agree that behavior modification is vital. I would never think that medication alone is the answer. I feel very privileged that we found Dr. Overall through Leslie McDevitt and that she has given us protocols of behavioral modification to work through in addition to her recommendations for medication.
However, here’s my rant. I think I literally bristled a little when he made that comment. Long before I decided to go down this avenue of seeking anti-anxiety medication for Rogue, I had been working with her to modify her behavior. I thought that I’d explained what we’ve done with Rogue prior to coming to him. In fact, I think that anyone who knows Rogue…knows the amount of time and effort we’ve put into training. Granted, in hindsight not all the training that we did was helpful. In fact I think some backfired, but I did what I hoped would help. Bleh, I don’t know, it just struck me like he thought that I hadn’t tried any training before. Whatever, that’s my rant for the day!
So…here’s the latest. We’ll start her out adding 10 mg. of Amitriptyline once a day for 10 days and then go to 10 mg. twice daily. I’ll keep everyone posted if we see any changes. Keep hoping for the best… 
We don’t seem to making any headway with our work to lessen Rogue’s anxiety or reactivity, even though we’ve adjusted her meds. To recap: 7 weeks of fluoxitine at 1mg dosage which was an error (fortunately on the safe side). Then we changed it to 10mg of fluoxitine daily for two weeks, which made her more aggressive towards the other dogs, and now we are closing in on 5 more weeks at 5 mg. daily. We’ll re-evaluate again at the first of March.
Frustration and impatience. Those two words would describe how I’ve felt about this process with Rogue lately. Well, and then guilt. Probably those three would sum it up. They usually come in that order too. I’ve been reading and re-reading the consult and protocols that we got from Dr. Overall, and this phrase always gets me, “these are the dogs who show you the type of person you can – but never expected – to become.”
When I first read that statement I thought, “yep, living with Rogue will reveal good qualities about us that we didn’t know we had.” How egotistical! LOL What I overlooked was that it was going to reveal many more negative qualities about myself than positive ones as her stress and anxiety wears on me. As we work through this process, I’m beginning to think that it’s more about being willing to see the flaws in your character and being willing to work to overcome them, to become a better person. Just my thoughts for today….
I’ve known for the last month that our trip to North Carolina with Zoe to compete in the AKC Nationals was not looking good. My husband came home the first part of January from work and told me that it was so slow that they were considering lay-offs. Being the perpetual optimist that he is, he wasn’t ready to cancel the trip. He wanted to wait till Feb. to see if things had picked up, as there was still a small possibility of things working out. So, I put off posting about this till we made a final decision. As the month wore on, the lay-offs became a reality for some of the employees, including a very good friend of ours. It wasn’t till last week that my husband finally said: “It doesn’t look very good for our trip to Nationals…” then he finished by saying: “but, it’s only Wednesday!” LOL
February is now here and we’ve made the decision to cancel the trip. It seems that for the moment his job is still “secure”, although I don’t think any jobs are secure these days. The problem is that with the lay-offs they need all the remaining employees to be able to step up “if” more work comes in, and so taking a two week vacation is just not possible right now.
I’d be lying to say that I’m not incredibly disappointed! I kind of felt like this was a once in a lifetime shot to compete with one of my dogs at a National level…but life goes on.
I’ve decided that sometimes all you can do is shake your head and laugh when things don’t go as planned. As you know, we started Rogue on fluoxitine and alprazolam 7 weeks ago. Well, I wasn’t seeing much improvement in her reactivity and so I contacted Dr. Overall again to update her and see if we needed to make adjustments in her dosage or in the medication itself, or if this was just typical.
Well, come to find out that the dosage that we’ve been giving her of 1 mg. daily of the fluoxitine was wrong. Turns out that was a typo and we should have been giving her at least 5 mg. daily, if not 10 mg. So, after I found that out, I tried to contact the vet here and he’s out of town till next Tuesday. Ughh! At the prompting of my friends at Sheltie Rescue I called the vet’s office again and asked if one of the other atttending vets would consider changing the dosage of the prescription, so that we don’t have to wait till next week. Fortunately, they were nice enough to do that for us, and we’ve picked up the new dosage today.
I’m trying to look at this as a really long ramp-up time on the meds, instead of just viewing the last 7 weeks as being wasted, but I’m only partly convinced. LOL Hopefully in the coming weeks we will have some progress to report. I hope!!!