I have wanted another dog for a long time, but had yet to find a good match.
Odinn is a black and white fuzzy mess of a puppy. He is going to be a large dog, a giant in fact. Although we are still atempting to figure out his breed mix, we know he is a St. Bernard mix.
This is Odinn the night we got him. We choose the name Odinn for him to represent his vast size and greatness that he will one day be, but also his kind and gentle nature.
Here are some ideas of breed combos so far, and the names I've come up with:
- Saint Pyrenees = Saint Bernard x Great Pyrenees
- Newfound Saint = Saint Bernard x Newfoundland
- Landseer = a type of Newfie mix, a black and white one. This is actually purebred, but it's a thought.
And the winner of the breed matching?...He's a mutt!
But for the purpose of calling him something Robert, my husband, has come up with the perfect breed for him:
Saint Beast!
His health is in jeopardy!
Now, Odinn seemed really healthy when we got him, maybe because he just slept. A LOT! He is always sleeping. Maybe it's a giant breed thing. But as soon as we got him home, he started throwing up..and throwing up...and...you get the point.. I think I counted about 5-6 cups of food of some sort. It was very strong, almost like a cat food, or maybe it was some really crappy dog food like gravy train or Ol'Roy, who knows, but this lil boy was sick...as a dog...if you don't mind the pun.
Once he finally stopped throwing up, the diarrhea began. Horrible poops, the "Hershey squirts" as I like to call it. For a puppy though, he had good manners, never in the house did he have an accident. He whined to go outside, GOOD BOY! Thank god for my parents and their endless supply of newspaper! It's called going green people, recycle and reuse! Geesh, man was he sick. It stopped resembling poop after the first two movements, then it was just water after that. But even as sick as he was, he drank plenty so he was never dehydrated.
**Quick Note and Disclaimer**
I'm sure you've already figured this out, but I'm going to talk about poop every now and then. If it grosses you out don't read it. Poop is a major part of life, everyone does it, and it's a major indicator of health in all living organisms. It's poop. I have kids and animals and have worked with animals for a long time, poop is so just poop to me now. Get over it! Thank you....
Moving on..
We tried feeding Odinn, but he didn't want anything. Because I've worked with animals for so long I have several medical tricks up my sleeve. All this stuff is common sense and second nature to me but only because I've been doing it for so long.
Let's discuss what to do in case your dog has diarrhea:
- Fasting: you can fast a dog from it's food for 24 hours to help it's stomach and digestive tract to relax. Sometimes the intestinal tract gets so irritated and inflamed that it's best to let it rest.
- Rice: putting rice in your dog's food allows the rice to absorb the access liquid within the intestines and help firm up the stool.
- Pumpkin: all natural pumpkin, not canned pumpkin. I cannot emphasize that enough. Canned pumpkin has sugars and additives in it for pie filling. Natural pumpkin is the actual vegetable, but you can get regular canned pumpkin. Organic is best in my opinion, but non organic is fine too. Something about pumpkin helps a dog to feel better because it helps to settle the stomach and it helps to firm up the poops.
- Immodium Anti Diarrheal: I am NOT a Vet, but a vet will tell you the same thing. If you've tried everything else and if all else fails and you're concerned about the health of your dog, 1 Imodium pill will help. No more than that. Hide it in some cheese or throat jam it if you can do that, most dogs won't take the pill by itself.
Ok, another thing, when I'm talking about Diarrhea I mean full on Diarrhea. Soft stools and loose stools are different than full blown diarrhea. You don't take the steps I listed above when your dog has loose poops, you only do this when they are sick. Odinn had diarrhea; it was watery, painful, and resembled poop in no way or form.
So after seeing these things, let's think about what we did for poor Odinn:
- First if your dog has diarrhea, you fast them, no food for 24 hours. But...this is a puppy..can't do that. Not providing food for a young puppy can be detrimental and possibly fatal...
- Second rice. Ok did the rice thing. I throw rice into a bowl and he just looks at it and goes back to sleep...Crud! What do I do if he won't eat.....Make it taste good? Yes! I mixed in some chicken broth, all organic and free range thank you very much, and he liked that. But it is a double edged sword. The rice will help but the broth may make him have more poops. Well Dangit! So much for that...Next step..
- Third, got some canned pumpkin. They say most dogs don't like pumpkin. Well tell Odinn that cause he looooooves it! Ate a bunch of it and it seemed to help a bit, but he still had diarrhea.
On the fourth day of some serisouly bad diarrhea, I decided to give Odinn an Immodium. It helped but it wasn't perfect. I fed him nothing but rice and cooked chicken and that helped too. Fasting wasn't an option and because of how sick he was, he was losing weight, but still hydrated. I got him dewormed and got his first set of shots. And yes I do vaccinate my own animals. I do everything I can for them myself, other than rabies, when I can.
Why not take him to the vet?!
Yes, good question. Why didn't I bring him to the vet? Because it was the holidays and no one was open other than emergency clinics and I'm not going to pay an emergency vet more than my own kid's doctor for advice and medication I already have and know. So that's why.
I decided to start feeding him normal food, because even though he was having diarrhea, he wasn't acting sick anymore. He was happy, playful, mouthy, chewing everything and just acting like a normal puppy. I figure that even though his poop is gross, I will feed him so he will gain weight and get the calories he needs. Especially being a large breed puppy I couldn't afford to skimp on the calories because there could be long term consequences if he wasn't growing properly. Before I started feeding him normal he was getting really thin, and I could feel his hip bones. It was pretty scary.
After almost a week of diarrhea I decided to accept the fact that Odinn is just going to have really, really loose poop, he's just one of "those" dogs that has it. It's been 2 weeks since we've had Odinn now and he is still Mr.Loosey Poopy but he is healthy and growing. So just one of those things. He's been cleared in health otherwise, there is nothing wrong with him.
Training!
Odinn is crazy smart! He is learning very well and takes direction well. But when he is done, he's done. He starts getting frustrated with something and he starts being all barky and loud and whiny. It's like geesh dog, geesh alright already.
Leash training is going ok, he likes to chew the leash so that's something new I haven't trained with a dog before. He is also very sensitive with his throat, so I would like to get an Easy Walk harness for him, but since he is going to grow so much I'd hate to keep up sizing every time he gets a growth spurt lol. No fun.
Housetraining is going fairly well. He always poops outside. He has had one accident but that was my fault, I was not paying attention to his cues and he wandered off. He has a piddling problem we're working on, but this means I have to take him outside every 12m or so. I had a belly band on him for a while, one I made because I didn't want to spend 25 dollars on something like that.
Odinn's belly band:
All in all, Odinn is a great puppy. His personality and energy level is perfect for our family and great with our kids. Although he does the normal annoying puppy things he is getting better and I think he is actually a lot younger than we first thought. Supposedly he is 10 weeks old, but he may in truth only be 5 or 6 weeks old.
Well sorry for the long winded blog but wanted to get you up to date with the entire beginning. Lots more blogging to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment