Merry Christmas!

We had a lovely low-key Christmas, as usual. (Well, except for one thing.) Kaline, being a wee rambunctious man, didn't get invited to Auntie Jen's, so it was rather a Juno-centric day.

The night before, Juno, as predicted, was a very good girl at Christmas Eve dinner. She was in total work mode too—at the end of dinner but before we had left the restaurant, Auntie Jen asked to pet her and I said sure. Juno wasn't having it though! She kept politely touching her nose to Auntie Jen's hand and then backing up, like, “Yes, I like you, but I'm working right now so maybe we'll say hi later.” It was precious.

Juno in her ruff at the restaurant.

Mom and I stayed up late watching a movie and having doggie cuddles. Kaline was curled up in my lap/on my chest like a baby. Juno was on Mom, so there was no way to take a decent picture of both me and Kaline. So this will have to do:

Christmas morning dawned rainy and yucky, so I scooted each dog out individually to do his or her business (put them together, and they will take exponentially longer to get anything done), and then they had treadmill time. We headed down for them to have breakfast, and just as Juno finished inhaling her kibble, I noticed a bunch of red dots on the kitchen floor, like someone had been making some kind of jelly dessert and dripped everywhere.

And then I saw the wall in the family room, which had a huge red smear on it. Yes, Juno had whacked her lethal tail hard into the wall one too many times, and now she was bleeding everywhere.

I should probably mention that this has happened before, just not recently. When we first adopted her, her tail tip was totally raw from wagging in her narrow kennel run and constantly bashing it into the concrete walls. She kept busting it open and the vet was worried we'd eventually have to dock her tail. But we were careful for a while, she healed, and all was well. A few months later she bashed it open again following a bath, but again, she healed, and that was about the last time she did that. If you look at her tail now you can see the evidence, two little oval hairless patches.

I commenced a futile search for styptic powder and once that failed, stopped the bleeding with paper towels. I protected her tail successfully through her whole Christmas bath, only to have her thwack it against the doorjamb on her way out of the bathroom. Blood everywhere again.

Mom devised a bandage with non-stick gauze and medical tape. Most dogs probably would have nibbled it off, but once it was on (Juno did not enjoy that process) she completely left it alone. It stayed on the entire day, we had no more bleeding, and it would've stayed on probably through the night, if I hadn't cut it off to let her little wound breathe overnight.

So that was our Christmas drama.

Kaline stayed home in his crate while Juno, suitably spiffy in her Christmas ruff, came along to Auntie Jen's. She was great, following me closely almost the whole time (during dinner she left a few times to go beg and had to be called back). I got some excellent dog related presents, including a new Dremel (one that runs off a charger, instead of batteries—my current Dremel burns through four Double-A's every time I do Juno and Kaline's nails) and a lovely bone-shaped necklace charm. On once side it says JUNO in even, neat capital letters, and on the other side it says Kaline in letters that change in size, capitalization, and location. Pretty much sums them up, no?

Juno got to partake of many different Christmas foods, thanks to Mom, who was bubbling with glee due in no small part to the wine. (Usually one glass is enough to make her fall asleep ...) She got honeybaked ham, non-chocolatey bits of cookie, sourdough bread, baby carrots and who knows what else when I wasn't looking and going, “MOM! Whyyyyyy?!” But hey, she has an iron stomach and she deserves her treats, since she's the best dog ever.

Juno in front of the tree and all the presents. She's the best present!!!

Juno supervises present opening, using the table as a chin rest.

Me and Juno in front of the tree.

Juno and the mini-tree.

Training Kaline cheers me up

So, I've been sick and grumpy. Nobody wants to read other people's vents about being sick and grumpy.

Chilly little Kaline in Juno's Hallowe'en t-shirt. Dad's getting him pajamas for Xmas, hehe.

But today I've been doing a bunch of short training sessions with Kaline, and it definitely put me in a better mood.

First, though, an update on his neck. After a few months of being naked as much as possible but using the prong collar when a collar was required looking like the solution to the problem, it turns out it's not. Kaline had a tiny spot of very short hair on the back of his neck for a while, with an irritated follicle in the middle of it. Since it wasn't growing, I didn't really worry. Well, now it's growing. It's where the chain rests on the back of his neck. The hair on the front is still fine, grown in nicely, but he's got a couple irritated follicles there too. Cue despair.

Just kidding. I worked Kaline in the Infinity collar and his flat Tigers collar on Monday, and he worked pretty well in it, though he was pretty spastic in Trader Joe's. Thank goodness we were only there for about 10 minutes. He was trying to smell stuff, swinging his butt around randomly, etc. Then in line he did a perfect block, even leaning gently into the backs of my knees. He's a dog, not a robot, he's a dog, not a robot ...

Mom found a hidden stash of Christmas collars, yay!

Anyway. Tuesday I made a call to Paco Collars, based in Berkeley. I told them Kaline's issues, and they seem confident that one of their collars will do the trick. (Kay will end up working in the Infinity plus Paco Collar, until he progresses to the point where he can just work in the flat, like Juno.) I believe the word used to describe the lining of the collar was "buttery." Sounds delicious. So we are going to head up there on Saturday and hope they have a ready-made black Deluxe collar that will fit the wee man. I think they will. Not cheap, but if it finally solves the neck issue, I'll be happy. I know a ton of Dobermans wear Paco Collars, so it should work. Fingers and paws crossed.

Back to the training. Since the weekend, Kaline has gotten way better at doing the treadmill. He has now had seven total fifteen-minute sessions on the treadmill. On the first and second ones, he threw a fit and needed a lot of help to stay on. Three and four, he threw a fit but was able to stay on by himself. Five, he only put up a token fuss and walked nicely after that. Six, he got on by himself. And the rest is history.

It's really nice to know that that is now an option when Kaline needs to burn off some energy, because at least for now, roughhousing with big sis is no longer an option. He's got two little hairless tooth-marks on his neck. And I think we all know how insane I am about his neck (see above). He loves to have Juno chew on his neck, and she loves to oblige, so ...

We also worked a bunch on the fridge, because he was backsliding a little. Today, our new maize-and-blue tug came from Alex, a friend who is raising money for her future SD from Laughing Eyes Kennels. Both dogs love it, and Kaline is already starting to pull on the long middle part of the tug (on the rope toy, he refused to use anything but the little fringey strings at the bottom, which obviously led to the thing slipping abruptly out of his mouth a lot).

His take it is getting pretty good—he'll go for the blue bone on the floor—and he did very nice hold and out today. He walked around the kitchen with the bone in his mouth (I held my hand really close to his mouth in case he decided to drop it) and even did a sit-down-sit sequence with it in his mouth.

While Juno gets her turns on the treadmill, Kaline gets to practice his down-stay and settle, which is going nicely. I really want to just take a day and go to several different places with him and a book, and just work on settling under chairs/tables for extended periods of time. Super exciting, I know.

Juno did such a cute hold yesterday at training. Anne had left her bait bag way far away and was packing up her car. When I went to go grab Juno's leash (she'd been working off-leash), I saw the bag and told Juno to take it. She did, and she carried it all the way from that little area of the park over to Anne's car—where she sat and politely gave the bag to Anne. Yay.

I think the only other thing Kaline has really been focusing on is finding heel and finding front. Finding front is a lot harder for him, but we'll get there!

Generalization and more vomit

The good news: Kaline has generalized his open command to all the cabinets in the kitchen. He's mostly caught on that if a door is more resistant, he has to grab the tug closer to the handle. (Juno just pulls harder. It's fun to see what different techniques they have.)

We started on the fridge, and of course that is a little harder. It's a totally different door, a different tug (a rope toy, because knotted strips of old-t-shirt material won't work on that heavy of a door), and requires a much harder tug. He's gotten it open a couple times, but isn't getting it consistently yet. I've been playing tug a bit with him, which helps him realize that he's supposed to really pull on that toy.

Best part of working on the fridge is that Juno constantly peers over Kaline's shoulder, judging. "You're doing it wrong." And then if I really need something out of the fridge now (we keep working during dinner preparations), she gets to shoulder past her little brother and yank the fridge open on the first try. Gets her cookie and swaggers off.

Today it was rainy, and I had a burning desire to remain in pajamas all day, so Kaline had his first two sessions on the treadmill. Juno saw me get the little slip leash out (used only for the treadmill) and hopped up. I had Kaline go first though because I didn't want him messing with Juno while she was on. I figured once he had a go, he'd be too tired to bother her when it was her turn.

Originally, Juno and the treadmill were not friends. The first time I put her on, I had a massive protest on my hands. The trick is to just stay calm, ignore the protests, and keep them on the treadmill until they chill out and realize no one is going to die. So, as expected, Kaline threw a fit when I first put him on, and gradually settled down. I helped him out by putting a foot on either side of him, on the rails, to keep him centered—he kept drifting to the right. After he calmed down and walked nicely on the treadmill a while, I let him get off and Juno got her turn. Kaline wouldn't take treats from me until all four paws were on the carpet again, funny little man.

He stood very close as Juno trotted along. She loves going on the treadmill now—trots along happily, tail waving about. Kaline whined when she first got on—"Dude, that thing's evil! Don't you know it's going to try and kill you?!"—and then realized, like I said, that nothing bad was happening. He sniffed all along the machine carefully, licked the near rail very thoroughly, and constantly checked in with Juno, who ignored him studiously.

Kaline's second time was easier. He got going a lot more smoothly, and gradually I started moving to one rail or the other, so he could figure out how to keep himself centered without a leg to lean on. When he was okay with that, I got all the way off the treadmill and stood on his right side. Slowly I moved around to the front, where I sit to supervise Juno. Actually sitting was not really in the cards, but I was able to stand in basically the same spot. And when he was finished, I convinced him to eat treats from me before he got off. Win.

The bad news: Kaline's still barfing. He has been getting 10 mg of Pepcid every night with dinner and we were clear for a few days. Then this morning he had a nothing-vomit, and then he brought up half his breakfast later. (And tried to eat it again. What a boy.) Perhaps we will be back at the vet on Monday. Argh.