jetcitywoman

Capri is on monthly Adequan. I do her injections with no problem. The first month you do one a week, like a jump start, then it's once a month after that. It really worked well for her, in addition to a 1/2 tab of Novox (NSAID) twice a day. She has age-related osteo arthritis. Also, my vet gave me the rx and I buy it from Drs Foster and Smith to get the best price.

BTW, and off topic, but I really LOVE the pin that Nittany gave out in all the vendor packets. It's most beautimus. I don't really wear pins, but am thinking about buying some sort of scarf that I can hang up and display pretty pins like this one.

Hey there, just wanted to post a followup. I actually did buy one of these and used it this weekend at Gig. It was PERFECT! Thank you so much! I had no idea they made functional hand trucks that were foldable and so small and light. It's now a permanent part of my "event kit".

Here's a very well made short video that explains how to know when your dog wants to be petted:

Yep, I'm going to get that folding hand truck for sure. I agree with Jen, though, it would be a nice fundraiser for a rescue group. I didn't bother Tina and her crew because they already have their hands full and I'm sure they would have offered it if they could.

Thanks for that hand truck reference. I'm impressed with people saying they put it into the overhead bin on a plane! I also like the no-air-required tires. The hand cart we currently have, in addition to not being foldable or light, has flat tires. This sounds like just what I need!

... or attendee, I suppose. I get to vend as a merchant at Gettysburg this year and I'm jumping up and down excited about it. The vendor info says that this year cars won't be allowed to drive into the building to load/unload, though, so we need to bring our own dollies or carts. I'm a small vendor who will pack my car full of merchandise and really don't have room for a dolly or cart too. I'll make do. But my idea is that someone should bring like 5 or 10 dollies and hand carts and rent them to us vendors for something like a dollar each, in 15 minute increments. You wouldn't make a huge amount of money, but it would sure be helpful!

Darkhorse, thanks for that comparison. I've had my two greys for over 12 years now and had no idea that their pet weight could be lower than race weight. This particular dog confused me also because I got him from a previous adopter who told us that she believed in keeping her dogs AT race weight, so she'd been feeding him one cup of food a day. There's a thread elsewhere here that I created to talk about that. We don't know what her exact idea of a "cup" was, but ours is the scoop that came with this dog food bin and we've been feeding him 2 level cups twice a day to get his weight up. When we got him, he was very thin, well-defined muscles, hip points, vertebra and most ribs showing. Not emaciated, but clearly too thin. Now he's looking about right. She hadn't had him very long. He retired somewhere around the end of 2015.

I understand and agree with everything you guys are saying. He looks good, so he's probably fine. But I tend not to notice slow weight gain or loss with my eyeballs until the gain/loss is around 7 pounds or more, so I like to have an actual numeric metric. When I finally do notice that the dog looks too thin or thick, I'll take him/her to the vet or a Petco and get the weight measured to verify if my thoughts are right. If I don't do that, then I'll be another one of those people walking around with obese dogs. I agree 1000% that the race weight is only a point of reference, not one of the ten commandments, but I think it's a very convenient point of reference so I like to use it. It takes into consideration that dog's size and fitness. I do discount the fitness once he's my pet because he's not racing anymore, but it's still a good point of reference for a dog of his size. Without that you have to go by breed standards, and then... well, he's between 65 and 95 pounds so he's good, right? (Meaning there's too much variance in the breed standard because it doesn't take into account the dog's bone structure or size.)

I read that link and it sort of uses the race weight recorded in greyhound-data as a point of reference too. He's sort of an average size male, but without using his race weight as a reference point I'm not sure where he should be. Is he good at 63 or is that underweight? Should he be 70 or will that be overweight?

Hey experienced people, I am confused by our foster-soon-to-be-ours. For whatever reason they didn't enter his weight into greyhound-data, but Trackinfo shows him racing at 66 pounds (on average). When we first got him in late November, we took him to the vet to get a weight and he was 61 pounds. He looked underweight, so we've been feeding him up a little, trying to get him up to his race weight at least. I try to keep my dogs about 5 pounds over race weight, plus or minus 2, depending on how they look. So for the last week or so we think he's looking just about perfect. Can see his last two ribs, just about what everyone here would agree is a good weight. Took him to the vet again for a weigh-in and he's up to 63. I'm a bit befuddled. Is it possible they raced him too heavy? I'll try to get some good pictures to show you guys, but... I can't imagine his correct weight is below race... very confusing. Thoughts?

We have two greys and a cat and we foster fairly regularly. I'm leaning in agreement with PriarieProf. While your cats can run out of the room or under furniture to be safe, that's not a good way for them to live. Based on my own experience, I would ask to exchange the dog for one that's proven cat safe. It's not a failure on your part to do that, nor is it rejection or cruel to the dog. All members of your family must live in harmony. I've seen the range of cat safe in my own house. My boy Ajax was cat safe but mischievous and would occasionally chase and mock-pounce the cat. While the cat hated that, she still realized that he wasn't out for blood so they frequently kissed and shared the house peacefully. On the other hand, we did foster a cat eater for a few weeks and that was very different. I knew it and the cat knew it. The cat stayed hidden the entire time we fostered that dog and we had to move her food to a high place in a baby-gated room so she could eat. Your dog sounds like that foster to me.

There's no problem really. Annie is teaching the puppy proper manners, that's all. I would closely supervise them together to make sure no one gets injured. But the puppy needs to learn to leave Annie alone when she's done playing and the best way to learn that lesson is for Annie to correct the puppy.

Chase games are always fun, and related activities like hide and seek. (You hide and call, they seek. This one takes a little scheming but is fun because it forces them to puzzle out where you are.) For food motivated dogs, interactive puzzle games are great fun. I have some very clever ones in my shop you might want to take a look at.

What everybody else said, but I think the missing piece of the puzzle is trust. She doesn't know that she can trust you to let her out when she needs to go. Trust takes a long time to build, especially in dogs that have been rescued from terrible conditions, like most galgos. (And I'm referring to their lives with the galguerros, not the shelters like Scooby or GDS or wherever.) It will take time to teach her about this new type of human that actually loves, protects and takes good care of her. So in addition to what everybody else said, I would say to back up to the 2-hour potty break schedule, try your best to get into a regular routine so that she gets a sense of stability and always knows what happens next in her day, and stay patient. It sounds like you're doing everything right, you just need to let her guide the pace at which your mutual trust is built.

I'm thinking that it's in his best interest to go to a home that's not close to the airport like we are. I'm okay with that because we know him well enough now that we can give him a glowing reference. He's an awesome dog in every way but this. I'm not so selfish as to make him endure daily fear to live with us, though. I think I'm sort of asking more if my thoughts on this are wrong. We would LOVE to keep him, but I would love more to see him happy.

I've used both the No-Pull harness and the HarnessLead and like them both. They're very different from each other, but both are easy to put on and very hard to escape from and both gently discourage pulling. The HarnessLead has the added advantage of being resizeable as your dog grows, if you buy it for a puppy. I fitted one on a 6-week old pup at a local vending event in November and it was stinking cute and worked great!

Does anybody here live very close to an airport, or military base or other things with routine loud noises, and have a noise-sensitive dog? Can the dog be trained to get used to the noises? We're fostering with intent to adopt a very lovely and wonderful young greyhound, but we live within 2 miles of a major international airport. The plane noise doesn't bother us at all. But it bothers him. On overcast days, the plane noise seems to echo and roll and rumble between the cloud layer and the ground and he reacts just like it's thunder. He'll go outside to potty and run back inside in fear. Then he'll refuse to go out and potty in the house. On clear sunny days it's less noisy but he can still hear the planes. He'll jump off the couch in high alert and go from window to window looking for the scary thing. He's thunderphobic as well. We can deal with that because it's only a few days each summer. But the airport noise... pretty regular! I'm wondering if keeping him would be bad for him. He'd basically be on high alert almost every day, which is a lot of stress to deal with on a regular basis. Unless we can somehow teach him that the airplane noises aren't harmful? But how? Thoughts?

Ah, Kristie, that's an extremely good point. No, she only gave us a bag full of kibble with no scooper. For all we know her "cup" was 3 measuring cups... Over the past week we've discovered that he's super food motivated, super smart, and also toy-motivated. He gets into things like the recycle bin and redecorates the living room with torn plastic bags (bad husband, who was working from home that day but ignoring the dogs...!) unless we keep him well exercised. This morning I took him out in the back yard to chase toys around and ended up teaching him to fetch. He's very happy to bring the toy back and drop it near my feet in exchange for a bit of treat. I'll have to get a good side-view picture. He looks fine, a little bit on the thin side for a recently retired dog, but not emaciated.

Thanks everyone. As per here is a picture. It's not a terrific one, but... it does show his adorbs folded-up ears. Those ears go everywhere except back in the typical streamlined "ducktail" do. His personality is even cuter. He's a huggy, kissy, playful boy.

Okay, fair point about the quality of the food. I have no idea what kibble she was feeding even though she gave us some because it was given to us in a plastic grocery bag. We feed a moderate-protein, high quality salmon/whitefish and sweet potato kibble (Nature's Select). Dick, I got his race weight by looking at his more recent Trackinfo records. So that was his weight at about 3 years old. I don't think there's anything bad about race weight. It seems to me we use it more as a matter of reference because a lot of people can't tell a proper weight by looking at the dog. I admit to that problem, my dogs creep toward chunky if I didn't weight them occasionally, even though I feed them a measured amount every day. It's the "boiled frog" syndrome for me. (and the treats...) I actually do both: appearance and measured weight relative to recorded race weight.

Just for a rough comparison, Capri raced at 58 pounds and I keep her around 60 pounds give or take 2. She is twelve now so take that into consideration, but she looks almost twice as big as him. I feed her 3 cups/day to maintain that weight. Oh, and I should say that we have NOT been feeding him 1/day. We immediately started feeding him 2 cups/day. That lady also mentioned that he was a counter surfer and had stomach problems so she gave us a bottle of pepto for him. We're feeding him twice a day and there's been no counter surfing or stomach problems. He has firm, normal size poos now (diarhea the first day).

This week we started fostering a male greyhound who raced at about 62 pounds. My group adopted him to a lady who happens to be 75 years old. That's not a problem, but the story is she got wrapped up in the leash and fell and broke her shoulder. So she can't take care of the dog while she heals, but she's also now fearful of it happening again so we have the option of keeping him if we decide we want to and he does well with us. He's super affectionate and playful, a spunky 4-year old shiny black bit of eye candy so of course we'd love to keep him. I think he'll do great with us, but am willing to play it by ear for a few months and not make snap (and biased) judgements. However... When the adoption rep brought him to us, with his toys and some of the food that lady was feeding him so we can transition him to our food, she mentioned that the lady was feeding him 1 cup. I was like "... A DAY???" She said yes but they did NOT tell her to feed him that little. For some reason, despite what they advised her, she thinks she needs to keep him at race weight. So I'm sort of thinking we should keep him because I don't know if I could hand him back over to her to be fed that little. I'd love to hear from our experienced folks here, Batmon and Dmdsmoxie and others... approximately how much do you feed to keep a dog at race weight? I can't believe it's as little as one cup of food a day. If I do give him back to her after her shoulder heals, I want to work with the adoption reps to strongly advise her to feed him more appropriately, so I need to know the facts. He hasn't been with her long yet, so he's not skeletal. He's very thin in appearance, looks race weight or just under. I think he should be at a retired weight of about 68 - 70 pounds.

I did my first (her second) dose last night and it went fine even though the needle was a little too long/big. I'll definitely buy the appropriate size needles when I have to reorder, but for now the ones I got will work. Sort of tangential, it showed me just how delicate greyhound skin is. When I do my own sub-q medication, my skin has enough elasticity that most times it takes a bit of force to insert the needle. With Capri, it went in with so little resistance that I doubted if I'd done it right and wiped my hand over her fur to see it if was wet! Like maybe I'd injected the meds between the hairs of her coat! But she was dry so it was fine.

We did talk about that. It's approved use is intramuscular but vets have been experimenting with sub-q also and finding that it works just as well that way. The vet said that it hurts a little more in the muscle but she said I can do it either way I'm (and Capri is) comfortable with. The vet did her first injection on Saturday sub-q. Thanks! this is what I'll get next time. Fortunately I only bought 8 syringes to start with. My meds are pre-filled syringes also, that's how I got tripped up on this. I didn't find adequan offered that way, though. Maybe it depends. Both Costco and Wegman's pharmacies said that they'd have to pre-order it for us and it's sometimes hard to get. F&S had it in stock so that's who I went with, but it was only in vials. She's got some loose skin on the back of her neck and shoulders, so I'll do it there. The vet told me I could do it anywhere I could pick up enough skin.