krissy
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Posts posted by krissy
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Not that much flaming or judging - just opinions and strong feelings and it is important to share these. To lock this thread would be a disservice - the contents will likely save a Greyhound's life one day. The arguments against off leash are very strong, and some new owner likely will be discouraged from taking a chance. And if they do take that risk their is info here that is very useful.
I don't know, I saw some harsh sentiments in there. The OP didn't really ask for opinions... she asked for advice on how to do it. Which is probably why she is now not commenting much as this has turned into an off leash debate... again.
Everybody here is judging. It's just, some are judging one way and some another.
Sure. And I judge the owners who bring in their new puppy and then tell me they don't have time/money/interest in taking it to puppy school. I judge the person who comes in and wants me to euthanize the healthy cat that belonged to his mother who just passed away (and I refuse to do it, FYI). I judge the person who calls because their pet has fleas/is limping/needs heartworm medication but we haven't seen the animal in 5 years and they don't want to pay for an exam fee because they don't need to see the doctor because their pet is "perfectly healthy" and they "just need the medication". I judge them all even though I try not to. Thing is, I do it in my head. I share the facts and my opinion in as non-judgemental a way as possible and the rest I just think. Which is what we should be doing here in this discussion. And we were. Couldn't expect it to last forever though I suppose. I'm impressed it lasted as long as it did anyway.
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Well... we WERE doing well not judging and flaming. 4.5 pages might be a record.
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I suppose this could be off topic, but I just found an older post on a blog that I recently started following. The post it is from was discussing a course she has taken in the past and is taking again because she enjoyed it so much. I guess every year they hold a contest where participants from the previous year can enter a video describing their experience with the Recallers course and if they win they get their next Recallers course for free. Anyway, this was her video about her whippets and I thought it was great. Highlights my personal feelings very well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9Bfrfd_TM2A
And here's the link to the post if you want to read more: http://rubythewhippet.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/teaching-a-brilliant-recall/
Oh, and last year's video. Her older dog was actually hit by a car before he could be taught a rock solid recall. A second time after taking the course, having a recall saved his life when his leash snapped. And she still feels comfortable letting him off leash now. I'm super interested in this online course and I think I'm going to look into taking it.
Alisha... maybe taking this course would give you the last bit of confidence you need to decide if you can/want to trust Henry off leash.
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In this case, OP is uncertain, which strongly suggests that OP's greyhound is not in fact as reliable as Hester and Jim.
I don't think that's true. Anyone would be uncertain the first few times they off leash their dog. You've never tried it before. You may have prepared both yourself and your dog well. You may have many hikes with a long line as previous experience. But you don't know for SURE until you try it. I'm always nervous the first time I try something. I was nervous the first time I rode a bike. I was nervous my first day of school. I was nervous my first day as a vet. Does that mean I wasn't ready to be a vet or that I'm a bad one? I don't think so. I'd just never done it before. I was nervous the first few times I off leashed Summit. I was nervous a couple of weekends ago when Summit was asked to be an agility demo dog for our trainer at the local humane society walk-a-thon. He hadn't trained outside yet this year. He's never performed at high noon (classes are always in the evenings). He'd never performed in front of so many people. I was really nervous that he might decide "Nah, I don't want to do agility right now" even though past experience tells me that he LOVES agility. I didn't know for sure what he'd do. He did great.
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In most cases, the "quality of life" thing is in the mind/practices of the owner and doesn't have much to do with which particular activities the dog participates in.
Leash vs. off-leash isn't just a greyhound thing. Over the years I haven't found a *need* to off-leash anybody outside a fenced area, unless s/he was doing a job that required it.
It's all shades of grey really. I mean, how do you define whether the dog needs to be doing said job, for example? Summit does not NEED to do agility. I do not, however, think it is all in my head that he enjoys it significantly. He is off leash for this activity inside of a ring with a fence that he could easily jump. How high does a fence need to be to be considered safe enough for a greyhound (or any dog for that matter)? I have a 5.5 foot fence at home that I doubt either dog would try to jump, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility. Baseball diamonds on the other hand usually have 4 foot fences. If they wanted to I suspect my dogs could jump it. Yet an off leash fun run with a bunch of greyhounds at that location would be acceptable to most people in the greyhound community. Which is very interesting to me.
I'm not here for an argument, but I think we need to bear in mind that our greyhounds are dogs which have been bred for a task. We have suborned this task into a gambling game, so that modern greyhounds never get the training that their ancestors had - which doesn't mean they can't BE trained. Sure, it's 100% harder after they've been brought up in one particular way, and there are many, many greyhounds who will never make the adjustment. That's where common sense comes in: if you have a dog who doesn't seem capable of learning a solid recall, and doesn't have the right temperament, you don't let them off-lead outside a fenced area. However, a small percentage of our ex-racers are perfectly capable of this, and I think it's wrong to make the owners of such animals feel guilty or pressured into reducing their dogs' quality of life.
I agree with this: if in doubt, don't. In other words, if your dog is unreliable, or if you don't have safe off-lead areas to walk, don't. If you have a particularly vulnerable dog, don't. If you have signed a legal contract which forbids it, don't. Etc.
Absolutely!
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Not that I am necessarily for or against off leash dogs:
At least for a lot of groups in the USA, when you sign the agreement, they can in fact do something about it, as many groups still retain partial ownership. Because the pets are indeed "property" I have read a lot of adoption clauses that retain partial ownership of the dog. I have also known a few groups that have gone out and reclaimed a dog for failure to abide the contract. Never specifically for an leash clause, but for other things that violated the contract.
This is the legal portion of my adoption agreement. "THE LEGAL PARTS:
10. --- retains a partial ownership lien on the greyhound whose tattoo numbers are shown onthis application. If at any time this dog is judged by FoG board members or by AnimalControl personnel or other legal authorities to be abused in any way, this adoption is nulland void. FoG may assume custody of the greyhound and all ownership rights will pass toFriends of Greyhounds. Adopter will forfeit any and all adoption rights.11. The adoption fee is non-refundable. --- accepts checks and credit cards. Dishonoredchecks or credit cards will nullify this adoption agreement.12. Failure to abide by this agreement may result in civil and/or criminal proceedings againstthe adopter. Should legal action become necessary, the adopter agrees to be liable forattorney’s fees should --- prevail.The adopter(s) signature(s)on the last page indicates agreement to all 12 (twelve) of these clauses."For the record, I have never seen a USA greyhound adoption contract that didn't have a leash clause. Greyhound grps are also so communicative, that you could essentially be blacklisted by many grps on heresay. I don't feel that's right, as quite frankly, I have never heard of a lost grey/injured grey that was due to being off leash. I think many groups have this clause to protect the not 100% commonsense owners. Many people adopt a grey and never research/train etc. There is nothing wrong with that, but instilling these fears into an adopted at the beginning may protect that hound in the future if the person staunchly believe they can never let the dog off leash.Ah, well, if they retain partial ownership then that is of course I different issue. I didn't realize groups did that since none of the ones I'm familiar with around here do. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm not sure I think that's right for an adoption group. I've heard of it from breeders if they want to show a dog or have some breeding rights. If my breeder had wanted to retain part ownership of Kili I probably would not have gotten her. As far as I'm concerned I should own my dog outright and I should be able to choose for him/her what to do. I mean, the group retaining partial ownership opens a whole can of worms doesn't it? If someone else owns part of my dog then why should they not pay part of the vet bills associated with said dog? That may be somewhere in the legal notes that they will not, but otherwise doesn't that leave them wide open to someone trying to get them to pay for a surgery they can't afford... say a leg amputation?
As far as blacklisting someone... sure maybe from some groups. It might make your life difficult but it's not like you can't get a greyhound. Of my own free will I eliminated one group in my area which made my life a heck of a lot harder in searching for dog number 2. I actually had an acquaintance in Georgia looking for a dog for me down there. Then I got the idea that a pup might be a good idea for a blank slate. Not many breeders, not many puppies, but they're there if you know where to look.
It would definitely suck if a bunch of adoption groups wouldn't adopt to you. But again, if that bothers you enough that you won't off leash your hounds it's probably not the blacklisting that is holding you back. It's probably that you're not comfortable with it or not sure how you feel about it. And that's the more important factor... how you as a person feel. I think for those of us who are really for off leashing our hounds, we simply wouldn't adopt from those groups and/or wouldn't care if we got blacklisted because we could get our hound elsewhere.
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No flames and no judgement........just a question.
When you adopted your dog, did you sign an agreement with the adoption agency stating that you would never let them off leash ? I know we had to read a book and a story about it before we were allowed to have Ruby and tell the agency what we read. I would be afraid they would never adopt to me again if I broke the rules. I am kind of a rule freak though......
I also know that Ruby will never ever be trustworthy enough to let off her leash. Learned that the hard way when she ran out the fence one day and we luckily found her over 9 miles away.
While it often sucks to think of our beloved pets as "property", in the eye of the law that is exactly what they are. When you "adopt" your dog, you are basically buying a piece of property. And once yours, your property is yours to do with as you see fit. In other words, I imagine that once you adopt your dog that is really no way that "off leash clause" in the contract is at all enforceable. If they discovered you were off leashing your hound they couldn't do much about it. You're right that they could choose not to adopt to you again. But there are other groups and not all of them have such strict rules.
Honestly, I think the off leash clause from an adoption group is sort of extreme. Kind of like the blanket rules some groups have of requiring a fence or no young children. Taking that off leash clause very literally it stands to reason that greyhounds adopted from such a group could never do agility or lure coursing, or competitive obedience. None of those sports take place in a securely fenced location. The fences that make up a lot of agility rings are shorter than the jump height the dog would be competing at. Summit's competition jump heigh in agility is 26" (I plan to compete him as a veteran so he will only jump at 22"... but that's still as tall as a lot of ring fencing). Same with outdoor obedience competitions. Kili's next conformation show takes place outside. She'll be on a lead... if you consider a show lead to be "on lead"... which I don't. According to the adoption contract I signed for Summit, he shouldn't be in an agility ring. Now, that group burned their bridge with me very shortly after I adopted Summit and I long ago decided I would never adopt from them again, hence one of the reasons I ended up getting Kili from a breeder.
To that end, if being off leash is something that most greyhounds really can't do as most adoption groups suggest and most people on this forum would probably suggest... it is interesting then that breeders of greyhounds do not have the same mindset. I doubt they love the breed or their dogs any less than adoption folks.
Yes, your dog can get injured while hiking off leash. But it depends. Summit never leaves the trail. Pretty hard for him to get hurt. Kili is all over the place and the things she does and runs into... absolutely amazing. No broken skin yet. Ticks depending on where you live may or may not be an issue. Same with snakes. In Ontario there are just a few hot spots for ticks. I now live in one of them so Kili gets tick protection since she's into the long grass all the time. There is only one area in Ontario that has a venomous snake. When we go camping/hiking up there I do elect to put a long line on to have greater control. But where we live snakes are not an issue. I guess my point is you have to weigh the true and perceived risks against the true and perceived benefits. I think most people would agree that keeping your child in a bubble is not necessarily the best thing for the child. I kind of feel the same way about my dogs. Of course there are risks of injuries when letting them run off leash. You minimize those risks to what you are willing to accept. I am not willing to accept a hit by car. So I don't off leash near roads. I AM willing to risk my dogs falling or running into something. You can live your life with all the "what ifs" and "what could bes" or you can do what your dogs do and live in the moment. I would be upset if something happened to one of my dogs, of course. But I imagine if I didn't go hiking myself in the Bruce Peninsula because they have venomous snakes and I was afraid of getting bitten. I would never get to enjoy that beautiful area. I wouldn't get to share that with the people I love or my dogs, whom I love. If I didn't go I'd never know what I was missing so I wouldn't be unhappy. But I try to find ways to put as much joy into my life as possible, so I try to find ways to put as much joy into the lives of my dogs too. I accept the risks that go with that.
At the end of the day... if you talk the talk you have to be able to walk the walk... so just pick whatever walk you are comfortable with. All there is to it.
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Oh, and the 'other training' you should consider is a quick response to the word 'WAIT!'. Having the ability to make them stop in their tracks and not move can be a life-saver for them.
This is really useful. We walk on the Cross Canada Trail sometimes and it does open out to small roads periodically. Kili I call back to me and leash. Summit I will allow to walk to within about 10 metres of the road and give him his "wait" command. He stops and waits until I catch up and then I go out and check the road for cars before releasing him to the trail on the other side. Also useful if we see approaching dogs or people. Or just if he gets too far ahead of me.
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I love, love, love off leash hiking my dogs.
I had Summit for almost exactly a year before I started off leashing him. We had done obedience and agility in the winter and summer. I had worked on his recall in fenced areas (our backyard, baseball diamonds, tennis courts. I had an lead that I used for hiking him that wrapped around my waist so I was hands free and gave him about 8 feet of space. But Summit stops and sniffs EVERYTHING and it's just not enjoyable to hike with a dog and you either have to keep stopping or I had to make him leave what he was sniffing to come with me which seemed to defeat the purpose of a hike... you know, a dog being a DOG! I was pretty confident in his recall and where we hiked was far from any sort of traffic and we usually didn't even run into other dogs. Summit also has zero (and I do mean ZERO) prey drive. I was hiking with a friend and I was just so fed up with having to stop with him or being distracted with talking to my friend and getting a jerk to my waist because he stopped suddenly and I didn't notice. So I took the leash off from around my waist and dropped it. He dragged the 10 foot leash the rest of the walk with no problems. After that I went out and bought a 20 foot training lead and he would drag that (from his harness, not a collar otherwise he stepped on it constantly). We practiced recall on the trails again and again. After a couple of months I stopped using the long line unless we went to a new trail that we were unfamiliar with. And now I just take him wherever I want with no leash of any sort.
Kili I started off leashing almost immediately to be honest. I had Summit to rely on for one thing, and getting her as a puppy we were working on recall right from the get go. Again, we hike in places where traffic is not an issue and I have never had a problem with her trying to chase anything. The biggest thing I watch out for is other dogs on the trails... but that's not a common occurence. She is extensively obedience trained and is starting agility in a couple of weeks.
Could my dogs ignore my recall? Yes. Have they? Honestly, yes. But that's why I choose not to offleash them in unsafe places. What you define as "safe" depends on how confident you are in their recall and their likelihood of chasing after something. The only time Summit "ignores" a recall is if he is just about to pee on something... then he will finish peeing and then come barreling back to me. I can call him off any dog from a full sprint. He has had rabbits run under his nose and never looked twice. So I'm more likely to call a place "safe" with him than with Kili who might at this point still ignore a recall to go see a dog. But places where we off leash are typically secluded hiking trails (conservation parks and the like) so it's really not an issue.
I have lost Summit all of ONCE since I started off leashing him... and it was my fault because I was chatting with a friend and didn't notice he got kind of left behind as we went by a fork in the trail. He got to the fork and didn't know which way we went so he went back to the truck. As soon as I realized he was missing I knew where he was. I hiked back to parking lot and found him standing beside the truck. When he saw me he happily joined me again and we all continued hiking again.
Ultimately it is your choice in terms of what you feel comfortable with. If you choose to off leash you can never slack on your recall practice (not that anyone should anyway). But it's so fun and free to just let your dog be a dog. Watching my guys run and play at the conservation puts the biggest smile on my face. I think the only thing the dogs and I enjoy more together is agility.
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Hmmm... no real advice. Summit gets eye drops every other night for his pannus. He just lets me do it. Never moves a muscle. Probably because he knows he's got a good treat coming his way. It's part of his bedtime ritual. Teeth brushed and eye drops and then his bedtime snack.
You can use a wall to help you so that he can only really try to throw his head one way, which would just be into you.
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Gosh, I must be a terrible person then. I always crate for the first couple of months home. I have small critters and I just don't want my home destroyed (we also rent still so that's a further consideration). My puppy has been crated every day since 8 weeks old and I can seriously see her being crated well until she's 2-3 years old.
I even crated Summit who had been in a home for 2.5 years before I got him as a bounce.
I love crates and baby gates. I think they are a dog's best friend (well, most dogs as some really can't be crated).
My puppy is crated all day. I come home at lunch to let her out and play with her for a bit. And she is crated overnight. She spends a lot of time in a crate. She doesn't mind. She's totally happy in there and she gets lots of attention, training, and exercise during the hours when she IS out of her crate. That part is important.
Freedom is earned in my household.
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Sorry to hear about the diagnosis. Lots of good thoughts for surgery today.
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Update: Kili's poops have been getting better and better. Today she had her first poop that was back to what I consider to be totally nomal for her. The consistency is totally firm and the colour has even returned to what I was used to previous to these problems. Her poops have always been fairly dark in colour (Summit's tend to be a much lighter colour) but in the last 2 months they had been much lighter (more like Summit's). I have even been slowly adding back one treat at a time so now we're up to 3. I will add them all back in avoiding chicken treats for now.
Yay!
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Very nice tribute. I was lucky enough to meet Treasure a handful of times while we lived in Guelph. She was a sweet girl who always stuck around with the humans looking for ear rubs at fun runs.
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Poops are still good today. Continuing to phase out the old food. We're probably about 75% switched over to the new diet. Guess the chicken diets weren't sitting too well with her. Happy to have nice firm poops again. Never thought I'd be so excited about poo in my life.
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Honestly, we switched Lilly to adult food at about 6 months. Mostly because she is the. pickiest. eater. EVER! And she hated the puppy food.
Oh god, not here. DBF used to call Summit the "food mongrel" but Kili is 10 times worse. She'll eat anything that isn't nailed down. She gets excited if she even THINKS there's food involved. Haven't seen her turn up her nose at anything I've offered yet.
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Changed her food to a salmon diet. So far so good!
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Honestly, the best food is what works for YOUR dog. And they're all different. Obviously as pet owners we want to try to feed our dogs the highest quality nutrition based on the opinions we have formed through research, word of mouth, speaking to our veterinarian, advertisements, etc. But your dog might have other ideas.
Prime example... I'm a veterinarian so I am very leery of "pet store foods". The Blue Buffalo commercials drive me absolutely bonkers (want to talk about a gimmick... that whole commercial is full of them... but I digress). I always feed a veterinary brand of food. Summit eats Hill's J/D and Kili took me several foods to find something that worked which ended up being Purina Veterinary Pediatric. Well the last month and a half I have been battling diarrhea/soft stool issues with Kili. I've done all her basic work up and she's clean (no parasites, etc.). So I finally decided to try switching her food. Couldn't really come up with a puppy food in any of the veterinary lines that had absolutely zero chicken in it (most had at least a small amount) so I sucked it up and went to the pet store. Only thing they really had with no chicken that was a true puppy food (not an "All Life Stages" food) was Taste of the Wild. I'm not a huge fan of TOTW personally. But I bought the food. I'm switching her over, and so far (fingers crossed) so good. Killed me a little inside to buy TOTW at the pet store. But if that's what works for her then that is really the only part that really matters in the end.
So pick something that you're comfortable with, that's in budget, and just give it a try. If it doesn't work you try something else. Sometimes it takes a couple of foods to get it right, and that's ok.
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No, not worried about her weight. She goes through cycles of being skinny because of her growth spurts, but then fills out just fine until the next one.
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She is not having overt diarrhea right now. Some days are worse than others but it is never as firm as it used to be. Some days are soft formed and other days are soft serve.
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Interesting. I don't think my vet has ever mentioned discontinuing Tylocine before a fecal culture.
We just did one, in fact. Reams of clostridium. Counts so high that the lab had trouble doing the toxin assay (negative). Dog is now on Metronidazole and Tylocine. Still not doing well, but at least now eating thanks to pred and Stanozolol.
I understand about the scoping. Horrifically expensive and the prep is awful.
In theory if the animal is on an antibiotic and you get negative cultures... you see where I'm going. Of course if you get a positive result then that's great, but how do you know the negative is truly negative and not just that the antibiotic has knocked the pathogen load down low enough that it doesn't get detected. Then you're not sure. Which sucks.
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She has been checked for parasites to the point that it's becoming a bit of a waste of money to run them. They are always clean. Which isn't to say she really is clean. Whipworm can be a bugger to find. So I'm deworming her anyway.
At first I thought it was because the weather warmed up so she was out on the trails more and was maybe getting into stuff but there was really no correlation with when she would be loose and when we'd been walking. Now she's always loose.
Batmom - that's a good list of foods, but I don't think any are approved for growth. I'll probably just go back to rice and for treats I'm going to take ground beef and mix it with oatmeal. Then I bake it and cut it up. Hopefully if I do that for a few days things will improve. I don't know though. Last time wasn't helpful.
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How old is she now? Could be she doesn't need puppy food anymore, or could get by with half and half puppy and adult. (BTW, I won't feed Royal Canin anything -- baaaaaaaaad experience some years back.)
What I would do: Worm with something that covers rounds and hooks at 2-3 week intervals; do 3-4 cycles. Feed soft-cooked white rice + cooked ground beef + calcium carbonate and NOTHING else (no treats, no meds other than required antibiotics/heartworm meds, no probiotics, NOTHING ELSE) for 3 days; if better, continue for another 3-5 days and then gradually start adding whatever's most important to you. Leave at least 3 days and preferably 5 between each thing you add. If you're training, you can get freeze-dried beef with no additives; costly but less than a vet visit
.Soft-cooked white rice: Add 30-50% more water than you'd use to feed people, and cook till all water absorbed. If you don't do this, it'll often go straight through the dog. Eeeeeeeeeeuw.
Panacur is nice for worming. Costly but it's pretty effective against giardia too.
If the rice + beef doesn't help, I'd probably get an abdominal x-ray if you haven't; if that's clear, I'd go to a straight protein rather than trying to guess which carb she might tolerate. I know folks here use potatoes, oatmeal, noodles, but I have had very poor results with most of those over 40 years and a bunch of dogs. The only one other than rice that I'll feed regularly is noodles. For protein, I like beef because it's readily available, has a reasonable number of calories and, while dogs can be allergic to it, allergy isn't all that common.
Already tried all of this I think. Haven't x-rayed her yet because I am really trying not to go down that road again. Plus she just had multiple abdominal ultrasounds in the last few months for her urinary issues and I really can't imagine what could have come up in that time that would actually show up. IBD often doesn't even have ultrasound changes, definitely not radiographic. Even though I'm her vet I still have to pay for stuff or put it through insurance and the last thing I need is for her insurance coverage to drop because she has so many claims and then actually need it for something like a catastrophic injury. I tried rice only diet for 3 days with absolutely no improvement. And then she was driving me nuts in the house because I couldn't walk her, off leash her, or train her with just rice. It was an absolute nightmare. Diarrhea AND annoying ** disturber. Bad combination. Already deworming with Panacur for whips right now. Also dewormed with Strongid last time around (couple months ago). Haven't done a fecal culture yet because I'm 99% sure it'll be negative and it's expensive. But if this latest food switch doesn't work then I'm going to have to go to the culture as my next step.
I'm not sure if the issue is too much puppy food but she's only 9 months and I'm loathe to take her off puppy food that young when she's so active and so thin still (thankfully she's coming out of a growth spurt and filling out again so for a few weeks at least I can stop hearing about how I need to feed my dog).
Yep. Joey does the same thing. It drives me completely nuts. Some days it will be firm, some days just liquid. Sometimes firm and liquid on the same day. And since he just ate my couch, his life expectancy just dropped very quickly so I might not have to deal with it much longer!
He does not have worms, has no other issues, just poop issues. Tomorrow I think I am going to go buy some slippery elm I used it for my Dobe and try it.
Pumpkin, psylium seed powder, probiotics, l-glutamine, yogurt, etc all tried and nothing worked. The one food Joey did best on is RedPaw 32K. Although the place I got it from just jumped the price up sky high. They are looking into and hopefully it might be a pricing error.
Ugh! This is Kili, except lately it's just soft or softer, she's quit with the firm stool for several weeks now. Maybe greyhound puppies just do this? I don't know but it's irritating as all hell.
Maybe try some Tylocine?I haven't found Tylocine does much for food issues. Can help recovery from other things though. Like antibiotics used for UTIs.I know you know this, but it's different when you're living through it: a gut can take a long long time to settle after getting out of whack.
I was thinking of trying Tylosin with her but then if that doesn't work I won't have the option of doing a fecal culture until several weeks after the last dose. And I think the culture is probably my next step of choice in terms of diagnostics. Really don't want to end up back at the specialist for another scoping. That used up a lot of insurance coverage AND ate a hole in my bank account. Double whammy when I'm not doing the work myself.
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Cute! Would never happen at my house where both dogs eat so quickly they often choke themselves.
No Judgments... Question About Off-Leash Hiking
in Training and Behavior discussion
Posted
No, it is judgemental to speak down to someone or in such a way as to intentionally make them feel bad... in a way that is not constructive.
"I'm not sure if anyone has thought of this, but doesn't one of your dogs have seizures? Are his seizures well controlled on his medication right now? Because something you maybe didn't think of that I think is worth mentioning is that..." and into the reasons about the seizures. Does that not sound a lot less judgemental? Because it does to me. I might feel bad thinking "Oh my gosh, how could I have forgotten about that!" but I'm not going to feel like the dirt under your shoe. That's the difference between stating a fact/opinion and being judgemental.
And that is all I have to say about any of this. It was fun until the judging started. I'm not interested in the rest of this conversation. It is going nowhere good except to get locked.