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GreytTerp

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Everything posted by GreytTerp

  1. Very excited for you and your boyfriend! My (then boyfriend, now husband) and I adopted our big boy from Old Dominion Greyhound Adoption (formerly NGAP's Virginia Beach affiliate) while living in Hampton, VA. The big boys are definitely the needy sweethearts You will find that you are the one who has been adopted very quickly! We moved up to the DC metro area about a year and a half ago, and we reached out to the groups in our new area right away for vet recommendations, meet & greets, and other activities. We now go to meet and greets with Greyhound Welfare, and we have also done a meet and greet with Greyt Expectations. We've had such awesome support from all three groups - any group will always be there for you and your new hound.
  2. When we first brought Marvin home, he didn't know how to use his paws at all. He really wanted to try out his chew toys and get everything out of his kong, but he just couldn't figure out how to use his paws to hold and position his prize (we were laughing and taking pictures instead of helping...). Now, he's a pro and it's more laziness than a lack of skill for him to not use his paws while tackling a bone or his antler. He's always been a dog to reach out and put his paw over my foot or ankle if I'm standing near him while he's stretched out on the floor. I'm sure Daisy will learn everything she needs to know from Charlie!
  3. Our guy can also destroy a bully stick or yak chew in minutes, but he's not quite bright enough to have figured out the kong completely... Since your hound is so food obsessed, I would caution against a knuckle bone because of the effect eating so much bone meal can have on uh...the poop. With Marvin, the bone meal made his poo too dry and crumbly, and he had a lot of trouble on the back end. Consistency was the key for us, and it has also helped that everywhere we've lived, the kitchen was not an open kitchen. Putting down an empty spray bottle or baby gating the entrance was more than sufficient to keep him safely out of the kitchen. Marvin knows exactly what 'Get out of the kitchen' means, but it doesn't mean he doesn't still test the boundaries every few months. We only give treats if he has earned them, and we also found the game Krissy showed to be really helpful. It took several months to get Marvin to be less food-obsessed, but he's come a long way. The path might have been easier if we'd named him something other than Starvin' Marvin...
  4. I'm thinking plastic ornament pieces might be similar to chewed up plastic cat toy, a couple of pens, plastic lid/top of a milk carton and a chicken stock container, etc...? In our case, and this has happened about 8 times now and is predictable enough that we can prepare the night before (put blankets down, mix the oxy-clean, shut the bedroom door to keep him with us, etc.), the pieces might settle in his stomach but not block the exit and just cause some irritation. When this happens, our hound ends up vomiting up the pieces about 12 to 12 1/2 hours after his last meal (so about 5-6 am) and is just fine. For whatever reason, he doesn't seem to push much through and out the other end...not that we haven't been surprised on that occasionally as well. Unless your pup gets some odd gas build up, little is likely to show up on the x-ray. Canned pumpkin has also worked really well for us to 'flush him out' when we know he chewed up something into pieces small enough to pass. I'm sure he'll be just fine, and you'll start seeing ornament pieces in a few hours...!
  5. This sounds just like our Marvin. Twinkle Toes when it comes to avoiding stepping in poop of any kind, but not at all disturbed by peeing on his front leg or stepping right in his own puddle He also gets the adrenaline rush when he finishes a BM...we think it comes from being in such a vulnerable position, and also probably from just being happy and proud of himself. We had the 'brakes' problem while we were living in Hampton (hello, neighbor!) on walks, where it always seemed that he did not want to turn for home or didn't want to walk the regular route. We picked up some tricks from this board to get him moving again (treats, turning in circles, doing a slight direction change, and so on), and after a few months, the daily episodes of frozen hound subsided. I don't have much advice on the punting, other than to take cover
  6. Our boy came with rather long nails, and he hates getting them done by us, with the dremel or clippers. Anyone else, he is a perfect angel for...so I just hand over $10 every two or three weeks to the groomer down the street. It was been suggested to us that when our hound eventually comes due for a dental, that while he is under, the vet can cut the nails way back with a laser, cauterizing the quick, if we are still having trouble keeping the nails short. It might be worth if if your dog's nails are as extreme in length as it sounds.
  7. We also do a mix, and one of the bags is Iams Healthy Naturals. We used to think our boy was just a soft-pooper too, until we started mixing in some Iams. We just stick to two proteins we know he can handle, leaving the rest for in case he develops a food allergy, etc. Giving him variety is more for us - the day he doesn't go crazy for his meals will be the day we rush him to the vet for a check-up..
  8. We also gave up after 2 years on "high-end" food (Blue Buffalo Fish & Sweet Potato) due to inconsistent poos. We finally caved to the GreyTalk board support and switched to IAMS - we are now feeding the IAMS Healthy Naturals Chicken & Barley, and we have mixed in the other two IAMS Healthy Naturals varieties (one is fish and the other is chicken & peas grain-free) from time to time. We did not think our guy tolerated chicken or rice very well, but he has done great in the past 4 months, even with chicken. Sidewalk-bouncing poops like clockwork. We are officially converts. Good luck! We tried different foods for almost 2 years before finally setting on one consistently.
  9. As a reply to the "Has anyone successfully had their grey home alone for 12 hours?", we have. It's not 5 days a week, but from now through July (at least), it is about 11 hours 2 days a week. We did a streaming webcam a few times just to see if our hound did anything other than shift sleeping positions, and he literally just migrates every few hours from various dog beds, couch, blanket piles, floor in the sun, etc. We have never crated (and don't even have one, as our adoption group doesn't use them), just baby-gated. Our new place is so small though (~800 sq. ft) that we no longer baby gate, and Marvin is perfectly fine. On those long days, when home, we make sure Marvin gets all the playtime he can handle and a nice long walk. Marvin is a very social dog though, and we have started having a dog walker come over one of the long days to help keep him on the same dinner schedule and let him be social. The long days alone aren't ideal, but IMO, it's completely doable. As an FYI, we use both rover.com and dogvacay.com for boarding and for dog walkers, and we have found great people (and their dogs), including a bunch with greyhound experience.
  10. Since you mentioned agility, I just wanted to add that we have had (what we think anyway) good success with basic agility (just learning the equipment at lower settings and starting to add things together) in combination with obedience training. We've done a mix of 3 agility classes to 1 obedience class. It's all about positive reinforcement, and our hound responded almost immediately. Marvin now has a lot more confidence in himself and in us, as well as a major increase in his focus around distractions (other people, dogs, treats, new spaces, etc.). Just our two cents, but we have found obedience training to be a lot more effective when we mixed it in with some basic agility. (By basic agility - I mean introduction to things like the a-frame, dog walk, jump, weave, tire, tunnel, etc. incrementally. Marvin has done it all wearing a belly band...since he decided on his first visit to mark everything in the training gym...). Good luck!
  11. We also use Heartgard (our boy eats it like a treat, and it doesn't have any nasty smell either) for heartworm, and we switched to Frontline Plus for flea/tick mostly for the 4 or so different tick preventions. On the rare occasion when our hound needs to take a pill, we smear it in peanut butter (cover it well), and then stick the wad of peanut butter-hidden pill to the roof of his mouth, and down it goes, no problem. I've even done this with large antibiotics and never had him spit it out or fail to eat it. Also - good to know that we're not the only ones with a beast that has eaten entirely whole dead birds...when it happens, the first thing you think of as you're straddling your hound trying to pry his mouth open is, "I need to get a poo baggie on my hand because my parents always said never to touch dead birds!". By that time of course, the entire bird has been swallowed like a python. Oddly enough, the two dead birds never caused any disruption, aside from some feather-coloring..., of his BMs... Back on topic though - check with your vet for suggestions if Frontline doesn't seem to be working for you. There are some parts of North America where the 30-year old product no longer works very well.
  12. My fiancé and friends have definitely tasted some of my homemade dog treats before giving them over to the hound...
  13. We've been feeding our hound Blue Buffalo fish and sweet potato for over a year with good results. Fish food breath is the only "problem". He doesn't tolerate chicken very well, and he definitely doesn't tolerate duck, so we've eliminated poultry and rice-based foods. Our vet just gave us a sample bag of the Hill's t/d diet to use as "dental floss" to supplement teeth brushing, and he seems to tolerate those 1-2 pieces a day well also. If we even run into troubles with his current kibble, I don't think we would hesitate to try Iams with some nutritional goodies mixed in.
  14. We adopted our hound in a similar situation about this time two years ago - I was finishing my Ph.D. and was starting work in June. I think our guy would have been just fine with adjusting over a long weekend, but having several months worked out very well to get Marvin adjusted to spending his days during the work week at home alone. When I first started working full-time, either my fiancé or I did come home at lunch for the first couple of weeks to take him out and check on him. Over a couple of months after adoping Marvin, and in talking with our adoption group, we helped Marvin build up to "holding it" all day with no trouble. Now, we can take him out midday, but that't no guarantee he'll do everything you want him to, since his schedule says, "I go out and do both right after breakfast and then right after/before dinner". Congratulations on finishing school, and also on deciding to adopt a greyhound!
  15. We also had slippery, steep, hardwood stairs when we first adopted Marvin, but we bought stair treads (http://www.improvementscatalog.com/weave-washable-stair-treads-set-of-4/home-decor/area-rugs-stair-treads-mats/267927), and they eventually helped us get Marvin up and down the stairs. It was probably 2-3 months before our hound was able to go up and down the stairs. Friends of ours who apparently have way better tasting treats taught him to go up the stairs in less than 20 minutes, after we had zero success in 2 weeks. Down was a bit more difficult, and my fiance ended up carrying the beast down at least part way for another week. We were able to work on going down stairs by finding some steps outside in the neighborhood that were about 4 steps total to help Marvin learn how to shift his weight to descent. If you're in the Philadelphia area, there should be lots of greyhound owners in the area. The National Greyhound Adoption Program (NGAP, ngap.org) is located in Philly, and our dog is from their organization. They should be more than willing to connect you with local owners, and I think they even have a set of "trainer stairs" at their facility. It was almost 6 months before we really started to see Marvin's full personality emerge consistently. He may not be super cuddly, but he is always adorable and hilarious. It takes some time to establish to Anders that you are pack leader, no matter what. For us, that meant him not sleeping in our bedroom at night, not being allowed (at first) on the furniture, and removal from "his pack", i.e. us, if he did something really bad, like snapping or biting me when I tried to take something off of him. After a few months, our relationship as Marvin's pack leader was fully established, and we haven't had any incidents since. Good luck!
  16. Our experience has been canned pumpkin flushes out the system kindly. We get improved "end products" when we give Marvin some pumpkin, and we always keep some canned pumpkin in the cupboard in case he eats something he shouldn't. The first time we fed him some canned pumpkin, he pooped out two squeakers and some other toy innard remnants we had no idea about...
  17. I couldn't agree more with everyone's feedback on finding the right mix of foods, given our experience. It took us several months to figure out that our Starvin' Marvin doesn't tolerate chicken (or duck) very well. Lots of pudding poo and room-evacuting gas...If he does get some pudding poo, we can stop it within 1 feeding by adding a bit of canned pumpkin or smashed boiled sweet potatoes. Good luck!
  18. Congrats on finishing up at Tech (GT Ph.D. AE '12). I moved away from Atlanta before adopting our greyhound last year, but I used to see several greyhounds around Midtown and in the Virginia Highlands. The dog park at Piedmont Park is wonderful and is some of the nicest, largest, fenced in grassy space I've found anywhere, and I would have loved to take our dog there. Kota is gorgeous. And he will keep making you laugh and surprise you with his personality endlessly, I'm sure. We also had some challenges with our dog thinking he was pack leader and growling/snapping when he had something he shouldn't have or when I tried to take away a bone. It got to the point where I had to put on over mitts to take a bone from him and late one night, my boyfriend had a standoff that lasted more than 30 minutes where they growled at each other back and forth. The trading up to something better works with good treats, if your guy lives for food. Additionally, any time there was any growling or possessiveness, we separated Marvin from "his pack", i.e. us, by gating him downstairs in the living room by himself and having us hang out upstairs for 20 min or so. He has always been fine sleeping by himself, but when he was showing a lot of the nasty behavior, we made him sleep on his downstairs bed by himself a few times. We also stopped him from being allowed up on the couch (and he's never allowed on the bed - he's just too big!) with us for a few weeks. A decent squirt bottle from the garden section at Target, Home Depot, etc. is also a good "tool". Marvin only had to see the bottle and immediately gave up what he was eating. Consistency in asserting you and your girlfriends as pack leaders will make a very quick difference. Also, check with your adoption group. Ours was great in letting us know that this type of behavior was very common and provided tons of advice and support.
  19. Baby carrots are also good (less messy) Kong stuffing. We've also done plain yogurt or cottage cheese mixed with kibble and then frozen. Running Marvin's Kongs through the dishwasher on the top shelf is a lifesaver, because he loves the peanut butter, pumpkin, and other gooey/tough to clean yummies.
  20. We strugged with bileous vomiting with our greyhound, Starvin' Marvin (seriously, he lives for food and probably needs to drop a few pounds so perhaps, we should have named him Chubbs instead...) for more than 4 months. It started about two weeks after he destroyed a toy and subsequently vomited up the stuffing and squeaker that was inside the toy. The one and only toy he has ever destroyed and/or tried to consume. In our case, it started as a very early morning event that we could avoid by giving him an extra biscuit, a little kibble, or a piece of wheat bread right before bed. However, the vomiting started to progress to a "2am to 4am" event, and we were up to feeding him almost every 4 hours. We spent almost 3 months being unable to sleep through the night, and sleeping terribly because we had become dialed in to Marvin's heaving noises and having to scramble out of bed and race for the paper towels. Luckily, we have mostly hardwood, but it was still not fun to be cleaning up at 2am almost nightly. This sounds funny, but we had a "drunk bucket" we started keeping next to his bed so we could try and catch to avoid a lot of cleanup. Otherwise, a mixture of vinegar and water was very effective at getting the stains permanently out of our area rugs. Does your dog have a tendency to destroy his toys or occasionally eat things outside? Even once can be enough to lead to bileous vomiting over an extended period of time (e.g. months). Our vet put Marv on a prescription med to help regulate his digestion, but that and also pepscid had no effect, and neither did changing his food. Multiple X-rays showed nothing (our vet loves that Marv will roach on the x-ray table, giving a perfect view of his abdomen). I ask about the potential for your dog having eating something that could still be bouncing around in her stomach because this was the one and only cause of our grey's bileous vomiting. We dealt with the "twilight vomiting" for almost 4 months before Marvin finally vomited up "the infamous 2nd missing squeaker" from the one and only toy he has ever destroyed (a little bit of canned pumpkin about a week after that then shocked us as Marv pooped out a 3rd, completely different squeaker from we have no idea where). Marvin has not vomited even once since he vomited up the last squeaker this past October. I wanted to share, as none of the online searching or discussions with our vet or friends who are new veterinarians suggested the bileous vomiting could be caused by a foreign object floating around in our dog's stomach, and this was exactly the cause in our case. Good luck!
  21. We currently live in Hampton, Virginia, but for anyone in Hampton Roads, we would strongly recommend having your grey stay with Sandra, owner of Peanut's Pet Service (www.peanutspservice.com). She has a fenced in yard with a high fence, and your hound will get all the attention and love that he or she wants. You get to bring your dog's bed, blankets, toys, and anything else you think they might need. Sandra posts pictures and videos on facebook, so you can check on your hound...and then be bummed that they are having such a great time without you! If your dog is going to stay at her house, you and your hound will set up a time to go over a few days prior to let your dog meet her, her dog, and get a smell of the place. We had Marvin stay with her for a week over the summer, and he came home a happy dog. He must have picked up some info on how to be more of a "dog", because he was not a cuddler at all when we dropped him off, and now, he HAS to be wedged on the [undersized] couch with us, as well as more interested in playing. I would also add that using Peanut's Pet Service was also one of the most budget-friendly options we found.
  22. Everyone has their own experiences with different foods and what works for your dog, but I think all of us have been through the "pudding" (or worse) poop stages. I am happy to share what has worked for us. We also live in a townhome/apt community, and there is nothing worse than trying to figure out how to scoop up what you can...and being embarassed about what you can't... What worked for us: More Fiber! Most dog foods, no matter what brand, usually have between 3 and 4% fiber. Just adding a scoop of mashed sweet potatoes or some oatmeal to Marvin's dinner, we saw a big difference (though yes, the sweet potatoes will make things very, very orange). I read nearly every bag of decent food at the store, but I managed to find a few that have fiber content on the order of 7-8%. There was a noticeable difference within 48 hours of beginning to change Marvin's food to the higher fiber food. We're not talking "sidewalk-bouncing", but consistently easy to pick up completely. We are currently feeding Blue Buffalo Wilderness Large Breed, which is grain-free and chicken-based. We didn't need to go grain-free, but the Blue Buffalo grain-free options were about all I could find at Petco with significantly more fiber. Marvin doesn't eat a ton, only 1.5 cups twice a day, so we don't have any trouble buying him a 24lb bag once a month or so. Good luck!
  23. I'm 27, and my boyfriend is 32, and our hound will be 4 in April. It's still hard for us to believe that we will have had Starvin' Q. Marvin (or Marvin, Marv, Starvies, etc... ) for almost a year already. Time flies when you're having fun!
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