Jump to content

rsieg

Members
  • Posts

    427
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by rsieg

  1. Logan rushes to the door when I get home. He sleeps in my bedroom at night. (Well, he does usually spend some of the night on his comfy couch or chair, but is in the bedroom by morning :-)  He gets upset if I don't spend time with him in the evening after our walk and his dinner. He will usually come and lie down in whatever room I am in. 

  2. Given how old the last post in this thread is, I guess I'm one of the last still with a hound on HealthyPaws. Just got an email that in sixty days the monthly premium will go up from $57 to $102. I will be canceling when I get home tonight. 

    What I'm kicking myself over is, I got Logan at just past 3 years old, and he just turned 10 1/2 two days ago. Never had a reimbursement from HP (thankfully, Logan has been healthy, the few expenses he has had were below the deductible). So, that is about 7 1/2 years or 90 months. Granted, the premium started out lower (I think around $30 or so initially), but if the average premium over that time was even $40 then If I had skipped the insurance and simply put aside the premium amount each month, I would now have $3600 set aside for any medical expenses as Logan enters his senior years.

    As it is, once I cancel I have zero set aside for any medical expenses -- which I'm sure is why HP feels comfortable doubling the monthly premium on a senior dog.  

    Anyway, rant over...

  3. Logan trances in those ornamental grass bushes. Not sure the variety, but there are probably a dozen houses on our walking routes that have them, they are belt-height to shoulder-height or so. He won't stop at them all, but occasionally does and may trance for a few minutes. He would probably go longer but I tend to get bored and urge him along (but he is stubborn about it).  

    I don't recall Max ever trancing, so based on my huge database of two greyhounds about 50% of them trance occasionally :-)

     

  4. My old man Max, passed away in January 2018. He was a double-bounce, came to me at just over 10 years old and made it to almost 13.5 years. He was a wonderful buddy to me, and tolerated (maybe even liked?) by Logan. I actually did not think I would like a black greyhound, but he came as an overflow foster and ended up staying :-)

    Here is a time sequence from August 2017 (I may have it backwards in time, but I love the last shot).

    20170804_084039-M.jpg

    20170804_084200-M.jpg

    20170804_084059-M.jpg

  5. I adopted Max at 10 years old, and he was still going strong then, walking around 3 mile a day, sometimes more. He kept going on walks of 2-3 miles/day (not all at one time) until he was almost 13.5.

    Adopted Logan at just past 3 years old, he is now 10 years 4 months and over the last month came close to averaging 3 miles/day. He seems to be slowing down of late, but might just be the summer heat. And, Logan has taken up some (very) light jogging (4-5 miles/hour but only a few tenths/mile) in the last year or so, but that is only because his owner is now cooperating. And of course, in the backyard he still literally runs rings around me when he wants to :-)

    So, based on my purely anecdotal evidence, a healthy 6 year old hound should have a solid 4 years, maybe 5 or 6, of activity at a high level. By the time he starts slowing down your 3 year old should be older and able to adapt to her greyhound buddy slowing down.

    Also, is the 6 year old dog a return or just off the track? If a return, he is probably already housebroken (versus a younger dog just off the track which may have a few accidents), so that is a bonus.

    I'd go for it!

  6. When Max got older, he was afraid to eat in the kichen since Logan would go after his food. So I fed him in the bedroom, with the door closed, holding up his bowl as he ate.
    Haven't carried either of them, they are too heavy for me - except Max on his last evening  :-(

    Logan stops in midwalk for a full-body massage :-)

  7. Hi all, thanks for the comments. I didn't get home until 7 pm and it was raining, but Logan got out for a very short walk and got soaked. After drying off he did do some more zoomies with a new gravybone, then settled down to eat it. (The photo was actually taken after the video, but seems the video gets put at the end of the message).

    20200518_192934-M.jpg

     

     

  8. Logan came home on May 18, 2013. So that makes 7 years. He was just over 3 years old then, turned 10 on April 7, 2020, so he is officially an old guy now. In fact, he's the same age Max was when I got him, and I remember thinking Max was an old guy.

    I'm back at work now, so our celebration was brief this morning, but got a few pictures.

    Here he is after his morning constitutional. Not quite a mile, with light spitting rain, but apparently it tired him out. (On the plus side, he dropped two loads in that short time :-)

    20200518_090053-M.jpg

    Here he is getting his gravy bone. Got a bit more spunk here!

    20200518_091639-M.jpg

    20200518_091741-M.jpg

    He even got into some zoomies with his bone, and I got some video. Hopefully it embeds below. Note the teeth chattering near the beginning :-)

     

    I'm at work now, if we get more pictures this evening will add them...

     

     

  9. It is possible Hero is getting arthritic and has a hard time hopping into the car. There might not be a "scream of death" or anything like that, greyhounds can be stoic about chronic or expected pain.

    You might try making some stryofoam steps. See the pictures in this post:

    https://forum.greytalk.com/topic/321880-back-seat-ramp-suggestions/?tab=comments#comment-6040590

    I made some for Max, now that Logan is in his double digits he gets to use it occasionally (although he can still hop in by himself, he is sometimes hesitant so I suspect it hurts him sometimes). Great thing about the styrofoam steps is that they are ultra lightweight, the dogs don't get nervous about using them like with a ramp (where there is air underneath), even someone like me can make them, and if they don't work you are only out a few dollars for the styrofoam slabs and some adhesive.

    The other thing I would check is the backseat setup. Are there belt buckles or anything that might hurt him? Can you pad it up somehow to make it more comfortable? When I had both Max and Logan, I ended up removing the backseat entirely and putting in a board, a baby mattress and piling some comforters on top. Taking the backseat out can also be helpful because it lowers the height that the dog has to jump to get in. (Of course, if you actually use the backseat for other things, like carrying people, then removing it may not be an option :-)

  10. 29 minutes ago, ramonaghan said:

    :nod I've had to perform several extractions over the years with a poop-bag-gloved hand. Not fun for either of us.

    Same here! I usually encourage Logan to get it done himself, and given a couple minutes he usually succeeds by applying more, ah, effort. But not always. It does concern me pulling it out, since grass can actually be sharp-edged. But I suppose by the time it goes through the gastrointestinal tract, it is pretty well softened up. Never had any blood at least, and he always seems fine afterward.

  11. Eating grass is normal. Logan does it on walks. What I find is a problem is if he eats long grass, then it comes out stringy at the other end and can give him problems dropping BMs (as in, sometimes it will be hanging by a thread, or rather by a grass strand). So I let him graze on short grass but pull him away from long grass. If Chowder is eating cut grass, and it was not too long, I would not worry about it.

×
×
  • Create New...