MattB

So what sort of things are they testing for? I don't resent paying at all - I would just like a greater understanding of what it is (and if it's important I don't know why they don't describe it as standard)

Charlie is booked in for a dental - his teeth are very clean but he's got some recession and the vet says it's painful for him and he needs one of his big back teeth removed. Anyway, so he's booked in and the vet suggested that due to his age (8) he should have pre-anaesthetic bloodwork done. This seems like a lot of additional money - last time, with our other hound, same practice but different vet said unless there were specific concerns they didn't need to do tests before anaesthetic. Absolutely happy to pay, but just wondering if anyone knows what pre-anaesthetic bloodwork usually consists of, and why is it important. Is this something I should do? (I'm just a bit against the 'optional extra' status of something they're saying is important).

Thank you everyone. Stressing just how anxious Charlie is was not helped by Charlie walking into the clinic and falling asleep and having to be woken up for his examination. Anyway... The vet initially suggested some strong sedatives for a couple of days then a dietary supplement + adaptil diffuser. However after explaining the pattern of anxiety he thought the sedative were pointless as the anxiety is chronic rather than being linked to a stimuli. So he's given us these: http://www.vetpro.co.uk/stress-anxiety/4593962085 We've got enough for a couple of weeks, the vet reckoned he's seen them make a dramatic difference in dogs but I was expecting something more pharmacological, also we've been advised to give one per day but the instructions look like for a 35kg dog it should be 3. Anyway we shall give it a go and go back if we still need help in the new year. Thank you for your input. Matt and Charlie

I'm posting in Health & Medical but don't quite know how to distinguish from behaviour. My sweet beautiful Charlie hasn't recovered from firework season, I say 'season' because where we live they start in October and go on until now. It's been particularly crazy as they've been going off randomly at all hours of the day so we haven't been safe on a morning walk (even at 5am!). They seem to have finally stopped but Charlie is a mess - after a month of very little exercise he's now coming out in the mornings but he's neurotic about where we walk, refusing certain streets and sides of the road (ironically the only walk he will come on takes an hour and is through a very spooky forest), he paces around the house after mid-afternoon (he lives with our other hound Daisy and they're alone very little) and completely refuses to walk in the evening, when he does walk he's like a robot, stares straight ahead and won't deviate from his course (I dropped a glove and he statued when I tried to go back 5 steps to retrieve it the other day). He's constantly on edge and seems to associate non-firework noises (from a bus hitting a manhole cover to someone's stomach rumbling) with fireworks and runs out of the room. My mum's house in the rural countryside which was always a haven for us all is now surrounded by an estate which runs regular shooting, even when they're not shooting he's very wary of leaving the house. It breaks my heart to see Charlie like this and it's exhausting for us all - often he won't go out in the garden before bed so needs to go in the middle of the night. We're tried Zylkene and adaptil but I think we need something stronger. We're going to the vet tonight, my idea was some short term medication to calm Charlie down and help break some of the negative cycles he's got into. I would appreciate any advice from people who've tried medication and suggestions of what drugs we might try.

Thank you all for your comments and advice - apologies for the delay, I have been away for a couple of days. I suppose that my thinking re: not medicating all of the time is that I believe I am able to tell whether Daisy is uncomfortable - to me, if she is eager to go on walks, doing zoomies, pulling on the lead, racing up and down the stairs and jumping around in the house and otherwise appearing happy, then I don't think she is experiencing pain. At the first sign of any discomfort, stiffness or looking uncomfortable then I currently give her the previcox. I continue to give her joint aid supplements daily. This is consistent with my own attitude towards pain (I have chronic pain), I put up with a degree of it and then use medication when it bothers me. I realise that this is me making a judgement about how Daisy is feeling and this is certainly something I will talk to our vet about at our next appointment as I would hate to be making an incorrect assumption. Thanks again.

Thanks NeylasMom - sounds in line with my thinking. We had a retriever who sadly died young from a stomach ulcer which the vet said was caused by the NSAIDs he'd been on for some time (this was a few years ago and there was never any suggestion of blood work - we were quite naive perhaps). I will certainly try those alternatives. We've just run out of our usual vetvits supplement which I wasn't sure was doing anything and are just waiting for 'joint aid' to arrive.

Thanks - Re: only giving meds when she limps this was what the vet suggested after she seemed a lot better after 4 weeks of NSAIDs - I'm not trying to ration her meds. Day to day Daisy doesn't show any signs of being in discomfort i.e. no stiffness on getting up, desperate to go on walks, jumps on and off the bed easily etc. This sounded sensible to me but would you suggest I look at getting a prescription for a lowish dose and use that more consistently?

Nearly 18 months ago Daisy (8yo girl) developed a limp and x-rays showed what the vet said was quite advanced arthritis, she was prescribed anti-inflammatories and we used them daily for about a month but then reduced it to a tablet at the first sign of a limp. Daisy has been doing really great. She lives for her walks. She has half an hour in the morning and then 45 mins to an hour in the afternoons (longer at weekends). We have a garden and she usually does some zoomies at some point. After a heavy zooming session Daisy's limp sometimes reappears. I give her a tablet straight away and she's ok in a couple of hours. She's also taking some joint aid supplement. My question is whether I should be trying to prevent Daisy from running around? I worry that it's going to cause further damage to her joints (it's her front right wrist that's affected). She's fine after a little bit of a run around but sometimes she gets so excited and really goes for it. At the same time I don't want to stop her doing what makes her happy.

At a booster appointment I mentioned that Daisy had been licking her bottom quite a bit over the past few weeks. The vet expressed her anal glands and Daisy's screams were like nothing I'd heard even a greyhound make before. Vet said they were completely full and wasn't sure if they were infected, I took her back the next week and they expressed them again but said they didn't think they were infected and it could have been a one-off. My dad had a retriever with anal gland issues and the vet showed him how to do it himself. I'm wondering if this is something that I can do myself, at least check them myself - or is this a bad idea? Or is this an expert only procedure?

Have managed to get the name! Nice n Easy! (Two years older than we were told but that doesn't matter) Now just waiting for a confirmation e-mail from greyhound data and I can check up her family tree!

Hi - am i right in thinking that someone here is able to look up dogs by tattoo? I've adopted a girl with JX on her right ear and ZEP on her left. I've tried ringing the Irish coursing society on several numbers but none of them have worked! Sorry didn't mean to post twice

Hi - am i right in thinking that someone here is able to look up dogs by tattoo? I've adopted a girl with JX on her right ear and ZEP on her left. I've tried ringing the Irish coursing society on several numbers but none of them have worked!

I'm just wondering if anyone has any experience with sound/noise desensitisation. My mum has a greyhound and she's always been upset around firework season but now the farm has become a venue for pheasant shoots which happen 2-3 times per week during the winter season, then as soon as that finished the farmer has a few weeks of using a bird-scarer. She's absolutely fine when she's in the house but hates going outside at the moment, I know there's the prescribed meds option, my worry is just that it's over a long period, then there's the non-prescription stuff like zylkene which we're currently giving a go. But I've also seen, in my local vet's surgery, cds you can buy that claim pretty good results - I just wondered if anyone had any experience of these? If so, I would appreciate any specific recommendations of particular products (I'm in the UK).

Wing Chun - I didn't know much about it until I gave it a go, makes my brain hurt a bit! Thanks Amber - I know you've said before we seem to have had similar behaviour issues with our hounds. I don't want to fix Charlie just so he's 'better', I genuinely think that he would have a better quality of life, for example if my wife could take him out on a walk (she's not confident as last time he went crazy and dragged her across a path to get to another dog). I do love him unconditionally, he doesn't really ask for much, just wants me to be in the house with him. As for the animal shelter - it was just a couple of walks with a new greyhound they had in, I don't go there regularly, I agree with you there.

Thanks for your comments everyone. I think I've probably been too optimistic and haven't put in enough work. I'm now treating Patricia McConnell's 'Feisty Fido' book like a bible and being really strict with myself (and Charlie) about taking treats on every walk and doing 'watch' exercises. One of the difficulties I have is that Charlie seems to switch off after a while and almost zone out of any interacting with me. He used to do this at dog class when we started (this was partly why we stopped classes), he would concentrate for about 20 minutes and then just lie down, at this point, no food would motivate him to do anything. He's like this on the walks, he seems to loose interest fairly quickly compared to our other hound. The other big change is martial arts classes (for me - not for Charlie!). I'm trying to understand (and improve on) my impact on Charlie's reactivity and think that increasing my own self-confidence can only help. I'm more confident about dealing with off-leash dogs than I am with confrontation of any sorts with other dog owners.

Thanks I will certainly try to get hold of this book.

There's literally nothing to take out now.

Just an update, by the time Charlie's surgery came around the lump had nearly gone, today there is nothing there at all other than a small bald patch. The vet thought it was best to leave alone so I went with his advice. It had persisted for some time, I know these things are capable of remitting quite quickly but I was pretty remarkable how fast it shrank. The vet thinks it may have been infected. I did start spraying it with a product called 'purple spray' which I'd mistakenly bought instead of anticeptic, this ended up being a mixture of essential oils in water which claimed healing properties. Who knows if it had an effect but we are now 'without lump' so we're happy! Thank you everyone for your thoughts and advice.

That's what the vet also said - you don't know what's underneath the gums. I'm very gentle but do wonder if I've been too rough in the past. I've got much worse recession than Charlie but I'm probably more concerned about his.

He's 7 1/2 - I'm not sure if there was already some recession when we got him but it's definitely got worse. The gums around one of his teeth was slightly red I'm assuming some mild gum disease, seems to have cleared up now but I know that can cause recession.

At Charlie's last check up she pointed out receeded guns around a couple of his teeth which I'd also noticed recently. His teeth are otherwise looking very good and he allows me to brush them every day but over time I do think he's getting a bit less comfortable with the brushing. He's still showing no signs of discomfort when eating anD still enjoys hard chews. I'm thinking that, as with my own teeth, I should still persevere with the brushing but try to be very gentle? I've got a very soft baby's brush which I use on the affected teeth. Does anybody have any advice on receeded gums?

I'm not sure about others but our two will drink water based on their schedule. So daddy gets home means walkies soon and time to fill up, during the morning when we're out they don't touch the water. Oddly Charlie has just downed quite a bit at bedtime which means I'll be letting him out in approx 2hrs time!

Thank you - Yes, we had someone visit a while ago, I was happy at the time but I think he did give us fairly generic advice and disappointingly he didn't want to go outside on a walk and see the situation in action so it was more like a consultation which Charlie slept through and yes, like you say it was fairly generic. On reflection I'm not sure the behaviourist was too happy about venturing outside in our neighbourhood! That was the only trainer I could find who would come to us. We had started off going to dog classes when we first got Charlie - in fact, this was basically a room full of dogs who barked at each other so maybe this wasn't the best introduction to other dogs. Sorry I went off on a tangent - the reason I wanted someone to come to our house was that Charlie is much worse in his locality.

I should add that, Charlie has a group of dogs who he knows, in-laws's spaniel and my mum's greyhound (and late lurcher) who he is 100% with, even when my mum's dog winds him up he never reacts. He met all these dogs before we got our second greyhound when he was a much calmer dog, although I think he had started to bark before we got Daisy.

I've posted a few times about Charlie, my 7yo boy and what I always called 'fear aggression' as it (barking aggressively and pulling towards the other dog) usually related to big off-leash dogs or dogs pulling on their own leash trying to get to him. I was convinced that he was calming down and we got to the point of only reacting when a dog was particularly rude i.e. ran towards him barking at him. However in the last few months we seem to have gone in the other direction, I have him muzzled all the time after he went for a small dog (owner didn't have it on a leash but it was paying no interest in Charlie at all). Health-wise we've had a check up recently, in fact we had to wait in a separate waiting room because Charlie was being aggressive in the waiting room. [i posted in a separate thread that he was due to have a small lump removed but the vet has now postponed as he thinks it looks to be disappearing and we're reviewing in 2 week's time] Through this Charlie has always been fine with other greyhounds, as I'm told is common; we went to a show with dozens of other greys a while ago and he didn't bat an eyelid. But today we went to walk a greyhound (tiny 7yo girl) at our local shelter, I thought being introduced on the walk would be a good thing but Charlie behaved very aggressively towards her (lunging at her and trying to bite through his muzzle), we went on to have an uneventful walk with one of them in each hand and my wife walking our other hound but then towards the end of it he lunged/ pounced on her, she (understandably) reacted in the same spirit and I had to drag them apart. Noone is hurt but I'm so upset that this happened, we'd been told that this hound is really unhappy in the kennels and is scared of all the wind we've been having, we'd thought about giving her a home but this reaction has surprised and really shaken me up. I'd really appreciate some advice, I'm planning on getting back to consistently giving treats when other dogs come into view (I do this less than I should, mainly because I need all my hands ready to control Charlie) but is there anything else I should be looking at?