When she first came to live with me, Belle was not used to walking with a leash. Naturally, she pulled a lot on the lead. This was mostly because she was fearful of it and was trying to get away from it. She managed to pull a retractable leash from my hand once, and the noise it made as she ran down the street frightened her so much, she went faster and faster trying to outrun it.
OK, it was a little funny, but believe me, the pulling on the leash gets old quickly. Now that Belle enjoys her walks, she still pulls at the leash, but now it’s because she wants to walk faster or go over and smell something or chase a squirrel. I like to walk her twice a day, and it was getting so that I dreaded doing it. She even pulled down to the ground one time when I was trying to tie my shoe. That was the end of that!
After talking about my frustrations with walking Belle, one of my neighbors loaned me her dog’s steel pinch collar (also known as a prong collar). I was a little hesitant at first because this type of collar looks like some kind of torture device, but it made a huge difference in my walking experience.
Correct Placement of a Pinch Collar
The pinch collar has made a huge difference in my enjoyment of walking my dog. I can control her a lot easier when we encounter squirrels, loud cars, or other dogs. Even when she gets very aggressive and jumps up and tries to twist out of the collar, it’s not a problem because the collar allows for twisting without twisting my hand off!
Here are a few things that I learned about using pinch collars with dogs.
- Do not jerk it like you would to correct a dog wearing a traditional leather or vinyl collar. This can injure your dog.
- Size the collar to your dog. You may need to take out a few prongs to make it fit a little better, but don’t make it too tight.
- Place the collar at the top of the neck, closer to the head. This may require you to keep your lead a little tight to keep the collar in place. However, this gives you the best leverage for controlling your dog. If you keep the pinch collar down at the base of the dog’s neck, they may ignore it completely.
- Don’t take the collar off or put it on over the dog’s head. Have one prong that you have bent a little more than the others to make it easier to take on and off.
- Do not leave this collar on the dog when you are done walking or training him or her. This collar can get caught on something like a fence or a shrub and constrict on the dogs neck as he/she pulls and potentially hurt your dog.
I’ve been using the pinch collar for two years now and my dog doesn’t mind or fear it one bit. I have to admit that a lot of the time I have it down at the base of her neck lately, but as soon as I see another dog approaching we stop and raise it to the top of her neck for control. It has made walking with Belle so much more enjoyable and I no longer dread it.
It seems like this has been the wettest winter in several years. We have had a long period of rain interspersed with just a few cloudy but dry days here and there and a couple rare sunshine days too. All of this rain makes Belle’s dog pen very muddy. To make matters worse, the grass around the gate to the pen died before winter due to some sloppy weed-eating around the edges of the pen and there isn’t much of anything to keep the soil turning to mud.
After Belle’s recent surgery, I’ve been keeping her indoors almost all of the time, only taking her out briefly for bathroom breaks. Even still, her belly and legs get muddy and I have to towel her off when she gets back inside.
Yesterday I went out of town, so I had to leave Belle outside for the majority of the day. Although it wasn’t raining, her pen was VERY muddy. It’s important to keep my dog clean until the stitches come out, so I did what I could to make her pen more palatable.
Pine straw covering muddy spots
I had several bags of pine straw that I collected for mulch but hadn’t put on my flower beds yet. I distributed this in the muddiest spots inside and outside the pen. I cleaned out any wet debris from her dog house. Her dog house is on a palette, raised off of the ground to keep it drier and to allow it to try out faster.
She also has another wood palette in the corner of her pen that gives her a place to lay that is off of the ground. This is really useful when the ground is as wet and muddy as it is right now. It also provides a little more warmth than cold ground in winter.
My neighbor, Ms. Virginia, who owns a Jack Russell and another mixed breed dog, bought a bale of hay for her backyard this week. It helps her dogs stay out of the mud a bit better.
Although these aren’t the best options - a concrete floor in a pen would probably work best, they are temporary solutions to the wet ground in your backyard and help prevent your dog from getting too muddy during rainy seasons.
We got the results back from Belle’s minor surgery this past Monday. The skin growth was benign. Yay!
Stitches on my dog Belle after minor surger
Now she has a few stitches, but she has been doing well and is not scratching or biting at them. She licks them occasionally, but I’m trying to keep an eye on that and prevent her from irritating the location.
The blood work came back normal and there was no sign of infection in her urine sample either. The veterinarian and I discussed the frequent urination problem that she has been having. He recommended that I begin measuring her water intake. If she is drinking more than six cups of water a day (based on her weight), then this may be an indication of other problems.
This is day three of me measuring the amount of water I am giving Belle and how much she is drinking. She has not drunk more than three cups of water each day, which I think is a good sign.
Her requests to go outside to use the bathroom were very frequent on Tuesday (about 5 times in two hours one evening), but seem to have lessened as the week goes on. I suspect it may be a bit of a boredom and lack of exercise problem, since I haven’t been walking her much at all due to my illness and the really cold weather.
I’m going to begin to walk her more, especially since the weather is warming up, and see if that helps the problem. I will need to take it easy for another week though, due to the stitches in Belle’s stomach.
I just got back from the veterinarian’s office. Today was Belle’s 6 month check-up and Bordetella vaccination. She got checked for heartworms – none present! And she also got her fecal exam and annual exam.
I asked my vet about the unusual skin growth on her stomach. He looked it over and said that although it didn’t look like it was something to worry about (something about it having hair growing out of it and maybe being an odd hair follicle), it was best to remove it and test it. That way we could be sure it was a benign growth.
Since I had not fed Belle this morning, since I wasn’t exactly sure of all that was being done for her exam, she was able to get in the queue for surgery this morning (dogs with a full belly can’t undergo anesthesia). We’ll know in a short while whether the growth is something that we need to be concerned about.
My vet is a great guy. My dog is very timid in the vet’s office; he actually gets down on the floor with her and examines her rather than put her on the table, which really makes her nervous.
Scheduled exams are a great time for me to get all of my pet questions answered, and I take the opportunity to do so. If I have anything I need to ask, I’ll write it down and bring it with me. I often forget, if I don’t write them down.
Since I have a home office, I spend a lot of time with Belle (and vice versa J). The pervious two and a half weeks I have had quite a nasty cold. As a result (and due to weather being in the teens), I haven’t walked Belle much at all.
I began to notice in the last week, that she is asking to go out to urinate a lot more frequently. Usually, she will go out in the morning to use the bathroom, and then maybe go out two or three more times that day.
In the past week or so, she has been asking to go out 4-6, sometimes 8 times a day. This is a behavior change for her, but I couldn’t see much more of a difference. She is drinking a bit more as well, but not showing any signs of discomfort.
I mentioned this to my vet today. Since she is already in for surgery, he recommended that we take a bladder sample and blood sample to see if she has a bladder infection or if her white blood count is higher. These would be indicative of some kind of infection which antibiotics would help.
He also mentioned that the increase in peeing could be due to bladder stones. But since she is not peeing in multiple spots when we go outside and not showing any signs of straining, it does not seem likely. I forewent the x-ray for this, for now.
We’ll see what he says! It really helps to know your dog’s behavior well to be able to spot any signs of trouble. Dogs will hide their illness or injury as best as they can. This is a biological response to avoid being eaten by a predator. But observant pet owners will be able to spot potential problems.
Grooming your dog is a good time to look for any problems with their skin, nails, ears, and teeth. Belle, like most dogs, will hide any injury as best as she can. Only because I wrestle with her and bathe her regularly have I found things that were bothering or hurting her.
Recently, while rubbing her stomach, I found a strange bump on her skin. I wasn’t sure what it was, so I pulled the hair back from the spot to see if it was a tick or something else. I hate pulling of ticks, but I will when I have to!
This spot looked like some strange growth of skin. It doesn’t seem to bother her, but since we are scheduled for a vet visit next week. We’ll ask the doc what he thinks it is and what we should do about it.
Belle had another similar spot along her neck that we had removed largely because it was at her dog collar line and could get infected or irritated. The vet also wanted to make sure it wasn’t a cancerous growth. Luckily, everything was fine and the removal went smoothly.
I really hate to have Belle under anesthesia, but if the vet says we should get it removed, that’s what we’ll do.
