Out On The Town With Rigby

It's always a good idea when a new foster dog joins one's family to get them out and see how they do in different environments. Also, I want them to know that the car can lead to happy, fun places too, not just the vet and long transports.

Alert, but fairly relaxed in the drive-thru

So Rigby and I headed out for an adventure, just the two of us. We started out at the drive-thru at Starbucks. This was both to check out how he did at drive-thrus (not all dogs' favorite spots) but also as positive reinforcement to me for being such a thoughtful foster parent. ;)

Our destination was the Mud Bay in town - a natural pet food store. Because there's steady traffic through there but rarely more than one dog at a time in the store, it is a perfect place to practice public appearances.

Watching things from the back of the store

At first Rigby was too nervous to take treats from me so we went to the back corner of the food section were it was quiet and I just pet him and sat on the floor with him. After a bit of this he relaxed and got curious and started wandering away from me to inspect things. Perfect!

Inspecting the toys

There were all kinds of great things to check out - toys, bulk bins of biscuits, buckets full of bully sticks and roasted bones...

A couple of our favorite employees were working today and they took time to introduce themselves to Rigby. He was a little nervous but before long, his nub was a wagging blur and he was jumping up on them to give kisses. Rigby is a friendly boy and really loves people.

As a happy ending we picked out some allergy friendly cod skin sticks as a treat for the drive home.

He came, he saw, he conquered --- and he left with cod skins.

Rigby's New Coat

Over the weekend a very nice person donated some new coats and sweaters for NR foster dogs. Since Rigby has that super short fur and is a former California boy, he's been a bit shivery so I thought one of the fleece coats would be just perfect for him. Doesn't he look handsome?

 

Rigby wasn't quite sure he could walk when the coat was on

Salinas had to check out his new threads

He was getting tired of sitting still for photos

And his nose licking told me he had had enough of the camera - time to go play!

Frodo is Weird

Rigby is getting to know all the dogs in the house and he has decided that resident dog Frodo is a bit strange. Frodo tends to get grumpy out of no where and the other dogs have no idea what they did to set him off. But he is the best at alerting everyone to exciting things to see out the window so they forgive him for his curmudgeonly temperament.

I caught this cute video of Rigby watching Frodo in the act of one of his vigorous couch "backscratch" routines that I thought I would share.

Mr. Manners

Along with being house-trained. It seems as if at some point Mr. Rigby had some basic manners training. He has a good "sit", "down" and "stay" on a verbal cue. Good boy!

Down-stay

Sit

We needed some photos for his Petfinder bio and it was raining so we sat in the living room where we could get the best natural light and had a photo shoot. He did a great job but was happy when the whole thing was finally over with.

Handsome guy, isn't he?

Fostering 101

After fostering for  many years now and having over 100 dogs go through our house, I've learned a lot and sadly much of it I learned the hard way. Note the photo below.

The first litter of pups I ever fostered (Rat Terrier/Mini Schnauzer mixes). Lesson learned: never leave toilet paper within reach of puppies. Second lesson learned: Never again volunteer to foster a litter of puppies

Recently, I've seen some stuff on FB from new foster parents that made me bite my tongue and I've seen some stuff from not so new foster parents that honestly startled me as well. I needed a spot where I could share some basics and hopefully save others (and their foster dogs) some headaches and heartaches. So I created a blog called Fostering 101. No posts up yet but I'll be posting tomorrow, first thing.

Some of it will be just basic skills stuff - tips on house training, the correct way to socialize a dog, dog to dog introductions.... And I know that occasionally there will be a rant thrown in so humor me on that (the term "foster failure" comes to mind). Some will be opinions, based on my experiences and some will be basic animal behavior stuff backed by science. Hopefully people will be able to use the information and maybe even get some dialog going on "best practices" when it comes to fostering.

Tilly was our 10th foster dog and was the first extremely under-socialized dog I worked with. It was a difficult journey but we taught each other a lot. 

I'll do my best to get at least one Fostering 101 post written each week. With work, my fostering duties, my regional coordinator duties for New Rattitude, and family it seems the blog is the first thing to get forgotten so we'll see how I do. Stay tuned...

Gut Issues: Cleaning things up and Getting Healthy

Luckily I haven't had to work with many foster dogs who had food sensitivities but in the past when I worked at a natural pet food store I helped many a customer get a plan in place for an elimination diet for their dog.

Mr. Rigby definitely has something going on related to food so we have started him on a single protein/single carb diet along with some supplements to see if we can get things under control.

I know the previous foster mom who temped Rigby for me in California said that when he arrived he was much worse and wouldn't stop chewing on himself because he itched so badly. She put him on a grain-free kibble and that almost completely ended the itching and the rash subsided quite a bit.

As you can see though, he still has a lot of redness so here's my current plan. I'm going to try to approach this from a holistic point of view and if in a few weeks we still have some lingering issues then we'll have to visit the vet. My experience in the past though is that most vets turn immediately to low quality prescription food and steroids and I think that is a bad path to take unless absolutely necessary to give the dog relief.

Currently Rigby is only eating a fish and sweet potato based limited ingredient kibble with a fish/sweet potato LID canned food mixed in. Mixed into that he is also getting salmon oil to boost his Omega 3s and hopefully get his immune response under control. I've also added a high potency probiotic powder (30 billion CFU) to get his gut cleaned out and help him break down his food and get more out of it. I've seen probiotics work miracles on dogs with chronic yeast infections and Rigby's paperwork mentions that he has a history of yeast problems.

Yeast feeds on sugars so keeping grain out of his food bowl is also a key step to getting him healthy. That means ALL his food. The mistake that most people make when trying to manage food sensitivities is that they get the mealtime stuff fixed but then they keep giving treats that have wheat or other grains in them, or a protein that the dog isn't currently supposed to be eating.

Since we pay dogs for good behavior at our house it's important to have treats that Rigby can eat. These bits of freeze dried salmon are perfect and he definitely loves him. 

The one thing that I have thrown into his food as an extra supplement is kelp because his teeth are stained and have a bit of plaque build up but not enough that he needs a full dental at this point. Combining kelp and then regular chewing on bully sticks (or in the case of a dog with allergies, specialized chews) can work wonders on cleaning up a dog's mouth.

The last thing I'm going to try is massaging his belly and groin area with a colloidal silver salve that I have. Colloidal silver has anti-fungal and anti-biotic properties so I'm hoping this will help with his rash. I'll keep you posted on how things go. It can take about 3 weeks for a diet change to show results but I'm hoping that with all the things we are trying, we'll start seeing a change sooner than that. Wish us luck!

Fitting In

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that the very first thing we do when bringing home a new foster dog is to carefully introduce the dog to our 4 personal dogs.

I usually start out with either Salinas or Tilly, who both have very clear body language with other dogs and neither are quick to jump to being offended if the foster dog is a little rude. Chima, who is quick to be offended is almost always the last dog to get introduced.

The initial intro with Chima and Sal - much butt sniffing and ground sniffing to let everyone know - "It's cool. Let's just all keep chill."

How fast or slow these introductions go depend wholly on the foster dog and what they are able to handle. If a particular dog is under-confident and quick to jump to aggressive behavior it could take weeks or even months before everyone is fully integrated. Happily, Rigby is the kind of dog where introductions to all 4 dogs was complete in about 20 minutes.

Sal was giving Rigby the "you're in my BUBBLE!!!" look.

Even Chima, who is often on high alert around new dogs for about a week, was over any issues with him within the first few minutes she had met him.

Rigby was fine with giving the girls a little space and found his own patch of sunshine. 

He curls up on the couch with the dogs, shares sunspots with them, and even joins in on hunting forays in the back yard with Chima and Sal.

If you are looking for a very special dog, then Rigby is your guy!