Poor, Bored Dogs

Between my cold and the rain the dogs have had a pretty boring few days.  However, I have noticed a few things.

1. The citronella bark collars are working great for these two.  I really debated what kind of bark collar to put on them when I realized that I really had to do it.  I was afraid that if I chose the electronic bark collar Tor, at the very least, would develop a tolerance to the shock or potentially try to break out of the crate with it.  I have philosophical and theoretical issues with them as well, having to do with punishing a natural instinct and making whatever the dogs are barking at a more despised thing than it already is.  But having accepted that I had to do something, I opted for the citronella collars.  I am very happy to report that I suspect that within the next few weeks the only time that I will actually bother to put them on the dogs is in the car at work.  Tor has definitely gotten the idea that it is not OK to demand bark.  What a relief.  I'm sure that he will have recurrences but the quiet at my place the last few days while I have been sick has been blissful.

2. Both of my dogs are too skinny.  Tor worse than Gata.  I think that I had just grossly underestimated the amount of energy they were expending playing with each other.  I have increased the amount that each of them is eating.  In addition, I started adding some cooked oatmeal to their meat mix meals.  It seems to make Gata's stool soft so I am progressing more slowly with her.  Tor is doing great on it.  I think that he has actually started to gain some weight on it.  He's still thin but only about as thin as Gata, not skeletal any more.  What a relief.

In addition, I found out that Tor's daddy, Arras, is a bit bigger than I thought; about 26-26.5" and 84 pounds.  I wasn't anticipating that Tor would get that big and wasn't feeding him enough to start with.  So hopefully, we have that issue mostly dealt with.  I'm sure that as he continues to grow and mature that I'll have to adjust things from time to time.  But he was so thin that I was getting concerned.

I think we will be back to work tomorrow unless I have a bad night or my lungs are bad in the morning.  That's the problem with asthma/reactive airways, once they get going they are very hard to predict.  Oh well ... life's a bitch and then you die ... or in my case I decided to train one ;-)