Dominic has splintered a piece of bone in his left elbow. How it happened, we have no idea. Tanner went to the gym on Friday and Dom was fine. He came home from the gym and Dom wasn't weight bearing. I thought that maybe with some rest it would go away, but it didn't. So I took him in to the emergency vet yesterday (Saturday) to figure out what was going on as he wasn't wanting to bear much weight on the leg. Naturally, I freaked out and thought it was osteosarcoma. X-rays thankfully showed otherwise. Two other vets are going to review his x-rays tonight and see what they think about it. The orthopedic specialist that I want to take him to is closed on the weekends, so come Monday morning I'll have a better idea of what we're in store for. I didn't see the radiographs so I don't know how large the piece is or where exactly it's located, I'm just assuming that surgical removal is the only option. As we're currently doing just pain management until I can get him in to see a specialist, I really don't see any other option. I'm REALLY hoping that I can get him in for surgery this week as its hard on him to be hobbling around and all I can really do is just keeps pain meds on board and restrict his movement.
Understandably, our training has been a little curtailed. Once I know the scheduling for the course of action for him, then we can continue on a modified training schedule, but we're taking a little bit of a break at the moment. I will post the videos that we got done before he got injured, though.
Day 23
Day 23 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: I am feeling the rush of this month. I filled out my calendar at home so that I stay aware of all of my committments. I'm calmer this year. I knew this month would be ridiculous. But still. I love it, but December needs to be the length of two months because this is getting ridiculous. Again, I love it, I just need more time to be able to really enjoy it.
With the being said, you'll have to bear with me as some of these videos are going to be of where we're at with a particular exercise or piece of equipment. I'm staying committed to doing this challenge. Working with Dom is a priority and I do enjoy the daily training. I just feel like sometimes the video content is a little flat.
But here we are. I've continued working with Dom on the donut. His confidence is slowly increasing. The video of his first time working with the donut is back on Day 14 for reference. He has definitely increased his level of comfort putting his front feet on it. We're still working up against the wall for added stability as I want to reinforce his confidence to work on the equipment. He's a little less confident putting his rear feet on it than during one of our sessions last week. He actually got both rear feet up on it then. And I did push the session a little too far and Dom definitely said that he was done. So we ended there. It's great to end on a good note, but not great to keep pushing until you can find that "good note" when things have started going in a less desireable direction.
Day 24
Day 24 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: On Day 18 I posted a video of the start of teaching Dominic to nose bump a ball to me from a down. So he has the beginning understanding of what we're going for. For this behavior, I want to teach him to nose bump the ball hard enough to roll it a ways. Specifically nose bumping and not pawing with his foot. When he's standing, the pawing is his go to move, so I needed to focus on nose bumps.
He has no problem touching the ball with his nose, but he only gives it a good bump twice in this session. I did jackpot him for those, but he hasn't quite made the connection yet. I THINK what I need to do to encourage the stronger nose bump is to add a little bit of movement to the ball prior to him bumping it. It seemed like that may have helped. I try that during our next session.
Day 25
Day 25 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: We're a quarter of the way through!!!
My desired end goal behavior is that I can use this target to get Dominic to close a door with his nose. For that, I used the lid from a large yoghurt container. The first part of the video shows him on our first day where I just had him nose targeting the lid. I started out in the open and then moved it towards the wall, until it was right up against the wall. Because Dominic already knows a hand target, I figured this wouldn't be difficult for him and it wasn't.
From there I put tape on the back of the lid and had him start nose bumping a closed door. While he was starting to learn this I wanted him nose targeting something that didn't move. I wanted his confidence in the nose target high in the off chance that nose bumping an open door might weird him out. So confidence was high and I started opening the door. No problems with any door movements.
Where we're at right now is that he has no problem touching the target with his nose. He's just not hitting it hard enough to do much to the door. I tried adding a little bit of excitement or movement to the door to see if I could get a more forceful nose bump, but that didn't really happen. Doesn't mean it won't, but this time around it didn't. Maybe once I figure out how to encourage a nose bump on the ball with more force, I can put a cue to that and transfer it to the door. In the meantime, we'll just keep plugging away at this.
Day 26
Day 26 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: Today we brough out one of the large paw pods. I can't remember what they're actually called, but I think of them as large paw pods, so that's what I'm going to call them.
I warmed Dom up with both sets of the small paw pods first (that video is posted before I started the 100 Days), then we worked on just the one large pod and then on to one large pod and one set of paw pods. The large pod is definitely less stable than the paw pods and trickier for him to manage between the two, but he's doing well.
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