It seems that having animals is almost guaranteed to bring some guilty feelings into your life. Multiply the number of animals, and it seems the guilt multiplies as well.

There are times I feel guilty because the boys don’t get as much attention as I’d like to give them; certainly not as much as they got before Chester came into our lives.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t love my boys any less, but the simple fact is that Chester eats up a lot of my time. I suppose that in reality the boys are used to that, as Puss ate up a lot of my time as well. I guess I didn’t feel as guilty about that because Puss was here before the boys — and Puss didn’t scare Gizmo away from me.

For instance, now that the tv season is over and the days are longer, I’m trying to take Chester for a late evening walk. We got back from one the other day, and Simba was laying in wait just inside the door, with Gizmo not far behind him on top of the recliner.

The boys are trained to walk on a harness and leash, too, but it’s awfully difficult to try to walk all three of them each day. In fact, I had stopped walking the boys because there were so many off leash dogs in our neighborhood. Now that our backyard is fenced in, I want to start walking them again — but how to find the time?

Simba, I know, really enjoyed his walks outside. On top of that, I feel guilty that the boys are still confined to the kennel, while Chester has the run of the backyard.

One solution would be to put cat fence-in on our fence. I worry, though, that if we ever have to move to a house without a fenced-in backyard, the boys would be very unhappy if they no longer had access to a backyard.

Even having just one animal brings the guilt. Chester loves to play with his doggy buddies when we board him at an in-home facility. I really think he’d love to have a doggy buddy, and that it might help his separation anxiety, but I’m not ready for another dog for a variety of reasons.

Today’s funny: animals do such silly things sometimes. I’ve fond of saying that my animals “earn” their keep by making me laugh every day. Chester did it today when I asked him if he wanted to go for a walk; he ran over to his carrier, which is in the hallway near my office — relatively far away from the back door. Yesterday we’d gone to the hike & bike trail for our walk, and that requires a car ride. I guess he liked that.

He’s also quite funny about the carrier. He jumps right into it — something I never trained — then promptly turns around and bites the grate. He knows that good things happen (mostly) when he gets in the carrier, but he doesn’t like being confined, apparently.

Technorati Tags: guilty, guilt, attention, separation anxiety

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People often worry that their animals won’t remember them if they go on vacation. We were recently out of town (notice the lack of posts), and my husband worried that Chester wouldn’t remember us.

Well, he sure remembered the person we board him with, and he only sees her every few months. His tail was producing a windstorm and he tried to jump right out of my arms and into hers. Makes you feel kind of superfluous.

The boys make it quite clear that they miss us when we’re gone, too. I can always guarantee that they’ll sleep with us the first night we get back, even if they haven’t slept with us in weeks.

Sure enough, Simba spent the night curled around my head. My husband swears that Gizmo slept with him at some point, but as far as I know, he spent the night in “his” carrier in our bedroom.

In fact, I had to kick Simba out around 4 am, since he started to claw at the blanket. I couldn’t get Gizmo out. I’d look in the carrier and he’d just lay there, purring at me.

Simba started crying almost as soon as I put him out, and he never does that. He’s always content to just find himself a nice cozy bed to curl up on. Lord knows there’s enough of them here.

Some cats will give you the cold shoulder if you have the temerity to leave them, but they’ll come around eventually. I’ve always been lucky enough to be blessed with cats that don’t hold a grudge.

I worry a bit that Chester is relunctant to come back home! He’s boarded at an in-home facility, which caters specifically to small dogs. Apparently he has a great time there. I feel guilty he doesn’t have a doggy buddy to play with here, but I’m just not ready for another dog.

He seems happy here, but it must seem so boring after getting to play with other dogs all the time.

Technorati Tags: vacation, remember, board

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It often seems like animals have a sixth sense. They seem to be able to tell time, for instance. Gizmo will come in about a half hour before I normally get up — to try and wake me up. They all know what time dinner is.

Chester also seems to understand the difference between being crated, and being left in the bathroom when I’m not here.

I’ve been working hard with him on getting used to being in his crate (and the peanut butter is really helping with that). This morning I moved the crate and one of his beds into the bathroom, as I knew I would be going out to grocery shop later.

Then we did a little training in there. “Got to your crate”, “go to your bed”, “sit”, “down”, “stay”. He was happy and excited as he always is when training.

After we got home from our morning walk, I smeared his groovy stick with peanut butter. He was all excited, and right at my side — until I opened the bedroom door and walked in. He knew. He refused to go in the bedroom, much less the bathroom, and I had to carry him in.

I put the groovy stick in his crate (with the door open), and went to use the bathroom; so it wasn’t as if I immediately abandoned him. He wouldn’t leave my side, wouldn’t touch his groovy stick, wouldn’t get in his crate.

No matter how hard I try, it seems, I just can’t get him to relax when he’s all alone. Someday I’ll try crating him in the living room and see if that makes any difference. Maybe he thinks he’s being punished, because he’s being shut into a separate room.

There are definitely times you wish they could talk.

Technorati Tags: animals, sixth sense, crate, training

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Dogs are supposed to love peanut butter. Which would lead one to assume that a very food-motivated dog like Chester would go nuts (no pun intended) over peanut butter.

The first time I tried to stuff a kong with peanut butter he wouldn’t touch it. It took me a while to realize that it was the peanut butter he didn’t like, not the kong (now he gets a kong in his crate every night. He wouldn’t even lick peanut butter off of my finger.

I, on the other hand, adore peanut butter. Especially peanut butter and chocolate, but of course chocolate isn’t good for dogs. Still, I was making myself some peanut butter krispy treats, and suddenly Chester seemed interested. So I let him lick a little off my finger; and he did.

Next I tried putting a little peanut butter on one of his chew toys, and that occupied him for quite a while (once I got him to stop taking it out of the crate). Finally I tried plugging the end of his kong with peanut butter, and he enjoyed that, too (although it didn’t slow him down). He’s a convert. As my husband would say, he’s getting to be a “real” dog.

Yesterday, in fact, we had a first. I have a small, hollow sterilized bone for him. In fact, I have a large one, too, that he likes to gnaw, but it’s too large for him to hold on to; he hasn’t shown a whole lot of interest in gnawing on the smaller one. Until I stuffed it with peanut butter.

So yesterday I put the bone, with some fresh peanut butter in it, in his crate in our family room. Then we went off to have brunch at our kitchen table. Chester actually stayed out in the family room working on his bone, rather than looking at us with “feed me” eyes.

That’s pretty powerful stuff. I can always guarantee Chester will be hanging around us when we’re either eating or preparing food, whether it’s for us or him. But he chose to go into a different room, into his crate, while we were eating — all so that he could get at the peanut butter. And that’s what I call the power of peanut butter!

Technorati Tags: peanut butter, kong, crate, chocolate, chew toys, sterilized bone

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I often ponder the whole nature vs. nurture debate. Now, if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know by now that I’m no scientist. So this is just my take on it.

Gizmo and Simba are littermates, or brothers. In fact, did you know that a litter of kittens can have more than one father? In their litter, there were three orange and white tabbies, one all black cat with a white spot, and one all white cat with a black spot. Most likely more than one father, but clearly Gizmo and Simba had the same father.

When we first got them, we couldn’t decide who was the alpha cat. Our friends thought it was Gizmo, as a matter of fact. A few weeks after we got them, Gizmo came limping out of the bathroom (where we kept them at night).

The limp was pretty severe, and he wouldn’t eat. A not-eating kitten isn’t a good thing, so I took him to the vet. The vet we saw just happened to be male, too. Turned out it was a severe sprain, but he was okay in a couple of days.

However, Gizmo’s entire personality changed at that point. He became very timid, and it was clear that Simba was now the alpha cat. Simba grew up into a very cool cat who just loves people; he figures the more people, the more people there are to worship him.

Gizmo, on the other hand, is scared of strangers. He has gotten a little better over the years, but he still won’t approach my parents. He also has a particular fear of men. He has never, in any way, been abused.

My theory is that when he hurt himself, he was in one of his “fear periods”. So he associated the pain he was in with the male vet, which made him afraid of both strangers and particularly males. Who really knows? We do know that there was definitely a marked change in his behavior after that incident.

Now, Chester came to us as a puppy who never met a stranger and was crate trained. He’s still never met a stranger; he, like Simba, adores people.

However, he does suffer from mild separation anxiety. He is so anxious when he’s left alone that he will not touch any treat I leave him, and this is a dog that lives to eat. This hasn’t changed even though we’ve had him almost five months and I’ve been working on it with him.

He’s happy enough to eat treats in his crate when we’re here, door open or closed. In fact, if it’s a good enough treat (kong stuffed with yogurt, bananas, carrots & frozen, he’ll even continue working on it if we’re not there. But shut him in our bathroom, actually leave, and he won’t touch it.

He used to howl almost the entire time we were gone. We haven’t taped him lately, so I don’t know if he still does this. Usually he’s quiet when I leave and when I get back. I have taken to putting him in the bathroom for short periods while I’m home, and sometimes he’s quiet and sometimes he’s not.

Did we somehow create this behavior? He wasn’t like this in his foster home or in the home we board him at when we travel, but in both places he has lots of doggy friends to play with.

Which would of course seem to indicate that we ought to get a second dog, only I am not ready for that, for many reasons. Chester’s not even fully trained yet, so I’m not ready to take on another dog to train. Gizmo is just beginning to get used to Chester, and I’m not really ready to go through the whole dog-stays-leashed-t0-you 24/7 thing again. Not to mention, it costs us almost $500 per week just to walk out the door on vacation, between the pet sitter for the boys and boarding for Chester.

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Chester suffers from mild separation anxiety.

Now, from my reading and posts on various forums, some think separation anxiety often occurs if the dog is unsure of its place in the pack: they feel they have been given alpha power, and they need to keep the pack together — obviously since they can’t, it makes them very anxious.

I think in general I’ve done a pretty good job of being a “leader”. He has to do a sit-stay for his food. He has to sit before getting on the couch. He now has to wait while I go in the door first. And so on.

Yet Chester still gets so anxious when I’m gone that he sometimes has accidents — when I’m there, it’s been months since he’s had an accident (well, pee anyway) in the house.

Sometimes I think we’re making progress with it, and then sometimes it’s just as bad as ever. He won’t touch food when I’m out of the house. Today I left him a groovy stick (a rubber chew toys with grooves in it; I smeared some peanut butter — which he’s just decided he likes — into the grooves).

Naturally, he didn’t touch it while I was out. However, when I came home & took a shower, he spent his time in the crate, door open, gnawing on it. Even better, when I moved the crate back out into the family room, he went into it of his own accord — while I was in another room — and continued to gnaw on it.

I was so proud of him & praised him when I saw that. Of course, the minute I did that he picked the groovy stick up and carried it out of the crate. Still, I think that’s probably the very first time he’s chosen to be in the crate when he could be near me.

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I swear I am just at my wit’s end with what to feed this dog. I have tried just about everything: raw food, freeze dried raw food, canned food, cooked food. I’ve been feeding my cats raw food for almost 5 years with very good results. I fed my geriatric cat, who had kidney disease, raw and freeze dried raw food (mostly), with very good results.

While it sounds as though I’m constantly changing food, I don’t.

Yet it seems that all Chester has is problems. He’s had bacterial overgrowth in his stool twice, causing diarrhea. He has anal gland problems. Today, out of the blue, he started scooting (which usually means his anal glands need to be expressed), and scooting a lot. We were just at the vet last week; and a week before that.

I admit it, I’m getting really tired of going to the vet. I know that I’m feeding him good food. Maybe it’s just not the right food, but what the heck is?

He always has tons of energy, his coat is wonderfully soft, his teeth (other than his underbite) are very good.

I know that the first year is a lot of searching for what works, but Chester has become a full time job! Literally. I feel badly that the boys don’t get as much attention as I’d like to give them.

I’m certainly able to give them more attention than when Chester first came, but they’re not going to parks for walks with me, or out to dinner with me, or to obedience class with me.

Still, Gizmo is definitely getting more relaxed around Chester (relaxed does not equal likes, though). Today he got up from his bed, walked past Chester in his bed, and then plopped down on the floor just a foot away from Chester. No hissing at all.

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I can tell the weather outside by my cats. When it’s light earlier in the mornings, and warm, they want to go out and stay out — except to come in and eat breakfast.

If it’s cooler and dewy out, however, they want to be inside snuggling with me. This morning Simba took a long nap on my lap. It makes us both very happy. If he were a human, he’d make a great massage therapist.

I was vacuuming the floors this morning in preparation for steaming them. Simba isn’t afraid of much, but he does hate the vacuum. In short order the boys had disappeared outside.

Now, Chester isn’t very fond of the vacuum, but he’s not afraid of it either. I was trying to somewhat keep an eye on him, as he only pooped once this morning, but he disappeared and I couldn’t find him. I thought I kept hearing scratching noises. I also thought maybe he’d gone out into the kennel with the boys.

Sure enough, I was right. When I was finished vacuuming, I called him but still couldn’t find him — and there really aren’t many places to hide in our house. But I kept hearing scratching noises.

I walked over to the cat door that leads to the kennel, and called again. Yup, there was his head butting against the cat door. He has to jump up to get through the cat door, but he made it. Of course, now any time he really wants to hide from us, all he has to do is go out into the kennel. I’m sure Gizmo wasn’t too happy to have him just popping up in there.

I put him in our bathroom so I could steam the floors. That doesn’t bother him, either, but I’m trying to get him used to some time away from us. He’s been doing so well with it, but this morning he’s wailing in there.

We wanted to eventually bring him on trips with us, at least occasionally, but I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to. He just doesn’t seem to be able to handle being separated from us.

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