Microchip trying to escape

Grey's microchip is on the move. He was chipped by our old vets. It's very close to his skin and is moving around his neck and up to his ears. Occasionally it is forming a scab which isn't ideal. It could fall out! So we're off to the vets tomorrow (joy) to have it looked at. We're booked in with Grey's favourite vet and hopefully it won't be as stressful as the last three visits. At least tomorrow no one will be trying to look or touch his bum, hold his paw. Hoping we can get a nice session in of a cuddle and a stand still. Here's hoping.

Cows and Slovakian Rough Haired Pointer at Pegwell Nature Reserve Kent

We went out to Pegwell Bay Nature Reserve yesterday. It was a glorious sunny day. Crisp and bright. We had a good trot round. Met a few dogs as usual. Avoided a pack of barking dachsies. Grey saw the buffalo type cows and was good with them. He was happy and had a spring in his step.

A general walk

Here is a video I shot the other day while out walking at Minnis. I apologise for the rough camera and shaking, but I wanted to keep filming while I walked so I could capture how far Grey generally ranges from me without me stopping to film. When I stop walking Grey usually comes back to me when he's realised.

In this he goes ahead about 20 metres before he turns and sees that I've stopped. He then comes back on his own, no recall. By a coincidence, the point I stop in the film, there is also a passing cyclist on the upper sea wall. A few years ago, Grey would have chased this. He's still not 100% but he's so much better.

After we reach the point we're going to leave the lower sea wall and go up the slope, I use the much easier 'this way' to get him back down the slope than a recall. This gets him out of potential trouble as the sea wall can be quite busy with bikes and joggers and it gives me the opportunity to catch up and make some headway up the slope. From there, on the hard sea wall surface, Grey has less to sniff at and is far more attentive in keeping an eye on how near I am to him. He spies a couple of dogs and their owners on the beach and ignores them. Again, previously he'd have been off down the beach to the dogs.

As a Slovak that is in a pet home and we don't do any working training or gun dog work, this is the kind of terrain and habits that I've grown to do with Grey. Basically, having fun, keeping it neutral and hanging out. What I've learnt to do is watch his energy levels and arousal I think. I try to go places where I can manage him off lead and work up from there.

Can you help? 6 year old Eva (Aucassin Despina) very sick with suspected AI Disease

Sadly the new year didn't get off to a good start for this 6 year old female Slovak called Eva (Aucassin Despina, d.o.b. 17/12/2005). I was contacted by her owner who is desperately looking to bring her back to health. She's been struck down with what looks like another of those mysterious Auto Immune Disease (AI) conditions, and has lost the use of her hind legs with suspected hind limb ataxia. She comes from what sounds like an awfully sick litter of Slovaks with a few of her siblings having died at young ages. Her brother had hind limb ataxia at 18 months of age (he later died). Eva herself has had a life of overcoming sickness, since 16 weeks old she suffered with AI issues and meningitis problem. Her pedigree is the same mating that was repeated two years later and produced one of the main stud dogs in the UK, Bruce (Aucassin Tonto of Rosetinted). They both therefore share the COI of 20.3%. You can see from the pedigree their breeding, hence the high COI. The inbreeding coefficient of Slovakian Rough Haired Pointers is 11.5%.

Eva's parents are Sholto de ''Etang aux Colverts x Aucassin Comfrey.

The problem I've seen with so many of these mysterious AI pain issues that have come to light that result in steroid or anti-biotic treatment, there seem to be as many diagnoses as there are dogs. But one thing they all share is how distressing it is for the dogs and their owners. So if you think you can help with advice or experience, or if your Slovak is related to Eva, please get in touch: greytheslovak@gmail.com and I'll forward it on.

If you suspect your own Slovak might have had a health concern, no matter how minor, that you can now recall, please do take the time to fill out a health report for the breed club. Did you have a pup that reacted badly to vaccinations? Any pain incidents that seemed strange? It is only through reporting of issues within our breed that we can help get to the bottom of conditions like this. The link to the health form is on the breed club website to download.

Here is the lovely Eva (aka giant Doof) in happier days spaniel sitting this summer.

Eva has now had a max dexamethasone jab, after which she picked up so it does look to be auto-immune related rather than trauma.

She is now on prednisolone at 4x original dose ie maximum plus antibiotics in case there is a spinal infection. Problem looks to be at L4/5 or thereabouts.

When Eva was small she had recurrent bouts of elevated temperature, pain, neck stiffness, loss of appetite all responsive to steroids from around 16 weeks on. The attacks put her on a drip in the surgery if not spotted quickly enough. Then decreasing attacks and almost no problems for 2 years with the last 12 months clear. One week ago she was looking for pheasants in fields. She had slightly stiff neck next day, no temperature, but over 3 days reducing hind limb proprioception ending up in loss of motor power and no response to pain. Very sudden and a new manifestation.

Her brother died in England at around 2 years after a lifetime of the symptoms suffered by Eva although he had some loss of proprioception earlier. Another sibling died at a few months of age in the breeder's vets. Another sibling was ill.

Really hoping that Eva recovers soon. If you think you can help, please do get in touch. 

We're back! Cyclists, cut paws and paddling

Poor Grey's Days Blog. Can't believe I haven't posted since October. My excuse is that I've been busy building and maintaining other blogs about other things. I shall endeavour to improve things.

Grey is well and in fine fettle. He's just recovering from a badly cut hind paw pad. £64 trip to the vet to find that we were struggling to get him to allow me to stand his foot in a hibiscrub bath or to let me put a plastic bag on it either in an attempt to keep it clean. In the end, following good sense advice from a friend, I took him down to the sea after a few days of rest at home and let him do his favourite thing. Paddle.

While he was off on rest we picked up some silly trick training at home. So he can now do 'take a bow' on cue. This has only taken me 2 years to put on verbal cue! It's taken a long while because he doesn't move well from luring to the lure being faded. We also messed around with front paw targets and we can now have a fun game of switching between running round an object at a distance 'go around' and running out to touch the object with his nose 'touch it'. Keeps us busy in the winter when we 're down to one walk per day. 

He's still a bugger on the lead and I'm thinking about tackling this. But just thinking about it at the moment. Not looking for stress.

His recalls are good and we seem to have 99% cracked cyclist and jogger chasing. Woohoo! I think it has taken about 9 months. I started pairing 'ready Grey!' with a raised arm about to throw a pebble into the sea. Very soon, 'ready Grey' has him stop and watch me ready to come in and chase the pebble. Then I did 'ready Grey' and 'wait' and then throw. I started to do this whenever I saw a distraction like a cyclist. I moved on to having some food he can clearly see. So I have my hand raised, which becomes like a stop sign. The 'ready Grey' works as a recall, but a recall tied to something exciting about to happen. The 'wait' is with the added visual cue of my raised hand. The cyclist passes and then I reward with an exciting 'Go!' and throw of the food for him to chase and eat. He now actively looks for me if he sees cyclists. I've found this a good compromise and better than a 'leave it'. He loves it so much that as it has built up over time, cyclists now equal fun games and food.

Here are some piccies from our walk today.

lovely red apple tree

Project Grey's Nails - positively training to have his nails clipped

I decided to start videoing my sessions with Grey working on him feeling comfortable having his nails handled. The video is titled session 1, but I realise this might make people think it is the first ever session in this training. Sorry! Its actually it's been a few weeks of me teaching him paw and accepting casual touches of his nails. He's also been shown clippers and the dremel and had them out near him and near food.

His nails on his front paws are really are very long now and they simply do not wear down. It seems Slovak nails being dark are very hard. This hardness makes cutting them a harder task. Hard to see the quick and more pressure to actually clip the nail.

Grey gets very stressed if I go to clip his nails. He doesn't growl he jerks away and struggles really strongly. This makes it impossible to safely cut his nails. So I'm trying to condition him to accept me gradually working towards having his nails cut. In this video Grey is not restrained and is free to leave at any moment. When he flinches I go back a step to an area of his body away from from the paw and to work again towards the paw. Have to remember to take it slow.

This first session went on too long and you'll see at the end, he gave up and didn't want to do it anymore. I'll keep future sessions shorter. It's easy to get carried away with this kind of training and to take things forward. But the best and only way really is to go at the dog's pace. I'm not aiming for him to love getting his nails done. Do we love going to the dentist? The aim is for him to be as relaxed so I can get that unpleasant clipping action over and done with minimal stress and without him having a strong pre-emptive fear of the process. This might take a very long while.

 

Working on the nail handling

We're about day 3 into working on nail handling. I worked on him from his main body, down his legs and on to his paws. He'll now let me touch his nails with a pen, insert the nails into the clip of the pen and generally let me tap the nail with the pen and scrape underneath. I have a feeling he might actually tolerate a dremel more than the clippers. So I'm going to look up dremels. Other than that, we've been back out on our beach today. Tourists have gone and we're back having the whole place to ourselves. Yesterday the car was out of action so we worked on lead walking on the square. I went back to Ian Dunbars method of waiting for sits after a giant step. It gave him lots of time to take in his surroundings. And interestingly, he was calm through loads of his usual triggers: bikes, sirens, lorries.