Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Potty Problems...



So Marcus has an embarrassing little secret. He has some potty problems. I originally hadn't planned to post about it here, but apparently it's a funny story, so I figured I'd share it.

When we got Marcus, he hadn't been lifting his leg to pee for very long. As a result, he wasn't terribly skilled at it. Many times, he would put his leg down mid-stream, or he'd get tired of having his right leg up, so he'd put it down and lift his left leg. The end result was him peeing everywhere - on the backs of his paws, his belly, etc. I was sort of hoping that neutering would help a teeny bit, since many dogs don't mark quite as much post-neuter.

How wrong I was! Because Marcus doesn't want to pee a teeny tiny bit on 27 million things anymore, he now pees a whole lot in 1-2 bursts. Frequently directly into the backs of his front paws. The phenomenon has lead to Aaron giving him the nickname of "yellow paw". But it's not limited to his paws either. Sometimes, he decides to pee when his but is at a higher elevation than his face. In typical doggy style he's sniffing all over the place while doing his business, so he either pees right on his face, or ends up sniffing up his pee and sneezing.

Unfortunately, it's not just a pee-related issue. His signals seem to be somewhat crossed when it comes to going poop too. It seems that he seems to believe on occasion that he needs to poop in a high up place as well. The end result is that he sidles his little bunny butt up a tree, and then poops. Then, he freaks out because his poop comes rolling back to attack him! It's so funny to watch.

I am hoping that over time, he will get a bit more adept at keeping himself clean, but until then, it looks like we'll be giving him very regular baths.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Recovering



So, Marcus recovered quickly from his neutering. Too quickly if you ask me, because before we knew it he was up and running spastically around the house like nothing was ever wrong with him. And of course the moment that he could stand up, he wanted to start licking at his incision.

We tried numerous options to keep him off of them. We started with the bitter apple spray that the vet had given us, but Marcus quickly realized that it only tasted bad for a lick or two, and then he had unfettered access. Then we tried household methods - tee shirts, boxer shorts, anything that we could attach to his rump. No good there, he's far skinnier than Aaron or myself. We got a cone from the vet, but that lasted all of a few minutes, because as soon as we got it on him, he just started bashing his head against things to try and get it off. Not wanting him to knock himself senseless, I finally drove to the PetSmart and got him a doggy diaper.

As it clear from the image above, he was initially not too thrilled with the concept of wearing a diaper. He was confused by the fabric touching his legs, and seemed to be convinced that his hind legs wouldn't work anymore. After a while though, he was running, jumping, and back to his old self.




As a reward for all the misery that he had to suffer since his surgery, we took him to the Dog Park this weekend, and he got to run around and play with other doggies off leash. He was absolutely, positively thrilled. I am constantly amazed when we get him offleash - he can run so fast! He starts obedience classes on the 22nd of this month, and after that we're going to see what other classes he likes. Right now, I think he'd love agility, lure coursing, and tracking.