Beloved LGD has to have surgery next week... :(

[cmjust0]

I found a page on the "TightRope CCL technique " that Ivan received. Kinda neat, if anyone wants to check it out.

He got his stitches out yesterday, BTW..

I pulled those by myself. He was mostly a good boy about it, after I decided to give up on the very first stitch for a few minutes and come back to it later. While the rest all came out easily, that first stitch was fricken buried in there! Seriously...all I could see were the two tag ends and the top of the first knot. Had to wet the area just a little to soften the scab (pulling a dry, scabbed-over stitch out of a partially-healed hole = YOWZA!), and when I finally got it to break free to where I could work it around...

...um, yeah...

...there were like three more knots underneath the one I could see! I worked and worked and worked at it and finally got to where I thought I was maybe seeing what might be one side of the loop. I cut it, knowing that if I cut the whole knot off and left the loop in the dog, I'd be in trouble.. But I cut it anyway.

Zip..out came the stitch, intact.

He went out to pee last night, did his biz, walked around for a few minutes, came over to me and my wife and got his lovins...then walked back to the door like "Ok, I'm ready to go back indoors and lay down on my big cushy bed now, like a good house dog.."

Uh oh.




Oh, and...psst...don't tell anyone, but we're going to "look at" (read that as, pick up) another LGD this weekend. She's a 4mo old pup...75% Pyr, 25% Sarplaninac. She's out of the same Sarpie lines as Ivan, but has enough disparate DNA (Pyr) that we should be able to safely cross the two....and get 62.5% Sarpie puppies.

I haven't seen her yet, but the breeder says she's "light tan with a black face." Gee, wonder where that came from?

 

[cmjust0]

So, this past Wednesday marked four weeks post-op for Ivan. Up until just a few days ago, I'd say he was walking somewhere around a pre-surgery level.. Seems he plateaus for a while, then improves a few notches at a time seemingly overnight. Could just be our perception, though.

In any case, it's become clear that he's actually moving better than he was before the surgery over the last couple of days. He's moving almost like he did a few days after a partial tear, way back before he blew his whole daggone knee out. Just sort of a little hitch in his giddy at this point.. The incision healed beautifully, too...no infection or other soft tissue complications.

He's starting to realize he's moving better, too, and he's getting just a wee too big for his britches. I find myself having to...ahem..."recommend" that he take it down a peg a little more often lately, as he's becoming more and more prone to wanting to play when he goes out.. They're super sensitive, so all it really takes is going "Iiiivaaaaan.." accompanied by a :/ ..

Overall.....he's doing really, really well, and has been just a super duper trooper through the whole thing. Very accomodating and surprisingly adaptable. He really couldn't have taken it any better than he has.

Oh, and he's seen the new LGD puppy through the fence. She's smart, though...she won't come over and outright visit him. He really barked at her at first, but lately he'll kinda walk over to the fence to see if he can spot her.. When he does, his ears perk up and he locks his gaze direclty on her....but then his tail kinda starts to sway a little and you can sense that he kinda wants her to come say hi. The pup usually perks up too, but she won't say a word.....which is hilarious, because she usually barks like crazy whenever the house dogs come out.

I think she's kinda looking on like "Ok, now I know my own daddy was big, and the goats are big.....but this is ridiculous. I ain't sayin nuthin, and I sure as heck ain't goin over there!"

My guess is that when they're introduced, she'll be SUPER submissive and he won't take her as a threat. I expect that once he gets all healed up and can do what he wants, he'll wanna play. The folks who bred him said his daddy loved older pups.. Didn't care much for baby pups, but once they got old enough to run and jump and act goofy, he'd play with them all day long.

Ivan goes in the buck pen first, though, most likely in about two weeks...six weeks post-op. Not much to do in the buck pen. It's pretty small, so he won't have to walk long distances or anything. Plus, he'll be seperated from the pup. We figure he'll spend at least a month in there before going back to his regular duties. Plus, there's a 7'x16' cattle trailer in there as housing for the boys, and it can be split to two 7'x8' sections. If we decide we need to coop him up half the day or something, no problem.. He won't dig or claw his way out of that trailer, I can promise him that..

And if he plays too much with the pup right off the bat when they're finally in together in six weeks or so, we may switch her into the buck pen and let him stretch his legs alone with the goats in the bigger barnyard area for a while.

Ok.. </novel>

 

[cmjust0]

OH! Something else I forgot to mention (if you can believe it) is...

Ivan's super clean!

Where he's been indoors in clean environs for four weeks, he's not dusty/dirty/muddy anymore and man...his 'true colors,' so to speak, are just amazing. Such variation, from white to tan to almost orange, some black, with a bit of bluish gray.. His 'suspenders' really come through, too..

My wife mentioned getting a picture of him just to kinda compare and contrast to what he looks like when he's in the field.. We never really thought his color showed too much dirt, but.....well, guess it does!

And his feet, you guys...his toes are white!! Who knew?!?!?!!!!!

 

[ksalvagno]

Glad to hear Ivan is doing just fine. Sounds like he will be back to normal in no time at all.

How's the new pup doing?

 

[AlisonJ_SFW2]

I've been wondering how Ivan was doing. Glad to hear he's recovering so well!

 

[cmjust0]

Thanks.

The new pup has been awesome so far.. She's still a little weird around me, except when I have food. All wariness goes out the window when a food dish is in play. She'll belly crawl to me if I call her over even without food....but there's still a little part of her that worries I'm going to snap her head off. She's getting over that quickly enough, though.

She's on my wife like white on rice, however, and has been since day one.. Jumping up, putting her paws on her for attention, all kinds of "cuteness" that's almost certainly going to become a real problem when she's about 100lbs.

I won't let her do me that way though.. The dog, I mean.

She's really good with the goats, too.. No scuffles yet, and they're getting more used to her being somewhat of a spaz. They no longer split the herd, drop their heads, and put their hackles up when she comes busting a** into the middle of them. They'll allow her to "weave" now. Weaving seems to be her thing....if she leaves them for more than like 18 seconds, she'll turn and go flying right back into the thick of the herd and just weave around, saying hi to everybody for the 412th time that day.

The goats have become more or less indifferent, you might say. Like..."Oh. You again. Yes, yes hello little furry thing.. Yes, I know you're excited. Ok then.. Move along.."

Pup's pretty alert, too, when she's awake. Puppies sleep a lot. She barks at anything non-normal, as well as some things that are normal which she hasn't figured out yet. Like the windchimes on the porch when it's really windy. She stood out in the wind and rain last night and barked toward the front porch quite a bit.

Ignores chickens, too.. We've had a couple of rogue roosters to fly out of their little area and walk around in the barn about half the day, and she pays them no attention whatsoever. She's exhibited no prey drive that I've seen so far.

Of course, I'm under no illusion that she knows her job precisely and that she'll never need any correction for putting a hole in a goat or grabbing a chicken or anything like that...she is a dog, afterall, and -- contrary to popular belief -- LGDs don't run on pure magic.. So far, though, she really seems to have all the traits necessary to a good LGD. If we have to correct a few "extra" traits, no biggie.. It's to be expected. So, overall...she gets ...way up.

 

[ksalvagno]

That's great! Glad to hear she is working out. Hopefully the dogs will get along well and work together as a team. Or will they be in different fields?

 

[cmjust0]

That's great! Glad to hear she is working out. Hopefully the dogs will get along well and work together as a team. Or will they be in different fields?

They'll work tandem until she knows the ropes and/or gets to such an age that she could may start coming into heat. We don't want her being bred until she's fully mature at about 2 years of age.

I guess you could say the'll end up having an on-again/off-again relationship.

 

[cmjust0]

Ivan went out into the buckpen this past Wednesday after eight...long...weeks of cooped-uppedness. He's doing really, really well so far. Bouncy, happy, playful. The bucks are like...WTFnF is that?!? They've never lived with an LGD before, so they're terrified of him...which he obviously thinks is hilarious. He's chosen poor ol' Frank (former UC buckling...basket case/problem child) to be his "buddy," which means he occasionally stalks him and chases him and mouths on the back of his neck to be annoying.



Not cool, you say? Not LGD like, you say?

Meh.

Ivan's been cooped up too long and feels good to be back outside...and I think he's a little frustrated that he's in a new, smaller area with less to do...and he kinda wants to play...all of which are really, really good signs, diagnostically speaking.



New pup's doing great, too.. We had Ivan out in the barnyard with her one day and they seem to sorta know what one another are...guardians. He sniffed around on her (which she was really happy about) and then just sorta moved on sniffing everything else.

She followed him around like a...well, like a puppy dog. It was really cute, and I wish we could have left him out there but we suspected that some serious playtime was imminent...intermittantly chasing a goat is one thing, but playing with a puppy is a bit much for him right now. That's why he was almost immediately transferred to the buckpen.

The pup's actually starting to be a lil bit ornery at times , which is to be expected, but the good news is that she responds well to correction. She actually took a wild hair and tried to "play" with a rooster the other day...responded in roughly .001 seconds to a stern verbal correction from yours truly. Very, very sensitive...also to be expected.

She's super smart, too...I got her to sit for treats (which are actually glucosamine/chondroitin and fish oil pills wrapped in cheese ) in like two tries. She didn't give me a chance to reinforce the training because now she comes right over and sits immediately when she thinks I have something for her.

Super good puppy, overall.

We changed her name to Mischa, btw.. Dunno if I'd mentioned that before.