Difficult Diagnosis

Well what a horrible, horrible time we have been having emotionally regarding Oddjob. Not knowing if we would need to make that decision that all dog owners find themselves having to make. Hard enough when it comes to an old dog like Flint but in youngsters.....

Mark has had enough on his plate - he does love a full plate, but sometimes it leaves little room for manoeuvre.

He has had to make some tough decisions made harder by the great dogs and partnership he has amongst the Team GB squad. He has also commenced a new project in his day job.

He spent the day last Tuesday taking Oddjob into the referral centre with me and waiting for the MRI scan results. As many of you know my day job is supporting Mark :) Not everyone knows it is definitely two way traffic.

Oddjob is often seen as my dog but he is just as much Mark's so you can imagine the emotional turmoil we have been in all this last couple of weeks. The visit yesterday (again Mark rearranged his work day to attend the vets) has still not really answered all the questions and we now have 2 possible causes of his illness.

We will get copies of his scans meanwhile here are examples of the 2 different options - Glioma or Abscess as you can see they are very similar (try to ignore the size just look at their appearance)

One way to possibly find out for sure is to drill a hole in his brain and drain a bit of fluid from his cyst. That test would let us know if he has a brain tumour which would be a very sad thing.

The other possibility is a abscess which will be treatable with drugs although this may be costly and take a while we are hopeful this is the correct diagnosis.

The scans are going off for more opinions as we do not want his head drilled and we have drugs for him to have for a while.

Meanwhile let us enjoy life while he wants to. Since doing the Ultimate Agility Foundation online course he believes that we need to do some kind of training each day. When he was so off colour I thought it would be better to keep him in quieter situations with just walks out and about. Now both his spirits and probably mine to be honest are better we do not want to waste a day :)

Obviously with his limbs going in all the wrong directions moving forward with any agility equipment training is out of the question but he can still do puppy proprioception exercises and basics like recalls and hand touches.

He was so happy and I thought it may be worth recording his ability to achieve movement related tasks as it will help track if he is getting better or not.

It is very easy to watch for good things when you think your dog may be ill to prove that they are getting better so a subjective look may be more helpful to the vet.

Also Flint (yes he is still here and still getting special treatment as "we don't know how much longer we have with him" 18 months on :)
seems to thrive on life. Due to all that has happened with house move etc although he gets special time, he also has to muck in with the others. New experiences, being out and about and even going to shows seem to invigorate him and have kept him going even though he is so thin that if he looses any more weight he will become 2 dimensional.

Getting Oddjob to preform tasks usually involves an opportunity for him to earn treats which is his main reason for being so I aim to keep giving him reason.

List of actions and current ability
Sit - achievable but can't maintain
Down - can do and maintain
Hand target - no problem
Walking beside me in a straight line - will need to measure but just about provided loads of treats keep head forward
Walking from back gate to field without spinning - really tries and can make it if he runs after other dogs
Recall - does at a run and maintains forward momentum
Front feet on a box - can do and maintain I had not done this for a while as I think he would have knuckled over so I think this is progress
Get off box with OK release cue - good understanding of cue and how to do it physically
Walking though a short ladder - again only did this yesterday as I don't think it would have worked to do it when he was poorly poorly so I think this also points to a progression.
Lured left and right turns - I don't really like luring but due to his natural spin to the right which he will do if over excited (not sure if related to his current condition or due to being with his breeder until 10 months old) the guaranteed way to see if he can turn is to lure. He turns comfortably both ways.

I think monitoring these will give me good indications of his progress along with giving him some fun and maintaining his ability to move.

As far as his drugs are concerned I love this How to give a dog a pill

In fact as far as Oddjob is concerned even the bacon is not required :)

Empowering the Pug

Oddjob is a great little dog and we are so glad we got him.

With all the moving, Olympia, Christmas and then concentrating on the Wag and Tone eBook it suddenly dawned on me that he just lives with us. By that I mean he doesn't have a relationship with us. Well not the kind of relationship that we normally have with our dogs.

Our other dogs were brought up with a strong working relationship. We spent time developing a strong foundation built on great a positive reward based structure. This structure created the work ethic as it is known within all the Border Collies.

The work ethic of doing something right in order to earn a reward creates a life where we work on avoiding situations that involve any correction. This means simple basics like understanding go to your bed are actually taught and rewarded so although they may have preferred not to go they will as they had been rewarded enough. This paid huge dividends in helping them (and us) cope with living in other houses.

I have spent time re rewarding this behaviour in their new house where the beds are in a different place. I have also rewarded sitting in gate ways on the way to the field to help them calm down and not crash racing through gates.

Torro Devo and Rhyme waiting to be called through the gate

You'll notice Oddjob wasn't there. He would just not understand that behaviour and until he learns how to "work" he is almost entirely likely to fail any attempt I made to teach it.

Being small and calmer he is not likely to harm himself racing through gateways and he generally just hangs around so doesn't need to know the behaviour. But he does so much want to.

Oddjob trying to work out what to do

Without going right back to basics he will never be able to acheive exactly what I want. There is no way I easily explain it to him.

So I called in reinforcements our friends Greg and Laura Derrett International Instructors, Handlers and owners of UKA and UKI. Luckily they have also managed to make time to create Ultimate Agility. This gives access to their knowledge and help through online courses. Again luckily for me (and Oddjob) they have just started one on Reinforcement.

www.ultimateagility.com

How perfect is that.

I know I love the way Greg and Laura look at dog training - how important it is to them to use positive reinforcement over any other training and how well they put information across. It will be a lot of focus on Oddjob and myself and it will be uncomfortable for me at times facing up to the things I could do better.

It will also be the best thing we ever could have done together and I am very confident that Oddjob will come out as a dog many people envy and I will be a much better dog trainer.

If you are at a point when you notice you are spending more time saying no to your dog than praising it then I would thoroughly recommend spending the money on this great course.