New Dog

We got a new dog. No, I definitely did not need a new dog, but how many of the things that we have do we actually need? Anyway, his name is Woody. I'm not totally sold on the name, but I guess I'll get used to it. I won't change it unless my hubby says that he wants to change it. He is a pure bred Australian Shepherd. The story as I know it is that his original owners got tired of him and set him loose hoping that he would run away. Someone found him, found the owners, was told to keep him and gave him to the girl I got him from. She had him for about a month before her 4 year old little boy stepped on him and he snapped at the toddler. That prompted her fiance to say the dog's got to go. A girl who rides with her found out about the dog's situation and posted a call for help on Flahorse, which is how I found out about Woody. The fiance pretty much agreed to keep him for a couple days so that they could find him a home. After that he was taking him to Animal Control.

So I took a rather reluctant husband out to Lakeland after work yesterday to go look at him. The girl was meeting us at an arena there where she was going to be barrel racing. We got there about an hour and a half early, so we went to Olive Garden for dinner. The arena was really in the most unlikely of locations. Probably a victim of development, the arena is in a fairly developed part of town with soccer and baseball fields next door. I'm sure those soccer moms loved the dust from the riders blowing their direction.

Woody was very sweet. He's only about 18 months old, so he still has that floppy puppy body. He wasn't as obedient as I was told, but he did stick close really well and came back when called. Nothing a little positive reinforcement training won't fix. He seems a little under weight. The hair hides his body pretty well, but he just feels like bones when you scratch him. He otherwise seems very healthy. His second eyelid doesn't completely retract on one eye, but it doesn't seem to bother him. Since I'm guessing that's something that would have to be fixed with surgery, I'm not in that much of a hurry to get it looked at. The girl didn't know any of his medical history or even if he's been vaccinated. Greta was due for shots anyway, so I figured I'd take them both in together. So with minimal arm twisting, hubby agreed to take him and Woody hopped in the back of the car.

Hubby said that Woody absolutely had to take a bath before he was allowed to stay in the house, so we did his and Greta's introductions outside, fed the horses, and then he was escorted promptly to the bathroom. Why I bothered wearing a white shirt is beyond me. The water coming off of him was almost black. And of course he has tons of hair, so we went through several rinses before the water finally started to run clear again. I'm just glad that my bathtub is semi-contained. Every time he shook, muddy water covered the walls and me. What I wasn't expecting were the fleas. The poor boy was infested. He shook and dead fleas stuck to the walls. The rinse water would run down his legs and leave dead fleas stuck in the white hair on his paws. I'm sure they were elsewhere, those were just the ones I could see. He was still scratching last night. I doubt the bath got all of them.

This morning was filled with obedience training, horse trims, and vaccinations. I don't have any doubts on his ability to learn obedience. Aussies are very smart dogs and Woody is very motivated by cheese. He followed me every time I went to get a horse and laid under the farrier's truck during the trims. He's a very content dog. Although, I was told that he herds and he was less than helpful when I was trying to catch the buckskin. We'll have to work on that after we get his basic commands down. Then off to PetLuv spay/neuter clinic for cheap vaccinations. Rabies, 5 way, bordatella, & heart worm test for two dogs plus a microchip for Woody for less than $90. Of course then there were the heart worm and flea preventatives for the dogs and flea preventative for the cats, but we won't go into that. Just suffice to say that it's just as cheap as the company I was ordering it from online. I was surprised to find that the girl who checked us in had no idea that collie breeds shouldn't get ivermectin. I got a pat on the back for being an informed pet owner. Yeah, you work in a vet clinic and sell heart worm preventative. That really should have been in the job training. She did manage to find one of their heart worm preventatives that doesn't have ivermectin in it and it just happens to include flea preventative (Advantage Multi). So much for giving Comfortis a try. Not that I'm complaining. I like Advantage and I've been using spot treatments for years. Comfortis is just the latest and greatest. It has a drug that kills adult fleas within the first 4 hours, then another drug that continues to break the flea life cycle for the next 30 days. So, given Woody's flea infestation, I got him a single dose of Capstar just in case. He got the Capstar today. He just had the bath yesterday, so I'll wait until this weekend to give him the Advantage. Gotta wait for those coat oils to build back up or else the spot treatments don't work.

So two lazy dogs are now napping and I am once again avoiding housework. Yep, life is pretty much back to normal.