Sensitive Soul
Annie’s puddle diving addiction has got her into a bit of bother. During a particularly enthusiastic session in the Forest on Sunday, she leapt into what turned out to be more pond than puddle and disappeared momentarily into the murk.
She seemed nothing more than a bit taken aback by the whole incident and continued her rampaging for the rest of the walk, but by dinnertime, it became clear that stinky pond water isn’t great for the digestion; even the digestion of a Labrador with a passion for snacking from the cat’s litter box…
Vet trip
I’ll spare you any more gory details, but needless to say we ended up at the vets where she had to have an injection to stop the vomiting and a course of antibiotics to fight off whatever bug she’s picked up.
She refused all food yesterday and moved only between her crate and the couch with the occasional detour to the garden for the necessaries. As my gran used to say, she looked ‘proper poorly’ all day poor love.
Thankfully, she’s on the mend today and is a little brighter. She’s forced down two small bowl fulls of chicken and rice and we’ve even had a few wags out of her so I’m hoping the worst is over.
Sensitive Bear
As you can imagine, yesterday was slightly full-on and Little Bear’s walk ended up being pathetically short, squeezed in between vet trips, supermarket dashes for chicken, copious washing of dog bedding, floor cleaning, bowl sanitising and frequent coddling of the patient – and that was without the small matter of trying to run a business!
Amazingly though, despite having to play second fiddle to Annie all day, LB was an angel. He didn’t nag for food, (even though he had every meal late yesterday), he didn’t nag me to play (which is a nightly occurrence) and even his alert barking was considerably pared down. When Annie ventured from her crate to lay on the sofa, he didn’t pester her to play as usual, he simply waited for her to lie down and then snuggled up next to her and slept.
Empathy
When you have a reactive dog it’s all too easy to see the problem: the lunging, the barking, the hair-trigger temperament that means even a hiccupping bubble bee at forty feet can set them off; but in focussing on the problems we often miss something very special: The empathy, the sensitivity and the kindness dogs are capable of exhibiting, not just to us, but to their own kind too.
Reactive dogs are often sensitive dogs and while we work on helping them with their fears, we need to also appreciate and recognise the wonderful upside to their sensitivity.
Thanks Little Bear for reminding me of your sensitive soul.
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