Beloved Dog, The Reprise – Or, In Which I Take Spoiling My Dog To A Whole New Level

Tags

diet, dogs, home cooked diet, home made dog food, IBD, pancreatitis, recipe, ultrasound

Some of you may remember that a year and a half ago, I threw myself into a panic over Beloved Dog. Some routine bloodwork based on my paranoid suspicions revealed that he tested positive for pancreatitis, despite having none of the symptoms of it.

I put him on a low fat diet, rechecked him a month later, and he STILL tested positive. So I sent the blood to the lab for a more detailed answer. I wanted to know HOW positive.

Well, apparently a normal Spec CPL number is between 0 and 200. Over 200 is borderline. Over 400 is definitive. Beloved Dog was at 600.

Cue panic and tests.

Well, ultrasound showed pretty much nothing. Ditto when, a month later, Beloved Dog began urinating tea brown liquid. A little thickening of the bladder, some funny nodules on the spleen that, when tested, turned out to be nothing significant.

So, on the advice of the ultrasound vet, I dismissed it as nothing. He said that the spec CPL test is wrong sometimes.

Just to be sure, I put Beloved Dog on an extremely low fat diet. But his weight melted off and he got skinny as hell. And I’ve always kept him pretty lean to begin with, so we’re talking prominent ribs, sticky-outy spine, etc.

I changed his food to a more moderate level of fat and simply kept him away from fatty treats.

And he seems to have been doing fine.

It’s just the little things:

The fact that he has taken to having bowel movements in the house. Even if he pooped outside earlier that day. Several times.

He isn’t cuddly.

I mean, he was never a CUDDLY dog. Not the way a Lab or a Pug might treat you like their personal cushion. But he liked to lean up against you, It seems like over the last few years that has faded away. Now he wants to curl up in a corner and for you to leave him the f*** alone.

Behold, my doggy fortress of solitude

Then there’s the abdomen thing.

Whenever a dog comes in for an exam, vets always palpate the abdomen. Sometimes if there’s a cancer or something in there they can feel it, and how well the dog tolerates it can tell them if his stomach hurts or not.

That test doesn’t work on Beloved Dog, because he always grunts and hunches if you touch his belly. I dismissed it as a mannerism, until the pancreatitis test last year. Now I’m not sure. Humans with pancreatitis report it as excruciatingly painful, even in chronic form.

Anyway, I just left the matter to rest. After all, he SEEMS fine. Likes to run, loves to eat. Gets into mischief occasionally. Hell, compared to a lot of the fat, greying, stiff-limbed 9 year old dogs I see at my clinic, he seems remarkably youthful.

Then, on Sunday, I fed him a piece of lean steak leftover from Owl’s bowl. I was thinking “to hell with the pancreatitis thing. He’s been fine for a year. There’s no fat on this piece, anyway.”

My nose woke me up at 6 the next morning. We pulled back the closet door and nearly wept. Messy, stinky poop everywhere and judging from Beloved Dog’s hunched and guilty posture, he wasn’t done. I shoved him out in the yard for a good hour.

Then I brought him into work.

Physical exam was about the same – tense abdomen, grunts when palpated, otherwise nothing unusual noted. I did some repeat blood work, and his organ function looked the same as last year.

In fact, strangely similar. His cholesterol was up a bit last year, which often doesn’t mean much. Except a year later, despite having eaten nothing for 12 hours, his cholesterol was, if anything, higher than last year.

So I ran another Spec CPL, to see how his probably-false-positive for pancreatitis was coming along. Now it was 764, instead of 600. I asked the lab to add on a check of his amylase and lipase – two enzymes secreted by the pancreas as well as several other organs during gastronomic upset. They were elevated, too.

Learning to Read: Toddler vs Dog – An Update

Tags

development, dogs, first words, intelligence, reading, symbol recognition, toddlers, training

Back in March, I proposed a battle of wits between my baby and my dog.

It didn’t seem so far fetched, back then. Owl was still speaking in mostly single-word sentences, although with signs he often made two or three word combinations. The average dog has been judged to have the intelligence of an 18-22 month old.

My fellow dog trainer has seen dogs who have learned to differentiate between written words.

So!

To be honest, I was sort of rooting for Beloved Dog, because COME ON, that would have been an AWESOME result.

The problem was, it wasn’t really a fair contest. I could work on Owl’s word recognition at various points throughout the day, like after breakfast, and in the bath, plus he got alphabet work at Daycare.

Beloved Dog got maybe a couple of minutes before his dinner every night.

Within a month, Owl had learned to recognize five words: Ball, Apple, Dog, Car, and Foot. Eye gave him some trouble, as did Bear.

I figured out pretty fast that Owl was not recognizing the word as a whole: he was recognizing the word based on the first letter only.

I was disappointed with this result, but he was still doing way better than Beloved Dog.

I managed to teach Beloved Dog to sit when I held up the “sit” card within a single session, and things were looking good. Unfortunately, when I introduced a second word, things went downhill.

Beloved Dog is paying zero attention to the actual words on the cards. He knows that he should sit sometimes, and down other times, but he’s never sure which he should be doing.

I got disheartened and put the cards away, which wasn’t quite fair to him. I should bring them out and work them more, give him another chance, because Owl has left Beloved Dog IN HIS DUST.

I was able to introduce some more written words to Owl’s vocabulary, but Owl continued to recognize them based on first letter. Watch this video, how he’s guessing the word before I’ve even finished writing it, based on the first letter.

In fact, I began to feel that he was getting entirely the wrong idea from his alphabet work at daycare, and now believed that A MEANT Apple, and B MEANT Ball, and so on. So he just dismissed the trailing letters as meaningless.

And then (and I’m still debating the wisdom of this choice) I downloaded a trial version of a toddler iphone app.

Yes, let the judging begin.

Aside: I have very mixed feelings about letting kids use technology like iphones. First, there’s health. Cell phones are known to give out radiation. Now, I don’t have an iphone, I have an ipod, but I’m not sure that’s really the point.

Second, I think that interacting with the real world is an important part of growing up, and that too many video games robs children of active play.

Nor do I agree with people who say that children should be exposed to technology, since they’ll need it to function in today’s world. I didn’t have an ipod until last Christmas, and I learned to use it within days. I didn’t need to start from toddlerhood. It’s not that hard.

On the other hand, videogames aren’t the demons some make them out to be. People who play a lot of video games have been found to have faster reaction times, better decision making skills, and better fine motor control. Put it this way – if you’re ever looking for a heart or brain surgeon, choose one who owns a video game console and plays it regularly.

Anyway, I couldn’t be a hypocrite – I was always playing on that ipod and Owl wanted to play too, so I found something educational and let him at it. The game was First Words Sampler, a free version of several different paid game options. The idea is for the child to take letters scattered over the screen and slot them into  the correct order to spell the word.

So it’s basically a matching game – put the C in the slot that says “C”, and so on. But a voice announced each letter, and when the word is complete, the word is spelled aloud and then a moving picture and an accompanying sound bite of the object in question – a cat meowing or whatever, is played.

Owl loves it. He could play it forever, which is a problem so we don’t let him have it very often.

Then I discovered something. One day while were playing with words on his magnadoodle with the usual mixed success, I wrote out and spelled aloud one of the words from his game. He recognized it immediately.

I found that he could identify all of the words from that game. He sits there and actually puzzles it out, letter by letter, and then announces the word.

Meanwhile, Beloved Dog has learned to spin in a circle on command. So that’s something.

Let’s give them both an A for effort, shall we? That ought to confuse both of them.

The Potty Fairy (aka The Grossest Blog Post You’ll Read Today. Or This Week. Or Ever.)

Tags

dogs, gross stories, poop, potty training

We have a potty fairy!

Now, you guys know that I was worried about the whole cleaning-the-potty thing. I was originally hoping to get Owl using a regular toilet all the time and totally skip the plastic potty because I didn’t see the value of having to clean a potty vs having to clean a child’s bum. It’s still cleaning up poop.

Not that I’m unfamiliar with poop.

In fact, the other day at work when a client handed me his dog’s poop sample, and his nine year old daughter recoiled in disgust, I brought it up to my nose and dramatically inhaled its bouquet, just for the fun of making her gag in horror

But since the whole benefit of potty training is supposed to be a reduction in your daily poop quota, cleaning soft, squishy poop off the bottom of a plastic cup didn’t really entice me.

I ended up laying some toilet paper in the bottom of the cup, so that when I dump the potty into the toilet, the whole thing comes off leaving the remained relatively clean and in need of a minimal wipe.

That works pretty well.

But we may have an even easier solution:

The Potty Fairy.

I was staggering with exhaustion when I went to bed last night – bowed down by a long day at work, followed by a dog training session, not to mention many late nights of NaNoWriMo over the past couple of weeks.

I noticed a puddle of yellow pee in the potty, which PH must have forgotten to empty before putting Owl to bed. I intended to empty it, but by the time I passed that way again, I had forgotten.

When I came down in the morning, though, the cup was empty and clean, so I figured PH must have emptied it before leaving for work.

I only found out later that he had seen the empty potty and assumed that I cleaned it before bed last night.

Shortly after, Owl peed in the potty. We did a potty dance, I gave him a sticker, and he demanded his breakfast, so I took him into the kitchen and fed him.

When he was finished, I went to empty the potty. Except that the yellow first-pee-of-the-morning contents had entirely disappeared.

Like, it was bone dry.

That’s right, something had magically cleaned the potty for me while I was getting Owl his breakfast.

When I went into work that morning, I asked my boss if she had ever heard of a dog drinking urine.

“No, why?”

“Because I think my dog might have drunk Owl’s pee this morning.”

Beloved Dog has never shied away from eating most things organic. He will eat our cat litter if we give him half a chance, but he has never been interested in eating dog poop, and I’ve certainly never seen him try to drink urine.

Maybe we just had a magical fairy who was cleaning the potty for me.

Or maybe I was so tired from NaNoWriMo that I was cleaning the potty and then forgetting all about it.

This evening, after dinner, Owl announced that he had to poop on the potty and with much effort and facial contortions, produced a fat brown sausage of impressive proportions.

“Yay! You pooped on the potty!” This was only the second at-home poop since the Sunday Of Many Poops, so it was a big, big deal. “Look at the size of that poop! High five, buddy!”

PH came running into the room to join the celebration. “Whoa, and WHAT A POOP,” he said, glancing at the potty. This poop was the father of all poops. It left no doubt whatsoever that Owl had definitely defecated in the correct place. I had been able to correctly identify its presence from across the room.

“TANDY!” Owl squealed, and ran into the kitchen. I followed to finish wiping his bottom and to offer him a range of deluxe stickers in celebration of the occasion.

Only a moment later, I heard a rattle in the living room.

“LEAVE IT!” I bellowed, leaping into the hall. Beloved Dog scuttled away from the potty guiltily. I ran to the potty and…

The long brown sausage was gone.

GONE.

Only a couple of minor brown smudges remained, and a forlorn piece of toilet paper.

OH MY GOD.

“ON YOUR SPOT!” I ordered Beloved Dog to his bed. He wasn’t even licking his chops. No signs of the poop anywhere. Somehow he had swallowed that entire thing whole in a matter of mere seconds.

“IT’S GONE, LOVE, IT’S JUST GONE!” I said with a touch of hysteria.

“BAD DOG!”

“HE ATE THE WHOLE THING!”

“OKAY, BUT WE NEED TO STOP SHOUTING!”

“Doggy eat my food?” Owl asked worriedly, following us into the living room. We turned and put on big smiles.

“No, no, honey,” I said hurriedly, “EVERYTHING IS FINE. Mommy is just going to go flush your… er… poop now…” I carried the potty upstairs and dumped the piece of toilet paper. Some part of me hoped that the poop would reappear like a magic trick, but it was definitely, unquestionably, eaten.

Does anyone want to buy a dog? You’ll never have to clean a potty ever again.

…But you might not want to let him lick your face.

…And if you were disgusted by this, I think you should share it. It’s like the ring. The only way to get it out of your head is to expose others to it.

Update on Beloved Dog

Tags

dogs, urinary tract infection, veterinary medicine

As some of you might remember, I was panicking a few months ago about the state of Beloved Dog’s health.

I posted a couple of updates afterwards on Twitter:

Bloodwork came back very definitive for pancreatitis. According to the numbers BD should be barfing everywhere and crying. So confused.

— Carol @IfByYes (@IfByYesTweets) May 11, 2012

Instead, he looks like this… pic.twitter.com/QvkTVl31

— Carol @IfByYes (@IfByYesTweets) May 11, 2012

Well, the upshot was that I decided to get him an ultrasound. 

The ultrasound specialist is a super nice guy, and he did a really thorough job on Beloved Dog. He said the liver looked good, no sign of “hepatocellular syndrome” which was what had caused my previous dog to limp. The pancreas looked normal (bafflingly). There were some nodes in his spleen which were “probably benign” but he aspirated them just to be sure. And he thought the bladder wall looked a little thickened.

“Has he ever had a bladder infection?”

“He had blood in his urine after he got into the Thanksgiving ham. I put him on antibiotics and he seemed better. I never got around to rechecking his urine to be sure.”

“Well, let’s take a sample just to see.”

So he took a urine sample.

The urine looked pretty clean. There was some blood, but since he took the urine directly from the bladder with a needle, that’s not unusual. No sign of infection. He also sends all his reports to a specialist in the states for a second opinion, and the U.S. specialist thought the bladder looked fine, so I thought no more about it.

The cytology came back as normal spleen.

So we just kind of dropped the diagnostics.

For some reason my dog’s blood keeps testing positive for pancreatitis, but he doesn’t actually seem to have it, or any kind of cancer that could cause it.

Then, on Saturday, he peed in the house. He was standing right next to Perfect Husband and he just started to go. Since he hasn’t done such a thing for years, I caught a sample and brought it in to work on Monday.

Blood.

LOTS of blood.

The kind that I qualify as “TNTC” because the red blood cells were too numerous to count under the microscope.

At the same time, there was very little bacteria, very few white blood cells, and no crystals. No signs, in other words, of an infection.

Dr. Azaria recommended a urine culture, but I wanted a sterile sample. Beloved Dog has a lot of fur, and I didn’t want to pay the lab a bunch of money to grow the bacteria from his penis hair.

The next day I brought Beloved Dog in with a full bladder, but before we had a chance to try and take it out of him, he peed on the floor.

We collected it just in case, but it looked like this:

Should pee look like tea?

“Maybe the floor was dirty,” I said hopefully. “It didn’t look like that yesterday.”

“I keep that floor clean,” said the kennel attendant indignantly.

Grand. My dog is peeing brown.

Now, I see a lot of urinary tract infections at work; in fact, at my clinic we just sniff urine and say “ugh, smells like UTI”. But my dog’s pee was a weird enough colour that even the receptionist remarked on it.

By coincidence, the ultrasound specialist happened to be coming in that same day, so he did another quick scan and collected a new sample, and he didn’t even charge me for it.

No stones in the bladder, no tumors, just that thickened bladder wall.

I’ve sent it away to culture, and in the meantime I’ve put him on antibiotics.

Hopefully his pee will change back to yellow soon.

One thing’s for sure – this time I am rechecking his darn urine.

Dear History: Please Don’t Repeat Yourself, For The Love Of Beloved Dog

Tags

animals, bloodwork, cancer, cpl, dogs, health, limping, pancreatitis, pets, symptoms, tests, veterinarian

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I love my dog.

I love dogs, period.

When I was little I begged my parents for a dog. First they gave me goldfish, and when I managed to kill them off thoroughly they decided our family was ready for a pet that couldn’t be forgotten about.

His name was Shadow, and I adored him.

I mauled him about constantly and he tolerated my excessive affection with great forebearance. When I was 10 I trained him to walk nicely on a leash, and I worked very hard to teach him to play dead. He eventually would topple over from a “down” position with a big long-suffering sigh.

He adored my father, and when Shadow passed away, it was one of the only times ever saw my father cry.

As a child I spent a lot of time worrying that my parents would euthanize Shadow while I was off at University. Unfortunately, when he was 8 years old he had several large fatty tumors removed.

Shortly after, he began to limp.

The vets couldn’t find a thing wrong with his feet. After a lot of medications on his paws had failed, a biopsy revealed that his liver was excreting toxins through his sweat glands in his paws, causing the discomfort.

Within a few more months he had wasted away.

He died on the same day as Princess Diana.

His loss hit me hard. I loved him deeply, and I grieved his loss in a way that I have never grieved the loss of a human being. 8 years after he died, I woke up from a bad dream about him, and when I realized that it was a dream, I burst into tears – because my dog was dead.

When I graduated university, I got a new dog. I specifically picked a sheltie who was a different colour than Shadow, so I wouldn’t feel like I was “replacing” him.

That dog healed eight years of pain in a few short weeks. I no longer cry for Shadow. I love him in memory, but memories of him no longer cause me pain.

They’re nice memories.

Beloved Dog is now 8 years old, and I don’t know where the time went. It seems like the 8 years between Shadow’s arrival in our family and his painful exit were very, very long. But Beloved Dog was a puppy mere minutes ago.

Beloved Dog has started to limp.

This, combined with a couple of other nebulous symptoms that my friend The Farm Fairy clubs under the heading of “Ain’t Doin’ Right”, led me to take him to work with me and say,

My dog is limping. I need you to tell me that he doesn’t have cancer.

I got a laugh from people, but not when the vet looked at my dog.

My boss found that he looks anemic, but his bloodwork says he’s not anemic. She found that his abdomen seems painful, but he isn’t vomiting or having any diarrhea. His blood chemistries indicate normally functioning organs.

Except for one.

The spec cpl test is specifically designed to test dogs for pancreatitis. Normally panreatitis is an insanely painful condition brought about by fatty diet and not enough exercise, and is indicated by vomiting, diarrhea, and sheer misery.

My boss suggested it because it was all she could think of to explain the discomfort in his tummy, and because if there was inflammation in his organs, it might explain why he looks so pale.

It came back indicating pancreatitis.

So I fasted him for 24 hours, fed him on white rice for three days, and kept Owl and his fistfuls of cheese well away from Beloved Dog. I retested him for pancreatitis and it came back abnormal AGAIN.

So I changed his already low-fat diet to a corn-free diet, feeding him dehydrated fish with fruits and vegetables. I added digestive enzymes to his food.

He doesn’t look old, does he?

His paws began to show sores from his constant licking and chewing.

I took him in again yesterday, and the other vet, who has a very good ear, identified a mild heart murmur. Is that new, or is it so mild than no other vet has ever spotted it before?

The other vet, who reminds me of a Hank Azaria character, also thinks Beloved Dog looks anemic. He insisted on rechecking the red blood cell count.

Normal.

We rechecked him for pancreatitis.

Abnormal.

WHAT IS GOING ON?

I’ve sent his blood to the lab to get a more detailed report. They’ll be able to tell me whether my dog’s pancreas are just a LITTLE funky or a LOT FUNKY.

I’m trying to tell myself that just because Beloved Dog is the same age, and showing some of the same symptoms, does NOT mean the Beloved Dog has cancer.

It doesn’t help that my Aunt is dying of cancer. I’m flying home on an emergency visit to see her again, because apparently she’s wasting away fast.

It doesn’t help that today is Shadow’s birthday, or would have been, if he had lived to be 24 years old.

I just need Beloved Dog to be okay.

He says he just needs me to take off this damn cone.

Dog or Baby? Learn The Truth!

Tags

babies, damaged property, destruction, dogs, photos, Polls

Hi folks!

Thanks for waiting. I know you’ve spent the last week wondering “Was it the dog or the baby??”

The answers you have been longing for are finally here.

Exhibit A - stain on the carpet: Dog, or Baby?

Survey says: BABY!

The Truth: BABY!

Man, I thought I’d get you guys for sure with this one. Surely brown stain on carpet = dog? But you were too clever for me! Yes, Owl did this. He managed to get his hands on a bottle of liquid Claritin and dump it all over the carpet. We THOUGHT we cleaned it up well, but I guess there must be some residual stickiness, because it has become increasingly more brown as time has gone on as it slowly gathers dirt from the detritus of our lives…

Exhibit B - chewed-up Baby Bels - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: DOG!

The Truth: BABY!

That’s right. Owl chewed through the plastic mesh, through the wrappers, through the wax, and destroyed half of our Babybels before we even arrived home from the grocery store.

Exhibit C - Decapitated cup - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: Baby, but by a nose – the split was pretty close to 50/50.

The Truth: DOG!

Apparently it was left on the floor, with milk still in it… Beloved Dog must have thought this was a new puzzle… It’s a shame, too, because Owl picked this cup out himself at the store. Ah well…

Exhibit D - Damaged sofa - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: DOG!

The Truth: BABY!

Owl not only took a small hole in the cushion fibres and picked it into several large and gaping holes, but he now pulls the fluff out of them whenever he gets a chance. THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.

Exhibit E - Shredded L.M. Montgomery - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: BABY!

The Truth: DOG!

Beloved Dog wrecked this book in his youth, when he was two years old or so. Before we got the cat, leaving him with enough to do when I went to work every day was a challenge. This was the victim of a day when he did not have enough to do. So I got him a cat. He hasn’t chewed a book since…

Exhibit F - dented cheddar - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: BABY!

The Truth: BABY!

The dentition pattern gives this one away, I know, but I had to include it, because it happened in the SAME grocery run as the Babybel fiasco (notice the Babybels in the background). In fact, it happened WHILE I was putting the Babybels out of reach…

Exhibit G - shredded Kleenex - Dog, or Baby?

Survey Says: BABY!

The Truth: BOTH!

This one was a bit of a cheat, because it was really a toss-up. The Kleenex in this particular photograph was shredded by Owl, but actually Beloved Dog is just as frequently guilty of this exact same crime, even with the addition of the cat to the household. There’s just something fun to rip about Kleenex, I guess.

Who Dunnit: Dog Or Baby?

Tags

babies, damage, destruction, dogs, photos, Polls, quizzes

I’m going to present you with a series of photos of things that have been damaged or destroyed. Some were perpetrated by the dog. Others were perpetrated by the baby. Which is which?

Snow Babbies

Tags

babies, dogs, photos, snow, walks, winter

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

And no, Beloved Dog doesn’t knock over Owl at any point.

Am I #Winning? Or Does That Last Point Tip The Balance?

Tags

#winning, achievements, dogs, lists

WIN:

• I had my first dog training client on Sunday. I think I did ok.

• My partner and I opened our business account today, and deposited our first cheque.

• My dog training business now has a Facebook page and a Google Plus page.

• I submitted an article to a magazine BY the deadline and it was pretty much on-target for word count.

• I picked up 4 more hours of work for tomorrow, which may make the difference between making a profit and making a loss on my whole work situation this month.

FAIL:

• Magazine wants a picture of a trainer (preferably me) training a dog, and I don’t actually have ANY PICTURES LIKE THAT, because dog trainers wear ratty clothing and don’t like being photographed while making ridiculous faces at dogs.

• Our car’s brakes broke, and according to Toyota, the Midas we took our car to the last time this happened used non-Toyota parts and therefore had to remove some shimmymagig and that made our flimflam thingummies wear out fast. So we sold some stocks, because we have no money.

• I passed wind and my dog started barking because he thought it was someone knocking on the door.

• It took me five minutes to convince him there was nobody there.

…Altogether, I think I’m #winning. 

But it’s close.

Very close.

Ouch.

Tags

coworkers, dog behaviour, dog fights, dogs, veterinary medicine, vets, work

I’ve always told people that dog fights rarely involve serious injury – most of them are just noise and posturing and some wrestling. 

I had to remind myself of that the other day when a dog, who looked like a cross between the Mastiff from The Sandlot and Cthulu, picked up my Beloved Dog and dangled him in the air by his neck.

There’s a shut-down school near where I live, and all the dog owners in the area use the old field by the playground as an informal off-leash park.

I like to take Beloved Dog and little Owl out there after work, it if isn’t dark by the time we get home.

There’s often another dog or two around, but it’s a big field so there usually isn’t a lot of interaction. Some bum-sniffing, posturing, and that’s it.

This massive dog was retrieving a ball the size of a beach ball for its owner, and the dogs mostly ignored each other until a toss of the huge ball took the dog near Beloved Dog.

Now, Beloved Dog has a bit of a small man complex around big male dogs, but he’s usually quite good with girls, and this dog, while humongous, was female. So all he did was walk up to her daintily, tail in the air, and politely stick his nose in her taint.

The dog, who was probably named Cerberus or something, whirled around, grabbed him by the neck, and hoisted him up in the air while he screamed bloody murder. For once, he was involved in a fight that wasn’t his fault.

I was a good thirty feet away and I didn’t react immediately. I was partially surprised because big dogs are usually less aggressive, not more, because when you weigh over 100 pounds, how threatened can you be by… well, anything?

Besides, like I said, most dog fights are a whole lot of nothing and getting excited just makes things worse. But Cerberus didn’t let go, and the owner began to panic and try to pry her jaws open and she wouldn’t let go.

I started to think about the exceptions to my dog-fights-don’t-cause-damage claim, like someone I know whose small puppy was killed at a dog park. From all accounts it sounded more like a mistaken-prey situation than a real dog fight; the killer dog treated the poor puppy like a squirrel or rabbit.

I also know an ex-service dog who tried to RETRIEVE someone’s sheltie, with disastrous results.

My sheltie was still dangling. Still screaming.

I started to run.