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Worried about my dog and looking for feedback (LONG)
Tue, 10 Jan 2006 22:03:57 GMT rec.pets.dogs.behavior
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Natty Dread...
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Hi all -- I'm concerned about one of my dogs and need some opinions from you
A Poor Shepherd Boy...
A Poor Shepherd Boy...
all here as dog lovers. This post is long, but please bear with me because A Poor Shepherd Boy...
I want to be as clear as possible about my situation. In November 2004, I adopted a 2-year-old female Walker Coonhound from a rescue organization in my area. The dog, now named Daisy, was found running loose someplace in rural West Virginia by a kind-hearted soul who took her to the local animal shelter. When she came to us (we were then living in the DC metro area), she was emaciated, had recently been nursing a litter of puppies, and was recovering from spay surgery. For the first few days, she was really quiet, which I guess is expected after the surgery, which she had about a week before I got her. She was friendly with me (a woman) but acted scared and nervous around most men who came to the house in those early days, so we speculated that she might have been abused by a man at some point in her life. The odd thing was that she didn't appear to have any "house manners" -- didn't know how to navigate the stairs, didn't know what dog toys were for, didn't know what "outside" meant, etc. Shelters never know much about strays, of course, but I contacted them anyway to find out as much as I could about the conditions under which she might have lived before being found as a stray. The shelter woman told me that given the rural area where she was found, Daisy was likely one of a group of dogs who were raised outside in a hunting kennel (which would explain her lack of knowledge about stairs). The woman said she doubted Daisy was a companion pet -- she was probably trained to hunt and somehow got away from the kennel or maybe was lost in the woods and didn't find her way home. She said they tried finding her owner for a couple of weeks after she was brought in, but had no luck so they started looking for another home as they don't have the room to keep dogs for very long. (Luckily for Daisy, they found me or she would have been a goner.) After a week or so, she started settling in and got friendlier with us, even with my brother, a big, tall guy who lives with me. She's still a little scared in larger groups -- I've had a couple of family functions during which she's basically stayed in my room because there were just too many people around. She and my other dog, a sweet 8-year-old male pointer, get along fine and there are no problems there. In general, Daisy is a loving, affectionate animal with a quirky personality and lots of energy. Anyway, things went along fine until this past summer when she began exhibiting some strange behaviors, the three most worrisome of which I'll describe separately below: Issue 1: First, and most concerning, she acts like she's always starving. As I said earlier, she was emaciated when I got her, but in the past year she's put on about 20 pounds and now is really healthy-looking. The vet says she's actually a couple of pounds over her ideal weight, but the dog acts as if she's never been fed in her life. I feed my dogs twice a day -- in the morning they get a combination of high-quality kibble (generally Eukanuba or Iams) and canned meaty chunk food, and in the evening a another scoop of kibble. But this animal will eat an entire bowl of food and a half-hour later act like she's starving again. And I don't mean just sniffing around the bowl -- she displays a desperate, anxious food-seeking behavior that I've never seen from another dog. She and my other dog get fed in separate rooms, so it's not an issue of wanting what he has (although they usually sniff each other's bowls after they eat), and she can't possibly be starving again after just eating. No worms, so it's not that. Could this be a remnant of her experiences as a stray when she apparently didn't eat regularly? If so, what might cause this behavior to crop up months after she'd found a new home? Is there anything I can do to relieve her apparent distress? (I should say that in addition to her regular food, she also gets tasty treats of both the human and canine variety.) Issue 2: Separate and apart from the hunger anxiety, over time she's become an anxious dog in general. For the first few months we had her, she was really quiet -- rarely barked, never growled (and still doesn't) even when playing, and seemed to be adjusting really well to her new surroundings. However, over the past six months or so, she has been exhibiting an increasing anxiety that manifests itself through pacing, whining and general restlessness. For example, she wants to go outside constantly, but when she goes out, she stays out for a few minutes and then whines to come back inside. At first I thought this might be happening because she wanted us to be outside with her, but she does it even when we *are* outside with her. Another example -- when we engage her in play, she'll play for a few minutes and then either (apparently) get bored and go lay down, or go back to her pacing. As time goes by, I'm more and more wondering if she's a candidate for doggie Xanax! Unfortunately, although she and my pointer get along well, they don't play together consistently because he likes to growl and bark when he plays and that seems to scare her. He's the dominant dog and it seems that his vocalizing reinforces that for her (not to mention that at 8 years old he's starting to slow down a bit). Issue 3: This is not a behavior, more of a health concern, but my suspicion is that it might be related to her anxious behavior. About the same time as some of the other stuff I've described started happening, Daisy developed a skin rash that, despite constant treatment, is has never truly gone away. She gets dry, scaly patches on her underarms, belly and the insides of her ears and thighs that she scratches until they turn red. The vet prescribed some type of antibiotic cream (can't remember the name right now) that clears it up really quickly, like within a few days after it appears, but a few weeks later the rash comes back. The vet said it might be a food allergy, but it occurs to me that if this rash were caused by a food allergy it would *never* go away, even with antibiotic treatment -- the itchy patches would remain because she eats every day. She's never had fleas, so it's not a flea allergy, so I'm wondering if this might be related to the generalized anxiety described above - like a stress reaction to her living situation (or whatever it is that's causing the anxiety). OK, those are the three most concerning issues. I apologize for the length of this post, but to really understand you need the background. Let me also add a couple of comments about the living environment, to round out the information. We live in a nice-sized single family house with a big fenced yard that backs up to the interstate on one side and to our street on the other, so there is quite a bit of noise from vehicle traffic. She has lots of room to run around, another dog for company, two dog-crazy humans that love her, other dogs next door to bark at across the fence, and a mailman to aggravate six days a week. What's missing from the picture to make her (seem) so anxious? Did I adopt a country-dwelling hunting dog that just isn't happy living in the city? What can I do to improve her seeming unhappiness? Any serious suggestions, comments, questions, etc., are welcome. I love this dog and don't want to give her away, but if she's going to have a miserable life with me, what other option is there? Thanks so much for reading. ND ******** Basic human psychology is one of my subroutines. |