Introducing a Second Dog to the House – Round 2
Thanks to all the comments on the earlier entry - when Andy brought Sumo over to my house to "test the water," we decided to approach this home visit with a few added strategies.
- Seeing how they met before and worked things out once already, we skipped the baby gate. This worked because Sumo was extremely submissive and never challenged Mac.
- We let Mac and Sumo meet in a neutral territory first and went for a walk together.
- After the walk, Mac and I stayed outside the house while we let Sumo a chance to explore the house without Mac patroling him. This is so that when Mac is in the house with Sumo, Sumo will not be exploring the house which agitate Mac the Majesty.
- Once they are comfortable with each other in a location, we proceed to another location of the house.
Overall things went a lot smoother compared to last visit. It is probably a combination of them already met each other before, the more gradual and organized introductory process, and me not flipping out each time Mac breathed down Sumo's neck. We figure one more visit like this and I should feel comfortable enough to board Sumo when Andy goes on vacation! Yay for new playmate!
Below is a collection of videos from this session, less scary moments and more play time, I promise!
PS - In an effort to keep things more organized, I created a new YouTube channel for Mac instead of lumping all my videos together. If you are interested in getting notification on new video updates, please check out the channel and subscribe!
I Will Forever Wait for You – Seymour
If you are a fan of Futurama, you may remember the episode of Fry's dog Seymour. Fry thought his dog no longer remembers him, little did he know he has been waiting for his return since the day he left... the episode ends and credits roll right after the old Seymour closed his eyes... talk about a tear jerker!
Dr. Sophia Yin’s Chart on How to Greet Dogs
Click for full size
While some may be common sense, there are a few in there that we unknowingly do, for example, sticking hand in a dog's face for him to sniff instead of waiting for him to approach, having direct eye contact instead of using the sideway approach. Worth a look!
For more tips, check out Dr. Sophia Yin's website.
Black Mole – Removed!
Monday was an intense vet visit for Mac. The primary objective was to remove the black mole on his head with secondary objectives of teeth cleaning and three vaccination shots. You can say Mac was getting "The Works" - everything rolled into one day!
The decision to remove the mole was an easy one. This year it increased in size and we immediately decided to remove it just in case. I am curious to hear the result once it has been analyzed - hopefully it is nothing serious.
I dropped Mac off at Nebel St Animal Hospital bright and early around 7:30am, worked from home the rest of the day and picked him up around 3:30pm.
The good news is that Mac's troubling mole is now cleanly removed, he has whiter teeth, and good on his shots for a few years. Bad news is he will be temporarily bald until his fur grows back in. The stitches look a bit gruesome but thankfully Mac did not seems to be bothered by it in the least bit. If he starts scratching though a cone of shame may be in order. For now he is on pain med and he seems a bit dopey, it has been an interesting challenge to find new ways to trick him into eating his pills!
Introducing a Second Dog to the House!
Earlier this week Andy talked to me about the possibility of boarding Sumo the Boston/Frenchie puppy at my house for a few days in June. Knowing how dominant and territorial Mac is I had some serious doubt about introducing a high energy male puppy into the house, but since they already know each other from all the hikes, maybe it will work. We decided to have Sumo visit this past weekend to see how they do.
As expected, as soon as Sumo stepped through the door Mac greeted him with intense growling and staring down. Good thing Sumo was willing to be submissive and immediately went as long to the ground as possible - eye adverted and ears pinned back. The rest of the visit played out in a fine display of perfect canine body languages with a happy ending. Check out the video below if you have a moment, I found it really fascinating trying to decode what each dog was trying to convey to the other along the way!
Fun in the Mud
I am having a love - hate relationship with Maryland's weather this month.
The temperature would be in the upper 60s during the week but as soon as weekends roll around rain clouds would come and weather forecast would call for heavy rain and thunderstorm. As a result, we have not been able to fully take advantage of the fantastic temperature and go on one of the longer hikes, and we were pretty much confined to trails right around our house.
This past weekend was no different. The week was gorgeous and the weekend consisted of cloud and rain. We did manage to catch a break in the weather and went to the local Rock Creek Regional Park for a breath of fresh air, that was nice, and Mac got a chance to play in the mud!
Mac wearing his new mud boots
Sheep-ba Inu chomping on the fresh grass
Go Buck go!
Trip Report: Super Pet Expo
Ever since I was a kid I have always heard of the Super Pet Expo in Chantilly, VA. I imagine it as something similar to the DC Convention Center's Motorcycle Tradeshow except with thousands of vendors selling their new products and hundreds of exotic animals being featured at the show. I saw some youtube clips that featured huge pythons and parrots at another Super Pet Expo, I was psyched!
The day finally came, me and Mac hopped into the car and drove to Chantilly, VA. I was a bit surprised finding the convention center located in a strip mall - I was expecting something closer in size to the DC Convention Center. No matter, streams of dogs and their owners are heading into the convention center and it looked mighty promising!
While the exterior of the convention center looked a bit small (~size of a K-Mart), the interior was spacious with many booths set up. I was disappointed by the diversity of the animals and booths being featured. Most of the products were geared towards dogs and cats as expected, but there were hardly any other species being featured. The only exotic animal presented there was the sugar gliders, and I have my reservation about the company selling them.
The Pocket Pets booth has three employees giving constant pitch about the sugar gliders (each have one in hand), they were understandably up-selling them and drew a nice sized crowd. I was curious and asked some questions, sample answer below:
Question, "Do sugar gliders smell?"
Answer, "No, they don't have any odor at all! In fact, because they do not have any odor, your dog [points to Mac] will not see them as prey and they will have no problem together!"
False. Male sugar gliders' scent gland is right on their head, and they do have an odor. Let's not even get into dog not see something as prey simply because they do not smell... anyways, at $599 for the entire setup including two sugar gliders, I am pretty sure they made a killing that weekend. I was told no photo can be taken at their booth (?), I snapped one anyway to remember to research more about this company.
Moving on I stopped by some booths to check out the products as well as different local organizations. Everybody were friendly and the expo gave off a nice vibe. There was even an agility course demo that I watched for a bit. Overall though, the expo as a whole was a bit underwhelming. Maybe it was my own fault for having an unrealistic expectation (hey, the ads were awesome!). It was great seeing all these dogs in one location (every other group that went had at least one dog!), but the products were mostly items you can find at your local stores or online. While it was great seeing all the different animal rescue organizations, there wasn't many (if at any) adoptable pets on-site. Most things were catered towards dogs and some cats, they may as well rename the event to Super Dogs & Cats Expo for more targeted audience.
One of the highlights of the trip was meeting a few fellow DC Shiba Meetup members! Besides that though, I am pretty sure I won't go back again next year.
Oh, and the kicker - Yesterday I received a phone call from Pet Expo saying I won a prize, turns out to be a hard pitch for Willimsburg timeshare. Figures.
Mac’s Sweet 7 Birthday
Apologize for the lack of update last week - the hosting provider of this blog was compromised and all the sites were redirecting users to inappropriate websites, so all my energy had been put towards cleaning up. The good news is the site is now squeaky clean and back to our regular programing!
Today is Mac's 7th birthday! This old bird has been with me for 2.5 years now and it may be a strange thing to say after 2.5 years, but I feel like we had another break through in our relationship recently:
Started two weeks ago, Mac began sleeping by my feet whenever I work on my computer and I would use him as a foot rest. This is a big deal, because I always wanted a nice and warm foot rest. He used to stay outside the room whenever I am on my computer so this was a nice surprise.
Another thing Mac started doing is trying to communicate with me more with gesture. Somehow he picked up the ability to use "snout flick" to indicate what he wants. For example, if he needs to go to the yard to pee, he would run to the sliding door and anxiously flick his snout towards the door. Or, when we are on walks and I was ready to go home and started towards the house, he would stop and start flicking his snout down the trail. I would laugh and do another lap with him.
Mac you are quite the character and I am glad that we are still learning more about each other every day. Happy birthday!
Japan Post Disaster Rescue
Warning: Heart-wrenching music video, don't watch if you do not enjoy cutting onion!
An extremely touching short music video of the animal rescue effort in Japan after the tsunami disaster. These amazing people brave the radiation at Fukushima (福島) to rescue the pets that were left behind.
PS - It's amazing to see how many Shiba / Shiba-mix there are.