Roller Coaster Ride with Lily - the first 4 weeks!
Posted: 12 Nov 2011, 12:23
I adopted Lily on 14th October (now her birthday) - she is a two year old black bundle of energy and absolutely adorable. She has many many positive points which I'll come back to later - so as to end on a very positive note!
The first four weeks have been like riding a roller coaster (not something I choose to do even at the fairground!). I collected her from Ky just two days after she had been spayed, so was prepared for post-op care and need for her to be vaccinated (to be on the safe side as she came with very littel history). After 16 days she had to spend 36 hours in animal hospital as a result of violent vomiting which seemed to have been cause by fur balls blocking her back passage. Two days later her spay scar was red hot and swollen - the vet had to open it up and remove an internal stitch which had not dissolved and was causing irritation and therefore infection. And this morning, we went back to the vet because she now has kennel cough! She has also struggled with separation anxiety - see earlier post in "doggy chat" about 10 days ago. But thankfully, we seem to be getting there on that score.
Anyway back to the Good News. Lily is very gentle, very good with children. Took her for a first training session last week and the trainer said she was very intelligent and compared to most of the dogs he sees, that on her first lesson, she was doing things others don't manage until week 5 or 6! She has excellent recall - so long as there is no distraction - she is of a very sociable nature and thinks everyone and every dog is her best friend.
She has a strange habit of sleeping upside down - I've never seen any other dog sleep like this! And she worships the sun, and didn't take very long to work out where the best places were to sleep!
The first four weeks have been like riding a roller coaster (not something I choose to do even at the fairground!). I collected her from Ky just two days after she had been spayed, so was prepared for post-op care and need for her to be vaccinated (to be on the safe side as she came with very littel history). After 16 days she had to spend 36 hours in animal hospital as a result of violent vomiting which seemed to have been cause by fur balls blocking her back passage. Two days later her spay scar was red hot and swollen - the vet had to open it up and remove an internal stitch which had not dissolved and was causing irritation and therefore infection. And this morning, we went back to the vet because she now has kennel cough! She has also struggled with separation anxiety - see earlier post in "doggy chat" about 10 days ago. But thankfully, we seem to be getting there on that score.
Anyway back to the Good News. Lily is very gentle, very good with children. Took her for a first training session last week and the trainer said she was very intelligent and compared to most of the dogs he sees, that on her first lesson, she was doing things others don't manage until week 5 or 6! She has excellent recall - so long as there is no distraction - she is of a very sociable nature and thinks everyone and every dog is her best friend.
She has a strange habit of sleeping upside down - I've never seen any other dog sleep like this! And she worships the sun, and didn't take very long to work out where the best places were to sleep!
