Mango, six months old.
He's grown so much! It's amazing to compare the pictures of today to when I first got him and realize that they're of the same dog. Watching him grow up has certainly been something.
Well, Mango has been really sick. Yesterday, he woke me up at four A.M., because he had defecated in his cage. After I cleaned that up, he started to have diarrhea, and following the diarrhea he started to puke. He also escaped from his cage in the middle of all this when I was trying to fall back asleep...needless to say, I didn't get much sleep. Besides that, yesterday he showed no signs of being sick. His apparent sickness went away until today when I returned from school. For two or three hours he continually threw up. He puked on the floor twice and in his cage three times before I got the hint and went with him outside, where he dry-heaved for about an hour and a half.
I called Mango's vet at Leader Dogs, and they never returned my call. By the time I was starting to get frightened because of his sickness and I called Leader Dogs back, they closed for the day. They have an emergency line, but it is almost exclusively if your dog's life is in danger -- for example, if he swallows a piece of glass.
This strikes me as strange. I really think Leader Dogs should have some sort of emergency vet. Although his condition has improved a ton in the past few hours (although he is still throwing up), what if he was still throwing up? He could be in danger of dehydration. Emergency vets are a lot of money, and Leader Dogs would not refund us for any money we would have spent. Just a thought.
(Never mind, his condition just worsened. Now, he's throwing up blood.)
Besides this being sick episode, Mango has been doing very well. Well, mostly. He's started to really hit puberty, so things are actually starting to go backwards. For a while, he was making tremendous progress; he learned how to sit from laying down, and all of his commands are purely verbal (Leader Dogs wishes that their puppies be able to respond to commands without any hand signals). His loose-leash walking is improving, slowly. He doesn't bark.
However, he's almost starting to revert. At this point, I had expected he be housetrained and be able to walk well on a loose leash, and perhaps most importantly, that he not be biting any more. He has HUGE house-training issues (he very frequently urinates on the floor) and he bites quite frequently too. Another problem that is huge as pertaining to being a Leader Dog is that he gets super hyper and excited around any people. He jumps, he refuses to listen, and he tries to nip. Whatever I do, it doesn't seem to work.
The other day I went to a family gathering, and it took me almost twenty minutes to say hi to my family because he couldn't settle. This is one thing i am at a huge loss for. I make him sit, I have him stay sitting while people approach him, but he turns around and starts to jump. Anything I do, it has no effect.
My mind is currently with Mango, so I apologize if this seems...empty. I'll try and add more later.
Raising a puppy is harder than I thought.
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