It feels like it’s been forever since my 2 month (8 week) update on life with Wellie. It’s been a very busy few weeks and I have lots to report.
I was really hoping that by now we could happily report that Wellie was housetrained…but sadly it isn’t so. Wellie is still having accidents inside and has also now decided that our back lawn is extremely scary and won’t walk on it which makes housetraining all that much more difficult. She darts around the yard and sticks to the edges, or worse, does her business ON the deck. I am beginning to get nervous that her “scared-y-cat” phase has kicked in and we might be at this for a while. Corduroy had the same thing happen at around 13 months – but hers was a reaction to loud noises (especially the evil vacuum cleaner and stove fan). Wellie is 18 months now but I’ve heard the “scared-y-cat” issue can happen anytime up until the dog is two. Have any of you experienced this phase where they get afraid of things that never bothered them before? The grass never did anything to her! haha. Although it looks like we may have had a breakthrough this afternoon – she walked on the grass without much hesitation. Cross your fingers for us!
Since we are still having issues with house-training, we are trying to be diligent about sticking to a schedule. With the yard fear, Wellie has been taking ages to go poo in the mornings and has made me late for work on several occasions because we are out there for upwards of 30 minutes. Yesterday I got really mad at how long she was taking and decided that for the time being, every morning I will put her harness and leash on and give her 10 minutes to go. If she doesn’t go in that 10 minutes, we’ll come inside, have breakfast and go out to try for another 10 minutes. I don’t want her to think that she has 40 minutes to do her business in the mornings – it’s just not feasible. This morning was the first attempt at this and it went really well! She did both pee and poo in 10 minutes! Good girl! We shall see if she is still as good when it’s raining out – she still hates the rain.
It’s been really nice watching the relationship between Corduroy and Wellington develop. They do a lot of things together, including sleeping beside each other, playing, and just generally sticking with each other. It’s so adorable.
One of the biggest things that happened since my last update was something with Paddington. A few weeks ago she started limping and we noticed what looked like a whitehead zit on her paw. We thought it may be a bug bite and waited a few days to see if it would go away on its own. It didn’t go away and ended up getting bigger so we went to the vet…several times. There was talk of tumours and operations and lots of very scary stuff and it was quite an emotion few days for me. Paddington is only four, but she came from a puppy mill so it always scares me when something like this comes up because I know she wasn’t bred very well. Our vet gave her some homeopathic antibiotic shots and we were tasked to soak her foot in a very hot solution of sea salt dissolved in water, and then apply a transdermal antibiotic right to the growth. We did this for several days and it got better and she was obviously feeling better and then we found another growth in exactly the same spot on her other paw! Cue more panic. We then decided to soak and treat BOTH paws and it seems to have worked. Our vet still doesn’t know what they were but they are gone now and Paddy is back to her normal self, running around and being a general energizer bunny. We just have to keep an eye on her paws and make sure they don’t come back. So far they haven’t so I think that’s a good sign. I took these two photos while we were letting the medicine soak into her paw one evening. She was very good about it.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to make a note to photograph my own dogs more – especially after what happened with Paddington. I photograph other dogs all the time in my photography business, but I seem to never take any of my own furry family. I’ve made a pact with myself that I need to document my dogs’ lives more and I have been doing that. Wellie has turned out to be quite the model too! A few weekends ago I photographed all three of our dogs wearing dog fur fascinators for a local business and Wellie took her modelling job very seriously. She was actually the best behaved out of all three of them.
So as not to leave Corduroy and Paddington out, here are their modelling shots. I think Paddy wore hers quite well!
I am still always impressed with Wellie’s good behaviour when I take her places with me. Last night we went to Bark & Fitz to take a few test shots for the Westfest charity event I am doing with the store and Wellie was wonderful. I even went to the bank and to David’s Tea afterwards and she was so amazing – not a peep and she even laid down beside me in David’s Tea while I waited for my oh-so-delicious Goji Pop Iced Tea.
Speaking of Westfest, which I’ll be doing a full blog post about soon, we are going to have a ton of fun this year taking red carpet award shot style photos for BARK Rescue. We have lots of fun accessories including the trophy itself, bow ties and ties for the handsome man-dogs and pearls, fascinators (as modelled above!) and general loveliness for the lady-dogs. Here is Wellie, dressed as a boy (shh don’t tell her) in one of the promo posters for the event.
At Westfest, I’ll be bringing Corduroy on Saturday and Wellie on Sunday. Come on by if you’d like to meet the cutie-with-the-giant-ears in the fur. Westfest runs June 10th-12th and I hope to see you there!! Stop by and say hello.
Until next month!
Read Week 8 here |Read Week 7 here |Read Week 6 here | Read Week 5 here | Read Week 4 here |Read Week 3 here | Read Week 2 here | Read Week 1 here | Read Welcome to Wellie here.
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Liz Bradley is a dog lover who lives in Ottawa, Ontario with her husband,
8 Users Responded in " Three Months with Wellie "
Yay update! First let me say that I adore that picture of you and your three bundles of joy in your arms. Just awesome.
Secondly – Halladay and Wookie went through a “I hate the backyard grass” phase the last week and a bit. Basically we just waited it out and eventually they had to go. Or if they didn’t, they were doomed to wait until the next outside trip, and thankfully neither will go to the bathroom in the house. My foster is a different story all together.
Your best bet, honestly, it is to take Wellie for a quick walk in the morning. I would do that for several mornings. When we first moved to Nepean, we went months where Halladay wouldn’t poo in the backyard, but if I took him for a walk he’d immediately go in the front yard, or just down the street.
Since the morning poo became his ritual, he eventually learned that he had to do it in the backyard because obviously there were days when I couldn’t walk him in the mornings. Plus the walking gets their systems going.
Good luck!
@Mel – it’s good to hear that we’re not alone in the backyard weird fear thing.
About the walk in the morning – I thought of that, but Wellie never does anything on walks – not pee, not poo, nothing. It’s actually kind of weird. I’ve never had a dog not want to go poo on a walk before…
Will you be posting more information about the Westfest fundraiser for BARK ? I adopted my dog from BARK so I’m thinking of coming down…
@Sarah – I’ll be posting it soon!
Awesome. Thanks
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