BLOG052105

May 21, 2005 (Saturday)

Buffy is better as of yesterday. Mostly anyway. Yesterday, early, she followed me out of the bedroom, used
her little catbox in a very unhappy way. I held some chicken broth out to her and she pushed the bowl away
with her nose. I did the same with pedialyte. She looked away. I sighed and decided that I was going to use the
eyedropper again and basically force feed her some fluid. I did not want her to become dehydrated, which she
was on the way to becoming the night before. Small animals can become dehydrated very quickly and that's not
good. Anyway, I put her down so I could get the eyedropper and she went over to where she could see her food
bowl (which was full but untouched) and she stared at it, then looked at me, then back to the bowl, then back to
me.

I think I got the message. I held out one piece of food to her and she gobbled it up. I was very surprised, to say
the least.

I held out more. She ate.

She continued to gobble the entire bowl full of food. Woah. It was as if she was trying to catch up on the lack of
food from the prior day and a half. I almost breathed a sigh of relief except that I really wanted her to drink.
That was much more important to me than her eating.

About ten minutes later she wandered over to her water bowl and drank of her own accord. No eye dropper.

NOW I was happy and a great deal of stress evaporated. *whew*

Now if I can only figure out what's wrong with Jax.

Over the course of the last few months, he's become progressively both more aggressive and more fearful. I've
tried and tried to figure out what the cause is along with making sure his daily activities are very stable. Eating
at specific times, playing, having to stay settled down, etc., all at specific times of the day. Dogs need routine.

He's still off.

He'd started to growl if any of us touched him while he ate. I've NEVER had a dog that would do that. I've
always shown them that they have nothing to worry about where their food was concerned. But this was bad. Ed
had put down Jax' food bowl and as he said "good boy" and patted Jax on the rump, Jax growled. He got
progressively worse.

So, now I'm hand feeding him. After about an hour, one day, of walking him up to the bowl, him growling, and
me telling him "no" and making him heel away from his food. Over and over until he stopped. Then I sat down
on the floor and proceeded to hand feed him.

He growled. I commanded him out and told him to lay down just outside the kitchen entryway. We did this
about a dozen times until he stopped growling.

Then he got to eat. From my hand.

I've been doing it just under a week, now and he doesn't growl when he's eating any more--but then I'm still
hand feeding him.

He still growls when he's inside his crate and at other, seemingly miscellaneous times. And he's afraid to go
outside when he never had that problem before. I thought maybe something scared him outside, but he's never
outside alone--one of us is always there and none of us saw anything or experienced anything that could have
frightened him. Unless it's a scent--which is something we could not discern.

Sigh.

So, I took him to the vet because he has three lumps I found on him and I thought that maybe he had cancer or
something and that possibly the lumps (or whatever caused them) might be causing some pain inside of him
where I could not discern. Touching or rubbing the lumps caused no reaction. The vet told me today that
they're just fatty cysts and though they'll eventually have to be removed, they're benign.

Okay. They're not the cause.

Jax was having some skin problems on the inside of his thigh, as well, so we got antibiotics and an antibiotic
injection. I'll wait a week--until we're done with the antibiotic pill regimen--and then see if that's helped to
exacerbate his mood. If he's still growling as badly, I want to see if there's any puppy prozac availalbe in very
low doses for him.

I think it would help.

I want it to help.

He can't keep growling. He even snapped at Tanamin one day. Not good. If he should ever snap at Buffy and
make contact, that could end up tragic.

*sigh*

I think I'll go sort laundry.