Hello From Ontario!

nerd_rock Wed Mar 14, 2012 1:28 pm

I recognize a lot of people on here from other forums!

For those who don't remember me, or didn't know me, my name is Alicia. I live in London, ON with my two dachshunds. Sadie is a 6 year old spayed longhaired black and tan mini, Fynn is a 3 year old intact longhair chocolate and tan brindle standard. I also have Lucy, a 2 year old intact longhair black and tan standard, but she lives with my friend and partner in breeding, Natalie. So far, we have not had a litter but hopefully that will happen this year. We were going to do it last year, but of course Lucy went into heat at the wrong time - Natalie would have been in Europe when she delivered.

Due to medical reasons, Natalie doesn't show Lucy right now. I actively show Fynn with a smaller club here in Ontario, but do not show with the CKC for various reasons that I won't get into right now. The group is like a big family and last year Fynn was top dachshund in the group. I am very proud of my boy. We're looking at a big show seasons this year, our group is holding more shows and we're also going to try earthdog again with Fynn. About two years ago we took him to an earthdog practice, they said he had good potential but it just hadn't clicked with him yet - at the time he didn't bark much and he didn't understand why he had to go through the tunnels to get to the rats, he would just run across the top and start digging where the handler puts the rats in, lol. He has matured a lot and hopefully things have clicked now for him, he loves the sound of his own voice and has the funniest baying bark. He is also beginning weight pull training in a few months, I'm very excited for this as I've only seen a few other dachshunds competing in it. We are going to be starting training for field trials this year as well, but probably won't compete until next year. I have a friend that does lure coursing with her wolfhounds, so we might go over to her place this summer and see if Fynn and Sadie show and interest in that. My boyfriend also wants to get Fynn started in agility, but I think that is going to wait until next year - we have a lot going on right now!

When Fynn first came to live with me, he was just over a year old. I was walking him one day, about a week after I got him, when he was attacked by a much bigger dog. It caused a lot of problems, thankfully he wasn't physically hurt, but he is always on guard on a leash to the point where he had become dog agressive. Thankfully, he was a completely different dog on the show lead and never lashed out then. We have worked with him intensively over the past two years and he has made huge improvements. For the most part he will ignore other dogs now and rarely does "the Fynn spin", as we call it, where he jumps and spins trying to get to the other dog.

Sadie was purchased from what was essentially a puppymill when I was in college. I didn't know it at the time and was very naive. When she was just over 5 months old, she started having petit mal seizures. She was spayed immediately. Over the next few months her seizures started becoming more frequent, she was put on medication to control them when she was about 8-9 months old. She was on them for about 6 months before I decided that we should wean her off of them and try something different, we also didn't know at this point if she had outgrown them. We learned that she was more likely to have them if she was excited, so we stopped taking her to dog parks and limited the number of times we took her to pet stores. Her seizures intensified to grand mal but she was having fewer of them, about 4 a year, so the medication wasn't warranted anymore. We started her on a raw diet and her seizures have pretty much stopped. She will still have one every year or two, usually a grand mal cluster seizure. Just over a year ago, due to vet negligence, she developed three large bladder stones that had to be surgically removed. At first we were going to try to break them up with diet, but opted to just do the surgery and get it done and over with. It was a good thing we did that because they were a mix of two types of stones (the core was one kind and the outter "shell" was a different kind), so they wouldn't have broken up anyways. She is also intolerant to grain and beef, so the raw diet is perfect for her. She has had a few episodes with her back, the first when she was just over a year, but so far she has recovered nicely from each one and hasn't become paralyzed. We have decided that if she ever does, we will not do surgery and she will live out her life as a cart dog. She is great at earthdog and we take her hunting with Fynn often.

I also have a cat, she's a siamese/snowshoe mix and very weird. I have taught her a few tricks; sit, come, stand up, jump up and jump down. Every time she does them she looks like she wants to kill me but obliges for treats. Two years ago we had another cat, Stanley, that we adopted from the local Animal Care and Control centre. We didn't know at the time, but he had a deadly virus and passed away two months after he came to live with us. He was 8 years old and the best cat ever. I had to hand feed him and carry him to the litter box, he passed away the night before Sadie's surgery. At that point my boyfriend said we were not getting another cat again, he didn't think he could go through everything that had happened with Stan again. In February of last year, for Valentines day, he agreed to let me get another cat. We tried many rescue groups first but they wouldn't adopt to us because Fynn is intact. We ended up posting an ad on Kijiji saying that we were looking for a cat, we didn't care about age, gender or colour, but it had to be fixed if age appropriate, up to date on shots and grown up or lived with dogs. A few hours after posting the ad, my inbox was filled with responses. We chose Leiki, her owner had seen our ad and thought that she would be good for us. He had a small chihuahua and had received Leiki as a present from his friend that bred siamese cats. He had come to realize that he wasn't a cat person but was still taking the best care of her and hadn't even thought of rehoming her until he saw our ad. When we went to see her we fell in love, she hated us. She would run away, hiss, growl and try to swat at us. We talked to him a bit, he said that she had never been really friendly but that she did warm up, if she didn't we were welcome to bring her back. We took her home, that night she slept with us but still wouldn't come out of hiding during the day. It took about 2 weeks before she started coming out. It's been a year and she is now the sweetest cat when she wants to be, she burrows under the blankets at night just like the dachshunds do and cuddles up to them.

I guess I should include a bit about me... I run a small mobile pet photography company that has been picking up over the last few years. It's something that my boyfriend and I both enjoy very much but not really a source of steady income. I work fulltime at a drugstore in the photolab and I also work for Nature's Variety as a product demonstrator. I absolutely love the job and if anyone here feeds it or has any questions about it, just send me a PM.