Sled Dog!

At the end of March, I decided that if I was going to get a chance to try Lottie at pulling a sled, it had to be soon, or relax and wait until next year.  After winter camp, I saw an awesome video of a blind/deaf Aussie that loved to pull a sled, and I was dying to try this with Lottie.  She gets so upset when we walk because I keep her on leash and the others get to run free in the woods.  I realized hooking her up with her buddies in harness is a way to let her run run run through the woods, and still keep her safely attached to her buddies.  So over Easter weekend I LOADED the car up with Lottie, Keebler, Skye and five border collies to make a quick sledding run to Dog Scout Camp in Michigan.  We dropped off foster border collie Charlotte at a potential new home in Ann Arbor, and the rest of us continued our trek to find a dog sled and snow.

 

At first, all we found was MUD.  I’ve never seen camp so muddy.  The trails had some snow in places, but not much.  So all we did for the first two days was hike.  Tango got to play on the Trash Agility Course, and we spent a lot of time in the woods.  

Tango practicing for Trash Agility



That was fine with the others, but Lottie wasn’t happy.  Then, the last night, the temperature dropped and we got lovely SNOW!

 

Tango on the Trash Agility course



          I hooked up Tango, who has pulled a sled several times in the past with Kannika.  Then I chose to pair him with Pascha, who had never been in harness before.  The plan was to see if I could get Pascha to pull with Tango, and then add Lottie and Jasper behind.  Tango, however, had different ideas.  This is my Wonder Dog, who is so scary smart and athletic, and biddable.  But not that day.  He flat out refused to move forward. He chewed the harness and tried to back out and finally lay down.  Absolute refusal.  I was shocked.  Pascha, however, seemed quite willing.  The best I could do was to walk behind them and pull the sled myself.  This was the only way I found to get Tango to move forward.  Finally I decided to just hook Lottie and Jasper up behind and see what happened. 

      Once in harness, Lottie jumped gleefully forward, and Jasper stayed willingly with her, but Tango put on the brakes while Pascha tried gallantly to pull forward with her harness partner Tango acting like a post.  It was twisted mess of harnesses and gang lines that resembled spaghetti.  So I just unhooked Tango and Pascha and let Lottie and Jasper go on their own.  And guess what?  Lottie totally ROCKS as a sled dog!  She loved it.  Only problem was that the snow trails were barely covered, and bumpy icy, so I’m looking forward to next winter when we can try it with some real sledding snow.  Lottie is, too!

Lottie seems to be wishing she could just run free!

One nice suprise was seeing Lottie featured as Miss February on the DSA calendar

Next year, expect a great video of Lottie Moon, lead sled dog!

Louisville Rescue Roadtrip

What does a girl do for fun on a Friday night? ROADTRIP!! And what makes it even better? Blind and deaf dogs!!

Lottie Moon, Keebler and I joined Victoria, Raquel, and Dahlia, and we all hit the road to Kentucky to pick up a double merle Aussie named Orkah. Orkah was losing his home, so Speak! For the Unspoken went to his rescue! http://www.speakfortheunspoken.com

Dahlia meeting Orkah

Orkah turned out to be a lovely young deaf and vision-impaired Aussie. So like all these double merles, he is real sweetheart. And Lottie, and all the dogs, had a great time meeting the new guy.
We spent quite a bit of time at a park in downtown Louisville on the river, which was nice, and all the dogs enjoyed stretching their legs and getting to know each other before we all piled back in the car, this time with Orkah, too, and headed back to Columbus.
We stopped for dinner at Chipotle, and I wanted to eat inside, since I wasn’t brave enough to eat in the car with all the dogs. Now, I often eat in the car with lots of dogs, but this time I was in the back seat with all four of them. It seemed a bit stressful, even for me. Yet I wasn’t comfortable leaving Keebler alone with so many big dogs while we ate inside. Rachel saved the day, or at least dinner, by being brave enough to hide the little guy in her coat while we ate. Only one time did he pop out unexpectedly and grab a mouthful of burrito from her fork!
All in all, it was a successful trip, and a good time was had by all, humans and canines.

Lottie's always ready to say HI

Dahlia, Orkah, Lottie Moon

Victoria and her dogs Dahlia and Orkah

Rachel keeping Keebler warm!

Chasing Enchantment

These double merles have such a sweet, enchanting energy about them.  I was thinking this as I drove with Lottie Moon and Keebler in the back seat of my car yesterday.  They were playing together, sharing a toy.                                         
These dogs have a different energy, in some almost indescribable way, than my other dogs.  There is a gentleness to them, but not a calmness; a wisdom to them, yet not an intellect.  This is not to say they are not ever calm, or that they are not intelligent, because absolutely they can be both.  It is more about the descriptors “gentle” and “wise” as descriptors of their energy, their auras, if you will, and not their personalities, and the sense that these words provoke in the soul, and not the mind. When I say that they are gentle, the mind brings forth images of calm, slow, quiet.  Lottie and Keebler spend massive amounts of their time running and wrestling and screaming in play together. 

Lottie has her OCD moments several times/week where she pants and barks and runs through repetitive behaviors and stresses out everyone around her. 

Keebler is a Chihuahua, and just like most Chihuahuas, he feels the need to shriek and rush forward in attack mode to big dogs who venture near him when he has a bone, or when he’s on my lap. 
Yet I still use the word “gentle” to describe both of these dogs.  It goes beyond actions; it goes deeper to their hearts.  Likewise, I have border collies and an Australian Cattle Dog, so I live with dogs that possess crazy intelligence.  Sometimes I swear they are smarter than me.  Lottie and Keebler are not more intelligent than the border collies, not at all.  But they feel wise.  Like learning from them will heal my soul. 
  
There is just something about these dogs, these double merles, that has an impact on people.  It happened to me when I met Dahlia, the deaf and blind Aussie who made me decide I needed one of these dogs, started me on my path to find Lottie, and really changed my life. 


Keebler and Dahlia



Lottie, Keebler, and Dahlia

 
Since last year when I adopted Lottie, I’ve become involved in helping other double merles find homes, and I’ve become a part of the community of owners of double merles.  I’ve watched people become just as entranced with these dogs as I was.  When you meet them, you just know you’ve met something your soul hungers for.  And once you feel this sweet enchantment, you cannot forget it, ever.

Lottie's Brain

  Lottie is continuing to have night terrors.  It is really kind of freaky, because when she gets scared, it is hard to get her awake.  She will be lying on the bed with me and the cats, asleep, and suddenly she will growl, yelp, and lunge at a cat.  She never seems to hurt them, but she has certainly scared the bejeebers out of them.  She has lunged and bitten me a couple of times, but she doesn’t hurt.  Bless her, she has very good bite inhibition, thankfully!  But I’m still afraid she will hurt a cat, or one of the Chihuahuas.                                               
                                                                       
If she is sleeping on the floor away from any of us, she still growls and snaps, but at nothing.  Sometimes she gets up and runs away, growling.  One time she ran to a corner and stood snapping at the air, protecting herself from .  . .?  Additionally, since Noelle and Kannika passed away, Lottie has been going into bouts of OCD-like stress.  This is nothing new, but it is more prevalent, and I’m not able to reach her and calm her down like I used to be able to do.  She will be perfectly fine, then suddenly go into barking and digging at the floor, running and pouncing on nothing that I can see, and when I try to distract her or calm her, it is getting increasingly more difficult.  I put a Thunder Shirt on her last week when it happened, and it seemed to help.  She continued to go through her OCD behavior all evening, but it was for shorter periods with bouts of calm rest in-between.  Thankfully, there have not been any more seizures (that I’m aware of) since the one and only one she had several months ago.

            

But all of this abnormal brain activity certainly has MY brain in overtime.  What is going on?  Is any of this related?  Do other double merles have the same issues?  Anecdotally, it seems this is true.  But I don’t have any kind of statistics or studies to back up my theory.  So if this is a part of the makeup of some, or many double merles, what is the cause?  And what can we do? 

                                                                                    

I was listening to the radio last week, and heard about Charles Bonnet Syndrome.  Odd, and interesting. Upon further research, I learned more about this strange syndrome.  Basically, Charles Bonnet syndrome (CBS) in humans is a condition that causes patients with visual loss to have complex visual hallucinations.  Sufferers, who are mentally healthy people with often significant visual loss, have vivid, complex recurrent visual hallucinations. One characteristic of these hallucinations is that they usually are "Lilliputian" (hallucinations in which the characters or objects are smaller than normal). The most common hallucination is of faces or cartoons. Sufferers understand that the hallucinations are not real, and the hallucinations are only visual, that is, they do not occur in any other senses, e.g. hearing, smell or taste.  The main cause of CBS is loss of vision and how the brain reacts to this loss. The exact way loss of sight leads to hallucinations isn't really known, but research is slowly revealing more about how the eye and the brain work together.  Current research seems to suggest that, when you are seeing real things around you, the information received from your eyes actually stops the brain from creating its own pictures. With vision loss, however, the brain is not receiving as much information from the  eyes as it used to. The brain can sometimes fill in these gaps by releasing new fantasy pictures, patterns or old pictures that it has stored. When this occurs, these images stored in the brain are experienced as hallucinations. CBS tends to begin in the weeks and months following a deterioration in sight.

 

Is this a scary "Lilliputian" hallucination, or is it real???

Not that I think Lottie has CBS, but it is interesting to learn that the brain can fill in visual images in the mind when there is a lack of true vision.  Does this help explain what is happening with Lottie?  I don’t know.  Just lots to think about and contemplate about life with this little girl.  It’s why I love her so.

 



Winter Outing 2013

           
President’s Day Weekend was also the annual Winter Outing at Dog Scout Camp, where those of us who are tough and brave enough to plan a trip driving Michigan roads in February gather with our dogs in the snow to hike, sled, skijor, snowshoe and drink lots of coffee.

This has traditionally been Kannika’s big weekend, even though she always disliked

1)      pulling a sled

2)      getting her feet wet   



Kannika

    But she always looked SO good in winter photographs.  My beautiful girl passed away in January, so this was a very bittersweet trip without my Kannika or my Noelle.  I miss both of them so much.  But life, and Dog Scouts, goes on, so I loaded regulars Punch, Tango, and Pascha in the car, along with Winter Outing virgins Lottie Moon and Keebler, and we had a blessedly uneventful drive to Michigan.

 

Going to Dog Scout Camp has always been like going home for me, but now with my trailer there, it REALLY feels like home.  I love walking in and having all of our stuff waiting for us, in our own familiar space.  Lonnie and Joe got my trailer all ready and turned on the electric and the gas so it was nice and warm for our arrival, but unfortunately the propane ran out before we got there at midnight, so it was quite icy inside when I walked in.  I went back to the car, and we all slept nice and toasty in a big pile in the car until morning when we were able to go get the propane tank filled.

 

We had a small but fabulous group.  There were some great activities planned for us, including a class on Search and Rescue, taught by my wonderful and awesome friend, Claudette Smith.  For this activity, we had six people in the room who walked to the center, and one dropped a scent article, such as a glove or scarf, in the center of the floor.  Then each person walked back out to the edge of the room and waited.  The handler brought the dog in, had them sniff the article, then find the owner of the article.  It was amazing.  I am so blown away by the talent of these dogs to do this.  All of the border collies were able to find the owner quickly, and so my confidence was bolstered and I brought Lottie into try.  She ROCKED.  Of course, first she had to greet everyone in the room, but THEN she went to the owner of the article and was very excited that she found her.  Lottie's response to the owner was much different than her greeting of the others in the room, so there is no doubt in my mind that she knew this was the person who dropped the glove.  Part of this training is learning to read your dog, so maybe once she learns to forego the salutations, Lottie can participate in more nosework.  After all, the eyes and ears don't work so well, but there is nothing wrong with Lottie's nose :-)            

I was interested to see how Lottie would enjoy all the Michigan snow (so much prettier and better than awful Ohio snow), but every time we hiked, she was so frustrated.  She had to remain on the leash while the border collies ran free in the woods, and she wasn’t happy about it.  She barked and screamed on every hike, and there were a lot of hikes.  I kept thinking she would finally accept her plight and relax, but no.  She is tenacious, that’s for sure, she never, never, never gives up.  That’s how she is able handle her blindness and deafness with such courage and joy; she just plows forward through life and doesn’t accept that there is anything she can’t do. 

We never even got out the dog sleds, although Lonnie made a half-hearted attempt once, then abandoned the idea for more hiking.  It was after we left and were back in Ohio that a friend sent me a video of a blind and deaf Aussie dog-sledding, and I was so upset that I didn’t think of it for Lottie.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh4RhmrUXMk&feature=player_embedded

 What a great way for Lottie to run through the woods, safely tethered to her buddies in harness?!  If I don’t make it back yet this year, we will certainly do this next year.  I might even have to look at buying a kick sled for my aussie-girl.  We don’t have much snow in Ohio, but there are usually at least one or two good snows each year that we could take advantage of.  I’m so anxious now to try!

Regardless of missing my opportunity to try Lottie at sledding, we still had a great trip enjoying the Michigan woods and snow, and spending time with some of my best friends, both human and canine.

Hiking with Keebler

We miss you, Kannika