The Weekend Of The Ass Explosions

This weekend we learned something. Well, we had heard it before but it never hit home like it did yesterday. You should always GRADUALLY introduce a new dog food. We didn’t…….

We had traveled to a sheepdog handling clinic on Saturday and by the time we got home that evening we were too tired to go to the store to buy more dog food as we were out of their normal crappy Pedigree. So we used the bag of EVO that I had bought for Blue when I was looking for a really good, grain free food for him after he had his first seizure last month. That bag was sitting unused because the first time I gave it to him he had a seizure within an hour. I didn’t connect the food to that event, but after the evening meal and it happened again within an hour we figured there was a trigger in that food. That’s a whole nuther story and mystery that I hope to get to the bottom of. My suspicion is that it was the high protein content (42%!) which I’ve since heard may have a connection to triggering seizures in epi dogs. ANYWAY, the food itself is a very good food – should be for $50 a bag - so even though the vet said to not feed it to Blue, there was no reason to not feed it to the others. (Blue gets home cooked meals now which he LOVES!). So we fed it on Saturday and sometime during the night, Vic had the squirts. Gave him some tummy meds and off we went to another day of the clinic.

We got there and as we were letting dogs out of the dog box, they came flying out and each had been swimming in watery poo and it flew everywhere! I had it on my shirt, legs, arms and on my dog whistle – EEEWWWW. Maureen the hostess gave us a roll of paper towels (which we used up that day) and some Imodium for each of the dogs. Of course the only one that felt okay was Blue because he hadn’t touched that food. They are all better today, and we sure learned our lesson. Andre was cussing that food all day, because of what it did to Blue and now all the other dogs! He kept saying “And how much did you pay for that food????!!!!” Lot’s of people swear by it and it’s a very highly rated dog food – it’s just never going to be allowed in our house again because of the bad memories…….

Well that was the worst part of the weekend. The rest was great. I loved the clinic, loved the company and getting out and working dogs. The hosts - Maureen and Billy Pritchard - had everything set up and ready to roll and provided breakfasts and lunches each day that were great! They had a round pen, a medium size field and a large field to work in depending on what level you were. The sheep were little troopers and worked great with the exception of the BIG Corriedales that were put in at one point (they had to switch out sheep because it was getting very hot and humid). They were a little too friendly and would run right at the handler – kind of like having a buffalo trying to climb in your lap to be petted! They were promptly put back out to another field.

Carol Calhoun was the clinician and she is great at seeing what your issues are and giving you exercises to help you and your dog. I would recommend her to anyone who has a chance to take a lesson or go to a clinic with her. Unfortunately she lives too far away from us to take more than just an occasional clinic with her. I’ve gotten to know her from being at trials where she is running or judging and she has always freely offered wonderful, useful information to new handlers because she wants people to do well with their dogs and not struggle. I told her one time that I really appreciated that.