More on Tarma

[moominmuppet]

I still need to make a Tarma icon.

Most of this is from various comment replies and the email I sent to her original shelter seeking more info.

On uncertainty about her breed, and tasharowan's suggestion she might be a Swiss Mountain Dog:

I'd been wondering something similar, only about the Bernese Mountain Dog. I've encountered a few of them before, and it strikes me as perfectly possible that she's partly that breed.

Ah, interesting. Apparently the Bernese is part of the subset of Swiss Mountain Dogs. The Greater Swiss Mountain Dog does look like an even more likely possibility than the Bernese.

I've been looking through the documentation on her that I got from the APL, so I've learned a bit more about her background (although some of it is just plain confusing). Actually, I just now looked up the group she came from: Swiss Friends of Animals -- it's named for the county, not for the breeds they work with. This strikes me as even more likely that she's not entirely correctly identified on breed; I'd be less likely to expect that they'd have extensive enough experience to distinguish what type of big, drooly, working-type dog she's got in her than if they specialized in working with those breeds.

Do you know anything about her previous owners or living situation, or why she is so skinny? Poor dog.

Less than usual, actually. The APL in Tremont got her from an overcrowded shelter in Illinois Indiana. There was also something in her paperwork about a Mountain Dog Rescue group (note: I was misrecalling this from the Swiss Friends of Animals name that'd been tossed out while we were talking at the APL; it had sounded like a breed-specific rescue to me) -- I don't know whether they were the ones with the overcrowding, or if she moved between them and the other shelter before coming here, and we couldn't figure it out from her records (although one nice thing is that the Mountain Dog Rescue group did a bunch of tests and vaccines she wouldn't otherwise have come with).

I don't get the sense that she was actively physically abused -- she doesn't shy away from people in the way I expect of abused dogs, not even when she gets a sharp "No!" about getting into the cat litter or the cat's medicated food. Jax and Sarah-dog were both abused, and both would just cower in reaction to things like that when they first came home (Sarah-dog was my family's dog after I left for college). It seems to me like she was neglected -- she seems to just be figuring out how to deal with things most animals would've encountered by her age (like affection). My guess is that her timidity is more about lack of experience than active bad experiences, and that she was underfed, particularly for a pregnant state, along with that neglect. Part of why I wonder about her size is because of the underfeeding and the very early pregnancy. I don't know enough about what kinds of things permanently stunt growth, and what just delay it, but I wonder if she isn't so small in large part because of those factors. Now that neither are at issue, and she's still relatively young, especially in the growth cycle of a large dog, I'm wondering if she'll kick back into a growth spurt, or whether the damage is done.


And the email I just wrote to the original shelter this morning, once I sorted through all her paperwork and figured out where exactly she came from, and found the brief notes about the rescue (rescued 4/13/07, notes "chained to car in driveway"):

Hi, my name is Sarah Young, and I just adopted a dog named Lady (although we've renamed her Tarma) from the Cleveland APL last Friday. Her papers say she originally came through your group, and I'm just looking to make sure I know as much about her as I reasonably can, given that she's a shelter pet.

It's apparent she had a very recent pregnancy, and I was wondering if you or her foster home (Marie B***) might know just how recent (I'm taking her for her first vet visit in a week or so, and wanted to be able to tell them). Also, some of her paperwork lists her as 2 1/2 years old, some lists her as 1 year, and that confused me a bit. I saw from her paperwork that she was rescued from being chained to a car in someone's yard -- I'm just wondering if anyone recalls the circumstances well enough to be able to tell me what kind of shape she was in when she was first rescued; she's still a skinny girl, so I suspect she was at least being badly neglected, but I'm curious about any signs of active physical abuse and such. If it would make sense for me to call her foster caretaker Marie, I'd be happy to do so; her phone number is listed on the paperwork.

Tarma's settling in very well in our household, although we're still working on her fear of stairs (we're getting there a step at a time, quite literally *grin*), and I wanted to thank you as well for your especially comprehensive testing and vaccinations.

Feel free to contact me by email or phone

__________________________________

Today's update:

In general she's still doing well, although it's two steps forward, one step back on the the stairs training (almost literally). She's gotten more stubborn/nervous about going downstairs again, although she's still doing moderately well on getting upstairs. I'm ending up carrying her down part of the flight, and then setting her down a few steps up from the bottom, which she manages without too much problem. I'm hoping to continue to work that so that she gradually gets used to going down more at a time.

Most nerve-wracking item, especially given Harry's problems -- yesterday afternoon she started intermittently limping; her right hind leg seemed to be bothering her (I'm quite certain she doesn't have a weird rare bone cancer in her leg, but it's still a jolt to see that same behaviour again so soon). We're not sure exactly when that started; Bec first noticed it mid-afternoon when she went up. It seems ok this morning, but we're being especially watchful about that (also part of why I wrote for more history from the original shelter), and we're taking it as easy on the stairs as we can while we keep an eye on her; we don't want to push her to do something that's actually causing her pain, as well as making her nervous. Unfortunately, this is adding some frustration in terms of accidents -- she doesn't have a clear signal for needing to go out back, and once we get out on the porch for one of our regular intermittent trips it's a total guess as to whether she actually has to pee, and we need to get her down the stairs, or whether she's really just not interested at the moment. I ended up carrying her down twice this morning before 6am because of just that uncertainty, and our misjudgments on it so far have resulted in two substantial accidents in the apartment (not a huge deal -- I never rent anyplace with carpet, but I need to pick up some more paper towels ASAP). I'm not particularly counting that as "misbehavior" per se, given the circumstances, and she's continued to be pretty well-behaved inside -- nothing except chewies chewed up when we got home, no general destruction and chaos. As she's getting more confident she is definitely getting more willful, so we'll really need to stay active on the training. I worked with her some on "sit" last night, although she's having a bit of a rough time of it -- the normal tricks that trigger sitting in many dogs don't seem to work well with her.

Also, does anyone have any experience, good or bad, with pet insurance policies? Tarma came with a complimentary 30-day coverage from Pet First Healthcare, and I'm currently looking at their site and considering a policy for the rest of the insurable animals (unfortunately, Shroom and Morph are too old for a new policy, and it's likely that Fatty Lumpkin is too (musicalchaos, how old is he now?), but it'd still be nice to have something for catastrophic events like what happened with Harry for the rest of the pets).

Comments

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

Could it be that she's just not used to stairs and has an overuse injury on her leg?

I think that it's kind of weird how scattered her paperwork seems to be. Then again, I've never adopted a dog from the APL. Friends who have don't seem to have that kind of issue. Sarah's (my roommate) dog came from a single family, who seemed to have neglected to tell us that several people took him home and then returned him. You'd think they'd need a good history if only for vaccinations and so forth.

About the stairs ...

[inonit.livejournal.com]

I fostered a dog for a while (lost dog, eventually found owner) who displayed exactly the same fear of stairs you describe. However, with this one, as we learned when we met the owners (and friends of the owners), it was that the dog wasn't allowed in the upstairs part of the house. No amount of coaxing could get him to climb stairs -- not treats, not encouragement -- I had to carry this giant dog up the stairs from the basement (where he stayed the first night).

Just a thought.

[musicalchaos.livejournal.com]

I think... He's about 11 or 12 now. But James or Dad would probably recall better, as I can't remember exactly what age I was when we got him.