This is the litter at seven weeks. Reilly is third from the right, wearing the red yarn collar.Thursday, June 30, 2011
Seven weeks old
This is the litter at seven weeks. Reilly is third from the right, wearing the red yarn collar.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Ready....
Reilly and I are now registered for his first puppy class, which starts on September 6. He has to be four months old and have all his shots, and he'll get in just under the wire. That's good. He needs to get in his classes before he gets too big and unruly for me to handle. In the meantime, we'll be working on some basic manners. I'm going to start taking him to the park each day for a walk. Practice leash walking, getting used to outside distractions, such as squirrels and other dogs, and getting out. Feels funny to take a dog off-farm for exercise. Murphy and Jake are perfectly pleased to just play pasture soccer, and are only on a leash to go to the vet. So many things will need to be done differently with Reilly.
I sure hope he approves this name. I've run a list of names for months, then shortened it last week. I've sorta morphed into calling him Reilly, even though that's not the name I was intending to choose for him.
Yesterday my niece, Sydney, and I picked up a few things for our puppy trip. A stuffed cuddly for him in his crate. A rope toy, ball and hedgehog. The rope is to get him used to the feel of those in his mouth. Mastiffs usually love to play with ropes, and I'll want to use that tendency. Ropes attached to doors and cabinets mean he can open those for me. A rope with a hook on it means I can have him open those heavy doors at some stores which do not have electronic doors. Ropes are important. The ball to get him to start retrieving things. Mastiffs aren't as good at retrieving as the hunting breeds, but they will do it. Getting him started early with a ball will help. The hedgehog is simply because that's the most popular mastiff toy in our house. Murphy loves squeaky hedgehogs. We have them everywhere.
We also picked up a collar and lead and a lovely little poop bag tube that snaps to collar or belt loop. Practical things. I'll need to pack food and water for the trip, too. And bowls, of course.
Just a few more days. I'm not waiting. Not nervous. Not excited. Oh, no. Not me.
I sure hope he approves this name. I've run a list of names for months, then shortened it last week. I've sorta morphed into calling him Reilly, even though that's not the name I was intending to choose for him.
Yesterday my niece, Sydney, and I picked up a few things for our puppy trip. A stuffed cuddly for him in his crate. A rope toy, ball and hedgehog. The rope is to get him used to the feel of those in his mouth. Mastiffs usually love to play with ropes, and I'll want to use that tendency. Ropes attached to doors and cabinets mean he can open those for me. A rope with a hook on it means I can have him open those heavy doors at some stores which do not have electronic doors. Ropes are important. The ball to get him to start retrieving things. Mastiffs aren't as good at retrieving as the hunting breeds, but they will do it. Getting him started early with a ball will help. The hedgehog is simply because that's the most popular mastiff toy in our house. Murphy loves squeaky hedgehogs. We have them everywhere.
We also picked up a collar and lead and a lovely little poop bag tube that snaps to collar or belt loop. Practical things. I'll need to pack food and water for the trip, too. And bowls, of course.
Just a few more days. I'm not waiting. Not nervous. Not excited. Oh, no. Not me.
Monday, June 27, 2011
The Path to Reilly
June 28, 2011
This path got started down years ago, although I didn't know it then.
I used to wonder why I had trouble doing things other people found easy. I was always told I was out of shape. I believed it. But by my thirties, I was giving up things most people don't have to. High heels. Running. Because I'd fall, and didn't know why I was turning into a klutz. Fast forward some more. By my mid-forties, I knew something was dreadfully wrong, but the doctors I spoke to blew me off as a hypochondriac. After enough of that, you start believing you have mental issues. Finally, I did my own research. I made a careful list of my symptoms, noting which muscle groups were having problems and which were not, as well as exactly what kind of problems. Then I went searching. On the internet, one disorder kept coming up. Inclusion Body Myositis. After reading it the first time, I tried to ignore it. That couldn't be ME. It's a degenerative neuromuscular disorder with no treatment. It'll put me in a wheelchair and bed, and on a feeding tube, potentially for years and years. And I was in my forties. And active. We had a small hobby farm with sheep, poultry, angora rabbits. I was slowing building a fiber business. I was a college biology lecturer. This could not be me. I took the list of symptoms to a doctor and requested testing. He laughed at me, but ended up doing the benchmark blood tests just to shut me up. Then he contacted me wanting a muscle biopsy as soon as possible.
It couldn't be me. But it was.
I of course started researching the heck out of this stuff, trying to figure out what was going to happen to me. Somewhere in the early research I came across a reference to mobility service dogs. Interesting, but I didn't dwell on it. I was still in serious denial. I found that when you get a diagnosis of this type, you're on your own. There's really nobody who can relate to this. I found myself comforting friends and family who were upset by what was happening, rather than getting comfort. They didn't know how. There's no way they could, really. It was and is hard to deal with.
The ones I can cry on without feeling guilty for making them feel bad are our dogs, Murphy and Jake.
After about two years, I got through enough of the denial to look again. I had moved in those two years from a person who could walk alone to one who used a cane, then a StrongArm mobility crutch-cane. Sometimes two. Kinda hard to deny that. So I started looking at the service dog thing. And started looking harder. And started looking at programs and breeders and dogs.
In 2010 I started looking seriously. First, I looked at the many dog training placement centers out there. For starters, they all have a waiting list of people who need dogs, and those lists are years long. Most of the companies have stringent requirements, such as not being allowed to have other dogs in the household. Since we already have two mastiffs, Murphy and Jake, that put me out of the running. Most of the places use predominantly water retrievers; Labradors and Golden Retrievers. Although they're nice dogs, they are not breeds that I enjoy spending large amounts of time with. Additionally, I don't like the oily coat on labs, and couldn't groom the long coat of a Golden. On top of all that, we have mastiffs. After mastiffs, the idea of trusting myself to a "small" dog like those just wasn't going to happen. The other placement groups I found had other issues. One required you to fund-raise a minimum of $13K, but did not guarantee you would ever get a dog. Lots of obstacles. And even if I got on a list, my needs would change dramatically between getting on the list and getting a dog.
The next option was to find someone who could train my dog especially for me. I looked at local trainers, and most were in the business of "fixing" unmanageable dogs. Not what I needed. Someone put me in contact with a man who had been training dogs for years. I interviewed him, and liked him, with some reservations but they seemed small to start. They got bigger. He was a police dog trainer, used to breeds with strong dominant characteristics. He wanted to use a rottweiler instead of a mastiff because of this. And his training techniques would have been too heavy handed for a mastiff. So that wasn't going to work out, either.
Next choice was to plan on training a puppy myself, which I'd never done. Sure, simple commands; sit, come, wait. Nothing like this. I needed help.
I located the Cape Fear Dog Training Club. They train dogs for obedience competition trials. They also offer Canine Good Citizen classes and Therapy dog classes. This is where I needed to start. While I'm learning to teach my dog the basics, I'll also be learning how to train him. I'm the one who knows the tasks I need done, and I'll know this dog best, so with their help, I can put this together.
I hoped to find a puppy in the spring, about when spring semester was over, or a bit earlier. Summer classes for the pup, and lots of bonding time, I thought. Except there are no classes in the summer. There are competitions in the summer. Classes start back up in the fall. So I was on hold again, but it was really okay...because I hadn't found a breeder or a puppy yet! (And yes, I also looked at rescues, but with my physical limitations, that one was harder.)
I had certain things I was looking for in a puppy. I used Volhord's guidelines, to an extent, but I also took our family dynamics into consideration. First, I wanted a pup from health-tested championship lines, but I wanted pet quality. Health-tested parents, for hip dysplasia, elbows, eyes, etc., are no guarantee the pup won't develop things, but they do give better odds. Since this was meant to be a working dog, soundness was imperative. Secondly, and equally important, was temperament. I could use neither a timid puppy nor an aggressive one. It needs to be smart, somewhat bold, inquisitive. Seemed like a simple enough combination. But it wasn't.
Dog breeders are a breed apart. The variations between them are amazing. I've learned a lot about how people think about their dogs, and their own insight into dogs, over the past six months of looking for a pup. First, I went to the good ole internet. I did a search for English mastiff breeders. And I looked over their websites. I emailed a few. None emailed back. Most wanted a puppy application filled out as a first point of contact. I didn't want to fill out an application until I learned more about them, and they weren't talking. Some of them didn't want to deal with me, because they didn't want their dogs being service dogs.
I did find one breeder, way out in California, who was quite interested in what I was doing, but had no pups and none planned for this year. She had just retired and placed an adult male, and he was in training to be a therapy dog. I missed him by just a couple weeks! However, I didn't find anything closer.
In May, I asked for breeder recommendations on a mastiff forum. I got several responses, including a lady who was hunting for a mastiff for a similar purpose for her disabled son. I initiated contact with the breeders those people recommended...and got no response from them. (I was starting to feel a bit invisible.) But I read a lot more websites. I found links to other breeders. I found the Mastiff Sweet Spot.
Since I wanted to keep this as financially reasonable as possible, I was concentrating my search in North Carolina, but extending down to Georgia and up to Maryland. I found a breeder in NC, and a second in Virginia, that had puppies, or bred bitches. I contacted them both. Both responded. Neither of them health-check their dogs, and "I know my dogs and I'd know if something was wrong" was a common line from them. Granted, if they're doing a lot of line-breeding a trait will show up strongly, but if they don't follow their puppies, how would they know? I had breeders tell me they "Never have a pet quality puppy; mine are all show dogs." Uhhh...yeah. Right. The odds are against that. I admit to being hugely tempted anyway. It's hard to be objective when you're on a puppy high! I had to enlist friends to pull me back to Earth and get me refocused. (Thanks to the Chronic Bitch forum!) So I stepped back, and looked farther afield.
One website I had found through the Mastiff Sweet Spot I had been attracted to several times. This breeder called herself a hobby breeder rather than a professional. She had a section on her website about "lessons learned" as she moved from owning a backyard bred mastiff (like our Jake and Murphy) to owning and breeding show dogs. This breeder was in Ohio, ten hours away from me. Ten hours. I'd look, leave her site, and try to find something closer. Only to go back later.
On her website she had photos and videos of her litter, and them interacting with their mother. Even with pups, the dam was a very mellow girl. Both parents were health checked. Both parents were champions, not just from champion lines. Her pups were older; nearly seven weeks. I didn't think there was a chance there would be a pup left, much less a male, but I emailed anyway.
One apricot male available.
I called her and got more information. The pup had been under contract, but she'd found that the people had...ummm...misrepresented some things, so she was not selling the pup to them. I asked about temperament, and told her what I wanted the pup for. She was thrilled with the idea, and sent me backlog emails that she'd been sending as weekly updates to those who had purchased puppies. She had been keeping temperament records on each puppy since they started developing personalities. And she pulled no punches. She identified the Klutz, the least intelligent, the show potential...and the pups that were smartest and really should go to obedience trials, rally...or a job. The available pup she considered the smartest in the litter. He was also inquisitive; running toward dropped things rather than away from them. The first to figure out the puppy litter box. As a comparison, no other breeder I talked to could tell about individual puppies. They talked only about breed traits. I'm sure there are many others out there who track such things, but they weren't ones I found. This breeder also insisted I listen to the negatives of the parents, so I was aware of future potential. A probable food allergy in the dam, alleviated by a grain-free kibble. The same kibble we feed our dogs, for the same reason. A non-issue for me. A slight knee issue from injury, and she'd done her best to verify it was injury and not genetic by tracking down littermates, siblings and half-siblings of her bitch and checking their health.
I was back on a puppy high. I called a girlfriend who has done dog training, and gave her the scenario. Theresa gave me suggestions on additional questions to ask the breeder. They were all answered satisfactorily. In fact, Theresa was quite impressed with this breeder. So were the dog-savvy folk on the CB forum.
After a sleepless night with worrying that someone else would get this puppy, I called to confirm I wanted him. I was accepted, pending a phone call to my vet. The breeder told me bluntly that she liked our conversations, that I seemed right for this pup, but she wasn't confirming until my vet said I was a good dog owner. That conversation took place today, and Reilly is now mine to pick up...and pay for..this coming weekend, when he turns 8 weeks old. He's got a new puppy check-up scheduled on July 5th.
There's lots more details I could put in, and conversations with other breeders, but as a first post, this gives the background.
After Reilly comes to live with us, I'll do daily posts while he's growing fast, then weekly ones on how he's progressing and how his training is coming. What we've done wrong and what we've done right. Cross your crossables, Folks, it's going to be a ride!
Meg
This path got started down years ago, although I didn't know it then.
I used to wonder why I had trouble doing things other people found easy. I was always told I was out of shape. I believed it. But by my thirties, I was giving up things most people don't have to. High heels. Running. Because I'd fall, and didn't know why I was turning into a klutz. Fast forward some more. By my mid-forties, I knew something was dreadfully wrong, but the doctors I spoke to blew me off as a hypochondriac. After enough of that, you start believing you have mental issues. Finally, I did my own research. I made a careful list of my symptoms, noting which muscle groups were having problems and which were not, as well as exactly what kind of problems. Then I went searching. On the internet, one disorder kept coming up. Inclusion Body Myositis. After reading it the first time, I tried to ignore it. That couldn't be ME. It's a degenerative neuromuscular disorder with no treatment. It'll put me in a wheelchair and bed, and on a feeding tube, potentially for years and years. And I was in my forties. And active. We had a small hobby farm with sheep, poultry, angora rabbits. I was slowing building a fiber business. I was a college biology lecturer. This could not be me. I took the list of symptoms to a doctor and requested testing. He laughed at me, but ended up doing the benchmark blood tests just to shut me up. Then he contacted me wanting a muscle biopsy as soon as possible.
It couldn't be me. But it was.
I of course started researching the heck out of this stuff, trying to figure out what was going to happen to me. Somewhere in the early research I came across a reference to mobility service dogs. Interesting, but I didn't dwell on it. I was still in serious denial. I found that when you get a diagnosis of this type, you're on your own. There's really nobody who can relate to this. I found myself comforting friends and family who were upset by what was happening, rather than getting comfort. They didn't know how. There's no way they could, really. It was and is hard to deal with.
The ones I can cry on without feeling guilty for making them feel bad are our dogs, Murphy and Jake.
After about two years, I got through enough of the denial to look again. I had moved in those two years from a person who could walk alone to one who used a cane, then a StrongArm mobility crutch-cane. Sometimes two. Kinda hard to deny that. So I started looking at the service dog thing. And started looking harder. And started looking at programs and breeders and dogs.
In 2010 I started looking seriously. First, I looked at the many dog training placement centers out there. For starters, they all have a waiting list of people who need dogs, and those lists are years long. Most of the companies have stringent requirements, such as not being allowed to have other dogs in the household. Since we already have two mastiffs, Murphy and Jake, that put me out of the running. Most of the places use predominantly water retrievers; Labradors and Golden Retrievers. Although they're nice dogs, they are not breeds that I enjoy spending large amounts of time with. Additionally, I don't like the oily coat on labs, and couldn't groom the long coat of a Golden. On top of all that, we have mastiffs. After mastiffs, the idea of trusting myself to a "small" dog like those just wasn't going to happen. The other placement groups I found had other issues. One required you to fund-raise a minimum of $13K, but did not guarantee you would ever get a dog. Lots of obstacles. And even if I got on a list, my needs would change dramatically between getting on the list and getting a dog.
The next option was to find someone who could train my dog especially for me. I looked at local trainers, and most were in the business of "fixing" unmanageable dogs. Not what I needed. Someone put me in contact with a man who had been training dogs for years. I interviewed him, and liked him, with some reservations but they seemed small to start. They got bigger. He was a police dog trainer, used to breeds with strong dominant characteristics. He wanted to use a rottweiler instead of a mastiff because of this. And his training techniques would have been too heavy handed for a mastiff. So that wasn't going to work out, either.
Next choice was to plan on training a puppy myself, which I'd never done. Sure, simple commands; sit, come, wait. Nothing like this. I needed help.
I located the Cape Fear Dog Training Club. They train dogs for obedience competition trials. They also offer Canine Good Citizen classes and Therapy dog classes. This is where I needed to start. While I'm learning to teach my dog the basics, I'll also be learning how to train him. I'm the one who knows the tasks I need done, and I'll know this dog best, so with their help, I can put this together.
I hoped to find a puppy in the spring, about when spring semester was over, or a bit earlier. Summer classes for the pup, and lots of bonding time, I thought. Except there are no classes in the summer. There are competitions in the summer. Classes start back up in the fall. So I was on hold again, but it was really okay...because I hadn't found a breeder or a puppy yet! (And yes, I also looked at rescues, but with my physical limitations, that one was harder.)
I had certain things I was looking for in a puppy. I used Volhord's guidelines, to an extent, but I also took our family dynamics into consideration. First, I wanted a pup from health-tested championship lines, but I wanted pet quality. Health-tested parents, for hip dysplasia, elbows, eyes, etc., are no guarantee the pup won't develop things, but they do give better odds. Since this was meant to be a working dog, soundness was imperative. Secondly, and equally important, was temperament. I could use neither a timid puppy nor an aggressive one. It needs to be smart, somewhat bold, inquisitive. Seemed like a simple enough combination. But it wasn't.
Dog breeders are a breed apart. The variations between them are amazing. I've learned a lot about how people think about their dogs, and their own insight into dogs, over the past six months of looking for a pup. First, I went to the good ole internet. I did a search for English mastiff breeders. And I looked over their websites. I emailed a few. None emailed back. Most wanted a puppy application filled out as a first point of contact. I didn't want to fill out an application until I learned more about them, and they weren't talking. Some of them didn't want to deal with me, because they didn't want their dogs being service dogs.
I did find one breeder, way out in California, who was quite interested in what I was doing, but had no pups and none planned for this year. She had just retired and placed an adult male, and he was in training to be a therapy dog. I missed him by just a couple weeks! However, I didn't find anything closer.
In May, I asked for breeder recommendations on a mastiff forum. I got several responses, including a lady who was hunting for a mastiff for a similar purpose for her disabled son. I initiated contact with the breeders those people recommended...and got no response from them. (I was starting to feel a bit invisible.) But I read a lot more websites. I found links to other breeders. I found the Mastiff Sweet Spot.
Since I wanted to keep this as financially reasonable as possible, I was concentrating my search in North Carolina, but extending down to Georgia and up to Maryland. I found a breeder in NC, and a second in Virginia, that had puppies, or bred bitches. I contacted them both. Both responded. Neither of them health-check their dogs, and "I know my dogs and I'd know if something was wrong" was a common line from them. Granted, if they're doing a lot of line-breeding a trait will show up strongly, but if they don't follow their puppies, how would they know? I had breeders tell me they "Never have a pet quality puppy; mine are all show dogs." Uhhh...yeah. Right. The odds are against that. I admit to being hugely tempted anyway. It's hard to be objective when you're on a puppy high! I had to enlist friends to pull me back to Earth and get me refocused. (Thanks to the Chronic Bitch forum!) So I stepped back, and looked farther afield.
One website I had found through the Mastiff Sweet Spot I had been attracted to several times. This breeder called herself a hobby breeder rather than a professional. She had a section on her website about "lessons learned" as she moved from owning a backyard bred mastiff (like our Jake and Murphy) to owning and breeding show dogs. This breeder was in Ohio, ten hours away from me. Ten hours. I'd look, leave her site, and try to find something closer. Only to go back later.
On her website she had photos and videos of her litter, and them interacting with their mother. Even with pups, the dam was a very mellow girl. Both parents were health checked. Both parents were champions, not just from champion lines. Her pups were older; nearly seven weeks. I didn't think there was a chance there would be a pup left, much less a male, but I emailed anyway.
One apricot male available.
I called her and got more information. The pup had been under contract, but she'd found that the people had...ummm...misrepresented some things, so she was not selling the pup to them. I asked about temperament, and told her what I wanted the pup for. She was thrilled with the idea, and sent me backlog emails that she'd been sending as weekly updates to those who had purchased puppies. She had been keeping temperament records on each puppy since they started developing personalities. And she pulled no punches. She identified the Klutz, the least intelligent, the show potential...and the pups that were smartest and really should go to obedience trials, rally...or a job. The available pup she considered the smartest in the litter. He was also inquisitive; running toward dropped things rather than away from them. The first to figure out the puppy litter box. As a comparison, no other breeder I talked to could tell about individual puppies. They talked only about breed traits. I'm sure there are many others out there who track such things, but they weren't ones I found. This breeder also insisted I listen to the negatives of the parents, so I was aware of future potential. A probable food allergy in the dam, alleviated by a grain-free kibble. The same kibble we feed our dogs, for the same reason. A non-issue for me. A slight knee issue from injury, and she'd done her best to verify it was injury and not genetic by tracking down littermates, siblings and half-siblings of her bitch and checking their health.
I was back on a puppy high. I called a girlfriend who has done dog training, and gave her the scenario. Theresa gave me suggestions on additional questions to ask the breeder. They were all answered satisfactorily. In fact, Theresa was quite impressed with this breeder. So were the dog-savvy folk on the CB forum.
After a sleepless night with worrying that someone else would get this puppy, I called to confirm I wanted him. I was accepted, pending a phone call to my vet. The breeder told me bluntly that she liked our conversations, that I seemed right for this pup, but she wasn't confirming until my vet said I was a good dog owner. That conversation took place today, and Reilly is now mine to pick up...and pay for..this coming weekend, when he turns 8 weeks old. He's got a new puppy check-up scheduled on July 5th.
There's lots more details I could put in, and conversations with other breeders, but as a first post, this gives the background.
After Reilly comes to live with us, I'll do daily posts while he's growing fast, then weekly ones on how he's progressing and how his training is coming. What we've done wrong and what we've done right. Cross your crossables, Folks, it's going to be a ride!
Meg
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