Quiz Show

I figure now is a good time to give a little update on Poor Archer. He is much better thanks to the meds. Once I figured out the dosage we were all good to go. I accidentally 'over' dosed him the first day because I am instruction deficient and misread the bottle. Not to worry, no harm done, but when I did my math and realized my error I quickly reverted to the actual instructions on the bottle, not the pretend ones in my head.

After some discussion with various people about sedating and anesthetizing (which sounds a little too close to 'euthanizing' for my taste) a Ridgeback I have instructions to take to a vet for next time. Raimi and Leeloo are due for their hips and elbows in the next 6 months so I want to go armed to my *new* vet with important information.

Such as, most vets do not realize that Ridgbacks are like sighthounds and need to be sedated as such. Because they don't look like sighthounds the assumption is that you can sedate them according to their body weight but because of their sighthound ancestry they do not need a full dose, 1/3 to a 1/2 dose is usually sufficient. I am told by a vet who owns one of Halo's puppies, and has done surgery on Ridgebacks, that it is less likely the anesthesia that Archer was having trouble coming out of, and was more likely an overdose of sedation.

I'm not so much in love with the word overdose.

While Archer's lameness has decreased over the last week, with a show 10 days away, I was practicing a bit to see how he was stacking up, so to speak. I can't really tell about his movement except that he is not moving lame, he is just not moving totally sound. When I stacked him he was clearly very uncomfortable. Standing four square seems to cause him, not so much pain, as discomfort. He does stack but he roaches his back and if you look at him from above you can see his whole body is leaning slightly to the right to take the strain off his left hind leg. It looks like he's standing four square but he's actually not.

There are a couple things about this that make me nervous. I don't want to continue to make him stack if it's uncomfortable because he will begin to associate being stacked with discomfort. When the pain is gone the association will still be there and he may still look like crap even though he is sound. However, I don't want him to forget that this is what he is required to do ... forcing it just seems to be a bad idea at this time. Added to which, if he looks 'good enough' for a show but he is still uncomfortable and I show him, he could associate the show ring with something negative, also not what I want. So the question is, practice and risk him not liking being shown or show him anyway and risk him not liking being shown. Hmmm ... I will take him to the show and see how he is there but ultimately I need to think of his future; missing one show will not make the slightest difference to his career as a show dog. Showing him might.

As you can see I spend a lot of times dissecting the psychology and physiology of my dogs.