Kenai trying to figure out what happened to his terrain, 14 mo old

We seriously dodged a big ol bullet, here at our house. Monday night the freezing rain began, and I was praying there wouldn’t be a repeat of the deadly ice storms of 06 and 08. I was worried how we were going to get the boys out for potty, how many times I’d tenderize my rump roast… Tuesday morning I went after the deck/sidewalk and managed to smash away about 3/4″ of sheet ice.

Figuring out how I was going to do that every couple hours without winding up in bed for a month suddenly became moot: it changed from freezing rain to sleet! Sleet can be shoveled off, snow can be plowed, but there isn’t a darn blessed thing you can do about freezing rain. South of us they got hammered, almost 2″ of ice on everything. But I thanked God with all variations of gratefulness for the sleet.

Getting the boys out wasn’t easy, I didn’t even try crossing the driveway until enough sleet had accumulated to give us traction. Kenai didn’t like “going” in the yard next to the back door deck. Once there was at least some relative traction, we made yak tracks to the field. He’d held the #2 until we got there, not doing more than a piddle for 24 hours. Picky where he poo I guess, silly boy.

The sleet kept coming all day, and Kenai actually had a good easy time following the trails of rabbits et all. He put his nose to the ground and sniffed his way around the garage and back to the door. Seems the scent trails are easier for him to follow in the frozen precip, that or he prefers the combo of scent and sight.

Anyway, I salted and shoveled when the deck and sidewalk were covered with 1/4 of sleet all day too. Then about 7 pm, the sleet blessedly changed to snow. Even better–I quit shoveling. We can walk in snow. Today I hurt, of course. Uhg. But I’m avoiding the tylenol if at all possible. I’m just immensely grateful it wasn’t all freezing rain.

Kenai is excited. This is his first real accumulation of snow; his first froze toes, snowball chasing, drift pouncing, snow on the nose event. He’s making the most of it, doing his polar bear pounce all over the place. He’s had one kennel playtime already this morning. His front leg is tender, though, after having it jam to the ground when the ice gave way over a depression in the ground.

He gimped for a minute or two, and hasn’t slowed down on his own. So I’ll have to limit the romping today. We won’t get above freezing for at least 2 more days, so he’ll have plenty of polar bear fun this entire week.

The past few posts I’ve wobbled about with a certain amount of self-doubt, of what I didn’t know when it comes to training a service dog. There was some insecurity, I guess, and some rational questioning of if I could get Kenai to where I wanted him as an SD entirely by myself.

Once I decided to quit with the feelings of not quite being up to par, I could objectively look at things. Mild dissatisfaction with what we’ve not accomplished together aside, the fact is that there is so much work left to do, and I’m tired. I’ve reached a sort of impasse with my body, currently in a slump. It won’t do what I demand of it.

As a BTW, things most people don’t pay attention to in fact require considerable energy. That “calm and assertive” energy so much talked about when working with dogs is actually tiring to maintain when it’s not your normal, personal energy. Mine is softer, and yes, weaker. So conjuring up a confident, head up and strong walk can be done when you have chronic fatigue, but keeping it up is the battle.

That’s hard to explain, hard for folks without CFS to really grasp. The best analogy I can come up with is having a case of mono for 40 years… I can chuckle about it, but it’s a major interference. Until you have to deal with a serious depletion of your strength, you don’t realize how much energy is expended without notice just going about an ordinary task.

My best efforts to alter Kenai’s excitement triggers have had mixed success. Mostly I believe because of my flagging strength. He’s at an age when there’s enough maturity for him to have more self-control than a puppy, and I’d like to take advantage of that. Yeah, teenage dunderhead stuff is present, but an adolescent has more ability to calm himself than a puppy does.

So I would feel better having a hands on resource to guide me. I’m not expecting Kenai to suddenly be all perfect, not by any means. He is still a youngster, still has a solid year of growing up to do. I just want to rebuild his public obedience, and that means I have to deal with his excitement around dogs and people showing interest in him, as well as his nervousness at times. He can’t go on refusing elevators, and pulling on the harness.

The training, no matter how much you do, doesn’t show when a young dog is uncomfortable.

After some thought and prayer, I’ve contacted the only other professional SD trainer in the area, (other than the ones we started out with and it didn’t go well). They are used to Danes as SDs, low and behold, they love them. They are also positive reinforcement advocates, and regularly train teams for anxiety alerts. They’ve trained Great Danes for anxiety alert as well as mobility.

I probably won’t work at all right now with the anxiety and asthma alerting, since Kenai’s slightly gone off that in his current teenage stage. What I really want him for is mobility, and that’s the important focus. How good it is to perhaps have found a trainer who actually understands how to work with people with anxiety issues.

Now all we have to do is dig out! It will be at least the weekend before we see anything outside of this yard. I won’t complain, though, knowing just how fortunate I am compared to nearby counties who got pounded. Thousands are out of power, the roads are terrible. But back in 06 we were a cat-2 disaster area. We had national guard here for that storm, and some 40,000 people were out of power for 2 weeks or more.

Gotcha! I’ve been trying the better part of a year to get a shot of Kenai in mid shake. He doesn’t do it often, unlike some dogs. I’ve known dogs who shook so often and hard it made ya wonder how they manage not to shake themselves clean out of their own hide. Kenai’s not a big shaker. Guess it would disturb his man-dignity or something.

Hilarious, isn’t it?

Can’t come up with a catchy nickname for that. I don’t even know what to compare that to. Sorta moose like but not, sorta has cow horns, but not…the lips look like he’s got a Groucho mustache. What the giggle do ya call that? “How Now Brown Cow with a Groucho Mustache”? Flubber Puppy?  Suggestions, anyone?