Doggy-Zen

It's been a good 6 months since our last post. At first our silence was mostly due to guilt about not agreeing with, nor following through with, the trainer's advice. And then... to not wanting to jinx something that seemed like it might really have worked.

First, the guilt. The steps the trainer was having us take were making things so much worse. Where Marlo was once leave-able during the days, he had now become intolerant of Mike so much as shifting around in his arm chair. Every movement seemed to signal, "he's leaving me!" and Marlo would jump up from a full slumber to head toward the door.

This was simply not sustainable, and with Mike's high school coaching gig starting in January, he was going to need to leave Marlo each weekday from 2:30 - 6 p.m. We couldn't keep this up.

Mike decided to go back to square one his own way. Each morning while working from home he built up tiny, incremental bits of time when he would leave Marlo and sit on the other side of the front door. He would eventually take his laptop with him and work from the stairway. Success bred success, and Marlo became OK with Mike being on the "other side of the door". Then Mike started to leave the house entirely and work from the corner cafe for short, then longer times. And then he started to leave for baseball. Each day he would take Marlo out to the median to pee just before 2:30. He'd let Marlo back in the apartment, and then close the door behind him - never walking in the apartment with Marlo. This behavior became the golden ticket. And just as baseball season began, so too did Marlo begin to stay home alone.

After a few weeks of Mike's success, I was ready to try leaving Marlo, too. I practiced when I was home alone with Marlo. We'd go out for his afternoon fetching, and I would bring him back, let him inside, and close the door quietly behind him. I could then leave, and he was calm.

We might return to a dog nest in the bed, shoes scattered about the apartment, or pillows on the ground, but never to anything destructive, and never to barking or howling.

Mike is confident that he found his, "doggy-zen" and can typically leave Marlo in most situations now. I'm still working on that level of enlightenment, and need conditions to be relatively ideal for the departure to go without a hitch. We still can't leave at the same time, nor have we practiced that much.

The difference our ability to leave him at all has made in our lives, however, has been extraordinary, and we've spent a good 3 months engaged in normal social lives - going out to dinner together, visiting friends without the dog in tow, and feeling confident being away from home for longer than 4 hours at a time.

We are making the most of our freedom, because as hard-won as it's been, it's about to disappear altogether. Marlo might be fine on his own, but the baby is due in 8 days...

Paw pad problems

A day or two before Christmas, Marlo tracked bloody paw prints down the hall after his morning run. He wasn't limping, or otherwise showing pain, but a quick examination revealed a one inch gash in his right front paw pad (likely earned by running over a broken beer bottle left in the grass at Dolores Park). 
We used a warm, wet washcloth to clean it off, covered it with a doggy antibacterial cream, and wrapped it up in a bandage. For good measure, we pulled a sock over our masterful first-aid contraption, which we taped around his ankle so that he wouldn't pull the bandage off.

Unfortunately, he bled through that bandage (and sock) and several more. So it was back to the vet with Marlo for a professional opinion.

The results? A very deep wound that probably needed stitches. Which of course were projected to cost $750 to perform. Again, weighing the risks, we opted instead to wait and see if it would heal naturally. So Marlo got a thorough flushing of the area and a professional bandaging, and we were left with strict orders to NOT remove the bandage ourselves, not let the bandage get wet, and to return in 3 days.

Poor, miserable Marlo was now sporting a spiffy blue leg warmer (to be covered by a heavy plastic IV bag whenever we went outside) and was prohibited from running or exercise for TWO weeks. Not content to suffer alone, Marlo milked this new development for all it was worth. On a family walk down to Castro street, Marlo and I sat on a bench waiting for Mike to finish a few errands. Marlo laid his head down upon his good, left paw, stuck his bandaged right paw out straight into the sidewalk, and directed his sad brown eyes woefully up at all passersby. And what a pity-party ensued! The amount of love and attention he received for this forlorn form was impressive, and I was regaled with empathetic tales of other dramatic cuts on other dogs over the years.

We lucked out this time, and after 10 days and 2 more visits to the vet for bandage changes, the wound was clearly healing back together on its own with no need for stitches. Marlo's been a trooper with all the fuss,  never once eating his bandage off or resisting treatment.

Here's to a healthier new decade with the dog!