Seven Months With Hannah

Hannah had a rough start to January.  The first minor thing that happened was we noticed that her boots were rubbing against her front dewclaws and causing them to bleed. That was pretty bad, so we didn't make her wear her boots and then the salt and cold caused her paw pads to crack and bleed. She LOVES being outside in the snow, though, so we really felt like we were stuck between a rock and a hard place. I'm considering either Musher's Secret Paw Wax or Boot Liners for her.  Anybody want to weigh in on this? I'm worried the wax might irritate her skin, and I'm concerned that the boot liners will be just as aggravating. 

Meanwhile, on the second of January, our puppy was really sick, with the grossest stuff every coming out of her every orifice. We got an emergency appointment with the vet and she was diagnosed with hookworms. Getting her treated for worms has been a problem because so many of the preventative medications have proteins in them that we haven't tested her for. Hookworms are terrible to get rid of, by the way. We gave her this liquid medication (she HATED it and spit it out on us the first night - we wised up and mixed it with some canned pumpkin after that ) and we had to give it her AGAIN in three weeks to kill any worms that escaped the first treatment. In the meantime, she wasn't supposed to really be with other dogs, which took out the dog park and daycare as some of our usual ways to exhaust her.

But she's really been a trouper (trooper? - this is a language question that seems to be quite vexing) through it all. She has always been eager to continue to go on walks, despite her paw issues. She's always good about using her time on walks to do her business.  Even at her sickest, she wasn't snappish or mean, just sort of pathetic.  Poor baby girl.

We did sneak her into an obedience class, though. I know she wasn't supposed to really interact with other dogs, but at these classes, she doesn't actually every engage with other dogs.  She is terrified to jump over jumps (she's very scared of humans wielding brooms and sticks and I hope that the person who hurt her before she came to us suffers a very violent fate) and so we've been working on desensitizing her to these types of obstacles.  She quickly learned how to do hand targeting.  She was less sure about putting her front paws in a cardboard box, but after a week of training, she now does it without much prompting. She also generalized that to putting her paws inside a bucket (that we normally use for her to stand on when it's upside down). We're working on getting her to hold a chin rest for five seconds.

She's doing great, though. We went ahead and gave her one of the worm preventatives with some of the allergens (what's worse? worms or a day or two of discomfort?) and so far she's tolerated that pretty well.  Fingers crossed that Hannah doesn't have to go back to the vet until she's due for shots in the spring!