MORE progress in training

And of course as I updated his blog today about his progress in training, he has made even more progress!  This evening, he started sitting with a combo of hand signal and treat.  Before I had to touch his back to give him the idea of sitting, now he's figured out that is how he gets treats!  Now if he even thinks I have a treat or if I give him the hand signal, he will sit almost every time. I'm so proud of my little goofy boy!!!

Some progress in training

It's been a while since I posted an update on here but things have been busy at home :)  Tsu'tey is now almost 9 months old and just as silly as ever, as you can see from the spinning video I posted before this.  I made a fresh batch of peanut butter biscuits for the dogs yesterday afternoon, Tsu'tey very much approved.  He spent an hour last night in the kitchen, do a spin, look at the counter, do a spin, look at the counter, etc.  I got up and started working with him with some of the new biscuits I made and we have made some progress in his training (as much as you can call it training).  He still won't sit with a hand signal but if I just set my hand on his back he will sit (not pushing down, just needs a touch).  Pairing that with a hand signal and a treat every time he does it but he hasn't connected the hand signal with sitting yet.  I can get him to down as well if I set my hand on his back after he's done a sit and then move the cookie down to the floor.  Hopefully he'll figure out the signals eventually, but it's progress none the less :)  So long as I have food, his attention to me is very good which is what my original goal was - to get him to pay attention to me and watch me as we can't proceed much further until he was doing that.

Will hopefully have some new videos to add to his blog soon ;)

Spinning!

One of the many quirks of Tsu'tey ;)

Boost and Tsu'tey reunion

Broken toe :(

Boy, this poor guy never catches a break!  The other day I discovered that one of his back, middle toes was all swollen and puffy and he was limping on it a bit.  After palpating the toe we think it may be fractured or broken, though not a bad break as we can't feel any unusual movement in the toe.  I have no idea how he would have done it, his toes are taped up to support it and keep it from bending to much when he walks, so far he's left the tape on which I didn't think he would do :)  This guy has a hard enough time walking straight as it is, now he zig zags everywhere he goes since his broken toe throws off his balance even more!  But as usual, it doesn't seem to bother him at all other than a little bit of a limp, he's still the wild, happy puppy is always has been.  Keeping him quiet is the hardest part - of course, keeping any 6 month old puppy quiet is hard :)

But here are a few pics from our WRA/NOTRA National trip - there are a few cute pics of Tsu'tey I would like to share :)  There is also a video of him having a little reunion with his brother Boost that I will put in another post :) 

Enjoying the sunshine at the NOTRA National

On the way to the National - he rode up front the whole way :) 

FINALLY fell asleep

So precious with his sleepy eyes

random pics

Just some random pictures of Tsu'tey tonight - he's doing wonderful with everything, still having a bit of difficulty house breaking him but I have read and heard that sometimes it can take deaf dogs longer to house break - not sure if that is true but Tsu'tey is having that problem.  We are dealing with it with belly bands, and when those are in the wash, diapers :) 

Tsu'tey and daddy dog Byelo, they love to chew on bones

I crocheted that sweater for him :) 

Me, Tsu'tey, Fergie, Dido and Helen napping on the couch (they are napping, I'm watching TV) :) 

A very happy puppy!

I took the camera out with me last night while the puppies were playing in the yard, Tsu'tey joined them as usual and I got some really cute photos of him running around and just being a very happy puppy!!!

Weekend of racing

This past weekend we went to the WRA races in Mocksville, NC and took the pups and Tsu'tey along as well. Tsu'tey had a blast, on Sunday we did a little straight practice with him, just a little ways and he bounced along after it - I wish I had the video camera with me because he is hilarious to watch.  He bounced along, trying to run full out in his own way with legs flailing everywhere and not really running a straight line but he was after it and he loved it!  The lure stopped, he gave it a good bite or two and then laid down on top of it watching me as I ran to him, looking very proud of himself.  I put the lead on him, gave him lots of hugs and kisses and picked the lure up to walk it back - he of course thought the chase was on again and was jumping up to grab it for a minute until I got it held up above his reach.  He walked back to the box with me like a gentlemen - though he spends most of his walks with his nose to the ground, I think he's more of a scenthound than a sighthound :)  He and the other puppies are exhausted after the long weekend, he barely wanted to get out of bed this morning.  He collected a little fan club over the weekend, everyone adored him but how could you not love that little face with those beautiful eyes and quirky ears and that happy, happy, HAPPY personality.  You won't find a happier and more trusting puppy anywhere and he just makes you fall in love with him, he proved that this weekend :)

Video of Tsu'tey chasing the lure!

Got some video of Tsu'tey playing with the lure in the backyard yesterday, he had a blast :)   5 months old and not so graceful but he had fun!

Lure coursing practice

So a quick update, his inner ear problems seem to be much better, he doesn't even really have much of a head tilt that he had after the first time he had some vestibular syndrome problems.  He's still not the most graceful thing in the world and he reminds me very much of a bobble head but he's doing excellent.  We went to lure coursing practice on Saturday (Aug 27) and he tagged along.  I didn't expect much with him but gave it a try with him, he bounced after it a few times (however I think his depth perception is off and he looses sight of things very quickly if they move to fast), so I ran the 300 yard square with him bouncing after me.  I really wish mom had the video camera in her hand as I am sure it was a sight to behold, me chasing the lure, Tsu'tey chasing me.  He has a funny way of running where he just scrunches up his back and bounces along and runs little circles, he's a happy boy for sure!  Now that the weather has been cooler, he has been spending a lot of time playing outside with the little puppies (which he loves, for once he's bigger than someone!), so he really wears himself out while he's out playing with them, so he sleeps VERY good.  So I have been taking him to bed with me, to tired to do much other than just lay down and fall asleep.  His little chewing problem seems to be getting a lot better, he no longer chews on my hair, fingers, hands, face, etc. at night.

No major updates about how his training is going since he hasn't learned much, but now that the weather is cooler, I will be working with him outside on a lead with some treats - he walked pretty good on the lead this past weekend, but if his attention goes elsewhere and he stops, tugging the lead doesn't get him paying attention again, I have to walk over to him and touch him to get him moving again.  He was a very happy boy at coursing practice, of course nothing bothers him so he just pranced around and watched things.  He rode in my lap part of the way home and loves watching vehicles go by, his head snapping back and forth trying to see every vehicle as it goes by :)

Vestibular Syndrome

Okay, so when I started this blog for Tsu'tey, I didn't think we would continue to have issues to post about other than training, etc.  But alas, the vestibular syndrome has started up again.  Our vet did say that if it is an inner ear infection causing his problems (nystagmus, loss of balance, head tilt, etc.) that it may require a longer time on antibiotics but wanted to see how 3 weeks went.  Well, less than 2 weeks after completing his 3 week round of Clavamox the symptoms have come back.  Yesterday he was perfectly fine, playing that afternoon and acting like his normal silly self and when I went to feed dogs around 5pm and I went to put his food in with him, his head was rocking back and forth.  I took him out and the nystagmus is back, loss of balance, wobbling and so on.  I put him down in the kitchen to see how much balance he had and he was pretty wobbly but gained some control over his legs after a minute or two of walking around - he adapts pretty quick.  I gave him a pill for motion sickness since they can get nauseous from all the movement and then helped him eat.  His appetite was great, he ate a big bowl of food but I held his head steady otherwise he couldn't keep his head in the bowl to eat.  I helped him get a drink of water and then finished feeding dogs and sat on the couch with him.  Other than all the rocking back and forth, nystagmus and loss of balance, he seemed to feel fine and keeping his still was the biggest problem.  He wanted to get up and play and move around as he normally does but he wasn't in the condition to do that, so after a while I put him in his crate to lay down and rest.  He napped without a problem and slept through the night.  He seemed better this morning, balance is a bit better, nystagmus isn't as bad, ate and drank fine, when he shook this morning (as most dogs do when they get up in the morning) he was able to keep control of his balance and didn't fall over so that was good.  So as of right now, he's back on Clavamox for 6-8 weeks and see if we can get it completely under control.  He's still the happy, go-lucky, silly little boy that he normally is so it doesn't seem to be bothering him mentally, he doesn't let something like vestibular syndrome get him down :)

Tsu'tey video at 15 weeks old

And another video of Tsu'tey a bit older :)  He was 15 weeks old in this video, playing with his momma GiGi and just running around being a silly puppy, enjoy!

Tsu'tey video at 9 weeks old

So you can better get to know Tsu'tey, I'll post some videos of him.  This one was taken at 9 weeks, having recovered from his illness but still catching up on weight (he had put on a lot of weight since his illness in this video but had yet to return to normal weight).  Hope you enjoy!

BAER test update

Well, we had him BAER tested on Sunday (7/31/2011) and it did confirm that he is indeed deaf in both ears, but possibly has some residual hearing in his right ear, though if he does it doesn't help him at all - though we couldn't confirm if he does have residual hearing or not since his throat was hurting at the time and between his hard swallowing and moving around it was hard to tell. Now to explain his sore throat, we thought maybe he had scratched his larynx or something due to the way he was swallowing very hard and was also inhaling air into his stomach (he would inhale through his nose and into his stomach when he was swallowing hard and I would then have to burp him to relieve the pressure).  But then because of how quickly the symptoms went away we think he might have had something stuck behind his tonsils as he is perfectly fine now.  So as of right now he's doing great, we believe he had/has vestibular syndrome due to an inner ear infection which is why his head still tilts, but that doesn't seem to bother him at all.  The vet that did his BAER testing also thinks that due to his illness when he was little that could have caused the deafness.  So that is where we sit at right now, he's doing great - he's a happy go-lucky little pup who has personality to go around.  Now to work on his attention span so we can do some training, I think that's going to be the hardest part!

Introducing Tsu'tey, and his story...

It all started when the most wonderful little puppy was born on March 29, 2011.  I named him Tsu’tey as his litter was the “Avatar” litter.  He was born the most beautiful color of white and blue brindle with blue brindle spots and a totally white head.  I fell in love with his color and markings and knew right away that he was our pick in the litter and that he would be staying here with us.  Since he was born he has put me through some trials and tribulations, but I would do anything for my little “TT” and here are his stories.

To start out, since you will see his name several times throughout these writings - Tsu’tey is pronounced Sue-Tay, I also call him TT some times.  That being said, he was a wonderful little puppy, due to his mother not producing a lot of milk, I hand fed the litter for quite some time before they were weaned so they absolutely loved being handled and I developed very close relationships with them quickly because of it.  Tsu’tey and his littermates did wonderful through everything, weaned great and were developing nicely.  Then when they were around 5-6 weeks old, they started getting sick one by one.  There were 6 in the litter, 4 of them got sick - the first started vomiting and went off food, we kept her hydrated with sub-q fluids and it all passed in about 12 hours.  Then another 2 got sick, we did the same and one was back to normal in 24 hours, the other took about 48 hours.  Then Tsu’tey got sick, the 4th to get sick (the other two never showed signs of being sick).  He started vomiting, went off his food but he wasn’t getting better after 12-48 hours, he was only getting worse.  I was giving sub-q fluids and syringing what food I could get into him, as well as some sugar.  He was coping well but had absolutely no appetite, he eventually stopped vomiting and was having bowel movements very infrequently due to not eating, at first they were quite soft, then turned to diarrhea and then returned to normal, though he was still sick - no appetite and occasionally still throwing up.  Then one morning he started seizing, I checked his eyes and the pupils were decreasing and increasing while the light never changed, I pumped him full of sugar and the seizure stopped quickly, though it was a strong one.  So I kept giving him sugar and trying to keep food in him as often as I could get it in him.  Through this whole ordeal, he NEVER left my side.  I carried him wherever I went, no matter what I was doing - if I absolutely had to use both my hands, I left him laying on the couch, tucked in a blanket while one of my momma girls watched over him.  He sat with me on the couch, he slept in bed with me so I could get up frequently and give him sub-q and force feed him.  He was absolutely stuck to me.  He continued to have very slight seizure activity over the next two days - feet and legs tightening up mostly and I would give him sugar immediately and the seizure activity would stop.  After the seizure activity had stopped I discovered that the sub-q fluids I was giving him created a problem in one of his legs.  It felt like a knot and when I started massaging it - fluid starting coming out and the flesh eventually started to sluff off.  The vets put in an IV catheter and gave us antibiotics for the infection in his leg and after about 2 days he seemed perkier than usual, so when we fed his siblings we decided to put him down with them and he started to eat with them!  Huge success and we couldn’t have been more happy, we were just ecstatic to see him eating food on his own after over a week of nothing but what I was syringing down him.  After thinking about many different things, we finally discovered it was probably food poisoning due to expired wheat germ they had eaten.  The vets think the same thing since he was the last one affected and it had more time to germinate in him, which made him worse.  So after more than a week of force feeding him and him not drinking or eating anything on his own, we saw progress.  After 3 days of the catheter being in, it was removed since he was eating and drinking on his own.  He slowly returned to normal food (though I fed him much more frequently than the other puppies) and watched his water intake closely.  His leg was healing nicely with help from Cut Heal.  It was a very slow progress and it took him a while to put good weight on but we saw new weight on him every day, he was stunted compared to his siblings, about 2 weeks behind them since he never grew during the ordeal.  He continued to sleep with me at night however, my little bed buddy and I knew when he was feeling much, much better when he started pulling my hair in the middle of the night and also in the morning to get me up!  Needless to say, because of everything we had been through - he is stuck to me like glue, he could be loose in the house with all the other adults and they wouldn’t even touch him because they know he is MINE, plus they spent so much time laying next to him on the couch and the girls watched over him quite well - so they just knew he was one of the pack and not to mess with him at all.  He was weak for several days so we worked on mobility, keeping him off any slippery surfaces and I only let him down to walk around for a very short periods of time so not to stress him and his joints to much, we slowly increased the amount of time he could walk around at one time.

After the catheter was placed

Eating kibble all by himself, you can see the scab where the infection was

And so the progress began, he slept with me in bed for several more weeks before he became such a monster that I couldn’t do it anymore, chewing on my hair, chewing on my nose, jumping off the bed and then crying to get back on the bed in the middle of the night.  Plus all but one of his siblings had left and I didn’t want his sister to have to sleep all by herself at night.  So he started sleeping with his sister in a crate at night and he did amazing with that, I thought he would be a wreck since he was so use to having human interaction all the time but he adapted to the crate beautifully.  Everything was going great, slowly but surely he put weight on and looked excellent, other than being smaller than his sister that was still with us and the scar on his leg from the infection.  He is a total goofball, not afraid of a thing and loves running through the kitchen, down the hall and back through the kitchen again.  He also LOVES grabbing a hold of your pants at the ankle and being pulled around.

Napping on my bed, you can see the hole in his leg quickly healing over

Taking command of my pillow

Just looking cute, the stuff on his chest took forever to get off - it was the various sticky foods he was receiving and he would spit out on himself

Then when we was about 3 months old, mom got up one morning and got him and his sister out of the crate to take them out to potty and something was wrong, his head was completely tilted to the side and his balance was way off.  He would stumble and wouldn’t straighten his head out, we rushed him into the vets and he was diagnosed with an inner ear infection… this poor guy never catches a break!  So he was put on 3 different medications and I watched him carefully when he was outside or inside walking around so he wouldn’t fall down and hurt himself, he quickly got use to his new balance issues and after a few days he could walk around just fine, but if he shook his head he would fall down occasionally.  After a few more days the head tilt got better, though it was still not straight.

The head tilt he still has from the inner ear infection - this was several days after having been on his medications.

Then we started to notice something, something that had probably been going on for a little while but it really got noticeable as he got older and more independent.  We think he’s deaf.  Now, I know when he was little he could hear, he responded to me talking to him and when he was three weeks old and I took a video of him and his siblings and it clearly shows him responding to noise. He is looking at me and when I squeak at him he twitches his ears, which is a normal thing for puppies to do when they hear something at that age.  So now we try and think back about when it may have occurred.  It could have possibly happened when he seized as seizures can cause deafness, it could have been when he got the inner ear infection, though he appears to be totally deaf and as far as we know, he only had an inner ear infection in one ear.  We are having him BAER tested soon to learn the truth, but we are already pretty sure he’s totally deaf, he responds to no noises at all.  I will like to have his ear drums looked at to see what they look like, but that will happen in the future.  But for now he is still on the last of his antibiotics for the ear infection, still has a slight head tilt but otherwise he’s doing great.  I am working on his attention to me right now before I work on any other kind of training and signs.  He’s always ready to go, go, go and has the attention span of a gnat right now so working on getting him to pay attention to me is proving difficult at times.  He responds to vibrations as I can get his attention by stomping my foot on the floor.  It absolutely does not get him down in the very least though, he's as happy as any puppy possibly can be and we love him to pieces.  He's so very laid back when being held that he literally melts in your arms, he just totally goes limp.

Proof of his 'limpness'  Excuse my dirty clothes, I had just come in from playing with puppies that like to jump on you!

As we continue in the adventures of Tsu’tey, I will update as often as possible with how things are going and how his training is coming along, results from the BAER testing and what his ear drums look like when I get someone to take a peek at them.  Right now the main focus in training is getting his attention and keeping his attention - once we have mastered that, we will work on every day commands such as come, go outside, crate, and because he barks quite often when he wants attention, I will work on a 'hush' command as well.

Stay tuned as our adventure continues!