Thursday, April 24, 2008

The Story of TD

Or "tiny dog".

Siggy (Sigmund) is a 4 or so year old mini-dachshund that we've had for little more than a year. He came to use through Freecycle. I wanted a little dog and someone was giving him away. The previous owner mentioned that he suffered from occasional seizures and that he still had accidents in the house.

Heh. Understatement. We went and picked him up and it was love at first sight. He's a bizarre color...silver dapple is what it's called.

Our problems arose when we put him in his crate as we left the house. The previous owners said he was crate trained. Well, he's crate trained if that means trained to pee and poop in the crate. And it's a small crate. Ozzy, the big lab, IS crate trained, we trained him. We know how to do that...Siggy was not crate trained. The other owners were gone 12 hours out of the day so Sig spent way too much time in his crate, thus the not REALLY being house trained. He won't go to the door to tell us that he wants out, and if we wait too long between potty breaks, he'll pee at the slightest noise or excitement.

And he has/had terrible separation anxiety. We leave the house? The dog pees on the floor.He also came to live with us in the spring so we weren't aware that he only likes to go outside when the weather is PERFECT. No wet paws. No cold. If it's raining, he hides under the bed. If it's snowing? He hides.

The seizures? Well, those started after we'd had him for a couple days. And they weren't little OR infrequent. They were long...and he had them sometimes more than once a day. So now he takes phenobarbital twice a day to control his seizures. The meds make him kinda stoned, too. And the drugs can hurt his liver so every six months we have to take him in for blood work.

We assume that he's very inbred. The previous owners bought him at a local pet store. His coloring is so unusual that I'm sure it's result of some sort of recessive chromosome defect.

So, we've got a cognitively disabled, weird looking, brain damaged from too many seizures, $100 lab fee, peeing, pooping dog.

But he was free, so, what the heck?

4 comments:

Michael said...

Well at least he was free! We paid large dollars for a pure bred chocolate lab. He is allergic to EVERYTHING. We spend twice as much (or more) for protein only dog food so he doesn't chew his feet off and his ears get nasty infected about once a month even with cleaning every other day. So he's about half deaf. Other than costing us more in medical bills than any of our kids ... he's OK.

Jennifer said...

OMG, your post could be about our Jack Russell terrier (except he wasn't free and doesn't have seizures!). I really think ours needs to be on anti-anxiety meds. He shakes if you try to put him in a crate and goes to the bathroom in it. He hates to go outside in almost any weather. Except when you don't want him to go outside, then he runs away!
But my daughter loves him, so what can I do?

CB said...

Another reason why puppy farms should be outlawed and dogs should NEVER be sold at pet stores.

Rixblix said...

There are so many cool dogs at TAPS and PAWS, I don't know why people insist on buying animals from pet stores when most know about the awful practices of puppy mill breeders. Siggy is our little public service project, I guess!