If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ve probably seen Winston and Clyde together and happy. I generally had been letting Winston, Clyde, and SeeSee out together. They got along reasonably well as long as there was nothing to fight over.
Recently, Daphne was in heat when I took her, SeeSee, and Roz to a dog show. I made an effort to always put Daphne in the same crate so her scent would not be distributed among the other dogs. But I must have made a mistake and put SeeSee in Daphne’s crate, or maybe it was just using the same grooming tools on both of them.
Whatever I did, Daphne’s scent must have gotten on SeeSee because as soon as I put SeeSee and Clyde and Winston out together when we got home, Winston and Clyde started fighting over SeeSee. I had to break up a dog fight between two 90lb plus dogs. That is a recipe for a disaster. It’s really easy to get yourself bit or hurt doing that. I was really lucky I did not get hurt.
I ended up denting a stainless steel water bucket on Clyde’s head. Luckily, they did not seriously hurt each other. I checked them out thoroughly, and I only found superficial marks on them and some sore areas. No vet visit was needed. But here is a picture of the bucket:
After giving it a lot of thought, I decided to get Winston neutered. The only way I can keep him is to put him in with the girls. I don’t have a way to keep them intact and separated long-term. I’ve been keeping him upstairs, but I need to use that space when there is a female in heat.
So now Winston is neutered, and he is getting used to being with Roz and Daphne.
It’s never the dogs’ fault.
The other stupid thing I did was to allow SeeSee to get too hot playing fetch. (This happened last year with Clyde, too.) On a day that was unseasonably warm and very humid, when she hadn’t had time to acclimate yet, I was playing fetch with SeeSee, and I caught an odd look in her eye and decided to quit. She was panting too hard, so I put her outside with a cold bowl of fresh water. She didn’t drink. This is a huge red flag.
She couldn’t think straight. She began panting so hard I couldn’t count her breaths. I got ice packs, and that did not help fast enough, so I put her in the shower and sprayed her down with cold water for 20 minutes, but she kept panting really hard, and worse, having difficulty standing.
I finally put shampoo on her to help get the cool water down to her skin. German Shepherds tend to shed water easily, so the shampoo actually helped her cool down, getting the coolness of the water where it needed to go.
This did the trick, and we avoided the final stages of heatstroke, which can be fatal. At least she got a bath and got to air dry. (And so did myself, my clothes, and shoes.)
How stupid of me. I need to be more careful with exercising the dogs in the heat. Be careful everyone, it’s going to be a hot summer.
Shepherd Sight 