Payton’s ZUMI Lead
Baby Payton has needed a nice agility lead for a while. Since I named him after Walter Payton, I really wanted an orange & navy blue one. After searching the internet, I couldn’t find one.
Enter ZUMI Leads. Who added an orange and blue rope to their line-up.
It had to happen. It HAD to happen. Since I like martingales on my guys, I e-mailed asking if it would be possible to custom make a martingale. They were happy to make a custom lead for me so Payton could run around agility trials in a martingale.
It arrived earlier this week and I couldn’t be happier.
The lighting tonight makes the blue look lighter than it is in real life. It truly is a nice orange and navy blue. The perfect Chicago Bears lead for my Payton.
This photo actually has more accurate colors:
The rope itself is amazing, it feels so soft. I had to show it off to my mom who was also amazed at how soft it felt. LIKE BUTTER.
Can’t wait to take it to agility to start using! Our first trial of the year is coming up in early March, and then after a short week we’re off to Louisville!
Auggie’s Christmas Toys – Part 1
For Christmas, I ordered Auggie some new puzzle toys off Amazon. I racked up a few Amazon gift cards using Swagbucks so it was pretty cheap to order a handful for him. Tonight I gave Auggie his dinner in the Kyjen Paw Hide toy. Below is a video of how he did with it, sped up. I thought this might help since people are always asking about puzzle toys and treat dispensing toys and stuff. My main comments are in the video description.
It took him ten minutes, including the times he stopped and stared at me like “helloooooo, I’m supposed to be getting DINNER here…” and his half a minute barking fit (Auggie temper tantrum – I’m surprised it only lasted 30 seconds, but I think he was hungry.)
I’m not over the moon about it, but it only really cost me $5 out of pocket, so it’s not a huge loss if it doesn’t work out well. I might be able to sell it to some other agility people with border collies if I continue to be lukewarm about it.
I also bought him the treat wheel and I’m thinking I will like that one more. I wish the cups weren’t so darn flimsy though, they are the same in the treat wheel. There’s no way I can give him this and then go cook dinner, because I know he’d start chewing on the cups and would break them, and he’s not even a “chewer” the way some dogs are. The tug-a-jug and other puzzle toys I have, I feel confident in giving those to him and walking away… this one, nope. Kind of a bummer since I was hoping to get some more stuff to keep him occupied and leaving me alone. But at least it only cost me $5. I didn’t buy the star spinner which is the one that doesn’t have cups… I sort of wish I had to see if my opinion would improve without the flimsy cup aspect.
Why didn’t anybody TELL me about these??
Saturday I drove to a confo show and got to see Auggie’s breeder do some show grooms on a couple of her dogs. A lot of scissoring had already been done the weekend before (and I missed coming to watch that because I had to work) but I still got to see quite a bit and learned some stuff. I had a little bit of spare cash that I saved to spend at the show but couldn’t find what I wanted there that was affordable enough for me, so Sunday after work I took Auggie out to the pet stores in town and tried to find an economy pair of curved shears. PetSmart’s teeny tiny little grooming section had ONE pair, and even though I haven’t had much luck with PetSmart’s “Top Paw” scissors before, I went ahead and bought them to see how they worked…
I tried them while I was home for lunch this afternoon and AUGH! I wish I’d known about this and bought a pair of curved shears AGES ago! They made it SO fast, and SO smooth, and his feet look awesome. I’ve been able to do a good job with my straight shears, but it usually takes forever and I have to do a lot of careful blending, which did I mention I don’t own a grooming table, so it consists of me sitting on the floor, hunching over and usually tilting my head at an odd angle to get a good look at Auggie’s feet? =P
I’m so happy! And even more thrilled that I got them at PetSmart and they worked!! And now I don’t have to spend an hour on Auggie’s feet or risk them looking like I completely butchered them! YAY!
Auggie gets a Fetching Tag
I ordered Auggie a tag from Fetching Tags. I wanted one for a while but wasn’t positive what to put on it. The first thing I came up with was “bad bad bad to the bone.” “Why bad bad bad?” my mom asked. “The song goes b-b-b-b-bad.” “Yes,” I answered, “but Auggie is a bad, bad, BAD dog.”
I kept changing my mind though. Maybe something to do with sheep. Maybe a tennis ball obsession reference. Something about being a brat? Something about being a boy dog and he can’t HELP it if he’s pretty, he’s NOT a girl? Or maybe simply “bitches love me?”
But for some reason, I just kept coming back to “bad bad bad to the bone.” I couldn’t get past it. So I finally decided to take the plunge and order it… and here it is.
How it will normally sit, since he wears a martingale – his tags normally rest near his shoulders.
Talkin’ back about something… he wanted the cookie I had. I believe I asked him if he wanted it and this was “yes I wants the cookie.”
It was windy and it kept messing up my shot by blowing his fur in the way, LOL.
Of course, he has so much fur, this is sort of how it’s going to look normally…
or like this…
Just the tag. Oh my God I just love it.
The back of the tag with my phone number… and you better believe I wanted the little skull icon on there! That just makes the whole thing complete.
I LOVE this tag. I ordered the medium size for Auggie because I figured that was the only way to get the whole tagline to fit, and I’m glad I did. You can actually see the tag under all his fur – not always 100% clearly, but definitely better than anything smaller. It catches attention – people have asked me about it at agility meets. It looks heavy but it’s actually incredibly lightweight. I really couldn’t be happier with this tag.
Have a few more pics from while we were outside-
You has a ball?
Throw the ball.
YES I WANT THE BALL THROW IT
(This is why shelties are “loose eyed” herders… it’s not really an intense stare like a BC has. He REALLY wants the ball in that last one but he still looks like a big snuggleyboo… or maybe that’s just Auggie.)
Goopy Eye Continued
The first day of Coneheadness was a hard day, but I tried to take the cone off so Auggie could sleep without it on and he immediately started to paw his eye again, so it unfortunately had to go back on. I took it off at about 4PM the second day and he left his eye alone, so we were able to keep it off after that, much to Auggie’s relief. It’s hard to be a conehead.
At first his eye seemed to be getting much better right away. The green mucus discharge went away within a couple days and the redness got much much better, but he still kept putting out a lot of clear mucus, far more than usual. We went to Louisville for agility the following week, and his breeder told me she thought it might be a clogged tearduct and I should take him back to the vet. The vet said yup… clogged tearduct. The bad news was, he wanted to put him under to unclog it… and figured while Auggie was under we should do a dental too.
Well, I called around and found a vet that would fix it without putting him under, but it was going to cost over $200. Auggie’s teeth really aren’t in need of a dental and I don’t want to put him under, but I didn’t want to pay over $200 either. I decided I would think about it for a while and figure out what I wanted to do. A clogged tearduct isn’t harmful and it can’t turn into anything worse, and was probably caused by the eye infection, so all it was going to mean was a lot more discharge than normal. Not exactly fun for Auggie or for me, so I DID want to fix it… I just wasn’t sure which the best course of action was.
That weekend, I went to the yuppie grocery store in town. I actually went looking for some stuff for my face that I’d read about on the internet, but couldn’t find it. However, they have a tiny little pet section, and in that pet section I found Halo Cloud Nine herbal eye wash. I had read about it online while reading about clogged tearducts and was sort of delighted to see it there. It was $20, all natural, and it claimed to open clogged tearducts and was mentioned a few places online. I figured, well, $20 was a lot cheaper than $200, and if it didn’t work, at least I’d tried a cheaper, natural solution first, right?
The wash comes with two different solution concentrates that you mix up in an eye dropper. You do three days of drop one, three days of drop two, then repeat drops one and drops two for a full cycle. The notes that came with the drops said “You may notice a swallowing motion right after putting the drops in. This means the tear ducts are clear. This may not happen right away.” When I first began putting the eye drops in, I didn’t really see him swallowing. The third day of the first round of drop one, I THOUGHT I saw him swallow after I put the drops in the eye with the clogged tear duct. The first morning of the first round of drop two, I definitely saw him swallow after I put the drops in his clogged eye. He also already had a lot less mucus coming from that eye than he had since he first got the eye infection. The second drops are to clear out the bacteria that clogs the tearducts to sort of “finish the job,” and I suppose you repeat the round to just make sure you’ve gotten everything.
Well, I am REALLY thrilled to say that these drops worked for Auggie. I didn’t have to fork over tons of money for the vet to put him under and unclog it, nor did I have to fork over tons of money for the specialist to unclog it without putting him under! All I did was pay $20 and it was ALL NATURAL to boot. Whoo-hoo!
A little on grooming – brushes
For those of you who own cordless/battery powered nail grinders (I personally use the Dremel MiniMite) – recharge your battery after EVERY session. Seriously. After every single one. There’s no harm in it. Your battery won’t be overcharged or anything. Yeah, you have to unplug the battery from the grinder, plonk it into the charger, and find somewhere for that rather large charger to plug into an outlet. But seriously. It’s a good idea.
Poor Auggie is lop-sided as he currently has freshly dremelled front paws, three nails on his back right paw dremelled and the one remaining nail about 80% dremelled… and one paw that I didn’t get to before my dremel died.
Poor, poor Auggie. All because I didn’t plug the stupid battery in after our last session (I’m lying. LAST THREE OR FOUR SESSIONS.) to charge it up.
Anyway, the subject of brushes came up on a group I belong to; usually it starts with somebody asking about the Furminator and people start chiming in what they like to use instead. I thought it would be interesting to put down here for my lovely readers what brushes I use on Auggie. I have quite a selection, you see. All links are to the exact product I own from the exact place I purchased it from; you can probably find the same or similar products other places.
First, I own a pin brush that I always start with. Everybody should have a basic pin brush, IMO, for simple day-to-day brushing. It’s good for grabbing a lot of the already loose hair and getting some of the other dead hair to loosen up, but not a heck of a lot else on a double-coated breed. A good pin brush won’t pull or scratch, so even if it doesn’t do a lot for the actual fur managing, it’s great for getting your dog used to sitting for some gentle grooming… making grooming a pleasant experience! For Auggie, it’s the warm up brush, the relaxing brush. Sometimes I finish a grooming session with this brush, too.
Second, I purchased a Master Grooming Tools Ultimate Coarse Comb from a local groomer who was placing an order with PetEdge (it’s VERY expensive to order from them if you aren’t buying a lot of stuff.) and I love love LOVE it. I actually have two and one stays in my car with the other dog gear that I haul around. With this, I continue in long, gentle brush strokes. This is REALLY great for getting out dead hair from Auggie’s pants, which are a different texture than the rest of his fur; for the rest, it just pulls out more of the undercoat.
For the more stubborn hair – that is, for our serious grooming sessions – I have other brushes I continue with. I have a shedding brush that was recommended to me by a guy at the dog park when Auggie was a wee little guy; he demonstrated how great it worked on his own double-coated dog because Auggie had no loose coat at the time. I went to PetSmart and got two of them a few days later – one for me and one for my sister’s two shelties. They unfortunately don’t carry it anymore which is a REAL shame… it really does work wonders on removing undercoat, and I especially like to use this on places that have shorter, tougher-to-remove fur, like his armpits and his thighs. I do find that during heavy shedding seasons, this can pull a little bit when it gets “clogged” with fur, so you have to make sure you remove the already brushed out fur from it fairly often. I find this brush to be a lot gentler than many other brushes and combs I’ve used in the past; I think it has to do with the varying length and the slightly wider spacing of the teeth.
This is the ONLY brush in my tool bag that I would say there’s no replacement for, no buying from another store. I haven’t found anything quite like it anywhere else. This brush is just fan-freaking-tastic. It’s a tragedy they don’t carry it, or anything even remotely like it, at PetSmart anymore.
Next, I have a fine-tooth comb that I purchased at Target before we brought Auggie home. I don’t have a link for this one because I don’t think they sell it anymore; but a fine-tooth comb is pretty much a fine-tooth comb as long as it lasts. Mine has held up through the three years (the first pin brush I bought for Auggie from Target bit the dust after about a year; pins were falling out.) The fine-tooth comb I use mainly for brushing behind Auggie’s ears, trying to get rid of the crimpy dreadlock look. (I also use a pair of thinning shears on the hair behind his ears, which also helps; the comb then is great for going through and getting out all the hair that has been thinned.) This kind of brush CAN be used on those sheds-a-lot parts as a de-shedding tool, but it also tends to pull far more than the above tool, so I really hate to use it for that purpose.
I also have a slicker brush (I think in the medium size) that I use during shedding seasons. The other brushes do a really good job any other time of the year, but this is really helpful to use on longer fur, like down his back, when he’s blowing coat. I find this does a great job of picking up undercoat more than really helping to loosen and remove it, so I guess that’s why I like to really only use it during shedding season, when the fur is already lose. I also don’t brush very hard with this, so that might be why… I’m hesitant to apply pressure with it.
Last but not least, I own a Zoom Groom that I use during bath time. It’s wonderful to get him all lathered up and to start working the dead hair lose in the tubby.
Finally, yes, I do own a Furminator. I got it for a fairly good deal, which is good since I hardly use it. I don’t like what it does to the texture of Auggie’s fur. I don’t believe it breaks the fur like a lot of people do… but it definitely does something odd, something not pleasant. The only places I will use it is on the SUPER short hair on the top of Auggie’s head, his muzzle, and on his paws… those are the only places where it doesn’t seem to have a weird affect on his fur nor cause him discomfort. I’m not sure if it pulls or scratches his skin; all I know is that he is not comfortable with it and therefore I am not either.
So, when it comes to the Furminator… if you have a pal who owns one, see if you can borrow it to try it on your pet first. Observe your individual pet’s reaction before you make a decision. I definitely don’t believe the Furminator is a tool for every pet out there, it needs to be judged on a case-by-case reaction from your particular pet. If you can’t borrow one, make sure that, if you don’t like how it works for your pet, you can return it to whatever place you purchase from – be it PetSmart, Target, or an online shop.
And there you have it… my brush collection!
