The Real Veterinary World

I apologize for anyone who actually does follow my blog for the insane amount of time that has elapsed since my last post. Summit and I moved to Stratford (about an hour from where we live) for my veterinary externship. The externship is an 8 week stint at a mixed animal (both large and small animals) practice getting practical, real world experience between third and fourth (final) year. Things are going great and I'm loving actually learning and getting hands on. Unfortunately it has meant no training with Summit. No formal training anyway. But I do still have some news and updates.

We are staying with one of the ladies who works at the clinic (and her family). They have a little beagleX puppy who thinks Summit is the greatest thing in the world. She's super annoying to him. She jumps up at his face constantly trying to get him to play. Most of the time he just tries to look the other way, but occasionally he does play with her which is a hoot. Hopefully this weekend I will be able to upload the videos of them playing to post here.

Summit has been demoted back to his crate. Last Tuesday I had a long day. On Tuesdays I am gone from 7:30 to 5:30 (give or take) and then have to be back at work by 6:30 and don't get home until 9. So after I get home from work the first time I have to feed Summit and let him out and I have to eat dinner myself. I also try to get a shower in, but depending on when I get home that's not alawys possible. Last Tuesday I didn't have time for a shower. I came home and basically went to take a shower right away. Well, I guess Summit was a little frustrated, so while I was in the shower he took a huge chunk out of the door frame. I decided that he would have to wear his muzzle from then on. So the next day he knocks down the baby gate and stands at the closed basement door (our bedroom is in the basement) wanting out. Luckily someone was home and found him, took his muzzle off and let him hang out until I got home. So the next day I tightened the baby gate so even I couldn't pull it out. I was only gone 3 hours. He jumped the gate AND OPENED THE DOOR! So at this point I decided he had to go back to his crate. Things have been great ever since.

Now, I realize that just throwing him back into a crate is not a solution. There have been other changes. Longer walks in the morning and evening and we've been working on some obedience as well. I called every training facility in town and no one has agility. No one even has agility equipment I could borrow. And no one is running any sort of high level obedience. Just level 1. I'm looking for level 3. So I found one place that does "drop in" obedience classes with some Rally mixed in. We will try it next week and see what we think. Most of it sounds too basic for us, but for $20 we'll see. I figure at worst we can do our own thing and at least there will be distractions to work with.

This weekend there is also a big greyhound picnic event back home, so we will hopefully be attending that. It should be a lot of fun. Hopefully I will have pictures to share!