Stella's Separation Anxiety Returns

Last Friday I returned from a trip to buy groceries in Bloomington, I found it a little odd that my door key was unable to move the lock so I could open the door. The door knob was installed sometime in the past year and worked perfect. I finally got it to move enough to unlock the door but it was hard. That wasn't going to be the biggest question of why, no ... the shock was when I stepped inside to see Stella sitting in the kitchen looking at me, with Heidi behind her. I had left both in the bedroom with the door closed, their normal hangout location when I am gone.

Someway somehow Stella was able to open the bedroom door. It has a round door handle. She has tried to open that door in the past, and obviously many times, before she could figure out just how to jiggle it enough to pull it open. I had seen signs that she had been biting the bedroom door knob hard enough to put dents in it. Before I leave I always check to make sure the door is latched and cannot be pulled open by her.

This past Monday I had a problem. I set up "Plan B" to keep her from getting out into the house, with a baby gate adjusted to it's tightest position and just for good measure I put a kitchen chair behind that gate ... at least if she jumped over the game (I've never see that happen) she would have to really be good to clear the chair. If she was able to shove the gate open maybe that chair would stop the gate.

After a trip to the recycling center only 12 miles away, a trip that took me only 25 minutes total, I return home to see the bedroom door open and Stella is trying to dig a hole to get under the gate. Luckily she did not scratch my hardwood floor in the bedroom nor tear a corner piece of carpet ... but she was digging fast and hard enough to do that.

So just like that Stella and I have returned to the first week she was here in September 2015. Her separation anxiety has returned after a 17 month vacation. Why was she doing this? What do I do next? I spent a little time thinking about both questions but not constantly.

Her next big test will be today when I go to the library and a short stop at the store for dog food.

We still take our two walks per day, in snow flurries sometimes but we will cancel them if it's raining or has rained. Believe it or not this morning was one of our "brightest" days lately. No sunshine but a much brighter overcast.

I have to admit that after almost three months I have still not gotten use to doing this walk without Sadie. Some of the time it really bothers me and the joy of taking this walk is lost. I think about her different times of the day and night and I find it very hard at times to crawl out of the past. She played a big role living in 'the tropics'.

Facing the woods to the north Stella has to be catching the sent of deer. There is nothing else in that direction that would cause this much interest.

Maybe I am not the only one that gets bored with this walk or taking the same photos ... I did have to wake her up this morning to take the daily morning walk. Sadie would have always been giving me the stare to get me started. I have found out that Sadie helped herding Stella on these walks more than I realized. Anymore it's almost like work trying to keep Stella moving in the direction of the path. She never falls back and runs to catch up. I always have to go get her.

After three weeks using the GlycoFlex Plus for her hips and joints I have seen slight improvement. She has never ran full speed like she use to but seems to be more active with occasional turn around hops and then short bursts of speed while we are walking.

A possible downside to this glucose and MSM supplement, she seems to be scratching herself a lot more than before as if there is something she is allergic to in the supplement. That is a hard thing to figure out as I did all that research into Heidi's skin allergies a few years ago.

Back to her anxiety when I am gone. In the past when she destroyed something while I was gone I'd take photos of it and then date them in my Apple Photo program, filing them in their own folder. So from those photos I know she went 17 months without tearing up anything in the bedroom while I was gone. Some of those times I was gone for 7 hours if I was visiting a friend out of town.

I first thought she might be trying to find Sadie, thus getting out of the bedroom and trying to open the kitchen door to get out of the house. Based on all of her nose and jowl prints on my clean window in the kitchen and the smaller window on the kitchen door I thought maybe someone had been at the door ringing the doorbell while I was gone. It was obvious she wanted outside.

Yet a few weeks ago when I had someone ring the door bell when I was home, both Heidi and Stella sat in the kitchen facing the door and not moving. They didn't bark and did not stand up to look out the window to see who was there. Sadie would have been standing at the large window in her attack mode.

I have not seen any stray dogs or cats come through the yard during the daytime in years, nor have I seen any deer in the field in the past year based on dated photos.

So who knows ... I hope to come home today with no surprises.

I have a couple of options to keeping the bedroom door closed no matter how hard she tries to open it. If I buy a new knob with a key lock, she will only bite into the new knob. With it being hard last Friday to turn my key when she bit into the kitchen door knob, it would be possible that it would not open if she bit into the locked knob hard enough.

From what I have found on my internet searches, the best solution seems to be some sort of lock from outside the door in the hallway that would keep the door closed and in no way could she get to those latches or locks.

She is a big funny dog that has kept me on my toes since the day I brought her home. Stephanie warned me she was an 'expert' in escaping, even from a large indoor kennel. Maybe she thought I needed some new things to add to my 'to do' list for the winter.

Heidi in the meantime is doing very good and is only active after her lunch where she goes outside then does a few laps of running around the living room upon her return.

Fun times in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Make Me Take An Oath

Waking up to another missed weather forecast, it was decided over breakfast kibble that the blog author and a slave to the hounds (me) would be forced to take an oath. So picture Steve (blog author and slave) standing at attention with his right hand raised and both hounds facing him. Repeating the words "I will never blog about future weather conditions and/or local tv weather forecasts again. I will not let the local tv weatherman lead me down the path of stupidity."

At the rate the snow plows were going back and forth last night in front of my house, prepping the highway for major snow and ice conditions, they might run out of their annual salt and sand allotment before the major snow storms happen later this winter. I could tell by the time I called it a day around 1am, that old computer the weatherman spoke of the other night needs some calibration if we are to believe the local forecast.

Of course that didn't stop Stella this morning. Since I will not let her walk into the Land of the Burrs, she has decided the next best thing is to stretch into that area as far as possible and she is safe from hearing me yelling "No" because her rear feet are still in the backyard.

With just a small amount of sleet this morning we took off for a pleasant morning walk, just at the freezing level of 32°. I am glad I finished up the 2018 Leaf Project a few days ago.

It took a while but Stella eventually got back to enjoying these walks, even demanding them now twice a day by walking to where I might be in the house and whining a little bit. She must be a morning hound because she likes both of her meals and both of her walks wrapped up no later than 1:30pm.

Just the weight of a little ice made most of the dead wild flowers tip over, facing west.

With the light white cover, it was easy to see all of the deer tracks. To me it looks like they are traveling in a small group. It's been over a year since I last saw any deer in the field while we are taking our walk. Where two years ago Sadie and Stella would be on a full speed sprint chasing them, last year's sighting they did not even lift their heads from the ground. They missed seeing them.

From the looks of it, the winds were coming from the north last night while it was sleeting.

While I followed the path ... Stella though she would follow those fresh deer tracks.

Stella has completed her 3rd bottle of Cosequin, that has 600mg of Glucosamine Hydrochloride from shellfish. It also contains MSM and I believe has helped her hips and joints to the point she runs a little bit but nothing like two or three years ago when she sprinted in this field either running from Sadie or chasing her.

I am going to change her next order and instead of buying it locally I am buying from Chewy.com something called VetriScience GlychoFlex Plus boosting that 600mg to a 1000mg and higher dosages on all the ingredients that are in both brand names. I did not request Next Day shipping but FedEx just delivered a few minutes ago.

She has improved though with the Cosequin these past few months.

If it wasn't for that black part on her tail or her grayless snout, she looks almost like Sadie in this photo.

What might those footprints be, on my path and with Stella BEHIND me ... deer tracks. Throughout the walk you could see where they followed a lot of the path I walk on.

I had to be quick with that photo because Stella came charging up behind me to check out those exact same prints.

A light frozen rain while we walked this morning and with the temperature so close to freezing +/- a degree or two, it is raining off and on most of the day. Those building you see there are only two of the four back there. They produce such a high number of turkeys in those four buildings that I am still not sure if I heard the number correctly from the owner a couple of years ago.

More of the deer prints, which were much more obvious to the human eye than they were to my camera.

At first I thought that Stella was cold and had decided to leave me. Then she made an immediate left turn because her nose caught a whiff of something.  I was able to take the old return path home.

She made one last try to convince me that I should let her wander out among the ragweed burrs and find out what that dead smell was. That wasn't going to happen. She gave up and headed for the door.

Can you see that 3" to 6" of snow we had last night ????

Don't mistake these for "footprints in the sand" ... we may live in 'the tropics' but that doesn't mean we live near a beach.  LOL

It was a very productive day today, inside that is. Dishes done, Laundry done, Heidi's blankets washed, and many pages of two books read. We are still maintaining indoor temperature between 64° - 66°. When I woke up this morning the house was too hot. I still prefer a cooler house, even below these temps.

Here is one smart Basset Hound ... staying dry.

It was a good day in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana today.