Stella's Bad Side

How can a great bloodhound have issues? If you were to see her at the house or outside you would never suspect she has severe separation anxiety. Since having basset hounds since 1987, some rescued from shelters others bought from breeders … Stella’s separation anxiety is the worst I have ever seen in a hound.

I was told before I decided to pick her up, that she had issues. The previous owner and I thought with me being around all the time, in addition to having another bloodhound to stay with … she would improve. That improvement was true from Aug 30-Nov 22. Up until then, any damage was very minor if any took place. It didn’t happen all the time.

Up until November 22, I was never gone longer than 2 hours. I guess I became over-confident with her performance, so on November 22 I thought nothing of taking a trip to see an old friend about 1.5 hours away. I was planning being back home by 4pm … I didn’t make it back until 7:30pm. I had also left early that morning, around 7am.

She wasn’t alone .. Sadie, Winston and Heidi were with her. She had food, water, every bone in the inventory and a couple Kong toys filled with peanut butter … all to keep her busy.

It was a SHOCK what I saw as I opened the door. That is putting it mildly.

It was THE worst damage I had ever seen by a hound in the 29 years that I have had them. Her strength was on exhibit, the word severe would be a compliment … no I will not post the photos I took.

Since that night on November 22 – I started over from scratch in her “training”. Just like the first day I had her, I leave her with Sadie in my now, pretty bare bedroom. Why that room … no electronics to destroy, no refrigerator door to open … and no doors to open.

From the best that I can figure out … she doesn’t freak out if I am outside for an hour. I have even quietly walked up to the window to see what she is doing … laying next to Sadie sleeping. I have stood outside next to the room to see what I hear … no sounds, no howling.

So the ‘trigger’ must be when she hears my FJ driving down the gravel driveway. When I have started my FJ or Mini Cooper and left it running but never leaving … no damage.

Until last night I thought it was “time related” … that I needed to be gone for an hour before she started destroying things.

Last night I was gone for 10-15 minutes to pick up a pizza I had ordered.

I even rolled the bed out to the center of the room on the hardwood floor, so she didn’t have to drag it out with her jaws attached to the end of my bed … that has been her most recent act.

I even leave the closet sliding doors open so she doesn’t have to push them off the track to get inside. There is NOTHING left that she can destroy … she did all of that November 22.

So I return within 12 minutes … TWELVE MINUTES … and there are signs of destruction.

Months ago I had moved a heavy chest of drawers in front of a small wall that is between the bedroom door and my closet doors. She had been digging on the wood trim by the door handle, since she could not open the ’round’ door handle but she can open ‘lever’ door handles. I decided to protect that wall.

Within 12 minutes, she had slid that heavy chest of drawers away from the door handle … ready for this???????

She started digging at the drywall, door handle high.

Very, very, very disappointed … and confused.

So I will be digging deep throughout the internet for books, articles or even possible books here at my local library … on canine Separation Anxiety … and hopefully find some sort of answers. I guess I have my answer why I am her 4th home in her short 6 years of life.

I can’t say that I am happy this morning in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana.

Stella Continues To Do Well Unleashed

My thanks go out to blog readers, Bethers and Cat … they let me know after my first post this morning that all of my photos were not showing up on the pages I had transferred from the first WordPress blog. I think most of the problem is not the older blog posts but the pages in the red banner.

As I write this … those problems should be fixed since I spent most of the afternoon rebuilding the photo file here on WordPress by adding the photos directly from my hard drive. That of course gives the photos a new and updated file name when I updated the pages with those new photos.

We still had time for the afternoon daily hound walk. It may have been close to 60° but it felt a “cold” 60°, if that is possible in the ‘tropics’ on the first day of February.

While the 152 photos were uploading into the “media library”, I WOKE UP two bloodhounds, grabbed the camera and we took off for a walk. For some reason Heidi is boycotting all walks outside until the outside temperature reaches 70° … that should be a couple of months from now.

It was a strange walk.

Sadie spent the majority of time walking right beside me and Stella edged her boundaries out a little further by ignoring me more and more. At one time I thought it might be time to put her back on a leash. I didn’t carry it, so she was saved today.

She did come when I called her name eventually.

They had a slow start. They were waiting on me and I was waiting on them to move forward to start taking photos. Maybe the are starting to protest in their own way.

They finally moved down the brush/tree line together but it is not long before Stella falls way behind and goes into her first stage of ignoring me calling her name. She didn’t look happy as she ran toward me.

As they turned the corner … Sadie for some reason came back to my side walking slowly, too close for any photos with the 55-200mm lens. Stella headed for her favorite spot to the right … but today I decided not to let her go that way and called her … she veered left and followed the brush/tree line.

Her and Sadie decided they would team up on the ‘ignore game’.

As we made the turn to return home, they were back to waiting on me. Ten acres of field to walk in and Stella has to walk in front of me … slower than slow … her normal pace. She always walks in slow motion dragging her paws if she is not playing or running. When I would stop to let them walk ahead … they would stop.  LOL

Like I said … it was a strange walk today for the hounds. At least the sun was out and a LOT warmer than normal for February 1 here in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana.

It's Monday & It's Quiet

The hounds and I have been off to what feels like a slow start this morning, but things are getting done. I can’t believe it’s almost noon as I write this. I finally got a few ‘bugs’ worked out with the Firefox browser. It’s always been my browser of choice. A few years ago I started using a 3rd party password management program called LastPass. It will encrypt all the passwords that you use on the internet.

For the longest time Firefox and LastPass didn’t work well together … so I moved go Google Chrome.

I can say after a few days of switching to Firefox and with the LastPass ‘bugs’ worked out, I am really happy with the results. I have it set Firefox up to synchronize with my Firefox on my laptop … everything is working out great.

Before I ramble any further here are photos from this morning. I do know that photos of all the hounds are more interesting than my rambling.

After their normal morning activity … Stella ran full speed into Sadie wanting to play. I wasn’t able to catch the initial contact because I was picking up sticks in the yard but I heard the collision. I still find it strange that when they are outside, Sadie is always the one being ‘attacked’ on the bottom of the pile but it is reversed when they play inside.

Then just like that … in a split second … they stop and act like they haven’t done anything rough.

 
Soon after Sadie found a good stick to chew on while Stella roamed the field, to exercise her nose.

Stella was almost outside ‘her boundary’ but when I called her name, she came flying back into the yard. I can’t really describe that last photo besides just excess bloodhound skin in action.

I’ve spent most of my morning doing some online research, making lists, checking some of my spreadsheets … I have plans developing and that is always dangerous, in a joking way. For some reason the internet seems slow today. I’ve had some weird stuff going on with my older desktop computer whereas I can do the same task on my newer (less than 1 yr old) laptop without any issues.

The common fix seems to be digging deep into my operating system files, deleting a file called “cert8.db”, then rebooting the browser. That fixes the issues with error pages when loading a site.

Another thing this morning I am getting notices via the WordPress plugin I have that detects broken links in my blog. A lot of those are URLs for the photos I transferred inside the posts when I transferred from my free blog on WordPress just this past week. The photos worked before, some of them still work today and some will not load.

Is that happening on your computer when you load my blog or look at one of the pages listed inside the red banner at the top? Let me know if you are not seeing all the photos loading either in an older post or one of the pages listed inside the red banner.

I have also been very happy with my move not only to WordPress but also using DreamHost as my blog host. It’s a little more work than having a blog on the ‘free’ side of WordPress or Blogger but they make it very very easy to set up and manage.

For 16 years I’ve been buying the majority of my domains from GoDaddy but found DreamHost from a blog reader. The domains are a few dollars cheaper than what I paid at GoDaddy. Loading the WordPress blog was a 1-click installation. Their customer service is fast when answering questions via email and very knowledgeable if you choose to chat with a representative.

I had my new blog up and running in less than an hour. Most of that time was me customizing my template (theme).

Be sure to check out their hosting program, besides just buying a domain.

Well I am finished at 12:21pm typing this and no word from Stella yet that she would like to have lunch. I guess the playing outside made her and Sadie wore out because they are both sleeping right now.

A Very Lazy Sunday

It was overcast but the weather was great here in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana. Nothing happened today and I mean it when I say that. The highlight of the day was the Chinese Buffet for lunch and then a long siesta that lasted the afternoon.

As you can tell, the hounds didn’t do much more but did skip the Chinese food.

Early this morning … Heidi is you know where.

A few hours later and it wasn’t much different. Stella enjoys the breeze from the South

I was barely able to get this next photo last night … just in time

It was counted as another successful day of retirement here in the ‘tropics’ of Southern Indiana.