Joined
·
114 Posts
So I brought home my new girl on November 13th. She is a two year old rescued grey hound. Here's the catch, she only has three functional legs. The third is basically dead weight. The group told us she has a frozen knee essentially, from being stepped on as a puppy. She never raced and she's been in the rescue for about a year.
I work for a local pet store where the greyhound group holds adoption clinics. I saw her every month at the clinic and just loved her but my apartment would not allow dogs. So in the end of October I moved to a new apartment that allowed a dog.
I filled out my adoption application and was approved. I explained to the group that my new apartment was on a second floor so there were stairs involved and if they felt she could not handle this, please let me know and I would choose a different dog. They thought she'd be alright, especially with a lift harness.
She is my first dog and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with a few things and would love some advice.
1. Okay..no one can really help me with this probably but she decided to eat the cat's wet food today then proceeded to have massive diarrhea on my floor. Thank god for hard wood flooring and Nature's Miracle! The smell was horrendous though! I can still kinda smell it when I walk through the living room...but I cleaned it all up and doused it in Nature's Miracle. I also got freaked out and ran to the store I work for and picked up some canned Pumpkin and Eagle Pack Digestive powder for her. Although she's showing no interest in eating said pumpkin.
2. She eats her wet food but hates her dry food. It's the same stuff that the foster family was feeding her(Diamond Naturals Chicken and Rice). I really want to transition her to raw eventually but I am seriously scared to death that she will have crazy diarrhea again. Her poop even yesterday before her cat food experience, just wasn't quite right to me, smelled pretty strongly, a little mushy, and huge!
3. All she has pretty much done is sleep. She just lays around looking sad...all the time. I give her stuff to play with...try to play with her, give her stuff to chew on, but she pretty much just lays there all sad. I have a crate for her for bed time and for when I go to work(I have four days off right now that I took of to help her transition). And she loves her crate. Goes in it all the time to lay down on her own. At her foster home they had like 10 greyhounds there....do you think she's lonely? I have two cats and that's it...and they don't want to be friends with the new dog. She looks so sad.
4. She was whining in the middle of the night..around 3:30am, so I got up and took her out and she peed....but I don't want her to think that whining means you get to go out. Because she also whined again around 5:00am and I did not get up and take her out because I figured she was bluffing. Am I wrong?
5. This is the big one. The stairs. She is petrified of the stairs. She only had three stairs to go down at her old house and she'd usually just leap down them. I have two sets. One set of four stairs, then a landing, and then the stairs go up an additional six stairs. She refuses to use them. I have also tried using a lift harness and I've tried a plain old towel. She's scared to death. She is scared to even step the one step onto the porch/mudroom because she knows it means she has to look at the stairs. I've just been carrying her up and down but she's about 60lbs and it's getting old fairly quickly and there's no way that I can hold her that is really comfortable for her either it seems. It's funny though because if I bring her down the first six stairs, set her on the landing while I open the door after the four stairs, she will go down those. She usually kinda leaps down them. I think the only reason she will go down those four is because she can see outside, and because that's pretty close to what she was used to at her foster family's home.
I'm just scared to death that this whole thing was a mistake and that she won't be able to do the stairs, and then what? I want to give this dog the best life possible because she sure hasn't had it easy! I may just be overthinking things and over whelming myself...I don't know. Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated!
And here's a picture for fun
I work for a local pet store where the greyhound group holds adoption clinics. I saw her every month at the clinic and just loved her but my apartment would not allow dogs. So in the end of October I moved to a new apartment that allowed a dog.
I filled out my adoption application and was approved. I explained to the group that my new apartment was on a second floor so there were stairs involved and if they felt she could not handle this, please let me know and I would choose a different dog. They thought she'd be alright, especially with a lift harness.
She is my first dog and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with a few things and would love some advice.
1. Okay..no one can really help me with this probably but she decided to eat the cat's wet food today then proceeded to have massive diarrhea on my floor. Thank god for hard wood flooring and Nature's Miracle! The smell was horrendous though! I can still kinda smell it when I walk through the living room...but I cleaned it all up and doused it in Nature's Miracle. I also got freaked out and ran to the store I work for and picked up some canned Pumpkin and Eagle Pack Digestive powder for her. Although she's showing no interest in eating said pumpkin.
2. She eats her wet food but hates her dry food. It's the same stuff that the foster family was feeding her(Diamond Naturals Chicken and Rice). I really want to transition her to raw eventually but I am seriously scared to death that she will have crazy diarrhea again. Her poop even yesterday before her cat food experience, just wasn't quite right to me, smelled pretty strongly, a little mushy, and huge!
3. All she has pretty much done is sleep. She just lays around looking sad...all the time. I give her stuff to play with...try to play with her, give her stuff to chew on, but she pretty much just lays there all sad. I have a crate for her for bed time and for when I go to work(I have four days off right now that I took of to help her transition). And she loves her crate. Goes in it all the time to lay down on her own. At her foster home they had like 10 greyhounds there....do you think she's lonely? I have two cats and that's it...and they don't want to be friends with the new dog. She looks so sad.
4. She was whining in the middle of the night..around 3:30am, so I got up and took her out and she peed....but I don't want her to think that whining means you get to go out. Because she also whined again around 5:00am and I did not get up and take her out because I figured she was bluffing. Am I wrong?
5. This is the big one. The stairs. She is petrified of the stairs. She only had three stairs to go down at her old house and she'd usually just leap down them. I have two sets. One set of four stairs, then a landing, and then the stairs go up an additional six stairs. She refuses to use them. I have also tried using a lift harness and I've tried a plain old towel. She's scared to death. She is scared to even step the one step onto the porch/mudroom because she knows it means she has to look at the stairs. I've just been carrying her up and down but she's about 60lbs and it's getting old fairly quickly and there's no way that I can hold her that is really comfortable for her either it seems. It's funny though because if I bring her down the first six stairs, set her on the landing while I open the door after the four stairs, she will go down those. She usually kinda leaps down them. I think the only reason she will go down those four is because she can see outside, and because that's pretty close to what she was used to at her foster family's home.
I'm just scared to death that this whole thing was a mistake and that she won't be able to do the stairs, and then what? I want to give this dog the best life possible because she sure hasn't had it easy! I may just be overthinking things and over whelming myself...I don't know. Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated!
And here's a picture for fun
