Thyroid

Once I've promised to write a post about the thyroid.
After watching a Webinar from Ute Blaschke-Berthold I think it's time now to start my post about this topic.

Due to Lisbeths multiple behaviour problems I was thinking about health issues as well. Checking the thyroid was one of the first ideas I had in mind. Therefore I went to the vet and asked for a full blood analysis including thyroid values. The first time I went there I trusted my vet that he knows what values to check but I was wrong. When I went a little bit deeper into the topic I realised the the values total T4 and TSH (these two ones are the standrad ones) are not enough. Therefore I had to repeat the test but as I know today I still checked to less values but I did a full thyroid profile.
The result was that Lisbeths values are okay a little bit low but totally within the range.

As I have learnt now from Ute B.-B. a correct interpretation of the blood values is almost impossible. They can give you an idea but you have to include other signs a well. I'will continue this post about the thyroid because I think it is an important topic, but I do not want to overload this post with information.
One important fact Ute mentioned in her Webinar is that most of the time behaviour issues are related to training mistakes. So always try to improve your training and asked someone to have a look on your training sessions.
But if you still think there might be something related to the thyroid and the blood values are a little bit low there is one thing you can try. Give your dog canned larynx meat. Larynx meat usually contains the thyroid of the animal and therfore hormones as well. When you feed it raw it contains the carrier hormone T4 but when you buy canned meat the T4 was already deiodised into T3 which is a lot more reactive. You can feed this canned larynx meat for 10-14 days and if you see behaviour changes in your dog its time to talk with your vet about thyroid hormone substitution. But just use this canned larynx meat temporaliy otherwise it can cause problems with the liver.
I've started this larynx diet today. I will take notes about possible behaviour changes and I will post about my observations.
The information about the thyroid will be continued but I will finish my post for today!

Attention Signal

As I promised in december the story about our newly introduced cues will be continued.

It took a little while until Lisbeth understood the idea and the "cue" for her cuddling time. First of all I introduced her to the toy regularly and whenever she took it in her mouth she was petted. After some days I hade the feeling that Lisbeth understands what the toy means. But Lisbeth still didn't took it by her own initiative. I always showed her the toy when I had the feeling she wants to get in contact. And now after 2 months "training" she truely understands the meaning. She takes the toy and enjoys my attention for minutes.

Yesterday I didn't see her taking the toy but she dropped it on the floor close to me. I heard the noise and turned around, then she took the toy again and gor what she wanted. I love this cue and it helpped us a lot. The biting has decreased drastically and I need the interrupting signal only rarely. I truly can recommend this strategy for dogs who need a lot of attention!

Concentration

It's easy to motivate Lisbeth when we are at home. She sometimes is a little bit overstimulated and you have to make trainings sessions short but she reacts to my voice and my body signals. Outside it is a lot different. Most of the time she isn't able to react anyway. I do not want to force her to do anything but it would be a lot more relaxing and I could give her more freedom when it's possible to communicate with her. I try to be at places with only little distrections but beeing outside is already too much most of the time. I've read trough the internet what people are talking about thit topic but I did not like what I found. It's all about forcing your dog to listen to you (also without punishment) somehow but this is not what I would like to do. At the moment I do not know what is a solution but I hope to get a good idea soon.

Hunting

I really would love to know the experiences of others dealing with hunting behaviour.

Lisbeth is a hunter, but it's not to bad. In the past I have thought I should never ever let allow my dog to hunt. But I now think a little different. On our perfect walking place there are some wild animals - most of them are rabbits. Lisbeth loves to follow the tracks of this animals but allways stays in contact with me. It can happen that she finds a very new track and then she is away for some minutes but she allways returns back. We are working on a call back cue that also works to call her back from wild animals but thats a long way. And I have the experience that calling back from dog friends, mouse holes and wild animals only works when the dog is allowed to do those things regularly. So I try to find places where it's safe to "hunt" a little bit. I never allow Lisbeth to follow deer because this trigger is to much so walking off leash in a wood is normaly not possible.
But my experience is, that Lisbeth is more likely to listen to my call back cues when she is allowed to move freely and follow tracks as well. Last night we have been outside and I just let her go away for a while but it was easy to call her back afterwards. She was happy and satisfied and it feeled at is she wanted to share her experience with me.
I would love to hear your opinion about hunting, freedom and call back cues!