What is stranger than a camel in a minivan?

Well, I was going to share the story of my drive home from the tournament this weekend. Most of the drive was pretty boring freeway driving, except for one memorable purple minivan with a camel riding in it. Yes, a full grown camel. It was laying in the back of the van, taking up the whole length of it, with its head and neck sticking into the front. It looked at me as a drove past. Had my passenger in the car not seen the same exact thing, I would've pulled over then and there to get some sleep.

However, this morning's events have surpassed the camel in the minivan. Maybe not to the world at large, but to me.

I went for a morning run (really, jogging/walking, but a run sounds so much more active) with a friend of mine and the dogs. We were just jogging along when I spotted a coyote off to the side of the path. I went to leash up the dogs when Koira caught sight of the coyote and took off after it. I called her (or screamed at her, one or the other) and when she turned to come back, the coyote took chase after my dog.

I thought I saw contact on their way back to me, but wasn't sure. Koira reached me, was leashed up, Pallo was leashed up, and I examined Koira's rear end for any bite marks. Since the coyote was out in daylight and showed no signs of fear towards me (it only ran once Koira started chasing), I had a vague fear of rabies or distemper.

I didn't find any bite marks on Koira until after we got home, when I found I welt on the side of her hip. It had broken the skin a little. Not really any worse than some scraps from the dog park or playing with Pallo, but with the risk of infection from a coyote, I cleaned the area with soap and water (as per my vet's instructions) and put in a call to the local Animal Control and Fish and Wildlife.

The good news is that, from the behavior described and a previous similar report (chased dog, no bite, that happened last week) Fish and Wildlife believes it is a female coyote guarding pups or a den, rather than a sick animal. Also, they were able to let me know that the nearest rabies outbreak is in Josephine County in Southern Oregon, about a 5 hour drive away, giving us locally a very low risk. Distemper is in this area in raccoons, but since Koira is current on her distemper vaccine, they told me not to worry.

After spending all morning on the phone with my vet, Fish and Wildlife, and Animal Control (who told me to call F&W, they don't deal with wild animals), seems like Koira should be just fine. They have not asked me to do a quarantine, but I plan to keep the dogs in for the rest of the day in case when their staff vet comes in they change their mind. And, I think coyote bite is a good reason to miss flyball practice tonight.

All in all, it was a dramatic, worrisome episode, but unlikely to have any lasting effect. I will follow advice from online in that I will keep Koira under observation for the next 45 day, making especially careful note of any symptoms of distemper or rabies (neurological symptoms especially, and things such as aggression, aversion to light, aversion to water, etc). I am unlikely to see any such symptoms.

This is why I make sure my dog's have current rabies vaccines. Over-vaccination undoubtedly is a problem in today's animal world. I know over vaccinating can cause problems. But, some vaccines are so important, I would rather be safe than sorry. All it would take is one fluke incident like this to happen in an area with a hint of a rabies outbreak for my dog to be seized and destroyed.

Oh yeah, and Happy Cinco De Mayo. Hope all of yours goes smoother than mine.

Flyball in Canada

Well, despite a lack of pictures from the weekend, I can no longer hold off on posting about our awesome trip to Canada for flyball. Instead, I will include pictures of Pallo from today, doing tricks.



Koira and Pallo both came along this time. Previously, Pallo has always been a bad eater when we travel, but I had the theory that he missed Koira rather than not liking traveling. This trip proved me right, as I had no need of the smelling canned dog food or any other tricks to get Pallo to eat his food. Of course, since his breakfast was a tender grass fed beef roast and lunch was whole flash frozen sardines, it might have just been the awesomeness of the food. Koira was her normal campaigning self, happy to eat, sleep, hand out, and be calm.



Saturday started out pretty rocky for us. Our first race went fine, but with a false start on every single heat and each person on the team taking turns doing early passes, it certainly could have been better. The second race of the day, Pallo's brain melted down. He started running down over two jumps, then stopping, looking confused, and running back to me. When I sent him again, he would do fine. This has long been a trick of Koira's, but Pallo has never once done it before, even in the early months of practicing.



After our five heats were over in the second race, I set to thinking about why he might be doing this and how to fix it. Then, I realized that the Open team we were running with is quiet. The dogs don't bark. And they aren't fluffy. Our team at home is loud, barky, and fluffy, and so was our Open team in California. I brought this up with the person in charge of lineups, who promised to put the two loudest and fluffiest dogs on the team in for the next heat, and also moved Pallo to anchor position (racing last, as opposed to third, where he was for the first two races). I also decided to pull out the big guns, switching from Pallo's little toy to the 5 foot fluffy tug. He is more likely to drop his ball when the tug is in play, but at that point, I just wanted a happy dog willing to do his job, and figured I could work with the ball dropping so long as he was happy.



Seems like that combination amped him up, and though he wasn't running the best in the world, he did run clean on the next race (except for my early pass, bad human). He also got his new fastest rerun time ever of 5.9 seconds, which is pretty good considering it includes his turnaround time.



The rest of the weekend went smoothly. My dog's brain came back, and he settled down and did his job, loving every minute of it. No new best times were set this weekend, though he did pull in plenty of times in the 5.1-5.3 second range over 9" jumps (his Personal Best of 5.0 was set over 8" jumps).



Saturday, Pallo raked in 499 points for the day, putting him over the 2,500 mark and earning him his Flyball Dog Champion Gold title. Sunday was an additional 475 points (roughly, I didn't count exactly on it) so he is over 3,000 total points at the one year mark for competing. From this point on, each title will take more and more points to achieve, meaning it may be awhile before a new title post comes about. For Pallo at least.



Green dog practice on Saturday afternoon did give me a bit of hope that Koira may be competing soon, though I am trying not to get my hopes up too much for the July tournament with her.



On the note of the pictures, Pallo is doing pretty good at a lot of his tricks, such as shake and other paw (for feet or hands), and roll over. He needs to learn spin, circle, and backup better. I am trying to talk my cousin into doing freestyle with him. I think he would be great at it.

Nails

Fingernails and toenails that is, not hardware nails.

My cousin, who has some mad skills with nail polish, offered to do my nails for the flyball tournament. I requested tennis ball nails, and I think they turned out great. Plus, while my nails were drying, she also gave Pallo and Koira pedicures.

Pallo got green nails, to match the color of the team we were running with for the weekend.



Koira had two colors, with sparkly red on the front and blue on her back feet.



And of course, showing off my own nails along with the dogs'.




The tournament was a blast for the weekend, but I don't have any pictures from it yet, so will share later. But, as some observant readers may notice from the side bar, Pallo gained his next flyball title, Flyball Dog Champion Gold (FDCh-G). Good boy.