Needs More

This is what Conker had for foods some days ago. Before he started to boycott.

It consists of: Several large chunks of pork, a piece of turkey neck, beef liver and heart slices, a chicken egg, some plain yogurt and a couple sweet potato fries. He ate the fries first then looked at me as if to say, "Where's more? You only gave me two. I need more."
There were more, but I ate them. Conker watched. He was not happy about that.

The weather was a bit odd today

Dunno what was up with that. It's been odd a lot lately. Forecast for rain, we get sun. Forecast for clouds and light winds, we get drenched. Stuff like that.


Anywho, Conker continued to boycott eating his food for two days before I got fed up with him. See, there's nothing wrong with him. He just didn't want his food. He wanted everyone else's food like he normally does, but his food, no. Not interested. At. All.
Why was he not interested in his food?
I was attempting to get him to eat Coot.  When I'd cooked up the Coot I shot, Conker almost stole it off my plate. Good! I thought, He'll eat the rest of it with no problems. I was wrong.

Conker flat-out refused to eat any of it. Heart (he loves heart), gizzard, kidneys, lungs, neck (also loves necks) frame, liver, feet... all of it. This is the first time since the liver incident that Conker has completly refused to eat something.
And I don't know why.
I somehow got Conker to strip a tiny bit of meat off a neck and crunch a little, but still nothing. So after the first day of boycotting, Sasha got Conker's food. She munched it up, everything, without a hitch. She wanted more, but there was none left that day.

Day two of boycotting got Conker to eat a bit of breast that had some meat attached to it, and the frame, but he still refused everything else. I sat on the kitchen floor at 3:50 in the morning last night shaking the frame and saying, "Good boy Conker! Git it! Git git!" As he licked the frame to death. Took him 30 minutes to eat it. He did not enjoy it.  I made a huge bloody mess on the floor and am glad I decided to attempt to get Conker to eat in the middle of the night. Nobody would have been happy to come down to that.

This morning I offered the rest of the Coot to Conker. Again it got rejected. Juneau happily slurped it up but wasn't sure what to do with a foot, so Sasha stole it and ran off to eat it on the living room carpet.

I've discovered that Conker wants the meat, but nothing else. He tried to strip only the meat off every time he nibbled on something. Didn't want the bones or organs, just the meat. Weirdo.
So any future Coots I shoot will be offered to Conker, and if they are not eaten, give to one of the Girls.  I think that I might be able to get Conker to eat Coot if I grind everything up with the meat (and maybe some other kind of meat to make it... better?) but for now, since I have no meat grinder, he gets to be a stubborn buttface who eats "normal" stuff like chicken.  Which is what he eventually got today and ate it without any problem whatsoever.

Weirdest Breed Guess

Conker is commonly mistaken for a fox, puppy or Basenji, sometimes even a Husky or Akita.  I have gotten used to this, but yesterday I got a really funny one.

"Is that a Vizsla?"

Um... a what? Vizsla? Really?

I don't think this:

Looks ANTYTHING like this:

I politely corrected the mistaken person then went home and laughed my head off.

Updates for the next two weeks

Pictures (new pictures) will be absent on the blog due to the camera being in Hawaii. So, in order to make up for that, happenings will be just text and some postings will be stuff that's occurred in the past (like finishing up the Arizona Adventure series) that will have pictures taken during them. I'm probably going to do a couple more reviews too, since I've got some drafted up and are bored with them sitting around doing nothing.


Conker is spending more and more time out with the Girls at night. He does come in to sleep on the bed with me after a while but I'm starting to think he might decide to spend a full night out there. No worries, I'm not upset about that. Glad, actually. I'll have more room to myself if he does.

I'm going to start re-training him. Not because it's supposedly "train your pet month" or whatever, I'm a bit late to get on that bus. But simply because I think he could use some real obedience training. He's already pretty good about some things but due to his issue with being indoors and strangers, I haven't been able to take him to a class where he doesn't begin to shut down.  He's moderately okay in petshops but as soon as someone looks at him, that's it.
So I'm hoping that training him some more will help with the other problems if I can get him to focus more on me instead of what's bothering him. It will be slow and take a while, but I've decided to quit beating the rug and...
I have no idea where I was going with that.
To quit "dealing with it" and face the actual problem and find a way to remedy it. Like I've stated in the past, I don't want him to love every stranger or building he sees. I just don't want him to flip his shit.

I've had Conker for over a year. He is one and a half years old and I haven't done very much to combat this issue. Issues. I'd rather not just keep him where he is if there's a possibility of getting him more comfortable with strangers and being inside buildings. And I'd especially like for him to not get worse. I have seen that happen, and quite recently too. (Talking at you, siblings of great aggravation. You know who you are.)

I think if I can get him to earn the CGC this September, that will be a really good step for him.


In other news...
The internet continues to crash my computer with increasing frequency. It's not fun browsing the net with a 10 year old machine that can't run the latest updates (for about 3 versions or so) of required software and plugins due to it's ancient-ness. 

No Photos (again)

Mom and her BF are off to Hawaii.  They took the camera with them so there's going to be a lack of pictures unless I can magically find the charger plug for my sister's. Which has a broken screen.
It's raining, a lot, so any pictures of hikes wouldn't come out good anyways.

Juneau is on her last day of painkillers. I wonder how she'll be tomorrow without them.
Speaking of Juneau, the Petco near me is apparently not going to carry any products by Holostic Select (in store) anymore so everything they had was clearanced. I couldn't pass up some cans for .55 cents a piece since the ingredients were mainly good. It does contain chicken so Conker probably won't be getting any, but Juneau sure liked it this morning. Soft and squishy for her wounded mouth.  Sasha was jealous.

Back to Conker.
He is being stupid and refusing to eat. He wanted nothing to do with his food whatsoever this morning. I was wondering when this was going to happen again since he was long overdue for a boycott session. Well, it's here, and I wonder how long it will last this time. Last time it was a half day, but I have a feeling it's going to be longer than that.

Here comes Juneau!

Taken before her tooth extraction

Juneau is doing better. She still rubs her mouth a bit every once in a while and since she is also still on painkillers I guess she doesn't much notice if it hurts or not.  She's due to come off them in a couple days and we'll see how she reacts to that.

I'm hesitant to take her hiking because of that. I'm sure she'd be fine, but you never know. Plus I don't want her to grab something and rip open her mouth stitches or whatever.

The (other) Approachisades Pack

With me being me and liking to modify things, I couldn't keep my hands off the new Approach Pack I'd bought for Sasha. (There are needles in my keyboard that are rattling right now) I wanted to do something a bit different from the Approach II that I'd already modified and now that I knew how to (sorta) use a sewing machine, I felt invincible.
Well, not invincible, but certainly capable.

If you've read the previous post detailing how I made the Approachisades II, this version is somewhat different but I feel it's more badass.  Instead of using fabric as a skin, I completly left that part out and just made the skeleton with strapping. Much, much beefier strapping.

Here's what I used:
1 Ruff Wear Approach Pack (small)
4 3/4" plastic buckles
3 feet of 3/4" strapping (polypropylene heavyweight)
2 feet of 1" strapping (polypropylene lightweight)
2 feet of 2" strapping (polypropylene lightweight)
Many yards of heavy-duty thread
Velcro (optional)
Lots of pins
A tempermental sewing machine

In case you are unsure of where to buy buckles and straps, Strapworks is an excellent site to order from. They have a nice inventory and great prices, plus cheap shipping. Also, you will want to get more strapping than you actually need in case you mess up somewhere or have to repair something down the line.

The Approachisades II Pack

Yes yes, I know, lame combination of names.

A while ago I mentioned that I was going to turn my Approach II pack into a Palisades style pack. I finally got around to doing it. This took forever since I couldn't find any plastic buckles or straps of the correct size locally and I generally don't like to order anything online unless I have to.
I ordered the buckles and straps from Strapworks who has pretty good prices on buckles, really good prices on webbing (straps) and had a nice low shipping rate as well.  I highly reccomend you buy from them if you can't find what you want for whatever your project might be. They have several other things in their inventory as well.

Anyways... For this project you will need:
1 Ruff Wear (or other brand) dog pack with harness
4 Plastic buckles of correct size (for the XS pack I used 1/2" single-adjust buckles)
3 feet or more of strapping (I used 1/2" heavyweight polypropylene)
A couple feet of fabric (I wanted to use heavy-duty mesh but instead went with lightweight canvas)
Several yards of heavy-duty thread
A couple feet of hemming strip (bias tape, 1/2" extra wide doublefold)
A sewing machine and/or hand sewing needles
Lots of pins
Some velcro (optional)

Where's Conker?

In other news...

I changed the banner and made the blog layout slightly wider, and messed with the sidebar a bit.

Juneau is out of it

Juneau laid in my lap for a while and enjoyed some good scratches.

We got Juneau back. Her teeth are quite nice looking, very white and clean. She's a bit loopy though and kinda seems like she's somewhat drunk. We have to restrict her exercise for a bit and soak her kibbles for seven days to give the extraction spot time to heal. She also gets to take some drugs for a while. Pain killers and antibiotics, or something like that.
We had her chipped while at the vet as well.

Edit: Juneau is still quite out of it. She's been sleeping for most of the time she's been home, but I did get her to eat some mushy kibble mixed with a bit of The Honest Kitchen.  While playing with a tennis ball with Conker, Juneau perked up and watched for a bit then went back to sleep.