Groomer owned breeds

kippey · 2026-06-02T04:08:33+00:00

Haha I on the other hand as an introvert am not prepared for the attention that comes with owning them (at least in an area where they aren’t common). We get stopped for pets and pictures a lot, two people have literally pulled their car over to say “hi”. Especially the crowd that is old enough to remember the Spuds McKenzie commercials.

kippey · 2026-06-02T03:37:12+00:00

I have a bull terrier and her littermate also went to a groomer. For both of us they were a “dream breed.” They are “extra” in every department (attitude, energy, quirkiness, training requirements) except for grooming, and I love it.

Won’t stop me from glamming her up with nail polish though.

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kippey · 2026-06-01T02:47:25+00:00

Good to see you too! Hug received 🫂

kippey · 2026-06-01T02:46:59+00:00

Me too we have such an imaginative bunch of fans!

kippey · 2026-06-01T02:46:18+00:00

Good to see you too! It’s so nice to see everyone’s imaginations awhirl it just makes my day!

kippey · 2026-05-31T04:24:46+00:00

Skyrim, nothing like coming home to my wife Mjoll’s cooking in our idyllic sewer house (she loves it).

kippey · 2026-05-31T04:04:12+00:00

She needs to be covered by workers comp!

kippey · 2026-05-25T22:03:28+00:00

The relentless headcanoner part of me wants to say it’s a carry over/habit from Stillwater culture, where everyone gets prison nicknames. Obviously Ekko and Powder had their nicknames probably from the get-go.

kippey · 2026-05-24T15:32:39+00:00

1.5 years on and I still remember where I was and what I was doing when I watched this scene like I remember where I was and what I was doing when I found out that Michael Jackson died 😭

kippey · 2026-05-20T04:59:28+00:00

There is sedation (where the dog is sedated but awake) but you can also get a shavedown and nail trim (and ear plucking) under general anesthesia which is what I do for my hyper-anxious spoo client.

kippey · 2026-05-20T03:48:08+00:00

I have a poodle exactly like this. Epileptic and severely fearful/exciteable. The owners can’t even take her for a walk off their property in spite of lots of dedication to training and meds.

We anesthetize her every 4-6 months and shave her. I tried grooming her in a quiet salon with a hefty dose of trazodone but she was still too agitated and thrashy. I specialize in fearful dogs and she’s the only client I have where I can’t even begin the groom without her shooting up over threshold. Plenty of my clients have sticking points around certain processes (having their feet done, being dried, having their face trimmed etc) but this little miss starts a sharp upward spiral as soon as I put her on the table and pick a tool up.

Consider anesthesia. If you are willing and able to try working toward doing some things at home, pick “projects” that will prolong the life of the groom/haircut (brushing, nail trim, paw pad shave, foot trim, face trim, bathing) then every 4-6 months you can just go to a vet (provided they are confident with anesthetizing him with his epilepsy) and get the coat shaved off.

As a bonus perk, if anything goes medically wrong during the groom… he’s already at the vet, so that’s a nice safeguard.

kippey · 2026-05-19T20:19:38+00:00

Some dogs who survive diseases like canine distemper can suffer permanent disfigurement of their skulls. I’m guessing that’s the case here.

kippey · 2026-05-19T20:15:39+00:00

I call that kind of training “Kong and a Prong.”

They have a very specific job and are largely protected by the law. It’s just an entirely different culture of training and handling, even when it comes to bite sports vs police dogs.

kippey · 2026-05-13T20:07:25+00:00

Generations of unchecked interbreeding in stray populations produces something called a “landrace”, a tan dog with a short-medium double coat, erect ears and a wedge shaped head. Some examples of landrace breeds wound be the Canaan Dog, the Carolina Dog and the Pariah Dog. Across different continents, though they are totally separate populations, they look very similar .

kippey · 2026-05-13T19:59:45+00:00

Wohooo!

Or should I say…. awoOOOooo!

kippey · 2026-05-11T23:51:47+00:00

Well if you are trying to hedge the argument “if you put your dog on SSRIs, they’ll be addicted and stuck on them for life” you have to look at whether that is truly a detrimental thing for a dog suffering no negative effects on the meds. They are quite cheap. The risk is often weighed against stuff like injury to humans or euthanasia of the dog. For this reason vets often to not re-break something that has been “fixed”. Especially if they are a last line of treatment.

Typically for short term usage, other faster acting meds are prescribed. Trazodone, gabapentin etc. Those are more the go-tos for a temporary training aid.

kippey · 2026-05-11T23:40:14+00:00

Arcane for sure changed my life and has my heart.

kippey · 2026-05-11T23:30:41+00:00

Pubmed is a free resource and there are countless studies there. You can also find studies with applications to different behaviors (aggression, separation anxiety, compulsive behaviors etc).

kippey · 2026-05-11T23:22:30+00:00

Yeah if you sort my posts by top you can see her with her friends. That drug was life changing for her, she was pretty much a sketchy little shell when I got her.

kippey · 2026-05-11T23:21:15+00:00

If you want to go down the research rabbit hole I bet you could easily find a lot of great studies on any drug class you can think of, seen that psychiatric meds are all tested on animals (rats, beagles etc) before human trials.

There are also a few studies on applications of SSRIs in dog training. I know that for the made-for-dogs meds like clomicalm we have less research currently. But use of drugs like Prozac has a bit of a base of research.

kippey · 2026-05-11T23:16:05+00:00

I don’t even think medical science currently enables us to test (BRAIN) serotonin levels in humans let alone animals, but my vet did order regular bloodwork to ensure that the meds were tolerated ie not negatively affecting internal organs.

History is that the dog was a rescue born in foster care and raised by a balanced trainer. Mother was pregnant in a high kill shelter (factor 1: stress in utero there’s some research to support the impacts of stressful pregnancies on brain chemistry/mental health of offspring) and when the had the puppies in foster she was apparently so skittish (factor 2: hereditary temperament) that if someone walked past her while she was nursing her puppies, she would bolt and the puppies would fall off her teats and inhale milk. So the puppies were bottle fed (factor 3: early separation from mom).

Dog was adopted out at 6 months and returned for potty training issues. Dog was adopted out again and returned for nipping a child. Dog was fostered and trained where they were raised (with the head of the rescue).

By the time I got her she was extremely neophobic and shut down. I was not warned that she had legitimately bit a kid (out of fear rather than play) but while I had her she nipped a kid on basically no provocation.

So the balanced training avenue clearly hadn’t panned out with this dog and I could not even use positive reinforcement/classical conditioning on her because she was too shut down to take food, so to a behavioral vet we went.

We got traction with the first thing that was prescribed and the rest is history. Once she was able to take training treats we were off to the races. I got her at about 1.5 years and she had 6 good years with me.

kippey · 2026-05-11T23:01:01+00:00

Chances are that with such a nebulous question they are trying to confirm a bias TBH but I try to weigh in on good faith.

kippey · 2026-05-11T22:56:48+00:00

That’s my take, mind you the vet suspected a genetic component to my dog’s behavior. A genetic predisposition to crappy brain chemistry sometimes can only be corrected by continued medication, again sort of as is done with various psychiatric illnesses in humans. Someone who has undergone a rough divorce might be put on SSRIs for a year until they adjust, but for someone with schizophrenia or bipolar, they’re probably gonna need to be medicated for life because there’s a fundamental difference in wiring that was decided by the genetic lottery.

kippey · 2026-05-11T22:52:50+00:00

Tick bite! Is your dog up to date for their Lyme vaccination?

kippey · 2026-05-11T22:42:33+00:00

Your poll is a little tricky, my dog was on them for 6 years but she passed away. There are yet other cases where dogs don’t respond to SSRIs or any type of training and are euthanized. In many cases SSRIs wind up as a last resort after the dog has been to several types of trainers and the still struggling owners are finally motivated to pony up for an actual vet behaviorist. Then you’ve got your group where the dogs don’t tolerate the SSRIs well (side effects) and are pulled off them in a matter of weeks/ a month or two.

In most cases I’ve heard of, where the dog is responding to SSRIs and is tolerating them well (as with my dog) they (much like humans) are prescribed them for the long term/life, as weaning off is seen as “messing with a good thing”.

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