A lot going on in Athena’s week 3 in foster care!
Controlled Meets with Foster Brother
First, at the beginning of the week, we decided to have her first controlled meet with our 10lbs chihuahua mix Batik. A controlled meet is a meeting where the two dogs get to sniff each other without a baby gate or any other barrier in between them but still with both or one of the dogs on leash for in case they want to attack each other. Frankly, Athena and Batik had already started sniffing each other through the baby gate and Athena’s crate door in week 2, but week 3 is when they first got physically close to each other without barriers. It went really well! She kind of just ignores him, even when he puts his front paws and head on her face/head. Our chihuahua mix Batik is also used to socializing with dogs bigger than him as we used to put him in 1-hour weekly puppy socials up until he was about 10 months old, so he understands to be submissive to a bigger dog to get on their good side.
We also started walking them together (not pack walk anymore). Although our Chihuahua Mix sometimes gets leash reactive when he sees another dog, including when he sees Athena, she never reacts to his reactivity, which is a good thing!
Got Spayed!
Athena also got spayed this week! We dropped her off at the vet around 8.30am and picked her up at around 5pm. Our vet said that she was hyper so he prescribed tranquilizers, in addition to the regular pain medication, for her to take during the 2-week recovery period after the spay surgery.
When we took her home, she was super low energy; It seemed like she was still drowsy. She was so low energy that she could not jump up to her crate in our car like she usually would, so I had to lift her up. Because she’s 50 lbs, I was not able to lift her up completely, but I managed to lift up half of her and she was able to climb up our car into her travel crate. When we got home, she was hesitant to even get out of her crate for the first few minutes. When she started to walk out of her crate, she was too weak to jump down from the car so my husband had to help lift her off our car. Our house is a townhome in which we have to climb up a set of stairs to go to the main living area- it took her a bit of time for her to climb up these stairs the night after the surgery. She would stop halfway and sit in the middle of the stairs. Once she was up, she basically slept the whole night. Also, that night she would not eat or drink anything, which is one of the things to expect the night after a spay/neuter surgery.
The day after the surgery, she regained some of her energy, but she was still pretty tired so she stayed in her crate most of the day except for walks and feeding. The second day after the surgery, she regained more of her energy but was still not optimal but she had enough energy to climb up the couch. By the way, during these couple of days she did have her cone on. By the third day after the spay surgery, she pretty much regained her full energy. However as she was supposed to limit her activity, we started giving her the tranquilizer every 12 hours.
As her cone was causing her to knock things out when she’s walking, we decided to put her in a post-spay surgery jumpsuit that our neighbor had recommended when her dog was recovering from her spay energy.
Stay tuned for our Month 1 update!