On the 15th of September, I acquired Jasper (previously named Noel) from the Chattanooga Dog Pound, she is a 1-1/2 to 2 year old German Shepherd.  I wasn’t able to pick her up until the day after because she had to be neutered. When she was at the vet for getting “fixed” she was given a bath to help get rid of the ‘pound smell’ she reacted quite violently towards the water, she tried biting at the water and repeatedly bit at the sprayer, later, while at a friends home she again reacted aggressively towards water while a female friend was doing some cleaning up.  Since I have brought her home I have had no reaction towards water in any way.  It is a guess that a female may have used water as a form of punishment at some time in Jasper’s life.

At the time of her neutering, Jasper weighed 51.2 pounds, she had a microchip implanted in her back and spent two very rough days recovering from her surgery, even this morning (Sept. 18th) she still has the runs but is finding it much better when she messes outside rather than inside, she enjoys the attention when she does a good ‘potty’ outside.

She isn’t sure how to react towards my other two dogs, Mollie and Buddy, and one cat that likes to use all of the dogs as punching bags, at first she was a little aggressive about getting a paw on the tail or in the face, but simply ignores the cat now.  She is learning how to play with the other dogs without getting aggressive, and is finding the transition difficult with getting it out of her head that she doesn’t have to protect her food, and that here everyone shares the water, food, and toys.

When it comes to walks, Jasper finds that she doesn’t care for the choke chain at all, when cinched upon for correction she has attempted to bite but is finding the walk goes so much better when she just slows down to enjoy herself. She is much better with her walks already and is an extremely quick learner, although the “sit” still eludes her.

Her weight gain is still a concern, with the constant diarrhea.  She hasn’t really taken to much of any food.  The first 2 days alone she had no ambition to eat at all, yesterday (Sept. 17th) was the most she had eaten so far (2 cups of puppy food and 1 cup of rice mixed).  Although she is older, we have been trying to get her to eat the puppy food to give her a little more weight since she is rather thin, with her ribs and hip bones showing.

At the moment, everything is still just one step at a time.  Jasper has reacted well with the ducks in the yard, mostly ignoring them, and has adjusted fairly well to both of the other dogs, even attempting to play with them, although a little too aggressive for them, but is adjusting well.  Even with a half million gallon pond in the back yard, she has made no attempt to go anywhere near it so far, but I figure if she was abused with water, than that will take some time.

Jasper has shown herself to be extremely interested in just about any noise, she keeps herself occupied by listening to every noise and checking out everything that she can see.  Teaching her to keep an ear out on walks, but still keep her attention whoever is walking her was initially a challenge, but she is learning to keep her head moving often to do both, so she is adjusting well to these new teachings. Especially since her first walk and training never even started until the 17th, letting her adjust to all the changes, and learn her new surroundings.

Because of her recent surgery, we take two short (10 minute) walks per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and work on her being on the leash. She has some problems not being the one in charge, but she is adjusting with this as well. With my other 2 dogs, they know that when I stop walking they are to sit, Jasper isn’t to this point yet as we are still working with just being on a leash, she has learned to ignore all the other dogs in the neighborhood, but this is a bit of a challenge as most other dogs in the neighborhood are allowed to just run loose, something I think she misses doing herself.

Sept. 18, 2008

This afternoon, I came home for lunch, and to check on the kids, everything seemed to be fine, Jasper had apparently attacked another potted plant, but since she is only doing it when no one else is around, it is difficult to figure out why she is doing it.

After work, I took her for a walk, and we sat down and watched what was going on for a little while around us, the entire time, she shook, her flanks just quivered something fierce. I’m not sure what it is that she is scared of but it is something that will take time to work on, but eventually we will work in increasing her confidence and get her weight increased a little at a time, and in time I think she will be a fantastic dog, on and off the field.

Sept. 20, 2008

At about 2 o’clock this morning Jasper had a little accident in her crate. So I set aside the ‘hershey squirts’ and took it to my vet on the way to work. It turns out that Jasper has roundworms. As soon as I arrived at home I gave all of the dogs a dose of dewormer, this was decided since worms are extremely contagious.  Whitney from the Cheatham County Animal Clinic has been amazingly helpful in getting Jaspers health improved

Jasper resting on my pillows on the 21st

Sept 21, 2008

After a long day of fun, we all decided to sit down, relax and watch some movies for the evening.  I put some pillows on the floor so that I could lay down on the floor, and Jasper put my pillows to use before I could. Her energy level his since skyrocketed since we have figured out why she wasn’t gaining any weight and constantly had the “Hershey squirts,” and since we have taken her off of all medication from her surgery (she got fixed, not that she was broken to begin with.)

Her training is slowly coming along, she still doesn’t care for going for walks yet, she feels that she could do better on her own without that cord in between the two of us, but she is getting better about it over time. 

Sept 22, 2008

 This evening, when we went to go for a walk tonight, we did something a little different.  Since Jasper is healing very well from her surgery, we decided to put her backpack on (Outward Hound) and see how she responded to it. The results were staggering, this is the first time that she made no real effort to pull, and she did everything by the book, dogs seem to know very well when they are working, and Jasper did her best so far tonight.