7½ weeks after my previous entry, and I'm happy to say that things are going very well with Kosbaar! The pesty mange appears to be something of the past, but we're still spraying her weekly with a preventative dip to make sure it does not return. Her hair is growing out nicely, and the few places that still looks 'spotty', are getting less obvious. As you look at the following images and videos, see how her appearance has changed over time.  And perhaps it would be a good thing to look at her earlier images, from the time we found her, now almost 4 months ago.

When we took her to the vet for her check-up last week, she was pleasantly surprised at her progress. She had gained another 5 kg, which makes it a total of at least 10 kg of flesh and muscle that she has put on since we'd found her (after having taken her initial dehydration into consideration, and allowing about 2.7 kg for that).

Her energy has no bounds! Every mealtime she literally hops and twirls around as she accompanies us to her bowl!  

A while ago she started pulling washing off the wash-line. We got confirmation for that, when we checked our security cameras. She had deliberately jumped up and pulled several pieces off the line, and then played with it like a cat with a mouse ... Gave her a stern talking, and she looked rather apologetic.  After the 3rd wash-line episode, and another very serious talk, it did not happen again. We do hope she's now over it! 

I made her a toy by plaiting strips of old cloth, and she rather enjoyed playing with it, but soon lost interest again. It seems like she only likes to play with it if one of us plays along!  She also lost interest in the hooves we bought her to chew on ...

At a stage I thought she was slowing down as far as her eating speed was concerned, but I was mistaken. She regularly still seems to almost attack her bowl of food, as if she hadn't been fed for days. She gobbles her food down, and barely chews. All that time while she had struggled to survive, seems to have made a permanent impact on her.  She still has two big meals a day, and now I'm trying to cut down on the 3rd meal, middle of the day, by slowly replacing it with snacks. Gradually I want to phase that out, because we cannot go away from home for more than a few hours, as leaving her with a large bowl of extra food won't be good. She'll probably eat herself into a stupor.

Three weeks ago my 5-year-old granddaughter visited, and at a stage we were blowing bubbles. My daughter managed to capture Kosbaar while she jumped up and grabbed a rather big bubble with her mouth! I must add that it was the only one she got hold of, before losing interest in them. Perhaps it was the taste of that bubble that put her off! :-)

By now she has learned to sit, and is quite good at it. But we're trying to teach her not to jump up against us. She is heavy, and can easily hurt someone if she does that, especially as she appears to do so in a rather clumsy way. We also don't want her to annoy visitors. She frequently wants to give us her paw to hold – I guess we can call it "her default". This is such a nice gesture of hers, but her paw comes down hard and heavy if one happens to be in its way, and she can easily hurt someone that way. We'll have to work on that somehow, without crushing her friendly spirit.

It's fun (for both her and us) to have her catch her snacks, whether it is an apple core, or a pellet. 

Two days ago was a landmark for Kosbaar. We took her for her very first walk outside our yard.  It went much better than we'd anticipated, but when dogs charged towards their own gate as we were passing by on the other side of the road, we had difficulty restraining her. She still needs quite a bit of training!

Riana

10 August 2018