Anissa

Hi Tatsu, the best "diet" is to exercise him because if you simply reduce the calorie intake the metabolism will slow down and the diet is not very successfull. If you prepare the food for him (other then buying industrial food) I would stick to lean meat (for high quality protein) and veggies (not many fruits due to the high sugar content). To prevent him from being to hungry all the time, you can add more "fillers" (like potatoes, pumpkin or brown rice). I would also add some rosmary to the each meal, since it is good for activating the metabolism and reducing weight. I wouldnt' fast him too much but one day a week is usually fine if he getz more exercise on that day (to prevent the metabolism to slow down). Most dogs cope with the fasting but if he keeps vomiting maybe it's no good for him. If he eats a lot of grass, than you can add some to his normal food. It can be a sign that something is missing in his diet. If you reduce the amount of food it is very important to feed good quality food (I prefer selfmade, raw food with fresh meat, veggies and herbs) to make sure he gets all nutritiens he needs.

I do have a couple of stuff but it is all in German. This one is fantastic but it would take me a while to translate: Cancer and Food by Silvia Dierauer One of the main points is to feed NO CEREALS whatsoever and just fresh food with good quality proteins.

First of all there is no such thing as a homoeopathic vaccination. Secondly, homoeopathy never works as a preventive treatment and should only be used as a remedy for symptoms actually shown. I do treat my dogs a lot with homoeopathic medicine and know for sure it works very well. If you want to treat your dog with homoeopathy, please consult a homoeopath, someone who learned it properly. Otherwise go for the traditional methods because you actually CAN harm by simply giving (wrong) homoeopathic remedies (especially in such low potencies like C3,4 or 5 since these still contain a large amount of the original substance).

Hi, a homoeopathic therapy is a very complex and individual thing and requires a direct contact to a therapist. You CAN treat that sort of behaviour with homoeopathy but as a therapist you need the whole picture to find the right remedy for your individual dog. Especially when your dog is very senstitive anyway giving the wrong remedy could cause a severe first reaction (which is a common thing when using C and D potencies) and should probably be treated with a Q/LM potency which AGAIN requires close contact to the therapist! You shouldn't try a remedy by yourself or by recommendation of someone who is not an animal homoeopath since your dog can experience severe side effects from a wrong remedy! PLEASE, if you want to use homoeopathy: go to a classical homoeopathic therapist!!!! Don't try it on your own, you can definately worsen things and make it very difficult for a therapist to deal with a therapy afterwards. Cheers, Anissa

I have done "ski joering" with my dogs in the german winter, which is a bit similar to pulling the sled. I used nordic ski and had my waist belt with two leashes attached and my doggies were pulling me. like that: The dogs wear special pulling harnesses (to distinguish between "non pulling street harness" and "pulling ski harness"). :D

Hi all, I am an absolute clicker addict for over 10 years now. The dogs school I worked at back in Germany solely worked with clicker training and both of my dogs are trained with it. I bought most of my stuff back there (in german) but order new books at dogwise. They seem to be very reliable with the delivery. Here are another clicker page I really love: Clicker Solutions They even have a mailing list about clicker training. :D My doggies love to learn new tricks and are nice "service dogs" by now.

Mine has a snap hook at the and not a choke collar.

I use a "hands free" leash for my collie girl. It is one from a "hunting shop" in Germany and you wear it like a handbag over your shoulder/across you upper body (don't know how to describe it better, will try to find a picture :D ). I love to use it with her, she is extremely reliable with her loose leash walking and very well mannered. But as amhailte said before, when using something like that on a (big) dog that is not reliable, you can have bad accidents. I use a jogging belt with Manu (my greyhound cross) when I go running with him. But I have to admitt that I fell twice because he was going after a rabbit (which I haven't seen in the first place). (apart from that I love the belt, I run long distances with my dogs and Manu has to stay on the lead. So keeping a leash in my hand would give stiff shoulder muscles after a short while. he is quite reliable now but I am always careful. usually he is really good after running 15 k or so. at least the following 15 or 20 k are quite relaxed )

The dogs love to follow me anyway so why not heeling. I 've never thought of that option but I am sure they will love to have a new "job" in sticking to my knee.

Great idea, I've never thought of that before!

Me again! Some stuff I do for my dogs: - filling a kong with peanut butter and dry dog food/bickies (takes a while to get all that sticky stuff out) - I use the (cut off) legs of old jeans as toys and put a good smelling dog bickie in it an tie it - You can pack a parcel for your dog using a carton and loads of old newspaper (most dogs love to produce a mess ) and fill some treats inbetween so your dog needs to search for them. - You can hide treats for her in the whole house and she can look for them while you are away Cheers, Anissa

You can use any reward your dog actually sees as a reward. Since your dog seems to enjoy close body contact a simple pat might be a good reward. I use different food rewards: I have several different types of treat which have different "values" for my dogs. I use simple commercially available dog treats, selfmade liver-carot treats and their absolute highlight are these dog sausages (junk junk junk food!!!) Depending how difficult the lession was I give different types of treats. For my collie girl a play of fetch is a nice reward as well.

Hi Bret, it is very hard to give an exact tip what you shoul do without seeing you two work together but from your description I wonder if the problem might be that you are reinforcing the unwanted behaviour without wanting to. Obviously your dog can't distinguish between wanted behaviour and unwanted. IMO your dog is an "attention junkie" and every type of attention seems to reinforce her (for example bringing her back to her mat). IMO you should focus on sending clearer messages and unwanted behaviour has to be completely ignored. Cheers, Anissa

Good question!!! Luckily I have no probs with my back and do loads of sports anyway so the handling is not a problem for me. But I would recommend doing sports when you have back probs.

Congratulations! Obviously Lucy liked being back! :D

Hi Erny, I don't use (even a normal flat) collars generally and don't like them for my dogs. For Peaches (my Collie girl) it would probabely make no difference since she would never under no circumstances pull on the leash but Manu is still a bit unpredictable (he is a Galgo X and can't help it :D ) even though he is walking perfect on the leash in 95% of the time. But IF he decides to go after a rabbit (or whatever) he could hurt himself severly by wearing any type of collar. Have you read the book of Anders Hallgren about back problems of dogs (I'm not sure if it is available in english, I have read it in german)? He strongly recomends the use of harnesses since you can minimise the risk of injuring the dog's back. For this reason I have never used collars on Manu and therefore have no experiences with any type. I don't doubt that you are sending your message more precisely using a martingal (or whatever) collar. I personally choose to get my results a bit slower rather than risking back problems in my dog but its definately everybodys own choice of which tools you like to use.

I have shaped id freely to Peaches, she is always streching after a nice sleep. :rolleyes: Took me a while untill she figured out what I want but it's her most favourite trick. Manu just copied Peaches one day and learned it instantly. That was really funny!

@ K9 and Erny I absolutely agree that there is no such thing a a simple recipe to train a specific task or avoid a specific behaviour for every dog. I also just wanted to point out that neither a collar (nor the clicker of course) is the solution to every problem they are just tools you can choose to use (or not). It alway requires to see the whole picture when you want to train a dog or get rid of unwanted behaviour. I have to admit that I am a clicker addict and always try to go that way as far as I can. But my experience is that I am definately I am able to teach the loose leash walking not stopping or sitting if I do the "whole thing" (stopping when pulling AND walking & rewarding when not). If I would just stop and refuse to walk any further after the dog started pulling once, your arguments would be correct but I combine two things in my lesson: the way that won't work (pulling the leash) and the way that works for the dog (walking on the loose leash). I have applied this method on many dogs (probabely by far not as much as you two have trained) and up to now it worked every time, sometimes it took longer, sometimes I achieved results very quickly.

Have you ever thought about clicker training? It is a nice and easy method to teach your dog what you want (for example stay on your bed not on my couch). I am personally not a fan of choke, martingal or any other type of collar that can hurt the dog or works as some sort of punishment because it is simply like K9 wrote before: it will teach your dog what you don't want but not what you want. When teaching a dog to walk on a loose leash I go for the "traffic lamp principle": pulling = red lamp = brakes/stopping (you can even walk slowly backwards a bit) & walking on the loose leash = green lamp = walking forward + reward/praise. You can include the clicker in this as well by rewarding the wanted behaviour with an additional "click & treat". In this way you not only tell what you don't want but alos offer an alternative behaviour. So simply using a certain collar type is not the solution (if you feel more comfortable while using a martingal or whatever, that's your choice) you have to make it clear to your dog what you want.

Is he more distressed lately? Dogs tend to shake as some sort of calming signal (not really a calming signal since it usually occurs after stress). Maybe he has some pain in his back? Has anything changed shortly befor he started with that behaviour?

I am in touch with Dr. Fedderson-Peterson in Germany about this study on the usage of prong collars and hope to get her publication and the latest data soon.

Yes, I am german and I am not very good in writing my thoughts in english, so a lot of my stuff comes out a bit different to what I meant. I will do my best to write it more acurately. So you are absolutely right that keeping Manu muzzled on an the lead is management not training. I train him _additionally_ (with a bit of success by now) but we are far away from our goal yet. Again quite off topic, sorry for that! edit: by the way, thanks for the link!

I have to admitt that I have not hoge experiences but one of my dogs is aggressive as well and I train him now for 2 years with some improvement. But I am pretty sure that it is very unlikely to cure aggression completely. Aggession tends to be a very self rewarding and therefore "successful" behaviour for the dog. Even if you have trained an alternating behaviour this "option" will stay for the dog and I personally wouldn't trust my dog... ;) But meybe someone else was really successful? And as a tip: there are some very good books about aggressive behaviour. I personally like the ones from James O'Heare. You get a lot of insight into that topic.

You just need an opportunity to reward him, so maybe a good distraction will work.

Hi Rhi, the problem is that your dog enjoys the barking itself so you can't remove the reinforcer in this case which makes it REALLY difficult. What you can try is to for example give a kong for play filled with yummy stuff, so you can leave hin outside for maybe 10 mins and he will be busy with his kong. You will have to carefully watch him and just return before he is finished and reward him for being quiet. Additionally you can start to train the "stay" so that your dog learns to be "left behind".