Nushie

I use it on my pug and it works well, he still sheds but it is reduced. And as someone else said, make sure you dont put too much pressure on it when you are brushing. Ebay has them for around $15 free delivery. I have seen them instores for around $50-$75.

Thanks BCP - i know its not a major issue at the moment as i dont mind leaving him in his pen during the day. I would just like to enforce as many good habits as possible while he is still young. Just thought there might be something that i have missed in his training or something else i can do to reward the good behaviour while we are home so that when we are out he thinks twice before going on the carpet. If not, then i will just keep doing what i am doing and hope that over the next couple of months it starts to click for him. Cheers

Hi guys, I am currently at a loss as to what to do about this. We live in an apartment with only a balcony which we will eventually get a dog door installed onto it so that Jager (6 months) can toilet outside on a pet loo. At the moment we have a play pen set up for him so that when we are at work he has his pet loo, bed, water and toys. The problem being that when we are home he is has access to the lounge, kitchen and study which is where we spend all our time when we are home. When we are home, he always toilets on his pet loo. Without fail, no issues at all. He runs over goes and when we know that he is going we make sure that we praise and treat him. We have tested leaving him out for short periods (for the half hour after i leave for work and my boyfriend getting up) and if he needs to go he wont go on the pet loo, he goes on the carpet (he does pee in the right spot, just doesnt poop there). I have no idea how to fix this, as he hasnt had a mistake while we are home in months. We praise him and treat him when we are there so that he knows that is the right thing to do, but how do we fix it if he only does the wrong thing while we arent there? I am hoping that we can get the door done this weekend as i have 4 days off so hopefully that will give us some time to get Jager used to going through the dog door and going out to "go". Do you think that because his toilet has always been inside that he just assumes that the house is just a giant toilet tray? Will moving his toilet outside help him understand the difference between where he should go? I dont particularly want him going to the toilet on the concrete on the balcony, but if it comes down to it and it is that or the carpet, the concrete is easier to clean and get rid of the smell. He is due to be desexed soon, will that assist at all? I have had a few people say that is just a fluke that he goes in the right place when we are home. But not one mistake in the past months when we are home and without fail, if he needs to poop while we aren't there, it is on the carpet. I think i am starting to blabber on a bit, but his pen gets cleaned every week, grass gets replaced for clean grass twice a week. I know we probably made the mistake of not starting out with the toilet outside, but he we didnt want him out the balcony all day while we were at work when he was so young. Once the dog door is in, he will have access to the balcony (which we have secured) and we will set the play pen up inside around the door so that he can also come in and sleep inside if he wants (with the laminate that we currently have under his pen so that he doesnt ruin the carpet). Any ideas / suggestions on how we can teach him to go to the correct place while we aren't there is greatly appreciated. One last thing, he doesn't always go in the same spot. And the carpet is cleaned properly and then vinegar used to neutralise the smell. He has done so well in all other ares of training and there are times when i would like to leave him with access to the lounge area when i go down to the shops for 10minutes but until we get on top of this, i can't as i dont want him to get into the habit of 'mums away, poop where ever' I dont know if this is just going to be something that we will just have to put up with and continue doing what we are doing and hope that one day it will stick. I think that is it..... thanks guys

Jager sleeps in a crate next to my bed, he has since day one and will continue to until he settles down a bit. I still dont think he is 100% toilet trained and although he sleeps through the night in his crate, he is pretty lazy and if left on our bed, i think when he decided he needed to go he would just walk to the corner and go instead of making the journey to the right place. Besides the fact that i already have a cat on the bed and she makes it hard enough to sleep, add a dog to that and i dont think i would get any. Once he grows up and is able to settle quicker, he will stay in his crate. Just to steal the topic quickly - for those of you who let your pups sleep on the bed, how do you teach them to settle and learn that the bed is a calm place for sleeping?? At the moment, as soon as I put Jager in his crate he is quiet and i dont hear a peep out of him unless he needs the toilet. But on the odd occasion on the weekend when i thought i would bring him up for a cuddle, he goes mad and just wants to run all over the bed and licks your face etc.

I have heard this one a lot and i dont understand it. My parents didnt breed a dog just for a bunch of pups so that i could experience it and i think i turned out fine. I dont understand the lesson these parents are hoping to teach there kids from this. I baffles me to be honest.

I am pretty sure Jager sleeps most of the day as nothing much gets moved around in his play pen. He gets a frozen stuffed kong when i leave at 6.30 and then another at 9.30 when my boyfriend leaves (the first is usually half eaten when he gets the second one) but both are always empty by the time i get home. Sometimes he gets treats in his A-mazing ball, but thats more for when we are only leaving him for an hour or so. In general he just gets his kongs. He also has a chew that i put it in his pen when i leave and it stays in the same spot for the entire day and then when i get home and he has calmed down and i have got a cuppa or sat down to read or something, he runs back to his pen and grabs his chew. Apparently it is only something he can do when mum is around. Kongs rock!

My teacher at puppy school suggested everyone there get there dogs desexed, when one lady said she wanted to breed dog (some form of poodle x), the teacher gave the class a lecture (not harsh just informative) about the reasons why you should desex its benefits and how breeding should be left to the registered breeders etc. I was pretty happy with her after that.

Jager used to be an early riser. As soon as the birds started outside at around 5am he was awake. I used to take him to the toilet, then return him to his crate. If he made a fuss i would grumble at him and give him a firm 'No'. He has always responded well to a good 'No'. Over time it got later and later until he was waking up at my alarm at 6am and then i couldnt hit snooze cause it would wake him up. Now i can snooze it 3 times before I have to get up and even then Jager struggles, he just goes back to sleep as soon as we are upstairs, i have a morning coffee while watching some morning tv and he sleeps on my lap. On weekends we sleep in until around 8am when he wakes up. I then take him upstairs, give him his breakfast and a stuffed kong and then trundle back to bed. That keeps him entertained until i get up at 10am.

I think my mum was paying around $30 a day for two visits a day and an hours walk for her Dally.

When we picked up Jager we got a huge puppy pack with all sorts of stuff. We didnt sign a contract just had to fill in all the details for his microchip. We spent about an hour at the breeders house which i think was good, she was really helpful, answered all the questions that had been milling around in my mind, plus she told us heaps of other stuff that i had forgotten to ask. During the time that we were there Jager was running around their lounge room investigating stuff so by the time we left he was exhausted and as soon as we got in the car, he fell asleep. So maybe try and tucker the little girl out before you head off on the 5 hour trip home? Other than that i cant really help but i wish you all the best and expect to see some photos of the cutie when you get her home.

Hi i have the same problem (at least that is one of the many problems i have) and i what i would suggest is that you buy some dowel or something and cut that to length so that it fits in the tracks nice and snug. So pull one of the sliding doors so that it is as far as it goes towards the middle of the door and put some dowel in that track so that the door cannot be slid back. Then pop your dog door in and close the other glass door to meet it. Then do put some dowel in that track. You will have to make sure it is nice and tight as you dont want the doors to be able to be slid back at all. When you want to go out the doors, just remove one of the pieces of dowel and slid that door open. Our major issue is that our glass doors are on the outside of the screen doors so the tracks are on the outside of the solid door, so dowel is not an option and the landlord doesnt want us installing the patio locks (cause it involves drilling). So we are at a loss. Hope that helps

I have actually seen them on ebay but again the doors arent big enough even with the extension. "Extensions for doors taller than 212 cm need to be custom made . Total cost , if ordered together with the Portable pet door is $60.00" so it works out to be $300 which would be fine, but seeing as it doesnt have the clear panels. I htought I may as well see how much it costs to get a handyman to put one together for me maybe he can also work out a good way to secure it for me as well But they are really cheap and if i had a standard door, that would be the way i would go.

Im not too worried about the light as that entire wall is glass, floor to ceiling and about 6m across the room. But yeah, i think that will be my plan.

Thanks! I was thinking of finding a handyman in my area to knock it together as i am not all that great with tools

No, but he doesnt toilet outside anyway, he has access to the pet loo that he has been trained to use since we got him as we dont have any grassed area outside. Apart from when he is crated at night, he always has access to his toilet. We watched him like a hawk all last night and he no problems, no hesitation. Just went straight to his toilet when he needed to. So i dont know what has happened.

So Jager has been really good with toilet training over the last couple of months and we really haven't had any mistakes (especially with wee). So i get home from work and he has pee'd on my lounge. I am not sure why, nothing that i can think of has changed, no change in diet, no change in routine. He even sleeps on the lounge with us at night so i just want to find out if anyone can think of why all of a sudden a 5 month old would do it? Poor guy just lost his house privileges while we are out.

Has anyone attempted to make their own? I have been thinking that i might be easier for me. My door is 2600mm high. Even the 'tall' version only goes to 2450mm so i would have to buy 3 of the 60mm extensions to make it fit. And i have only see the extensions available for purchase at 1 place and they are about $100 each! So a $300 door (have seen them on ebay for that) becomes $600. Sure a home made version wouldnt have the nice clear window in it. But if i can wack one together for $150 myself i think i can live with a solid panel down the middle of my doors.

Jager tends to be pretty good. All his toys end up in the same place. In the morning i put everything in his play pen (left open during the day as he has access to the lounge, dining and kitchen areas) when i come home everything gets dragged out and ends up at the top of the stairs (the first place he sees us when we come home), then during the course of the night everything migrates into the lounge room, he drags them in one by one. Once i go to bed and my boyfriend works on the computer in the second bedroom, Jager brings the toys in there. And thats where i find them in the morning when i dump them all back into his pen. Where ever we are, Jager is and where ever Jager is, his toys are

My dad got a DVD with one of the Don Burkes mag's and it was the top 6 dog breeds in Australia (according to Burke himself) and out of the 6, 4 were DD's. He then went on to describe how much better DD's were and how it eliminates health issues etc. It was all total Bull S.....!

Hi all, Just got a quick question about locking the pig in mud panel. We have a double sliding door (meets in the middle of the wall and both slide back) Was wondering if those that already own the insert could have a look and tell me if they think it would be possible to screw the locking parts of the door onto the pig in mud insert? So essentially having 2 locks on the door. I dont mind if the entire panel and doors move back and forth but due to the fact that the glass doors slide on the outside of the solid stationary doors so i cant put a runner lock in or a piece of wood in the runners. So i need the doors to physically lock into the insert. I have added some diagrams below if that helps. First is how the doors are at the moment. Second is how i hope it will be possible to fix them together. Green lines indicate the solid fixed glass doors Red lines are the sliding glass doors Light blue is the dog door insert Black things are the door locks. So i am thinking of buying another set of the same door locks and attaching them to the pig in mud insert so that it all becomes one solid moving panel.

Jager used to be the same when we first got him home. He would always circle and sniff to do a poo, giving you plenty of warning (as long as you are watching) so you could race him off to the right spot to go. However there was absolutely no warning at all when he needed to pee. He would be walking through the lounge room and just squat. No sniffing, no whimpering, nothing. We used to watch him like a hawk and even then cause there was no warning we missed a fair few times, but we would catch him in the act. As soon as he squatted he would give a firm no or BAH etc. and then pick him up and take him to the toilet and then praise him. He pretty much never continued to pee once we put him in the correct spot, but we praised him anyways. Eventually he got it. As long as you catch them in the act you can teach them. From about 11weeks he would generally go to the right spot with only a few mistakes. Everytime we saw him heading off in the direction of the toilet we would grab a treat and quietly follow him. Once done we would praise and give him a treat. From there we moved onto no treats, just lots of praise and cheering. One night friends came over for dinner and drinks they thought we were mad as both my boyfriend and i would go nuts, cheering and clapping our hands. By the end of the night, whenever Jager went to the toilet everyone was cheering him. He was the happiest little puppy, come running back inside and run around to different people lapping up as many pats as he would get. So just keep an eye on him, give a No if you see him go, pick him up, put him in the right spot and praise. Good luck

Thanks Schnauzer, but i think Eastern Suburbs will work out after all. I just assumed that it was like set weeks that you had to attend, but if i can just come and go as i please then it is fine. Do you go to Eastern Suburbs dog club?? Just to get it straight in my head (read the website but still a little confused) you pay the $30 to become a member for the year and then each time you attend is $3 on the day??

Oh i get it now. I just assumed all class levels were in blocks of 6-8 weeks with a test at the end. But if is just the beginners class and then when i progress i can go as i please that would be perfect. Well than thats fine, i can get myself organised for the beginners class. So do the instructors tell / suggest to you when they think you are ready to take the test to progress to the next level or do you just nominate yourself?

Bento is such a cutie! With Jager whenever he bit we would give a firm 'NO' and then stop playing with him, just sit and ignore him, not even looking at him for about 10sec until he calmed down and then we would distract him with a toy that he could chew and bite. Most of the time this worked but sometimes he would still go back to biting in which case after the third 'No' and distraction, the game was over. We ignored him, put him on the floor if he was on the lounge and just gave him something to chew on but we wouldnt play with him. We did this from day 1 in our house as i didnt want to get him into the habit of mouthing us or visitors. By the time he was 12weeks and we went to puppy school our instructor was super impressed with him. It is just patience and persistence. Jager responds really well to 'No' and if you say it firm he will always stop whatever he is doing. If Bento responds well to something else use that instead. You just have to make it clear that if they bite they dont get your attention and the game stops. Good luck with him.

Thanks deelee. I would start in the adult beginners and go from there. But the dog has to be over 6months so we will have to wait for a month or so. The only problem i have with Eastern Suburbs Club is that they run early morning Sundays but Sundays are the only days that i can catch up with my family (usually about once a month) so i would be missing a few classes due to that. I was hoping to find one that ran on Saturdays. I dont mind early mornings, just that Sundays arent very convientent.