corvus

Corgis can definitely be vocal when excited.

It is true that you can't be sure your current dog is fretting from general loneliness or fretting because you aren't around. But given your recent experiences it sounds like it's worth a shot, but I think you should have a plan for how to deal with it if it doesn't permanently help your current dog. My younger one is very bonded to the older guy, but not to the extent that he wouldn't happily head off on an outing with just me and leave the older dog behind. I didn't do much in the way of separation training with him early on. He is fine as long as he has me, or the other dog, or the OH. All of us is best.

If you are coming up our way, WS, we need to organise a spitz meet!

Erik started asking when I started paying him for going. He went through a phase where he refused to go on the grass if it was wet (pansy). So I would go out with him, tell him to water the grass and then give him a treat when he did. Since he cottoned on to that, he will find a way to tell me to open the door and accompany him outside so I can reward him when he pees. Often it's barking, but then he barks about a lot of things. So he will start banging things around in the kitchen and scratching at the door until I realise what he's on about and let him out. I am starting to catch on to what Erik's "I need to go out!" bark sounds like. Mind you, Kivi gets treats if he goes on the grass as well, just because Erik does. So Kivi still doesn't make any noise to ask to go out, but he does fake peeing, comes to collect his treat, and then turns around and goes back out to do a real one. Had to start watching him and bring in the "No really, you only get one treat per outing regardless of how many times you pee" rule. He's adorable. I do vaguely recall him scratching at the door one time, so maybe he does ask now and just never needs to because Erik usually can't last as long as he can.

The water bottles on the lawn works here! We hustle the doggies past the lawn littered with water bottles lest the crazy dog hater inside see our dogs crapping on their lawn (and us picking it up).

To me, a well socialised dog is one that talks dog well. There are lots of styles and mannerisms out there, and I think a well socialised dog should be able to makes sense of the majority of it. They don't have to like playing to be well socialised.

This shit happens all the time folks. There's a thin line between being suitably angry about it and being a crazy dog person. I never yell at anyone doing the wrong thing because I don't know when my dogs might somehow god forbid end up on the streets and I'll be depending on these same people I've yelled at to stop if they see them and get them off the road (and hopefully call us!). I foster good relations with other dog owners wherever I can because it's like having a support network. When you're casual acquaintances you can suggest things to them and they might actually listen to you. You can ask them to help you out with setting up a training scenario, you can explain to them why you're setting it up, you can share information on what's happening in the area with dogs and where there are dogs you need to watch out for. You can set a good example and they might actually think about following it if your dogs behave impressively and they've seen it work for you. There's always going to be people that you can't change, and yelling at them is certainly not going to work where all else has failed. I'd rather manage it and not gain an enemy in the community in the process. At least that way I won't have to worry that they know where my dogs live and have motive to get back at me or something. And I keep thinking about what happens if my dogs get out or get away from us somehow. The more people I have onside the more folks out there that might stop and pick them up. So I keep doing the right thing and being tolerant and making friends with dog owners, or at least not making any enemies.

Just be careful with this one... Some herding dogs especially are driven to control moving things. For the longest time with Kivi I was freezing when he went for my feet or ankles and it eventually occurred to me that he was getting exactly what he wanted when I was doing that. He was stopping the moving objects. I started carrying a tug toy and when I'd run with him I'd hold the tug toy out so he could focus on that instead. It made all the difference.

http://www.scdtc.org/index.htm

Just don't get the Karen Pryor target stick. It's lame and it broke within a few weeks of getting it. I have one of those purple ones with a clicker in the handle, now. The clicker is pretty ordinary and feels like it'll break sooner or later, but the targeting bit is sturdy.

Erik, being a drivey herder, was very difficult when it came to biting shoes and legs. In the end, we used a combination of telling him to sit, asking for a heel to the nearest toy, and then throwing the toy. It was important to walk very very slowly to avoid triggering him. It's hard to believe now that he was ever such a monster, although every now and then when he's very excited he walks on your heels and may be caught with a pant cuff in his mouth when you turn around.

Same as Staranais. Our dogs have a "hold up" cue to remind them if they get caught up in something and start to pull. I think in future I'm just going to teach them that the tension on the leash is the "hold up" cue and forgo the verbalising.

Haha, yes! But I'm worse. They don't even have to be on me. I just don't want to disturb them. I will put off lunch for over an hour waiting for the dogs to wake up naturally. They never do.

Cool, you'll have to introduce yourself, skip. Lisa is fabulous. She brought three of her kids along to our last southern Sydney/Wollongong beach meet. They are heaps of fun, and she's a great trainer. Erik thinks the sun shines out of Pilatus' rear.

Kivi only just started cocking his leg and he was neutered at 6 months. He's now just over 2 years. Bemusing, but OH has been rewarding the hell out of it. What is it with men that think their male dogs should cock their legs?? I think it's more a social maturity thing. Kivi has been acting much more socially mature lately. I don't see a need to do anything about it as long as you don't see it as a problem yourself. For some reason Kivi only marks trees at the dog park. That's all.

You never know, Kavik. We'll see how I go. In the meantime, you can always check out my tugging fiend on YouTube: I don't know how a 10.6kg dog can make himself so heavy. It's a good workout trying to drag that dog around on the end of a tug toy.

Also, can I just say I'm wildly in love with Katie's adorable face.

She's got the moves and the attitude. I like how the dog almost doesn't even need to look up to look her in the eye. I kinda want to say she's cute, but it's not really the right word. She's too accomplished to be cute!

Goddamn, she can yell!

I'm in Jannali, next suburb north of Sutherland. I actually hate long drives, but I looked around at all the clubs nearby and asked for recommendations here and decided it was either travel an hour on the freeway for Dapto or an hour through Sydney to Parramatta. I like freeway driving better. Erik and I did the relationship course at SCDTC back in March and start foundation agility next week. I like the things they teach there and the relationship course is such a great introduction. So far I've found the trainers to be really helpful and terribly tolerant of my questions. Plus, there's another Vallhund going through with us so every time Erik does something obnoxious I can point at the other Vall and say "See, he's doing it too! It's not me!" Where's PICSI? Laffi takes her dogs to Sutherland for agility.

I deliberately don't go there. They have a bad reputation as yank and crankers for obedience, but they aren't like that for agility and flyball. I'm doing agility at the South Coast Dog Training Club in Dapto, but I expect once I have a vague idea what I'm doing I'll switch to agility at Sutherland. The 50 minute drive is a bit rough. Which puppy preschool are you going to? Will we get to see you around at Carina Bay dog park?

I'm not trying to push a point here, but I suggest that it's not so unlikely. For example, the dog park at it's busiest is less of a distraction for my dogs than a single dog on a leash when we are walking them on leash in the street. So that's kinda what I was getting at. For them to be good off leash in a distracting environment and on leash in a distracting environment is assuming the off leash environment is inherently more distracting than the on leash environment, but that's not necessarily the case if the off leash environment is the everyday one where all the training gets practised. Eh, I think I'm just confusing the subject for no real reason. Never mind.

"I understand" perhaps? You were the one that was confused. I was just trying to clarify by way of example. Presumably some dogs are better at generalising than others. I tend to assume that if there's a detail in the surroundings that's different a known behaviour may as well be new. I've never seen a dog that heels off leash start pulling on leash, but I have no doubt it could happen with the right circumstances.

Yeah, but the leash adds a potential frustration factor. Off leash I might be able to get a nice whip-around when my dog is, say, ten metres away from me and heading in the opposite direction, but on leash I have approximately a metre to get that whip-around before he hits the end of the leash and goes into "OMG, I want to but I can't!" mode. I'm not that good! I find it hard to build it up to the reliability I need it at for the distractions we encounter when on leash. We are pretty close to there with Kivi, but it all falls apart when he's about 2 metres away from a dog that is heading our way and he just KNOWS he's going to get to say hi. I wish I could shout at them to stop coming closer when he's being an idiot, but it's only going to make me look like a nutter and I'm way too friendly to shout at strangers. It comes down to exactly what you've said: what you have trained for. If you haven't trained a good heel under distractions on leash, then why would a dog that does it off leash necessarily generalise? For example, Kivi can do a nice informal heel on leash or off under distraction, but only if he's positioned so he can swing in from behind or from the side. Actually turning around if he's in front and returning to the side is completely different to him.

Ignore what I said about collars and leashes being a tool for a moment. My point was why should someone wean their dog off, say, a head collar or no-pull harness? You said off leash reliability is something everyone wants, and I'm saying you can have off leash reliability and still need to walk your dog on a head collar or whatever. It just depends on what you spend your time on. Off leash reliability it important for us because we mostly walk our dogs off leash at the dog park. They are way more reliable off leash than on because that's where we've put in most of our work. There's that tendency to switch off once they are on leash. In my mother's case, her requirements are not as stringent as ours. She doesn't meet many dogs when she's got hers off leash and those she does meet are friends' dogs in most cases. All she wants is that they come back when called. They do. And she puts them back on the head collar. If she wanted to get them off the head collars she could train it. She has the ability. She just doesn't have the motivation. I think that's fine as long as she and her dogs are happy and safe, which they are.