corvus

Haha, but something I've thought about myself. I have long thought that Kivi is a tactile dominant dog. He seems to find excuses to get you to put your hands on him. I found in training that he learns new things more quickly if I give tactile clues, like touching the body part I want him to move. I eventually decided to target train him as a result of that and his dislike of free shaping. I don't think he's very sensitive to touch given he has such thick fur, though. My other dog is extremely sensitive to touch. So much so that it seems counter-productive to try to use it much. He goes weak at the knees if you scratch his back. Apparently most Vallhunds are like that. I hear that many Greyhounds are as well.

Why would it be less likely to happen on a collar over a harness? That doesn't make sense. Trust me, after the first time I was pretty motivated to avoid that in future! I do line us up and Kivi has been taught to pass on my side of them. But his head is in the clouds a lot of the time. It seems a very easy thing to happen to me, especially if you have a lazy sod of a dog who trots a half pace behind you where you can't see him so well. Incidentally, I don't run with him anymore because I got tired of towing him up the hills. I'm not on a "collars are dangerous" crusade, although we all know they come with dangers, but I find it peculiar that I'm apparently the only one that considers accidents? I originally went from collars to Ruff Wear harnesses after someone related a story about walking their dog in the bush and having a cliff edge give way underneath the dog and having to haul it back up by the leash on the harness. Given that has actually happened to me while walking alone it didn't seem like a wildly improbable accident, especially considering we live in an area heavily populated with cliffs. Not to mention poles. ;) Also jetties, boulders, and rock walls. And broken glass and oyster shells. And slippery rocks flanking deep water. Well, that was lucky! Last year I had a dog charge Kivi from about 50 metres away. It felt quite luxurious. I had a good 5 seconds to get myself organised and "step in". My previous charging experiences had been on the streets where a dog has come out of a yard or something and I had not even had 2 seconds to do something about it.

I saw the team on Barking Mad help someone train a deaf Dally one time. They used a vibration collar for recalls and really big, exaggerated hand signals. More like arm signals. The dog was so excited to finally understand what was going on that he was super reliable with the cues. It was really touching. I don't understand how a vibration could be more aversive than an electric stimulation. Could you elaborate, Erny?

Am I the only one that has safety concerns over any tool that gives you one point of contact with your dog at the neck or head? I broke one of the D rings on our walking belt one day when jogging with Kivi. Ran alongside a pole and didn't think to tell Kivi to stay close. He was a half step behind me and had been right on my leg, but somehow he went on the other side and we strung ourselves up. I was glad he was on a harness. He looked pretty shaken. I sure was. It happened again a couple of months later. And there were the two times I had to swing my last dog out of the way of a charging dog. She was on a check chain both times and it's the reason why I stopped using them. I dunno if I'm just being paranoid, but that really bothers me. I guess a flat collar or martingale wouldn't be so bad, but it seriously worries me what would happen if a head collar or prong (or check chain, although we've already been there) took the full weight of my dog (plus some?) by accident.

Sounds like you're doing the right thing to me. Is it just me that thinks that sounds pretty full on for a 14 week old puppy, though?? I have an 11 month old dog that tried that on at 9 weeks and he's a handful, but even so, when he did try it on it was little more than a growl and a rush. Since then he has discovered that some dogs bite back and is more apt to do a submissive crawl than an aggressive snap. If I were you, I'd be sticking closely to NILIF and keeping an eye on things. There was a puppy in my older dog's puppy class that was picking fights from the word go and she was a bully breed of some type. I guess some dogs can have sort of aggressive personalities.

I think everyone knows you can't stand head collars, huski. I don't think I'd want to be locked in to using any training tool short of a leash. Different clubs have their beliefs, though. I think it's safe to say I wouldn't sign up to any club that had a blanket policy about a training tool, although I did sign up to a club that required me to have a tug toy, so maybe that's an exception to the rule. That said, staffy lover said nothing about whether the head collar had to be used or for how long. I think most things are voluntary, even if they are strongly recommended.

How short are we talking with fur? Swedish Vallhunds are a BIG dog in a small body, but they have a double coat. It's a short double coat, though. My little Vall is an awsome companion dog. He's a great watchdog, a total cuddle monster, dead easy to train, very people focused, and loves an off leash romp/game of tug or fetch. Valls are a little on the noisy side, though.

Pyry's skin is not raised or inflamed, but just gets dry and flakey. He scratches a lot, though. Poor little Loki. :D Hope you can work it out.

Kivi experienced vomiting, lethargy and decreased appetite and Erik just the latter two the first time. We gave them with food as experiences shared on here were that if not given with food the dogs would most likely vomit. It wasn't scary vomit, just once, mostly saliva. The second time was similar, but not as bad for Kivi and no real side effects for Erik - maybe he was an itsy bit down. The third time Kivi didn't vomit and was only mildly depressed and Erik was fine. After that there were no discernable side effects in either. I don't regret it for a second. Our flea infestation was something out of a nightmare. Poor little Erik was waking us up in the night because he was so itchy he couldn't sleep.

I suspect the only thing to be learnt from that tragic death was to bloody well stop keeping orcas in captivity already. Didn't seem to be taken to heart. But that's a whole other story. I think he has a liking for the sound of his own voice. But he was the only one at the time that took notice of what I said about hares and encouraged me to apply what my hare had taught me to rearing puppies. For that I will always be forgiving of him. And I have always liked the "be the moose" analogy from Natural Dog Training. Social pressure is so often ignored in dog training. Of course, they have a kooky explanation for it all involving energy, but so does Cesar Milan. :D There are useful gems of truth in even the most unexpected places.

The first summer we were here the spot on treatments only worked for about a week if they worked at all. The vets said most of them weren't working. Last summer we got hold of Comfortis and 3 months later our dogs were completely flea free. In that time the flea burden on the dogs was low. Another 3 months and we are no longer treating them at all. We'll see what happens come spring. I love Comfortis. I swear it saved our lives! It is nasty stuff, though. Safe, but it took a few months for them to be able to take it without side effects on the first day.

It all sounds oddly familiar. My mother has a dog that has had chronic skin allergies his whole life. I'm not by any means saying that's what it is, but I think it's worth considering allergies. Pyry's skin is prone to being flakey and his coat is always greasy. He gets yeasty ears a lot as well. When he's uncomfortable he starts behaving strangely. He gets into things left around and rips them up and becomes obsessed with breaking out of the yard. I can really imagine him just being driven to distraction by his itchyness or whatever it is that is causing his acute discomfort. He's a sweet, laid back guy and remains so when he's so uncomfortable, just starts acting weird. Taking grains out of his diet helped the allergies, and he must be washed every week to keep the yeast burdens at bay as he is getting older. But now my mum has just started full-time work for the first time in his life and he is worse than ever. Definitely a stressed out pup. So, all I'm really saying is that his behaviour is similar to that of Pyry when he is in distress. I hope you can get to the bottom of it all. There's nothing worse than knowing something is wrong but having nothing to treat.

LCK had a short and volatile membership at another forum I'm on. I've been told he has done similar things with dog forums before: joins up, gets into a lot of arguments, talks a lot about things that are completely unfounded in science, gets some people very upset and then vanishes. I'm going to make myself unpopular by saying I kind of like him. Once you get past the bluster and the more outrageous things he pulls out of nowhere, he's not so bad. I don't read the blog, though. I've found it to be far-fetched, even for him. I think dog's chase moving objects because the sight of them stimulates the "chase" response - provided arousal is also at a helpful level.

Sorry, not trying to be argumentative, but out of interest I find it's the human that gets confused more often than the dog. ;) Dogs are awesome at figuring out rules (like "I can jump on the bed without permission only on mornings where someone has got up for a while and then gone back to bed"). As long as you're consistent about when you expect which position. When Erik graduated from sleeping in a crate I was telling my friend I thought he'd be better at working out the complex rules of when a dog is allowed on the bed in our house better than I could ever be at deliberately teaching them to him. I said "He'll figure it out on his own in no time". He certainly did just that, and added "at 5am once gentle barks have partially awakened humans" and "at 5:30am when the alarm goes off if I'm not already up there" to the list of criteria for safe bed self-invitations. :p I find it amazing that they can be so sensitive to criteria. Sorry, maybe that was a bit OT.

Young. They are carefree, easy to please, and they run and play for the joy of it. They make me feel young, light-hearted and carefree myself. Who can be sad when they are so happy?

The only reason your dogs know where to go is from constant commanding until something works - so really they are not paying attention because they want to, it is because they have to. I mean when the dog consciously pays attention to your body language and follows you without having to be constantly told - and that cannot be done if they are ahead, then they have their own agenda unless you have specifically encouraged walking ahead (why I dont know I find it hideously annoying). Well, not quite. I like verbal directions, so I set out to teach them by the absorbtion method. :p I'm a verbal animal, so I figured if I'm going to verbalise at them all the time they may as well respond appropriatedly to it. I would say they barely pay attention at all. They just sub-consciously follow the suggestions. But it's still control, ain't it? If I want their active attention it's not a problem to get it. But like I said, I don't often walk them alone so we are pretty lax about what they do. It doesn't bother us so we haven't trained it. We just want them to come close when asked and leave things when asked and walk on a loose leash, so that's what we concentrated on. As far as I'm concerned, those things alone would be "control". Just depends what you want. I reckon if my dogs walked at my sides I'd still spend a lot of time telling them to leave the bird carcass/dirty tissue/possum poo/dead rat/chicken bones that I often don't see in time, anyway. I'm better than OH, though. ;)

Currently he's doing what you describe, with the left foot leading left and the right (front) foot coming to meet it. What I'm shaping is the right front foot crossing past the left front foot instead of just meeting it. I tried to find a video but somehow I couldn't! ETA Now get back to that basket! I'm like that. I get excitable and never quite perfect anything because I've raced off to try something else.

I dunno, Bub! Maybe they have real names. Sideways walk is just walking sideways. I was trying to shape him to walk sideways by crossing one front paw right over the other rather than just meeting the other. Does that make sense? Like horses do in dressage.

I think it's kind of human nature to do a bit of that. With my last dog I was starting to consciously tell myself to let the leash go. I would pull on it without even being aware of it. I felt like it was just making tense situations with other dogs (we had a lot of territorial dog issues back home) worse. I was going to teach my next dog with the leash tied to my waist so I'd learn to stop being so dependent on it, but ended up using long lines instead. Did the same with Erik.

Ha! Brilliant! Filming only let's you know how many times you messed up after the fact.

I think it doesn't really matter where they walk. I know someone with three dogs and he expects them all to walk at the side because he says he hates it when they walk all over the place or up ahead. He says he doesn't know how anyone stands it. I can appreciate that, because our dogs rarely get walked by one handler and so we never taught them not to meander all over the place. There was no need. They come in close when asked, leave things when asked and so on. The odd time someone does walk them both on their own they can be a pain. I put one leash on my waist belt and hold the other and that with verbal directions generally sorts the mess out, but sometimes it takes a little managing to get into the groove. I sometimes wish I'd taught them a specific place to walk. My mum has three dogs she walks on her own and they all have their "spot" to walk in. Pyry takes the left in heel or slightly behind, Shani takes the right, and Jill walks a little ahead. They are certainly allowed to wander around and sniff, but they rarely get tangled because they mostly stick to their spots. You just have 'em where you find it most comfortable and least annoying. It's just a walk. As long as everyone is getting along and behaving to the walker's standards I don't see why it should matter. ETA Both my dogs tend to go nuts if they see a cat running past on walks. That's why I taught 'em alternative behaviours. We play "Look At That" with the Lappie and cue a tug game with the Vall. Problem solved.

We all know what it's like. I spent about the last 6 months of my last dog's life angsting to online friends and my mum about it. Everyone kept saying to me "You'll know when it's time". I did, but something I realised was that the "right time" was pretty flexible for her. It would have been the right decision to give her her wings a month earlier, and it probably would have been the right decision to wait another month as well. I was always looking for a point at which her down times outweighed her up times all of a sudden. There was no point. She had good days and bad days. In the end everything kind of came to a head at once. Her arthritis medication had stopped working, we had recently nearly lost her to a bowel blockage and it was obvious just making bowel movements was now quite uncomfortable, she was almost blind and deaf and would forget where she was and just stand there and start shaking in fear, she was making my other dog's life miserable, and she was no longer interested in spending time with us. She just wanted to be left alone. I made a few friends out walking her. People with old pets need social support. They would see me with her and come and talk to me about their old dog as well. It helps to get it off your chest. We were in the vets a lot towards the end and her vet would ask us about all the age-related problems she knew we had with her and listen with infinite patience while I poured it all out. So I think talk to dog people about it. It really helped me come to terms with it and when I made the decision I was confident it was the right one. One thing someone said to me is that they went against their gut feeling with one dog and ended up having them die in terrible pain instead of peacefully. I think you just wait until it seems right and in the meantime angst about it all you like to us. People told me not to mourn her before she was gone, but I don't think there was any other way I could have handled it. I badly needed to prepare myself.

I was messing around with Erik with the clicker last night trying to shape a front foot crossover (is that what it's called?) into his sideways walk. Just for fun. He's kind of short and I was finding it hard to see what his feet were doing. I ended up sitting on the ground so I could see his feet better. Is this a problem with my observation skills? I feel like other people I've seen clicker training short dogs don't have this? Anyone experienced it or something like it? I had trouble seeing Kivi's back feet for hip targeting around all his fluff as well, so I taught it initially with big movements and then shaped it back to smaller, more controlled movements. I feel like that was pretty messy.

I LOVE having two young dogs close in age that act like complete hooligans with each other. Watching them play puts a smile on my dile and puts me in a good mood. Well, not always... Sometimes it seems like the boys will play any time, anywhere. Just when you're trying to do something they crack out a toy and start wrestling it out of each other's mouths, or they're rolling around on the ground biting each other and making all that noise, or they're suddenly hooning around the place jumping on and rolling each other. I sometimes find myself shaking my head and watching bemusedly. Or telling them "Boys! Cut that out!". I've got a list, now, of times when I have discovered a sudden round of canine wrestling does not bring on a lighter mood. * When we are walking them down the street on leash. * On our bed (particularly when I'm in it). * On the couch (particularly when I'm on it). * When I'm trying to brush one of them. * When I'm trying to dremel their nails. * When I'm attempting to play fetch with one. * When I have just lined them up to show someone their latest tricks. * In the bedroom when we are trying to sleep. * When tied to separate poles in someone's backyard while we're talking. * When trying to share with someone the virtues of owning a cuddly Lapphund or a sparky Vallhund. * When I am on the phone and can't hear over the noise. Maybe it's just me that thinks it's funny when you find yourself saying things like "Boys! No playing on the bed!" and having to pause mid-conversation while you break them up because everyone is watching the dogs with a mixture of amusement and concern. Before these guys I never thought I'd ever need to tell my dogs to stop playing around. They just didn't do it that often. Does anyone else have dogs that play in bizarre and inappropriate situations?

Verbal directions? I talk to mine all the time. This way, come on, quick, this side, stop, wait, hold up, hang about, leave it, no playing on leash!, cross the road.... I didn't even reward most of it. Some of it has translated moderately to off leash walking as well, that which is useful. It's not bomb proof by any means and it all disappears if a cat runs past, but then we have other things for those situations that do work.