corvus

I think the copious amounts of oil in sardines used to upset Penny's tummy. She'd throw up whether they were fresh or canned. I find they are harder to get than Whiting, but they are such a good size for pets. Kivi did look a bit puzzled the first time I gave him fish, but as a pup reared on raw he's pretty game when you put a hunk of meat in front of him. But even Penny knew what to do with it and she was 12 before she was introduced to whole raw fish. I did have to help her a bit with the first couple, though. Cut the skin to make it a bit easier to chew. The only thing is she used to bury them and dig them up a few days later. Somehow rotting fish smells so much worse than rotting lamb or beef or even chicken.

The fresh fish store at Miranda Fair, laffi. It was a pretty small fish. The dude looked at me funny, waving this fish around and going "Just one?" I think the price was about $9/kg. Kivi made pretty short work of it, although he never manages to eat fish without rubbing it on himself so he smells like fish for the rest of the day. I guess it's probably good for his coat.

If we go shopping and there are some small, whole fish available, I always get one for the dog. Today he had a little Red Spot Whiting, which cost me all of 85c. There is something absurdly funny about a dog walking around with a whole fish in his mouth, flopping around. I wonder if it's a dumb thing to feed him with all those little bones? I remember asking people on another forum about feeding whole raw fish and everyone said it was fine as long as it's not a species with spines on the outside. He's had salmon heads before as well, and seemed to like it, but they are kinda spooky and part of me thinks feeding a whole fish might be better. He also gets gutted Leatherjacket from time to time, which he seems to quite like. I don't give him Sardines, though, as it used to make Penny throw up. Fish vomit is NOT cool, people. What are people's thoughts on feeding raw fish? I think I read somewhere that Husky teams in Alaska get fed almost exclusively on raw salmon and were ending up with mercury poisoning or something. Maybe I made that up.

For a GSD maybe! I'd like to see someone coerce a dog not particularly well known for its biddability without treats. At least in the beginning, surely? Mind you, I know someone overseas who is very heavily into Schutzhund stuff and one of her instructors used to train police dogs. She tells me he uses verbal corrections because training in high drive with a hard dog inevitably leads to moments when you have to be able to tell the dog to ease up or stop right now, but she says that's the extent of aversives. Training new behaviours is definitely all positive. I think not much in the way of treats, though. Mostly drive training with bite rags and the likes.

I can't believe choking a dog out is being discussed in relation to aggression on a public forum. I've had the finger pointed at me for advocating far less dangerous things that still require a small amount of skill reading dogs lest some lurker should actually do what I'm saying. For any lurkers or visitors, don't even go there. Meeting aggression with aggression is downright dangerous and likely to make the problem worse.

How can you be sure the dog learns exactly those two things? What happens if the dog never realises that attempting to get to another dog has 100% failure rate because the dog is always so worked up at that point that it can't learn very much at all and just reacts to the frustration of not being able to reach its target? And then let's say the dog is like that dog I grew up with and associates the unpleasant experience of being whipped around with the sight of other dogs it wants to get at. Say the dog never learns that this is self-inflicted because at the time of the correction it is wholly focused on the object of its fear/distress and is not even consciously aware of what it is doing and what you are telling it to do. Mixing pain and fear is, IMO, a recipe for disaster. Stringing a dog up until it passes out? That's a pretty violent thing to do to an animal. I'd rather PTS.

Thing is, I grew up with a dog that would probably have got worse with that kind of treatment. That's how it all started. Aggression meets with harsh correction equals a dog who once thought something might be bad now KNOWS that something is bad. She never made the connection that her behaviour was what was being corrected. She just knew that she was upset by something and then she had something bad happen to her, so the upsetting thing is now associated with bad stuff and thus becomes far more upsetting instantly and thus triggers a more aggressive response next time she sees it. And that's just another reason to my list of why I don't base my training methods on corrections. If you want to then that's your business and not mine, but I hope you never find yourself with a dog that thinks corrections justify an aggressive response rather than punishing an aggressive response.

I know someone in America that met a CAT trainer, but in the end they decided her dog wasn't bad enough to really need that approach. She was poorly socialised and tended to get overly intense around other dogs, but was not really very aggressive about it.

Maybe that's why dogs "grow out of it". Having just seen that Kivi was finding it tricky to maintain his inhibition during a boisterous game and eventually decided on his own to stop mouthing I wonder if some dogs just give up trying to be super gentle with people and stop biting on their own. I was told by several people to concentrate on teaching my puppy not to bite hard rather than not to bite at all. It was kind of an exercise in shaping but over several months. As his jaws strengthened and his adult teeth came in he got more feedback on what was too hard and adjusted. And yes, Ian Dunbar was one of those people who talked about inhibition rather than the blanket no teeth rule. I was thinking that with Penny I had taught her not to bite at all, but now that I think about it I realise I didn't stop her mouthing. She just grew out of it. She wouldn't dream of putting teeth on skin until she got old and sore and blind. It took my mother's dog some 3 years to grow out of it, but she doesn't mouth anymore. My mum's Sheltie had been taught not to by her breeder, but just recently she's come out of her shell quite a bit and has been mouthing gently from time to time. Never hard. I wonder if she will grow out of it. I guess I'm a little dubious about all this talk about not changing the rules on dogs. I change rules all the time. I make mistakes and fix them, or I decided that he was old enough to be capable of a little more restraint and began to insist on it, or something that started out as no big deal intensifies and has to be addressed. I'm not afraid of admitting when I've made a mistake, and I think there have been times when I've let Kivi mouth when I shouldn't have, but equally, the way I tend to approach animals when I have that luxury is to tell them what I like and don't like and let them choose what they want to do. Within reason. I default to that when I'm not thinking very hard. Next time I get a puppy I think I would do it the same way, but come down on them earlier than I did with Kivi. Ultimately I don't want an adult dog that mouths, but nor do I want to suppress them more than is necessary. Kivi has stopped doing most of the mouthy things he used to do as a pup, but I don't think he grew out of them. I just gradually decreased my tolerance for mouthing as he got bigger and older. In the scheme of confusing things we put dogs through, I think it was one of the less confusing things he's handled. As opposed to, say, OH and I using different words and different ways of signalling for commands.

I think she wants one which is really similar to wrestling, only without the teeth. All the other games we suggested were a bit different to that. Not sure how you'd teach wresting without teeth, with it still being fun for the dog. Thank you. Kivi says he likes the push-tug game better than wrestling, now, because my wrestling rules make wrestling no fun. It's working well. He gets to push at me and bite something without risking hurting me and he doesn't need to be particularly careful. I guess I didn't make myself clear because I wasn't entirely clear myself on what I wanted. I didn't want him to lose wrestling, which is his favourite game, but obviously I didn't want him chomping on me, either. I was looking for a way to keep the basic essence of wrestling while finding something more acceptable for him to do with his teeth. Once I stopped trying to find a suitable wrestling outlet it became apparent that he was quite happy to lose wrestling in favour of something that didn't involve chomping on me. I guess the basic essence of wrestling kind of requires a fair bit of wild abandon that a largish dog will probably never have with a person. I don't want him to bite me and I am happy to forgo wrestling, I was just looking for alternatives and wasn't very clear on that. Erny, the reason why I didn't expect this to turn into an argument was because I thought I was walking away from the "on your terms" argument, which was off topic.

What about the school of thought that says you should not concentrate on teaching a pup not to bite at all so much as how gentle they have to be with the expectation that they will eventually grow out of it? When should they have grown out of it by?

Do you allow your dogs to mouth you or other objects? Why or why not? I was going to give you my take but now I can't be bothered. Suffice to say it differs for me depending on the dog, it's tendency to bite hard, its tendency to get very aroused, its tendency to get bitey when aroused, its capacity to do harm, its tendency towards snarkyness... That's all I can think of right now.

I suppose I should clarify that it's not chasey hand as such. It's "look, here's my hand tapping your nose - can you catch it without hurting me? Yes you can! Aren't you clever!" You know what?? I'm gonna start an argumentative thread about teeth in play!

Holy crap! I didn't realise this was going to turn into an argument. I'm fine not wrestling with Kivi or finding a way to wrestle with him that doesn't involve teeth. That's what I was asking about. I don't actually have a problem with Kivi's behaviour, I was just wondering if anyone knew of a wrestling game that didn't involve teeth or a game like wrestling that didn't involve teeth. My only argument was with the assertion that the game is not played on my terms. It is. I can see that other people will disagree and it's a matter of perspective, hence, here's an argument no one can win because it is too subjective. That argument has nothing to do with why I started this thread. I wasn't looking for an argument. I have far more provocative ways to do that! So for the record, Kivi likes to wrestle but is too polite to come barrelling up to me and initiate the game himself. He has ways of asking, though, which I encourage in all my animals. Communication is good! He is a mouthy character, which is not something I have a problem with. He just likes having something in his mouth. He's very gentle on things and we still have all but one of his toys from puppyhood. I don't think we've ever even lost a sock to him and he walks around with them a lot. Usually I whack a toy in there and he's perfectly happy, but when wrestling he spits it out because that's how he wrestles with other dogs. He needs his mouth for it. I started this thread because I was wondering if a) there was a way to teach them to wrestle without their mouths and b) if not, are there other games you can play instead that are very much like wrestling? I have got my answers. A) Yes, if you have a dog receptive to it and b) There are lots of games you can play with dogs that don't involve teeth, but nothing that is really the same or very similar to wrestling. My own invented game is the closest and Kivi is coming to quite like it, so I'll keep on with that one. K9 said something about there being nothing dogs can provide another dog that you can't provide yourself. I imagine you all know how I feel about K9, yet here I am, looking for a way to provide something I was thinking only other dogs can provide. I really and honestly am not after an argument. I just wanted ideas is all.

I disagree. It is not on your terms because you express that you still have a problem with him biting you during the wrestle. So he's not playing the game to your rules/terms. If a person who had a dog who liked ball chasing and the person was playing 'retrieve'. The person started it. The person finished it. But in between the dog continued to run off with it. Do you think the dog is performing on the person's terms? Here's an argument no one is going to win. The way I see it, all games are on my terms if they are dependent on me to happen. I don't care if a dog runs off with things when I'm trying to play fetch. I guess the dog doesn't want to play and the game ends there. How is the dog meant to read your mind and know what your rules are unless you stop playing when they don't toe the line? Kivi is well behaved with other people and doesn't mouth strangers. My little bro plays rough wrestling games with him when he visits and they adore each other. He still tends to bite too hard sometimes, though. Kivi also doesn't initiate these mouthy games. You have to go up and start pushing him around. He knows by my body language when I'm going to play with him. I've never had him chomp on a hand signal. I think the pushing tug game has potential to fill the wrestling niche, but ultimately he's going to be going to daycare/the dog park more often. At least until we get another dog. The soccer ball would be something he'd be into. He can get all touchy feely with the ball. He likes to use his paws and his mouth when he's wrestling.

That's a very good point to raise. Many people with puppies 'think' their recall is in place, when really it is only that their pup is not independant enough at that age to want to ignore them. Although I tend to think the age to watch is 5/6 months and upwards. That's probably more like it. I think it first occurred to Kivi that it might be better for him to not come to his recall when he was about 6 months. He would still come sometimes, but it was at its worse when he was around 9 months and he went back on the long line until he was about 12 months. He is now nearly 16 months and is an absolute pleasure to take to the park. I will be waiting for that independence to appear with our next dog and it will be back on long lines until the recall is really good in any situation. Unless I've managed to train a conditioned recall before that adolescent phase. Kivi's is still not quite conditioned at this point. He doesn't usually think about whether he will come or not, but every now and then he hesitates. I'm looking for a drop-everything-and-run recall. And yeah, rewarding check-ins is a good thing to do, I reckon. Although sometimes Kivi thinks if coming over spontaneously equates to demanding a treat. I try to vary it so that he doesn't expect something in particular when he checks in. Sometimes he gets praise and sometimes a treat and sometimes a little bit of roast meat and sometimes just a little attention.

Long lines are really useful for that transition phase where you're testing the recall. We have a 10m long one from Black Dog that is very lightweight and doesn't tend to get tangled in things. At least then if they take off you only have to get within 10m of them to get hold of them again. Watch out for that adolescent phase that hits around 9 months or so. They suddenly get interested in all sorts of things and if your recall isn't conditioned by this point I reckon you'd do best going back to the long line for another few months. I wish someone had told us to do that. It set back our recall almost to the beginning and we had to do heaps of work at home. It is very good, now, and despite playing with dogs being Kivi's favourite activity, he will come away when called, and he does it at a run. It's supremely satisfying to see that. Vary the rewards a bit, but keep them very awesome, like roast meat or steak. We were using the 4 Legs balls for ages, but Kivi one day got carsick after having some and before we had a chance to change to something else, he had decided he didn't want to come for those icky balls that remind him of being sick. So it's a good idea to have some different things on hand in case your dog abruptly decides they are not wild on something. The hardest thing, I think, is to know when not to call. My OH is terrible at this and will call precisely when the dog has zoned out and is 100% focused on something else and on his way to have a good look at it. I ended up banning him from using Kivi's recall without my permission! OH thinks that when he calls and Kivi doesn't register, Kivi is being a little twerp. Kivi is just being a dog. He didn't hear the recall and if you can slot one in when he's momentarily distracted from whatever he was so focused on, he will come back. He doesn't even need to be looking at you. He just needs to flick his gaze to something else for a moment to know he's receptive again. If you call as he's starting to get uber focused on something, you can prevent the need to go after him because he will come back and you can go check out the exciting thing together. A good distraction at home is someone else with food.

Well, it is on my terms because I started it and I stop it when he bites too hard. It's not like he's coming over and asking to wrestle and then beating me into submission with his teeth. We also play a game where he tries to catch my hand in his mouth and he never bites too hard with that one. I don't want to suppress him particularly, and I want to play games with him that he likes. We do play tug and a bit of fetch and a variation of tug where he pushes against my hand to get at the toy in my other hand. I'm just wondering what some of the thousands of other things we could do are. I made him a flirt pole, but he's scared of it.

We play a lot of rough games with him because he loves it. It's always on our terms. My problem is what can you do instead of wrestling? What is a similar sort of exercise that doesn't automatically involve teeth? Kivi knows how hard he can bite, but in the excitement of wrestling with me he inevitably bites too hard and when I tell him he gets all repressed and doesn't want to play anymore. He'll lie down and whine or start chewing the furniture again or something. I'd like it if he knew how to wrestle without his teeth, but I can't teach him that if he doesn't want to wrestle without his teeth.

What kind of activities can you do with a dog that loves wrestling? Kivi will play a bit of tug and fetch, but wrestling is his favourite. He's a very touchy feely kinda dude. I've been trying to fulfill Kivi's wrestling needs for months, but I just don't compare to another dog. He wants to mouth me and he can't because even though he is gentle, inevitably he leaves marks in the rough-housing. I've kind of devised a wrestling game where he is focused on a toy rather than my hand and pushes against my hand to get to the toy, but he has to be feeling really drivey (for Kivi) to play that for very long. Sometimes he just wants to lie down and play bitey face or something and when I say no teeth he doesn't know how to play without teeth.

I disagree with some of the stuff other people have said Because I'm difficult. I would say remember that she is just a baby and she is not capable of very much impulse control. Her mind is like a butterfly. Or a dragonfly, if she's that kind of puppy. She'll do whatever grabs her at the moment. Decide what you want your relationship built on and start building it. For me, that's trust. So nothing but love and good things for pup if I can possibly swing it that way. Puppies don't make mistakes: people do. Whining is inevitable, but you don't have to ignore it. If you spend some time reassuring your pup and waiting until they are calm before you leave them, then the whining will be minimal. They're just babies and they whine and cry because they are distressed. If you're okay with letting your pup be distressed, then ignore it, but I'm not, so I go and reassure them. It's all part of building the trust. The first week I had Kivi was dedicated to teaching him to handle being alone. He would howl and cry and I realised he was just frightened of being alone. I would stay with him until he fell asleep and then leave him. It didn't take long.

I said no, but plenty of times they have swallowed something too big and coughed it back up again for another go. I've never seen them or any other dog unable to sort it out on their own. Like others, Kivi has had bones stuck across the roof of his mouth before. One was a dried pig's trotter bone and the other I'm not really sure what it was, but my guess is a small roo shank. We get roo shanks from the pet store and they are a big favourite - very meaty and a bit of marrow in the bones - but they tend to splinter. They get those bones as a special treat, but I do worry about them. The small ones especially. Kivi got that one caught because he was playing with it while upside down. I think there are risks with bones and I can understand why you wouldn't want to take those risks. Aside from choking, I believe it is also not uncommon to get bowel blockages from bones. I'm very uneasy about the thought of cutting them out of the diet all together, though. There is nothing in the world Kivi would be prepared to lie down and chew for over an hour but a bone. I was talking to this behaviour specialist recently about possible PhD projects and he was saying he thinks the pet food companies have missed something in bones, because there's more to a bone than just the nutritional value. Why do dogs want to sit down with an old bone that has no nutritional value and not only chew on it for ages, but defend it from other dogs? It seems like the act of chewing a bone is rewarding in itself. That really struck a chord with me, as I know when Kivi was teething I provided him with all sorts of chew toys and I smeared peanut butter on them or vegemite trying to get him interested in them, but the only thing he would chew was bones, and if there were no bones, the furniture. I ended up giving him bones while I was not at home in a desperate attempt to provide him with an outlet for his chewing that was acceptable. It was the only thing he would happily do for more than five minutes.

In adult dogs that don't know each other, meetings are very often tense. IME, usually the tension evaporates once the dogs have done their ritualised greeting. The purpose of dominance by my way of thinking is to attempt to control a situation to swing it towards an outcome that will benefit you ('you' being the dog acting dominant). Dominant behaviour also acts as a signal telling another dog how committed one dog is to getting what he wants. I believe that dogs that have no history with one another and have no resources to defend are most concerned about their personal space, safety and sense of security. All of these things are heavily influenced by predictability. The beauty of aggression for a dog seeking predictability is that it's kind of like yelling "I want this and so help me I'm prepared to fight for it!" It's a pretty good way to get other dogs to listen to you, and many will respond to that outburst either by backing off to avoid a confrontation or removing themselves entirely. The ugly side is that every now and then you meet a dog that really hates being yelled at and will yell back, only louder. This is how things escalate to a fight. Aggression in itself is not necessarily bad. It's a natural way for dogs to communicate. What is worrying is when they are "yelling" at other dogs quite a lot, as that would indicate they are uncomfortable with the situation. Tension is fine, but a lot of snapping is a warning to you that your dog is decidedly uncomfortable, and outright lunging with lots of noise, or fighting is obviously not good. So in answer to your question, I believe that what makes a dog act dominantly towards another dog is a sense of unease, probably because it is unsure what the other dog is going to do. Mind you, some dogs don't default to dominant behaviour in these instances. My Kivi Tarro defaults to submissive behaviour. My old dog Penny would swing between the two depending on how she read the dog in question. Sometimes dominance works best and sometimes submission works best. I like a dog that can go either way.

Funny you should say that, because Penny was on Supercoat until she was 9. I switched her to homecooked on the advice of my vet (God bless the man) after several episodes of extreme stomach upsets where she couldn't even keep water down. Within a week of being on homecooked she was acting like a puppy again. After a few months her arthritis had disappeared and she hasn't had a stomach upset since. The Supercoat was evidently not the best of things for her after all. Penny has a narrow bowel prone to blockages. About half her diet is RMBs. I have had trouble with lamb offcuts and some cooked bones a neighbour fed her, so she doesn't get much lamb unless it's low in fat, which seems to be some of her problem with lamb. Otherwise, everything else has been fine. Kivi has been on RMBs for about half his diet since he came to us at 8 weeks old. He occassionally eats a wing too fast and has to cough it up for another try, but he's never been unable to do that. When he throws up for some unknown reason, there is often huge bits of bone in it, but nothing like that comes out the other end. Dog guts are incredible. I wish I had a gut like that! We did have a scary moment with a dried pig trotter. He got a bit of it stuck between the two top rows of his teeth, wedged in tight. I had to yank it out. That was our first and last foray into dried bones. A couple of months ago he did the same thing with a little bit of bone he'd been chewing on while lying upside down. I think it was roo shank. So we take the little bones away if he's rolling around on the ground with them. Incidentally, Erny, we feed roo tail here sometimes. It is very popular, but OH is not keen on the bits of vertebrae left behind. IME, the dogs aren't able to seperate the vertebrae out and spend a lot of time picking bits of meat out between them instead. They are particularly hard work and require paws to hold them still and lots of neck muscles for pulling bits off. The bones don't get eaten, and once all the meat is pulled off they aren't fond of gnawing on the bones as they are unpleasantly hard and pointy. My dogs don't swallow the neck bones from osso bucco, either. They gnaw on them a bit, but they generally only swallow soft bones. They seem to know what they're doing better than I do. ;)

I did make that point, Nekhbet, and once again, that is why I walk my dogs on harnesses, now. Goodness knows what would have happened if she'd been wearing a head halter at the time. I'm not sure, but I imagine it would have been painful. I know that a check chain doesn't make you not listen to your dogs. I'm saying that it doesn't help me listen to mine. It's entirely a personal observation and wasn't meant to be a general comment on check chains. Sometimes I think I'm the one that needs to wear the check chain. Correct myself when my dog pulls! When I was training Kivi I got to the point where I was wrapping his long line around one finger so I could tell when he was pulling. I guess it was probably dangerous to my fingers, but it stopped me from letting him pull even a little bit.