corvus

Yeah, but my puppy at least is a complete wuss about the "muzzle bite". Penny my older dog did it to him just this morning when she was extremely fed up with him. She reserves the muzzle bite for times when she is well beyond her normal level of patience. It's like a "THAT'S IT! Get OUT of my face!" It makes him cry. Quite a lot, really. It's not that he just doesn't like it much, he really hates it, and finds it terrifying. So I'd be careful about imitating dogs and how they interact with one another. They understand what they're doing, but we don't, really. We can only see through our own eyes, and we can be wrong about what we see. And my wussy pup and my restrained older dog are good examples of how something can be taken in wildly different ways by different dogs. Penny certainly doesn't seem to expect the pup to start screaming when she holds his muzzle, but nor does she use that whenever she wants a break. She always snaps first, and oftentimes she just lifts her lip at him or makes the cranky bark at him. I wonder if the muzzle hold is a bit of the old sledgehammer where a chisel would suffice. Anyway, we get buy with our pup using the yelp. It helps if you do it really loudly and try to make it sound as much like a dog as you can. Failing that, he gets crate time with a tough bone or pigs ear to ease his chewing needs. Pups nip and mouth. That's what they do. I think it's better to let them figure out at this stage how hard they can bite before they hurt you. Our puppy often responds to a yelp by chewing on you with less pressure. I'm okay with him doing that. It shows he's being considerate of us and learning how delicate we are rather than learning just that all biting is out. He'll grow out of it like every pup does.

Maybe you could try the leash with a harness? Kivi Tarro was definitely more comfortable with it when there was nothing pulling on his neck. He has since got used to being handled around the neck area, but we're sticking with the harness.

Good to know about the booklet. I was just about to buy it. Guess I'll get the dvd instead. I'm getting it from Dogwise, too.

Living with someone is generally a series of compromises. I grew up in a house where my father loved the animals, dogs especially, but never did a thing for them. Training - forget it, feeding - wouldn't have a clue, clean up after them - as if! When my mother had my dog and rabbit and hare on top of her 2 dogs, 3 cats, and budgie for a while, do you think he ever helped out? Nope. I took on all 9 animals for a week while she was away and was just about run off my feet. It took half an hour just to feed them all before I got to bed. I couldn't believe she was doing all that without an ounce of help. But then, when I wanted a puppy before I'd moved in with my partner, he wanted me to wait until we'd settled somewhere. When I said I wanted to do it before because I'd have the support of my family, he said he'd rather be the support and take on an extra dog as a joint thing between us. In his family, both his mum and dad look after the dog. Either one knows how much to feed and what needs to be done. I am still trying to come to terms with living with a man who helps with the animals. I don't expect him to because they are mine, but he does because he cares enough to want to have his own relationship with the animals. I still apologise to him every time I leave a big job to him. He's starting to take advantage of it by making me clean out the hare's cage every week while he does the rabbit's. The hare's cage is about ten times more disgusting than the rabbit's. Expense-wise, after being together for 4 1/2 years, we still don't have a combined account. He earns about 3 times as much as me, so we like financial independence. We do intend to get one soon, but in the meantime, I pay for food because I pay for groceries. I pay for things I want to do with them and he pays for things he wants to do with them. Last time we took the rabbit to the vet, he offered to pay. I think he did that because he has built a strong relationship with her and cares most out of any of the animals for her welfare. She's his special girl and when we decided to take her to the vet it was mostly him talking me into it. I guess I wouldn't ever ask him to pay vet fees for my animals. I don't want him to resent them and me. It's got to be his choice. You can't force someone to care. Regarding rules, I think it's fair for people to have strict rules. Strict rules apply when someone cares very much about something. I am very much for the dogs sleeping in the bedroom but don't want them on the bed. Partner would love to share the bed. I win because I care more. I win with most things with the animals because I care more, but I'm considerate of what he wants because we all have to share a house.

This is just an idea and I might be way off base, but could it be a symptom of her submissiveness rather than dominance? My dog marks when another dog makes her uneasy. If she's confident with the other dog, she'll still do it, but much less. If we meet a dog on a walk and it seems friendly but then goes bananas and lunges at her, it's mark mark mark all the way down the street. But if it's friendly and greets her, then one mark or none at all. If it's clearly cranky and never seems friendly, same thing. The marking comes in most when she's unsure of a situation. If that were the case, or if it were stress as someone else suggested, then rousing on her might actually make it worse, making her more uneasy. I'd not take her to other dog's houses. I mean, that can be an intimidating thing. Everything smells like this other dog, and if she doesn't know that dog, she might feel intimidated by that and compelled to put her smell on things. It could even be calming for her to do it. That might be why she keeps doing it even when you come towards her and grump at her. It could act as tension relief for her. I don't know enough about marking behaviour to stand behind these ideas and give them my whole-hearted support, but just something to think about.

We never got up for KT unless he woke us up by whining. He sleeps in a crate in our room. He currently sleeps through the night, usually, without needing to go and has done since about a week after we got him. He's 12 weeks now. Just a tip, best to carry pup out quick smart when he whines. If you let him walk out he'll wee before he gets outside. Take him straight out to his wee place and as soon as he starts weeing, say your wee command. It does help. Just classical conditioning stuff. My 12 year old dog is even going when I use the command, now! Anyway, after a week or so, just taking pup out to their wee spot can be a very strong suggestion that they need to wee. KT has been a lot easier since we got the routine going.

Problem is, once they wee somewhere the smell lingers and they take that as a cue to wee there again. Every time KT has had an accident indoors, he's done it again in the exact same place before we've managed to avoid it for a couple of days, which seems long enough to break the habit. Is there any other way you can confine pup for a couple of days to see if you can break the habit?

Wow, so many Morissetians. That's my home town. The folks are still there. My mother has 2 dogs and gave up on taking them to obedience for the same reasons. No good ones around. She did flyball for a bit, but it went bad as well. Breakdown in group cohesion. Don't know about training, but her dogs would be great distractions!

You can also try giving him his water in ice cube form.

We went through this sort of thing a few years ago, only it was a whippet cross and a corgi, so considerably more manageable! Even so, we ended up giving up. We got a behaviourist in and he basically said there was not much you can do but manage. The aggression came from a different basis, though. I guess sometimes dogs just don't like one another. Some breeds don't like anyone. I think there's a point where you have to realise that there's only so much you can ask of your dog (the point you are obviously at). ETA, sometimes walking dogs together can smooth out a lot of troubles, but I don't think that's going to happen for you. :D

I've heard Pharoah Hounds are like that to the extreme when living in groups. Someone told me they knew someone that bred them. The top bitch one day tripped on her way down the stairs with the other bitches behind her. The moment she tripped, the rest of the dogs fell on her and it was very messy. But then, it was a staircase and tight spaces seem to create a lot of tension in some dogs as well, which could have been a contributing factor. I think I even mentioned once before a wolf in a captive pack that was at the top, but broke her leg and had to have it amputated. She always kept her lopsided side away from the other wolves, especially number 2.

I'm pretty chatty when I train. It depends on how I'm training something as to whether I use a no-reward marker. If I'm shaping, no, if I'm luring, yes, if I'm practicing something KT already knows, yes. I say "ah-ah" because it pops right out.

I have found the clicker to be a breeze with my brand new puppy, but a real challenge with my 12 year old corgi. Penny the corgi was originally trained traditionally. She is also wildly food motivated to the point where she doesn't care if all I have in my hand is a piece of lettuce. She'll still go stupid over it. In the end I gave up on her. She's a great dog and already does everything I really want her to. I just wanted to have a play. Kivi Tarro loves the clicker game. It's really easy to tell him exactly what it is he's doing that I like with the clicker. He'll happily train for 30 minutes as long as he keeps winning. My partner doesn't like it, though. He finds it too hard to co ordinate. So KT gets trained with clickers and a voice marker. We use food with him because it's about the right level of excitement, but food is too much for Penny. With Penny we use affection and verbal praise. It's hard to use a clicker with that. With a clicker, ideally you should be able to pump out rewards at a rate of one every 2 seconds. If you can do that without food, then go for it!

This is interesting, because I'm running out of hand signals for KT. I've got one finger drawing a line upwards for sit, palm with fingers up for stay, palm dropped towards ground for down, palm with fingers down for paw, and a finger pointing for touch. He gets confused between paw and touch and sometimes paw and stay. I think the paw and touch confusion is more about his coordination. He just gets confused whether to touch it with his paw or his nose. Stay and paw are related to the similarity of the hand signal. He's learnt quite well, but sometimes if my hand angle is a little odd he thinks it means paw rather than stay. He likes paw better. []

Sometimes I wonder about rewarding things like a breath between growls. If the dog is still in that emotional state, aren't you really marking the wrong thing? I thought about this when I was training Kiv Tarro to spend alone time in the pen. I could see by his behaviour that sometimes when he was quiet for a few seconds he was still very agitated and restless. If he was quiet for a full minute, his behaviour would change and he started to calm down more. I rewarded then. If he'd been going for 20 minutes and I didn't get a window in which to reward him, I took him out and tried again later. I don't know if it made any difference, it just felt wrong to drop him a treat when he was all worked up but silent for a moment. Isn't it better to back off until the dog is not worked up and then reward? Hey, try the book "Click to Calm". Forget who the author is, but you can get it at the Vet Shed online. I've heard good things about it.

We use a verbal marker and the clicker with Kivi Tarro. I like the clicker but my partner doesn't. At training class we use a marker word because the trainer doesn't think 10 week old puppies can't handle both a clicker and a verbal marker. KT thinks otherwise. I often pair the clicker with the same verbal marker my partner uses anyway. I find that KT tends to learn new things quicker with the clicker than without because it's very clear and I think it stands out from the background talk I tend to do while training. The problem with a verbal marker compared to a clicker is that a click is typically always followed by a treat, whereas a verbal marker is often still used when food rewards are being phased out. So in a way the verbal marker could lose its effectiveness a little. Ideally, we'd be using a different verbal marker when we're still using treats every time and then switch to another word when we start phasing the treats out, but who's gonna remember that? And it could in itself become a cue for the dog that they will no longer get a treat every time. A clicker savvy dog is often off the clicker and onto verbal markers and intermitant rewards within 2 or 3 clicks for a simple thing. I watch KT and he's quite keen to make the clicker click so he gets his treat. His attention tends to be better when training with the clicker.

Jedi's a hero! I showed my partner the video and he said "Why isn't Kivi Tarro like that?", which has inspired him to get into training. KT is doing beautiful sits, downs, stands, stays, and we're in the process of teaching him touch and roll over. Our trainer is telling us to teach heel by luring backwards, then kind of turning into the dog as you go around a corner.

Well, I don't know that it is normal for a dog to eat their own poo. None of the dogs I've ever lived with have done that. They won't touch other dog's poos, either. Cat poo, rabbit poo, roo poo, and pretty much anything else under the sun is fair game, but not dog poo. I've heard it said that dogs do this when they aren't digesting everything and what comes out still has things in it that smell like food. I believe it's not uncommon with kibble diets.

We have a cat Cuz here, and it's firmly at the bottom end of preferred dog toys. Penny will play with it if I get her going, but Kivi Tarro will have a bit of a mouth and gives up. And he's a 10 week old puppy, so I don't know what's going on there. Maybe I'll try a round one.

I add fruit like apples or pears some weeks, some dairy in the form of natural low fat yoghurt or cottage cheese, some garlic, a little offal and some kelp powder, although I don't have any of that at the moment. The chicken mince I get is ground chicken frames, so I like to add a little minced muscle meat to try to balance that out a bit. I think it's good to give a variety of animal proteins, so I try to feed different meats. I generally avoid supplements because I think once you start adding things like that you're on a slippery slope, but that's a wholly personal decision and one based on the fact that I don't feel like I understand supplements well enough to want to go adding them to the diet. Feeding dogs is not rocket science. Before commercial dog food, dogs lived on table scraps and bones and they lived to ripe old ages on it. Commercial dog food has only been around for, like, 50 years. I just try to feed a good variety and try to be sensible about it.

I know someone who taught her hounds this through free-shaping with the clicker. Took her a while to get the back feet. Might help if you have a dog that kicks with his back feet after toileting.

The Vet Shed is also really good. http://www.thevetshed.com.au/index.php

If it's too hard, she might get easily discouraged. Sometimes it's good to make it really easy at first so they learn that it pays off. That's where the peanut butter and cream cheese and the likes come in handy, too. If you smear some in, they can smell it and taste it when they lick, so they keep at it. I found with KT that to begin with I had to put in things he really liked and make sure it was easy for him to get it out again. He's working up to harder things. I put in mince mixed with cottage cheese and vegies, which is part of his daily diet anyway. It's sloppy, so easy to get out, but little bits get caught on the ridges. If he gets bored of it, Penny cleans them up for him! Kivi Tarro doesn't like peanut butter, though. Apparently he's a freak.

Name: Kivi Tarro. I had a list of Finnish names and a list of Aboriginal names and my partner jokingly told me to combine. He picked Kivi Tarro as an example because both names mean "stone". We discovered it had a great ring to it, was appropriate, amusing, and sounds like the name of a superhero. And has led to such fun as "Have you found a stone, Stone Stone?" Sex: Male Date of Birth: 25.3.08 Colour: Black, tan and white Breed: Finnish Lapphund Hobbies: flailing his big bear paws in the air, playing tug, chewing on hands and feet. Loves: Chicken wings, sticks, playing tug with hair, cuddles combined with chewing and paw-flailing, cardboard. Hates: Being confined to his pen, being alone, my partner's socks apparently.

I've just started clicker training with my puppy. He's really taken to it. I also used a clicker with my rabbit when I couldn't get her to accept being touched (she was a rescue). I'd tried everything else and it wasn't working, but the clicker worked really well. I think to some extent it makes the animal feel in control and that puts them at ease. Kivi Tarro gets bouncy when he sees the clicker, but he's only 9 weeks old and pretty much instantly gets distracted by, like, a leaf on the ground minding its own business. The clicker itself is just a tool, but the training method of operant conditioning is great. If you don't want to use a clicker, you can use a word instead. Clickers are just clearer and faster, usually. I'm going to pair my click with a word for the times I don't have a clicker on me.