wuffles

Niques: Ava loves robust little dogs and her favourites are the pug crossbreeds. She can spot them from a mile away! KTB: @ Elbie photo. That would be freaky! Neither of mine ask to be played with, but while we were eating our dinner tonight, Ava wandered through the lounge and onto her bed holding an A4 envelope that she'd sequestered from our recycling pile I asked her to "give" and she did, but she looked sad that I'd taken away her treasure. Most people at my work like dogs. Only some own them though! As mentioned previously, thankfully my big boss is a dog lover so is very understanding. Satchmo's Thundershirt arrived today and he looks very cute with it on. Hopefully the storms hold off until after work when we are home and can try it out. I have my work Xmas party tomorrow so I definitely won't be able to come home to check on him if it does storm

Our TS arrived today! :D Put it on Satch for 10 minutes and he didn't do much. Storms predicted for tomorrow here but we'll be at work

Longer. Half an hour or less is nothing to my Aussie, it would be like we hadn't gone at all.

I am positive that Satch would pee on that tree if it was in our house

ravenau1: Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Little dobies are so cute! And big ones aren't bad either We see a tan and white (sorry, don't know the proper colour name ) at the dog park and she is just a beautiful doggie.

Whaaaa? Ava was a crazy puppy but is so calm and lovely these days. I took her to the oval yesterday and she wouldn't even run around, all she wanted to do was wander around at my side... Then I sat down on the cricket pitch and she came and lay beside me and went to sleep :p As nice as it is that she's calmed down, I kind of miss my nutty puppy sometimes About the only time she's boisterous these days is when she's giving her big brother a hard time

Hope everyone had a great weekend. It goes so quickly! :cry We went to the dog park this morning and Satch found a puddle. He frolicked. He dug, snorkelled, splashed and rolled in it. Ava copied him. So did a few other dogs whose owners were not impressed. I just enjoyed watching them being dogs They were both grotty afterwards but appear to by dry and clean now, if a little stinky. I took some pictures this afternoon, nothing exciting, just lots of Ava and her toys, hope you guys don't mind Satchy makes an appearance - I don't take as many photos of him because he's always sleeping.

I separate mine when feeding meat and bones. Ava eats in her crate and Satch eats outside. It's no hassle, and then neither of them have to worry about having their meals stolen.

It also depends on the dog as to how they will behave when left alone. Our older boy, even when he was an only dog, had no problems being left alone and often he's not even excited to see us when we get home. But our younger girl thrives on company and needs more attention. Mine get at least an hour's walk/training every morning before work. Then of an afternoon, sometimes we lounge around with them, sometimes we take them out, sometimes we go out to dinner or play sports. I spend a lot of time with them but not every waking hour.

I had actually been looking at those because we have one of the collars on our older dog and it's made of nice soft material. But it goes across the shoulders as PF has suggested against

Our Aussie goes for a short jog with OH most mornings. He started off using her usual flat collar but found that she was a bit hard to handle -- she is good with encouragement but it's difficult to talk to her while jogging! He now takes her in her front-attach harness which works for him. However, I am worried that it might not let her move as naturally as usual so I am looking for a good 'normal' harness that doesn't restrict her movement but allows a bit of extra control compared to the flat collar. Does anyone have suggestions for a suitable comfortable harness? In the future we are hoping also to run her beside a bike so it would be used for this purpose as well (with a Walkydog attachment). Thanks!

From my own experience, I would say a huge part of people giving up on obedience classes would be clashes with individual instructors -- either personality wise or the way they teach. Even within the same "training philosophy" there are so many different styles and ways of dealing with people and dogs. Maybe we even need some more formalised training or courses for instructors with people skills being a big component? At work, if we attend a training course, we always have to fill out a feedback form. Why not when training our dogs? And incentives for good instructors... I am considering becoming a volunteer instructor at our club but with working fulltime, playing sport and training my own two dogs... even one hour a week can be a pretty big commitment. Lots of people I know just aren't interested in training their dog. Some people don't even understand that there is such a thing as "good manners" in dogs. Some of my aquaintances don't even want to go to puppy preschool as it's just something to take up their time and cost them money. And to be fair, a lot of their dogs somehow end up quite well behaved anyway, so why would they go? They giggle about me spending so much time training my dogs. To a lot of young people, it is definitely not the 'cool' thing to be doing :D

Note to self: hide all softdrinks AS WELL as all poultry over Christmas period............ Interestingly, Miss Ava has not touched ANY of our stuff while we're at home. Even when she had free range of the house overnight she didn't destroy anything. And I guess they didn't touch our shoes, or speakers, or DVDs, or books, or anything like that... OH said "no more empty soft drink bottles for them to chew on during the day!"

*beware the interloper* You poor thing! I hope the carpet recovers. Our bedroom carpet has never been the same since doglet decided to take a half full mountain dew bottle in there. Are they still hyped up from the sugar? ;) Thankfully our carpet is kind of crappy anyway. We are hoping to get it replaced in the near future. Ava had a spew and a poo when we got home so that was hopefully the only after effect... She also removed a Crust pizza menu from the fridge and tore it up. Mmmm, Crust...

Apart from stealing a pack of Coke bottles from the kitchen bench and chewing them, spreading Coke all over our floor and carpet... the dogs did ok at home alone

The one place Satch always wants to go during a storm is under our computer desk -- which is the worst possible place IMO He's not interested in a crate, or the walk-in robe, or under the bed (not that he'd fit under there anyway). He doesn't bark, just paces and pants and generally turns into a stresshead. I've ordered him a Thundershirt as per the thread in General... we'll see if that makes any difference. Ava slept peacefully in her crate although she did keep looking at Satch wondering why he was being so silly. Today I've given them access to the lounge, living room, kitchen and main bedroom. How much stuff could get destroyed? Ummmmmm ;) I left a treat ball for Ava, their Kongs (which they were munching on when I left) and about 5 toys strewn around the house. And they both went for a walk/jog this morning. If they still destroy things they'll never be inside by themselves again! lilli_star, mine will destroy anything soft including bedding and soft toys. They don't get soft toys unsupervised, not even Tuffies as they just get dirty and muddy (I did leave them with one today inside though). They also don't get any bedding unsupervised as they rip it up (including the simplest things like carpet).

I have high hopes as my boy always tries to get as close to us (or to our other dog, which is very out of character) as possible during a storm, and he is comforted by touch. He doesn't bark, but he paces, pants, and his eyes glaze over he is so stressed Have just ordered one, I will report back as well!

I think I'm going to try one for my big boy as well who had a horrible night last night with the storms.

OMG Clastic how scary Mine never wear their collars at home. I have been very brave today and left the dogs inside. Not only is the yard so disgustingly boggy that I'm worried they'd hurt themselves, but we had a horrible night last night with storms the whole night and a scared, trembling, panting big black dog He was so stressed, and if it storms again today I don't want him to be outside in that state. Poor bubba Now I just have to worry about them destroying the house! Hopefully I won't have any destruction photos to post tonight

It's storming here and the pups were getting stressed so I just did a training session with Ava to take her mind off it. She was awesome! I was doing recalls from one end of the house to the other

We still go for walks, even if it's pouring, as I don't want them to go nuts while we're at work. When home I do lots of shaping games, at the moment we are doing a dumbell retrieve and getting in a box/basket. Practice static heelwork and long stays. Throw toys up and down the lounge and roll around on the floor with dogs Mostly they are happy once we get home from work just to have a 5 minute training session then lounge around on their nice dry beds inside with us

Big nasty storms in Canberra, stressing about my puppies Edit: Eeeek @ sunburn. My shoulders are soooo brown. I have been moisturising like 10 times a day so it's not peeling yet, but is really itchy and hard to resist.

From what I have observed with my two, this seems pretty correct... both of mine hate to think they might be missing out on something and they are really motivated when they are both in the same room. But I wouldn't say they give their best performance, they tend to do the behaviour really quickly then go check on the other dog, then offer a few more random behaviours, then go check on the other dog, etc...

Yes Ava has a mo, how cute is it I think I can see one on her brother Tally too, in his photo. Must run in the fam My two smell different too. I think Ava smells more doggie and Satch just like... Satch. I wish there were more Aussies at dog training. The one who used to be there (Mia) seems to have dropped out ;) Ava and her had so much fun together. Someone in Canberra needs to get an Aussie ;)

As requested... lots of puppy pics from various stages Everyone... make sure you take lots of photos of your pups as they grow up soooo fast I will need to get The Ark to come in here and post the most recent photo of her boys (Ava's brothers). They have all grown up to be stunners!