Serket

My neighbours have two yappy dogs too, every time they hear me walk out my back door they start ;): I can't water the garden without setting them off, or play with Gypsy in the back yard. They yell at them to shut them up (in Spanish :D which the dogs seem to understand at least). I was worried that Gypsy would start barking back, but so far she hasn't She usually just ignores them completely. If your neighbours dog is jumping the fence, I would sort that out ASAP - you don't want a strange dog coming into your yard when you're not home, and you don't want your puppy to realise that fences can be jumped over.

What GL said! For Gypsy, she needed to go out during the night for the first week or so (I'm sure it's in that other exhausted thread, and I can't remember the details now). Let me stress the avoid getting into too much of a routine, and I would suggest especially the "wake up, wee, breakfast" one, and also come home then dinner right away. Gypsy doesn't demand lunch or dinner, but she's taken to waking me up at 5:30 every morning for a 'wee' which then becomes 'oh and it's breakfast time too now, right?' So now it's get up, fine, but not breakfast time, and hopefully we can get to back to at least a 6:30 wake up, that would be wonderful. Oh, and DON'T give in to the whinging in the crate, unless it's an 'I need to go wee' whinge

General consensus from what I've read seems to be don't clip - makes no difference and can actually make it worse - they can even get sunburnt if you clip them too short apparently. My MIL clips her Border Collie x Golden Retriever and her coat has grown back all over the place since she started doing it 3-4 years ago whereas it used to be nice. It looks awful. I think you'd be best giving her a good brush and making sure all the dead undercoat comes out - get an undercoat rake, or a mars coat king or a furminator rather than clipping her.

1. He'll probably need to go after meals, after play, after a drink, and after waking up from a nap, if you're vigilant you shouldn't need to expect accidents, although they'll still happen 2. Take him outside for a wee before they arrive. Gypsy has done that once but I think she already needed to go and the excitement was just too much 3. Yes, normal and healthy, it's what you're aiming for. He's 6 months old so he should be able to easily hold on that long. Gypsy has been holding on overnight since 10 weeks.

My understanding (which might not be good at this time of night...) is that meal is actually better because it's dehydrated, and if it just says "chicken" the weight of the ingredient is pre-dehydration and the actual percentage of 'chicken' in the food is less than if it was 'chicken meal'. (does that make sense?) In terms of which premium foods are chicken-based.... ProPlan is Chicken & Rice (hate their website, can't find the info at the moment) Artemis is Chicken/Turkey/Salmon (adult mix is 23% protein, large breed puppy is 27%) Gypsy has done well on both, currently feeding Artemis. There are undoubtedly more options, those are just two I've used.

The other option is....does the dog NEED to be in the ute at all if his behaviour is so troublesome? Otherwise, having him inside and then moving him outside when you're not there sounds like the easiest solution for you

Maybe her Brat hormones are coming to the fore :D Oh goody. We were just saying that she's calmed down a lot in the last few weeks and stopped biting and jumping up on people. I thought we'd get a bit of a lull before the terrible teens Oh well, better stock the fridge with carrots

I've never noticed before either, although it's been a long time since I had a puppy. The carrying on did get her frozen chicken, out of desperation and a need to actually get some sleep! But it also became her breakfast since it was 4am by that point. She won't be getting it again if she does it tonight, but I was worried about her teeth because her mouth seems sensitive at the moment, and was bleeding earlier in the evening. I also expected her to sleep quite soundly since yesterday was a big day - we had obedience training in the morning, a good run around the grass afterwards, and the car trip there and back, and then some short training sessions later in the day and big play in the yard. She's usually pretty tired on a normal day, so being awake and restless all night seemed out of character. It was cold last night and rainy. We'll see how she goes tonight, she's being a bit of a brat today, barking at the kitchen bench because she can't reach it (yet) and that's where all the yummy things are

Gypsy's adult teeth are starting to come through. 2 at the very front on the top, and loose ones down the bottom, and a lost tooth but no new on up the top on the side. She seemed ok when the first two came through - we didn't even notice the baby ones were gone until we saw the new ones. Last night however she just wouldn't settle in her crate - she got me up 5 times during the night, but didn't need to go to the toilet except for the first time. I've been giving her cold carrots from the fridge to chew on in her crate which she really likes, but I ran out last night, and so she got a biscuit instead. She's fine to go in to the crate and sleep there, and normally sleeps right through. She woke me up each time by barking really loudly, whereas toilet time is normally grumbles and quiet barks. Each time I took her out to the yard, gave her a few minutes to go to the toilet and took her right back inside to her crate, where she settled right away and was fine, until an hour later when she'd wake me up again. In the end I wondered if her teeth were hurting and keeping her awake, and I gave her a piece of frozen chicken breast (didn't have anything else cold/frozen that was suitable) and she was fine from then until the morning. So, since it was unusual for her to do that and it seemed like she was having trouble sleeping I'm wondering if it's because of teething? I'll go out today and get more carrots, she's got a kong which I can fill and then freeze - anything else that's helpful for them when teething? Hopefully if I can give her something cold when I put her to bed it will help her sleep

Well if it's only wee and never poo inside, then that's progress Gypsy still has the occasional accident inside at 4 months - usually at night time before bed, but we're down to maybe once or twice a week, and again, we've gotten slack with not taking her out ourselves because she's gotten quite reliable at taking herself out. She has a dog door, but when she was too small to use it we'd just leave the door open - lots of bugs, but we figured it was only for a short time. If she's holding on overnight then crate training or not wouldn't make much difference assuming you'd only have her sleep in it overnight anyway. When Gypsy was having more frequent accidents, if I took her out and she didn't go but I thought she needed to, I'd let her come back inside, and then take her right back out again - usually resulted in a wee. Are there particular places where she wees? Gypsy only has accidents at the very end of the hallway now if she has them, we think it's because that part was blocked off the longest with a baby gate so it didn't click as being 'part of the house' in her head.

Can I stick my head in as a recent attendee at 2 different puppy preschools? (feel free to disregard my entirely non-expert opinion!) Both puppy preschools I attended allowed some short (1-5 minutes) sessions of free play with restrictions (e.g. only two dogs at a time, and only dogs who were considered compatible in temperament/size/age/play style). I enjoyed watching Gypsy play with the other puppies and I felt it was good for her to interact with other puppies. Having said that, I think that any play needs to be carefully controlled, and 2 puppies off-lead at a time and 6 puppies off-lead are completely different of course. Also, if it's two puppies off-lead at a time, but all the other on-lead puppies are still interacting with those two puppies, then it's not strictly only 2 puppies playing at any one time. On the topic of adult dogs: My parents have a reasonably elderly shih tzu (12) who has never been around another dog since their other dog passed away 10 years ago and rarely even leaves their house - we can't take Gypsy to visit because their dog can't cope. My MIL has a BC x GR who was taken to basic obedience training as a puppy (8 or 9 years ago), but hasn't really interacted with any other dogs since then except passing by them while on walks. She's fine on-lead, couldn't care less about dogs she passes or barking dogs in yards etc, she'll have a bit of a bum sniff but then wants to move on. However, she hates dogs coming anywhere near her when she's off-lead, and will snarl and snap. Letting a puppy anywhere near her is a recipe for disaster. So, the two options we have available for socialising Gypsy with adult dogs are both not possible. It occurred to me at puppy school that while it's lovely for her to play with other puppies, it doesn't teach her that not all dogs want to play, and that older dogs aren't going to like her getting in their faces and being all bouncy. She's actually not that 'in your face' as far as puppies go, but she hasn't had much opportunity to learn when to back off since all the puppies she's played with have been quite outgoing and keen to play. So for people like me who effectively don't have access to any other dogs (puppies or adult dogs) but who want to have a puppy/dog who has good social skills in order to go for walks on and off-lead, and meet a range of dogs of different ages and breeds, the idea has some merit. I don't know if it just sounds like a good idea in theory, and the actual benefit is negligible, but that's why I'm not the trainer EFS

Other puppies, my leg, but one puppy in particular. It seemed to me like a "I'm feeling a little uncertain.... but a little excited.... what can I do?" and then he'd suddenly perk up and go and hump something. Invariably something he felt less intimidated by. Humping interpretations bother me a little bit because I think it's very hard for people to divorce themselves from human sexuality when they see it. I've seen a lot of young dogs at the park doing it when they get overexcited. To me it is often an indication of them not knowing quite what to do with themselves. I was watching someone else's dog at a family gathering a few weeks ago humping Erik. Why was he picking Erik in particular? Of all the dogs there, Erik was not the smallest, but he was the youngest. One might reason that because he was the youngest he was the logical place to start asserting one's dominance, especially if one is not a dominant dog by nature and wants to start somewhere easy. But then, if Erik was picking targets that were less intimidating to him, why should it be different for an adult dog that was also feeling uncertain? Just because of social maturity? He was desexed and not well socialised. He didn't look to me like he was in his element with 5 other male dogs in a strange backyard. Maybe it's easy to mix up dominance and uncertainty? I am just not convinced about the dominance thing at the moment. I don't see dogs that aren't conflicted in some way doing it. If you see dominance as less about social hierarchy and more about securing access to resources, then I think I have seen a few puppies behaving dominantly. Erik is one of them. At 10 weeks of age, just a few days after we got him, he stood over a small piece of bone he'd found and growled menacingly at Kivi, who was a good 3 metres away at the time. I was like "hello, note to self: watch that!". I'd seen puppies resource guarding before, but there was a different element to this. Erik was not wildly interested in the bone. He was making a point. He thought better of it halfway through and the growl died away very quickly, and then he got nice and comfy with Kivi and we've not seen anything like that happen again. There is no doubt in my mind that Erik will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. To me, that is a dominant personality. My job is to guide him in learning acceptable ways to get what he wants, and to gently habituate him to frustration. Fortunately for me, Erik is very responsive to rewards and thoroughly loves doing things to earn them. He quickly forgets what he wanted when you give him an opportunity to earn a different reward. One time at puppy preschool the Leo puppy tried to take Erik's pig snout. He had a go at her, then pinched a piece of her cooked liver treats, almost as an afterthought! The audacity. Some puppies are rather bold and outspoken, and I think you've gotta treat that much the same way as you would dominance in an older dog. My feeling has been that it's over excitement, and not knowing how to channel that energy into anything else. But so many people see it as dominance, and a big red warning flag, regardless of the age of the puppy/dog, so She is a very confident and outgoing puppy, and also quick to take advantage of any lapses of consistency. She's also very clever, and if she gets away with something once she'll keep trying again and again. Most dogs are probably like that, I suppose. She's great to train because she picks things up really quickly, but it means she's also quick to learn other things. When we first had her in her crate, she tried crying a bit - she tried all the different noises she could make, and after each new type of whine/whimper/bark she'd pause, and look around to see if it got a reaction, and if not, she'd try a new noise. After a while she just huffed and lay down and went to sleep. She didn't want to be in there of course, but she wasn't working herself up into a stressed-out mess either (she has done that too, so I know the difference), just seeing if she could manipulate her way out, then giving up when it didn't work. At the moment, she wakes me up at 5:45 with 'i need to go to the toilet' noises (they're very cute little grumble-y whines ). So I stumble out of bed, take her out, except recently she doesn't come outside and runs right to her food bowl, and only then comes outside. I'm not going to ignore her noises, even though sometimes she doesn't need to go, because she usually does need to go, and I don't want her to have an accident in her crate. Most mornings recently she has then been given breakfast after coming back inside. This morning for example, she woke me up at 5:30, I got up, let her out, she ran straight to her food bowl, I walked past her and went outside. She stood at the door and barked at me (presumably meaning, hey get back in here and feed me!). She followed me out after a while, and did a wee (surprise surprise). Sometimes I get up, take her out, and then go back to bed and feed her an hour or so later, and I'm going to go back to doing that, because at the moment she's become too set in the routine. She's been waking me up earlier and earlier, and that's something I'd like to stop. We were getting up at 5am before daylight savings started, then we went back to 6am, and now we're getting earlier again. Partly it's the time of the sunrise, partly it's her waking up and deciding it's breakfast time because it's been working for her before. She gets a kong or something else to eat in her crate at night, so she's not starving or especially hungry, it's been 6 hours max. since she last ate at the point where she decides it's breakfast time. She gets fed regularly, and she's getting fed enough - she's the perfect weight for her age, so I'm not keen on having her dictate meal times. Lunch and dinner don't have the same issues, because they're not as consistent and it's not as easy for her to keep track of the time either. Anyway, different issue to the humping, went off on a bit of a tangent.

We have the patiolink door, and the flap is fairly heavy and stiff due to the magnets, and there was no way a small puppy was going to be able to get out happily if at all. My MIL's older BC x didn't even want to go through at first - the feeling of the flap sliding along the back takes a while for some dogs to get used to. So we took it off, and put book covering vinyl (not sticky contact, the thicker plastic stuff) in the gap instead - screwed it in the same way as the flap was originally. That way, the dog gets used to having to push something to get out, but it's a more reasonable weight to move and won't scare them off. It might be worthwhile trying that? Just taking the flap off works too of course, but it lets in the flies and the bugs. We've got a different type of dog door on the laundry door, which is a hard plastic flap and Gypsy is perfectly happy to go through that at a million miles an hour, but we still haven't replaced the main dog door flap with the original one, and probably won't for another few months.

This assumption tends to get in the way of good, clear dog training unfortunately. How do you know she knows exactly what you mean? Or, to put it a different way, where do you draw that line? Let's say we have a dog who has been taught to sit at home, and does this reliably. We take him somewhere new, a dog park. He gets out of the car, sees the other dogs, and off he goes. The owner figures the dog "knows" sit, so she calls "sit" repeatedly but the dog doesn't listen! Would you expect the dog to 'sit' in that example? I wouldn't. The owner eventually lures the dog back to the car, goes home with the resolve to work on 'sit' some more. She gets home, cues 'sit' and the dog sits. She cues 'sit' again but this time someone knocks on the door, and the dog rushes to the door barking instead! So where do you draw the line? A lot of the really good balanced trainers do draw a line, but I suspect they are well aware that it is not a line where "the dog knows" but rather where "the dog will figure it out". Their corrections are instructional. Regardless of whether you use time-outs, corrections, purely positive - whatever, the "let me explain this again making it easy for you" approach usually gets the job done. It's just something to keep in mind. Time-outs can be a great strategy in the right situation, but not usually as a way of punishing a dog because "they knew what I meant". Does that make sense? Aidan - I take your point, however, in this case she's been obeying the command 'get down' instantly and reliably for several weeks, so I am quite sure she does know what it means, and when she's having a 'selective hearing' moment, she looks at me and then slowly and reluctantly does it, or looks at me and then ignores it. It's the same place, same people, same (lack of) distractions. I'm well aware that behaviour/training is often context-specific - what works at home doesn't work elsewhere, what works without other people around might not work with them, and so on and so forth. But for this particular behaviour, I'm pretty sure she's not confused in any way about what's expected. I don't expect her to behave perfectly or achieve the same rate of success at training or elsewhere and will happily start from scratch if required Kiesha - thanks for the article. I might try redirecting her more often - I tell her off and then ignore her, so while she does get attention it;s only very briefly, but I tell OH the same thing that any attention is good attention as far as she's concerned so time to take my own advice, and try redirection as the new strategy of choice Was Erik humping people or other puppies? Gypsy has never shown the slightly inclination to hump other puppies, pretty must just me. I must be special She doesn't do it after she's been told off. It pretty much comes out of nowhere - sometimes it seems to be when she's hyped up from playing fetch, other times I'll just be walking down the hallway and there she is latching on, the recent times have been after a bath, and after eating her dinner. Sometimes it's right after she's been getting lots of attention and interaction, other times she's just been playing with a toy quietly and comes flying out of nowhere. Who knows, it could be for different reasons each time. Over-excitement certainly seemed to the reason early on, and it still makes sense on the less frequent occasions she's done it recently. She's a very confident puppy with new people/places/things/other dogs, she's not a fan of the bath but she's not stressed out by it either - she'll still eat treats while in there, whereas my MIL's dog won't because she's too stressed, so even the incident after the bath doesn't seem stress related. She could have just been excited to be out though! Like I said, I'm not hugely concerned, and it's much much better than it was in the beginning. There's another thread in general started today regarding a 4 month old puppy, with a general consensus that humping = dominance, so everyone seems to have a different theory regarding it. As long as the frequency continues to reduce, I'm happy. Just wanted to see if I was missing any big warning signs of an imminent takeover I've been lucky perhaps with previous dogs - ideas of dominance and pack rank and all of that never crossed my mind until I came across them on here, and since so many people see humping as a dominance behaviour, and see things like ToT as being so essential in maintaining rank I thought I must have been living under a rock.

All it will do, IMO is make her hungry and maybe more excited I also don't agree with hanging around while a pup/dog eats...it is their time, to enjoy their food- not to be expecting you to be doing something all the time... If you want her to give up food/treats, then do it when playing, or training. have her on lead.. offer her a toy or something, then ask for it back. Take it gently and IMMEDIATELY treat her!! get her to sit.. and return the treasure... repeat repeat repeat...gradually increasing the value of the treasure.. and always giving her a worthy treat, AND returning her treasure. Having her on lead means she cannot make a mistake . I don't hang around constantly, nor do I fiddle with her food constantly. I do it now and then, because I didn't do it for a while and she growled when I bumped her bowl, I've hung around a bit more since then and no more problems. I'm quite happy to let her eat in peace, but I want her to be comfortable with someone being near her as well. As I said, I never take her food, if I put my hand near her it's only ever to add food. The only time I make her give me things - treats and toys is when training, I don't make her let me take her dinner, and didn't mean to imply that's what I was doing. I actually think a calm response is better in this sort of situation as you may find that even you saying "no" and getting cranky with her is enough of a response to her attention-seeking behaviour to be an incentive to do it again. If you found time out was helping I would stick with that but just take her there calmly and quietly, don't pay her behaviour with any sort of attention from you, even negative attention. If you are consistent I think this will work. I don't think the time that you feed is as important as the way in which you do it. You are already using TOT which is brilliant - I wouldn't worry about whether she eats before or after you tbh. It won't hurt her to wait a little but it also won't help you particularly IMO since it would be easier to settle her down after she's eaten. Selective deafness is a normal puppy development stage, albeit a very annoying one. As long as you are confident she understands what you are asking you can try giving her a time out each time she fails to obey a known command. Again I wouldn't say "no" or anything to her, just the second her paws go up somewhere they shouldn't, lead her to the time out spot. FWIW this worked for me. You will need to address any inconsistency in your training - otherwise the dog is getting mixed messages and it's not fair to expect her to understand what she is meant to do. She's more hyped up once she's eaten compared to before she eats. She does get time out with no reaction other than being picked up and taken out of the room if she doesn't obey things like 'get down' because we know she knows exactly what they mean. ETA: I'm not suggesting there's a dominance plot, and I don't want to jump on the dominance-is-the-reason-for-everything bandwagon either. I'm asking because I've had people tell me both ways that it's a dominance issue that needs to stop now, and also that it's unrelated puppy behaviour. So I just thought I'd open it up for more opinions.

Showdog - let me just say that that's not a typical example. She normally eats around 6am, 12-1pm, and 7pm, and we don't go to bed until 12 or so. A lot of people say not to feed the dog before you eat, so we've been trying to eat first where possible to see if it makes any difference with the humping. If the consensus is in fact not to bother doing that, then we'll re-evaluate what we do. People also say that feeding at the exact same time can also cause problems. She wakes me up at 5:30 am now wanting breakfast which is something I'm not enjoying, and my feeling is that feeding her then is giving in to her demands, which isn't going to be a good thing in the long run. She gets fed regularly, I'm hardly withholding food, but not necessarily when she demands it. A fixed routine has problems of its own. I actually found last night that her manners were better. Normally if we feed her first and then eat, she comes into the lounge room and jumps up on the lounge and makes a nuisance of herself for a while before she settles down, she usually gets kicked out of the lounge room and put behind a baby gate so we can eat in peace (she's never been fed from our plates for the record). Last night, she sat quietly at my feet while I ate, and didn't jump up at all, despite the late time of night and not having been fed. Maybe it was coincidental. I haven't had a dog that humps before, but I have had dogs who beg for food, and demand to be fed at certain times of the day. Sometimes both OH & I don't get home until 8pm or so, so her dinner is never going to be guaranteed to come at a certain time. (and before someone comments - on those days - like today, I leave for work at 2:30 and come home around 8:30, OH leaves early in the morning and comes home late, but she hasn't been left alone all day)

Thanks Aidan. I've tried taking OH to training with me (only once, admittedly), but he's really not into it and I admit I get cranky with him when he doesn't do things 'right'. I'll ask him if he wants to come and just watch maybe - that way I won't get cranky. He is starting to get the message about needing to be consistent though, so there is progress. I'm not too worried about her behaviour because it has improved, but I'm also conscious of making sure any issues or potential issues are dealt with now, and not in a few months when she's bigger, and more established in her behaviour patterns

Gypsy is 16 weeks old today. We've been doing ToT with her from the day we brought her home, and she got the idea very quickly and is very good at waiting until released to eat. Our mealtimes and hers are totally out of synch and so often she effectively eats before us, but not right before we do - usually an hour or more, if we even eat at all (we don't eat breakfast at home except on weekends). Whenever it's remotely possible, I do feed her after we've eaten. From around 10 weeks of age she developed a habit of trying to hump my legs. Obviously I discouraged it, and she wasn't allowed to get away with it. However, 2 different trainers at/around the time said that in puppies that young that sort of behaviour is just playing and over-excitement, and not an attempt at asserting dominance. So, not having experienced the behaviour with any previous dogs, I wasn't too concerned, and just stopped her from doing it whenever she tried. When she first started humping, she'd try to do it every night, around 10-11pm when she was going a bit nuts with the zoomies etc so it seemed to fit in with what the trainers had said re: over-excitement - she was definitely a bit nuts and not focusing on anything. At this stage she'd have a go, I'd pull her off and tell her off, and she'd come right back and try again, and so she'd get put in 'time out' in her pen, and let out once she was calm. If she tried again, right back into the pen. This helped, and the frequency and persistence decreased quite quickly, and she had more or less stopped doing it except for the odd attempt once or twice a week, but only half-hearted (not clinging on like she did at first). I've also gotten sharper with my response to her doing it - she gets a sharp "no!" and removed and then ignored and she'll just sit and not try again. At first, I wasn't as cranky as I should have been with discouraging it, so she didn't get the message right away that no means no, so to speak. We treated it very calmly, and just removed her from the situation until she'd settled down. Now though I've noticed that although she doesn't do it often, she does seem to do it in response to things that are designed to put her in her place (e.g. eating after we do). For example, I made her wait for her dinner until 9pm last night, because that's when I was eating mine (OH didn't get home until 10pm) and and as soon as she finished her dinner, as I was walking down the hallway there was running then a flying leap and suddenly she's attached to my leg. Didn't get a chance to actually hump, I shook her off and yelled at her. She's also been selectively deaf recently when asked to get her paws down from the lounge and the bed. OH is a pushover - he worries that if we put her in time-out and scold her for doing the wrong thing that she won't like us any more so part of the problem has been making sure he is consistent in the way he responds to her. He lets her get away with things a lot of the time, although he is getting much better. In terms of who does what: I feed her 95% of the time, I'm also the one who takes her to obedience, trains her, brushes her, bathes her, etc. OH feeds her if I'm not here and plays with her, but that's about it. She hasn't made much of an attempt to hump OH - only a few times when she first started. But, OH isn't home as much as I am either. She's an only dog but has been to puppy preschool and plays very nicely with other dogs - not overly dominant or submissive, she's been good at playing gently with smaller dogs etc, so no issues there. With food, she had a very small non-serious growl at me once when I accidentally kicked her food bowl, but she's happy for my hand to be in there while she eats (adding extra food), and is happy for me to pat her and hang around while she eats, including when she has a bone or something else exciting. She'll give things up if asked (although haven't tried with a bone recently), but I always give them back once she's given them up (unless it's something she's taken and can't have). __________ So, the question is (after the long-winded background!), is there anything else I can do to make it clearer that she's got no chance at being 'top bitch'? She's an opportunist, and will take whatever chance she can get (not that it's a constant power struggle, she's very well behaved and obedient 90% of the time, but I don't want to end up with it being a constant power struggle once she's older)

Sasha's blend has green lipped mussel in it that Joint Guard doesn't, but also has a stronger smell/taste which some dogs like and others don't. It seems to be mostly personal (and also the dog's personal) preference - there have been a few threads comparing the two before - I searched looking for info for my MIL's dog.

She won't be getting any more for a few days. She normally only gets maybe one a week, max 2, and only fairly small amounts of bone. She only got two two days in a row because she woke me up at 4am to go out to the toilet, and she gets up at 5:30 anyway so I gave her the 2nd one as breakfast in her crate early so she'd settle again. Selfish reasoning but it's bad enough getting up at 5:30 every morning because she can see it's light. She just did a poo though

Update: Vet said he can't feel anything abnormal and it feels like she's got a normal poo in there not too large or sharp bits or anything (too much info probably!) Said she probably passed a poo earlier that irritated her anus hence the straining. There was only a really really tiny poo between last night and now, so it didn't look like it would have caused any problems, but he couldn't find anything else.

Trying not to worry too much, but she keeps trying to go, and can't, and she seems upset and a bit flat now (she seemed normal earlier) Also doesn't help that my mother (dog expert that she is(n't)) has been telling me over the phone that this is why feeding bones is bad and dogs that aren't in the wild should never be given bones, etc etc.

Called the vet and they didn't seem particularly worried...have an appointment for 11:15.

A2G - I only pressed it gently to see if it was painful, and it didn't seem to be, so I'll leave it. I hope she will pass it soon, but she's been trying for a few hours now and she pretty much poos on schedule normally.

There was no bone bigger than her head. The offcut was 90% meat and only a small amount of bone, which is why I got it. The entire thing wasn't bigger than her head, the bone that was in it was spongy sort of bone, not even hard white bone. She just tried to poo 3 times in the space of a minute when I was outside with her, so clearly it's bothering her. She still seems quite happy for me to press on her stomach, it's just when she strains to go that it hurts it seems. This is also a dog who doesn't yelp if she has her tail trodden on, or the quick of her nail cut by accident, etc - she never yelps or whimpers in pain