SammieS

Helen and I tried to revive the challenges but the excitement quickly died off.... lets pick something easy to strart with for the month of August :)

I'm definitely interested :D

If only I could visit Cairns for a holiday! I'll take a look at the website when I get home Marly :)

Thanks everyone for your replies! Its nice to know that you appreciated how wonderful the times are when our reactive dogs actually seem normal and it makes you realise all your hard work is finally paying off! I wish we had a reactive rovers class near us, we have been to something similar but there isn't any walking between other dogs or anything like that, we sat at the back of our class because being placed in the middle pushed Asti over threadshold too easily (although by the end of the 5 weeks we were sitting closer and closer to the rest of the class who used to look at me like a freak when Asti lost her brain but it was because their dog was eyeballing Asti but no-one see's that!). Snook - thanks for your kind words! Megan__ yay for Lucy! Hankdog - how did you teach "run away"? I noticed that Asti has converted from fight to flight now when other dogs are barking at her as her pulling is now away from them!

Hi Everyone! I haven't written in here for a while but have been watching everyone's progress I think I've had a small break through with Asti our reactive female Frenchie. Since Christmas we have been visiting a dog chiro as we noticed she didn't have the movement in her legs that our puppy did (Asti is 3.5 and Angus is now 10 months). The chiro informed us that Asti basically had a miagrane for all her life and suffered from bad siatica (sp?) pain up both back legs... I was devasted and felt like I'd let her down as her owner... so for the last 6 months we've visited the chiro many times and more recently seen a holistic vet who also did some stretching and gave us some chinese herbal medicine which has done the trick! So, now I can say that she is feeling 100% better and she actually comes over to us and wants cuddles now! Its amazing how you don't recognise behaviours drop off but you notice when they come back... (like laying on her back, doing the "i love you stretch", laying with both legs out the back like a frog). Anyway, the reason for my post in here is because you guys will understand how significant my afternoon walk was. Today we tried something different and I went to a local park which has a winding path and I managed to help Asti walk past a large brown dog which was pulling its owner, past kids on noisy scooters, past prams, we walked towards a jack russell who was miles away that started growling and carrying on with its owner, then past two little fluffies fence running who were very vocal! and then we did the same walk back past all of that to get home!!! I was so excited at how well she did that I couldn't contain myself!!! I just about skipped the entire way home from the park! So my thoughts are that Asti is no longer in pain so when i direct her with the lead when she see's another dog there is no pain so she doesn't associate the sighting of another dog and pain, today I used a harness instead of her normal collar (we haven't used her harness for about 2 years as her reactivity got quite bad), we walked along a winding path today and I criss crossed over it depending on where my obstacles were so she was concentrating on the environment and me talking to her more than the people around her (normally we walk on a straight path where you can see the dogs coming directly at you from a long way away) and finally, I was wearing a walking belt which means I didn't touch the lead once! so she couldn't feel my tension and i had to work hard to talk her through it and remain calm myself! The whole walk I managed to keep her below threashold and it was such an enjoyable walk!!!! We still have a long way to go like managing her fence running and sensivity to fast changing environments and strange noises but I think we might have hit a milestone! I could almost yell it from the rooftops! Its slow progress but I wanted to share with my fellow reactive dog owners who know how big these little changes really are (if that makes sense :p)... thanks for reading :)

oh Snook! I totally understand where you are coming from, those rules all make sense and we were given a similar set by our trainer - I also don't mind having Asti on the couch or the bed with us and its nice to have her on her own accord want to sit next to you on the couch or move slightly on the bed just so her paw is slightly touching you... its cute and warms the heart :D Like Justice, Asti is the calmest and most gorgous dog at home, its just when she's out and about and the environment changes suddenly (dogs, noises... kids zooming down the hill on bikes) she can't deal with it! I just wish that the rest of the world see what we see at home Some progress that I've made lately is that I have been following up on Asti's fence barking by putting her in time out each and every time! By giving her the 'cue' word first gives her the opportunity to choose to come away from the fence otherwise i'll go over to get her and she'll spend some time in the bathroom away from everyone else. This is working better than expected, until we visited a new puppy school with Angus I never thought that timeout could work on dogs like it does on children! The problem is remembering which timeout word is for which dog! so Angus gets "too bad" and Asti gets "loser" and we make it sound like they've won a price so that it doesn't sound like we're getting frustrated with the situation. Angus has spent so much time in timeout that I say "too bad" and he takes himself off to his crate! :laugh:

My old boy was fine with people but had massive dog aggression, and I remember the fist time I stopped and spoke with another dog walker, had my boy in a drop beside me and he didn't arc up at all WOW.......felt like I had just won a world obedience title And the first time we went to the vet and didn't have to sneak him in through the back door in case he saw another dog. People who haven't had a reactive dog think you are nuts getting excited over your dog not playing up, but it's a massive achievement and a real breakthrough when your program starts to get reliable results. I never reached a point a with my old boy where I could confidently let him off the leash with strange dogs, but he was good under leash control in the end, and I bought a new puppy who became his best friend, that was something I doubted could ever be achieved well introducing another dog into the home, but having a puppy helped him to enjoy dogs instead of wanting to kill them it seemed, after 6 months with the pup, he was far more relaxed around dogs in general. It took me a couple of years to really get a handle on my old boy's behaviour and make a permanent change, but having that experience and conquering it, I admire and respect people with reactive dogs who dedicate themselves to give rehabiliation a red hot go, it's so worth the effort and the learning framework achieved in the end :D My old boy was my 6th Retriever, I think a victim of chasing conformation in the breeding over temperament, but was unusual for a Goldie to be DA as a rule of thumb, so most people blamed me for his behaviour, what I didn't do right in his upbringing to the point I was starting to believe it, but the DA was in the dog, he was just a crappy breeding temperament wise with a lovely conformation, you get that in some dogs, and people do sling blame at us for owning reactive dogs, my advice there is don't listen to it and just concentrate on a program to get through it. :) Obviously we desexed him and didn't use him at stud, but the desexing made absolutely no difference to his reactive behaviour in the slightest, many advise desexing a male as the first step in rehabilitation, it may help in some situations perhaps, but in my case it made no difference whatsoever?? thank you for this post... its made me feel normal!

:laugh: DITTO!!! I agree!

It didn't work on my dog....

Today I shot some love bokeh :)

Here's a link to some nice bokeh shots... {link}

I'm sorry to hear about your story... I too think that 5km's is such a long way for a little dude - fit or not! My guys are so tired after a walk around the block that we leave them at home and then go for a run ourselves!!! Feel free to post in the Frenchie Thread as there are some breeders and experienced Frenchie owners that maybe able to assist you.

My guys have just had it - the puppy got a wart on his face and them in his chops, Asti had two in her chops. They look like bits of cauliflour? I squeezed Asti's (before I knew what they were) and they fell off the next day - or she scratched them off. Angus' have finally disappeared after about 7 weeks. Our vet wasn't overly concerned and no other dogs that Angus came in contact with seemed to get them (this was before we knew what they were). Our vet said that you can take stuff from the inside of the wart and inject it back into the skin for the body to fight the virus faster but we decided to see how it went. I was worried that they would get them in their throats but luckily the warts stayed on their chops!

Hi Sylvie, I have also seen Jane Harper and have found a combo of what I learnt with her and also our weekly training worked well. We go to Urban Dog Training at Carina - Danielle and Paul are fabulous, very down to earth and the results are outstanding. Asti attended the Urban Basics class and Angus attended the two Puppy ones and also attends the free Adolescent play groups up until he's 12 months old. My next plan of attack is to get both Asti and Angus into Clicks and Tricks, and Loose Lead Walking (in that, Asti will learn to walk around other dogs who are also on lead!) and then depending on how we go I want to keep repeating with Asti until she gets the hang of being around other dogs and knowing they don't care about her. When you go to an Obedience Club, do they have classes/sessions like other dog training schools? or is the training specifically for competing in competitions?

I watch this thread with interest because I have a reactive dog and I know all the things that we didn't do correctly with Asti when she was a pup to lead to this and have promised myself I wont make the same mistake with Angus. I also know how frustrating it can be when "just friendly dogs" barrel up to yours when you're trying to keep your dog calm and under threshold then when your dog reacts the owner gives you the "there is something wrong with your dog look" when it was their dog that was displaying the rude/incorrect body language in the first place. The best thing that I did was enrol Asti into a basics dog training class - it covered all the things we did in puppy preschool 3 years ago but I wasn't there to teach her to drop, stay, loose lead walk or go to your mat, I used the 5 weeks to let Asti know that she could be around other dogs and they weren't going to come near her and she wasn't going to have to meet them. I have seen such a difference that I'm going to continue training at this place because the trainers are very supportive (and place you in the class where your dog is most likely to succeed as in be less reactive) and they have a strict no meeting on the lead policy which takes the pressure off us knowing we don't have to worry about those "he's just friendly dogs" because Asti won't have to meet them. I have to admit that I always took my cool calm and collected husband with me and I did sit in the car after class one night and had a cry because we were put too close to the trainers dogs in class (they were in a pen) and Asti lost her brain (only once in the 60 minutes) but all I could feel was the whole class looking at us! I hope all goes well on Saturday Hankdog and that you come back in here to tell us how it went!

Welcome LittleMissOdie! and congrats your Frenchie! I spend my life trying to work out how to make my Frenchies tired... lucky mine don't have as much energy as others! It will get easier once her vacc's are finished and she can go anywhere and everywhere! Until then, give her milk bottles (with the ring around the top of the bottle removed) - or any plastic bottle for that matter to play with or toilet rolls to chase around (our 7 month old thinks toilet roll cores are the best thing ever and follows you to the toilet in case you've finish the roll - our 3 yearold Frenchie just rolls her eyes at how excited he gets :laugh:), nylabones are also good for them to chew on, it tires them out and is good for their teeth! We also leave treasure hunts for our guys (Angu is in a pen when we're at work so they can't play too rough whilst unsupervised and end up hurt) so we spread treats around in kongs and treat balls and behind things and under pillows and towels so they spend the first 15 minutes after we leave searching for treats and not worrying about us leaving. Also - come and visit us in the Frenchie thread (if you haven't already) we'd love to see some photos!

So... our pup Angus has a cough and we think its kennel cough. As he's been vaccinated we're just treating with left over Linctol from when Asti got it last year and keeping him warm when it gets cooler in the morning (waking up at 1am with a hacking puppy isn't fun when you ahve to go to work the next day) and the humidifier on near his crate too. Just incase we ran out of our existing bottle of Linctol the vet suggested we get some more - he charged us $60 for 120ml I asked him to repeat how much it was twice as I didn't believe him! On the weekend I had bought some benedryl from the chemists for $11 but am too nervous to give it to him... so Linctol it is! Edited to Add: Asti's bottle of Linctol was $45 that's a huge price increase!

With the forms that the vet has to fill in - did you just take a copy with you with you picked her up? I'm just wondering if you had to make an afterhours vet emergency call and raced in to get your dog looked at, treated and then left again (without having the dog to stay in over night so you wouldn't have to visit again and would probably go to your normal vet) - would you take the forms with you or woud you have to go back so the vet can fill in all the details? I can see that vets would get cranky having to fill in the lengthy PetPlan form every time and after the fact. I have just swapped over to PetPlan, I was with RACQ before and their forms didn't require a vet to write anything if you had the invoices of what happened during the consult. Edited to say: I hope your baby girl is ok and her toe is on the mend!

BOKEH After some discussion in the March thread, it looks like the Shutter Sisters monthly words are quite difficult! So, I propose a new word for this month and hope that more people can get involved. I chose Bokeh because I've seen other posts with awesome Bokeh so that it'd be a good starting point! Here's are some of my bokeh shots - Fairy lights then the same fairy lights with a music note shape put over the front of the lens.

Here are my straws... not quite gathered!

You and I can do it together then ;) I'm sure Helen will join us too if she can :D So the 1st is on Sunday - I'll pick a word that most people can do - or that I've seen in other photo posts....

You didn't happen to get any photos?!

Good Job RedAngel! I have a straw photo I took this week for a "plastic" challenge - I'll post it tonight! I'm thinking we should also start a thread with people to post ideas for the Monthly Challenges - what do you think?

You are correct in thinking this is not 'friendly' body language! We have a dog in our training class that sat staring at my dog for about 5 minutes and then Asti growled to which I got up and walked out of class quickly to refocus her on me and then we came back into class and resumed being calm. Anyway, turns out the other dog is reknown for 'staring' and egging other dogs on and it also made two other dogs bark and lunge at it during class too! All the while the owners are oblivious to the confrontational stares their dog is doing because they are too focussed on listening to the Trainer! Most people miss the stare and then when your dog reacts people look at you and your dog and think "geez, what was wrong with it" - I'm glad that I go class with awesome trainers and they already knew that we were doing the right thing and were helping the other couple identify the body language their dog is giving to other dogs.

Fabulous RedAngel!!! All I can think about is the gather at the top of elastic waisted pants!