koalathebear

Hi Many of us go through profound: "What have I done?" feelings after we get our puppy. I think more experienced dog owners are fine but we certainly had many moments of: "Urgh - one puppy - free to a good home!" I can't comment on the worms issue so will leave that to others but can share with you what happened with us. I suspect it's difficult for a puppy to be calm - especially in a new environment. If a puppy was truly calm and placid, you might worry that it was lethargic. The crate can really be a blessing and give you precious moments of quiet. What we did with our puppy was put his toys and little treats in there - we kept luring him back into his crate. Every time he went in, we praised him. Eventually he went in of his own accord and it's a place that he could become calm - if he was hyper, we could close the door to the crate. Also put a mat in a sunny spot of the kitchen - Elbie loves to stretch out in the sun and when he's all sprawly and recumbant on the sunny floor, he becomes very dopey and placid - dropping off to sleep easily. For food, people will link you to the Triangle of Temptation for training your puppy. I can really recommend that making your dog learn to wait for her food will be one of the most useful things you can teach her because meal times can then become training sessions and that sort of thing. With Elbie, when we first got him, we just made him sit and put his bowl of food down in front of him - he wasn't allowed to eat it until he made eye contact with us/we gave him the signal to eat. Of course he failed quite a few times - see , but he got better at it even though he was still a bit of a greedy guts, see . We did it every single meal time and he just got used to it and he's got to the point where he's extremely keen for his food, but he will wait as long as he needs to. It means he doesn't go rushing at the food/go crazy when he sees the food. As Cosmolo pointed out, if your pup is food motivated it's actually a really good thing that can be so helpful in training. At Dog School, the most frustrated people are the ones whose dogs are not motivated by food because they just can't make their dogs do anything! You have to take her out on the leash first. Put the leash on, walk her to where you want her to go and wait as long as you need to. When she eliminates, then you say the cue word (whatever it is you have picked) and then praise her a lot. It takes a lot patience and persistence but it does pay off. We moved house and basically had to retrain Elbie again because he had a new back yard. We took him out on his leash to "Poo Corner" until he got the message. Also, when he was younger, the rain would throw him off so now and then, we would retrain him after the rain. He now is very good and poops where he's supposed to. Also, toilet-training doesn't tend to be rock solid until the pup is older. I felt quite envious of people who would airily say that their pups were fully toilet trained at 8 or 9 weeks but my pup still had accidents until he was a few months old. By 3-4 months he was pretty solid. A lot of people say that pups can still regress up until 6 months. They just can't hold it. You can't rely on your pup to tell you when she wants to go. Sometimes Elbie would be so distracted by toys that he'd just lose control ;) The safest thing is to automatically take your puppy out after drinks, meals and sleeping. At night, we took our pup out every 2 hours. Then every 3, then every 4. Now he sleeps through the night. Even after he was 'mostly' toilet trained, he'd still have the occasional accident. There's even a funny thread here where a bunch of us puppy owners start congratulating ourselves on our toilet-trained pups - thereby jinxing ourselves and pretty much everyone's puppy had an accident that week :p Elbie in the early days would sometimes wee in his crate - I think he fell asleep and did it in his sleep or did a panic wee when we were away. He doesn't do that anymore. The first 3-4 nights we had Elbie, he screamed, cried, howled and yelled ALL night in his crate. Because of that, we couldn't tell which was an "I miss my mum" scream and which was an "I need to go!" scream. As a result, on night two, every trip down stairs to take him out to the toilet his blankets were just COVERED with poo and I was replacing the blanket and dumping the pooey blankets onto the deck to clean in the morning. That first week, I seriously SERIOUSLY regretted my decision to get a dog - the sleeplessness was putting me on edge and I was wondering if I'd ended up with a crazy dog. We persisted - my husband's a lot more steadfast and patient than I am, and we've managed to overcome each challenge from our dog. So hang in there ... a lot of us have gone through the same thing. Sometimes we feel like bad owners because other people don't seem to have the same frustrations with their dogs but plenty of us have - especially newbie owners like us. A young puppy seemed to suck out a lot of the free time we had and we spent a lot of Elbie's early days with us closely monitoring him - for a while we seemed to spend our whole lives in the kitchen because we were renting back then and didn't want him anywhere else in the house (because of carpet). Then he went through his biting phase, then he went through this phase and that phase and blah blah blah Sometimes when we were standing out in the freezing cold waiting for him to do his business, we wondered what on earth we were doing - but now at seven months he is a very lovable, loving little dog who sleeps through the night, toilets on command in the right spot, waits for his food ... There are a lot of people here to help out when you need it. You can also rant here although you should be aware that some people WILL say: "What did you expect when you got a puppy?" :D Nonetheless, it's good to get things off your chest when you need to. Good luck! ETA: Just wanted to add two more suggestions. 1. Elbie's very focussed except when we go on walks. He won't even look at me when we go on walks even though he's stopped pulling. So it's good to go back to basics. One really easy exercise you could do with your pup to help her focus is to hold a piece of kibble between your eyes and say: "Watch" or "look at me". When she looks at you - which she will because of the FOOD, you praise her and give her the kibble. You can feed her half her meal or her whole meal this way and this will slowly teach her to look at you on cue. 2. Get a clicker. Your pup is too young to do training but you can get her used to associating the clicker with Good Things. This way whenever your pup does something GOOD that you like, you click and give her treat. Once she learns that there are good things that lead to food, she will try harder to please you. When we first got the clicker, we clicked, gave Elbie treat, clicked and treated until he associated the click with treats. He had such a good time that day - didn't have to do anything except get fed kibble. There's heaps of stuff here about how to do clicker training and it's a really helpful way to get your dog focussed.

Hi azareal: There's a post here about the dangers of a the standard kong and here's a post about the hard kong ball with a hole in it. I should add that these do seem to be freakishly bad luck incidents and that heaps and heaps of people including DOLers leave their dogs alone with kongs and kong balls witih no problems - as did we for ages ... but given that Elbie's just as happy to play with a tucker ball or the plastic juice bottles, I'm not going to run the kong risk anymore. If anything happens while I'm at work, there's no one to help him and I'd never forgive myself. I suppose the reason why I'm paranoid is that when Elbie was a very little puppy, he did get a larger kong stuck on his nose for a while - it was cute but in remembering it now, I realise that there is a real risk of getting stuck. To be honest, pretty much everything that is recommended will have people who support it and people who will say it's a risk so it's up to you to judge depending on your own circumstances and your own dog whether it's a suitable toy. For instance, a lot of people would never give their dog a rawhide bone but we frequently give Elbie a rawhide bone - under supervision and we check it every 10 minutes or so to see if it needs to be taken away. Same with squeaky toys. My husband's bringing a kong wobbler back with him when he gets back from overseas so that might be a suitable toy, too. I can't recommend the tucker ball enough though - Elbie LOVES it

You poor thing ... Elbie used to be an early riser (5am or 5.30) but for the last few months, he wakes up whenever we do - whether that's early or late. If we want to sleep in, we tend to get up earlyish to wee Elbie but then we pop him back in his crate and can sleep in until 10am if we want. We would make sure he didn't need to go to the toilet and then ignore him if he whinged :p Heh - little is relative. Elbie likes to play keepaway, too. My husband is very good at getting him to swap things for kibble/another toy/a treat. Elbie doesn't trust me so much so for things like bones that he finds from wherever (which he knows he's not supposed to have), he'll dash away from me like a demon - he is soooooooooo fast you can't catch him. Or worse, he'll drop the thing then approach the kibble and then dart back and get the bone before I can get it. These days, I lure him closer, toss the kibble to the side and then hurtle towards the bone or whatever before Elbie can. Sorry to hear about the socks/face cloths/hose connectors - that must be frustrating. For the hose connectors, have you tried using a clicker and desensitising? With stuff like that we normally just dangle it in front of Elbie's face and he gets nothing if he tries to bite it or sniffs it but we click if he ignores it and he gets a treat. He gets to the point where you can wave certain items at him and he won't bat an eyelash. My husband keeps joking that we're going to turn poor Elbie into a desensitised zombie that responds to nothing. Absolutely no danger of that ...

Some dogs have smiley faces. My puppy always has such a serious and earnest face for some reason. Perhaps he is anxious about his wonky ears, perhaps he can't decide if today he feels like a kelpie or a border collie In other news, because I was helping out with Papa Koala over the weekend, Elbie got to hang out in his huge backyard. He kept retrieving garbage from goodness knows where ... weird plastic cups, shells, bones (!!!), glitter pens. Worst? A plastic cup full of about 10 spider eggs. He kept me busy cleaning up after him and chucking everything out - but he kept finding more. Thank goodness he doesn't eat the stuff - just retrieves it as if he's giving me some sort of precious gift. Then he found cardboard and made a bit of a mess. On the plus side, he is not a destructive dog so leaves clothes, shoes, furniture, cables and that sort of thing undisturbed so even though there was laundry billowing temptingly on the clothes horse outside, he ignored it. He also ignored all of the shoes on the back deck. I had a small win on the weekend - I've finally managed to stop Elbie barking in the car. I had to do it because the trip to obedience on Sunday was unbearable - Elbie was so wild and out of control he was having difficulty breathing and he was gasping and crying by the time we got there. So on the way back, I sprayed him in the face a few times. He dropped and once he was in a dropped position, he calmed down - presumably because he wasn't seeing cars flying all over the place. I fed him treats intermittently. He whined a bit but mostly stayed quiet. We have now had three car trips where he has stayed quiet. I'm hoping desperately that this behaviour lasts. I can't have Elbie jumping up on Papa Koala who is quite frail from his chemo so I used the clicker to make Elbie leave dad alone and go to his soft crate. He was actually really well behaved. Obedience on Sunday was good. Elbie did great with his 'go to your mat', sits, drops and stays. With the traffic cones he also did very well, coming up with very good automatic sits. I didn't give him treats during the exercise, just before and after. He did very well with the recall and the mealtime manners (waiting for food) - not sure if he'll be so steady if someone else puts the bowl down but he did very well when I put the bowl down. For the 'obstacle course', they had two dogs tied up near the beginning of the course - one of them barking like a maniac. Elbie ignored them beautifully. He got a bit distracted partway through and was sniffing a bit along the course so the lease went taut for a few seconds but I got his attention back and he made it through the whole course well without any treats and sat, dropped and stood nicely. Alas, he failed the sit for pats miserably but well ... that's Elbie. He's a quivering ball of energy. He did well with the controlled greeting ie approach other dog and owner and stop 1m away from each other and make dog sit while you have a 15 sec conversation. Elbie lunged once at the instructor's dog but otherwise did well with three sets of dogs and owners. His bronze assessment is next week - I hope it goes well. If he fails and we have to repeat bronze I won't upset, but it would be very nice if he passed

Dangling things didn't work so much for us but if you see here at the 3.13 mark, Elbie's getting pretty good at it. It took us about 3 different types of sticky tape, though before we could find one that actually stuck on his fur!!!

I hate the fact that I usually only notice my typos/misspellings: 1. after someone has quoted it back to me on DOL or in an email 2. after I re-read something in my 'sent items' folder :D 3. after I have printed something/uploaded something/converted it to PDF.

Hi Azreal I sympathise - I have to leave our puppy at home when I go to work and I feel so bad about it even though he's now 7 months. He gives me very reproachful looks when I come home. Some things that have worked for us: 1. We divide Elbie's kibble meal up and scatter some of it in the grass - he spends a while snuffling around looking for it. The rest of it we pop into a tucker ball and that keeps him occupied for a time as well 2. We give him empty plastic orange juice / milk bottles to play with (lid and plastic ring removed). He LOVES those. 3. He has some chew toys and tug toys in the backyard - nothing with a squeaker as he only plays with squeakies under supervision. We used to leave a kong or a kong ball in the backyard but recently I have read such horrific stories on DOL about kongs and kong balls that I've stopped leaving those for Elbie. I know that heaps of people have no problems with them but I'm just a bit paranoid now given that he's alone for so long. So far the tucker ball has been super safe and he loves it. Good luck with your puppy

Must be! I guess there are some words that if you just hear them said quickly all the time, you never really think about how they're spelled. Like how many people type per say instead of per se etc. I had an embarrassing experience of mispronouncing the country name Kiribati the other day. It was a bit mortifying. Then again, I was horribly disappointed the other day when I discovered that Ouagadougou was pronounced Oh Ay Gah Doo instead of oogadoogoo the way I had always imagined.

I think my eye must have been auto-correcting things before but now after this thread, I keep seeing people referring to "behaviouralists". What does the L come from I wonder?

Elbie doesn't lick our kitchen cabinet but when he visits Papa Koala's house, he licks the door of their kitchen cabinet. It was driving me crazy so I wiped it down with red vinegar to try to deter him - it just made him lick it more! ETA: Max#1 - the Back To Floppy ears are adorable, but then again, you've seen my dog's ears I'll try to get a photo of his ears when they're up and he's all alert. When he's excited, they go back and he looks kind of earless like a seal

The poor little thing. I'm so sorry to hear he's still poorly. I hope you find out what's wrong soon so that he can start to get better.

Ah .. it is definately annoying ... I find it a bit devestating or even devistating to see things like that ... Makes me almost loose my temper.

Oh yes - we got ours from either Hot Dollar or the Reject Shop here in Canberra. A real bargain given that it's lasted for ages and ages. Someone on my facebook asked if that was how Elbie was supposed to play with it. I had to say on, I just have a habit of draping things over my poor long-suffering puppy's snout and he stares at me reproachfully ... Max#1: I didn't realise that you thought you had to retrain because of different terminology. As wuffles said, don't worry about that at all. You could say pickleface instead of drop and that would be fine. We use 'drop' for the drop position and 'down' for telling him to get down off things or us - although in the US it seems more common to say 'down'. We were also told not to use 'good boy' as our marker word but to go for something shorter but we've stuck with 'good boy' and our clicker because it works for Elbie - he knows when he's being praised for doing the right thing. When Elbie does the wrong thing eg goes the wrong way or whatever, we use "no" and even though it's a common word, he knows what it means and doesn't seem to get confused. No - I'll have to keep an eye out! Last week I was too busy trying to make sure my puppy didn't disgrace me in class.

Oh that is so cute! Now I don't feel so bad that Elbie gets tucked in every night for bed ... my family think it's scandalous that a 'working dog' gets a blanket and a hot water bottle but if a big tough rottie also gets a blanky ... ;)

Please, PLEASE come back to obedience classes..... ;) Your doggies are soooooo cute.

So true ... It's so sad when they're not cute little puppies anymore! But other delightfulness awaits as their personalities develop. Elbie has lost his soft puppy coat but his head - particularly ears are still soooooo soft and lovely. I have to admit I like stroking and pinching his ears (very gently of course) because they're so soft. He rests his head on my knee to let me do this.

I know ... but one of the tragedies about some forms of mental illness is the person affected often does not realise that they are ill and sometimes tragic things can happen. I've seen mentally ill people think that they are invincible, that they don't need food or water, that they can touch fire, that they're gods etc. For my part, I'd much rather have a physical illness because at least I would know that I need treatment. The indignity of the mental illness cycle is terrifying - seeing someone ill, then treated then going off the meds as soon as they're well because they think they're well and don't think they need the meds. In this case, the woman didn't even seem to have been diagnosed because it looks like she had no one to say: "I think something's not right here." I know that sometimes being mentally ill/depressed is used as a cop-out to escape responsibilities, but if this woman was mentally ill and had no support network or carer to say: "You need help - go get it or I'm going to call the authorities", then I can easily see how it devolved in the appalling way it did. Health support services usually won't get involved unless a family member or neighbour draw something to their attention and so if this woman kept to herself and didn't draw attention to herself - no one would have known that she was deteriorating like this. If she did have 'consciousness' and knew what was happening then I have no sympathy but if she was ill then it really wasn't her fault. It's not a matter of being tough/responsible - I've seen mental illness strike unpredictably. In any case, I suppose we are all speculating because none of us know the truth. ETA: People on this forum are so compassionate about dogs - often it's because they believe that dogs are powerless/helpless to help themselves, they don't have a voice and are not responsible for the horrible circumstances in which they frequently find themselves. Many mentally ill people are in the same predicament.

It's a bit like the people who swear that they would "never" rehome their dog. You just never know what's going to happen in life no matter how much you plan for contingencies. The woman in this article didn't sound like a bad person, she neglected herself as well as her family and she sounded very broken and unwell. She clearly had no friends or support network and had fallen between the cracks in terms of the welfare system. I am not sure if she had a 'formal' mental illness but she certainly did sound very unwell and people who are in the midst of a period of mental unwellness frequently have limited if any judgement or lucidity. I feel very sorry for all of the family - dogs included.

Flyby post ... Elbie and his beloved rope toy

Must have video! She must be soooooooooooo cute with it. Elbie's getting very polished at it - pushing with his nose and pulling the ball back with his paw. It's very funny. He's ok - he was very unhappy yesterday because he was left at home by himself for almost 12 hours and it was cold, dark and rainy when I got back. He was barking dementedly and very jumpy. Today, the weather was a lot better so while he was excited when I got home, he wasn't jumpy. The tucker ball has been a great way to keep him occupied and in the morning when I leave, I divide up his breakfast - some of the kibble is scattered in the grass, other kibble is put into the tucker ball in the yard and some kibble was frozen into a peanut butter kong ball. I made him some frozen peanut butter kibble cubes in an ice cube tray just as a treat and threw those into the grass as well. We're both doing all right but work is busy and with looking family commitments, too I spend a lot of time driving around like a headless chicken Both Elborino and I will be very happy when OH returns!!! I feel very sorry for myself when he's not around. I must have separation anxiety - next step will be to gnaw on my feet or something. Don't forget the video of Miss G and her treat ball :D

wizzle: I noticed in another post that you said Genevieve has a tucker ball now. How's it going? Does she like it? She must look so cute! With OH away, I give Elbie part of his dinner in the tucker ball so that I can have my evening shower uninterrupted

Oh he's so cute!!! What breed is he? He looks like a teddy bear - or an ewok!

Max#1: I'm pretty sure Max will learn the different words soon. We used to just use the word "wait" to make him not eat his food until released but at dog school they always say 'leave it', so we taught him leave it just so that we didn't look like freaks in class - but both phrases mean the same thing and he won't start eating until we click or say 'ok'. Don't feel disheartened, Max is smart and will figure it out - at the end of the day, the words don't really seem to mean as much as the signals do I agree with Niques approach. We started with very short sit stays. It took a while to build up to 30 seconds and 60 seconds and in a High Distraction Area, Elbie doesn't even hear me!!!! I am envious of your recalls - Elbie's too timid with other dogs so we don't go to dog parks, just have him play at dog school and he never strays far so we don't really know how good his recall is. I keep reading about the "100% recall" thingy and wonder if we'll ever have it - recall is being tested at bronze assessment, too. Poor Max ... getting the snip. We felt so bad when poor Elbie was emasculated - guilty! Sorry the ear flopped, I know you were hopeful that they might stay up. Have you got a photo of the revised position? Good luck with the teeth. Elbie seemed to be done in a matter of 2 weeks - very weird. Suddenly he had a mouthful of large white teeth. Niques: My husband's still deciding on his preferred job so he's been home so will probably be home for a bit when he gets back. Even after he starts working, his hours should be reasonable - the main problem I'm having this week is that things have blown up at work and I have family commitments so I'm driving around like a headless chicken and always seem to get back home to Elbie when it's cold, dark, rainy and the puppy is crying. He'll just have to deal but I know he's very distressed when left alone all day OK that video was WONDERFUL. Best part of my day and it really cheered me up. Thank you so much for sharing - James looks absolutely adorable. I know he looks small to you but he has grown so much - he has such an expressive face Keep the vids coming!

wuffles: I can't believe you still hang things on the outside line with two such playful doggies! When we bought this place, we didn't even realise that there wasn't an outside washing line! Max#1: James' version of dead is here. We're still here - but no new photos unfortunately. Elbie and I are having a very tough week - the poor puppy isn't enjoying being left in the backyard on his own for so long and I'm juggling so many things at once that I'm racing around like a maniac. Elbie's so happy when I get home that I am feeling very guilty. He went really well at obedience class last week although who knows if he will pass his bronze assessment the week after next.

I'm in the same situation. We had a family dog but I still consider myself a novice dog owner because I didn't really 'look after' our family dog other than to go for walks and feed him. I don't think I really engaged or played with him the way we do with Elbie. Looking back, I feel a bit sad about it now. Our dog Kitt had 11 good years and he was healthy and well-treated, but he must have been bored out there in the backyard doing his own thing even though he wasn't destructive and didn't chew things up or dig holes. A labrador/border collie, we got him at six weeks (these days a no-no) and he was an outside dog after the first night ... Things definitely have changed a lot since 'those days'. I didn't want to say this before but I have to confess that we have a bum bag for training. For a while we carried little ziplock bags, then I bought cheapie little camera bag on a string from hot dollar ...I looked at the various treat bags but a bum bag seemed the easiest way to go so that we could dispense treats quickly and also separate the different treats.