whiskedaway

I'm not surprised she was tired! She and Akira went racing around the park like mad things. She's got to be one of the first dogs that can keep up with my idiot.

I'm kind of the same - I really wanted to do it because I want a chronicle of Akira as a puppy. Unfortunately we have no photos of her between birth and 10 weeks, so I wanted to make up for that. I plan on printing out all of the photos and putting them in a really nice album.

Being Spitz you'll be used to the temperament too. And they're definitely able to cope with bigger dogs and I believe they are fairly affectionate (Corvus's Erik is anyway).

This is my all-time favourite photo of Akira and was taken the day after we got her.

Week 43 - Akira supporting my partner's footy team Week 44 - Tug! And yes, I'm planning on doing it next year again. I'm hoping to get a new camera next year too, fingers crossed!

I only ended up with one good one. Esky and Akira:

Ker, sorry to say but I'm pretty sure Scott won't be there. He was working like a mad thing to try and get the front yard finished today so that he could come along, but unfortunately it's still only half finished, so he'll be staying home to work on it.

We have one of those automatic scent diffusers (smells like frangipani) which we originally got because while Huskies don't have a really doggy odour, when Akira used to have accidents when we were toilet training you could still smell the urine no matter how much detergent we used to get it up.

Oh you poor thing PH! How'd you manage that?

Akira is a bench surfer, so any food left on the counter is scoffed. She's stolen chocolate muffins, bread rolls, fully made sandwiches covered in glad wrap, meat patties, chicken breast and I'm probably forgetting something. The thing is though, she has a really sensitive belly so EVERY TIME she's sick for days. Anything non-food, she doesn't actually eat, she just chews up and spits back out. There's been a remote, the windscreen wipers on OH's car, lots of dog beds, anything that has a zipper on it and shoes.

My partner refuses to have anything but girls. He reckons they're cleaner, won't cock their leg on everything and don't get as big, but I think he's a little bit ignorant because he's never had anything but female dogs. So if we were to get another dog, it would be a female, but a third one I'd try very hard to get a male. I don't think I have to worry about the third one though seeing as a second one is a big fat no at the moment anyway!

Our pup tends to have a sensitive gut, so anything that she eats that's a little out of the ordinary tends to go through her. We had her on Supercoat for quite a while and have recently switched to Pro Plan. She has done really well on both and neither upset her belly.

Haha, Twilight has as long a tongue as Akira!

Akira didn't go either. At the time, she was scared of everything and we didn't want to take her to puppy school and possibly undo all work we had done. When she was four and a half months old, she started obedience, and by that time she was a little more confident so it was better for her.

I love the second shot of Kivi. And the flying Echo shot is awesome!

Yes he definitely is non-threatening which helped Akira heaps. My dad, on the other hand, she was petrified of because he's a big, muscular, bald, biker-looking guy. :p Now he's her best friend, all because he was cleaning the boat with sprinklers and was ignoring her and Akira LOVES water. So he started squirting her when she wasn't looking and she thought it was the best game ever. Wouldn't work for any dog that hates water, but it was perfect for Akira and ever since then she's less wary around men in general.

I'd probably qualify the above with something more along the lines of "backyard bred, undersocialised, and undertrained dogs tend to develop poor temperaments anyway" Not all backyard bred dogs are going to be problem dogs - it really does come down to getting out what you put in - well bred dogs can be nasty little things when owned by idiots too... T. Agreed. I own a BYB dog and while there were issues at first and there still is a teensy issue with men that we're getting through, we now have a well adjusted dog because we put in the hard work.

Scott will be there, and he's used to dogs that are afraid of men after what we went through with Akira. So I'm sure he'll be happy to help.

Here's one photo, I would have others at home but I'm currently on my work computer.

I think they pick up the hand signal much easier than the verbal hence the reason to teach the verbal first . Maybe my dog is a weirdo then. Typical Sibe, has to do things backwards.

My pup had dandruff when we got her. She was on a raw diet and we switched her to Supercoat which made a huge change in her coat. It was softer and had no dandruff. She is now on Pro Plan and her coat is still lovely. We also give her sardines once a week which helps with her coat and skin.

I've always been told to teach them together and that the dog will pick up the verbal before the signal, so then you start phasing the verbal out.

Alright I might do some fake convos. Squirting her wouldn't work, water is a fun game for her and she'd be back for more.

So just shut her out of the room before we get on the phone or when she starts barking? It's impossible to ignore a dog that's barking when the other person can't hear what you're saying, unfortunately.

I have noticed lately that Akira barks whenever either me or my OH are on the phone. It doesn't matter if they ring us or we ring them, and it doesn't matter if we've been playing with her before the phone call or if she's been ignored. For example, today she was in another room and I was in the study and I made a phone call and she came in to bark at me while I was talking. I told her to be quiet a couple of times to no avail and then shut her out of the study, which stopped the barking. While she's a talker, she doesn't really bark much normally. Does anyone have any ideas on why she might be doing this and how I can stop her?