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fuzzy82

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Everything posted by fuzzy82

  1. My puppy started lifting his leg at nearly 6 months, he was desexed at 2.5 months. I haven't done anything to stop it, it's natural. My female dog lifts her leg on walks too. They pee on cue, whether on lead or not, so they have no issues with that. As for doing it at your friends house, this is probably just because he hasn't generalised housetraining. They don't generalise well, and being housetrained in your house doesn't mean he's housetrained in any other house. So when visiting, make sure he has peed before taking him inside, and take him out regularly to pee and praise for peeing outside, just like you did when housetraining him.
  2. I walk my two dogs separately. They walk perfectly on their own, no pulling etc. But when I walk them together they pull, lunge, bark at everything and generally go crazy, like they egg each other on. It's embarrassing to be seen with them.
  3. As long as they are all well cared for then I guess it's up to the individual what's too many. Personally I don't want more than two. I don't think having more than two would add to the enjoyment of having dogs, it would only result in each of them getting less attention. Plus, mine are indoors with me all the time, bit different having 10 dogs outside and 10 dogs inside.... And I don't think I could ever have less than two, now that I have seen how much the enjoy being around a canine friend. We don't have ANY friends who have dogs, so if I only had one it wouldn't get to socialise much with other dogs.
  4. I wouldn't call it "crap" either, not when comparing it to supermarket foods, but there is definitely "something wrong with it". I personally wouldn't feed Advance or Proplan, I did check both when I was looking around for the best food, but found that they have a lot of grains and ingredients you don't recognise. I ended up feeding Nutro for a while, which was ok, but I still wasn't happy with it. I eventually found an online site that sells both Artemis and Canidae, which are superior foods when compared to Nutro, Advance, Proplan, Royal Caning etc. Canidae is 100% grain free, and I think there is a grain free version of Artemis too. I ended up getting Canidae, which is working well at the moment, and I got Felidae for the cats, which is the feline version, and it's amazing how much less they need to eat (the cats were previously eating RC). It also works out cheaper than both Nutro and RC when I buy the big bags. There might be a supplier near you, or you can buy it online at www.petdeli.com.au
  5. I had been using Revolution for about 6 months, and was still finding live fleas on my puppy, but not on the adult dog. I decided to try Comfortis last month (2-3 weeks ago) and haven't seen a flea since. No side effects either, and at the pet store they said it's their most popular flea product these days.
  6. I bought a kabana for when my puppy started basic obedience last week. In puppy class I always just used commercial puppy treats or cat treats. The kabana was a big hit tho, and for just one or two sessions a week I can't imagine it doing any harm. I have a doog belt with a pouch at the front for treats. For commercial treats that's fine, for the kabana I bought the smallest zip lock bags I could find and just stuck that in the pouch, and threw it away afterwards.
  7. I actually like the completely shaved look for my poodle x. She is cute when she's fluffy, but I have a weak spot for sighthounds and my poodle x is long and lean and I just like the look of her body when I can actually see it all. My JRT x doesn't get clipped at all, being double coated. He gets really hot tho, so I am trying to find someone who will strip him, but there aren't a lot of groomers in my area and I don't want to have to drive 30 minutes AND pay $80 for it. I would drive 30 minutes if it was cheap, or I would pay $80 if it was just down the road, but I'm not gonna do both.
  8. Nutro and Royal Canin are actually quite crappy as far as food goes. They are better than Pedigree and any other supermarket food, but they are still full of grains and fillers you don't recognise the names of. Canidae is one of the best foods out there, and it actually works out cheaper than RC for the big bags. And the first 5 ingredients are meat, and they list the type of meat, not just "meat", and almost every ingredient on the list is something you recognise, and it's completely grain free. I have to buy it online, can't get it in the stores here. I buy it here: www.petdeli.com.au
  9. Some kids called my poodle x a chihuahua once. She's 4.5 kg, about 35 cm high and very long and lean, with floppy ears, and is cream colour with apricot ears, and looks nothing like a chi. My JRT x MFT usually has people stumped, they usually ask what he is, rather than calling him anything.
  10. There are plenty of badly behaved big dogs too. It's not a small dog problem, it's a general dog owner problem where a lot of people don't bother training their dogs and expect them to train themselves and instinctively know good behaviour from birth. I have two small dogs, they are super friendly, well trained and we often walk around our huge local dog park. Pretty much every time there is a big dog running up to us. They usually end up being friendly, but it's quite scary when a dog 10 times the size of yours is running at you at full speed, and when they do reach us they are usually over excited and intimidate my dogs (who usually just end up sitting on my feet letting the big dogs sniff them, no growling or aggression at all). My dogs never run up to other dogs, usually they stay well away from them, if they do go up to other dogs they are calm with good manners. Even in training class there are big dogs who regularly snap at other dogs, and dogs that are so big that their tiny female handler has no control. One of my dogs is already worried around bigger dogs due to being attacked by a big dog once, and a huge GSD pulling his handler around in class doesn't help her fear, and it makes it difficult for her to focus. He would probably be perfectly fine if they met, but he was too excited to remember his doggy manners and I spent the whole class just trying to stay out of his way.
  11. The thing about being friendly to strangers and people who come over, + letting you put your hand in their food and touch them while they are eating, that is a training issue. Small dogs don't automatically have 'small dog syndrome' just because they are small. They develop this because a lot of people are slack with training small dogs, because problem behaviours don't seem as bad when it's only a small dog, compared to if a rottie or great dane had the same issues. Both my dogs are tiny, I have a poodle x maltese and a JRT x MFT, and they both let me take toys off them, drop whatever is in their mouth when asked, I can touch them while they eat, put them on my lap and touch them all over and trim nails while they lie limp in my lap, and they are friendly to everyone, but will guard the house when we are not home. They are both indoor dogs, and my JRT x is quite vocal, but not a nuisance barker. He will bark while playing, when excited and when unsure, and just for fun. My poodle x is much quieter, and hardly every barks except when the dogs are home alone and someone approaches the house (we know because she does scary big dog barks when we have been out and come home, before she realises it's us) They behave this way because right from the start I put them in my lap and handled them every single day, touched their paws and ears and lips, and would not let them get down while they struggled, once they are calm they get to go down and play. They would eat in my lap to begin with, then when I started putting the bowl on the floor I would touch them all over while they ate, so they think nothing of it. They were taken to puppy classes and b-day parties and got to meet many different types of people and dogs. Everything mentioned in this last paragraph is an absolute minimum for any puppy you get, and if you do, you will have a friendly dog that goes limp and placid whenever he is handled, and who is friendly to strangers but not intruders.
  12. My groomer (at the pet store) charges $40 for a groom, bath, nails, ears, and it takes about 1.5-2 hours (Brisbane northside). I always thought it was stupidly cheap, and not sure how they make money off of grooming. I would think $50 is very reasonable, or even $60 for a standard puppy clip.
  13. How exactly do you get started with this? I have issues with my dogs always wanting to come in front of me to do sits and downs, if they are too far away they will run up to me to do them, and if they are next to me they will move in front of me before doing them. How do you start teaching them that sit means sit right where you are right now? Of course it's my fault for not doing it in different ways right from the start, I always had them right in front of me while teaching it, I just didn't think of it at the time.
  14. One of our dogs is called Obi, as in the Star Wars character. Does that count as a human name?
  15. Two of our cats have human names, but the remaining 5 cats and 2 dogs have non-human names. We didn't set out to name them one way or the other, we just picked whatever we liked at the time. I have previously also given goldfish human names, and I know other people who give their bettas human names. They are just names, giving an animal a human name doesn't necessarily mean you are humanising them. There is nothing magical about names that are normally used for humans.
  16. A crate is like a pet carrier, you can get the plastic type or the wire type. It should be just big enough for the dog to sleep in. And then you train them to like the crate and see it as their den, put toys and treats and kongs in there etc, and put them in for a few seconds to begin with, have a party, going into the crate is the most awesome thing ever etc. Then slowly work your way up to several hours (which sometimes doesn't happen so slowly, my puppy had to be in his from his first night here, but I spent most of his first day here encouraging him to go in, and he slept quietly the whole night). I like to cover it with a blanket as well. He used to whinge whenever I would leave the room where his crate was for the first week or two, but after I started covering it up he can't see me leave, and then for some reason doesn't care (surely he can hear me leave, but as long as he can't SEE me leave it's ok) Once the puppy is comfortable in the crate, you can use it as a safe place to put the puppy away when you have to leave the house, or just for naps. It works in more than one way, it's a safe place for the puppy so he can't get into trouble, it's also safer for your house because the puppy can't chew up shoes and furniture, it teaches the puppy that it's ok to be away from you for an hour or two at a time, and it helps with housetraining. The idea with housetraining is that dogs are clean animals and won't soil their sleeping area. So as long as they are crated they will not pee (within reason of course) and then you can take them out to pee and reward them for peeing outside. If the puppy is left in the laundry or playpen, it will pee on the floor, or on newspapers or pee pads, and so you have missed an opportunity to reward the puppy for going outside.
  17. A lot of people don't like the idea of crate training puppies. I have heard people say it can only be done when they are puppies because if you tried to crate train an adult dog they wouldn't tolerate it and chew through it and howl the whole time etc, whereas a puppy has no choice and will eventually go quiet if you just leave it long enough. Which is not how I crate trained my puppy at all, but a lot of people do so I can't blame some people for not wanting to do that to their new puppies. When I was growing up we never had crates, the new puppy would be in the kitchen which would be closed off and my dad would sleep on the floor with it the first few nights until it settled in. Crating is pretty new where I'm from, and I think it's great, but before it became popular people still managed to raise and housetrain puppies, and people who have grown up not crating are not going to jump on the crating bandwagon just because it's now the "cool" thing to do. There are so many different ways to train dogs, it would take a lot for this show to show methods that everyone agree with. I am sure even some experienced dog people would agree with the methods shown, not just ignorant new puppy parents. But Ian Dunbar does heaps of DVD's and has done shows for tv, why can't we write the network and ask them to put some of those on? I don't agree with absolutely everything he does, and some of it is oversimplifed (but I think all experienced trainers oversimplify some things ("you just do this, the puppy will respond like this, and voila!")) but at least when you use positive reinforcement and become more aware of how the dog can self reward etc, then you're not going to do much damage to it.
  18. My female dog wears a dark blue collar and a light blue harness and dark blue lead, and my male puppy used to have a blue puppy collar, but now he has a burgundy collar, which kind of borders on purple, with a purple lead. It's actually pet peeve of mine to thoroughly define genders of babies and pets using colour, all baby girls must wear pink and all baby boys must wear baby blue, and same with our pets for some reason. I happen to not like pink, but blue is my favourite colour. If I have a baby girl, she will wear baby blue. Some people think my poodle x is a male due to the blue collar, harness and lead, but so what. I like the colour and she doesn't care what people think. My future baby won't care what people think either, and I will not have her brainwashed into thinking that everything she owns must be pink because she's a girl.
  19. Firstly, the boy's name is supposed to be Walter Aker, obviously the news site ran the story through a translator and it translated his last name. (I am Norwegian, and I know "Acre" is not a last name) Secondly, very weird story. All the wolf stories I have heard suggests that wolves don't like humans, are scared of them, and stay as far away as possible. Not to mention wolves are critically endangered in Scandinavia and so even seeing one is unlikely. I consider it more likely that it was a group of huskies or malamutes or crosses thereof, and the boy thought they were wolves. There was an incident a few years ago where a 7 year old boy was killed by a group of huskies (or malamutes, I alway get them mixed up).
  20. They have to lie quietly on the floor while we eat, and as a reward they lick the plates/bowls. I will also save some chicken pieces for them if they're good. If they wanna go off somewhere else and entertain themselves that's all good. I don't care if they stare at me, I can't tell if they are anyway because we usually watch tv while we eat.
  21. I am European too, and where I am from we keep dogs inside, with the family. I believe it's mostly a cultural thing that Australians keep dogs outside. Both of my dogs are inside dogs. They never go out in the backyard on their own, and they don't want to. They want to be around me all the time, and will always hang out in the same room as me. When we go out my puppy is crated and my adult dog is loose in the house. Neither of them have separation anxiety and they are both housetrained. I couldn't even imagine keeping a dog outside. IMO, leaving a dog outside all day while you are at work encourages barking, digging and fence jumping.
  22. I would use a harness if the puppy is going to be in the ute tray, but at that age they are squirmy and excitable and I'm not sure I would trust it. Personally, I have my puppy in a crate on the back seat (because he gets carsick) and my adult is strapped into the passenger seat with a harness and seat belt attachment. And putting dogs in ute trays is not a 'country' thing, we see it all the time around here, and we are quite close to Brisbane.
  23. Avoiding fights isn't about showing them who's boss or being a better leader. It's smart management and conditioning being around the others with something good, and training. Blaming lack of leadership for behavioural problems is a bit of a cop out. "Your dog doesn't come when called because he doesn't respect you", "Your dog fights other dogs because you're not a strong enough leader". Rubbish, it's all about training and reinforcing good stuff and not rewarding bad stuff and smart management the rest of the time. (Oversimplified)
  24. Bugger, just had one of them vaccinated last week, paid $85 for it. The other one isn't due for another 10 months.
  25. Both dogs have tattoos from when they were desexed, they are both microchipped too, but they didn't get a tattoo for that. Not all of the cats have tattoos, but they are all desexed. I guess tattoos being mandatory is a recent thing? Some of the cats were desexed about 6 years ago, and they don't have tattoos, but the one that was desexed 3-4 years has a tattoo. My European ones don't have tattoos as not all vets do it where I'm from and they are not mandatory, and for the last cat I actually don't know. She is desexed but she is so antisocial that I have never dared to look in her ear, and have had no reason to.
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