hankdog

That third photo is lovely, it looks so quiet.

Gosh your dogs are good looking. Love the first smile, have to smile back.

Don't know about dogs but I had yellow fever on Monday and it hurt like hell. She might have a sore spot?

Hope the J-dawg is treating you well Snook and getting over his upsets?

Terri there is no absolute. Dogs are trained for different purposes. My friends show dogs don't sit, freaks me out but she doesn't want them too. The correct amount of sniffing is how much sniffing you want. Teach her a solid leave it, when she's doing something you don't want then tell her. If you want to wander along stopping at each smell that's your choice. No magical standard, your dog does what you want.

For clarity proximity for Jake is with me about ten meters at the closest, we take a bit of work to get that close. If the trainers have him and I stand away so his focus is split they can get him a fair bit closer. It's not expected that he will ever actually get close to a dog, just that he doesn't tantrum when he goes by. Strangely he doesn't growl, he has a toneless, repetitive bark, sounds more like desperation to me. Normally he screams and sometimes he says " hubba hubba". Weird dog. I think his vision, anxiety and lack of experience mean he doesn't fit neatly into a category. He's an odd dog, he doesn't really understand pats, he now likes a belly rub but it took him a while to get there. He does luckily like to sit touching you. Lucky me in winter he loves to sit on the couch right squished next to me. It took an open minded trainer to give us a chance and I think even she has been surprised by his progress. Most trainers just wrote him off.

For clarity proximity for Jake is with me about ten meters at the closest, we take a bit of work to get that close. If the trainers have him and I stand away so his focus is split they can get him a fair bit closer. It's not expected that he will ever actually get close to a dog, just that he doesn't tantrum when he goes by. Strangely he doesn't growl, he has a toneless, repetitive bark, sounds more like desperation to me. Normally he screams and sometimes he says " hubba hubba". Weird dog. I think his vision, anxiety and lack of experience mean he doesn't fit neatly into a category. He's an odd dog, he doesn't really understand pats, he now likes a belly rub but it took him a while to get there. He does luckily like to sit touching you. Lucky me in winter he loves to sit on the couch right squished next to me. It took an open minded trainer to give us a chance and I think even she has been surprised by his progress. Most trainers just wrote him off.

Love the hover saluki photo. There's a hover Justice photo somewhere too. I tried many ways to get a hover Jake but bulldogs seem to be prone to gravity suck.

It's great that she can have dog contact and she has good recall. A lot of dogs are on leash reactive, not that you want to accept it but if she's fearful I suppose that will persist for quite a while. I think she's marvelous being able to greet dogs. Good girl Stella. (Virtual hand in treat bag!)

Mmmm yes I think Amax that they think he might be working it a bit. So he barks and then looks at me to get a reward, so he's being rewarded for barking possibly rather than the look. I've thought he's been doing that for the neighbour dogs. They don't really bother him anymore, they're over 70m away and quiet unless they're playing rough but he spends a lot of time looking at their house, then as soon as they appear he barks and runs to me for reward, I still reward him because I'd rather that than he decided to go fence fight. I don't think he's that much in control with an on leash dog, his bark is more "real" if that makes sense. So I think though that it's more to build a more sustained calm response. I can't think of exactly how it was put but holding a more pleasant feeling will also be rewarding. He did seem to get it quite quickly. I think a newbie might be better rewarded for just looking but we've been at it for a while so I think it's also a progression. I kind of reach for my treat bag as soon as I see a dog so I think that also creates some confusion for him. I know I do but I guess it's my nervous tic. Look Jake there's trouble but I have all this peanut butter rather than if you do the right thing I might reach in there and give you some. Because that is pretty much what I think rather than trusting him and giving the opportunity to prove himself.

We had an interesting day, Jake was the demonstration dog for the dog training course today. Initially I didn't interrupt him, he dropped into a crouch and barked. No lunging though and he stayed loose leash. It was quite hard not to interrupt him, I felt quite sorry for him. Finally we called him off and he came away easily. We then did some practice approaches and he was quite well behaved which I thought was great given we had let him bark freely for quite a while. It was interesting to hear the discussion points, mostly around responsibly managing him and his quality of life. Whether he's likely to be human dangerous and so on, things I really hadn't thought much about. I guess trainers need to consider all those issues when taking on a reactive dog. Two useful tips were that I need to keep my hand out the treat bag ( after a year it's still my bad habit). Also when he reacts then turns to me I treat him straight away. What I need to do is let him look calmly back at the dog without reacting and then reward the second time he looks at me. That way he is rewarded for maintaining a calm state rather than barking, I don't think you would do this up front but we have worked on look for a while now and he got it quickly. Then we practiced on the neighbour dogs this afternoon and he was great, until my daughter pointed out the neighbour dogs had disappeared and I was rewarding him for whipping his head around. So not surprised my dog gets confused.

You have to be careful there's Sydney pet resorts and pet resorts dural. Both in dural. Jake trains at and has boarded at pet resorts dural. He is their norty customer, anywhere he comes back happy from must be good. He had no issues and the next week when we went back for training he tried to go into his suite. I would highly recommend them.

Yea I've never raised a pup, I think it would be nerve wracking. Much easier to get a renovators delight and blame it on the previous owners! How big is Didi?

Embrace the weird lady/ crazy dog thing.

Jake was a five year old with no training....freight train with a capital F. A front attach harness turned around and came straight back to me minus dog. We did a lot of stuff, just turning in the opposite direction gave him the opportunity to speed up in the turn, if you use it turn in front of them, I do that now if he's drifting. What really helped was walking snails pace, really snails go sailing past you. Also the walk and stop, as soon as there's leash pressure or if your martingale chain clicks use that noise. I literally spent 5 weeks taking no more than 5 steps then stop, wait ten seconds and go again. You get to know your neighbours very well.

It's such a hard thing. It'll be three years since Hank but I still can't walk past that vet. I had gone too far with a rescued guinea pig and since then have resolved not to make my animals go through stuff they can't understand. We came home from Saturday coffee and Hank couldn't stand properly. He had bad arthritis in his back and I knew it was time but I took him to the vet. She kept him in for two nights on morphine to see if he would recover. They wouldn't let us in on the Sunday. I can't bear thinking about him there by himself. She said he was on morphine and wouldn't know us but he knew us on the Monday morning. I think I would prefer to err on the side if too early next time.

I'm so excited . There's a new lady in our suburb, a large and small dog. The small is aggressive the large is I think a frustrated greeter. She has little control and a few weeks ago the small yanked it's leash loose and had a go at us. Luckily a passerby grabbed it since she couldn't do anything without bringing her large dog into the fray. We saw them this morning, she stops and hangs on when she sees other dogs and just waits until the other dogs go past. I sat Jake and made sure he saw them, little one was by now barking and both were straining on their leads. In the 70m that it took us to walk past and turn down the street I only had to sit Jake twice, just when I thought he might be about to lose it. We had to turn into our street right in front of them, he managed the turn no problem and put his head down and powered away, not one look back. We are really starting to run our little walk pasts like a well oiled machine but I was so impressed with how confident he seemed, he was almost pre empting me when I told him to sit, almost if he knew "ok, I'm about to blow better calm down." He seemed particularly pleased with himself when he got his post walk past treat. I bought him a new harness and a bag of Greenies and ears. I hate stinky ears but he loves them.

Bye Digby. A gentleman gone .

Gremlinoodle

Certainly grumpette so that will be one elfoodle. Yes Simply Grand, it has been very sad for those poor pit bulls.

It was found that many of the pit bulls began to suffer identity issues whilst wearing the disguise sold by Deshonko. They turned from slavering beasts into wriggly cuddle dogs. They were not able to prevent themselves from climbing into people's laps and being adorable. These effects persisted even after the disguise was removed.

Definitely sheens, the cost is a once only $20 no ongoing fees. You may choose your very own name too, this dog could for instance be called a bull-oodle or a poo- dog. The possibilities are endless.

So after much careful research I have invented the oodlenator. Now you can have the perfect dog, purebred at home but oodle when out. No more embarrassment when at trendy cafes admitting your dog may have been sourced from a breeder, simply pop on the oodlenator and no one will guess your dirty secret. It slips easily into your handbag and can be manufactured in the colour of your choice. Disclaimer: The oodlenator may not withstandthe scrutiny of a ranger, not gauranteed to make yout pitbull BSL proof.

My greatest dog training achievement has been getting my dog "hooked" on peanut butter. Now he's my minion....mwa hahahaha!

I'm being irreverent but sometimes a shut down response would seem quite desirable. I think the term threshold distance is quite misleading too. I gather for a lot of dogs there's no magic distance but rather a combination of factors. Initially I used to try find the exact distance at which he would react and then as per the text book that would be reduced. Much experience later and I can nearly 80 percent of the time predict whether he will lose it or not. Border collie threshold is another country, he will freak out at them in the tv. Fence between him and the dog and he can pretty much stand two meters away and be ok under instruction. No fence,on leash if you're big and dark colored and confident and ignoring him then across the road and you can go by. Off leash, well inversely proportional to size it's a circus. I think you just have to keep plugging away patiently but after two years I've also learned that you really need to learn your own dog. Theory is general and therefor very simple, good to have but not applicable to every dog.