Jozlyn

"BARF"

What is "BARF"?

Ella and amber are mine.. Ella is turd for OH even though he's had her since she came home. Amber I had no intentions on her being mine lol she's supposed to be his!! But she is a complete mess for him in the ring if I am near by or if I go away lol shell only train for me lol!!!

Leo on the other hand is OHs he's a happy cuddly boy for me but doesn't work for me.. Only stresses but for OH he is on fire lol! Runs like a dream :)

What breed is Amber? She's gorgeous!

This is a reflection of the 'germs are bad' mentality that is creeping into everything. And it is making us sicker.

x 2

It's a reflection of the times, everything is anti-bacterial this & anti-bacterial that. Watch out for the germs! We actually need germs to keep our immune systems active. People get sicker more often & worse 'cause everyone's so worried about "bacteria" I ate plenty of dirt as a kid, my Mum didn't steralise anything (except the preserving jars lol), I shared drinks with friends, I'm not dead & I almost never get sick!

If raw meats are prepared & stored correctly the possibilty for salmonela bacteria is very minimal.

If shes telling you she doesnt need lunch, I'd listen to her and stop feeding lunch. All pups work on their own schedule!

Should I up the size of her other 2 meals to make up for what she's not eating for lunch?

Abby is not eating her lunch, hasn't for about 5-6 days now, is she telling me that she no longer needs lunch? At only just over 4 months old I would have thought she'd need 3 meals a day until she is at least 6 months old.

She does get training treats between meals, but I have already deducted the amount of treats she gets from her main meals so that I am not over feeding her.

I tried searching the forums to see if this had already been asked but after an hour of fruitless searching I've given up and started a new thread :)

I just got my copy of Crate Games and can't wait to get started on it

It's lots of fun :)

One more thing, up date on the crate games...

SG uses the wire mesh crate so that you can see what she's doing with the dog - ie for the camera. But it works better if you start with one of those hard shell things, and then graduate to a soft sided crate for the faster stuff. And when she's looking to build speed and enthusiasm, she throws treats into the back of the crate as the dog goes in - which doesn't work so well if the crate is a wire one and the treats go straight out the back. Or if there is a big cushion in there that hides the treats.

I'm not buying another crate! I'll find a solution!

And once the dog is blasting in and out of the crate on cue (imagine that), the floor of the crate needs to be something not too slippery and doesn't bunch up under the dog.

A rubber bath mat (suction cup type) or a piece of scoot guard might fix that problem.

I agree will all the other advise.

My advise is do ot leave her unspervised with the chair!! Last year my pup destroyed my leather sofa I made the mistake of letting her have access to the room unsupervised.

If your pup has taken a liking to the chair it is going to be hard to stop. And if she still has her baby teeth...........the worst is yet to come (when they get their adult teeth is when the real damage happens!!).

If you cannot block access to the room, Move the chair or put a puppy pen around the chair (i currently have done this with another sofa).

I threw thousands of dollars down the drain with my sofa being destroyed so better to be safe than sorry.

I'll try the Vick's and see how that goes, if that doesn't work then I'll find a play-pen to put round it.

If you don't praise her for chewing her own toys, how will she learn what is her's and what isn't?

Good point! I guess she knows what's hers because I don't take it off her, I play with her with her toys?

As for a deterant, try Vicks Vapourub on all the corners of the chair she is chewing or any other hard surface she takes a fancy to.

Thanks, I'll try that in conjunction with the other suggestions.

Do you rotate her inside toys, so she always has "new" toys to play with instead of getting bored with the same ones and therefor looking for stimulation elsewhere (ie: the new chair toy!)

Yep, I've had 3 kids! I know the power of toy rotation :D

What is she allowed to chew inside?

Anything that belongs to her.

Do you praise her for chewing her toys?

I never thought of that!

I'm having trouble with this part too with Reggie :laugh:

I've misplaced my dvd, but will give it another go once I find it.

The dvd is exactly as Mrs Rusty Bucket & Fuzzy82 says. Swap the treats around till she's coming out reliably, then swap them back again to amp the crate value back up again.

I have a million things in my lounge room that Hamish is allowed to chew so I just redirect him (but he's been really easy in terms of this sort of thing!!). Oh and I have a million sticks that are being brought in to the house that he chews, so we're a mess all the time! Hamish has also been taught that "no" or "ah ah" means stop doing whatever you're doing come to me and you'll get a treat, so I use that a lot! But I also try to make sure that I'm supervising in places of temptation, and if I can't be he will be put outside or in his crate.

Yep, we're the same. But she knows the "outside" toys are not to come inside! I got sick of picking up sticks and all the gross things she kept brining in lol Re-direction isn't working very well with her anymore, nor is going AH! at her. If I have a full on long play session with her she'll stop, but I'm half wondering if she knows that now and has trained me!

I watch her like a hawk! Her toileting is still not that flash so I have to keep an eye on her to make sure I get her outside in time.

She has plenty of chew toys, lots of different textures etc. She gets bones. Brain training, when I can't walk her. She knows that she's allowed to have anything in her toy box and that everything else is out of bounds. Although she still hasn't worked out that that includes socks and tissues!

Unfortunately given the layout of our house I can't stop her access to the chair she chews in it's current location, I will move it to a room that she doesn't have access to if I have to, but we use it a lot, so I want to leave that as a last resort.

She doesn't chew on it a lot, the damage to it is still quite minimal atm. She mainly seems to have a go at it at night, I'm not sure why that is.

Edit: What is a scat mat?

Need some ideas to stop Abby chewing furniture. I've tried "Stop Chew" the first couple of times she tasted it she had a fit, now I think she likes it I bought a can of lavender spray made with pure lavender oil from the chemist today, apparently dogs don't lavender, but that hasn't had any affect either! Tomorrow I'm going to just buy a bottle of oil and mix it water (Shannon Lush recipe) and try that, but I'm really not holding out any hopes for it.

SO any ideas anyone?

i think there is some trouble shooting stuff at the end... about re-balancing your treats...

have you watched it all the way through yet?

I hadn't, but I have now. I didn't notice there was a page 2 to the menu with a trouble shooting section, so we'll have another go today.

My dog would not sit for opening door. Didn't matter how long I waited. She did not get it. She'd be standing up or lying down or whatever - she wouldn't move at all until I got the door open. I think she found the hand on her head blocking sneaky exits so erm embarrassing? anyway she got that message completely - no coming out until invited.

lol I had a little trouble with that too, as I couldn't get my arm up high enough in the crate to get her to sit. She worked it out eventually 'cause I just wouldn't let her have the treat (clutched like iron between finger & thumb) till she twigged. It was easy after that.

The other sneaky thing about crate games is you have to be aware - not to reward if the dog goes in and you haven't cued it (once you've completed stage 3), and not to reward coming out when that happens either ie sneaky human training dogs - will go in the crate unasked in the hopes of getting a release and all the goodies that go with that... And you want them to know the difference between if they put themselves in there, they can release themselves vs if you tell them to go in there, they can't come out until you say. It's a tricky thing and I don't think me and my hound have it right at the moment.

Yeah, got my eye on myself big time for things like that. She's still quite good at training me, if I'm a bit distracted. However she's got the OH & kids fully trained

That's funny :)

I believe Susan's approach to this is to release the dog out and then do fun stuff on the outside too, like great treats or a game of tug or something, and release often to build value for releasing too. If the dog doesn't release on the release word, you close the door as if they made a mistake, then open and try to release again. Repeat until the dog releases, then reward for the release, and on the next few reps build more value for releasing. Not sure if you'd do this with a puppy or a dog who is new to crate games though.

I wouldn't run out and do weird stuff to get the dog to release. You don't want to build movement and distance into the release, as you might want the dog to stay in the crate when you do that in the future.

Yep, pretty much. But we were only at Stage 2, testing. where she was supposed to come out and then choose to go back in, but she didn't want to come out lol when I finally got her to come out, she just turned around and bolted back in. I actually couldn't get her to come out a 2nd time so I left her to it and I'll try again tomorrow.

There was actually no solution for a dog that didn't want to come out! All of the dogs in the video just came out easily. Trust Abby to throw a spanner in the works, she's such a funny little character. Her recall is really good now, but I was only standing about a foot away from her (with my foot on her lead), clearly she didn't see any reason to come any closer to me.

It's also not very far from where the crate was to the back door, maybe 5 meters or so, at the time it was the only thing I could think of to get her to come out as I was not supposed to lure her with anything.

People mistakenly think that you can tire out a Kelpie - you actually can't :p

Aint that the truth!

I was using boiled chicken "In" & biscuits for "Out" today.

Tomorrow I'll retry with chicken for "In" again & cheese for "Out" and see how she goes.

I also need to work on her "collar grab" as I had no idea how much she'd hate that idea!

I'm really having a ball with her training now & so is she. She gets so excited when she see's the treat bag come down off it's peg

I started doing Susan Garrett's "Crate Games" then ran into a hitch when she just wouldn't come out of the crate I ended up running through the house and out the back door to get her to get out, then she just turned around and ran straight back in

Abby in her crate.

With your fetch problems, until you get her reliably bringing the toy back, I would keep either her or the toy on a leash, so she can't practice the behaviour of running off with the toy - the more she practices running off the harder it will be to fix.

I've put "sheep" her favourite fetch toy on a lead now :D

If she has just had dinner it may well be that she isn't as food motivated as other times?

No, she still goes for food, I think she's a bottomless pit , ie she'll do the nose touches. Doesn't matter, I just played Hide & Seek with her.

I was really just wondering if this was a general sort of issue or just Abby's personality.

Thanks.

Add bats to the list LOL. And totally agree that crate is the way to go as HW and showdog have explained. Having a crate to sleep in at night is a nice thing all round (my almost 4 year old BC still sleeps in his crate beside my bed every night - door is open since he was a year old - his choice.)

If you're worried, get a different crate to play Crate Games - but truly I don't think you need to worry.

Given how much I stuffed up before finding these forums, I'm truly not willing to do it again, so I'll just wait until the books arrive, they should be here tomorrow. In the long run it's not going to make any difference if I wait another day, we've got plenty to do to keep ourselves occupied in the mean time.

She didn't do it last night, she slept straight through so whatever was bothering her the two previous nights didn't visit last night :)

My main concern was wether or not the behaviour was "normal" and whether or not I should try to "comfort" her or just let her go for it. Both questions have been answered so thanks everyone for the input.

Is there anything I can do for her to reassure her that there's nothing there and that we're all safe?

Thanks.

J.

Invest in a crate and sleep her in it.

I have the crate, just waiting for my "Crate Games" book to arrive so that I don't make any mistakes.

That said, my pup is very vague and is much happier wandering around the yard eating grass than paying attention to anyone at the best of times lol

ditto x 10 then add in - leaves, sticks, birds, insects, cars, people, dogs barking, etc, etc, etc.