Daisy.Tea

I really like the look of these. Plus so many colours!

Hello I was trying to find some information about what sort of harness would be best to walk my dogs in. I have two aussie shepherds. I've done a bit of a search and all I can find are topics that go into teaching a dog not to pull rather than the harness themselves. My dogs do not pull, I have trained them to walk on a loose lead. At the moment I walk or train one on a limited slip as they can slip out of normal collars and I like the reassurance. I did use an ezywalk harness on my girl when she was younger but it isn't the most comfortable for her and so it isn't fair to walk her on it when she doesn't pull. I prefer to walk them on a harness around the street and take it off for free running etc. So what I am after is a comfortable harness for walking. It doesn't need to have a 'no pull' feature but if a really brilliant general walking harness does that's okay. I also wasn't sure how y front and other types compare in terms of muscles because I read on a previous post that harnesses can actually do damage?! If anyone can give me examples of what to avoid and what to look for and what they recommend for general walking it would be really helpful. Thank you.

I wish I could have got you to build ours! I'm excited that your boy is going to become a hopeful little agility star like my pup.

Heads up Lisa that they can roll the chicken wire up and get under it. If you use tent pegs to keep the wire down they can still sometimes get them out if they are too far apart or the ground is too soft. We used a lot of rocks to hold our chicken coop fence down before we ended up building a solid fence, used the same idea for the vege garden to stop them eating tomatos it wasn't as well put together as the other one and lasted all of two days at most before she was in there again. Since its winter we've given up on that one. If an Aussie wants something they will do what it takes to get it. Daisy wasn't so bad but in the two and a bit weeks Atticus has been here he is a determined pup! Best thing we purchased for our garden was a retractable hose! Before that we use to lock it away between uses after many were eaten! So so excited for you! More Aussies.

Also Koda reminds me of my daisy, so so cute little black tris! Aussie pups have the best expressions in their eyes!

I can't work out how to add photos from my phone. But I'll get there. In the meantime is it right that I'm not worried that Atticus probably ate his lunch worth of cat litter. It's environmentally friendly...

Have sent you a pm.

My little boy is home! Daisy has been way too excited for the last hour and plays a bit rough. He is so sleepy but is lying quietly in his crate chewing a pig ear. Things have settled down now for the most part. I will post some pictures later once I get them off the camera. It's been a long day already.

So so adorable! Those eyes. He looks super smart.

Another Aussie! He is a blue merle boy with a 3/4 tail. There will be pictures. We took daisy to meet him the other week and he grabbed onto her tail. He's meant robe a little bit of a bully but in a nice way. That's so exciting Lisa, you won't want to stop at one if its your first. That was us. Resisting for a year and then giving in.

When I first read this I was going to suggest an Aussie. I'm not surprised you fell in love. We are about to add a second one into our family, because its hard to stop at one aussie! My girl is pretty relaxed. She knows when it's time to work and play and that inside is a chill out space. We were really clear about that from the moment we bought her home which helped. I found that having any set boundaries with an aussie is important. Mine started to really test these as a teen but she has realised we ain't budging. We left ours alone in our secure yard while we had work/uni so anywhere from 8/9 - 3/5 a couple of times a week. If I'm going to be out for longer than 3 hours or so I leave a frozen kong or an activity for her as she can sometimes find other jobs to do like redesigning the watering system. They are such lovely company!

I have been having a peak in here for a while now. Excited to say that I can pick up my little boy in a weeks time! It'll be great to see some photos of everyone's puppies. I'm still debating names... Mum thinks that Atticus might be too long?

My Aussie loves her chickens. In fact they have become her flock and she gets a bit protective of them. We had a few problems when we first moved house and had to build a new chicken run with either chickens escaping or Daisy digging holes to free her friends. Luckily no chickens were hurt, just very wet as Daisy sat there happily licking them clean. We have a rule, no unsupervised chicken dog time because of the excitable licking now. In terms of training we introduced her as a pup, first through the fence and then on lead. Making sure to nip any herding/ chasing behaviour before it got out of control and rewarding for calm quiet behaviour. At the time the chickens were about the same size slightly bigger which I think helped her establish her place among them. She also learnt quickly that chickens produce poo and eggs and if she's lucky and quick she can eat them.... Hopefully you might be able to use someone's chooks, maybe a neighbour? Or perhaps the home stay will let you visit for the day and do some socialisation?

My dog doesn't have the most perfect stays but we are getting better. However I am having trouble getting her to understand my release command. She has done this from a puppy where she will continue to stay after I've used my release word 'break' and looks confused. So we added in a hand signal because I didn't want me walking to become a release cue. Now I need to get her to understand the command word because she still won't 'break' with only a verbal cue. We have just started agility and my instructor noticed this when we were on the pause table and releasing her from it could only be achieved by a hand motion so she told me to work on the verbal. I've tried placing food and toys near her as an incentive to move when I say break but she is hesitant to move towards it and often will continue to sit looking at the item and me waiting for permission. I don't want to mess up her stays by having her break when I don't want to. Does anyone have any suggestions for helping train a successful verbal release? Strange problem to have...