dididog

It's been a long time since I posted anything in here! Didi is 3 now and lives by the beach so gets to get her feet wet as much as she likes (which is a lot!). I also got a camera that I haven't quite gotten the hang of using but here are some snaps from the year. Every place in these photos is within walking distance of our house, I really love being able to have so many adventures close to home!

Hmmmm my list is constantly changing and is split into realistic and unrealistic categories. At the moment though, a silver Standard Poodle, a flashy dark brindle Boxer, a red German Pinscher, a cream mini long haired Dachshund, dark sable Havanese, a black GSP, tri-colour Cocker Spaniel or Brittany and I always have an eye out for a dark brindle lurcher type with a dark mask that's large whippet size to pop up in rescue.

Also feed 80/10/5/5 I feed chicken carcasses, turkey and lamb necks for bones, chicken carcasses are cheapest, I get 3 or 4 for $1.50. Roo mince, chicken and cheap cuts of lamb are her main muscle meat as well as lamb hearts, lamb lungs, chicken hearts, might try tongue soon if I can get over the creepy factor. Lamb and chicken livers and kidneys sometimes beef if I can't find those. She gets eggs a few times a week. Its not necessary but I also feed a blended vege mix to help fill her up a bit as she runs on the sniff of an oily rag and gets very hungry if just fed the necessary amount of meat she needs to stay trim. I go to a Tasman meat warehouse to get most of my stuff, a bit hit and miss on what you'll get depending on when you go but prices are good and lots of variety/interesting bits. Also get offal and turkey necks fairly cheap at woolies. Does take me about 2hrs every week or fortnight to prep all her food, I've nearly severed a few digits but its not too hard once you get into the swing of things. I try to buy bulk and in advance as I tend to spend a lot more if I'm constantly going out to go get different bits but I manage to feed my 45kg active dog for $50 or so in a good month.

I'm not quite sure either, she'll be 3 in October! Feels like only yesterday she was a lil potato head (which she thankfully grew into!)

This is such a nice thread :') Didi grew up (very quickly!) on DOL, god knows I needed the constant reassurance bringing up my first puppy and freaking out about every little thing She turned out to be just my kind of perfect though. I love her more than anything else on this earth and I'm so happy we managed to find each other. bonus feature: Dog Friendships of DOL! DOL played a pretty instrumental part in hooking these two pups up for doggy rehab and now play dates (and made us a new human friend too!)

Of all the arguments against why an industry inherently prone to the wastage and culling of thousands of dogs every year should be shut down... the fact that you might not be able to own the type of dog you like best hardly seems to be a strong one. Surely your personal desires in a dog shouldn't be more important than the guaranteed ongoing deaths of said dogs should the industry continue to exist? While yes I would imagine the breeding of racebred greys would produce better quality dogs over a BYB, the breeding program is hardly worth being defended and revered if half those dogs being bred are going to get a bullet in the brain for the misfortune. If a show breeder was pumping out litters and then culling half of the dogs they bred I'm sure that's not a breeder or an industry anyone on this forum would be willing to defend or overlook just because they breed nice dogs??

...'manipulating them into position'...you mention this in context with 'quite aggressive punishment', why?...what makes 'manipulating a dog to sit, drop or to stand' such a bad, cruel exercise? ... I said the trainers were into manipulating dogs into position AND used aggressive punishments... maybe you should actually read what someone says before you decide to pick it apart??? But I still don't think yanking up on the collar while jamming down on the butt (which is what they would make every beginner do if your dog couldn't sit on word command) is a particularly fair or good way to train a position, neither is pulling a dog up by it's collar from a drop into a stand or a sit. I wouldn't say for the most part (apart from when people are being aggressive and forceful with their yanking and pushing and shoving) that using physical touch to show a dog a position is necessarily cruel but being forceful and inflicting pain to do so definitely is. And since most of the trainers at my club really weren't giving great advice and most dogs weren't being worked with food or toy rewards, a lot of the dogs would still not understand the positions, the owners would get frustrated and then they'd take it out on the dog when manipulating them into position when they didn't respond the first time or broke.

I also had this problem at my last club. While they were fine with me using toys and treats with very few exceptions all of the trainers were very much into jerking dogs around, manipulating them into position and punishing quite aggressively when they did something naughty. I thought the same as you, that I know what works for Didi and I'll just do that and tell the trainer I don't want to do something they suggest but it got extremely hard for me to block out all the awful training going on around me. Not just with the instructors but the way the others in the class would yell and physically abuse their dog really upset me and was starting to upset Didi as strangers yelling around her stressed her out a bit. I lasted 8 months there. It was good in the sense we got to practice training around other dogs and under distraction but I was starting to get worked up so much at the prospect of going and it was making me extremely anxious and I would spend most of class working off to the side and playing and only joined the group when it was my turn to do an exercise so I just stopped showing up. If you think you can remain relatively disconnected and just use it as a place to practice then I'd say try it out for a bit but I at least think it's pretty damaging to your wellbeing to consistently see dogs being mistreated/abused and not really being able to say anything about it.

We're on $0 for this year, probably under $500 for the duration of Didi's life. She's only ever had an ear infection and Kennel Cough that's needed attention and a checkup/vacc once a year. When you have a big dog that is terrified of the vet you learn to only go if you reaaallly have to. Luckily she is also *touch wood* a very healthy dog and despite being a massive klutz, rarely hurts herself more than the odd scrape or cut.

SFE is a tricky one with strangerphobic dogs and I agree that expecting a SFE right now is unrealistic and you should just keep going with desensitising her to the possibility of it. I got Didi to a stage where she was confident approaching and being touched by our trainers at obed (would previously bark and carry on when they were still metres away) and she would even allow stand for exam but would normally break the stand to swing her bum around a bit and keep an eye on the trainers hand. Despite being quite happy with being handled by the trainers the SFE exercise is pretty unnerving as it's not typically how somebody would approach a dog to pat them and it made her nervous. In hindsight I wish I'd paid more attention because this was Didi being a good girl and using her coping mechanism (put distance between yourself and the scary thing) but my instructors pressured me a bit and since I was so used to Didi using aggression to show discomfort I wasn't too concerned and didn't try and take a few steps backward and Didi got more and more uncomfortable with the exercise and one day she had enough and tried growling instead of avoidance and realised that was much more effective in stopping the exercise. After that SFE was not safe for us to do and we had to bring it back to just doing stand with instructor walking in gradually tighter circles around us. Close enough for Didi to be a little unsure but not too close that she'd get scared and allowed me to reward the experience. We got to the stage where she would let them walk in a tight circle (like under 1m) and touch her back however could never do an actual SFE because it was the head on approach that she found most unnerving. So we had to break the exercise down into two parts, the approach and the touching/proximity. Once we'd worked on getting her more desensitised to holding stand in close proximity to the trainer we started doing another thing where the trainer would stand facing us and avoid eye contact and we would walk up to them in heel and once Didi's shoulders were level with the trainers legs I would put her in a stand. So we were still approaching the trainer head on, just we were the ones approaching and not the trainer which made Didi more comfortable. We started off at whatever distance she was comfortable with and would slowly approach the trainer closer and closer to their leg (and obv rewarding for everytime she held the stand) and eventually she was standing right up against the trainers leg and once we got to that point the trainer would also reward her (so she got used to hand movements out of her direct line of sight but the hand movement = treats and not being touched so it was positive for her) and eventually (with female trainers) was comfortable with being touched and holding the stand. Unfortunately we stopped going to obed a bit after this so I'm not sure if more progress with that method would've helped make the head on approach less scary for her and if we'd be able to combine the two things together. But yes I think it can definitely become a matter of exercise being scary rather than the concepts behind it (being touched by a stranger) because Didi was fine with being touched and is quite outwardly friendly to strangers now, but forced physical interaction where her ability to move away is discouraged was whole other level of expectation and one that I'm not sure we'll ever get over because SFE goes against everything I taught her to do when uncomfortable around a stranger.

Hey all, my mum has recently decided she'd like to get a dog of her own. As much as she loves Didi she doesn't feel confident walking her on her own and would like something small enough to pick up and cuddle on her lap (and doesn't shed as crazily as Didi). Mum did have a mini growing up and my Nan had standards for a while so she's pretty familiar with them but I'd like to hear from people with experience with them, see if what we have to offer would be a good fit (we're also contemplating the Havanese if people have insight on them). Grooming and clipping isn't an issue, Mum likes keeping things nice and clean and I always find her fussing over Didi even though she is super low maintenance. We currently walk Didi for about an hour a day offlead with lots of fetch and climbing rocks, we live by the beach so go swimming a lot in summer but Mum also wants to be able to take her dog on lots of on lead walks, we live near extensive walking tracks and Mum would also like taking her dog to go get coffee/lunch/markets stuff like that. Mum works part time from home and there's normally somebody home, if there's nobody home its generally only for a couple of hours a few days a week. Didi (2.5 year old Dane mix)and I will probably still live here for the next 2 or 3 years but Didi is very small dog savvy and placid around the house, I don't think we'd be leaving the two alone together while we're out though. Mum would take pup to puppy school and most likely an obedience club, I love training though so will probably be training tricks and more advanced obedience as well. Really she's after something quite small but still fairly robust and able to keep up with exercise, something that doesn't shed much or at all and is friendly with dogs and people and would enjoy going out and doing new things a lot. I think we're quite strongly leaning toward the Mini Poodle (and Havanese) so interested to hear about those and any breeder recs but open to other suggestions!

Ooh those goat photos are lovely gapvic! I'm really bad at updating every week! I've been taking the photos but keep forgetting about this thread 12/52 My two favourite pups being silly on their play date! 13/52 14/52 This at our new regular park, we've been having some lovely sunsets recently!

Poor Justice! Hope his wounds stop causing him so much grief It's been a bit over a month since we moved house, something which I thought would set back our progress but if anything I think it has set it forward! Part of me always thought that Didi's calmer demeanor and less reactivity was mostly because she'd become familiar with our old suburb and had had lots of practice being calm there. But since moving Didi hasn't changed at all! She's fine walking in busy areas around strangers and kids and going off lead in lots of different parks. She hasn't growled or barked or lunged at anyone since we moved (with the exception of two super rude cyclists) and so far the only time I've seen her 'scared' is by one of those advertisement boards that change slides every few seconds near our train station. We had somewhat of an affirmation yesterday at our new regular park, it was nearly dark and this man was standing with alone against a tree in the park smoking and was staring at Didi. She kept an eye on him but without any redirection from me kept moving along. In this type of scenario even 6 months ago she probably would've run up and barked at him, even my Dad commented after we passed him that he was waiting for her to run up and bark at that guy. I think it was a good indicator that while Didi is still wary of strangers, she's learnt not to redirect that fear into aggressive behaviour. We also had a house guest for the first time since Didi's dislike of strangers in our house popped up and despite a few barks at the start Didi warmed up to her super quickly and spent the first night cuddled up in her lap! She's definitely not 'normal' and probably won't ever be when it comes to strangers trying to approach her (although she's quite happy for strangers to pat her offlead) so I'm always going to be cautious and not expect too much from her but I'm really happy with her and I'm really glad she's more confident in herself and with me as a handler that going new places and seeing new things isn't so scary anymore!

I'm very behind!!! Between moving and starting uni again the challenge skipped my mind a bit however where I live now is such a great place for taking photos so I'm sure I won't find it hard to go out and start taking more photos... maybe even some that aren't of the dog! 8/52 Didi reassuming guard dog position in the new house. 9/52 10/52 11/52

Really lovely work this week everybody! This week's photo isn't too exciting since we're packing/moving/cleaning atm but here's the last photo I'll take of Didi in this house. Didi's spent her whole life in this house and it's served as the backdrop for so many of my memories with her. We're moving right to the beach though so I'm excited for all the new photography opportunities that opens up! 7/52

Ooooh boy I'm a bit behind! 4/52 Not the best shot, wish I'd gotten her nose more in focus but it makes me smile! 5/52 I've recently started running a vegan insta and have been enjoying having something other than the dog to take photos of so here's a glorified insta breakfast photo 6/52 My beautiful baby :)

Ugh that would've pissed me off so much! Our old club was also at a public oval and because a running track went around the park so many offlead dogs would run into our classes. Luckily all the trainers took 0 shit and would grab any dog straight away and yell at the offending owner to get their dogs. The shame and embarrassment of 30-40 dog owners watching those owners reclaim their dog was generally enough to put them off but some still thought it was a bit of a chuckle. I reckon if it happens again you should just get one of the trainers (or somebody with a dog that won't mind the BC) to just grab the ball and hold it hostage until she's forced to come close enough to get told off. Technically she's infringing leash laws by allowing her offlead dog in an organised event so threaten her with a trip from the ranger if she still doesn't take it seriously. Also agree that though how I'm feeling has some effect on my dog's reactivity, when she's that far over threshold that she's fixated and not listening like Thistle was then she's not really responding to anything other than the trigger and the only thing that will salvage the situation is distance from the trigger to allow my dog to be able to focus on me. While I appreciate that you are probably only trying to help and aren't trying to start a debate here Willem, this is a thread specifically for documenting our challenges with getting out and about with our reactive dogs and is a safe space to vent to other owners who understand. Coming into the thread and trying to imply that Thistle's owner was some how more of a problem than the rude woman trying to upset an entire class of dogs is a bit unnecessary especially since Thistle's owner didn't ask for advice or opinions.

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You do realise now that you've said this Didi is probably going to be a massive dickhead and make me look silly! We'll try our best though :p Snook that's so nice about Justice having some doggie interaction without getting upset! Hopefully working with Gruff keeps paying off :) Even though Didi has reached a pretty stable point atm we've had a couple of experiences that really tested our progress and she did wonderfully! The first was when I was letting her run around a fenced in playground at night. I never used to let her offlead in fenced in parks because Didi would guard the area and bark at people coming in but while we were in the playground a girl a bit older than me came in with her boyfriend to use the swings. And at first I freaked out because it was dark which makes her more cautious than usual and by the time I noticed the girl opening the gate Didi was on the other side of the playground to me. But Didi just looked up and ignored them and kept doing her thing. And then last week I took Didi to a brand new beach that we've never been to before. The last time I took her to a new place was over 6 months ago and she was so overwhelmed and nervous that she just shut down and was so paranoid the whole walk back. So we got out of the car at the foreshore which is offlead and I was a bit hesitant but she seemed excited and not nervous so I let her off lead and she was great! She was really confident and explored everything without hestiating and her recall was really good which was great because I haven't really tested it in new environments for a while. Then when we were swimming there was lots of people and children, one was actually swimming right next to Didi for a fair bit and she was so calm about it all. I do think the water helped a bit, she is so at ease and in her element at the beach. When we were back on the foreshore a family stopped to talk to us and kept trying to convince Didi to get pats. I could see she was a bit unsure of them but instead of barking or getting upset she just gave them a few sniffs and walked away (had to reassure the kid not to take it personally because he really liked her and wanted a pat!). The only time I did not feel confident for her to make the right decision was when we were on a narrow path and had to pass a family with a toddler that was running ahead with their golden retriever. I could tell the golden would probably approach us and didn't trust Didi to not get freaked out if the toddler joined in so I just popped her on lead and gave them a wide birth. Im glad I did because later I saw that toddler do exactly what I thought it would do and started patting a staffy that the goldie had gone to say hi to. I know to most people that day probably doesn't sound too exciting but for a dog that used to get very paranoid in new environments with fear issues around strangers and kids, being able to go do fun things together without either me or the dog being stressed out had always been the maim goal for me so it really did mean a lot :) Not going to push my luck with her and go right back to catching trains and hanging out in the CBD like we used to or anything but it was a really good experience for both of us and has shown me how she has learnt to piece together all our training and conditioning in real world situations.

That's beautiful Snook! I love how the softness of the water and the sky is contrasted with the sharp horizon line

Haven't been able to use the internet at home for a few days and then I ran out of data so I've only just checked back into this thread! Thanks for the feedback and comments on my first week, still trying to assure myself that the photos I'm editing don't just look like I chucked an OTT insta filter on them 2/52

Awesome sunset Snook! Alternatively my photo for this week is the first sunrise of 2016... I'm not 100% happy with the framing (her collar got cut off a bit) and I don't know if in trying to edit out the over exposure and noise of the original that I made it look too over processed?? but w/e I think it's most appropriate for week 1. 1/52 BTW since I'm super new and clueless with all this please feel free to give me any pointers or critique :)

I have a 10m gripper lead that I haven't used since I threw the ball for my 45kg dog not realising it was wrapped around my leg and had the fall force of her hitting the end of the lead yank me off my feet! The lead is made out of rubber too so it burnt through a few layers of skin and gave me some nasty scars. For now I only keep it for things like nosework and will only use it if it's attached to a harness (even then 10m is a bit excessive/annoying to use).

The Nikon D5200! Even with just the kit lens and an incompetent user (me) it is still taking some really awesome shots (i'm a little bit in love and mad I hadn't bought a dslr sooner!)