dididog

Thank-you, I appreciate that :) Hopefully it'll work out but I'll let you know what's happening!

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Steph it would be really good if you could come... when I put my name down weeks ago it seemed plausible but it looks like I'll struggle to get a lift and I am in my last weeks of uni and drowning with work and revision for exams right now. But of course if I don't come then there aren't enough dogs so that's a bit of a dilemma as I don't want to let everyone else down!

Just now someone on facebook shared a status of a lady whose dog was poisoned and died after a walk yesterday in the You Yangs which were apparently also baited with 1080

Trying to work out how he got up on such a narrow ledge!? Instead of coming inside when it started raining last week Didi ran into her kennel and closed the door and looked at me pitifully. I was literally standing 2 metres away with the back door open but she just stood there whining getting her head wet. Silly pup.

I went to the one in Maribyrnong but I wouldn't recommend it for a lab pup, most other puppies are usually smaller breeds so a lot of the bigger puppies pushed them around, everyone got highly aroused because they had offleash play time a bit too much for my liking and it opened up a pathway for my puppy having a very high value for other dogs and the area reserved for the class is tiny. I haven't been there but Jean's puppy school was recommended to me by many and their approach to puppy school sounds very good (unfortunately there were no free spaces when I got my puppy). After puppy school I attended Keilor Obedience club and I liked it when we started but I'm now thinking of changing clubs and will be checking out Northern Obedience Club tonight. My reasons for wanting to change are more due to travel and training times but it also doesn't seem like the right fit for us. It is a fun and diverse club with lots of puppies though, definitely a good club worth checking out. Werribee also gets highly praised and I would probably go there if it were closer to me.

Oh that second photo of her curled up asleep is so cute! Those little footsies are adorable :)

She's going to be a tank after a summer of swimming and beach walks on the sand! To be fair the angle of the last one makes her body look chunkier than it is but her legs have definitely bulked up, not that she needs to be any stronger than she already is :laugh:

Lots of puppies turning 1! Didi is 2 weeks shy of her 1st birthday. I've noticed she is slowly making that change from gangly puppy to solid dog. The first photo was taken 1 month ago and the second taken just now on our walk.

Didi is an adolescent large breed who goes to an off lead area with other dogs almost everyday. We go primarily to exercise her so don't go out of our way to play with other dogs however if a dog wants to play with Didi or just greet one another then I don't mind stopping. Didi, as I'm sure Ronin does as well, appears intimidating to smaller dogs due to her size and because of this will lie down a fair few metres away from a dog she approaching to play with/say hi to and allow them to approach in a way they find comfortable and only gets up once they've had a sniff. She does this even with larger dogs too which is good because it means she's never going to upset a dog by rushing up to it, I've had a lot of people remark their dog or puppy is usually scared of larger dogs but have been fine with Didi as she puts the ball in their court when it comes to interaction. Perhaps with smaller dogs or nervous dogs you could encourage Ronin to lie down to greet? It will help diminish reactions that I'm sure crop up with his size and natural stance with dogs that are unsure of him and will give an owner a chance to tell you they don't want their dog to play with yours before he tries to initiate play. Some dogs might be a bit nervous around big dogs/bouncy dogs but I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to use offlead areas, fear aggressive or dog aggressive then perhaps not a good idea, but if just uncomfortable with intimidating or boisterous dogs then I think personally as a large dog owner it's in the best interest of everyone to not allow my dog to interact with a dog that is not comfortable with her size or play style, why risk it? In fact I pretty much never allow Didi to initiate interaction when I don't know the other dog, that way she's only interacting with dogs that want to and she's less likely to get snapped at which even though she takes like a champ, I still don't like her having to deal with that. Even as a large boofer Didi does not like to be chased unless it is in a reciprocated game so can understand a small dog owner being alarmed at their dog being chased if it was not enjoying it and playing back. As for the injured dog... well I'm not sure how recently after hip surgery this was but where I live in the inner city I've come across quite a few dogs on the mend as this is the only place they have to go to plod around away from the concrete and busy traffic. If I can clearly see a dog is recovering from something or I am told they are then I make Didi leave them alone and will usually pop her back on lead and move away in case the injured dog is feeling vulnerable and give them their space. I understand this is more of a 'dog park' than an off lead area but I still think there needs to be a lot of give and take and consideration, even if it seems illogical for a dog to be there if someone doesn't want your dog to interact with them then you've got to respect that. If you can't rely on your dog to stay away then yes it might mean popping them on lead for a bit. I don't really think you've done anything worth fretting over, and it's good that you are concerned about Ronin's dog park etiquette, seeing as most people treat them as daycare for their obnoxious under stimulated dogs you are definitely not an issue!

Okay well just as I had a little mope the other day, we had something really good happen today! We'd been on a long walk without anything major and as we were coming home Didi saw a group of people, mainly kids coming home from the show. They were about 50-70m away and she stopped and stared at them and at first I was annoyed because I thought I'd waited too long to click but instead of getting completely caught up in the group of people her first reaction upon registering the group and being scared was to look at me :D I clicked and moved us off the path as much as I could as I couldn't cross the road and dropped some ham for her to forage for on the grass and then as the group began to pass us I just kept shoveling ham into her mouth. At one point she looked up from the ham but then returned back to licking my hand so I clicked that too. It's such a tiny thing but it was a bit of a break through because I could finally see BAT working with the beginnings of her offering the behaviour I want when she is scared by people and the situation went so perfectly that it will be positive for Didi's memory bank.

Sorry for the pity party guys, though it's nice to hear your perspectives on it, I worry way too much about everything (as you can probably tell) and am just having a sooky week in general! But yes even though it's an issue and has changed a lot, she's still a great dog, so it's not too hard to focus on the good bits, just got to change my way of going about things a bit, have a bit more fun with my puppy!

Also leading on from Grumpette's lovely story, can I just say that I appreciate how you've all stuck it out with your reactive dogs as long as you have and all the progress you've made with them This has only been a recent thing for us but it's already doing my head in and making me really sad and stressed out. So many things that I wouldn't think about before are now the things I worry about at night before bed and play over mind every time we step out of the house, which I know isn't helpful for the situation but if I'm not thinking about it I get complacent and make mistakes and reverse any progress we've made. I understand you though Hankdog, before all this Didi went everywhere with me, to some pretty weird places for a dog and she was fine with it all, occasionally unsure or too eager since she was still a puppy but otherwise just went along with it but now it's like an intense mission just to walk around the block. I'd love to take her everywhere with me like she used to, Melbourne's pretty dog friendly and we used to have fun but now I don't think going out for coffee or a picnic or a train ride would be fun for either of us as I'd be too focused on her and the people around her and she'd be too nervous the whole time for me to even justify bringing her along. I think I'm just a bit down in the dumps because we are yet to see any progress (as expected, still early days) and I keep stuffing up but I'm sure after a while things will start working out and we will both be more confident at handling situations and knowing our limits and the whole task will seem less daunting and impossible, but I like coming in here and seeing everyone's little (and big) successes in the mean time :)

Progress report??? I don't think anyone actually wants to read it but I want to keep logging down progress and setbacks/achievements as they happen so that I can see how we're doing as otherwise it all turns into a big blob so don't mind me :laugh: we had the party... Was okay actually. The first 3 to arrive were close friends who Didi knew so I let her stay out and hangout with us. Next guest arrived, asked Didi to stay in the kitchen, no wuffing. First person walked in and Didi sniffed but I could see she wasn't very keen so I took her straight to the back of the house before she put on much of a display, only one muffled wuff. She stayed back there for few hours, most people were here and all outside and the door to outside was closed so I decided to let her out for a bit for a leg stretch while my parents and I were cooking food, she just sniffed around the inside of the house, stopped at the glass door to outside and looked at all my friends and to my surprise couldn't care less at 30 people in her backyard. Bad moment on my behalf, someone knocked on the door and Didi wasn't following me until I opened the door and my friend barged in with his bike and took me by surprise as I was not expecting that and Didi started barking so I put her in a room and told my friend to hurry up and put his bike in the garage and once he was gone let her back out but apparently she had decided that rude bike boy was not someone she liked and barked at him when he came back from the garage. I told him to just head outside but he came over to us and I said to just leave her but then he all of a sudden drops down in front of her (EEEK) and goes to grab her collar and Didi pretty much told him where to go and I quickly turned around and led her back into the back of the house. Another dumb boy who was too insistent on being friends with a dog that doesn't like him Was pretty mad that all happened especially as I've had lots of discussions with this friend about her nervousness (his old dog was DA), I think he was a little drunk upon arrival hence welcoming me with his bike tire. So after that huge stuff up on my part I was a bit hesitant when only 5 of my friends were left really early in the morning and they said they'd like to meet Didi. I figured she would really need to pee anyway and she'd met 2 of them before (though while she was much much younger). I stressed to them to all stay where they were sitting and don't interact with her and just let her decide if she wants to say hi and when I let her out after she did a wee she was more than happy to approach everyone for pats and hammed up to one of my friends who is a dog guy so at least the night ended on a good note. Not planning on having a group of people over for a while :laugh: Too much to worry about and I definitely need to hash out a game plan for visitors and start practicing it and sticking to it to get some consistency for the puppy. Walks are a bit intense at the moment as we live near the Melbourne Showgrounds so plenty of families with crazy kids running around and just in general A LOT more pedestrians and traffic so running across a road to avoid people is harder, even if I go early in the morning or late at night there's still people coming and going to set up so I'm just using lots of laneways and backstreets. We are doing well with passing people in close proximity (unless they are young children or behaving in any slightly strange manner, in which case the other side of the road is only just sufficient). I've noticed I've been missing a few reactions beginning and while she's still only staring intently, it's too far gone to get a response from the clicker so I'm trying my best to take it all at snail's pace so that I can ingrain in the new behaviours. She is doing way better at on lead walking though, I bought her a new martingale and lead that are much nicer to walk with than our old limited slip and today we walked down a really long road that was backed up with traffic and I couldn't help smiling to myself at all the people staring out their windows to look at my pretty puppy walking so nicely on her lead, though to be fair they would've been pretty bored :D . My dad even took her for an on lead walk and he said she walked on a loose lead pretty much the whole time and would correct herself if hit the end of the lead, which is an improvement on the freight train mode she would go into whenever he used to try and walk her.

The closest thing she has to a den is under the covers of my bed... she does have a trampoline bed tucked in the corner of my room which is more or less enclosed on three sides, might try hanging a blanket over the top and make a fort. Normally if Didi want to give herself some time out she'll go and sleep on my bed or her bed in my room and if I go out and am leaving her inside, that's where I'll find her. Yeah I will talk to Judi about it when I check in with her next, we've already been working on a way to curb her warning barking. Personally I like Didi to alert to someone outside, we live in a relatively dodgy suburb near a halfway house and our suburb has a pretty high drug addict prevalence. My mum is home alone all day and often has to answer the door to strangers so we want her to bark but what we've been working on with Judi is working in a 'thank you' command that lets her know that she can stop barking, that we've deemed the stranger okay and it's no longer up to her to carry on. Pretty much whenever she barks at someone she can see outside, we call her and give her a reward and say thank you which means her job is over and the barking must stop (it's a bit more complex than that but that's the vague idea). Eventually we could be able to get to the point where if she sees a stranger she will come find us by her own accord, which I'd rather have than her ignoring a stranger's presence if that makes sense, so similar to what you've suggested I guess with desensitising and taking the responsibility off their shoulders, so that she knows her job doesn't extend any further than letting us know someone is there. But her behaviour and the behaviour of the people coming inside was really different and unexpected and I forgot all about how I was supposed to handle it That guarding instinct has always been very innate in Didi. I remember we'd had her for all of two days and my parents came home late and even though she was flat out asleep and at the other end of the house, as soon as my parents put their key in the lock she shot up and did a big bark. I think it was the first time we heard her bark actually and it scared the crap out of me because it was so big and deep and coming out of such a tiny little baby! Next week after the party I might ask some people to come over and do some drills so I become more used to the motions.

I used the train a few times when Didi was a baby puppy mainly for the socialisation aspect but once she got bigger decided not to use it without a muzzle. I had to take her somewhere once and didn't have a car and took her two stops at a non peak time, out in the suburbs, bumped into PSO's and they started to write me up a fine but I talked my way out of it. Even though most people don't follow the rule/know it exists, the PSO's and most likely ticket inspectors do so may as well play on the cautious side, especially if you have a larger dog. But I have found the majority of people on the trains are completely fine with dogs, normally one person who wants to sit and cuddle your dog for the whole trip though!

Yes but they are supposed to be muzzled, not on seats and not travelling during peak times. Not many people muzzle their dogs though I have found and don't even know it's a rule.

Hmm would definitely go Altona Dog Beach over Brighton Dog Beach. Altona is really flat with heaps of sandbanks so great for walking alongside your dog while they swim/throwing the ball, most dogs are pretty easy going down there I have found, I've heard Brighton can get a bit feral and squishy. Fairbairn Park in Ascot Vale (near the racecourse and showgrounds) is a huge off lead reserve next to a river which has plenty to sniff and explore and plenty of space to give other dogs a miss if that's not your thing. The river is normally quite nice for a dip(for the dogs that is) and there are heaps of paths along the river for an on lead walk. About a 5 min walk away is union rd which is my local jaunt, full of dog friendly cafes, pubs and restaurants. Port Melbourne Beach is also pretty nice and you could walk down to St Kilda for coffee/lunch (though once summer kicks in you're not allowed on the beach in certain parts but you can still walk along the foreshore). Before she got reactive to strangers on lead I used to take Didi into the CBD and on a sunny day it was nice to have a lie down on the grass in front of the State Library and people watch. Royal Park and trails along Merri Creek are nice also but not much of it is offlead and too much of a snake worry as the weather heats up personally.

We crate trained her as a puppy but huge dog = huge crate and we don't really have the room for one so never bought her a new one after she outgrew the first. I think she'll be fine in the back part of our house (garage/laundry/office) especially if my brother/dad/mum are hanging out with her but I think the noise and knowing lots of strange people are in our house might make her upset.

I felt so bad the other day I had some friends over on Friday night for a birthday dinner and while we normally have strangers over a fair bit with no issue it's usually only 1 or 2 at a time and anyway I heard my friends at the front gate and went to open the door and Didi ran into the hallway barking her 'hey somebody's outside bark'. I'd put her lead on just in case so I asked her to back up and opened the door and my friends yelled happy birthday (really should have briefed them before hand) and instead of turning into happy tail wag sniffy sniff puppy like she normally would when I let people in the front door she started up her 'I'm a big bad puppy' bark. I told all my friends to completely ignore her and asked them to go into the kitchen while I took Didi into my bedroom and got her to sit and decided to take her lead of incase that was making her feel weird and that way she could just move away from us if she was scared. I let her off and she followed me into the kitchen and started sniffing my friends but had her tail right between her legs and even though I said for everyone to ignore her until she calmed down one of my friends started patting her and she wet herself! Normally if she is scared of somebody she moves as far away as possible and she could've easily moved away but she kept slinking around my friends sniffing them with her tail tucked so I think she was just nervous and excited rather than straight up scared. There was also none of the growling or barking that usually accompanies people breaching her comfort zone apart from the initial entrance and once when one of my friends screamed about something which is fair enough, our household is generally quiet and I told everyone to keep their voices down after that. Once she calmed down a bit my friend who Didi is most familiar with kneeled down and had a chat to her and after that Didi followed her around and lay down at her feet while we made dinner. For the rest of the night she was pretty much fine, everyone could pat her and she lay down calmly at my feet while we ate dinner. I think she was just initially very overwhelmed and stressed out but it kind of caught me off guard and everything kind of fell out of my mind management wise so I just stressed that everyone be calm and ignore her. I am having a party with around 40+ people next week though (was meant to be the weekend that just past but had to change it) and while I wasn't intending on having Didi roaming around I am a lot more worried about it now. The plan was to tire her out completely and set her up in the garage with my brother and a big bone and a kong and she can just hang out in the back part of our house which is separate from the party area. I would leave her with someone that night but the only person I would leave her with is coming to the party. Dad might take her for a night walk if she's getting too stressed. I kind of want to cancel the whole thing because I'm worried about her. I love the puppy but I am so worried about making her reactivity worse or her hurting someone and that's the opposite of what I need to be doing at the moment. On the plus side we went to a DOL meet up this weekend and she got lots of cuddles from some people she's only met once or twice and took it all in her stride and she played so nicely with another horse puppy which kind of cheered me up, seeing how great she is with other dogs made me forget about our other problems for a bit.

Didi is my lovely mutt puppy. The rescue did DNA test her but I don't believe half of it (bedlington terrier?? Really??) So we just stick to great dane mix :) She's so pretty though ^.^

I have the same one for Didi, we got it at Petstock :)

Her ears and her squishy jowls are my favourite parts of her, her ears are like velvet :) And yes I agree (though with extreme bias) she's such a pretty girl! I was really worried with her mutt heritage she'd turn out looking a bit weird but so far so good

One more month until Didi is *technically* a big girl (but will forever be my puppy) We've had plenty of nice weather recently so lots of adventures :) Didi and her rotti/mastiff pal Winston after a dip in the river He's one of the few dogs Didi can play rough with without the fear of squishing them! Didi is such a water baby, I'm so glad we live near such a good dog beach. And a few more :)