Some Small Successes For Puppy

[koalathebear]

1. Elbie had his first giant marrow bone the other day. He LOVED it. We got the bone from the butchers shop next to Pet Barn at the Belconnen Markets because one of the sales assistants who owns a kelpie recommended the place. They gave us a HUGE bone for $5 and they cut it in half for us so that Elbie could get to the marrow more easily. I cut off all the fat and any bits that looked vaguely dangerous and choke-able. Accordingly to my OH, it kept Elbie entertained for more than 9 hours! He chomped out all of the marrow in the middle first and then spent the rest of the time gnawing on it happily. He was gnawing it under supervision and seemed fine with it. I know that it's all right to leave the bone for more than a few days, but just to be safe, we threw it out after one day. We still have the other half in the freezer.

We will definitely get more bones from that butcher because Elbie enjoyed it so much. We're very conscious of the choking hazards - which was why it took us so long to get around to buying a gone for him - but as mentioned, we supervise so it should be fine. We took it away from him a few times when he was gnawing on it, but he just gave us a placid: "Why do you want my bone?" look and waited until we gave it back to him. I'm so happy he's not thingy about his food despite being crazy about eating.

2. One of Elbie's puppy teeth fell out today. The first one we're aware of. It's possible that the bone chewing might have moved it along. We found a little bit of blood on his toy badger yesterday and also on his raw hide bone. At first we were afraid he had cut his mouth while chewing on the rawhide so inspected his mouth - he was very funny standing there patiently with his mouth open as we peered around inside his mouth but we didn't find any cuts or anything. Do puppies gums bleed when they lose their puppy teeth? There wasn't a lot of blood, there was none today and Elbie seemed in good spirits.

3. We have been trying to get Elbie to use his outdoor kennel. The days are cold, I've already gone back to work and OH is going back soon so Elbie will be left on his ownsome in the yard during the day. We were worried because while he shivers with cold, he hasn't wanted to use his kennel and he prefers to curl up on the doorstep outside the kitchen - even when it's cold and rainy. We bought straw and a comfy dog bed that looks like a mini trampoline to put into the kennel. Elbie seemed to love it and we coaxed him in the kennel a few times on the weekend and he lay there for a bit. Alas, he wasn't going in there of his own volition. Today I received an email from OH announcing that it was cold and rainy and although at first Elbie had curled up wet and shivering on our back door step as usual, eventually he vanished into the kennel and all that could be seen was one small white paw. It's great news for us because Elbie should be much warmer in there than on the back step.

4. Corvus mentioned that we should teach Elbie to touch his nose against our hand so I put my palm up and he immediately stuck his cold wet nose into it I repeated it a few times and then said: "touch" and he seems to know what's going on. With these tricks though, he always looks at me in a very perplexed and puzzled way as if to say: "What's this all about?" He loves to learn new things, though. Now if we could get him to crawl without the aid of kitchen benches He doesn't seem to grasp the concept of crawling when there's nothing to crawl under.

5. His stays are getting very good. I'll ask him to stay in one room, go wandering off into another room while he's in a drop position or a sit and then after a wait, I'll call him in. The first time I did it, I saw his head poke around the doorway curiously to see where I had gone but now he knows that he's going to be called, he just sits and waits even though I'm in a different room.

6. Elbie has overcome his aversion to toileting in the rain He now trots outside, does his business in Poo Corner and then trots back inside again. For a while he didn't like it or worse, he'd get confused and wee in the courtyard because it was all wet anyway, but now he seems to know what he's supposed to do.

7. To our delight, he now sleeps through the night so no more late night dog duty in the freezing cold. Even when he drinks water late at night, he seems fine about holding it.

8. For a while, Elbie wasn't drinking water from his outside water bowl when we weren't home. We'd come back, find his water bowl outside untouched but he'd come dashing into the house and start drinking the water from his inside bowl thirstily like there was no tomorrow. We took the inside bowl away so that he had to drink all of his water outside. At first he was quite reluctant but my OH discovered that giving him warm water made him more inclined to drink the water so he's now fine about drinking water outside and we don't have to worry about coming home to a thirsty puppy.

Harness/leash gnawing and Car Anxiety challenges remain but we are working through them gradually.

Edited September 5, 2010 by koalathebear

[Marley'z Mum]

Congratulations! Thats excellent, hope my baby is as well behaved soon...

How did u get Elbie to like bein outside on his own? Marley will soon need 2 be outside during the day, atm if he is put outside, if we are inside, he stands there an whines an barks an carry's on, he is never let in until he is quiet but i worry bout him upsettin the neighbours

[koalathebear]

Thanks MM - they're small successes in the scheme of things but we had a setback with Elbie's progress recently which preoccupied us so much that we weren't really focussing on the positives :D He is a very good dog and learns quickly.

As for being outside, Elbie is very much an inside dog, too unfortunately. Canberra winters are very cold and lately it's been rainy as well so I don't blame him for not really wanting to be outside. Some things we did:

1. Like Marley, Elbie would and will still occasionally whimper and bark to be let in. Some of the sounds this dog can make! Like you, we didn't let him in until he's quiet. We worried that he might think all he has to do is carry on, then go quiet and then we'll reward him by letting him in. So usually what we did was either left the room or if he could still see us - we'd just ignore him. He's carry on for a bit but then eventually plonk himself into a sit/drop and turn quiet. Once we felt he'd almost forgotten about his desire to come in, we'd let him in. Our worry was that when we're not home, he might expect that he can be let in by barking and barking so we're training him to think that if he's quiet, he MIGHT be let in.

2. We only put him outside for short bursts of time initially. Half an hour at first, then an hour, then a few hours. It's important to make the backyard an interesting place for him to be. For Elbie he prefers to be with us, but he's very food and toy-motivated so things we did were:

(a) at mealtimes, scatter part or all of his kibble in the grass so he could forage for it.

(b) if we were going out, get a kong, fill it with peanut butter and kibble and freeze it

We set up Elbie-Cam so that we knew what sorts of things he was doing when we were out - was he bored/upset? What did he like playing with etc.

We also put toys in the yard - he knows the difference between 'inside toys' and 'outside toys' so doesn't try to bring them in or out. One of his favourites is an empty plastic bottle - he'll run around with that for ages. He has cloth tug toys and balls but for some reason that bottle makes him happy

Finally, we also fed him a portion of his meals outside. From a very short time after we got him, Elbie has always been 'working' for his meals. This was partly because we wanted to be treating him for his tricks/training but we didn't want to overfeed him so the best time to focus on training for him was at mealtimes. At every single meal time, Elbie will:

- sit, drop, stand, go backwards, beg, high five, spin, shake hands, rollover, do an 'are you shy' and wave several times

- have his harness put on and taken off

- have his leash clipped on and be walked around for a bit

He works for every single bit of his food, even if it's just making him keep his distance (1 metre) and wait for it until we give him the okay (after he looks up at us). We're lucky because he's already a very focussed little dog who looks up at us a lot.

Hope this helps a bit

Edited July 15, 2010 by koalathebear

[Genabee]

It's helped me!

Not that Genevieve is left outside, but I love the way you make him work for his food!

I make G sit and wait, then shake hands and lie down. I never thought to do any of the other things you mentioned!

Might give it a go!

The other tricks you mentioned (waving etc), are tips on training those found in the training section of the forum?

[persephone]

KtB

Good to hear that Elbie is enjoying new things !You are doing well. Do we get to see new photos of him ?

With bones- I was always told to scoop out the marrow before feeding It is fat! Sometimes it can give pups the runs:( .... We sometimes have pups/dogs the same sort of size as your boy- and they chew up lamb flap (cut into about 10 cm. squares)/chicken frames from about 12 weeks- no problem - they can use all their teeth,with these bones, chewing different ways- and it is a meal Marrow bones are ok occasionally as a plaything ... but I'd rather pay $5 for something the dog can eat :D

Glad teething has started ! Sometimes you may notice a tiny bit of blood- but most times not. Lots of chewy things- but perhaps not rawhide- that might be a bit hard when he gets a bit more gummy in the process See how he goes. Some pups prefer softer bones..some just continue as normal :)He will let you know!

[Niques]

Elbie always sounds like quite the little character! What a charming guy!

Re: bleeding, our vet warned that there might be a little bit of blood on his bones or soft toys but I never saw any. I did end up with slobbery blood streaked down my arm at one point when he thought he'd use me as a teething toy, but as he was in hyper/zoomie mode at the time I suspect he may have knocked a tooth which prompted the bleeding. I was glad when he finally started teething... but even happier when he finished! James was prone to crying and chewing on hands when his teeth hurt - his discomfort, although infrequent, was really quite sad to watch.

Congratulations on all the other little breakthroughs! It's really wonderful when they move past certain trying habits and learn new things. I second the call for new photos!

[koalathebear]

niques and persephone:

Thank you! I will definitely add some photos soon. We've really been very preoccupied with our little boy's behaviour lately that we haven't been keeping up with the photos.

persephone:

Bones ... We agonised for ages about the marrow in bones issue I googled and googled about to marrow or not to marrow and on the day, I think there were more 'marrow good' articles so we let him have the marrow ... We will probably give him a giant marrow bone (with marrow) very occasionally as a treat. I'll probably sometimes scoop out the marrow as suggested because I don't want him to become a fatty.

I tried the lamb flaps (our local butcher gave us a bag for free to test them out on Elbie) and he LOVES them (he loves all food ) but they were seriously gone within minutes!!!! He was able to play with the bone for 9 hours so we were very disconcerted when he seemed to inhale the flaps :D

It's so hard to find any consensus on what's safe/not safe. We gave him rawhide chews (regarded as dangerous) under very close supervision but he has learned how to soften them and untie the knots so they aren't very safe for very long. I read so many hideous stories about bone choking and throat/stomach damage so we decided to get him a huge one that he couldn't choke on and eyeball him as he gnawed on it

wizzle

The tricks help a LOT to take the edge off Elbie's hyperactivity around mealtimes. When he was very young, he used to sit there staring at us intently and literally quivering with anticipation - sometimes he'd whimper, sometimes he'd even drool a little bit! It was very cute but not very calming for him. These days because he's running through tricks, he's very focussed and calm and we don't have to worry about his manic behaviour.

As soon as he sees that we've finished our meal, he comes trotting up in expectation of HIS meal and when we run through tricks with him, you can almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tries to guess what we're going to ask him to do. He's very funny because sometimes he'll do a bunch of tricks in anticipation of what we want him to do so before we've even asked him to do anything he'll be begging, spinning, rolling over and doing 'are you shy'

One time, he was anticipating all the things my OH was making him do and my OH said: "I must be too predictable, he keeps doing things before I say it or as I'm saying them."

Me: "Why don't you ask him for a drop and an are you shy?"

OH: "Spoilers! Don't say that aloud!" Sure enough, when my OH looked back towards Elbie he was already dropping and doing the shy gesture on the basis of our conversation.

In terms of the tricks we have taught Elbie.

He came to us at 8 weeks with a very strong sit so we didn't have to train that. The drop took us a little bit of time because his butt used to pop in the air when we tried to do that. We've now turned that into 'bow' so he does that very nicely now

For "beg" basically one of us sat behind him and one of us sat in front of him. When my OH said "beg", he'd do the "beg" gesture while I put Elbie's paws into a beg position. I only had to do it a couple of times. His first attempts, he was jumping up and balancing on his back legs but now he does a very nice seated beg which is very cute. Sometimes it looks like a double high five or like he's having a panicked spaz attack as his paws flail a bit.

High five: I put him in a sit and sat in front of him. I put my hand up and lifted one of his paws to touch against mine. I did it a couple of times, then said high five and he learned it very quickly.

We read online that it's good for dogs to obey hand signals as well as voice for if they get deaf when they're old so we have taught Elbie to obey hand signals for all his tracks as well as voice commands.

'wave': he just learned of his own accord one day. One day, he was looking at me, I lifted my hand at him and he stared at me intently. I'm not sure if you've read Paddington Bear but he's always described as being very good at giving a 'hard stare'. Elbie has a very intent, considering stare. On that day, he stared at me and my upraised hand and then lifted his paw in response.

It made me crack up and my OH was laughing because at first I called the command: "We come in peace" but I changed it over to 'wave'. Because I praised and gave him a treat for the wave, he now does it on request.

go backwards: Elbie walked backwards quite naturally so we just had to capture the behaviour. When we walk towards Elbie with food/a toy he'll automatically back-up. If you look here you'll see instructions.

rollover: For rollover, we just scanned youtube for the different videos and found the technique that worked for us. It took us a while because Elbie kept nipping at the treat instead of rolling over. Eventually one day he was in his dog bed and when we called his name, he rolled over towards us. We praised him a lot and gave him treats and made him to it several times until he got it down pat on the mat. Then he did it on the ground. Our theory was that he didn't really want to roll on the cold, hard ground at first :D

spin: we found a spin on

that worked for us. You can see Elbie in action in this thread. He does very very sedate spins now but he used to do crazy, athletic demented spins that made us laugh soooo much - I kind of miss his demento spazzy spins.

'are you shy': This was a very difficult trick. DOL forum has this post. Unfortunately the tape or peanut butter on the side didn't work for us at first because it kept falling off Elbie's fur. He's short-haired so we couldn't use the peg option.

We found

and Elbie learned it really quickly although we got through a LOT of sticky tape. My mum thought it was hilarious because she was there for the sticky tape days.

We're still not able to get him to crawl without a bench or do a 'drop dead'. When he drops onto his side, he automatically wants to roll over for a 360 so that will take some more work.

As for the tricks, everyone says that you're supposed to get the behaviour you want first, perfect it and then give it a name otherwise the dog might just give you a sloppy version and think that's good enough. We've been lucky with Elbie - we actually give it the word almost right from the beginning because he usually only takes a few times to associate the word with the behaviour.

Hope that helps! Please feel free to ask any questions. I'm not an expert by any means but I can certainly tell you what worked for Elbie. What helps is that Elbie really seems to find it fun so for him, learning tricks seems to be almost its own motivation and reward. Sorry for the length of the post!

Edited July 15, 2010 by koalathebear

[Magstar]

I love reading all of your Elbie updates

Congratulations on all of your success with him! He is so lucky to have such dedicated owners

[BrittanyMay]

I love reading about Elbie's endeavours - he seems like a joy to have around, and you seem like very dedicated owners. Keep up the great posts!

[hopenfox]

koalathebear, please be very careful with the big marrow bones - they are SO hard they can wear down and break teeth.

Unfortunately my vet recommended them to me for my dog Hope when she was less than a year old. After just half an hour of gnawing on the bone, she'd worn her new adult teeth over half way down to the gums, with every tooth bleeding from the core! It was very distressing to see. She's had to live with short, flat teeth since...I felt terrible and still do every time I see her teeth!

Marrow bones are harder than dog's teeth and will always win.

hopenfox

[koalathebear]

magstar and BritannyMay: Thanks. He's a lot of hard work but a very lovable little dog.

hopenfox: Thanks for letting me know. The butcher cuts the bones in half so the marrow is reachable so mostly all Elbie does is a lot of 'scooping' of marrow with his teeth, licking and gnawing on the softer bits of the bone. He doesn't seem to be biting down hard on anything. We take the bone away after a day - but we'll definitely keep an eye on him. We'll get him lamb flaps today as suggested by persephone - if only he didn't eat them so fast

persephone:

Elbie says hullo to his Auntie Persephone. Also, his ears are still quite floppy - I just took the video at that angle so that his ears looked more kelpie-ish

[Clastic]

persephone:

Elbie says hullo to his Auntie Persephone. Also, his ears are still quite floppy - I just took the video at that angle so that his ears looked more kelpie-ish

Aw, so cute! Lucky Aunty Persephone!

[Genabee]

Thank you for the detailed explanation koalathebear!!! Genevieve has jut mastered 'touch' (I make her touch her nose to me fist, but not allowed to lick!) and high five!!!! She already shakes hands!

I took a leaf out of your book and have been making her do lots and lots of tricks before her food - and half her food was eaten as a reward for doing things. Our biggest challenge is getting her to stay in the 'down' position, but she is improving every day! I also make her look at me before she hears the magic word 'OK'. She looks funny as she starts out with her head staring at the bowl then all of her sudden her little eyes look up...

Thank you for sharing all your advice and updates. You have a beautiful dog and you are obviously a fantastic dog parent! If only all dogs could be so lucky.

[persephone]

persephone:

Elbie says hullo to his Auntie Persephone. Also, his ears are still quite floppy - I just took the video at that angle so that his ears looked more kelpie-ish

THANKYOU! that is so cute

[ravenau1]

Awww! So cute!

I love reading about Elbie too, and love all the vids

[koalathebear]

Thanks to everyone for the kind words :rolleyes: Elbie is a handful (several actually) and certainly keeps us on our toes but he also has a very beautiful personality.

We have been worried about possible aggression given his response to the harness in the car, but in almost every other single situation he is very non-aggressive and during the last couple of car trips, he has shown marked improvement in his behaviour.

wizzle: when will see see Genevieve in action on youtube? She must be sooooooooo cute. I adore cavs - there was one at our puppy class and we have a little guy named Caleb in our obedience class who is just so adorable and lively. He's so little but he acts like he's a big dog - all confident and happy.

Edited July 25, 2010 by koalathebear

[Genabee]

I Am so not computer savvy!!!

How do I put things on youtube? I couldn't even work out how to put a picture of her on here!!

[koalathebear]

I Am so not computer savvy!!!

How do I put things on youtube? I couldn't even work out how to put a picture of her on here!!

Do you have a video function on your camera? It probably makes mpegs files. Try to keep the videos shortish so that the file size is not too large.

1. save the video files to your computer

2. go to youtube and create an account (http://www.youtube.com/create_account?next=%2F)

3. Then click "upload" (http://upload.youtube.com/my_videos_upload), select the video and upload to youtube.

It will give you a link to where your video is located and you can post the address over here at DOL :p

Hope that helps!

[Genabee]

I make no promises.... but will see what I can muster up!

I should have got her while she was on the dining room table! Cheeky dog.

[Genabee]

Well.... Just for Elbie!!

Genevieve by no means is as talented as the Great Elbie, but she is getting there!! And so is her not so computer savvy Mum!!!