The Life Of Hugo

[keroppiyo]

Hey Dju, you might want to try using a Dremel to grind Hugo's nails.

Link

I tried to get Buffy to accept the clippers, and I thought we were making progress. But then she decided she absolutely hated them, and wouldn't let me cut her nails.

You need to get them used to the Dremel too, especially the sound, and vibration when it comes into contact with the nail. It also takes a bit longer compared to nail cutters, but if you can get the job done, it may be worth it in the end. You won't have to worry about cutting the quick with those things too.

[Ausvarg FL]

Well after reading this I am totally pissed off.

and the vet felt the need to question our choice of breeder and said something along the lines of "Your breeder got the bare minimum vaccination, if she had gotten a better one with more coverage, then Hugo would not have needed so much during his visit here". No idea what that means. He got a C3, I was like.. a C3 is a C3?

What the hell

[Dju]

Well after reading this I am totally pissed off.

and the vet felt the need to question our choice of breeder and said something along the lines of "Your breeder got the bare minimum vaccination, if she had gotten a better one with more coverage, then Hugo would not have needed so much during his visit here". No idea what that means. He got a C3, I was like.. a C3 is a C3?

What the hell ;)

I have no idea what he meant by that either :D We're not so savvy about the vaccinations we need to give him, but I mean the guy is living in the past and clearly has little clue about anything modern within the last ten years, so after Hugo gets his next shot and we can walk him outside and stuff, he'll be going to a better, less obscure veterinary practice about 30 minutes walk away instead of 15.

Though I think he's picking on me because Hugo is just too awesome. They keep saying I made the wrong choice of breed, but they have no idea how happy we are with each other ! Hugo is perfect and you are the perfect breeder Cassie

Keroppiyo, at first we tried filing his nails with a normal human nail file and he was okay with that but I think the clipping experience has made him so against having his paws touched now, period, so we'll firstly have to go through and desensitize having his paws held! Whenever we touch his paws now, he either (gently) mouths my fingers, or pulls his hands away and tucks them under his neck, lol!

I'll be uploading some pictures soon. We spent all day playing together and we got him some new and exciting toys to play with as well!

[KumaAkita]

Kuma used to hate having his paws touched, but we've slowly worked on the desentisation by gently touching and rubbing his feet. He's so much better now. Last night I was actually rubbing his legs and his feet trying to get his dead hair out, he now seems to love it.

I think you have the right idea by starting again with the desenitisaiton and work back up to trimming.

I also think you have had another bright idea by leaving that old vet behind!

Can't wait to see new photos of your little man

[Dju]

Ahh, I can only dream of the day that Hugo will love having his paws touched . The bugger is shedding a lot, o em gee! I'm not sure how to deal with that as he's a puppy and a coat king would.. destroy his coat, and he also has this thing where he likes eating the brush which has completely shattered my dreams of brushing him until kingdom come when he's an adult. We're hoping he grows out of that stage though. We're sure he will, yes.

Last night we gave him my mother's childhood teddy bear to play with and he loved it! I was a bit sad for the bear because it was so old and Hugo really did love it enough to chew it all over (I have a soft spot for all my childhood soft toys as they were so loyal to me when I was a child!), but luckily Hugo doesn't feel the urge to rip it up, which is wonderful. So far he only mouths it and snuggles against it, as shown in the picture I snapped up of him sleeping besides it last night.

Do tell me that isn't the most precious thing you've ever seen.

In relation to the abundance of pink around him.. er.. uhm.. Hugo is a ...viking.. and their favorite color is ... BLOOD. And pink is just diluted blood. Yes, we'll stick with that explanation. Because Hugo wants me to let everyone know that he's really manly and buff and awesome and that the is not an ounce of femininity in him. Absolutely not.

[Dju]

We have learned the wonders of random objects as playtoys now.

Hugo's absolute favorite outside toy at the moment is our Big Red Ketchup Bottle.

Hugo goes ga-ga for the ketchup. As I mentioned before, Vikings like the color of blood so it's only natural that he goes ga-ga for the bottle because it is his favorite color and reminds him of his ancestor's days on the battlefield, destroying those damned Frenchmen and spilling their delicious offals all over the battlefield which they would then eat and then terrify everyone with how manly they were and so on and so forth (this is real history, this is, I promise). You can see the murderous look in his eye when he sees the subtle tribute to his ancestors, shining brightly in the sun with all its rosiness. Look at that face, that beautiful, naughty face.

Hugo is becoming very good at playing fetch, though he will only do it a maximum of ten times before he gets sick of it and starts to glare at you. So we play a mixture of that and a mixture of "kick the bottle around the yard and behave like a lunatic". He gets very bitey during the loony stage, so we often have to stop and calm him down. I am already beginning to see what Corvus means when she tells us about how Erik can get over-aroused! I wish I could do that massage thing on him but he's much too little at the moment, with his loose skin, so loose even that when I firmly rub down his back, his facial features gets misplaced and ends up on his arse. And then I need to go through the effort of fixing his face back on. It's quite a bother actually. My mother says it's because he's "skin and bones". I agree that he looked a bit fatter when we first got him, but he was also much smaller back then as far as the pictures tell me. He was a squishy boy, yes he was!

Anyways, back to playing fetch; I'd sit in the shade and toss the bottle down the yard to him, and he'd dart off after it.

As you might be able to see, the back yard is divided up so that the chickens can have their own space, and he's not allowed in until we can fully trust him. I'm not sure how the fence would work for Hugo. Either it would tantalize him, or it would desensitize him to the chickens. We're hoping the latter, but there's no real knowing until he's grown up a bit more and we can try introduce them personally.

Sometimes Hugo sits there with the bottle because he thinks I'm going to take it off him, which is true I guess, I mean, we are trying to play fetch and if he never lets go of the bottle, there's no playing is there? But he looked too cute to pass up the photo op in that situation so I let him, before eagerly calling Hugo back--"Bring it to mummy, bring it to mummy!!!"

It's so comical to watch him waddle back to us with that huge bottle in his mouth. Sometimes he grips it by the handle but sometimes it's a bit too hard for him so he grabs the lid. He has not yet managed to grab it by the barrel, but he enjoys licking it though.

So that's basically what we did all day, play with that bottle! Gosh he loves bottles. He really likes his water bottle full of kibble as well. Mostly because it's hard to have a grip on it and it makes exciting noises when he attempts to and just ends up kicking it around his pen. We want to get him the Bob-a-Lot toy because we heard good things about it, and he seems like the type who would really enjoy that sort of activity. Because we do have to leave him alone in the house for a few hours when we're at work/uni, we don't want him to get bored and resort to boredom barking. We've installed Vitamin D software onto my computer so the next time I'm at work, I'll leave the PC running, and the webcam, and we'll capture anything he does. With any luck, he'll just be sleeping all day but we want to see how agitated he becomes, if at all. If we see that he's barking up a storm, we do have to deal with that somehow--our neighbors aren't the most tolerant of people!

I will update his journal when we try the experiment, could be Monday maybe before we try it out, as I work on Monday and my mother goes off to TAFE.

I leave you all now with another picture of one of Hugo's favorite hidey-holes, the... barbecue plates rested up against the side of the house. He likes licking it. I think he can still taste some remnants of meat or oil on it or something. He doesn't do it obsessively, he prefers hiding under them rather than licking them. And hiding his toys under there too. You should see him try to cram a 2L bottle of ketchup under there!

[Esky the husky]

Look how cute his mask is :D

*squee*

Hey Dju, I know you and your mum are concerned about him being skinny etc.

Pups go through a stage called the ganglies or the uglies. This is when they are starting to grow a bit, they become all leggy, look skinny and weird.

All kinds of things happen. It's like going through puberty.

When Esky hit that age, she looked like a starved whippet. It was hard to keep weight on her. She was definately not undernourished or anything. Just going through on of those ugly patches.\

It's a normal process. If you've been following the growth of any of the lappies eg Alera, Fable, Ella in the Spitz thread you would have seen what I mean.

[Dju]

It's good to know that we aren't starving him then. The trainer at the puppy preschool told us that we were spoiling him with a menu every time he wants to eat and that was bad bad bad! :rolleyes:

Today was Hugo's first day at puppy preschool! He was freaking out a lot in front of the other dogs and our trainer told us that behavior was definitely not normal and it was that kind of behavior that led to an aggressive dog. He was so loud, just barking and barking and barking and barking, he was acting like a little nutter. What made me pretty sad was the trainer's comments about basically how unfit we were for such an "overly intelligent breed" like Hugo. I felt really disheartened when he said that.

He showed us a calming technique (basically pushing the dog to sit between your legs and restraining him until he lost all will to tantrum?), and he did a little better, but I swear it was like he never saw a dog before the way he was acting. Hugo was being noisy during the class and actually the first one to be a test subject for "the hold", and boy did he freak out and start squealing. In the end he settled down.

Throughout the lesson even, our trainer didn't help the situation by pointing out all the things that me and my mother were doing wrong/badly and negatively affecting his learning, reinforcing bad behaviors, etc etc. God knows how long that's going to take to correct now that you've taught him that he can get his own way all the time, he says to us.

Hugo had no idea how to play with the puppies, he was actually pretty aggressive when we let him. It is basically an area where two trainers watch over a small group of puppies and when it gets too rough, they get pulled into the restrain hold and sit like that for a minute or two before continuing with play. Hugo got put into that restrain hold so many times I lost count. I was starting to get a bit upset, they were just giving me these looks as if to say "clueless girl, look at how she's messed up this puppy" or something like that, I was heaps embarrassed that Hugo was behaving like that.

My mother was fretting really bad about her poor Hugo-poo and actually one of the trainers pulled us aside and told us that maybe it would be a good idea to not bring my mother back next time because she was acting agitated and making Hugo agitated as well (she was acting a bit overprotective, but not come back, really?).

During the whole day though, it was the comment about Hugo not being the right dog for us that made me really upset though. We love Hugo so much, he's our heartdog!

Edited December 13, 2010 by Troy

[whiskedaway]

Dju, I've been told the exactly the same thing by a trainer about how a Sibe was not the right breed for me. As others in the Spitz thread said to me, just ignore it. Take some advice on board about how to help him, but ignore the snarkiness. They probably wouldn't be very good with an overly intelligent breed either.

[tlc]

Hugo has grown heaps what a lovely little boy he is.

As far as puppy school is concerned if you don't like the way a trainer is handing your puppy go with your instinct, don't take anything as gospel, there is more than one way to train a dog. Time out is good if he is being a bit boisterous but not restraining them :rolleyes: I would be most upset if that was my puppy!

Don't let people dishearten you with comments on your suitability. Even if you are not suited to the pup you have him and you have to make him the best puppy he can be and I am sure you are capable of doing that. Mkae it your goal to prove these people wrong. We see a lot of people who come through our obedience school and yes some ar enot suited to the puppy they choose but with the right guidance and training it is all good in the end. The main thing is you think/know he is the right pup for you, THAT is all that matters.

Do you mind if I ask how old you are? (PM me if you like or tell me to mind my own business, )

From your posts it seems like you are doing everything right with Hugo and trying like crazy to have a good happy healthy puppy, well done!

Ps. I also noticed a couple of pages back Hugo has two crates in his area, just curious as to why??

[huski]

Sorry you had such a disheartening experience at puppy school Demi :rolleyes:

SwedishDogsDownUnder, I know the place she is going to puppy school, and they are actually full on positive reinforcement trainers. I'm not saying that to defend the way they have treated Demi, but they definitely aren't Cesar Milan type trainers.

Demi I'll PM you.

Edited November 28, 2010 by huski

[huski]

I will add one more thing, this is not to discourage you at all Demi, but this is the reason so many of us told you not to wait to socialise Hugo and that his behaviour would get worse if you left it too long.

Breeders can mean well and I get where they are coming from about parvo, but this is the kind of thing that happens when well meaning puppy owners take their advice about not socialising them until they have had all their vaccinations and miss their critical socialisastion period.

I am sure Hugo's behaviour can be turned around if you put the hard work in, don't let the puppy school instructors make you feel like you are a bad owner or discourage you from continuing to train him. I am sure you can do it :rolleyes:

Edited December 13, 2010 by Troy

[corvus]

:rolleyes: We all told you to get out there and socialise him. It is SO important with this breed! Please do it, for his sake. Once again, if he's making a fuss, he is TOO CLOSE. Take him far enough away so that he is able to take treats and become calm, then one step closer and treats until he is calm, then another step closer and treats until he is calm and so on. If you can't get far enough away at puppy preschool that he will settle within ten minutes, then take him outside where he can't even see the other puppies. It is not fair to put him in a situation he can't handle and then force him to stay there until he realises there will never be a way to handle it and goes still. He has to learn that these things he is scared of are safe and be given the chance to explore them WHEN HE IS READY. Not before. Trust me, I have seen the fallout when a puppy has been forced into socialising. It was horrible and he never got any better. It was also a Vallhund cross, so for the love of god, please take this seriously. Whether Hugo has it in him to go the way this puppy did or not, just don't set him up to find out. Promise me you'll take him out every day this week and let him just quietly watch some dogs from a safe distance where they can't run up to him. Preferably with a bag full of treats you can pop him every few seconds.

It is not enough to just love him. He needs your guidance and help. If you continue to push him into things he can't handle he will learn the world is full of monsters and won't want anything to do with it. He will be scared whenever he's outside his yard. You don't want that for him.

[huski]

I can't believe I am saying this, but I totally agree with Corvus.

ETA: although I know you mean well Demi, the people I am angriest with over this are the breeders who told you and put pressure on you not to socialise him :rolleyes:

Edited November 28, 2010 by huski

[tlc]

Well I obvioulsy missed something re: the socialization aspect.

I agree with Corvus and Huski, early socialization is best. But I will admit it is a hard call, vaccination over socialization?? You need to find the happy medium with being able to socialized pup with out to much risk of parvo and other doogy nasties.

Are you able to take Hugo to play with friends dogs ot get him out around other dogs a bit more often??

[huski]

TLC, I believe Dju was booked into puppy school earlier and was intending to socialise Hugo before now but her breeder and some other breeders in the spitz thread told her not to do any socialisation until he had all his vaccinations.

Those of us who are more involved in the training side of things naturally disagreed as we think it is a balance and there is such a small, crucial window in a puppy's critical socialisation period :rolleyes:

Edited November 28, 2010 by huski

[SDDU]

I can't believe I am saying this, but I totally agree with Corvus.

ETA: although I know you mean well Demi, the people I am angriest with over this are the breeders who told you and put pressure on you not to socialise him :rolleyes:

Did she though ??

I wonder if Demi manages to listen long enough to know what people say, being the devils advocate here, you are

trashing the breeder without the breeders voice being heard !

[huski]

I can't believe I am saying this, but I totally agree with Corvus.

ETA: although I know you mean well Demi, the people I am angriest with over this are the breeders who told you and put pressure on you not to socialise him :rolleyes:

Did she though ??

I wonder if Demi manages to listen long enough to know what people say, being the devils advocate here, you are

trashing the breeder without the breeders voice being heard !

Yes, there was a whole conversation in the Spitz thread about it with a couple of breeders even piping up and agreeing that Hugo shouldn't be socialised until he'd had all his vaccinations.

[SDDU]

I can't believe I am saying this, but I totally agree with Corvus.

ETA: although I know you mean well Demi, the people I am angriest with over this are the breeders who told you and put pressure on you not to socialise him :rolleyes:

Did she though ??

I wonder if Demi manages to listen long enough to know what people say, being the devils advocate here, you are

trashing the breeder without the breeders voice being heard !

Yes, there was a whole conversation in the Spitz thread about it with a couple of breeders even piping up and agreeing that Hugo shouldn't be socialised until he'd had all his vaccinations.

Yes I was there, I added my bit, but THE breeder did not, so I say again you are trashing THE breeder who has not posted on this subject !

You may be right in your assumptions, but I would not post about things I have "heard" from dubious sources.

Edited November 28, 2010 by SwedishDogsDownUnder

[tlc]

I guess the socialization thing is a tough call, I'm sure if a puppy owner came on DOL and said they had a pup and socialized it early and it got Parvo there would be an equal amount of people jumping up and down saying the opposite of what we are saying. I suppose at the end of the day only the person owning the puppy can make the call and if there is consequences then the owner has to take that on either way.

All 4 of mine were socialized from the age of 8 weeks, would I do it differently next time? No nothing I would change at all. But I bet a person who has had a dog die or be very sick from Parvo would see things differently.

Sorry to go off the topic of "The life of Hugo" but this part of any pups life is important.