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Phuzun posted:The rabbits will die of heart attacks from the constant presence of a predator. That's if the enclosure keeps the dog out. This. Out of curiosity I asked my veterinarian mother-in-law and she said that they'd likely die from stress with enough exposure to the dog, and that in her experience most dogs, regardless of breed, will do their best to kill (or "play with") the rabbits anyway. Apologies if there are actual vets in the thread who have already said basically that, I only just started lurking the thread.
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Jul 26, 2018 20:59
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Yossarian-22 posted:Hey, remember me? I'm the dumbass who almost got a terrier, but thankfully the gf and I have returned it and we got an adorable 1 year old poodle instead. Some questions: Separation anxiety is usually derived from the dog not liking where they're being left, not having anything to do, or both. Give the dog something to entertain herself (like an indestructible chew toy with food hidden in it or rawhide strips or whatever), that may help. Some dogs will always whine though. But if she's anxious when left alone, you'll want to find a way to fix that or it'll just escalate into ripping stuff up or being destructive because she's bored/under-stimulated. I will say, if you just got the dog, it's not separation anxiety as such. The dog probably couldn't give a poo poo that you in particular are gone, just that she's confined and has nothing to do. Dogs wake up when they feel like it. You may have to just get used to it. You can try to head it off by setting an alarm earlier than she usually gets up, so that you are the one waking her up rather than the other way around. Once you establish that habit, you may be able to edge her wake-up later and later over time (like, literally a few minutes a day, it has to be pretty gradual). It depends a lot on the dog though, and you may never really be able to affect her schedule. You didn't get it the last time people told you, so I'll just reiterate it here: if you want the bunnies to live their natural lives, don't let the dog near them. Any dog will have some amount of predatory instinct, even if they're generally well behaved around typical "prey" animals. My wife had two german shepherds growing up who had been around the farm's goats since they were puppies. They never had any issues for years, then one day when they were about five or six years old, something snapped in them and they killed four of the goats. Nobody ever figured out why, and the dogs obviously had no idea they ever did anything wrong. It's not the sort of thing you can control, or even guard against. As for training a dog to behave around other animals or other dogs, that is a very involved topic and requires a lot of time and dedication. The fact that the dog is already a year old means that you're kind of past the key time for socializing a dog to other animals, which will complicate the process. But if you want her to be okay with other dogs, it's something you need to look into, and right away. If she's a rescue, it's entirely possible she'll respond poorly to other dogs depending on her past treatment and experience with them. Dogs develop a lot of impressions about people and other animals in the first 8 months of their life and they can be very difficult to change sometimes. As for crate training, it would be the solution to most of the questions you asked. I genuinely don't get dog owners who refuse to crate train their dogs. If you do it when they're young, and do it right (which once again, takes time and dedication), your dog will come to see the crate as a safe place. My two dogs are fine, but kind of uncomfortable and jumpy, if they have to sleep somewhere overnight and don't have a crate to crash in. A dog that's crate trained well will generally calm down pretty well when they're in a crate, and if you really take the time to do it right, they'll even hang out in the crate, with you present and visible, without whining or stress. It makes leaving your dog at home a non-issue (and would make it very easy to just leave chew toys etc. in the crate with them, thus dealing with the "separation anxiety" issue) and it would make training her to wake up when you want to get up a lot easier as well. It's an easy one-stop shop sort of training tool that I don't think I could live without.
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Aug 6, 2018 20:13
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MF_James posted:So, my pup over the past few months (shortly after turning a year) has started to get aggressive with other male dogs, typically larger males, but he did just snap at a pup yesterday, though the pup might have bit his face or something that triggered it. It's hard to say without being there and seeing what's setting the dog off. It could be totally normal dog communication (dogs do just get up in each others' faces and need to let each other know that's okay), it could be that your dog feels unusually threatened for some reason or another, but it's hard to speculate. There are ways to kind of identify the problem and help your dog feel more comfortable but it's an involved subject, and given it's a situation where guessing what the problem might be and getting it wrong could result in one or more dog being hurt, I'd suggest seeking out an experienced trainer for advice, one who can see your dog interact with other dogs. Some dogs just don't do well with other dogs, some don't do well with dogs bigger than them, some form other strange avoidances. One of mine, for example, got freaked out by a big, aggressive white dog as a puppy so he takes a long time and careful encouragement to warm up to other white dogs. A general note, just because I see people do it a lot: don't ever scold your dog for growling, at people or other dogs. That's the dog's way of letting whatever or whoever know that they're not happy with the situation. It's basically an early-warning system. Dogs know to avoid a dog that's growling (generally, unless it's been trained out of them or they were taken from the litter too early) but people sometimes view it as undesirable behavior. But if you train a dog to not growl, you're basically training it to skip over the "hey I don't like this" phase straight to the "I'm going to bite you because I'm scared" phase. The same applies in general to dogs who snap at other dogs without actually making contact. Snapping is sort of a last-resort "leave me alone" signal. It's usually the case, though, that you as the owner would want to intervene in the situation before it gets to that point, but it takes experience to know what the problem even is and how best to intervene without reinforcing fearful behavior, which would just lead to more growling and snapping.
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Aug 6, 2018 20:21
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Dogs don't think that crates are claustrophobic. They like being in enclosed spaces with only one entrance. This. This this this. Humans are dumb and look at crates and think "oh no a dog prison". Dogs look at crates and think "I would be safe in there". Or something like it. They don't find them claustrophobic, and in fact a lot of breeds prefer smaller crates than we'd expect. It's also about a thousand times easier to housetrain a dog that's also crate-trained since they don't like to eliminate in their own "home", but that doesn't really apply to Yossarian-22. Most dogs look at stuff like X-pens and ask themselves "how quickly can I knock this over or shove it against something and climb out?" in my experience.
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Aug 6, 2018 22:13
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The other option, if you can't put a cat door in for whatever reason, is to get one of the friction-fit style baby gates. I got one and set it up a few inches off the ground so the cats could get under (though they both can just jump on top of the gate to get over it) but the dogs can't. It's a pain in the butt because you then have to leave the door pretty much wide open, and you have a nice little tripline a few inches off the ground, but it worked alright for what I needed. I feel like anything similar to what you linked either won't work, or will just lead to a dog mashing its face against the door until it manages to dislodge it.
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Aug 17, 2018 17:16
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A little late to the discussion, but my veterinarian mother-in-law told me once that in 30 years of owning her practice she maybe went two weeks where she didn't have to tell at least half of her clients that their dogs were overweight. People chronically overfeed dogs. Mine are rocketing balls of energy and I feel like I practically starve them and they still hover above an "ideal" weight range, not that they're unhealthy. She claims she's only twice had a basset or bloodhound in that hasn't been obese. Unrelated, but she claims she's also never had a chow that hasn't tried to bite her.
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Sep 24, 2018 16:44
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Hi dog thread, I need some puppy advice. My wife and I have a 10 week old Mini American girl. She's our third dog of the breed, we live and die by positive training, we've read Ian Dunbar pretty much every time we bring a puppy home, etc. etc. We're just having a hard time with this one, mostly because my wife and I aren't in our 20s anymore and can't manage as much cool, zenlike patience when we're tired. Specifically, we're trying to figure out our nighttime routine. I think we've overcomplicated it, and we kind of need to re-think nighttime from scratch, because Waffles (our pup) is absolutely exhausting us at night. Right now: -Wife goes to bed at 9pm, which is a normal bedtime for her. -I stay up, usually til 12:30am-1am. -Usually, Waffles has a crazy hyper zoomy fit sometime between 8-10pm. I try to get her to play in little 10-15 minute bits to reduce the length of these crazed zoomy sessions but she's still a little uncertain about me since I'm very tall and have a deep voice. -After her extreme energy burst, she usually falls asleep pretty quickly, around 9-10:30pm -I wake her up about every hour and a half to take her out. I'm not sure why we started doing this, but we did it with the previous two dogs, and they caught on to housetraining really quickly. Waffles is also pretty on top of housetraining (she doesn't like to mess inside, and is starting to understand she only gets treats if she goes outside) and when I wake her up, she goes pretty quickly, then tends to go back to sleep. I've been reading a lot, though, and it seems like the conventional wisdom is that you shouldn't wake puppies up frequently like this. -My wife usually wakes up a couple times a night, around 3am and 5:30am, when Waffles whines because she needs to pee or poop, then gets up in earnest around 6:30-7am. This was working okay, but the problem now is that she's awake a lot of the night. She tends to sleep a lot during the day, and we do our best not to wake her if she's fast asleep, so I'm not sure how we can help her learn to settle down and sleep in earnest at night. Right now our nighttime setup is an X-pen with a potty spot and her kennel, along with puppy-appropriate toys. She's actually very good about sleeping in her kennel about half the night (when she sleeps, that is), and is very good at keeping herself entertained with Kongs and other chewtoys. My wife sleeps on the couch near this setup, and I sleep down the hall with the door open (I've got a bad back so the couch is no-go for me). Just the last few nights, Waffles has started whining almost constantly. We ignore her when we're pretty sure she doesn't need to eliminate, but it's basically like some switch has flipped and all of a sudden, nighttime isn't bedtime. I know that's a ton of words for a fairly simple problem, and I know she may just grow out of it, but basically we need a plan of action for nighttime that we can just stick to when we're awake at 4 in the morning and don't have good brain function (or much patience). MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Feb 14, 2019 |
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Feb 14, 2019 22:57
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Look Around You posted:Compliments yes for sure, treats we’ve been a bit spotty about if we’re rushing to get her out and then we just forget to grab them sometimes. Definitely do treats, it's the quickest way to get a dog to want to go outside. We got little bags that we can clip to the leash with a carabiner and fill them with treats, so we never have to think about whether we have treats in our pockets when we're in a rush to get the pup outside. (that said, I swear every coat I own has dog treats in most pockets) If she goes inside, she may or may not get the idea if you still take her outside after she's done, it helped with one of our dogs, but not with another.
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Feb 18, 2019 18:25
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I just asked my veterinarian mother-in-law about biting the other day because I couldn't remember how these phases time out. She said most dogs will start seriously teething and getting their adult sets around 14 weeks, which is right around the 3 month mark, so that may be part of it. Make sure your dogs have access to something to chew on that will help with the process and redirect them to it when you're able. Kongs are great (there are some that are labeled as puppy or teething Kongs, might want to stick with those as the Adult kongs can sometimes be painful for puppies) and there are some Nylabone sets specifically directed towards teething puppies that are also very good. As for behavioral biting, we've had luck doing a couple of things: first, getting hands/feet/arms/whatever out of reach is good, and if the pup doesn't get the idea we just leave. A lot of times puppies bite because they want to play or want your attention so if they start getting the opposite result, it can sometimes dissuade them from biting, though this will take time and stubbornness. Don't allow any kind of mouthing or playing with hands, even if it's gentle. Another thing that works surprisingly well with our dogs is whimpering. If our pup bites us, even if it doesn't hurt at all, we'll let out a high puppy-like whimper and it will usually get her to stop (and look very confused). It's about as close as you can get to speaking the dog's language and letting them know you don't like their teeth on you. It doesn't work 100% of the time, though, especially if she's in a very amped up mood, in which case leaving her by herself is kind of the only option. We did the whimpering thing with both of our other dogs, though, and they have the gentlest mouths possible as adults. None of our dogs were really ankle/foot biters though, so I don't have good advice if they like to nip at you while you're walking, though I'd imagine stopping might be the first step. If they bite at your feet and you move as a result, you're sort of giving them what they want (play). So yes, biting is a phase that most dogs usually grow out of, but it's a really important time to try to redirect them towards chewing on appropriate toys and dissuading them from biting people, since if they get (inadvertently) rewarded for the behavior, it's more likely to stick around after they're done teething.
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Feb 27, 2019 19:22
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Yeah dogs vary wildly on what will deter them. None of our three Mini American Shepherds dislike lemon juice, vinegar, or bitter apple, and actually seem to really like the first two. One of them hates the taste of bananas though, so we literally rubbed a banana on a chair leg once to get her to stop biting it. It takes some trial and error. Our second dog, though, wasn't deterred from chewing by literally anything while he was teething, including foods that we knew he disliked (he'd sneeze and make a blech face, but go right back to chewing) so we were stuck just fencing off stuff we didn't want him to get to until he grew out of it.
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Feb 28, 2019 18:34
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Yeah the suggestion that fear is easy to train out of a rescue dog is a shockingly irresponsible thing for a shelter to suggest. I've had multiple rescues and used to foster for our local Humane Society when they ran out of kennel space, and I honestly think there was only ever one dog that I managed to retrain out of fear behaviors, and even then he would lose his poo poo around tall men in red coats and playground equipment. I'd venture to say that even with young shelter dogs, most of the time the best you can really do is adjust to a fearful dog's triggers and keep them out of situations that aren't going to go well. Reconditioning fearful dogs is immensely time consuming and a long road, and requires a lot of patience. That's not to say it isnt worth doing, my three rescue dogs that I had long-term were wonderful and working with them was such a rewarding experience, but there were also a lot of fosters that I probably could have taken and didn't, because I knew their personalities or training challenges weren't a good fit for me. There's absolutely no shame in that, and it's important to acknowledge that keeping a shelter dog that isn't a good fit for you and your home won't help the dog in the long run, and often will do more harm than good. I will say, personally I don't have it in me anymore to take rescue dogs. It's so very hard to accept that you will have to tackle any number of behavioral and health problems that you potentially can't foresee when you get the dog. My job and home just don't really make it easy for me to support a rescue dog these days, so I got puppies from reputable breeders and they're amazing and my life is wonderful. And there's no shame in that, either. If you can't find a rescue dog that's the right fit for you, that's okay.
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Mar 12, 2019 05:04
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On the lying down to eat: we had a dog that did this, and it can be any number of things, including "dogs are weird sometimes". After ruling out joint problems and neck pain, we eventually figured out that he did it probably because the floor by his bowl was nice and cool in the summer and it felt good on his belly. Always worth asking the vet, but unless the dog is exhibiting some other sort of discomfort while walking or standing it's probably not urgent. Apparently certain breeds of dogs (and in general, very old/young dogs) can also be prone to acid reflux and will lay down while eating in an attempt to calm those symptoms, I'm not sure what you can do about that though. Regarding stool samples: I asked my vet mother-in-law and she said it's the first thing she asks for with any new client, and almost always asks for one on issue-specific vet visits, unless it's something really obvious going on. Well, she actually said "We love stool samples. They're like little brown info packets about your dog."
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Mar 21, 2019 21:20
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Giving the dog something to do when you leave will help too, my older dog is chill all the time now, but when she was a year old we couldn't leave her alone for more than about 45 mins without her freaking out and tearing up the blankets in her crate or whatever. But if we gave her a stuffed Kong, she'd be fine for a couple of hours, even if the kong only lasted her maybe 20 minutes. It was weird, but I think just having something to do right after we left was enough to calm her down. That said, both of my adult dogs are chill and I still put them in crates if I'm going to be gone for much more than an hour, partially because they really like their crates, but mostly for my own peace of mind. From my experience, genuine separation anxiety does exist in dogs, but a lot of destructive behavior that people attribute to that is mostly just that the dog is bored and looking for ways to entertain itself. Agreed that it varies a lot from dog to dog.
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Apr 24, 2019 18:39
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lifts cats over head posted:My dog was neutered 3 days ago and is already back to behaving normally. Unfortunately that means spurts of energy and frequently trying to lick his incision. Turns out he's long enough that if he gets the right leverage he was able to lick himself today. We stopped him but I'm curious how much damage could he do? He's not aggressively trying to bite his incisions or anything just licking. I'd check with the vet about licking. How much damage he can do by licking is pretty dependent on what sort of suture/closure they used on the incision, though in general you want to keep him from licking it if possible, if only to reduce the chance of infection. In theory dogs lick their cuts and wounds to try to prevent infection, but it doesn't always work that way in practice. Most dogs respond pretty well to just about any kind of training, in my experience. My pup is in (what I hope is) the most painful stretch of teething and even just training her in simple sits and downs, or working on impulse control training, is very helpful in distracting her from her mouth hurting.
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May 13, 2019 16:12
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I don't know if it'd work quite the same on corgi fur, but I use an undercoat rake on my mini aussies and it's a godsend, works much better than the Furminator. I think corgi fur might be the sort that the Furminator was really designed for, though. They tend to pull way too much on my pups to be useful.
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May 23, 2019 20:10
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DarkSoulsTantrum posted:Any good recommendations on a grooming tool for a mid-length coat? Aussie mix, No undercoat really, but he still sheds like crazy. We tried the Furminator, but he doesn’t like the sensation at all, and it frankly doesn’t work all that well. For reference here’s the good boy in question: If undercoat matting isn't a problem, I'd say you can probably get away with a pin brush or a straight steel comb.
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May 23, 2019 21:10
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Plate posted:My Silken Windhound usually runs at you full speed and tries to plant her front paws in your crotch. This has earned her the nickname Crotch Goblin. She does this because she wants you to catch her paws and let her sniff your face and give her some loves, but if you don't put your hands down in time, she's going to go for full on crotch agony. She too grins like a fiend, but makes no noise. This is unrelated, but can you tell me about Silken Windhounds? Specifically how they'd be for a first time dog owner? I have a couple of friends who haven't ever had a dog (other than as kids, which doesn't really count) and they really want to get a puppy direct from a breeder. They have their hearts set on a pug, which is really not a good idea for them for various reasons, but they saw a Windhound the other day and are now seriously considering tracking down a breeder, but haven't heard much about how they are as puppies or whether they'd be a good breed for a novice owner.
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Jun 4, 2019 18:12
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bamhand posted:What about just a greyhound? They are like, the easiest dog. They generally don't come as puppies though. One of them is in love with the idea of owning a pug but I think it's actually a bad fit, I told them based on what they like in dogs, they actually probably want a greyhound or whippet or something like that. I think they started reading up on sighthounds and saw the windhound and really liked the way they look. I'd agree that a greyhound is kind of perfect for them, and honestly if they can find a youngish rescue with a good temperament, that would be even more perfect. They are a little wary about raising a puppy for their first go-around.
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Jun 4, 2019 18:24
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I've never trained a dog with a prong collar, but one of the training places I take classes at does advocate them, but they specifically and strongly encourage people to only use them if they're in a class, so the trainer can teach them how to train a dog with a prong collar. I don't remember exactly how the trainer put it, but I think she said that it's possible to trade bad behavior (constant pulling) for even worse, more reactive behavior. Regarding introducing dogs, yeah the month apart thing isn't at all necessary. Just don't leave the dogs alone together until they're clearly comfortable with each other. I'm guessing if you were a two-dog house before you've probably been through it all, but just in case: They'll need to figure out how to coexist, and in particular the puppy will need to learn when playing becomes annoying. Some snapping and growling is normal and if the pup backs off, you won't need to do anything. Make sure they both have plenty of room to get away from one another. If they take to each other really well, you may want to continue to separate them occasionally just so they're okay with it, we made that mistake when we got our second dog, who freaked out for about four days straight when our first dog went to the breeder's place to have puppies. Basically it sounds like you're doing all the right things, just keep at it. Puppies are exhausting, and in particular I think people with multiple dogs sometimes take for granted how much work a puppy can be, because it's easy to look at your current dog and think, well they're great, I'm sure the puppy will be great too! We got our third pup this January and it's been harsh re-learning the exhausting and trying bits of raising a puppy, especially with our two adult dogs being very well behaved off by themselves.
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Jun 17, 2019 18:28
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food court bailiff posted:Hi, I've dogsat for Australian shepherds for like eight weeks out of any given year for a few years running now but have never had a dog of my own. I was hanging out with a puppy foster and absolutely fell in love with a lab aussie mix, put in an application the next day and got approved, so now I'm puppy-proofing everything and reading as much as I can on as many subjects as I can and generally just freaking out a little. I am extremely anti-prong collars and agree with a lot that's said in the OP about them, I've personally never seen a dog benefit from a prong collar in a way that couldn't have been achieved through positive training, and I've seen at least two dogs that got more reactive after put on prong collars. Part of that can probably be chalked up to irresponsible owners who think prongs are a solution to a problem rather than a training tool, and obviously my experience is anecdotal, but I'm honestly not convinced they're necessary. I'm 100% positive & clicker training and have been for years, though, so I'm biased to begin with. Regarding cats, it sounds like you've got the right ideas. Once you're introducing the cats and the dog and they have access to the same parts of the house, it will be helpful if the cats have access to places that are high up and safe from/out of reach of the dog, since they tend to equate height with safety. If your cats have claws they'll be fine, your pup will get swatted occasionally if they won't leave the cats alone, and they'll learn pretty quick to steer clear of the cats until they figure out what is acceptable interaction. If your cats are declawed, you may have a bit more of a headache until the puppy is an adult. We're having to actively train our 7-month old to leave our smaller cat alone because she's declawed but hasn't yet figured out she can bite the puppy to get her to go away. And yes, dogs are extremely clicker-trainable. If you're already familiar with the concepts of classical/operant conditioning, capturing & shaping behaviors, luring and rewarding, all of that applies to dogs just as much (probably more) as it does to cats. And yeah, bad behavior that's rewarded will be repeated, for the most part. Keep in mind that for a lot of dogs, even negative attention (scolding, yelling, even just gentle "no"s) is attention and therefore its own reward, so the best ways to deal with unwanted behaviors are either ignoring it and rewarding after the behavior ceases, or if you can't ignore it, redirecting to a more desirable behavior (eg. giving the dog a chew toy if they are biting/mouthing hands or feet or whatever). If you get good at capturing and shaping behaviors you can train all kinds of weird stuff, one of our dogs is learning how to smile on command.
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Jun 24, 2019 18:46
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ImplicitAssembler posted:Having gone through 3 positive reinforcement only trainers, we ended up with a 'whatever works for your dog' trainer, who got us to use a prong collar and it was night and day. Yeah my issue with prong collars (and my entire secondhand experience with them) is when people treat them as replacements for the dog's everyday collar, which only seems to exacerbate problems. My understanding is that they're really intended as a training tool, to be used in specific situations for very specific training goals, and not just as a regular collar. Has that been your experience working with one?
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Jun 25, 2019 16:02
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My dogs have kennel cough. Or at least, one of my dogs has kennel cough, which means the other one is almost certainly going to get it. He's just so pitifully heartbreaking and I wish there was something I could do for him. I lucked out that my pregnant dog went to the breeder's place to whelp before he caught it, though. edit: obligatory proud mom picture 
MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jul 16, 2019 |
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Jul 16, 2019 16:38
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For what it's worth, my veterinarian mother-in-law no longer sells food at her practice, and used to really push the more boutique foods, but when we got our new puppy she told us we should definitely switch over to one of the bigger companies that do extended trials and put a lot of money into nutritional studies for their food. She personally uses Purina Pro Plan for her dogs, so that's what she switched to, but yeah she also said any of the bigger companies are probably a bit ahead of the curve than most when it comes to the emerging info on grain-free foods and dilated cardiomyopathy concerns. She said she only ever recommends Purina Pro Plan, Science Diet, and Royal Canin to clients these days, barring specific food allergies. We used to do Nutro, and she said she doesn't have any particular gripes with their food, though she strongly urged us to avoid their grain-free options. And yeah, Purina/Nestle has issues but their quality control is reportedly extremely rigorous. They're a big company, and by extension have put a lot of money into improving their food over the last couple of decades. I'm very happy with Purina Pro Plan so far.
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Jul 17, 2019 17:27
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The one thing that my mom in law impressed really heavily on us was just to avoid grain-free until more information comes out about the DCM concerns (assuming your dog is fine with grains) and to be skeptical about broad claims made by smaller boutique food producers because apparently a lot of small dog food companies are, in her words, "big on heart and style but very light on science". I think if it's an established brand you probably don't have a lot to worry about, barring some new info.
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Jul 17, 2019 17:54
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My puppy kinda does the opposite, if I'm sitting on the couch, she'll climb onto my lap and tuck her head under my chin. Occasionally she'll get really excited and hoot at me too, it is the most goddamn adorable behavior and I have no idea why she does it
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Jul 25, 2019 16:38
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I think you should always be a little conscious of rescues. I've fostered a lot of dogs over the years and most of them it was pretty easy to tell what were potential triggers for fearful or defensive behavior. One exception, though, was a dog that my roommate and I kept after fostering him. He was a sweet, big, dumb mutt and was always wonderful with strangers, never really displayed any problem behavior, until one day he saw one of our friends who was tall and bearded (and not a stranger to him) wearing a red jacket. He totally lost it, started pulling on his leash, barking and growling, and even peed a little. It took us a bit to figure out what was going on, and once my friend took off the jacket, Rowdy was completely fine with him. tl;dr you probably don't need to be that worried, but it's always worth being observant when the dog is meeting new people or encountering new environments. If he does start acting strangely or defensively, just calmly get yourselves out of the situation and see if you can figure out what was going on once everything calms down. fake edit: didn't see your last post before I wrote mine: there's always a risk that any dog, but especially rescues who might have been raised in unusual or bad situations, will develop some hoarding/guarding behaviors as they become more familiar with you and your environment. Keep an eye out for resource guarding (snapping or growling at people who get close to food/toys/you). The last was fairly common in the rescues I fostered-- once they were comfortable with me and my roommates and knew we were "safe", they would sometimes get aggressive/fearful about strangers, but in particular when they approached us. There are ways to cross-condition resource guarding and fearfulness but you want to catch it early. That said, he may just stay mellow as he becomes more comfortable. I think you're asking the right questions and keeping an eye out for the right risky behaviors. MockingQuantum fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Jul 25, 2019 |
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Jul 25, 2019 17:35
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Yeah I've seen very few dogs that have taken to a crate without some training. It's really up to you if you want to crate train the dog, but I could not live without crate trained dogs. Like GoodBee said it's really nice to have a folding crate on hand even if you don't have a full wire crate. But yeah, feeding the dog in the crate, giving them treats in the crate, making sure it's comfortable will all help to make them okay with the crate. I've crate trained all three of my dogs, and they all hated their crates as puppies but now we leave them loose in our bedroom at night, with their crates open, and they choose to sleep in the crates probably about half the night. I personally love it because it makes it super easy to transport them anywhere, take them on longer trips, keep them confined for long periods without risking home destruction or dog poop on the floor, etc. Also my dogs are high energy and sometimes I just need a break from them, so it's great that they're happy to just chill in their crates. Most dogs seem to like to have a "den" so they do tend to take to crate training, but I could see it being tougher with an older dog or a rescue. My dogs all like to be in small spaces when they sleep, so they definitely see their crates as safe spaces now. I could see it being different for different breeds too, though.
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Jul 25, 2019 19:51
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deety posted:My pup is nearly eight months and she just started a destroyer phase, too. We got her back in March, and all while she was teething, she never ruined anything other than her own toys and bedding. She used to be really easy to redirect away from stuff she shouldn't chew on, but now I swear it's like she goes back to furniture, walls, or cabinets she was warned away from just to show us that we aren't the boss of her. Bitter apple spray on her most frequent targets has helped a little, but only seems to last a day or two before we have to re-spray. A lot of dogs hit a hyper brat/rear end in a top hat phase around 8-9 months, they'll start testing boundaries and seeing what they can get away with. Eating the treats when she doesn't behave will definitely help reinforce that she's gotta listen. Where do you have the treats when you're training with her? If they're on your person, start training with them very close by, but not on you (like in a bowl on a counter). Then you can very slowly increase the distance (and by extension, time) between when she does something good and gets a treat. We had a dog that wouldn't listen at all unless he could see you were holding food, and eventually we got to the point where we could get him to sit or down or whatever in any room of the house, then he'd patiently (though very energetically) follow us to the kitchen to get his treat. Eventually you should be able to phase out treats entirely and only occasionally "tune-up" the dog by adding treats back in for a training session occasionally. It'll also help if you start varying rewards and duration. So if she sits really nicely, count to three and give her a treat, then next time do it right away, next time count to five, etc. Basically you want to teach the dog that they can never be certain when a treat is coming. Also add in praise and pets as she is eating the treat and she'll start to associate those as higher value rewards in their own right. Then, start varying the number of treats, so sometimes she gets one, sometimes she gets two, sometimes if she's very attentive and quick to respond, she gets four or five. It really doesn't matter how big the treats are as long as they're something she wants, and that you only feed them to her one at a time. Dogs don't count unless you make them, so one piece of food and one handful of food given all at once both count as a single treat, so if you're giving her multiples, count them out one at a time. Eventually, once she knows she won't always get the same "level" of treats, you can add in praise or pets instead of food occasionally, and eventually once she's solid you should be able to just use praise or whatever. As for her energy level, she may not need more exercise. Acting out isn't always a product of a dog having too much energy, it can be due to them being confused about what's being asked of them, overtiredness, stress, diet, lack of a "den" or bed, or any number of other random things. My guess is that if she's being a real pain right now, she might even out as she gets a bit older. You can, to a limited extent, train a dog to be calm, or at the very least to not lose their poo poo if they're not being constantly entertained. My current pup had a bad streak around six months where she would just start destroying things if you weren't entertaining her, and it took a few days of playing tug, then stopping completely and waiting until she stopped trying to climb us to get the toy back. We'd start playing again right away once she was (relatively) calm, and eventually we could stop playing with her and she'd just kind of hang out quietly until we started playing with her again. Dogs sort of hit an adolescent phase around 8-10 months where they start testing pack boundaries and crap like that, so some of them start behaving very weirdly. The breeder I get my dogs from told us that one out of every two or three dogs that she's had has been a bit of a nightmare for about a month around that time.
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Aug 6, 2019 20:04
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Yeah most vets are starting to discourage early spaying/neutering. 8 weeks is pretty extreme honestly, but my mother-in-law vet now feels like even 4-6 months is too early. She said there were a few papers out recently that recommended spaying only after about a year. Which would probably be okay for boy dogs but there's a chance an intact girl could go through a heat cycle before they're a year old and I could see a lot of owners not being willing to deal with that.
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Aug 13, 2019 18:13
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there's also often a fear period in the 7-9mo range, so on top of the teenager dog boundary-pushing and willful ignoring of commands, you can end up with inexplicable days of "this chair is now terrifying, I must growl at it for no identifiable reason"
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Aug 15, 2019 23:44
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It is also a proudly minnesotan place to go (though here it's more "up nort")
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Aug 29, 2019 20:43
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jit bull transpile posted:You've got to retrain calm behavior basically. If she gets triggered move to a distance where she calms down and then reward the calm behavior. Try to get calm at closer and closer distances over time. It's just like any other training and the biggie is just to be patient and show your dog calm while you lead her to a safe distance. Adding to this, training a dog out of fearful behavior can potentially be very tough and take a long time, so don't be surprised if you don't see results for a while. It's also important to avoid accidentally rewarding fearful behavior, so if your dog is behaving stressed or unsettled, do your best to move away or continue on calmly and not draw undue attention to your dog. It's easy to reinforce fearfulness in dogs just by paying them attention when they're amped up.
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Sep 4, 2019 22:58
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I'm not going to know more about it than a trained behaviorist, but I will say from my experience that for 2-6 month old pups, it's really important to expose them to more environments and strangers, not fewer. You're almost certainly overestimating the "shock" of sending the dog somewhere new, as a young puppy they'll likely barely notice, and being okay with new environments is absolutely essential to reducing or eliminating aggression/fearfulness later in life. This is the time to do it, because the older dogs get, the less pliable they are in responding to new stimuli and the more likely it will go badly.
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Sep 12, 2019 18:27
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My 10 month old puppy is calmer than my 8 year old dog now, I have no idea what bizarro world I've stepped into. She's also bigger than the 8 year old (same breed) which isn't notable or unusual but is still very surreal
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Sep 19, 2019 20:21
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film_critic posted:Does anyone have any advice for a puppy that is stubborn on walks? Specifically just leading away from our apartment. She will walk fine in other neighborhoods and walks fine home, but will walk to her potty patch and no further unless we scoop her up and walk her a block away. You could try luring her with food/treats/toys, or being energetic or jogging while starting the walk, that might get her moving. Otherwise, you could try to train her to distinguish between reasons why you're going outside with her. So if it's just to relieve herself, you say "go potty" or whatever, but if it's for a walk, attach a different command to it. It doesn't always work for every dog, but one of my three distinguishes between different outdoor trips/activity pretty well, she understands "go potty" as "we're going to go pee/poop and head back inside", "let's go" is "let's go on a walk, and you're free to wander a bit, politely", "with me" is "come walk next to me and focus on me" (good for crowds/risky situations), and "go sniff" is "go be a dog for a while, and it's okay if you're at the end of your leash." It took quite a bit of work to get to that point, but some dogs benefit a lot from at least some signal between a potty break vs. a walk.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:49
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And if you think it's submissive peeing, when you wake up to let him out, try not to look or speak or really interact directly with the dog, just calmly go to let him out. The more you can make him feel like it's calm and not a big deal, the more relaxed he'll be, and less likely to reactively pee.
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Sep 24, 2019 18:18
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I've been posting these over in the Cute thread in PYF but I figured you all might enjoy them too, my dog Waffles had grandpuppies about four weeks ago (a couple of my friends kept one of Waffles's puppies from her first litter a couple of years ago, and their dog Noodle just had a litter)    
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Mar 29, 2024 20:37
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Metis of the Chat Thread posted:I hope the puppies are also named after food. The best genre of dog name imo. They are, top to bottom they're Ziti, Wonton, and Mlinci. My dog Waffles's first litter was all named after breakfast foods, Noodle's litter name was Muffin, though she was the only one who ended up having a food call name. Waffles had another litter last summer, they were the "Waffles Fries" litter so they all had potato-y names, the family that got one of those puppies very nearly kept his litter name, which was Tater Tot, and I was just a little heartbroken that they didn't.
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Mar 30, 2024 03:03
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Metis of the Chat Thread posted:That's gorgeous. I get to suggest names for my dog's litters and I'm always trying to get food names in but I rarely succeed. Another dog from the organisation is called Gnocchi though, which is an absolute winner. Imagine having a service dog called Gnocchi. Everyone would love you. Yeah we're lucky that we're pretty close with our breeder, so we've always been pretty involved with the litters, I think we've at least had input on the litter theme for all of our dogs' litters, and some we've chosen outright. We even got to whelp Waffles's last litter at our house, which was a tiring but extremely rewarding experience. Plus the pups from that litter were just so dang cute:   
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Mar 30, 2024 04:34
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 12:17 |
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Pavlov does not like the thunder Generally speaking I haven't found that comforting my dog would reinforce the fear response--it's not really a conscious response on their part so it seems like it's less likely they'll get conditioned to respond to comfort in a fearful way. My dog generally calms down when comforted, we just make sure not to baby her, and generally don't give treats. Basically we approach it more as reassurance than anything, so we speak to her quietly, pet her gently, generally just try and present a calm front ourselves. Honestly other than a thunder shirt, the most useful thing during storms for our dog is white noise of some sort. During 4th of July we usually go into the basement and watch movies at a little louder volume than we typically would, which can help to drown out the worst of it. Other than that (and meds, but I get why that's not an appealing solution) there's not a ton I've found that works, other than desensitization training, and that needs to happen over time. Having a place (mat, dog bed, etc) that you train him to go to, and reward him when he's there and calm and relaxed, can go a long way though, like I know one person who has a "thunderstorm mat" that they've trained their dog to view as the calm spot, and they bring the mat out in stressful situations, and I guess he mostly just hangs out there and does pretty well.
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Apr 3, 2024 21:54
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