|
Instant Jellyfish posted:Scout really loves fastcat. I really love the faces she makes while running fastcat. i brought home a blue cattledog on sunday. she's 14 weeks old, raised in the pen by her mum and grandma, barely met any humans in her life, never been in the house, never been on a leash, not toilet trained  i was expecting it to be a total disaster, but she's actually been great? getting them at this age with zero training, it really becomes apparent how incredibly smart they are. socialising her is going to be interesting, but she's had heaps of dog contact and the human contact she's had has all been nice and non-traumatic, so i'm just going to take it slow and keep things fun. her name is iris and i love her  i'd normally include a psa about "don't buy a 14-week-old untrained unsocialised cattledog", but will probably have stories to tell in the next few months that will make that unnecessary lol mahershalalhashbaz fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jun 22, 2022 |
#
¿
Jun 22, 2022 23:47
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 09:16 |
|
|
Instant Jellyfish posted:I got Scout at 14 weeks and even without the intense 100 people in 100 days early socialization she’s completely unflappable and afraid of nothing. I recommend taking her all the places and just having low pressure fun everywhere you go. If you can find a puppy class that takes older pups that’s a great option too. Cattle dogs just speak English so training them is easy mode when they decide you’re worth listening to, it’s figuring out how to convince them to do what you’re asking that’s tricky. Don’t let people convince you that because she’s a heeler you need to be harsh or use physical corrections with her but do set boundaries or she’ll walk all over you when she becomes a teen unfortunately i was brought up with traditional physically abusive dog-training techniques. those never worked, they just ended up producing a hugely anxious dog that would still chew everything to poo poo when no one was watching. learning to communicate with iris without smacking her or rubbing her nose in anything has been so educational, i'm having to do a lot of research on the fly. she's an amazing communicator. there were ten in her litter, they were all raised outside by multiple adult dogs in the most incredible breeder set-up i've ever seen, so she's had minimal human interaction but heaps of dog interaction. now she's in a house with no dogs and 24/7 human contact. to make things even more difficult, she hasn't had her second vaccinations yet (the breeders had their own medical emergencies, and vets in my area are snowed under due to covid and can't fit me in until next week). so i am keeping her away from other dogs. it's a hell of a thing keeping a baby cattledog exercised and entertained in a backyard, especially given the environment she came from, and socialisation is going to be interesting when it finally begins, but so help me i signed up for this mahershalalhashbaz fucked around with this message at 12:31 on May 6, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2022 00:24
|
|
|
Instant Jellyfish posted:I started out not working on anything but relationship building and play. We did Absolute Dogs Sexier than a Squirrel course (the name is awful but the games are fun) and I really like Fenzi Academy online courses so I picked out some stuff from my library to work on until I could get her into a puppy class that accepted older puppies. Nosework especially has been great to wear out her busy little mind, although she struggled with having enough focus to do it as a puppy. Don't get in the habit of trying to play or exercise her into exhaustion to get her to settle because she'll just keep getting more fit and impossible to tire out. Teach her to settle and reward her every time you see her choosing to just chill out with an appropriate chew. Scout is 2 now and it's still something we struggle with, especially in the summer when she's super fit and wants every day to be a sports day since we do so much on the weekends. thank you for all the positive puppying resources! last night i was trying to look up fenzi academy, but misremembered the name as kenzie academy and thought you'd taught your dog to code. quote:For safe socialization before she's got all her shots you can go hang out in your car in the parking lots of places with a lot of people and dog traffic and just watch with a special chew. Also environmental socialization is just as important as meeting lots of people so set up lots of different surfaces for her to experience. I used to throw Scout's meal in a tub full of my recyclables and let her dig around in the plastic bottles or cardboard, or a bunch of spoons in a metal bowl with treats mixed in. Anything I could do to make sure she was fine with loud noises and things moving weirdly or being slightly uncomfortable. currently i'm trying to train her not to kill or terrorise my pet quail, which you can imagine is a battle of wills. yesterday she lost control and took one in her mouth, but did it so gently that the quail wasn't even frightened.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2022 23:41
|
|
|
Culex posted:I don't feel like quail get frightened that much, of things that can kill them at least, from reading the backyard thread  we had a setback yesterday when iris grabbed a rooster, but still she didn't hurt him, and again he was barely bothered by the near-death experience.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2022 00:44
|
|
|
adnam posted:Anybody have guidance as far as dog-friendly pesticide/insecticides are concerned? We've held off on spraying in the backyard because we have two rescue yorkies but this year is the return of the vengeance of the insects and I'm waving the white flag. I've been calling around and so far the blanket answer is 'yeah it **should** be safe for dogs and kids' but no stronger guarantees
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2022 23:05
|
|
|
every morning iris rises at the crack of dawn, and she has some unsupervised play time while i'm still asleep. i'd been marvelling at the lack of destruction in the early mornings. little did i know she had found her way into a box of soft chalk pastels and was devouring them one by one, leaving no dust or trace of her crime. she only ate the natural earth tones and the red-orange-yellow spectrum, leaving the blues, greens and purples untouched. i had no idea she was doing it until yesterday i was presented with this
mahershalalhashbaz fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Jun 30, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2022 09:03
|
|
|
Metis of the Hallways posted:That's much more attractive than the pitch black turds my dog has after she's been eating mud. the quail training has taken a few steps backward. last week i think she was just so desperate to please me and scared of being shouted at that she was afraid to go near them, but this week she's more secure and daring to be naughty. she keeps so gently taking them in her mouth, or doing sudden huge pounces on them that just avoid making contact, and then when i bark at her to get back she looks at me like "you cannot possibly expect this of me at this moment in time." and she's right mahershalalhashbaz fucked around with this message at 12:31 on May 6, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2022 22:54
|
|
|
Organza Quiz posted:Genuinely until this post I thought running fastcat just meant zooming around like a cat with the zoomies. scout is magnificent and powerful
|
|
#
¿
Jul 4, 2022 09:37
|
|
|
last saturday, right on sunset, i offered to take iris out for a wee and she politely declined. then she immediately wandered up the hallway to my mother's bedroom and took a long, leisurely piss on the carpet. we both reacted, she was banished, we cleaned up the piss. i went outside, walked her around, and she completed the interrupted wee. we came back inside, and she went to my bedroom and did another piss on the carpet. at that point i lost my poo poo and started bellowing incomprehensibly like homer simpson. she actually hasn't pissed inside once since then, so i don't know what it means
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2022 09:11
|
|
|
cradling the sleepy pup, thinking about how amazing she is and how well she's going, and suddenly she bites me on the boob
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2022 21:56
|
|
|
Enfys posted:are you me because the exact same thing happened to me this morning  my sympathies, i hope you haven't done too much damage to your back. the things we do for our animals and they don't even know! i sympathise totally with gazing at a sleeping puppy and trying to savour every precious second of peace. at least it's been easier to do bite training with iris than my little dogs. when a terrier puppy nips with their microscopic needle teeth, it's hard to pretend that they've really hurt you. with iris, i don't have to pretend!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2022 09:53
|
|
|
so in the five days since i was finally allowed to take her out, iris has had three encounters with over-the-top aggressive dogs and is starting to get reactive  one of those was a big dog on a leash who was barking and lunging and baring his teeth at her, i was trying to get away (narrow sidewalk) but the stupid old man walking him homed right in on us and got his roaring shithound right up into her face so he could get a better look at the puppy! in the tiny waiting room at the vet clinic there was a loving miniature dachshund with the voice of a demon that spent a solid five minutes just screaming at her non-stop while its owner talked to the receptionist and paid the bill, not even acknowledging that their dog was raising hell. barking has been a big trigger for her from the start, now she starts whimpering the moment she sees another dog and i have a problem to solve.on the other hand, she's had only good one-on-one experiences with humans and now gets excited rather than scared when she sees a stranger. progress Instant Jellyfish posted:Here's Scout at our last dock competition. Regular access to professional photos is one of my favorite parts of competing. mahershalalhashbaz fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jul 12, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2022 23:43
|
|
|
after a couple of good walks and nice encounters, iris is back on track to thinking other dogs are cool and fun  Enfys posted:behold, the platonic form of chaos:
mahershalalhashbaz fucked around with this message at 12:32 on May 6, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2022 22:55
|
|
|
.
mahershalalhashbaz fucked around with this message at 12:33 on May 6, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2022 01:13
|
|
|
i always thought the "landshark" nickname was just because of the teeth, but when iris is about to grab a toy she momentarily opens her mouth wide and rolls her eyes right back into her head and it's both terrifying and hilarious
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2022 22:24
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:One of the dogs I frequently see on my morning walk loves to just engulf your entire hand when you try to treat him. It looks terrifying but he's really gentle
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2022 02:29
|
|
|
somebody managed to get the door of the quail cage open after dark while all the birds were asleep. she had her head in there among the quail for at least five minutes, eating grain and poo, before i realised - but she didn't hurt a single bird! (i'm not sure the quail even knew she was there. once a quail is asleep, their brain is switched off until the sun comes back.)
mahershalalhashbaz fucked around with this message at 12:33 on May 6, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2022 23:04
|
|
|
.
mahershalalhashbaz fucked around with this message at 12:30 on May 6, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2022 09:20
|
|
|
Instant Jellyfish posted:We had a photographer come to the dog training place where I work so you know I needed Easter pics of my two. those doofy grins!!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2024 12:55
|
|
|
me: you're such a good dog! iris:  me: you're a very bad dog! iris:
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2024 12:27
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 9, 2024 09:16 |
|
|
i own every Bionicle posted:How could you
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2024 12:37
|
|