wuffles

You've done better than me then, mine will not walk on tiles, period He won't even go within about 30cm of the bathroom because he knows it's full of tiles.

I just thought of something else that Satchmo is petrified of.... automatic doors. He just hates doors that open by themselves. We have to be careful walking down the main street past shops because he freaks out when the doors open when we walk past ;)

Glad you had fun ;) I believe Indi's owner is on DOL as well The little shiba puppy was soooo cute, such a confident little thing.

I'd definitely give the fur a trim if you haven't, I know that some people don't like to do this because it looks silly, but I've found it helps with the longer coated dogs. Nothing worse than fur matting across a hot spot ;)

How bad is the hot spot? If I catch them before they are weeping, I trim the fur quite liberally, dry the area as much as possible, then apply the Curash. I also use the Elizabethan collar for a day or two to give them a chance to heal. If you get them early enough this can sometimes stop them turning into bad ones. However, if they're already weeping and angry, I found Curash does nothing, I will go to the vet for these ones. Good luck, I hate hot spots

We have a big woosy dog. When we adopted him, his foster carer warned us that he hadn't experienced much in life and was scared of plastic bags and her mobile phone ringing... so we have socialised him heaps and now pretty much the only things he's scared of are slippery surfaces, loud beeping noises (like when the smoke alarm runs out of batteries), buses and storms Ava is scared of nothing

WOW! What a phenomenal difference! You must be so proud of her...AND yourself! I love watching before & afters like this. It just shows you what dedication & determination can achieve ;) I agree, great work! However, my Satchmo is way less interested in training as Daisy in the first video He's the kind of dog that, if I get a toy and dangle it in front of his face, dance around, make funny noises, call his name... he just lies on his bed and looks at me, like I'm crazy - doesn't even lift his head. He's realllllllly mellow

It was a pretty nice article! Unfortunately the roads look too close for my two who love to run and run and run

I walk in the rain, dogs don't care A few weeks ago it was 4 degrees and raining on a morning here in good ol' Canberra. I went up to the local reserve and walked up the hill in sleet :D Strangely enough, two of the other regular walkers were up there as well so at least I had company!!

I have one really low-drive, mellow dog and one puppy who would train all day if you let her ;) I understand exactly what you mean! I took Satch through 3 levels of obedience at our local club but he just never enjoyed the classes unless he was socialising. He passed quite easily because he's so mellow, and on exam days he was only expected to work for a few minutes. He has never had any level of focus though, he just went along with what was happening until he couldn't be bothered anymore ;) Ava is a completely different dog and will hopefully do well in obedience and agility! I train a lot with her at home. Most of the time Satchmo just lies on his bed and watches. Sometimes he comes and sits with us while we're training and "demands" treats by sticking his head in the way of the training session.... ask him to do anything, though, and he just looks at you going "no... I just want treats. Gimme." :D So Ava gets training sessions and Satch gets patting sessions... they both seem to enjoy this arrangement

Most people use 'yes' as their marker word - I do I never say it during the day, it's always 'yeah' or 'yep' or 'uh huh'. See you on Sunday

We don't have this problem at all................ You met Ava, can you imagine her sitting still when visitors come? The dogs generally go outside when we get visitors until they have calmed down a bit (this generally takes at least 15 minutes) as Ava gets really excited then she gets Satchmo excited and all hell breaks loose I try not to worry too much as she is just young, I hope that she will calm down as she gets older.

The first time I put a no-pull harness on Ava, there was an instant change. She ran to the end of the lead and went "WHOA! What was that?". It was a very pleasant walk! ;) I consider myself a relatively competent trainer, but loose leash walking in the presence of both of my dogs at once has me stumped. The harness allows them to actually get walked while we work on focus in the meantime.

Mine gets this when he's excited, but it goes away after a few minutes.

Interesting about longer noses... both mine have similar faces but only one watches TV. Maybe she just has those "special eyes" they were talking about Ava has still been watching the World Cup and can actually track the ball across the screen! Whereas the most interested Satchmo ever was in the picture on TV was when a fly landed on it and he left a huge goopy mark across the screen trying to catch it...

Ava can walk backwards... in fact now I have a problem with her offering it instead of sitting! Here is a video of us learning: I had heaps of trouble with her sitting every time I so much as looked her way. What worked for me in the end was training on a more "uncomfortable" surface - in our case tiles instead of carpet, and a more confined space. I'm pretty sure she would also walk backwards on wet grass instead of sitting too I had to take it really slowly and click as soon as she moved just a tiny bit. Oh, and if she sat or offered a different behaviour, I generally gave her a NRM then lured her back into a stand.

There were 9 puppies in our class, for off leash time we were usually divided into small/big with a few exceptions depending on personalities. We had some big bruisers in our class (our aussie, a lab, a staffy, a GS) so letting them run free with the littlies (maltese, cavalier, pug, mini schnauzer, low chen) would have been a disaster! They did get to meet all the other puppies on lead, and by the end of the classes most were confident and big enough to have short off leash time with the big pups.

Meeting a range of different puppies at our puppy preschool (big and boisterous, small and timid, dominant, submissive, bossy, indifferent) helped Ava a lot with her socialisation. However, she has a fairly confident nature, and the instructor didn't just stick them all in together and let them run amok. If you can't get in anywhere else, maybe try to make the most of it - make sure your introductions are controlled and avoid the aggressive pup (although one snappy pup in our class taught Ava her first lessons in personal space ). Edited to add: Sticking a bunch of puppies together and expecting them to have fun might not be the most realistic expectation In my experience, puppies are better paired with either one similar puppy or an older dog - they just don't have the social skills early on to take each other's differences into account.

I agree, can you try crating her beside your bed? We had to do this with Ava for the first two weeks or so, then we moved her in her crate to the lounge (where she had our older dog for company). She still took a long time to settle at night and she woke us with whinging every morning at 5am or so until she was nearly 5 months old! But we got there eventually. Good luck!

He is gorgeous, I loooove brittanies

2 dogs, both of us work full-time.

This has happened with a few dogs I've known. It seems like the exercise just moves it through them if you know what I mean! Our greyhound foster was like this - I switched her food but it didn't make a difference.

Ava watches TV, not just animals. She likes the World Cup. Once she was watching UFC (mixed martial arts) and the shot changed to a headshot of one of the contestants, and she got a fright and ran away Satchmo doesn't watch TV at all but he does listen to animal sounds The best are cats (even fake cat sound effects), he always goes looking around the house and yard for the cat he heard Edited to add: Does anyone have any theories as to why some dogs seem to watch, some seem to listen, and some don't pay attention at all to TV??

You'll probably find that once you're in a routine both you and the dogs will get used to it pretty quickly. We walk ours at 6am, 10 minutes of ball throwing or training for the puppy, then they stay inside while we get ready for work. I then put them outside, give them a Kong each, scatter kibble around the yard, rotate the toys and leave - they don't even look up from their Kongs. Once I get home, I find they're pretty happy just to laze around the house. I spend a lot of time with them on weekends (take them to OH's soccer games, dog park, off leash walks, etc). My older boy's favourite is getting pats on the couch, so he gets that every night The puppy loves running and training so she gets that every day as well. I'd love to be able to stay at home with them more often but unfortunately this is our reality and we cope pretty well Edited to add: OH is here as well but he doesn't do much with them :D When I go out I usually come home to him at his computer with his headphones on and the dogs fast asleep in their beds

I use the marker word "yes" most of the time including at training. Your voice is much more versatile than a clicker :p However, I do use a clicker sometimes -- usually when learning something new that needs really precise marking... it seems to give Ava a better idea of exactly what behaviour I'm marking. Of course this could just be my own fault for not marking at the right time with my voice And YAY we start "Bronze" on Sunday. We are well and truly glad to be out of the Beginners class