The Smart Dog U Blog

Blondes Rocking the Hunter Orange

Neither Tango nor I are slaves to fashion.

As the picture above proves.

That's us, the two blondes rockin' the hunter orange. You probably didn't even notice the black Lab in the picture. That's Lily. She's not wearing any orange. You see, it would clash with her silky black coat. (Actually, her hunter orange vest didn't fit.)

Because it's hunting season, we're decked out in our orange. Hunting is illegal on Sunday, which is when we were out, but we figured it was better to be safe than shot. I think we look pretty darn good, Tango and I.

We found a pond. You put Tango anywhere near water and he's going in. Water is a magnet to him. I felt the water - it was cold! Probably in the 40's. Thank goodness the Labs have the double coat - I don't think Tango's skin was ever touched by the water. Note that Tango's still on leash, even though he's retrieving. There was no reason for him to be off leash. First, it's illegal. Second, it's dangerous. (Those are leaves on the surface of the pond, not algae.)

The water's good, but chasing a stick into the water is even better. I found a good sized stick and Tango retrieved to his heart's content. I was tired of throwing the stick long before he was tired of retrieving it. That's a Labrador for you.

We were out for about two hours. We saw one deer and lots of hawks and squirrels. Unfortunately, we were the hosts to lots of ticks. Little tiny ticks. I found four on Tango, one on me, and one on my husband. 

Take some time this weekend to get out and enjoy the woods with your dogs. Just wait until Sunday, wear lots of orange and check for ticks when you're done!

Leashes Aren't Optional

Lily's very reactive when she's on leash and she sees another dog. She's not aggressive, but the scene could get ugly if the other dog isn't friendly. Lily makes all kinds of racket, jumps in the air, and is pretty much "crazy dog" until the other dog is out of sight.

Out for a photo shoot, I chose the quiet end of the park on purpose - I know Lily and I try to control the distractions as much as humanly possible.I also had Talos - all 110 pounds of him - out at the same time. I constantly scan my surroundings when I have Lily out, so if a distraction does come into view, I'm hip to it long before she is and I can prepare myself (and Lily).

Nightmare of nightmares happened today.

An off leash dog.

Not just an off leash dog. An off leash dog with no recall.

Fabulous. It doesn't get any better than this: I've got a reactive Labrador and a 110-pound Great Dane who takes his cues from the Lab. And now, I've also got an unknown dog directly in the mix. And an owner who isn't in any hurry to get her dog!

My mind is racing as I hurtle along, my feet skidding on the wet leaves. All I'm hoping is the dog is friendly and that the owner gets her dog as quickly as possible. Because it's very likely that I'm going down on the ground. And wouldn't that be pretty: three dogs (weighing in at a combined weight of about 250 pounds) and one woman amidst the tangle of leashes.

The poor photographer - what a sight (and a fright!) she must have gotten!I'm skidding along helplessly at the end of two leashes, there's growling, there's jockeying for position, there's barking, it's a whirlwind of fur and noise.

For all the noise and the fur, there wasn't any damage to anyone (except my psyche!).The woman got her dog and I got Lily and Talos back in this universe. Lily was too worked up to be any good for the rest of the shoot, and Talos was largely unaffected. He's a laid-back boy, he thought the incident was nothing but fun.

This is my plea: please (please!) leash your dogs! YOUR dog might be friendly, but other dogs don't appreciate having other dogs in their face. And you run the very real risk of letting your dog run right into an aggressive dog.

It's not fair to people who don't like dogs, who are afraid of dogs, or who don't want to be bothered by a dog. It's not fair to everyone else whose dog is on a leash. It's not fair to your own dog, who could really easily run off to chase a squirrel and wind up under the tire of a car.

Don't do it. Just leash your dog and be a responsible dog owner and considerate park user.

 

Chaotic Mayhem (Video)

This is what it looks like when four large dogs are playing in one small room. It's chaos. Controlled chaos, but chaos nonetheless. 

Lily rarely partakes in playtime. It's one of those once-in-a-blue-moon deals. It's so rare that I yanked the video camera out when they started this crazy play session. 

A couple things to notice: Nemo loves to play with Lily. They are play-buddies outside, but not usually inside. So when he saw her playing inside, he was ready to go! Knowing Nemo would interrupt her play with Talos, and knowing that this kind of play so rarely happens, I asked Nemo to restrain himself (which he did pretty nicely, I thought). 

Also, watch toward the end when Lily shakes off. That's a dog communication signal that often means "I'm done." Notice that even though Talos tries to re-engage her, she's pretty much done. 

There's lots of noise: growling, barking, yips. These are all normal play sounds from my group of dogs. Just like mothers can interpret their baby's different cries, I can tell immediately if a dog is no longer enjoying the play, just from the sound of the mayhem. These guys (and girl) are having nothing but fun. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ-TVVBEpEA

An Old Friend

I'm not a rational, logical person when it comes to dogs and my love for them. I can't separate heart from my job as a puppy raiser. Which means I go through a lot of heart ache on turn-in day.

Actually heart ache creeps in long before turn-in day. With Talos, I've already got a good case of heart ache going and he's only been here a couple months. You can't help but fall in love with these dogs. And you know, from Day One, that these dogs will leave you and go on to do better things.

My very rational, very logical husband tells me: "You are doing this for a reason. He's not yours. He's only temporary, then there'll be another. He's not yours. He doesn't belong to you." 

Oh, my heart begs to differ. It already knows it's going to be broken. Been there, done that. And no, it doesn't get easier the more dogs we raise. Each turn-in is horrible. Awful. Heart wrenching. So bad I feel physically ill. My eyes are swollen for days from all the crying.

 But I digress. This post is really about the extreme joy of puppy raising. You see, today we're having an old friend over for a few weeks. Rocky, the very first service dog we raised, is coming to spend a few weeks with us. His family lives close enough to us that we've been able to stay a part of Rocky's life. And that's meant the world to me.

Whenever the family travels, we get the opportunity to reunite with Roo, as he's affectionately called. He's on vacation while he's here - no work, just fun in the sun.

I  believe he enjoys his visits as much as we do: he helped raise Lily, our second service dog in training who didn't quite make the program and is now living out her days as a full-time pet dog. (That's them in the picture together when he still lived with us.) They romp, they play, they sleep. They probably catch up on what's been going on in their doggie lives since last they saw one another. It's fantastic.

For when you give your heart to a dog, a dog you know you must give away, there's nothing like a little trip back in time, a little slice of paradise when that dog gets to come back for a visit to his old "first home."

Back to Basics

With the addition of the new puppy, Talos, our training has sorta gone out the window. Not anymore. We're back on track. Get ready, dogs, school is back in session.

Nemo's toenails are ridiculously long. Scary long. Rip you wide open long. I've not Dremeled them in a long, long time. So today, we got started back on nail trims. I used super good wet puppy food for the reinforcer and it went smoothly. I worked on three or four nails today - only a total of about 8 minutes or so. Short and sweet, that's how we do training around here

Tango's nails are pretty long, too, but I haven't accustomed him to the Dremel yet. So we went way back and just worked on getting him comfortable just having his feet handled. He's a lot less go-with-the-flow than Nemie, so our progress will be slower, but steady nonetheless. Same yummy wet puppy food as the reinforcer. It's amazing what a high-value reinforcer will do for training! Lots of succes when the reinforcer is magnificent!

Lily puts on her best what-about-me pout if I don't work with her, so I had her doing some simple, remedial work. She just loves to train, period. I could ask her to take out the trash and she'd relish the opportunity to work.

Talos is learning a LOT of new things. One of the most important things he's learning is self control. He's going to be a huge dog - manners and self control are going to be of paramount importance. He's got to learn that good things come to those who wait, that he doesn't need to charge forward or barge in to get something good; that waiting is what brings those things to him.

To help him learn this, I started teaching him eye contact a while ago. If he looks at me, I click and deliver a goody. He got that simply looking at me was a pretty good thing. Nice. Once he was pretty good at that, I kept the reinforcer (the goodie) in sight. At first, he tried to bust in and just take it. It's easy enough to pull the goodie behind my back and make it inaccessible to him. He tried only a few times to muscle me out of the goodie, then he just sat. Click! Awesome job, buddy.

Once his default response to seeing the treat was to sit, I held out for eye contact. It's not good enough that he doesn't go for it, I need him to look at me first. It took a few seconds for him to look at me, and I resisted calling his name or otherwise "helping" him out. The instant his eyes met mine, CLICK! And he got the goodie delivered to him. Excellent work.

It's fun to watch all the dogs learn.

Finally, it's Slumber Party Copper! She's here for the week while my parents are in Vegas, living it up. She's quite the handful (there will be a blog post about her shortly). She's a neat little Rottie my parents rescued from the shelter about 10 months ago. Absolutely no training whatsoever. My parents have chosen to ignore the fact that their daughter is a professional dog trainer, and repeatedly tell Copper "No!," complain that she won't come when called (I ask "Have you taught her what "come" means?"), and call her stubborn and hard headed. She's a bundle of energy, but she's not stubborn or hard headed, she's just never been taught how to do anything.

So today, she got her first clicker lesson. She's never heard a click before in her life. She has no idea that her actions could be so beneficial (i.e. that her actions could cause me to click and deliver her a goodie). My mom has been trying to teach Copper to shake for a few months. Nothing doing, says Copper. Again, the label of hard headed is thrown around. Ha. Hard headed my foot.

In less than 5 minutes, I had Copper offering me her paw. I was even able to add the cue "paw." She's on a roll! More training tomorrow for all the dogs, Copper included.

A side benefit to training: it works their brains. Every dog is fast asleep!

Allergy Season Is Upon Us

Poor Lily's been chewing on her foot so much she's now limping. Her ears are infected. It must be Spring because her allergies are here in full force.

I took her to Kingsbrook Animal Hospital for them to look her over. We left with the usual: antibiotics for the bacterial infection in her paws, and drops for the yeast infection in her ears.

We believe Lily also has an underlying food allergy as well. Corn and wheat are the likely suspects, and lots of dogs have this allergy. In fact, if you've got a dog with recurrent ear infections, food allergies are worth investigating. It's as easy as a simple food trial. Feed your dog a new food -- one without corn or wheat products -- for about six weeks. See if the coat and skin and ears improve. If they do, your dog might have a food allergy. Of course, always check with your vet about things like this - they're the experts.

Spring always makes Lily's allergies worse, so we're pretty sure she's got inhaled allergies as well as the food allergies. But timing was poor this spring: a friend had given us a package of "Beggin' Strips." Not even thinking about the allergies, we gave them to the dogs. Within two days, Lily's allergies had bloomed -- she began chewing on her feet and her ears got goopy. I took a look at the ingredients and - you guessed it - we'd given those allergies a jump-start with the Beggin Strips - they had both corn and wheat on the ingredient panel.

After being on the antibiotics for only 24 hours, her foot chewing has slowed and she's not limping anymore. I'll be closely examining those ingredient panels in the future...

Rawhide Thief

I've been meaning to get more video on the blog because it can really be helpful. But before I do any real recording, I need to make sure I know what I'm doing behind (and in front of) the camera. So today I thought I'd take some silly video of the dogs eating rawhide. It's amazing what you can see on video that you'd normally miss otherwise.

Watch how Nemo visibly stiffens and freezes right before Lily moves in. That's a beautiful warning, along with the growl, to let Lily know she's on thin ice. I probably would have missed it if I was just watching them, not taping them.

I plan to get more video on here soon, especially of nail trimming! So if you haven't yet subscribed to my free newsletter, Your Smart Dog, what are you waiting for? February's article was all about how to make nail trimming more enjoyable for both you and your dog. So go download that article, then watch this blog for some nail trimming video...