krissy
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Posts posted by krissy
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Okay, super annoying thing that Kili does. She is just fine in her crate for 5-10 hours (during the day about 5 hours because I come home for lunch, if we go for an outing we might leave her for 8, overnight on weekends might be 10). And she is not desperate to go out at any of these intervals if she was given sufficient chance to empty.
But, if we are home and she's out loose, she asks to go out almost every hour. She gets all frantic and attacks the baby gate to the kitchen (backyard door is in the kitchen) and runs around the house whining and freaking out. If I let her out she'll go out and pee, but hardly seems desperate once she's out the door. If I ignore her she will typically eventually chill out.
And it's not like she doesn't get out often enough. She goes out first thing in the morning when we go for our walk. Then I go to work. I come home at lunch to let them out and do some training and then go back to work. After work they go out again and we train or hike or jog or something else. Then ideally I would just let them out again before bed. However, in the 3 hours between our evening activity and bed she will usually want to go out at least 2 more times.
She is not tanking on water, she does not have a UTI. I do wonder if her ability to hold it has been compromised by all the UTIs she had as a pup. However she has never had an accident in her crate since having surgery to correct her problem. which leads me to believe that she has simply decided that someone is home, she has a little bit of a bladder and she COULD go out for a pee... so why not? Or is this just normal for some dogs? I've never had a female before and I'm used to Summit's iron bladder. He will choose to hold it 16 hours if the weather is miserable. Anyone else have a dog that does this?
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I never give my dogs a second out. They seem to survive. We get up, we go for a walk of *gasp* 20-40 minutes depending on whether I am walking both dogs together or walking them separately (we mix it up because that seems to be best for Kili's leash manners training). We come home and they have breakfast. Then I get ready for work. Puppy goes back into her crate and they both get a chew or kong or cookie and I leave. Granted, I come home at lunch and let them out. But before Kili I never did.
At lunch both dogs get probably 5-15 minutes of training (agility for Summit, agility and disc for Kili). Back in the crate for the puppy.
After work we do one of the following:
-Walks for both dogs (either together or separate)
-5 km jog with Kili (and I'm so tired after that generally speaking Summit won't get a walk that night)
-Training for both dogs (5-15 minutes each)
-Dog park for both dogs
I would say that they get about an hour of exercise per day. These being my performance intended dogs (well, Kili... Summit will probably never compete at this point... he's just my "screw up dog" to learn on, hee hee) and that's all the exercise they get on the average day.
UTIs are frustrating. Glad things are going better. Kili's recurrent UTIs just about drove me off the edge of a cliff. But at least UTIs are generally an easy fix (unless you're MY dog, then it requires months of medication and surgery) so that's good! Yay for Luna!
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There's nothing really to do at this point except keep an eye on him. I also wouldn't let him drink too much at one go.
Monitor him for any clinical signs of bloat, but honestly... my dogs have run around after eating several times and nothing bad has ever happened. I don't think ex-racers are really all THAT prone. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't be careful about when we exercise them in relation to eating, but I don't get too worked up about it. My rule is at least an hour on either side of a meal, but as I mentioned I've had some accidental zoomies happen after eating.
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I just do it at the vet's office - we're in there every other whipstich anyway.
This made me lol and almost spit cereal everywhere!
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Generally we want the urine within an hour of being produced to reduce potential changes. You might want to call them in the am and find out what they want though, because first morning urine is usually preferable.
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I haven't tried the gel for my patients or my own pets yet. We recommend the water additive because it's easy for multiple pets. Which means better compliance. And for my own dogs I already brush their teeth and have no oral concerns at this time so I just use the water additive so I don't have a panic attack the one or two days a month that their teeth don't get brushed for some reason.
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How much tartar is "a lot"? I have plenty of patients that have had their teeth cleaned and less than a year later I'm seeing enough tartar on them that they pretty much need to be done again. Typically small dogs. I could see greys being bad for that though. If a dog is prone and there's no preventative measures put into place following the cleaning then some absolutely will develop a fair amount of tartar in a short period of time.
Brushing DAILY is the best thing you can do for teeth.
Healthy Mouth is a water additive that I haven't yet had a patient refuse to drink (there's a first time for everything though). It's supposed to be essentially tasteless. It does turn the water an apple green colour though so they recommend adding it in slowly over a week or two so the dog adjusts to the change in colour. It's also the only water additive that actually has clinical trials (ironically done on blood donor greyhounds!) to prove that it works.
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2) I can get his nose to the ground, but no play plow happens. He just backs up.
Lure him under your leg. That's how I've always started teaching the down. Jen's blog (NeverSayNever) shows it well. I have a video of Kili doing it, but not sure which blog post I have it under.
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Most places only type for DEA 1.1 as it is the most antigenic. So if there is no number you can probably assume it is 1.1. I would check with the clinic to be sure.
The only place I have been to that did fuller typing was OSU.
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My dogs go through the front door ahead of me, but I do require that they do it politely. They cannot drag me. I do it because I have twice caught Summit's tail in a door and had to deal with a tail injury. Much easier to avoid if the dogs go first.
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Love that last picture! She looks like a firecracker!
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Our crate is always in the bedroom if someone is being crated. And the dogs always sleep in the bedroom. Right now Summit sleeps on a bed on the floor and Kili sleeps beside him in her crate. Our bedroom door is open at night so Summit is more than free to leave if he wants. But he prefers to sleep with the family and rarely gets up until I do in the morning. BD would love for the dogs to not sleep in our bedroom but that will never happen!
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I think it's more personality. Some dogs tend to share and play nice and other dogs... just don't. I think it's kind of hard to teach. Kili has the sweetest personality and she loves to share toys when she plays. She likes to chase the other dog who has the toy, steal it, have them chase her, let them steal it, and so on. She's always been like that since she was a puppy. Other puppies she's played with though we had to remove toys from their play because the other puppy would hide under something and then growl and snap when another pup came by to try to play with the toy too.
If a dog in a household can't play nice, I think the safest thing is to just remove the toys and only bring them out for supervised play time.
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LOL! What fun! Summer plays with toys and does all kinds of things but tug is not her thing. I kind of miss it. On the other hand, watching your video made my shoulders and elbows cringe in sympathy. Maybe I don't miss it as much as I thought, LOL!
If you'd asked me 2 weeks ago I would have told you the same thing, tug isn't Summit's thing. And yet... lol. Don't give up hope, Summer might just change her mind one day!
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Sorry for your loss.
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More detail in the blog post about this, but seriously, if someone told me when I got Summit 3 years ago that my dog who wouldn't even LOOK at a toy would one day play tug... I would have asked who they thought they were fooling.
Apparently the fool is me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cMzHz983RM&feature=c4-overview&list=UUv4UPHwt2tthOhojMb-jtXg
Remember... your dog will ALWAYS surprise you. The only NEVER when it comes to dogs is NEVER assume anything.
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Ok, I stand corrected. It's ok to allow a canine to wake up a child who needs to sleep. Duly noted.
I get that this is hard. I've lived in shared housing for all of the time that I have owned dogs. First my landlord lived upstairs, now we have a basement apartment below us in our rented house. I brought Kili to work with me for the first 4 months that I had her. I get that it sucks when a dog is being loud. My downstairs neighbour just adopted a little dog and she barks in her crate whenever he leaves. Sucks for me on Mondays when I'm off work, and if it's not under control in a few weeks will suck for DBF when he goes onto night shift. Used to stress me out when the dogs were new and getting used to being alone because I had neighbours and co-workers that they were disturbing. I just had to have the will power to say "I'm not caving". I'm not a mother but I understand that it must be hard to have your child be woken up. However, you need to think about it this way: you can deal with a couple of days to weeks of the dog crying and your child being woken up OR you can potentially be setting yourself up for MANY months to years with a dog who develops full blown separation anxiety. Then you have a dog that screams when left alone, destroys things, hurts herself, etc. Prevention is always going to be shorter, safer, and better in the long run. It's not necessarily easier short term, but you need to do it for a good outcome.
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In my opinion, it's only been a week. And potentially you have not left her too many times in that period (because a week isn't very long). For the longest time I would crate Kili any time I was leaving the house, even if DBF was home because I didn't trust him to supervise her (and when she was young she had recurrent UTIs so she had to be watched like a hawk for signs that she needed to go out).
Finally when she was about 9-10 months old and we had corrected the cause of her UTIs, I would occasionally leave her out if DBF was home and I just needed to pop out quickly. Well, I'd come home and DBF would tell me about the panic ridden state that the puppy had been in. Standing up at the front door, looking out our front window, running back and forth through the house looking for me. But now she's used to it. Most of the time if I pop out for a second she follows me to the door and then goes back to whatever she was doing. She's got it figured out now. If only she would figure out that when I go to the bathroom and close the door... she does NOT need to try to accompany me!
Personally I'd either crate her if she's amenable to it, or I would simply let her be upset for a little longer and see if there is improvement. She can't learn if you don't give her the chance. I'd only start to work on correcting the problem if she's not showing signs that she's starting to understand.
And a second dog won't help in this situation I wouldn't think, because it's not like there's no one home. It sounds like it is mostly just when the OP leaves but family is still home with the dog.
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My 13 month old CKC show puppy who came home to me at 8 weeks has numerous scars already. One on her nose, one on her back, and one on her thigh. She likes to run into stuff all the time. Usually I don't even know what she nicked herself on.
My retired racer came to me with basically zero scars. He now has a couple from when a friend's dog attacked him. He only had 2 tiny punctures but they left little scars.
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to be honest the video game may be the walk itself. he gets so excited he can barely contain it. maybe a good chance to practice before we go.
Perfect! That's exactly what I mean. Hopefully some of the other tips from folks can get you going in the house to start with your focus training. Once you get outside with it, simply allowing him to continue on the walk might be part of your reward for attention.
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the idea of giving him what he wants doesnt sound like it would work either, what he wants is me to stop making him work haha!
If that is what he wants then that is exactly what you give him. He does what you ask and you let him go and lay down or go sniff, or go look out the window. If you keep pushing him to try to do something after he has done it, and he doesn't want to, he's going to think "why should I do it, you'll just make me do it again". If he won't do multiple repetitions then don't ask for them. Greyhounds aren't dogs that typically do well with repetition but some take it to an extreme. Convince him to do it once and ave a HUGE party. He doesn't even need to party with you at this point. Make a huge celebratory fuss, offer him a high value reward, and regardless of if he takes the food or celebrates with you, release him to do whatever it is he wants.
Chances are he'll figure out that you like it when he pays attention, that there's good things in t for him, and that he won't be forced to repeat this over and over and pestered again and again... he may start to enjoy learning and become more willing to do more reps.
As for teaching him eye contact. Put a high value reward in your closed fist and hold it out to your side. Make sure he knows it is there. Ideally the dog fixates on your closed hand. You can even let the dog sniff and lick at your hand. Eventually the dog will go from staring at your hand to looking at you (I.e. what the heck, dude!?). Click or use your marker word ("yes!") and open your hand so he can take the treat. Again, the reward has to be rewarding to the dog for this to work.
In order to train your dog you need to find something he wants. You cannot try to train a dog if you do not have something of value to him. It's like trying to train a child with broccoli. Not going to work. You use candy. You use toys. You use video games. You use "if you do your homework then you can go over to Johnny's house". But it doesn't work to say "if you do your homework I will give you broccoli". Right now your dog views treats as broccoli. You need to find out what video games are to him and use that. One day he may begin to work for treats in certain situations. I can reward Summit with kibble in most situations. When we first started it had to be hot dogs, cheese, chicken, steak. Now I dole out kibble and milkbones just as often as hot dogs. Training itself is now fun and partly rewarding in and of itself.
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If he's totally ignoring you he is over threshold. He's not challenging your authority he's just unable to concentrate for some reason. Reasons? Fear, uncertainty, anxiety, excitement, interest.
Summit ignores me when he is afraid. Today at the dog park we heard gun shots and he ran for the gate. I put his leash back on and offered him hit dog which he wouldn't take, wouldn't look at me.
Kili ignores me when she is excited and when she is overwhelmed. Lots of things are distracting to a 13 month old dog. Other people, other dogs, squirrels, strange smells, too much activity or commotion.
Figure out what the distraction is then get your dog under threshold. For Summit's noise phobias that means removing the noise. Can't really fix this one. For Kili it means getting further away from the distraction. At a certain distance it becomes less interesting than the chicken in my hand. Then we work and reward and slowly work towards the distraction. Slowly could be a matter of minutes or it could be months. Depends on the dog and the distraction.
You can also increase the value of the reward. This only works up to a point. It really depends how interesting the distraction is (or how great the fear/anxiety). You can also use Premack's principle. The principle is basically to give the dog what it wants. A reward is only a reward if the DOG finds it rewarding. Sometimes with Kili her reward is whatever she wanted. If she sis and gives me attention she can go greet the other dog. If she performs a few commands for me she can go chase the sea gulls in the field. If she recalls at the dog park she gets to go back and play.
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Well they just had a full on play session, uncomfortable viewing lol and definately something I will have to get used to!
Very rough and tumble, but he seemed quite happy and when they stopped he came back for more.
I'll try to get a video of my guys playing today and post it here. You'll see. The noises are horrifying. I'm pretty sure my next door neighbour thinks my dogs are killing each other sometimes.
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You should see how my dogs play and have always played since Kili was quite a young puppy. It's moderately terrifying. Summit runs her down into the ground, growling and snarling, and snapping at her. She screams bloody murder like she's being killed and then jumps up and takes off all over again. If Summit doesn't want to chase her she jumps on him and bites at his face until she either pisses him off enough or interests him enough. I used to tell Summit to simmer down because I didn't want the puppy getting hurt by accident, but she freaking loves it and is just asking for it... so game on!
Sounds like your pair are engaging in appropriate play, but depending on how rough your adult is and how young your pup is (and whether pup likes it) it may be too soon for them to play. I let my guys play rough because they both enjoy it to no end. If Kili was afraid or not enjoying it I wouldn't let them run together. I also don't worry too much about scrapes and cuts since I can just bang a couple staples or sutures in those myself. It's a risk but my dogs are pretty rough and tumble so it's just a risk we take. Not everyone likes taking that risk though.
Needs Out When Loose Not When Crated
in Training and Behavior discussion
Posted
This is more what I think the problem might be.
I realize that she'll do better overnight when she's sleeping. I don't expect her to go 10 hours when she's loose at home with us. I would EXPECT 5 hours to be reasonable, but we're home so less would be ok. I think 3 hours is totally reasonable. I think every hour is a little ridiculous. I don't really think she HAS to pee every hour if she is perfectly capable of 5-8 hours in her crate?