philospher77

Just a thought. Explaining it this way to the 6-year-old might help her feel better. Surely she has had friends/her sister take a prized possession of hers. Surely she has behaved less-than-perfectly at some time when that happened: pushed, hit, yelled, etc. But later, she didn't feel the same way towards the person. Then you can explain that Chase is like that. When he has something that he thinks is his, he is going to be upset if someone tries and take it, and is going to act like that. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't like her, or is being "mean". He's just like a little kid who hasn't gotten to be as old and well-behaved as she is, and mommy and daddy are going to be working with him to learn better manners, the same way that she did as she got older. And that she and her sister can help him learn these manners by not going by him on his bed, getting mommy/daddy when he takes something that he shouldn't have, and teaching all their friends the rules. To a certain degree, it's probably a lot of what you had to go through with the 8-year-old when her baby sister started trying to play with the older one's toys, etc. If they both get along most of the time now, the same approach will probably help your daughter get over her scare, and help her realize that this isn't something that could happen just randomly. I would also try and teach her that if the dog freezes, gets hard-eyed, or growls, that is him saying that he is uncomfortable and that she needs to stop and get you at that point. If you give her some tools that she can use, it may help her feel more in control, and then she is less likely to be scared. And here a video from Dr. Sophia Yin about dogs and biting that you might find helpful, especially the last bit about dogs and kids: http://drsophiayin.com/resources/video_full/why_dogs_bite1 Hope this is helpful!

Welcome! Gorgeous dog. I will point out one thing about the name: Hester is generally a girl's name. So you are going to be correcting people on his gender as long as you have the dog. It may not matter to you, but just something to be aware of, especially with vets and most especially with emergency care.

And just to throw my 2 cents in: You can not reinforce fear. No one wants to feel scared. You can, inadvertently, reinforce behavior that is shown when the dog is fearful. But if you can change the underlying fear state, then you can work on altering any behavior you may have reinforced without meaning to. And for a reference, because I just think that this is an amazing example of counter-conditioning and why it flies in the face of what most people think: Dr. Yin counter-conditioning an aggressive dog. http://youtu.be/sI13v9JgJu0 This is an example of an aggressive case, but the same idea holds for fear cases.

Now that Katie is doing the stairs on her own, it is interesting to watch her do it. You can practically see her thinking through each move: first this front foot, and then that front foot. Now the back foot... where is the step? Ah, there it is! Now the other back foot. Then this front foot..... And if she gets disturbed by something, then she gets a bit stuck. But she is getting better with practice, so I think it won't be long before she takes inside stairs as easily as she does outside ones.

Katie seems to have finally mastered the stairs. Peanut butter balls, letting her take her time and decide to do it on her own, and occasionally moving the back feet seems to have been the method that worked with her. The back feet seem to be an issue if they get too stretched out. Then they get stuck. But moving the feet a step closer "unsticks" her, and she'll do the rest on her own.

That sounds like a reasonable solution. I would also have your dad work on the "make the crate fun" part. I'm not entirely against crates, but do agree that 9 hours is a long time to go without a potty break. You say, if I am not mistaken, that you have an outside exercise pen. Is there some way of making access to that (thinking doggie door), so that you could ex-pen off an area by the access? That way the dog would be confined, but to a larger area with outdoor access.

Hmm. I can tell why you are probably getting conflicting information. There is a reason that cyanide is described as smelling like "bitter almond". It's found in almonds, and peach/apricot/plum/cherry pits. The level found in sweet almonds is low enough to not be a problem to humans. I don't know if it is high enough to bother dogs. So whether they are bad or not is probably an "it depends" kind of answer.

My Katie started off extremely shy. Getting her out of her crate was an ordeal (which is why I got rid of the crate after the first week). The advice I got from my trainer was to not force any interactions for about two weeks. I did block various parts of the house off at different times, so that she would be in the same room as me, but other than that, just let her be. That helped a lot. But really, it was a lot of just taking things slow. And I did eventually put her on antianxiety drugs. I know many people don't want to do that, and those people would probably say that Katie was fine without them. But she has become so much happier since she's been on them, I can't imagine making her settle for the life she had before. She was content, but not happy, if that makes sense.

First, let me say that I am sorry for your loss. My Trinkett broke the neck of her femur, and, as with your dog, the X-ray wasn't the "typical" one for osteosarcoma. But when they did the surgery, and sent the tissue out for review, that's what it was. So yes, your dog could very well have had it. Also, when a long bone breaks, especially down the length of it that way, there is always the possibility of fat embolisms, because they are full of fatty marrow. And if a glob of fat is carried along into the lungs, it generally causes death, and can't be dealt with as easily as blood clots, which you can attempt to treat with drugs. So, I would say that the description seems plausible, although that doesn't make it any easier.

Just last night, I had a bit of a scare with Katie. Around 10, I hear her suddenly start coughing... this loud, sharp, harsh cough. She'd been perfectly normal before that. She came in to where I was, still coughing, pausing occasionally to do a dry heave, tail tucked. My first thought was, if this were a person, I'd be thinking that they swallowed something wrong. In which case, as long as they can breathe, you just wait it out. On the other hand, she was obviously in distress, and I did wait what felt like about 10 minutes, but who can really tell at those times? , and it didn't seem to be getting any better. So I called up the e-vet, to find out that their fee for being seen (excluding any additional treatments) was a whopping $50. So I figured it was worth that to get her seen, and if something was partially obstructing the airway, they could handle it or tell me to just let it resolve on its own. Of course, Katie does NOT like going out at that time of night, and it generally takes some gentle coaxing to get her off her bed once I put her collar on her anyway. And I didn't want to be tugging on her neck with her coughing like that, so I picked her up off her bed. And it appears that between her rolling on her side, and my picking her up, whatever was bothering her got shifted, because she just stopped coughing at that point. Which put me back into the dilemma... the reason I was bringing her in seemed to have vanished, but I'd already told them I was coming. I went ahead and brought her in, just because of the suddeness and violence of the onset and the stopping, in case there were going to be lingering problems. Plus, I think that my vet charges more for an office visit! She's fine, we discussed what it might have been, I said that I thought it was most likely something that was irritating her throat, we discussed some things to keep an eye out for, and, with Katie being such a chow hound, how to tell if she ever swallows something that is causing a blockage or sharp and pointy, we came back home, everyone went to sleep, and she is feeling fine this morning. If the cost to see the vet had been the 150+ I am more commonly quoted, I probably would have stayed home once she stopped coughing. But at 50... it was worth it for the peace of mind.

Hmm. I seem to be in odd case here. I don't go to the vet for every little thing, but then again, I have generally healthy pets. I DO go with strange "something's just not right" cases. Which is why I am now treating a dog for pannus when it was at a level so low that the opthamologist said it had barely started being detectable, and how I caught Trinkett's LS issues when they were just starting. My vets have gotten to know me, and now trust me when I say that there's just something off that I want them to look at. What we do about it can range from "wait and see" to treatment, but I'd rather get these kinds of things early when the prognosis is better than to wait until I have obvious symptoms.

Katie is on amitriptyline (generic Elavil) and Xanax as needed. It's a tri-cyclic antidepressant, not an SSRI, so it acts in a slightly different manner. She is doing very well on it, but the initial affects are very subtle. It probably took 3 weeks before I noticed any differences, and even then, I couldn't put my finger on exactly what they were. But she is now a much more happy, playful, interactive girl! Prozac can cause paradoxical effects in some dogs, which it sounds like it may be doing in yours. In that case, I would be looking at a different drug to try. Paxil is another SSRI, while clomicalm is a tricyclic (and is the same drug as clomipramine, so you can probably save some money by getting that instead), so you may want to talk to the vet about which type is worth trying next. I know that my vet started with the Elavil because "that's what they had seen the most benefit with in the most cases", but it is a bit of a guessing game until you see how your dog does on it.

I'd say it's the work doing it. You know how there are those days when you didn't get a good night's sleep, or your stressing out about something, so you get annoyed at someone for cutting in line when on a good day you would just shrug it off? That's probably what's going on with Annie. The noise and bustle of the building has her on edge, so when she meets something on the street that wouldn't bother her on a good day, it will now. I am currently going through that with Katie. I live by a river, and they are currently doing some work on erosion control measures, so there is odd equipment and noise out that way. It's definitely affecting her, but not majorly, so I just accept it.

I should clarify: when we go down the stairs, I am about 2 or three stairs ahead of her, so that I can monitor or help as needed. I've tried doing the paw placing thing, and gentle tugging, and just find that with Katie, that makes her shut down. So I am trying "close enough to catch and support her if she starts going crazy or really gets in trouble), but otherwise not touching her. She is on-leash, though, so she gets some feeling of connection from that.

Hi! I've got Katie signed up for some training classes with my favorite trainer, and my only concern was that the training location for these classes is upstairs. And Katie does not do well with inside stairs (outside, she has no problems with them), and I live in a single-story house, so there is no handy way to practice them. Well, I knew that my trainer will actually rent out the facility, for 10/hour, but for some reason it never occurred to me to do that. I thought... parties, sure, people who want to get some extra practice before a meet, sure, but just to get Katie a chance to acclimate to the facility? That's not the kind of thing that they would rent out the place for. But when my trainer mentioned doing it, I was like "doh!" It's a perfect chance to get her there in a no-stress, no distraction environment. So I rented it for this afternoon, took her there, baited the stairs liberally with her FAVORITE treat (a mix of powdered milk, cornflakes, honey, and peanut butter... really tasty), took her leash off at the bottom of the stairs, and after a false start or two, she made her way up to the top no problem! Treat treat treat at the top, for being such a bold and brave girl, and then we hung out up there for a while and she sniffed around a bit. Then we tried going down the stairs. That appears to be much harder on her. She does the front feet ok, but then like slides her back feet over the edge of the tread and down the riser to the next tread. It's slow, cautious, almost painful to watch, but she did manage to make it all the way down to the bottom, licking up every piece of peanut butter ball I baited the steps with! Back upstairs, with a lot more ease and confidence this time. She did get herself turned sideways at one point, but figured out how to get straightened back out and all the way up. Hung out at the top some more, and then packed everything up to go back home, brought it down to the bottom of the stairs, and went and baited Katie back down the stairs. That time she did good until about two-thirds down, where she seemed to get stuck for a bit. I had to go up and bring her hind feet down a step, and give her a nibble of a peanut butter ball, and then she was like "oh, right, good stuff!" and came down the rest of the way. We will be repeating this next weekend, so does anyone have any advice for making coming down easier, or is this just one of those things that will get better with practice? I am going to see if I can keep the bait in my hand, since I'm thinking that trying to get her nose down to the tread is putting her off-balance, and if I can lead her to keep the nose up, it might make it easier for her. And, as I suspected, Katie does seem to handle things like this best when I just make it worth her while to figure them out, and leave her to do it on her own. Rebecca

I've been doing obedience training with Katie, since I figured that she needed to learn skills to make the world less scary. And, as I recently posted on my trainer's facebook page, my regret now is that I didn't do training with my first bomb-proof girl. Done right, it's just a lot of fun! I don't care if Katie is ever "perfect" at it, or if I have to repeat classes in order to go at her pace. It's been an incredible bonding experience, and it's given me more ways to interact with her. And it keeps ME on my toes, since I have to try and figure out how to teach her whatever new and silly thing I want her to do. The most recent was making an arch out of my body and getting her to walk through it. Yep, an entirely useless thing to do, but I had me and a dog that was looking like she wanted to do something different, and that's what I could think up quickly! Now, we are working on getting her to roll onto her back on command, which is being somewhat challenging. When you look for an instructor, you want to be very careful on asking them what their training philosophy is. Given that you have an easy dog, I'd go strictly for positive-reinforcement methods. Know what level of obedience you are going to find acceptable, and look for a trainer who is willing to work with you and your dog and not insist that you be a cookie cutter version of everyone else. For example, I tell any new instructor I get that Katie has certain issues (she still shuts down if over-stressed), and that I am perfectly happy if I only do counter-conditioning during class. And they have been perfectly willing to scale back what they expect from her. Which is a good thing, given that her first day of class ever she spent it curled up against a wall doing her best impression of "you can't see me!" And the second class, she made the major step forward of _eating_ while curled up next to the wall trying to be invisible. So yes, I would definitely audit a class before enrolling your dog, and if they do not allow that, find a different class. You want a small class, and you want to see how the instructor deals with the different dogs. How do they handle reactive dogs (because there is likely to be at least one in the class)? Do people actually seem to be having fun? What additional support do they provide (mine will do unlimited phone support, for example). What sort of training equipment do they use/allow? So, I say take your time, find the right class, and have a lot of fun! Sorry bout the double post... if someone could delete the copy, that would be great!

I've been doing obedience training with Katie, since I figured that she needed to learn skills to make the world less scary. And, as I recently posted on my trainer's facebook page, my regret now is that I didn't do training with my first bomb-proof girl. Done right, it's just a lot of fun! I don't care if Katie is ever "perfect" at it, or if I have to repeat classes in order to go at her pace. It's been an incredible bonding experience, and it's given me more ways to interact with her. And it keeps ME on my toes, since I have to try and figure out how to teach her whatever new and silly thing I want her to do. The most recent was making an arch out of my body and getting her to walk through it. Yep, an entirely useless thing to do, but I had me and a dog that was looking like she wanted to do something different, and that's what I could think up quickly! Now, we are working on getting her to roll onto her back on command, which is being somewhat challenging. When you look for an instructor, you want to be very careful on asking them what their training philosophy is. Given that you have an easy dog, I'd go strictly for positive-reinforcement methods. Know what level of obedience you are going to find acceptable, and look for a trainer who is willing to work with you and your dog and not insist that you be a cookie cutter version of everyone else. For example, I tell any new instructor I get that Katie has certain issues (she still shuts down if over-stressed), and that I am perfectly happy if I only do counter-conditioning during class. And they have been perfectly willing to scale back what they expect from her. Which is a good thing, given that her first day of class ever she spent it curled up against a wall doing her best impression of "you can't see me!" And the second class, she made the major step forward of _eating_ while curled up next to the wall trying to be invisible. So yes, I would definitely audit a class before enrolling your dog, and if they do not allow that, find a different class. You want a small class, and you want to see how the instructor deals with the different dogs. How do they handle reactive dogs (because there is likely to be at least one in the class)? Do people actually seem to be having fun? What additional support do they provide (mine will do unlimited phone support, for example). What sort of training equipment do they use/allow? So, I say take your time, find the right class, and have a lot of fun!

Ok, now I feel like I am starving Katie! She gets fed twice a day. Breakfast around 7-7:30ish and dinner whenever I get home, generally between 5:30 and 8. Weekends are generally twice a day, depending on whether we have class or not. I hold off on feeding her on class days. Since she started off very shy, she's handfed her meals (about 98%) of the time, and they have evolved into training/play sessions, which means that she gets fed kibble. TotW, 2 cups and a bit (under a half cup... I eyeball that, so it's not precise), split between the two meals. Which is why I feel like I am drastically underfeeding her, compared to the other dogs in the thread! On the other hand, it also sounds like she gets a lot more treats, since I am still working on counter-conditioning her and doing a lot of classes. For that, I use Stella and Chewys, Natural Balance food roll, cheese, hot dogs, liver treats, Wellbars, and some other items if they take my fancy and seem high-value enough to get her to eat them in potentially stressful places. And she gets bits of leftover dinner and lunch, generally a bit of whatever veggies I am having that meal, or some bread or crackers if I am having them. She loves carbs! I sometimes point out to her that she is a dog, and should like meat, but nope. Rebecca

I have grass and greyhounds. Now, granted, this place was a foreclosure, so it's the grass that survived 5 months of no water and no care, which means it's pretty sturdy, scruffy stuff. And of course, there are patches that are cold season grass, and patches that are warm season grass, so the only time the entire yard is green is mid-spring and mid-autumn. But it is able to handle Katie's running, except in the rut around the tree. There are some advantages to growing what is, basically, weedy grass! Really hard to kill it, even when you want to.

When I was looking for information on Katie's eye problem, I ran across a picture of a horse with a similar=looking condition, which I believe was sun-related. If it is the same thing, it is going to get worse. So, I agree that this is worth a vet visit to figure out the right solution.

I thought about it, but at the same time, she was doing a lot of pawing at her mouth and getting her to hold still long enough to even try wasn't too likely. Plus, while stressful, it was sort of the same thing as when peanut butter is on the roof of your mouth... annoying, but not life threatening. And about the time I was going to go for it, she managed to get it loose. But definitely no more of them for her!

Hi! Katie is crazy for most fruits and veggies, so I figured I would let her have the skin from some sweet potatoes I'd baked for a casserole (it's easier and tastier than boiling them). She loved it, but I quickly realized that dog's teeth are not made for chewing plants, and sweet potato skins are pretty big. Long story short, she managed to get it stuck to the roof of her mouth, and yet partially in her throat (like what happens some times when you are chewing gristly meat). It was extremely stressful watching her try to get it off the top of her mouth, but she eventually did. And it doesn't seem to have put her off (skinless) sweet potato any! But I just wanted other people to have a chance to learn from my mistake, and not have to go through it themselves. Rebecca

Talk to a good nursery by you. You want to look at large, round stones, not the small pointy ones. Decomposed granite might work. Do your dogs do a lot of running in the yard? I'd be concerned about their footing if they do, since the rocks could slip under them, especially on turns.

For this first trick, I would pick something that she already does, and try to get it on cue. You don't want her thinking that these are times when she is going to be forced to do something that she doesn't want to. So, think of things that she already does, and try and get her to do them when you ask. You may need to think outside the box a bit: does she bring you stuffies, paw at things, ** her head to the side when she hears a certain sound, lay down in certain situations? Any of that could be captured and put on cue. Keep in mind that right now you are trying to teach her about learning, so starting out simple can be helpful. Oh... and that bit about delaying feeding times in order to have a motivated dog? There is a reason that Katie does her training at breakfast and dinner! If your dog is excited by mealtimes, it is fairly easy to work training into dinner time. Katie only gets food in a bowl when I am really pressed for time. All the other times, I am doling it out as training rewards.

I will say that it took Katie a while to become the little movie star that she is! I started with handfeeding her all her meals, to build the bond between us since she was such a shy dog. Then we took some classes. And somewhere in there I started messing around with the clicker. Then to working for her meals, based on what she had learned. It took some time for her to get the entire idea of learning, but once she did, look out! I will say this: training should be fun. You say you don't want to teach her cutsie tricks, just the basic commands, but once you get started, you may change your mind. I put Katie's eagerness to train down to playing 101 things to do with a box, where she was rewarded for doing just about anything. That's what got her to learn that training is a team sport. That I would ask her to do things, which she could choose to do or not, and get rewarded for or not. But also that she could offer me behavior, which I might decide to reward, or not. It was simply thrilling to watch her carefully repeat an action to see if it would get a click and treat like it did the first time! Thankfully, she's a natural sitter, so that was just capturing it and putting it on cue. But things like teaching her to crawl was inspired by actions that she did to get food without having to stand up and walk. I took that behavior, shaped it, put it on cue, and now she will do it when I ask. She's far from winning any obedience trials, because I don't really care that much. But we have gone from learning a trick slowly, over multiple days, to being able to pick up the basics in one session and get it pretty solid in the next few. The most delightful thing is that to her, training is just a game, one of those silly things that humans ask you to do, like playing with stuffies or running around the yard. She sees me pick up the clicker and the bait bag, and she's there ears up, eyes shining, giving me a big play bow and waiting to see what I ask her to do. Which is, of course, part of why I have taught her so many cutsie tricks... I have to do something to keep her that eager to learn, and it's just a lot of fun to do. So, I would keep working with Annie, and see what happens.