MaggieDog

*Please* get a second opinion from a vet behaviorist; not a "behaviorist", not a trainer, not a regular vet, a veterinary behaviorist. Vet behaviorists should be up to date on indications and contraindications for certain meds, will be able to truly evaluate your puppy's level of fear, and can give you some good suggestions for behavior modification exercises to do in conjunction with meds if you go that route. I've seen waaaaay more vets suggesting prozac since the canine version was released and I'm not sure it's in the best interest of the dog to go with what their regular vet says since I've heard so much bad advice from vets in the behavior arena.

For the nitty gritty on training a SD, check out the OC Assistance Dogs list on Yahoo Groups - I've been a member for years (literally, like 6 or so) as it's something I've always been interested in and it is an incredibly helpful and supportive list. Assistance Dogs International, the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners (IAADP), and Delta Society all are great resources on what it takes to have a working service animal.

Consider getting some Direct Stop/Spray Shield citronella spray - it'll help break up fights without the need for screaming or yelling or hurting anyone. In fact I'm going to be ordering a canister this week given that Maggie and Z had an altercation this week and this thread's warnings.

Gosh so sorry to hear all this! Knee and similar joint injuries are my biggest fears for my animals as they can happen so out of the blue and cost so much in terms of money and time to rehab. I wish you guys the best!

Honestly with bitch-bitch problems I don't think "alpha" has much to do with it. If it did, appeasement signals and submissive postures would end the fight, but in most cases it doesn't.

Must be the season - Maggie jumped Z over a bone last night; one scrape, lots of pulled hair, and required human intervention, but nothing too major in the long run. Luckily for me both girls seem to have no hard feelings today, so we'll just be removing all resources and separating when unsupervised for a while. Maggie had major interbitch issues with my parents' dog. Those never were resolved and eventually escalated to major puncture wounds needing vet care, so they were never allowed anywhere near each other. Just Oreo's presence would send Maggie into a fit of barking and lunging.

This is one area where I use the feeding guidelines on the back of the dog food bag as it at least gives me a reasonable starting point, then I feed to ideal body condition, adjusting as needed. Any pups I get here are put on an "all life stages" food to avoid super fast growth; right now Laddy is eating Premium Edge Salmon, last bag was TOTW High Prairie, next will probably be Canidae Lamb since Prairie went way up in price. Laddy is about 20lbs, 16" at the shoulder, and 4.5 mo and gets 1 cup of food twice a day. He's still a bit too far on the skinny side for my taste, but I'm just gradually upping the amounts until I get him where I want him.

Parvo sucks! You've got all our good vibes here coming your way. I've heard that some people have luck with using Tamiflu in conjunction with normal treatment as well as some sort of immunotherapy in parvo cases - might be something to look into at least. Erin

Yay!

Registering AKC (ILP/PAL or otherwise) also means giving money to AKC. I considered it briefly a little while ago (ILPing Maggie), but decided to avoid it by solely competing in events sponsored by other organizations (USDAA currently). Why give money to an org that will use that money for things so antithetical to what we talk about here on the boards?

Rockin! Good job you guys!

My cat Pi LOVED my last foster - they'd wrestle each evening while we were on the couch watching TV; it was one of the most amusing things I've seen. I say get Buddy a cat if you want - there are certainly a ton who would love to live the high life with you guys.

And just an fyi in case you missed it: generally all rabies vaccines given as a pup are considered one year in duration *regardless* of what protocol you follow. Z was vaccinated at 5.5mo, then at about 17mo, and won't get her next one until she's 4.5yo since she's had her one year booster now. Ziva did get about 6 distemper vaccines at the shelter she was at for 3 mo (!) so we titered at 17mo and will likely vaccinate this year.

For SAR, I always carry an extra leash and lighted collar, batteries for the lighted collar, food/power treats, extra water, long line, doggie first aid kit (combined with my kit), collapsible dish for water or food, and of course I've got all my stuff which includes sundry survival stuff to help us both. Z wears a harness, belled collar, and lighted collar (after dark) when in the field. When hiking I generally have extra poop bags, doggie snacks, a collapsible bowl, extra lead, and sometimes a minimal first aid kit; our hikes are generally only up to 2 hours in length and on well-marked trails.

Oh I'm not really worried about the dogs getting sick. I'm worried about ME getting sick...

Yea I'm very much in the "wait and see" mode now that the initial "aww he's such a cute puppy" feelings are fading lol. The thoughts and suggestions I've gotten thus far have been *gold* and have really reminded me of a few things I need to remember. The constant management of him with my other two may well be the deciding factor as I'm still having a TON of trouble showing him that when one of the girls growls it means "back the heck off" - no one's been hurt or scared in any way, but my house is a lot noisier and he's just not getting it so Z especially has been on the run from him a lot (she's *finally* figured out if she runs to me I'll fend him off thankfully). We've started doing timeouts when he really pesters Z - at least he's starting to "get it" with Maggie unless he's totally wound up and doing zoomies. From what I've seen so far, he has a lot of the qualities I want in my next dog: uber-confident (which has the above drawbacks lol), bold, high energy, toy crazy (esp tug and his wubba but also balls), comfortable on all sorts of surfaces, good bounce back (if he even reacts), etc. He's also teaching me that I for *sure* am not going to be getting a baby puppy as it's a ton of work to keep up with him and he's already 4-5 mo (I think he's on the low end of that myself); if I get a pup to do SAR with it'll be a dog at least his age from rescue that shows potential. Courtney, Z just turned 2 the first week of March so they're close in age but not super close. Z's doing wilderness live search (haven't decide air scent or tracking yet) and I'm thinking that my next dog I may try to do cadaver (or disaster if we had the ability to train on it around herewith so they might not even be in the same searches. The overlap was one reason I was really thinking of waiting until Z was 3 to get another dog, though I'm not sure if a year makes that big of a difference in the long run, once the next closest dog is an adult. Z started SAR training at 17 mo and I know teammates who've started at 12 weeks, but I really do think I want him to mature a bit if I keep him before getting uber serious in training. I was reflecting last night on this whole issue and it really hit home that one of the reasons I'm thinking about this *now* is that I know in about 6 years we're going to want to start a family and that will greatly curtail my dog activities. To have all our dogs as well trained adults when that family expansion occurs, I know we will be adding a 3rd sometime between now and 2012. Maggie's 9.5yo now so she's pretty much our family pet with a little therapy work and agility for fun, Z's my active sport and working dog (agility and SAR). I do miss having a "puppy" in the house now that Z's 2, but I also know that DH has said that 3 dogs and a cat is our pet limit so the next dog will be the only addition for a number of years unless somehow his mind changes on that. *sigh* so many things t think about - I'm soooo lucky to have you all to bounce ideas off of.

Forgot to mention that my girls gets yogurt, pumpkin, and fish oil toppers on their food regularly and sundry healthy table scraps (lean meat, veggies, the occasional piece of fruit, bread, etc.). Julie, I'm glad I'm not the only one who is a bit grossed out by raw meat. My biggest concerns are connected to foodborne illnesses so I'm sure I'd be more comfortable with meat I raised or knew the living conditions and processing of. I'm pretty proud of the fact that I now can actually cook hamburger all by myself if someone plops it in the pan for me. Luckily my DH is a GREAT cook and so he handles all the meat prep in our house; when I cook we go vegetarian generally since that's how I cooked when I lived by myself. Once we get a house with a securely fenced yard, I may start giving the girls raw bones outside, but until then, I just can't bring myself to have raw meat somewhere in the house not in a controlled cooking situation, even with bleach and disinfecting wipes...

I'm paranoid about raw meat (seriously - I won't even touch it for myself, though I did get slightly better after taking a meat science class in college lol), so my dogs all get high quality dry kibble. We rotate kibbles every time we run out of one type of food, so that works out to a different brand/variety about every 6-8 weeks. Current food is TOTW (High Prairie i think), last go round it was Prairie beef, before that Wellness Lamb. Next up is probably going to be another Prairie variety or maybe we'll try the fish variety of TOTW. Maybe Eagle Pack Holistic (fish) if I can find it. Maggie gets itchy on chicken based foods, so I try to avoid those and it's much easier now than a few years ago before all the high quality foods became more common. Both girls are also easy keepers so I tend to avoid the grain frees that are high calorie like Evo as they gain weight like crazy on it - they each only eat half a cup twice daily of regular kibbles and would have to eat at least a third less if feeding Evo.

Yea Maralynn that thought had crossed my mind too - it's the main reason that I wasn't planning on getting another dog for a year or so. Currently I think it'll be about another year before Z can be certified so that would mean he'd be just about 16 mo before we could start training with the team. If I just did some puppy runaways and worked on toy drive, leave it, and other basic skills at home, he'd probably be just fine; I wouldn't even want to start runaways for at least a couple months I would think. Thoughts?

Thanks for all the input already guys - it's REALLY helpful and has given me a lot more confidence no matter what I end up doing now or down the line. The more info the better I figure. Given the input so far, my biggest concerns right now are that 1. he's SUCH a puppy that the girls are having to tell him off a TON (he's not "getting" it as quickly as we'd all like) and 2. timing as far as my plans (figured I'd wait *at least* another year before adding another dog; Z just turned 2 and is still training for SAR and next addition is going to need to have SAR potential as well, but our team only allows one uncertified dog per handler in trainings). One blessing is that it's only been 3 days and he is settling in better than the last foster did with the girls (took about a week or two to get where we are now with this boy). Don't even know at this point what DH is truly thinking on an addition, but it's worth thinking about the inherent issues regardless. Paula, the foster is this little guy, Laddy:

As an offshoot from a recent thread about adding dogs, I thought I'd pose a question that has been on my mind for a while. I have a foster right now that I'm really falling for and DH might be as well and it's made me really wonder about the realities of 3 dogs longterm. My current two are a great match and play really well with each other, but in the future I do want to add a 3rd (whether that's now or later remains to be seen). What changes have you guys seen going to 3, 5, 7, etc. that you didn't see at 2, 4, 6, etc. - good? bad? How do dogs play when you have an odd number? Do they alternate playing, do they all play together? Is someone routinely left out? I know adding a third will add in more costs for care and training as well as additional time (the current foster is a 4.5mo pup so he adds a TON more work), so what I'm really asking is specifics related to how the animals "fit" as a group since that's my biggest unknown. I've only had this foster and one other with both girls (lots of fosters when I just had Maggie); the last foster stayed about 5 weeks and this little boy has been here only since Thursday night.

Honestly I have a dog in one of my classes who does the EXACT same thing (she's an aussie) with other dogs who are rude and I actually commended her owners for having a dog that is so very clear in her signaling and pulled it out as an example of good "warning" body language. They were worried their dog was aggressive but what they really have is a dog who tells other dogs *every single little thing* she can before she snarks and when she does snark she's appropriate. She just isn't a "dog park" kind of dog which rally is not at all unusual in herding breeds especially. I agree with the others - find another trainer!

Ok there is NO WAY the ACD is not as smart as a Lab, GR, or Sheltie! That's crap! I hate these ranking things - so arbitrary.

Have you looked into the Ottosson puzzle toys? They come in plastic now and got good reviews in Whole Dog Journal.

I mentioned the show line for agility concerns and she's not hearing it - she's certainly got her mind made up. She attends a ton of AKC (only one USDAA trial in 4 years and a few NADAC) trials and currently has shelties; she has likely talked to some people with BCs at the events but not quite the level of research you or I might do when trying to find a dog for something specific. Now that I think about it, perhaps one of the main reasons she's not even considering the working breeder route is that doing so would require her to do in depth research, including attending trials and stuff when she'd rather be on the agility field or working her shelties on something...She's also the same person who is convinced that a certain sheltie she knows could do well in USBCHA trialling...