lucaslavia

Hello all, It's been a longtime since last posting. This forum was a goldmine for helping me raise Bob through his puppyhood. He's now almost 3 and for much of the past year has been an amazing maturing companion. Recently however he's been increasingly wary of new people which is really unusual. He's always been incredibly sociable apart from a brief month when he was 10-11mo old. It's escalated quickly over the past few weeks from the odd bark to batting their hands away with a snap to flashing teeth at pretty much everyone approaching with a look to pet him. His typical behaviour is to attention seek and often put his head in people's hands. The vet can't find anything wrong health-wise and his routine is the same. I've gone right back to basics with instructing people in advance and a fistful of treats given to strangers. It's just really odd and I cant yet find a common variable for the reason why. It's also been suggested by a friend that the aggression means its time to get him done (not suggested by the vet) - I thought this was a bit of a myth? Any ideas or similar stories would be a great help. Luke & Bob

Yep he's 15 months old, he's been a dream whilst on crate rest apart from finding new and inventive ways to rip his bandages off or crack the splints. Reintroducing walks is going to be tough though, he's always been quite independent and fond of exploring, i think having to walk slowly on the lead is going to frustrate him a lot.

Hello all, Couole weeks back Bob trod on something grim in the undergrowth and sliced up his front left leg - tendons, arteries, nerves all severed. Emergency vet was incredible, operated at 1am, and managed to reattach the tendons in a single surgery. They were happy enough to not reopen for a full orthopaedic surgery. 7 long weeks further on and we're nearly at the time to take the splint off. Apparently they would usually say 6 weeks for a tendon injury but given how active he is and the fact he's pulled his bandages off a lot it was better to leave the splint a full 8 weeks. Does anyone have any experience as to what recovery looks like from here? Vet has said to take it slow with 2 weeks rest after the splint off then short leaded walks. I don't know much about how it goes from there though - how much is too much or what sorts of exercise should be avoided for a long time? Any help or shared experiences would be really helpful, thank you.

Hello all, Bob's now 1 and whilst ditsy as hell atm with his hormones raging around he's going ok. What we're struggling with the most is loose leash - he failed his kennel club bronze award class on it. We've been doing the 'become a tree' method for about 5 months now so it's a regular routine for him but that doesn't stop him forging ahead nearly all the time. Generally a walk is really stop-start and his new thing is whenever I turn into a tree he comes back to me and pushes my legs from behind to try and make me move again. Occasionally we'll get a connection and have a really good walk but it's rare and we'll lose that understanding the moment something unusual happens. I understand this is a long game, is it just too much expectation at this age? And are there any good tips I'm missing, especially for a dog who takes each training exercise as a game to problem solve his way around.

Thanks guys, I guess it's just key keep reminding myself that he can't help any of it either and this is the part of the training I'll have to pick up the slack on instead. There are some rewards as well to balance things out a bit. He's much more confident and thus sillier which is regularly hilarious. He's also more affectionate, or better at being manipulative with affection I'm not sure yet.

Hi, Bob's now 10mo old and has gone mental, completely lost his mind. A few weeks back he's was attentive, relatively well behaved, occasionally calm and getting compliments on how he's developing in his classes. I want that one back. Everything has to sniffed, possibly licked and then peed on for good measure. Poops are apparently now fun to do up a tree or a wall so they just smear down delightfully. Recall has gone from being really solid in a distracting environment to optional from 6ft away at home. Loose leash is surprisingly still ok except for when he forgets the lead exists and goes haring up to yet another thing to pee on taking my arm with him. Being told to get off the table or stop chucking cushions around is met with curling up on top of what he's been told to leave alone and huffing indignantly...or just a full blown tantrum. I know it's all about being firm, consistent, going back to the basics and a lot of patience. It's hard to be patient though when you're quietly counting to 10 following the 3rd disagreement over whether it's time to go home and he comes charging up to whack you round the shins with a log. How long does this last and please tell me he'll get his mind back again soon? Wine is helping some but he's so much worse on a hangover

Dinged and divoted is the perfect way to describe it. Providing he gets his quarry be it a ball, frisbee, stick, or something alive which makes leaves rustle then he's content. Injuries don't factor into it until he's done his work for the day.

This is my first dog so I'm not sure if I've got a daft one or if this is normal for puppies. Bob is 8mo old now and always seems to be injured in some way in the past 3 months we've had: 1 bout of Pancreatitis 1 allergy and accompanying itchy bald spot, unknown allergen but has cleared up 2 cut pads 1 happy tail syndrome 3 grazes (at the moment anyway) The pancreatitis was definitely a screw up on my part by trying to fatten him up with cottage cheese when he was a bonerack a few months back. The split tail followed the allergy where he pulled out the fur on the tip of his tail. His trainer said she's had similar pups before which who seem perpetually at the vets but also others which haven't needed a vet in 14yrs. Temperament wise he just barrels on through any injury, tis but a scratch. I'm just wondering if this is a common thing or a Bob thing?

Bob is coming up on 8 months and will settle down and either nap or just flop over and watch when we're in the house and I'm busy. It's been a slow process with him picking up the idea room by room and it's still only in certain contexts - when I'm doing the washing up or cooking etc. - and it's only ever with me, not with anyone else even if he knows them well. It's mostly come about through rewarding him when he did it of his own accord on the rare occasion (capturing calm), training a good down, sticking to a relatively consistent schedule, and refusing to give in to him pestering me with toys. Next step is to build up the time he relaxes in the pub With hiking we go to relatively flat places where I can safely let him off lead for the majority of the time so he can set his own pace and rest when he wants (not that he often does). A hike is also instead of frisbee time or run arounds for the next day or two as well.

Hello all, My pup is approaching 7mo old and keeps getting in the way of the cat, should I be worried and stopping this behaviour? For backstory, the cat has always taken a long time to adjust to new things so when I got Bob as a lil'un i baby gated upstairs for the cat and kept him down stairs. We went through the usual slow introductions - sharing smells, treats either side of a door and as expected the cat retreated for the past few months. To make sure Bob was used to her when he younger I would bring a load of catnip and sausage, take him upstairs on the lead and reward both copiously for lying down quietly in view of each other. In the past couple of weeks the cat has been growing in confidence and now regularly comes down stairs, she will walk up to and sniff Bob with no heckles or claws and seems to barely acknowledge his existence now. Bob has been great so far but he is fascinated by the cat and he has to know where she is and what she is doing. He will follow her around and if he thinks she's about to go back upstairs over the baby gate he'll get in the way, she ignores him and jumps over anyway but it's starting to look like he's trying to round her up. It's also hard to call him away is she's in the room, his recall has had to go back to basics anyway since becoming more of an adolescent but it's usually near perfect in the house. Should I be concerned about this behaviour and if so should I be cutting off contact between them?

You're right, my apologies. Honestly not much of an idea regarding the nutritional aspects of Burns vs other foods. I used a rough comparison tool - I typed the ingredients of the food my puppy was on from the breeder into this site https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/the-dog-food-directory which gives a break down of common foods in the UK but also lets you search by an ingredient list too so you can spot any major issues regardless of the brand. In switching to Burns I mainly used advice from a collection of websites, from what I can figure the lower protein content in the food I ended up choosing - Burns - slows the growth rate but matched up with my pups lifestyle more than the high energy farm food he was on. With the trigger stacking it was always about breaking everything down to the nth degree. So here for instance, coming out the crate is stage 1 pretty exciting, lots of stuff to play with and they are still figuring what is allowed is stage 2, toy being thrown takes them further to stage 3 then charging after the toy under their own steam builds up until everything tips over and they struggle to listen or calm down. For me when I had this problem, to break the cycle was about introducing a gap between each - he has to sit quietly before coming out of the crate, limit the attention given once he was out of the crate until all 4 paws are on the ground and he was a little more calm. With the toys Bob has to work for it with little sit-stays or any other trick I can think of and I take the toy away every couple of minutes and ask for another trick or behaviour. The end goal being that there's a break between each new event that allows him to debrief a little.

Re the active period or zoomies I had two things that helped. The first was changing his food, that stopped the crazy run around almost instantly. Bob, who's only 6mo, used to be a complete terror at 19:30 precisely. After changing his diet to Burns he stopped going mad at 19:30. The second was a great analogy from his trainer: stress for dogs is like a cup, each interaction or something new or anxious situation adds to the cup. Eventually after too much the cup overflows and the pressure is released all at once. What you don't want is a dog that gets addicted to that release so every day is an exercise in tracking and ensuring the cup never overflows.

He's a cunning bugger, its really difficult to not laugh constantly at his mischief when he wants attention. I'm fairly certain he spends his spare time plotting new ways to manipulate a situation to his advantage. He knows not to chew shoes, he knows I know he knows not to chew shoes, you can surround him with shoes and he'll be completely disinterested 98% of the time yet on occasion when he desperately wants a slice of your pizza he'll run off and drop a shoe in front of you, start biting the laces and look to see if you've noticed. The funniest one yet was dropping a treat ball in the middle of my plate, I had to leave the house to wet myself laughing just to not let him know he'd won that round.

I don't want to jinx things but we might've cracked what was going on... The tea towels covered the oven window, he's been running in front of it to look at his reflection

That's genius, I love the idea of using it as a job for him to do and controlling the behavior at the same time, occasionally he gets a bit huffy without a direction so this would be another for the toolbox. As you mention it, he has actually done that once with a jumper from the hamper, similar behavior to the tea towel but as he's only had access to the washing once I didn't notice it as part of the same pattern and just attributed it to him exploring something new. When he first started I attempted to move the tea towel out of his reach to the oven handle but I was being rather dense and didn't think it through - he managed to grab it and pulled the oven open at the same time, thankfully it wasn't on but still caused a minor heart attack.

Hello all, Bob is now 14 weeks old and turning into a fantastic buddy. It's probably naive of me but even after the research before picking him up, he's a lot sharper than I ever expected and thanks to all the advice from you guys on this forum he's generally a well behaved and lovely puppy. One thing I just don't get though is he won't leave my damn tea towels alone. He doesn't chew or steal or play with them, just rearranges them. He pulls them off the handle in the kitchen and puts them in the lounge, doesn't do anything with them in the lounge, just puts them in the middle of the floor. I don't particularly mind as its not destructive but its just plain weird - I'm missing something here and can't figure it out. Usually he picks up on a corrections within a couple of days and if I say 'no' to him when he goes to move them he'll leave them be but sure enough 5 minutes later he's back attempting to tidy my tea towels where he clearly thinks they look more fetching. Has anyone any theories or seen similar behavior before? Photo - https://goo.gl/photos/r8W3Ed6FnFF3Kxya6

Hi, I've been a bit of a lurker in this amazing forum for quite a longtime browsing all the amazing advice you guys have and I've finally taken the plunge. Here's Bob (6 weeks in photo) who I'll be picking up soon on his 8 week birthday from a breeder in the Yorkshire Dales. I've got nearly 3 weeks off work with him once he's home to get the schedule, crate training, chew training & leash training all sorted and I hope you don't mind but I'd like to pick your collective brains on a few things: Schedule and downtime/off-switch - I do work full time and eventhough I only live 10 mins walk from the office and can pop back in breaks and at lunch and in the worst case wfh, I'd like to be able to get him to the stage of kipping/chilling out in his crate for two 3.5-4 hour stints. I've got a couple of weeks to bed in my ideal schedule but I'm worried if i'm at home with him for the first couple of weeks when I do go back to work I'll have some separation issues or a dog thats not great at hanging out by himself. Has anybody got any tips on building up that confidence and ability to chill out and be by himself? My ideal schedule is: 7-8 am - Wake up, business, short walk as puppy (longer when grown up) and playtime/training 8am - breakfast 9am - Crate 12.30 - Business, playtime/training, maybe short walk 1.30 - Crate 5pm - Longer walk, playtime/training, hang out (Pub ) 8pm - Dinner 10:30/11pm - Bed Fetch/Running etc. - I've read a lot about being careful with young pups and their activity levels, waiting until their joints are more matured. At what age do you think is ok for them to be charging around the park after frisbee's and toys? Just a random follow up - what's the weirdest phrase or trick your dog has picked up and hung onto? Thank you