ShellyF

Lol! Merlin doesn’t mind me being on my phone as he then knows he can go off duty but if I try and take a photo of him he wants to get his face up close and personal to the lens haha!

Lovely replies - thank you

As a regular user of these boards and very appreciative of the ongoing help I thought a little different sort of post might be in order. Merlin is 9.5 months now and these are the things about him that I love: - the way he closes his eyes with bliss as he licks away at his kong - his joy at every bit of snow and ice that he finds; like a kid who’s been given unlimited access to vanilla ice cream - the way he crinkles up his nose when presenting a toy to tease you into chase - his perfect collie pose as he lies down, watches and waits to see where the ball will get tossed - his hugs; the real ones only happen when he’s tired (but not too tired) and all the stars are aligned but for a few minutes it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world Thank you everyone - admins and regulars - for keeping me on track with my little guy!

Sleep sleep sleep! Don’t feel guilty. Just google how much sleep a dog needs (let alone a puppy) and you’ll feel guilty for not letting them sleep more! Train an alternative like ‘stand’ and ‘paw’ or ‘Let’s go’ or ‘Find a toy’ so that when they want to instigate play they know what they need to do. Enjoy. It gets better!

Two things come to mind: 1 - when they get bratish they usually need a nap in a crate in a quiet place 2 - it’s young and potentially dangerous to risk them running off. Invest in a 50’ training line! it gets better

I hear you re the ice! We regularly have that. I set up hunt the treat in the house. I hide lots of Bits of kibble and off he goes. I also teach him the name of toys. I put a treat on the toy I want him to find and then say ‘find ******’ When he finds the treat he finds the toy and I praise him. Eventually he finds the toy by name without the treat. Then I hide that toy without a treat and send him to find it. Once he gets the hang of it you can have several named toys. You can alternative what he has to find to really get his brain working. We also have soft footballs in the house and play herd the ball. We taught him to lie down and watch and nudge and then grip. Enjoy

We do both. Breakfast is from the bowl and I have trained Merlin to come and sit by me after I have put his bowl down and he has a wee bit of training. He’s normally very focused on the bowl so it’s great to do a quick bit of ‘leave it and ‘watch me’ training. Lunch is split into two kongs - one after morning walk and second after afternoon training. Supper is straightforward from the bowl after which he takes his long nap while we have supper and watch some quiet tv. But this is for our pup in our house. I think do what’s right for you but sometimes a dog just wants to eat in peace and why the heck not

We rescued a dog once at this age who had already had three owners and had (before we rescued him) been kept on a chain. He was a large breed, a biter, jumped up, wouldn’t get off - basically thought he owned the place and he was huge. I mention this because we managed to turn that guy around to be a loveable non biting dog although we did keep him inside whenever the postman came! What did we do? Well you have gotten some good advice above. Consistency and patience and seeing everything through is vital! We got quite a few bites while holding our ground and in hindsight a pair of gauntlets would have helped. Focusing on proactive training for things that aren’t currently a battle ground will help you. Spend time teaching him something like ‘lie down’ and ‘leave it’. That way your goal can be that he lies down before you give him food and he leaves it until you say he can have it. When you want a dog to do ‘off’, grabbing the collar can start a battle. Look to body block instead. So if you want him off the sofa just plonk yourself next to him and shove him off confidently with the weight of your body but no eye contact. If you want him off the counter then stand next to him and move your body into the place where he is. When he moves out of the way give a matter of fact ‘good boy’ and then get on with something else. Just my two cents worth

Make sure that you keep feeding him!

Our 9 month old went from ‘curiosity but staying close’ to ‘hey - i’m Free - catch me if you can’ at about this age! We put him back on his 50’ training line and if we can see he is playing well we sometimes let the end of the line go for a bit. It’s a lot easier to grab the end of the line if we see he’s getting distracted than trying to grab a leash. I think at this age it’s inevitable. A bit like teenage kids. You can bring them up perfectly but then everything you ever taught them goes out the window (just for a few years) lol! As someone said on here yesterday. The dog you have is the dog you have today. We can get very hung up on our own aspirations

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I agree re the food. I was told that the best way for a dog to not guard food was to actually add a bit of food while the dog is eating it. That’s what we’ve done and so far it’s worked. As for two different training methods. Well a dog needs consistency but I also think that our dogs are pretty smart. In our home it’s been hard training the humans to ‘my’ way of training. To be fair they have tried really really hard but we are all human. So while we try and be consistent there are some things that we have ended up doing differently and our dog has figured this out. Now this is fine if one person says sit before you have your dinner and the other says lie down or one says ‘no’ and the other says ‘ah ah’ but there still needs to be consistency for behaviour. So it’s unfair if one person is letting a dog on the sofa if the other person then tells it off for doing so. You both need to agree ground rules as to what your dog is or isn’t allowed to do. If he’s giving a firm correction for jumping that doesn’t sound bad. You can give the same correction and the same words without making yourself hoarse. And no I don’t think it’s too much for them to learn these ground rules young. Just ensure that if the dog gets over tired from too much, he gets time for a quiet nap to take it all in

How about setting a radio alarm to kick in just after he starts howling so that when he howls the radio comes on and he can listen to that for a bit. You could even have one of those smart switches to turn it on remotely haha! Oddly our 9 month old did a howl yesterday while I was out and hubby went and did chores in another room. He’s always done a little sing song whimper when we’ve left (for about five minutes) but this time it was a wolf type howl.

Not quite lol! He’s not ‘scared’ that’s for sure but when we have had enough of his silliness and want to relax we put a piggy next to us on the sofa and say ‘the shop’s closed Merlin!’ I think it’s more a case of ‘respect the pig’ haha!

So true! I’d be super lazy if it weren’t for Merlin. And yes they are happy to be trained to do anything haha!

Super advice here and hats off to you for committing to this pup. No need to repeat the excellent comments above. I would add that when we want our pup to play outside but there are areas we have to have off limits for whatever reason we get a 50’ training line onto his harness and having clearly established how far he can run within the limit we can throw the frisby. If we mis-throw and see he might run beyond the 50’ we let the line go and then casually pick it up as he runs back. It might work to keep him away from burrs with a degree of control for you and some running around for him. A cute little game we played with a timid rescue when we first got her was ‘ooh what’s this?’ We’d crawl around looking for treats we’d hidden and when we found them we would say ‘ooh what’s this’ and flick them just ahead of her. She saw we were sharing our finds with her. You could set up cheese or sausage hunt in your yard that can be done on a long training line. Using the nose is great exercise for dogs and can be done away from burrs, cats and other disconcerting things

We taught ours to stand so as soon as we get that growling and tugging at clothes we say ‘stand’ and of course he does because he already is standing but more importantly he stops in his tracks - especially if we at the same time stand bolt upright with arms folded. We then redirect by saying ‘let’s get a toy’ or something similar.

Great idea re canned food. I over-stuffed a kong today and put too much ground flax in so it went a bit like concrete. I had to help haha! Oh yes - kibble in boxes! Our little guy loves it when we get Amazon deliveries haha!

My 9 month old gets good exercise and naps and play but sometimes he just likes to be busy in his own corner. Since he finished teething he has zero interest in a whole range of chews and bones. He does like more foodie chews like jerky or whimsies but they don’t last five minutes. He loves stuffed kongs so I mix some of his Acana kibble with things like raw egg, chopped carrot, cooked liver and grated cheese with a bit of ground flax to bind it and that takes a good half hour if I really stuff the kong well. He doesn’t like them frozen. For non food treats I have an old sail that I cut into pieces and then sew them into different shapes stuffed with plastic water bottles and stuffing saved from demolished dog toys etc. I also sew on handles and dangly bits so they make tug toys when needed or just to add interest. It takes less than five minutes to run them up on the sewing machine but they are virtually free so it doesn’t matter if he rips them up lol! Would love other ideas for busy pups

I would add to the great feedback above that sometimes we need to be a little ‘aloof’. We can do it with kindness but let her come to you and know that when she does she’ll get a fuss. As others have said it’s good that you recognise ways you could do better but if we are honest I am sure we can all admit to that!

Sweet picture Yes we frequently stretch his boundaries but sometimes have to scale back if he’s not ready. We gave him access to our dining room at several stages in his development and he wasn’t ready. Just recently he seems better able to cope with the temptations although we are always nearby. He still has to be in his crate if we go out or at night and if we are going to another part of the house to do chores. For example we have a sail to repair today and we can’t concentrate on that and adequately watch him. He would likely slink off and find some mischief haha!

I liked your post and it is food for thought for sure. I didn’t read anything other than general discussions and ideas into your original post. All good from my perspective. Before I emigrated to Canada I didn’t even know crates were a thing except for airline transportation. Dogs slept in beds and if they were puppies they were confined to the puppy proofed kitchen. Now we do use a crate and I can see advantages but I also appreciate there are alternatives. Just as an aside, my 9 month old pup loves his crate but for some weeks now he’s decided that instead of happily heading into his crate at bedtime he takes up a spot on the sofa and goes very quiet in a kind of ‘I promise to be as good as gold’ way. Lol - i’m not quite ready for that so I lead him into the crate and he settles quickly

Sounds like you are doing well and it all sounds familiar too haha! i was reassured by people on this board and also the vet who reminded me that at this stage it’s kinder to pop them in their crate to sleep - especially as they have a lot of sleeping to do! Also, once they have played and chewed and interacted for a bit they will often resort to chair legs, skirting boards and the bottom of sofas! Once they get to this stage it’s the equivalent of a toddler who’s got over tired and doesn’t want to go to bed aka nap time in the crate! Re cars, we trained our pup to ‘lie down’ as a one of his early commands. Then when cars or joggers or bicycles are coming towards us we got him to lie down and kept our foot on the leash ‘just in case’. We gave him a treat if he stayed in the lie down as they passed. He lies down automatically now. Walking near traffic is definitely ‘work’ to him so we have to let him run off pent up energy when we get home.

I agree with comment above. Just pop him in the crate and for your therapy room visitors he could perhaps get used to the fact that when they come then this is his nap time. We have a willing friend who is happy to stand with arms folded looking straight ahead until our 9 month old lies down. He eventually will even though he ‘swims’ around on the floor in excitement. But for visitors we don’t know he goes in his crate. Although we are retired now when we want to get on with chores that involve moving about he goes into his crate to switch off. It’s exhausing for them having to be ‘on the go’ all the time and ours certainly thinks that any time we are moving it must mean he has to be alert (unless he’s in his crate).

Your comments are interesting. I think the dynamic of training changes when there are multiple people in the house. Training the others around here is as much as training the pup! I taught my guy ‘strokes’ I.e. you come, you sit, I stroke you and say ‘strokes’ and call you a good boy while you sit there calmly. He seems to quite like this and it will be helpful if I get to achieving my goal as having him as a therapy dog. We are careful how we use the crate. It got over used (IMO) at Xmas when there was hyper family activity going on. Another thing we taught was ‘go to your bed’ and he gets treats if he does. THis is a good interrupter mechanism.