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AdmiralGonsiorowski

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  1. Do you keep a long line or leash on him when you are out walking? If so, you can ask for his attention only when you are fairly certain he'll come. If he doesn't come, you can give him a tug to get him started back to you. That way, it becomes habitual for him to come to you everytime you call him, period. I use two different recall commands. I'm not sure if that's reccomended by others, but it works well for us. If I'm just asking for him to come along, I'll whistle, or say 'come' or 'come on'. He may or may not get a treat for that. But I've trained the command 'NOW' to be sort of an emergency recall. It always gets the highest value treat, and I use it very sparingly. It didn't take long for him to start spinning and dashing to me for that command. If you want to do some good training with distractions and such, the book "Control Unleashed" has a lot of methods for helping dogs focus and keep interested in you, rather than the environment.
  2. niccru, the way I broke Ski from being excessively nippy when he was smaller, was to pick him up and dump him into the designated dog-chair. It worked wonders on him, and was therapeutic for me, lol. No pain inflicted on the puppy, but it is very satisfying to take the sharp annoying teeth and toss them somewhere that is far away from your ankles. He would jump out, then run right back over to me to nip again, and get dumped again. After a handful of time, he stopped. Completely. Forever. He hasn't nipped my ankles since, outside or in. Now that he's too big to conveniently toss, I've taught him a 'chair' command using clicker training, and he will happily break off any annoying behavior to run and jump into it. I've used correction and punishment on dogs plenty of times, and it works as well as anything else on the right dogs. On Ski, it made him untrusting, frustrated, and unwilling to work with me. Kristine's advice on positive training made a huge difference in teaching my dog to respect me and respond promptly and consistently to commands.
  3. Here is an site with a lot of information about all the different Border Collie color varieties, the names of the colors, pictures of dogs, and some stuff about genetics. Very cool. They've got the 'Australian Red' seperate from the chocolate red. http://www.gis.net/~shepdog/BC_Museum/Perm...h/BC_Looks.html
  4. Kristine, I would love some more information on how you taught Dean to jump and hug on cue. I think Ski would take to that very well. You say Dean knows 'off' for people who don't like the hugs, how did you train that? Ailsa, I'll have to try that book reading thing next time I go on a walk. It sounds like a good habit to build for him. We don't get a lot of visitors at our home ( a grand total of 1 since we've had Ski), so most of our experiences with meeting other people comes from walks and trips to Petco. Since I take him to Petco every Saturday for the puppy playtime seminar, I may ask the trainer to help me teach him. It's hard for me to tell people I don't know how to interact with my dog, especially when I'm not 100% sure what they should be doing, but that's my hangup, not his. Thanks JBlaylock. The plotty look in his eyes scares me.
  5. Ski has made a lot of progress in behavior since we first started using positive training techniques. He has some nice default behaviors, sitting if he wants something, and lying down if he REALLY wants something. And rolling over for good measure sometimes. He'll do these things first whenever we start a training session, when he wants to go outside, and when we feed him. But whenever we are walking, or playing in the yard, and a brand new person enters the scene, he seems to think the appropriate behavior is to runrunrun to them and jumplickrolloversquirm all over them. The jumping is especially worrisome, since he'll do it to kids and little old ladies alike. He loves meeting people, more than anything else, including cheese. And I have NO idea how to start working on this. If he was anxious or frightened, I could work with that, but this boundless enthusiasm has me stuck. He doesn't lose his head completely, but people walking by him is like having a great juicy steak sitting on a 3-foot tall table right in front of him, it's just too tempting not to go for it. I'm not sure how to dial down the intensity of the encounter to start building the proper behaviour. One thing we are doing is making sure he follows proper behavior when greeting us. He has to sit and/or lie down before we will release him to slobber all over us. That seems to be working well so far, but I'm not sure how to take that to the next step, to build up to the meeting random people on walks scenario. Any ideas? In the meantime, if there's a better way to manage new people encounters than just holding his leash while he pulls towards them, please share.
  6. Does anyone have any links to studies about this? Or articles from vets? I've heard often that you shouldn't over-exercise a puppy, but I've never seen anything official on the subject, or anything official about how much (and what type of) exercise is acceptable. I've found one article that connects increased physical activity (even before growth plates close) with greater bone mass, and lower risk of fractures later in life, but isn't specific to dogs and so doesn't mention anything about hip dysplasia. http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/71/6/1384.pdf
  7. I know one way to manage ticks if you live on a farm, or have a fenced in area, is to buy a flock of guinea fowl. They tend to roam, but they are absolutely excellent at eating up ticks. It won't keep all the ticks off your dog, but it will drastically cut down the ticks in the areas you let them feed.
  8. Name: Admiral Gonsiourowski Nicknames: YouRidiculousAnimal, Damnitdog, Crocodile Ninja, and Ski (by order of use)
  9. Julie, thank you for laying all that out for me, it really helps. I hadn't really thought that I could turn down the other vaccines and just take the required rabies. I wish my county would allow for 3-year rabies vaccines, but it does make me feel a lot better that I can just turn down the other vaccines if I decide to, without legal risk. Karen, Melanie, the links are much appreciated. Thanks!
  10. Actually, it's all kind of moot at this point. I called the animal shelter to ask what the requirements of the county are regarding rabies vaccine, and they say it's every year. So the vet doesn't really have a choice. I am still wondering about the actual shot. Is there an actual 1 year shot, or is it just one type of shot, and you either give it yearly or every 3 years?
  11. This is this thing that worries me most, is that the vet may give a 3-year vaccine yearly. It seems like it may insult his ability to do his job if I ask about it though.
  12. Thanks for the information, everyone. I think maybe I'll mention this to the receptionist when I call for the appointment, since the first chance I get to actually see the vet during the exam is usually when he's about to stick Ski. And Jack & Co, thanks for pointing out that thread in H&G. I actually missed it because I wasn't paying attention to the pinned topics, lol.
  13. Moose!, Ski also had a really bad habit of jumping and biting our feet when we wanted to walk him, but it's gotten a lot better as his attitude towards us has improved. One thing I've done that I think has helped more than anything is investing in a 50ft rope. I don't walk him on it all the time, but I do take it to the park, so he can explore and learn about things around him. So he gets 50ft of leeway, which he usually doesn't use completely, and if he does get hung up, I can just look back at him, tug the rope, and he comes flying to catch up. The benefit of this has been that he doesn't see walking as a restriction, so he doesn't fight the leash, or me, or my feet. It gives him the freedom to move, and find other, more normal things to be interested by than my legs. If he does happen to decide that it's bite the leg time, I hold his leash out far enough that he can't get to me, and wait for him to get bored and give up. When he does, I give him something more fun to do; toss a ball or frisbee, or just take a break to play wrestle with him and get the energy out. It's mostly just management of the puppy behavior, so that he doesn't develop it as a permanent bad habit.
  14. amylobdell24, should I let the vet know I prefer to get a three year shot when I'm setting up the appointment? I don't know how it works, but it seems like maybe he would need some advance warning, if a different vaccination is needed.
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