mini schnauzer owners SOS!!!

[scoobydoo01]

Hi to all, I have spent the last 20 or so years with corgis. I now have a gorgeous pepper and salt mini called Lucy. She is a very well tempered young lady of 12 months, BUT she chews and chews, my bed legs, my rugs, curtains. what I would like to find out is will she grow out of this, or am I doomed to have a lot of very used looking furniture?

[Mattie]

Hi, Welcome to the forum, please can you give us a run down of her normal day, include exercise, training, playing, food etc. The more information you give the better we can help, we love long posts.

[scoobydoo01]

Hi, Lucy is fed twice daily, we feed her Advance dry food, and wet food mixed with it, she does not get fed table scraps. She is fully immunised and up to date with worming.We have to leave her in the house while we are at work,as we are worried that someone may take her while we are away We walk her daily for around 40 - 45 mins in the afternoons, as we both work. She has heaps of chew toys and we also give her Pedigree "denta stix" for her teeth. She has been de sexed at 6 months, but we find her to be quite dominant. She will try to hump the wifes leg, but only when she wears a certain dressing gown!!I have spoken with our Vet about this, and he is monitoring this behaviour.He is looking at checking her hormone levels when she goes back for immunisatoin in July. We have taken her to Puppy Classes, and she will sit,drop,stay, but she tends to not want to come when called,although she will come if you click and reward her. We play with her as much as we can. Do you think it would be a good idea to get her a playmate. she is very well socialised with other dogs, and people too, but she will submit to larger dogs. She sleeps in her own crate at night and is not a problem.I think she chews things probably out of boredom, but she has done a fair bit of damage. We use a Chilli spray as a deterrant on rugs etc.
Hope this gives you a little insight and you can offer a little advice

Alan

[Mattie]

Hi, Lucy is fed twice daily, we feed her Advance dry food, and wet food mixed with it, she does not get fed table scraps. She is fully immunised and up to date with worming.We have to leave her in the house while we are at work,as we are worried that someone may take her while we are away

Far too many dogs are being stolen these days, I always leave my dogs inside when I have to leave them. How long is she on her own for?

We walk her daily for around 40 - 45 mins in the afternoons, as we both work.

She needs a lot more exercise than this, if you can give her a walk before you go to work, it will mean getting up earlier but she will benefit from being tired when you go to work so she may sleep instead of chew.

She has heaps of chew toys and we also give her Pedigree "denta stix" for her teeth.

I would give her breakfast in buster cubes or Kongs, she will have to work for the food which will help with the boredom. There are recipies on here if you do a search for the Kong, then you freeze them, it takes a lot more work to get the food out of a frozen Kong.

She has been de sexed at 6 months, but we find her to be quite dominant. She will try to hump the wifes leg, but only when she wears a certain dressing gown!!I have spoken with our Vet about this, and he is monitoring this behaviour.He is looking at checking her hormone levels when she goes back for immunisatoin in July.

I hate early neutering, it can cause a lot of behaviour problems with dogs, I took a dog on last January who is locked in his puppy hood but has an adult body. It doesn't happen to every dog but more than enough to question early neutering. She is done and I suspect you did it on advice so you haven't done anything wrong. There are lots of threads on here about neutering, well worth looking at the links in them.

Humping is not dominance, it can be many things, ever excited, stress, etc. As it is just one dressing gown there must be something on there that is causing this, I would get rid of it, treat your wife to another one as a surprised gift

We have taken her to Puppy Classes, and she will sit,drop,stay, but she tends to not want to come when called,although she will come if you click and reward her.

Have a look at viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7155 it works and you always have control of her, my new dog Cyril still has a long line on but drags it along the ground, I can still get him even when he ignores me, he is usually concentrating too much on a small.

We play with her as much as we can.

Play mind games with her, do a search on here for them there are quite a few, these will help tire her out as they will be exercising her brain.

Do you think it would be a good idea to get her a playmate. she is very well socialised with other dogs, and people too, but she will submit to larger dogs. She sleeps in her own crate at night and is not a problem.I think she chews things probably out of boredom, but she has done a fair bit of damage. We use a Chilli spray as a deterrant on rugs etc.
Hope this gives you a little insight and you can offer a little advice

Alan

The chilli spray will stop her but won't cure her, the reason for her chewing is still there, you need to get rid of the reason why she is chewing. I think you are right it is boredom, increase her exercise both physical and mental, make her work for her breakfast with Kongs and Buster cubes and the chances of her stopping the chewing is high.

I don't think it is a good idea to get another dog yet, you need to sort her problems out first then consider another dog. Dogs do pick up bad habits from each other.

Stay with us and keep us up to date with her, sometimes advice needs to be tweeked to suit your dog, we can help with that if it does need it.

[scoobydoo01]

It is very hard to walk her in the mornings as we both start work at 5am, and we leave home at 415 ish. We do walk her twice a day on weekends and we also try to take her to an off leash area when we can. unfortunately, she is alone for around 5-6 hrs Monday to Thursday.The wife is home on Fridays, so I will get her to walk her in the mornings as well. The breeder we got her from said that 6 months is an ideal age for neutering, so we did it at 6 mths We have a kong that we stuff for her before we go to work, but we do not freeze it. we were looking at getting her into agility/flyball sessions when we can to mentally stimulate her. She learns things that she wants to learn very quickly, but can be quite headstrong when she chooses

[Mattie]

We have been brainwashed by the rescues to neuter young, now a lot of problems have developed because of it. The rescue say it will stop unwanted puppies, these days the majority of unwanted dogs are teenagers and the pounds and rescues are overflowing. I can remember when I was all for early neutering until I adopted a dog that never matured, she had a stroke at 17.5 years old, she still had a puppy brain. Early neutering hasn't helped. We get a lot of problems on here with dogs that were neutered early, at least you did wait until he was 6 months old, rescues are now doing it at 6/8 weeks old.

Even 10 minutes round the block first thing will help, I know it is difficult at times to do what is needed.

Do a search for recipies for Kongs, they will help because they will take longer for him to get through them.

[Nettle]

Can you and your wife do the early walk turn and turn about so the other can have a precious half-hour more in bed?

This isn't for ever: it's just while your dog is so young and needy. It's all over with quicker than with children

The chewing is partly boredom and partly because she has to chew. It's part of her development. So during this phase, which is quite a long one, protecting vulnerable items goes hand in glove with giving her plenty of safe things to chew. Big cardboard boxes, large whole green vegetables, deer antler - that sort of thing.

She isn't humping from dominance: it may be frustration or excitement or boredom....but it won't ever be dominance, because dogs don't behave that way towards humans. Save your money and forget the hormone test because this is nothing to do with sex hormones although it may well show stress hormones - and you know that already.