Positively | Victoria Stilwell | Forum

Got it. Thanks, both of y'all, for the advice. It might be another few weeks before we get him, but I'm sure I'll be back here pretty quickly once we do.

If he stayed in his house, he'd be alone overnight and for a couple of stretches during the day, probably no longer than 2 hours at a time. (I know that's not ideal for his SA, but he's usually alone between 7 and 4, so it's an improvement.) I'm not in favor of this option—like you said, Judy, it's ...

Hi everyone, This next month, I'll be taking care of my neighbor's 8mo Cesky Terrier. (Neighbor's in the coast guard and had to deploy to Miami for a month for hurricane relief.) Her dog, Gaston, is absolutely lovely and has daily play dates with my 1.5yo lab mix, Gypsy. Gaston's only flaw (besides ...

Hello everyone, and thanks again for all your help with Gypsy to date. I'm here today with a new training hurdle. My partner is allergic to dog hair, and with Gypsy's long hair we've decided just to keep the dog off of all our furniture. (It's not a bad allergy--she just can't pet the dog and then t...

Sorry for the late reply! I could have sworn I posted my gratitude a few days ago--guess not :oops: She is still growing and might there be a little soreness with her hips? Nettle, I think that's spot on. I had to scale back the amount I'm feeding her after I noticed her starting to get a hitch in h...

Hello again, My pup, Gypsy, has been a new dog since I started training her with the positive-reinforcement techniques I found here. I really can't thank y'all enough! She's responded incredibly well to clicker training, and now that I'm armed with this forum and a couple of Karen Pryor books, I'm e...

So today I noticed a patch of silver/white hairs growing on the underside of Gypsy's tail. Her tail, like most of her body, is solid black. (I'd attach a picture if I could figure out how to do it on here.) For whatever it's worth, Gypsy does have some white patches--namely, on her chest, under her ...

She's about six months old--six and a half, if you want to be precise about it--and has all of her adult teeth. The teething period when she was losing baby teeth/having her adult teeth come in was pretty rough for her, but she seems to be past it now. The adult teeth are still getting bigger though...

Update: She ate a few bites from her dinner bowl! Probably only a third of what I put down for her, but that's still better than nothing. Judy, she seemed startled by the noise from the collar tags when she was younger, so my practice has been to take her collar off before feeding. She has to go thr...

Where are you feeding her? I've fed her in her crate from day one, but during this little episode have tried feeding her outside of the crate as well. No success either way. could you feed her out of something else? I've tried feeding her out of a kong, but she loses interest before she eats anywhe...

Hello again, My pup Gypsy, an anxious but lovely 6mo lab mix, has decided that she will no longer be eating out of her bowl. I think this is a stress-related issue, and I would welcome any comments or suggestions on how to handle this. I feed her dry kibbles twice a day, and she usually eats roughly...

I wonder if a harness be a good investment? Amazon should be delivering it tomorrow! I forget the name, but it's a highly adjustable back-snapping (or back-clasping or whatever the term is) model that I saw emmabeth recommend on a thread about harnesses. It's not an Easy Walk. (Edit: I just had to ...

Ok, gotcha. Hopefully Gypsy will learn that too, shortly enough. I hope you're right about this just being a phase--Gypsy has been so wonderful (and still is so wonderful 95+% of the time), and I hate to see her get so distressed about day-to-day occurrences. She might always be perturbed by some th...

Ok, got it. Keep working on ensuring enough distance that she doesn't panic (I know it won't work all the time but you can only do your best), and allow her to walk away - not run, and not back home. Once we started moving away (but before the noise) she was in something of a "scurry"--not...

Ok, so today I had an opportunity to try out "strangers = treats", and I couldn't get Gypsy to take the treats (and I was carrying hot dogs & cheese, which she goes absolutely wild for). Here's what happened: I was taking her on one of our four(ish) daily walks around the apartment com...