What are you and your dogs up to today? Part 2

[JudyN]

It didn't occur to me that they could wear down their teeth on tennis balls Jasper likes a good chomp on his, too.

He's struggling at times with his sore foot. At times he's adamant he can walk all the way to the heath, and seems to be going OK till he stands on an uneven bit of ground. Yesterday he had a little romp in the garden and ended up running on three legs. He didn't want an afternoon walk, and later, when I called him for tea, he must have cornered a bit to fast on the quarry-tiles conservatory floor and did a Bambi-on-ice impression, limbs going in all directions, which would have been hilarious if I wasn't worried about him

At least he seems better able to cope mentally with restricted exercise than when he was younger. I'm getting a sore back, though - proper brisk walks keep it in good form, but it really doesn't like slow sniff walks.

[Sanna]

Poor old Jasper- he's a bit accident prone isn't he..? My friends lurcher X lab is the same. Hope he feels better soon!

I keep meaning to post but I enjoy lurking and reading about what you guys are all up to instead, your stories tend to be better than mine these days (I must've gotten a lot better at managing my dog.. ).

P and I practised some send-aways with redirection today, in a huge field, between 3 different markers- I'm pretty chuffed as he absolutely smashed it and really enjoyed himself (I've only just started working on it again as he used to just get over-excited and lose the plot completely whenever we tried.. His impulse control still isn't exactly amazing but he's starting to grasp the idea at least!)

[JudyN]

He's Captain Sensible compared to some lurchers, Sanna (and compared to the summer he found about 6 different ways to nearly kill himself ) Well done with the sendaways - how do you train them?

I don't know if it's general lack of coordiation, but sometimes it looks like Jasper gets a tweak on his sore foot and when he lifts itt, he can't quite get the other three to coordinate to compensate and he sort of stumbles, like he's not fully in control of them all Cocking his right leg is problematic at times, and scratting is interesting - he's an enthusiastic scratter, and I can see the battle between the almost reflex instinct to scrape furrows in the ground and the bit of his brain that's going 'Ow! Ow! Ow!'

[MPbandmom]

This evening we encountered bikejorers at the battlefield.

On one hand I was quite delighted, on the other I was not impressed at all. It was a bit warm for running dogs, but not horribly so, more boarderline being on the high side of the boarder. First bikejorer was running a red sibe, who alternated between running in front and running beside or behind. The dog also seemed to not be wearing a pulling harness when I managed to get a better look. The dog was also not attached to the bike upon closer inspection, so the pulling harness was probably not necessary. Later a second bikejorer showed up running either a larger grey sibe or a smaller mal. This dog seemed to have a better idea of the job and to definitely be pulling.

My two were not amused in the least. Sky didn't do too badly, but Sirius gave OH a fit. This was especially a problem when red husky gave consideration to stopping by to say hello. With all of our ducking and dodging away from the main path, we managed to rack up 1.8 miles on a one mile trail.

Bikejorers returned to the parking lot in front of us so we took the round about way back to the van. Only to discover an additional off leash dog of herding heritage who likewise gave some consideration to coming to say hello. It took some doing as the herder was staring at Sky and Sky was staring back, but I managed to keep her calm and break her stare from time to time as I unlocked the van. Then one of the bikejorers took off back to the trail whistling for the red husky to follow. The herder also followed, and Sky wanted desperately to follow also.

Then Sirius arrived and started talking smack. I had just gotten Sky into the van, but not yet secured into her crate and she thought perhaps she should go see what kind of help Sirius needed. Fortunately OH got Sirius into the van quickly and we were able to get both dogs crated and the doors closed before the smack talk turned into a challenge for the herder to come and cure.

After the dogs were loaded, I walked over to ask how long they had been running dogs. Man with herder said he hadn't done any running as he had just arrived. Other man with husky looked away. I took that as an indication that they weren't interested in a conversation on running dogs and headed back to the van where OH was searching through his phone for the number to the park ranger to report the dogs as being off leash. He will need to enter the number the next time we are at a location with that information on the sign.

[Sanna]

He's Captain Sensible compared to some lurchers, Sanna (and compared to the summer he found about 6 different ways to nearly kill himself ) Well done with the sendaways - how do you train them?'

How did I miss the adventures of suicidal Jasper ?!

The way I've done send aways is a combination of distance control and targeting, worked on distance control first using a clicker (started with wait (stop), then progressed to sits and downs. P now has a decent wait, sit and down regardless of where he is positioned in relation to me, or coming towards/ going away from me). Then I taught him to go to a marker (I use a weave pole), much in the same way you'd teach 'on your mat' I suppose. I know many trainers use a toy for the send away but as P's not very toy driven I used food- put him in a wait, put a treat by the pole and send him 'away', then ask for a down as soon as he got there and reward that with something high value. I faded the food 'lure' out very quickly so he wouldn't just mooch around the pole looking for food, our starting distance was only around a meter and of course he quickly connected the dots and started going in a down immediately when he got to the marker (I still often put a treat out for the first or second go though, to keep his motivation high). Then it was just working on increasing distance and speed so he runs out fast and goes down straight away
Then I introduced a second identical marker and taught him to go between the two (left/ right) in the same way, and now we've added a third so I can for example send him left, then left again; or call him back and send him 'away' to any one of the three. We've worked our way up to a distance of around 30 metres now.
The next step will be to train a variety of different smaller markers I think, so eventually he'll understand that 'away' means to run out in a straight line until I tell him otherwise, regardless of whether he can see a target or not..

[JudyN]

Thank you, Sanna

[MPbandmom]

It didn't occur to me that they could wear down their teeth on tennis balls Jasper likes a good chomp on his, too.

Sky loves a good chew on a tennis ball too. At 10 years old, her teeth do show wear.

We are trying a different non routine, non emergency vet and they have a list on a bulletin board of foods that should not be given to dogs. Raw meat and bones being amongst the items listed. Since I feed raw, this did catch my attention in a not happy way. Our first visit was to check out Sky limping. No mention of diet, other than to suggest adding fish oil capsules to her food.

Second visit was to check out a couple of lumps on Sky's side. They were determined to be two more lipomas (fat deposits) although smaller than the one removed from her leg last year. Sky was starting to blow coat and I guess looked a bit unkempt. She received a rather thorough going over including asking what she ate. When I mentioned Raw, I was queried as to whether we had any problems with loose stools. I replied no and that she had been on raw 3 years. (Vet had previously mentioned what good condition she was in weight wise. ) Vet then pointed out that eating bones had resulted in two cracked incisors pointing out that they were shortened. But they are rounded shortened, not jagged shortened. Tennis balls, not bones

Dogs don't chew bones with their incisors anyway. My dogs are fed smaller sized pieces of meat, so they don't need to rip and tear to separate a chunk of meat to get a bite sized piece. Honestly this is resulting in tartar building up on her incisors because they don't get the raw diet cleaning effect that her other teeth benefit from.

[Erica]

Yeah, Delta's canines don't get a workout on raw so much; as far as I know, they're more for attacks and hunting than actually eating. Make it easier to grab whatever it is they're after. He uses his incisors on things like frozen ground meat or when he's getting meat off of a bone (or more likely, bone out of meat...can't tell you how many chicken thighs he's deboned and then ignored!), and his molars are for shearing chunks of meat off or crunching up bones.

Opal also has worn canines from playing with lots of frisbees etc, but Delta's not even two yet so I was astonished to see his canines were already blunted. I'm hoping that keeping his toys to different non-abrasive textures will be helpful for preserving them.

Ordered some raw for him today. It's tricky sometimes to keep the cost down, as he's not a fan of boneless chicken or pork (which is cheapest) and simply won't touch it if makes up the majority of his meals for too long. I hope he likes ground turkey and ground beef lung, because that makes up the bulk of his boneless meat (alongside green tripe, which he does usually enjoy).

There was (is, for two more hours) a sale at the company we order from so I obviously used the money I would have saved to order some nice bully sticks and dehydrated rabbit ears/feet from them too. Their treats always seem more authentic than other kinds, so while they're a bit more expensive, the dogs like them better and it's worth it, every now and then.

It will be nice to be able to hide my food underneath containers labelled "pig uterus" to dissuade my sister from snooping through the fridge and stealing it

[JudyN]

It will be nice to be able to hide my food underneath containers labelled "pig uterus" to dissuade my sister from snooping through the fridge and stealing it

It would be even more fun to put Delta's food in a container marked 'Erica's: do not steal'

[Nettle]

oh JUDYN!

[Fundog]

Oooh! I laughed at what Erica said, but then thought---"-wait, she would probably throw it out."

Then I read Judy's idea.

[Erica]

Hmm, uterus is weird but not so revolting if you don't know what it is. More confusing.

Green tripe, though, has a definite repulsive quality all its own...

Too bad they were sold out of rabbit heads.

[Ari_RR]

Beautiful warm spring day... So we went to a huge nature park where dogs run off leash, next town... Where my poor dear wife got knocked off her feet by a flying 1 y.o. pit bull puppy. One moment she was walking next to me, next moment she was flat on her back, hitting the ground so hard that it took her a few moments to get her breath back.
The pit bull lady ran over and was very apologetic. Hey, accidents happen.

The real lesson, though (and I didn't score any points with my wife when I stated this to her) - when walking where free running dogs are, one needs to have eyes on both sides of her head and know exactly where each dog is around. Admiring the creek or watching the birds ought to come second.

I expect some nasty looking bruises for my poor dear wife tomorrow, and quite a bit of pain and suffering.

Ari-The-Protector-Of-The-Universe was busy sniffing bushes during the entire incident, and then switched his attention to an upcoming Newfoundland. I guess I need to rethink whether he is really in tune with humans' emotions. Perhaps with mine only, he is really his Daddy's boy

[Suzette]

Sorry about your wife Ari__RR! Hope she feels better and is soon on the mend. The second day after a fall is always the worst. But at the very least, I'm glad she got an apology from the owner. In the past five years, I have been taken down twice, my dog once, and once my husband took a pretty good slam from a great dane/lab type mix, but stayed on his feet. Not one apology from any of those owners. Just a lot of this....

"Zeus get back here. Those people don't look friendly." Umm... really? I was not unfriendly to the dog. I never blame the dog. They are only as well-behaved as their owners have taken the time to teach them to be. I'm sure I looked pretty unfriendly towards the person though as I sat in the grass, brushing dirt and leaves off myself.

"Don't worry, he's just a big, friendly lovebug who doesn't know his own strength!" Yelled across the beach to me by a woman on her cell phone as I was picking myself up off the sand. At least it was a soft landing for me.

"He's never done this before. Your dog must have been sending off threatening signals." This when a Pit charged, snarling and growling around a bend in the path on a trail with dense shrubs in between us. There was no visual between the dogs, and Piper was completely silent before the attack. Luckily, there was no physical damage since I got between them pretty fast and the guy grabbed his dog away almost as quickly.

"Oh, don't mind her, she's just a puppy. She doesn't know any better yet, but she'll outgrow it." Said in a chirpy voice by the owner of an easily 70 pound "puppy" while she petted and praised her dog over and over after she had body slammed my hubby. Sigh....

To be sure I meet a lot of great folks and dogs while out with my dog, but I guess it shouldn't be surprising that very ill-behaved dogs allowed off leash in public places often come from clueless owners. Oh well, as Ari says, it pays to have eyes in the back of your head while out where dogs are running wild (er.. I mean free).

[MPbandmom]

I hope your wife doesn't feel too badly after her tumble AriRR.

Yesterday I took Sirius on a hike along the local canal path with a friend and her Sammy. Sirius got along with him just as it he had ben Sky. The plan was to arrive early and hike in the opposite direction to what most people head out from that particular parking area. Next time, we will arrive earlier.

My gps stated that we walked just over 6 miles where the two apps that my friend was using gave a total distance of over 7 miles. My suspicion is that for some reason my gps didn't register for a mile of the first couple of miles. The first time we checked distance, was a little over 2 miles out by her gps and a little over 1 mile out by mine.

For the most part, we had a really lovely walk. I observed a rather large number of red goldens out on the trail and as my dogs hate red goldens, I did a lot of distracting and dodging and Sirius did a little grumbling, but nothing really full blown. The problem came as we neared the parking lot on the way back. While I thought I had brought plenty of treats, the large number of goldens out and about had proven I was wrong. Plus there were getting to be enough people going past with dogs that stopping and treat dropping (find it) was becoming impractical if we were ever going to get back to our cars.

I usually either hold a thicker dehydrated piece of meat for Sirius to focus on trying to get a bite off of or drop little bits of food to the ground for her to find. I have learned that when her nose in engaged in sniffing, she tends to be oblivious to other things going on around her. When I stated this to my friend, she mentioned that she had noticed the same thing.

Sirius has yet to allow my friend to pet her and my friend is okay with that. My friend had a drawstring bag with dried salmon treats, and every time she went to open the bag a certain fuzzy tan head was checking out the contents with great interest. Although she did not initially take one of the treats from my friend, upon the second offereing she decided they were very tasty.

We encountered about 3 other reactive dogs which were being very well managed by their owners with moving off to the side and treating. At one point I moved Sirius off to the side treats at the ready just as approaching dog owner moved her dog off to the side and other owner was a little more prompt in handing out the treats. I was trying to conserve my remaining supply as much as possible by this point. Clearly one of us was going to have to move past the other. Since she was already treating, I headed on along with Sirius.