Desperately Need Help With Walking My Ponies

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twobigdogs
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jun 19, 2011 8:26 pm

Desperately Need Help With Walking My Ponies

Post by twobigdogs »

My husband and I just finished watching the episode with Dakota and I think it was very eye opening for my husband. He was more like the husband on the episode than he wanted to admit. Let me give you a little background....

We adopted two dogs that had been abandoned at my work (close to many horse farms). However, we were not aware of how big they were going to become. We now have two small ponies - German Short Haired pointer/Great Dane mix. We were completely unaware of what we were getting into, but I fell in love and could not imagine giving them up by the time we realized what they were. There was some obvious abuse before we took them in and we have had to learn the hard way what upsets them (i.e. excessive salivating, extreme hair loss, etc).

What I am most interested in is the harness leash for training. We have tried the choke collars for almost two years and Max still pulls. My husband almost lifts him off of his front legs to try and stop him. It just makes me cringe. When other dogs pass Max, he pretty much ignores them and if a dog approaches him aggressively, he sits. Ruby on the other hand is an EXCELLENT walker ...... until you see another dog. She is 100 pounds of unwanted protection. She has never pulled me to the ground before, but I have lost my footing a couple of times. I try to notice when another dog is coming and cross to the other side. She is big enough that if she REALLY wanted to get to the other side of the road, I would only be along for the ride. I have tried getting her to sit before the dog comes too close on the other side of the road. Her reactions have only become worse the more we go out.

(On a side note, I have also noticed that she has become even more protective at home. When I have friends over and they have not been over MULTIPLE TIMES, Ruby becomes agitated. The closer someone gets to me the more agitated she becomes. If someone touches me, she starts barking and growling. We have had to put her in her crate and cover it several times now. We have had the dogs for about two years now and this has only started within the past year and has gotten progressively worse.)

So I obviously have two different dogs with two different problems. I just purchased the only harness leash that I could find at PetSmart, but it does not look exactly like the ones depicted here. Does it matter?

Also, is a harness going to help me with Ruby at all. The lady at PetSmart said that I should use the head halter. It looks just AWFUL to me, but I am not a dog trainer.

Thank you so much for your advice ahead of time!!!!!
MissCarla
Posts: 181
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:17 am

Re: Desperately Need Help With Walking My Ponies

Post by MissCarla »

I too have a 100+ pound dog, and I use the head halter/regular harness combo with a double ended leash. It will not stop them from pulling and nothing will replace training, but it will give you more control. My dog did not take long to adjust to the head halter, but yours may be different. It seemed to me once he started associating head halter = walk, he fought it less.

It will be a lot easier to train them to walk nicely separately, that way all the focus is on you and not the other dog or your husband.

Get rid of the choke chain, it absolutely will not stop the pulling as you surely know by now and it can cause a lot of internal damage to your dogs.

What is their daily routine as far as exercise and food?

BTW Max and Ruby are very cute names! Are they named after the rabbits on TV? :)
twobigdogs
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Jun 19, 2011 8:26 pm

Re: Desperately Need Help With Walking My Ponies

Post by twobigdogs »

MissCarla wrote:I too have a 100+ pound dog, and I use the head halter/regular harness combo with a double ended leash. It will not stop them from pulling and nothing will replace training, but it will give you more control. My dog did not take long to adjust to the head halter, but yours may be different. It seemed to me once he started associating head halter = walk, he fought it less.

First, I am looking for a double ended leash, but can not find one. Where did you get yours?
MissCarla wrote:What is their daily routine as far as exercise and food?

They wake up long enough to eat and get let out. They are pretty much back to sleep in their crate before I am out the door. I have to admit that they are then in the crate for about 8 hours. When we get home, they are walked about half an hour to an hour a day. Then they go out in the backyard SEPARATELY(whole other issue) in the evenings. If you close your eyes, Ruby sounds like a race horse. To quote Victoria - She has to get her crazies out. Max just wanders the backyard and only occasionally has a good hyper run. My oldest daughter also runs cross country. She does take Ruby on runs with her (for her safety and Mommy's sanity). She is getting frustrated with Ruby though. Max and Ruby eat Rachel Ray's beef Nutrish (Max is a Rachel Ray snob) twice a day - 2 cups in the morning and 2 cups in the evening. This amount seems to maintain Ruby's weight, but Max seems to be putting on a little weight and I may cut back on his food a little.
MissCarla wrote:BTW Max and Ruby are very cute names! Are they named after the rabbits on TV? :)

According to the doctor, they appear to be litter mates. My youngest son and daughter grew up on the Max and Ruby show. It seemed very appropriate to them to name the dogs after the characters in the show. They had no idea at that time that Ruby really would be the BIG sister. I would say that she stands about 3 - 4 inches taller than Max.
emmabeth
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Re: Desperately Need Help With Walking My Ponies

Post by emmabeth »

Why are they crated, will they trash the house?

Are they crated seperately or in the same crate together - I would really not recommend crating dogs together its such a recipe for an accident really.

Is it not possible for someone to come home at lunchtime, or to pay someone to come in midday, and let them out to toilet, leg stretch etc for half an hour or so?

You know they are not getting enough physical exercise and I'll address that in a moment, but mental exercise - brain training, are they getting any of this at all?

I would - crate them seperately if they are not already crated seperately.
Give them their meals either mostly or entirely, from food dispensing toys such as Kongs - that means instead of a few minutes inhaling their meals, they will take 20 minutes or more (depending how many Kongs, how you stuff them etc) to eat their food, t hats twenty minutes of WORK. If they get good at de-stuffing the toys then you can cram food in and freeze it and give it frozen, you can melt a little cheese into kibble and let that set, there are any number of ways of making kong type toys harder to do, and thus more satisfying and more work, and more tiring for the dog.

Have someone come in and let them out midday. Perhaps when they put them away again they couild give each dog another kong containing more of their meal portions.

In the evenings when you come home - one person can take one dog outside and work out there, the other can work indoors. Use their remaining food and a few treats (vary it so they dont know, is it normal food, is it a treat?? keeps them guessing), and do some training. Ideally clicker training as this really gets a dog thinking - check out the thread in the articles section or the link in the 'useful links' thread.

Exercise - twice a day, every day, morning and night. At weekends have them out several times a day for just 10 minute 'walking on a loose leash' practice.

Look online for a 'double ended training lead' such as this store here https://ahimsadogtraining.com/store/pro ... d=MCH-0165 (thats just the first one i came across, there will be others) whcih helpfully has a video that demonstrates its use iwth headcollars and harnesses.

Given these are BIG dogs, you need to practice loose leash walking with one person per dog, OR walk them seperately. You really will not achieve this attempting to walk two dogs to one person, nor is it something you can easily do whilst doing something else (ie, running).

I would use a headcollar, but use it with care - the dog must NOT be able to lunge into the headcollar, it is not there to stop sudden lunges, so you fix the other end to a harness and hold the leash in such a way that there is less slack in the harness end and more in the headcollar end (I actually use two leashes, a fine brightly coloured one for the headcollar and a thicker darker one for the harness so i can feel without looking, whcih is which, and see very quickly when I look).

This way, when the dog lunges, if you missed the signs and didnt get control before it could happen, the dog will FIRST feel the leash tighten on the harness NOT the headcollar, and then you can regain control with the headcollar. If the dog lunges and hits the headcollar first you do risk neck damage.

There are a lot of different headcollar designs around and you might need to try a few on and see how they fit before deciding on one. The main flaws, which vary depending on a dogs headshape, are that they can ride up into the eyes, or twist around, or the dog can flick them off easily (though I think your dogs will have the ideal headshape for most makes actually).

Anyway once you have the harness/lead/headcollar combination sorted out, head out for a walk but at first try to avoid places with lots of other dogs or other distractions - forget completeing a set loop or going to a particular place, just focus on spending five, ten, twenty minutes, walking with your dog and rewarding your dog for walkign WITH you, rather than dragging you around. You might find at first you can only concentrate and keep up the rewarding and attention for ten minutes, but that IS ok - its HARD work for both of you and its actually much harder work for the dog to concentrate and work WITH you for ten minutes, than it is to drag you around for half an hour!

Thats enough to be going on with, but see how you get on with that and let us know about any issues/questions/problems that crop up.
West Midlands based 1-2-1 Training & Behaviour Canine Consultant
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Mattie
Posts: 5872
Joined: Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:21 am

Re: Desperately Need Help With Walking My Ponies

Post by Mattie »

twobigdogs wrote:We adopted two dogs that had been abandoned at my work (close to many horse farms). However, we were not aware of how big they were going to become. We now have two small ponies - German Short Haired pointer/Great Dane mix. We were completely unaware of what we were getting into, but I fell in love and could not imagine giving them up by the time we realized what they were. There was some obvious abuse before we took them in and we have had to learn the hard way what upsets them (i.e. excessive salivating, extreme hair loss, etc).

What I am most interested in is the harness leash for training. We have tried the choke collars for almost two years and Max still pulls. My husband almost lifts him off of his front legs to try and stop him. It just makes me cringe.
I have never known a choke collar to stop a dog from pulling, most of the dogs I see with them on sound like they are choking.
When other dogs pass Max, he pretty much ignores them and if a dog approaches him aggressively, he sits. Ruby on the other hand is an EXCELLENT walker ...... until you see another dog. She is 100 pounds of unwanted protection. She has never pulled me to the ground before, but I have lost my footing a couple of times. I try to notice when another dog is coming and cross to the other side. She is big enough that if she REALLY wanted to get to the other side of the road, I would only be along for the ride. I have tried getting her to sit before the dog comes too close on the other side of the road. Her reactions have only become worse the more we go out.
Can you give more information please? your dog's body language when they see another dog, etc. It is normal for this behaviour to get worse them more the dog does it, they are rewarding themselves by thinking that they have chased the other dog away, they don't realise that the dog was going away anyway.
(On a side note, I have also noticed that she has become even more protective at home. When I have friends over and they have not been over MULTIPLE TIMES, Ruby becomes agitated. The closer someone gets to me the more agitated she becomes. If someone touches me, she starts barking and growling. We have had to put her in her crate and cover it several times now. We have had the dogs for about two years now and this has only started within the past year and has gotten progressively worse.)
Do a search for Ladybug's early posts with her dog Dylan, it will give you an idea of the sort of things to do and see that dogs can improve with the right handling. Then ask as many questions as you want.
So I obviously have two different dogs with two different problems. I just purchased the only harness leash that I could find at PetSmart, but it does not look exactly like the ones depicted here. Does it matter?
Do you mean a double ended lead? These have a clip at both ends with D rings in several places.
Also, is a harness going to help me with Ruby at all. The lady at PetSmart said that I should use the head halter. It looks just AWFUL to me, but I am not a dog trainer.

Thank you so much for your advice ahead of time!!!!!
The only way to teach a dog to walk on a loose lead is training, if you go to viewtopic.php?f=20&t=858 it will tell you how to get your dogs to walk on a loose lead. You will be walking up and down the same small area of pavement at first untill your dog gets the idea. They need to be taught seperately until they can do it. Several short sessions a dog is much better and they will learn quicker.

Head halters can help but they must be used properly, they should never be used on their own but with a harness or collar with a double ended lead or 2 leads. You walk your dog on the harness/collar, harnesses are much better as they help control the body, you only bring the head halter into use when you need the extra control. There is very little information about the use of these, used on their own a dog can still leap about as only the head is controlled, a friend saw a Dalmation break his neck because a lead was on this and he was able to leap about, with a harness as well, a dog can't leap about the same.
[url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Nethertumbleweed/PIXIE.jpg][img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Nethertumbleweed/th_PIXIE.jpg[/img][/url]
ladybug1802
Posts: 1991
Joined: Mon Sep 06, 2010 3:39 am
Location: Surrey

Re: Desperately Need Help With Walking My Ponies

Post by ladybug1802 »

[quote="Mattie]Do a search for Ladybug's early posts with her dog Dylan, it will give you an idea of the sort of things to do and see that dogs can improve with the right handling. Then ask as many questions as you want.
.[/quote]

Hi! My dog Dylan was fine when I first got him with people coming to the house....he was apprix 6-8 months, would let anyone come in, and stroke him and was 'fine'.....although more imp0ortantly he probably wasnt 'fine' and was just putting up with it, because he maybe didnt feel big and strong enough to 'fight back' at that stage. he slowlty started getting worse after maybe 6 months or so....and would lunge and snap at people when they came in.

Without going into it all again, as as Mattie says you can go and search for my posts, now when people come in I have worked out he is far better when he cant actually see them come in. I used to have him go in his crate when the doorbell rang, but qwould leave one end uncovered so he could see. It worked OK but mainly i think because the people who came in were people he had met before so he wasnt so stressed....but when someone comes in her doesnt know he totally freaks out and gets so stressed, and barks like a maniac. Now I either shut him in the kitchen or cover the front of his crate over as well......he calms down a LOT faster. Then I will either open the kitchen door after maybe 20 mins or so and bring him in on lead, get him sat next to me on his bed and treat him for a bit. or open the kitchen door and have a baby gate across for a while, or if he is in his crate, lift the front cover up for a while.

All I can say is the more you try and force your dogs to 'put up' with things and get them 'used to it' the worse they will probably get. I tried that and Dylan got more and more stressed....as did I!!!
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