The dog musing/vent thread

That's the $64,000 question.

With Recon, I did a ton of LAT training to not only build a chained behavior of seeing something and looking at me, but a positive association with those things being near him.

He's two. I've had him since he was a puppy at 7 weeks. I can say that it's been a behavior of his since about 6-9 mos. I've only had a firm grasp on seeing these things coming for the last 6 months or so. Before that I was hair doing a lot of LAT around the house for everything, causally. It got worse before it got better because then he started guarding spaces for more food.

My point is, it might be something that with time you begin to be able I notice as the build up gets more obvious, so that you can redirect (I use a place for this) or prevent.

One thing that made it worse, was, go figure... Correcting him for it. I just prevented him from being able to make those decisions for a while to reset his little peanut brain.

We've been doing LAT from the beginning, I can't tell if it has helped. He'll go a week without reacting to anything and then do it three times in one day. There is no way to keep his stress level down by eliminating triggers either, since I haven't identified them all and at least one appears to occur in the absence of any recognizable stimulus.

Since he usually looks relaxed and happy right up until he fires, I can never be certain he is truly relaxed and happy. Maybe he never is.

Came across a website calling Australian Shepherd x Miniature Schnauzers: Miniature Schnauzzis. Have to admit I like the name. opcorn:

*Think* a rescue may be falling in to place for a Lab pup at a kill shelter. *crosses fingers* May have a new foster soon...Gosh, I hope they can get him out and that he's a good dog. I'd hate to do all of this just to bring him home and have him be a sketchy dog.

So the rescue I volunteer for got a transport of 18 dogs yesterday from California. And one of them is a pocket-sized red heeler named Brooklyn. And she is incredibly sweet and reminds me a lot of Fable. AND she is potentially pregnant. *dies* I will post a picture later.

I know what I want for my next dog. Already found a wonderful breeder, been approved, met her dogs, gone to a show with her and met more dogs, etc.

But darned if I don't REALLY want to rescue a senior Brittany. Someday.

I mean, look at this face.http://nbran.org/searchdetails2.asp?ID=7822904 And I adored Rowan's foster mom's 14 year old. They're just lovely.

Well there's a breeding idea for you!

I have been looking for Juno's CGC certificate for MONTHS. I know you can just have a new one sent to you but I was bound and determined to find it; I save everything, and refused to believe that this was the one thing of mine that would get thrown away, even by accident.

I found it tonight. It's more beautiful than I remember it

Today is Eve's 8th birthday! For her birthday I'll be at work collecting overtime pay, so maybe she can have a toy someday lol.

8, though. wtf.

Had an excellent weight pull training session with Rhys yesterday. He's slowly coming together!

Simba and Chomper both have balls still, it must be possible somehow! :rofl1:




Also, should save money for move....but feel like some needs to be invested into another MAS puppy. Oh, how my bad decisions usually win. opcorn:

If all goes as planned and we get a house soon, there will be a little Australian pointy barky thing joining our family in 2017. Excited

Hank is ridiculous in good and bad ways.

Mostly I'm impressed at the speed he can learn things at. I'm talking 3-4 new tricks per session. It's amazing. He already knows almost everything Mia an summer knows. And he's better at it than them.

Sadly he's not that intuitive and can't figure out how to not snuggle in an obnoxious jerk manner.

But he's so fun to play with.

Can you believe I've had him two months already?

Also I have GOT to get a video of the way he shrieks. It's unbelievable.

Pvybe seminar = seriously awesome.

So I am not sure which dog did this but it is cracking me up. I think it was Hank.

So Hank has destroyed his dog bed over time. Just shreds it up. I replaced it, same thing.

Last night sometime one of the dogs took Hank's shredded bed out of his crate and replaced it with Mia's nice new bed. Hank's old torn up bed is where Mia's bed was and Mia's bed now resides in Hank's crate.

There's a litter of rescue puppies, ready for adoption next month. 18 hours of driving away from me. I won't say what they are but **** they're some cute pups, being kept in a foster home.

I emailed about them. What am I doing?! Why can I never like the pups in rescues close to me (Astro was a train ride and a long car drive away when I picked him up)?

Omg, your dogs are awesome! :rofl1:

Bye-bye to Lily's amazing Paco leash.
Scout had an anxiety attack while I was volunteering at the tracking test on Sunday and ate all every bit of it except the square inch the handle rivet was on.
She barfed up all the shreds of it last night and this afternoon... only part not accounted for is the bolt snap... hopefully it passes. I couldn't find it anywhere so she must've eaten it. If she barfs again tomorrow I'll talk to them about whether we need to xray or not. When I talked to them last night they just said to keep an eye on her.
I know exactly what triggers were stacked to cause it... but sometimes humans have to go do things in the world! I would've taken them, but Scout would have barked like an asshole the whole time in the crate because reactive plug frustration at not being the one working, so... yeah.

Lily was so disgusted. Just the stink eye she gave Scout, omg... Super good girl needs a solo run when I can arrange someone to sit with Scout.
Also smart dog is smart. We worked on scent article discrimination this morning and Lily aced everything I threw at her.
We couldn't afford entry this time, but we are so going to ace our TD in April if we're lucky enough to get a spot. There are only going to be two spots next time as its mostly TDX's so if the people who passed this time want to go on.

I hope I can afford to take advantage of Paco's black friday sale. Sigh, alas probably going to vet bills.

Even if she does okay passing the bolt snap (fingers super duper crossed we don't have to do surgery!!), I want to try a 3-4 month stint on a medium dose of clomipramine to see what happens. I didn't notice any pros or cons to it last time, but it was a very low dose. Everything else I have in place works really well. Not happy the fact that I did notice higher stress/anxiety when I had to go back to grain free kibble from raw, but kinda not something that could be helped. At least she hasn't had any overt digestion issues, just seems more wired and anxious on kibble.

Whew!

They replied. So much info on the mama dog (non reactive, friendly, stable, calm, good with dogs and cats) and pups (which is the shyest, which is the most independent, which is the laziest, etc). They were very forthright that one of the pups seems mildly fearful and will need more work, and that one of them is a downright spitfire who isn't afraid of anything.

I applied. No commitment yet, so I'm not going to get all excited and make a new big thread and post pics/reveal the breed, buuuuut...it could happen.

What am I doing?!