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Soggy
In the last 24 hours, we've had 8cm of rain, and it's not due to let up until close to midnight. It is rather unpleasant, but the ducks are happy with their newly acquired water-feature:
The boys, being stuck in their stables, are less happy, poor things. Bob is perfectly happy, as long as I don't make him go outside: I had enough trouble getting him to the stableyard this morning that I don't think I'll bother with a walk. Instead, I'm going to be mostly curled up on the sofa with my new quilt, which I finished off over the weekend:
We had visitors over the weekend, which was nice but tiring. Bob got a bit over-stimulated when so many people kept arriving, and spent an hour or so barking and growling at the last person through the door (but only when he stood up; Bob was perfectly happy to go and have cuddles from him when he sat down!), but a run around the field fixed that. Bob was generally very pleased with the visitors, as he is a complete tart, especially when he worked out that visitors meant that people were sitting on his sofa and cuddling him.
We did have an unfortunate Bob incident on Sunday, though: while we were walking him, he went for a perfectly innocuous black lab that was sitting quietly by the path waiting for us to go past. Whenever he's gone for other dogs before I've been able to excuse it (at the kennels, at the vet), but I think we'll have to accept that this means he'll need to have a muzzle when we start letting him off the lead.
(There are, I know, ways to train dogs out of this kind of behaviour, but I'm not sure how you do it when it's only occasional random dogs that set it off, unless you can convince the owner of the random dog to help. I may speak to the vet nurse about it next time we're there.)
The boys, being stuck in their stables, are less happy, poor things. Bob is perfectly happy, as long as I don't make him go outside: I had enough trouble getting him to the stableyard this morning that I don't think I'll bother with a walk. Instead, I'm going to be mostly curled up on the sofa with my new quilt, which I finished off over the weekend:
We had visitors over the weekend, which was nice but tiring. Bob got a bit over-stimulated when so many people kept arriving, and spent an hour or so barking and growling at the last person through the door (but only when he stood up; Bob was perfectly happy to go and have cuddles from him when he sat down!), but a run around the field fixed that. Bob was generally very pleased with the visitors, as he is a complete tart, especially when he worked out that visitors meant that people were sitting on his sofa and cuddling him.
We did have an unfortunate Bob incident on Sunday, though: while we were walking him, he went for a perfectly innocuous black lab that was sitting quietly by the path waiting for us to go past. Whenever he's gone for other dogs before I've been able to excuse it (at the kennels, at the vet), but I think we'll have to accept that this means he'll need to have a muzzle when we start letting him off the lead.
(There are, I know, ways to train dogs out of this kind of behaviour, but I'm not sure how you do it when it's only occasional random dogs that set it off, unless you can convince the owner of the random dog to help. I may speak to the vet nurse about it next time we're there.)
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Best of luck with Bob and the occasional-other-dogs issue. It sounds like a bugger to work on as it's unpredictable.
Teddy
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Teddy
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And what colour is Bob
Re: And what colour is Bob
Re: And what colour is Bob
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I found the book "Click to Calm" useful re thinking about/attempting to improve Sid's behaviour with other dogs. The author does talk about managing to do some work by recruiting owners of specific dogs that her dog had a problem with; we've never managed to do that but I have (by being prepared when we're out and spotting them ahead of time) gotten Sid out of the habit of woofing at a couple of her identifiable nemeses. (I still wouldn't let her off lead around them, and in general if we're near other dogs in the park she goes back on lead when she's with me, though Pete is less cautious.) Ugh, sympathy, though, as behaviour it is a PITA.
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I've bought a soft muzzle, which we're going to start introducing him to, but we're still having recall issues so.... I'd been resisting clicker training (what if you forget it?), but I think I might have to look into it.
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IME it works a lot more quickly with the clicker than using similar strategies without it. Sid had a brief issue with joggers (after one came up behind me silently and very close when I was heavily pregnant and scared the shit out of me and thus also out of Sid) and we got past that with a couple of sessions standing out on the path waiting for joggers to come past and clicking/treating, and then another couple of weeks of being super-aware of them whilst on walks so I could notice them before she did and click/treat at the right moment. Then once she was chill about them again we just phased it out.
Talking about this is reminding me that I have more brain available now than I did when Sid was at her worst (because that was when L was tiny and I didn't sleep properly for 3-4 years...) and it might be worth doing another bout of work to see if I can improve her reaction to other dogs beyond the current "this is manageable" situation.
* In this case, unlearnt, except that really you're teaching them another behaviour that's incompatible with the one you don't want, because that's a lot easier than un-learning. So (in theory...) when she sees a Bad Dog**, Sid now looks up at me for a treat rather than barking and/or lunging at the Bad Dog. I could definitely get this more consistent if we worked on it more.
** i.e. a perfectly reasonable dog that she just doesn't happen to like.