Puppy tantrums

A further point. My sister's newer dog is still totally out of control. We used the roll-over tactic with great success early on and she became used to it. Now, when we roll her, she starts to wrestle us. Wrestling includes biting our roll-over hands and kicking our roll-over arms. But, the thing is, she still does better when she's having more random and useless training than when she's not.

boomer, it seems logical that having the last week being the nippy week and having the roofers and more traffic over at the same time would naturally be related. puppy needs a lot of sleep, i'm sure when he's tired he may be more defensive or cranky. i know i would be.

Well at least I haven't bit Diamond yet!

He's been in a much better disposition today but we're just now getting into his "busy" time of day so we'll see how it shakes out.

I'm hoping that all the commotion last week played a part because I know that's mostly over. I'm pretty nippy when I'm tired too, dag!

I've mixed feelings on the crate time out approach. I can see the point.

But.. Pacco liked his crate, used it as his den sometimes in winter, and I kept him crated in the car with him being cheerful about entering it.

I don't know if crate time-outs would affect later crate relaxation...

Everyone has their preferred method. As long as you don't make the create a scary place (just a place to sit and figure out 'what did I do wrong'), keep the time outs short, and welcome the puppy back into the pack it seems to work fine, for me at least. My dogs always used thier dens to crash out if they wanted a nap and I was being noisy, so it didn't seem to give them a negative relationship to the crate.

Another advantage I have found is that as the puppy gets older and does something wrong you didn't notice, they will often send themselves to the crate and look guilty. It's a good tip to look for rug stains or missing food from the table.

Since "boom" has a happy 13 year old dog and so is not new to this I'm sure this one will do fine too. Sometimes it is just nice to get other's opinions.

I had the good fortune of watching Biscuit (the cat) do a little puppy training this morning.

Biscuit was in the garage eating when Diamond and I came in. Biscuit jumped down and rubbed her face against Diamond's which caused Diamond to bounce. Biscuit administered two quick, clawless taps to Diamond's nose and Diamond sat.

They looked at each other.

Biscuit rubbed.

Diamond bounced.

Biscuit hit.

They looked at each other.

Biscuit rubbed.

Diamond bounced.

Buscuit hit and hissed.

Diamond walked away.

Biscuit jumped back up and finished eating.

Pretty interesting stuff!

The crate.

The crate can be a good thing. Or not.

I have one dog who likes the crate - it became his safe place - he goes there when there are kids around and he doesn't want to be bothered - he goes there to nap - he goes there when he's stressed.

The other dog hates it. I probably got her too late in her life to make the crate a good place for her.

~~~

boomer - I actually think Diamond did the right thing in part when he went gonzo when Mo picked him up when he was napping. As much as Diamond needs to learn who's the boss, Mo needs to understand that the puppy must be respected - is not a toy for him to pick up/play with. In the picking-up-sleeping cases, Mo's the one who would have got a time- out around here.

~~~

Does Diamond get the twilight 'zoomies'? They came up in the thread when fishin got his new pupster. A good amount of disciplined walking (no stopping to sniff - just a brisk aerobic walk), just before 'zoomie time' can help.

Yes indeed, Mo was given a stern lecture on letting sleeping puppies sleep.

Actually Diamond gets the zoomies about 2:45 when it's time to go pick Mo up from school. He's always very excited to go there and knows that a rousing game of kickball will soon follow.

Then he usually crashes for a bit until we're ready to wear him out before bedtime.

Today should be interesting -- it's almost zoom time and Bird has done something to her foot; I think she ripped her dew claw. She's bleeding buckets but doesn't seem to be in any pain. I'm waiting for a call back from the vet.

Yuck, a dew claw tear. We were just talking about that at work today. It's recently happened with two colleagues' dogs - lotsa blood all right. We wondered if it was some kind of hidden-things-in-the-autumn-leaves thing.

I don't know how in the heck she tore it. She really is old and creaky and doesn't do much anymore. She's happy and healthy -- just old.

But I have kind of let her claws go lately because she hates to have them cut and she hates to ride in the car nowdays so taking her to the groomer is really stressful for her. We're at the point where everything is a balance between her comfort and absolute necessity.

I was eating lunch and heard her licking and licking so I went in to check and there was blood everywhere. It was all over her bed, the floor, her foot and her head. I didn't know where she was injured! Scary.

I bandaged her up and called the vet. We have an appointment here in just a bit.

Bird should be fine, for those of you who might have wondered.

I can't believe the amount of blood the old girl lost. When the vet said they needed to sedate her I nearly flipped but she seems to be doing good despite being completely stoned. (They couldn't give her the reversable stuff because of the seizure she'd had less than a year ago so she's way high tonight.)

Christonabike, I don't want to live through today again.

how are things today?

Bird and Diamond and Boomer ...

Things are much better today, thank goodness!

I think all of us were exhausted after yesterday so it's been pretty quiet. I managed to get the rest of the blood mopped up today and Diamond and I did a couple of power walks during sun-breaks which was a perfect activity for my slow brain plus it helped keep things quiet for surley Bird.

Was all the blood from the dew claw?

You absolutely would not believe how much that thing bled. It looked like something had been slaughtered in my house, I kid you not.

I have no idea how she tore it. I've looked over the yard for signs of bleeding and haven't found any. Of course, with all the rain the last two days that makes sense.

I think that does tend to be a bloody spot.

Sally dog does that once in awhile, I worry but the vet says not to.

You wouldn't happen to have any pictures lying around on your hard disk, would you? (This may be a stupid question to be asking a photographer.) If so, I wouldn't mind at all taking a look at them.

Here's our little monster.... er.... I mean sweetheart:

Oh man he's cute.

Got a bit of a glint in his eye...

(Nice floors, too!)