Postings by Winnie Mae's Family

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Pearl Irene Me too!     Barked: Fri May 24, '13 8:05am PST  Good news: she's improving! We have a lot of craziness in the house right now, so LOTS of opportunities for her to bark insanely, and thankfully I've been busy in the kitchen, so I'm always right there. And . . . the boys have been outside more!!! Which means no more crazy energy getting in our way I've been making her sit for everything, and while it often takes a while and she isn't so sure she likes the idea, it has been helping impulse control. my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals [notify]

Winnie Mae Just let me jump- it!     Barked: Mon May 20, '13 10:10am PST  It is a little strange when you think about it. Here's a Trakehner stallion still siring foals 13 years after he died: http://americantrakehner.com/Stallions/abdullah.asp And yet, as odd as it is . . . why not? If the stallion/dog was a good one, why limit the blood to his lifetime? Embryo transfer I also see the benefits of, but cloning scares me. Don't know why, it just does. Seems more "natural" to have a sire that's dead 15 years and a baby born out of a surrogate mother than an exact genetic clone . . . As a side note, I saw a very adorable video of two foals: full-blood brother-and-sister, one from the actual dam, one from a surrogate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X5hBKl23Lg Very interesting to think about. my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals [notify]

Behavior & Training > Previously Abused Dog, Barking, and Cesar Milan-esque Training

Winnie Mae Just let me jump- it!     Barked: Mon May 20, '13 9:14am PST  Admission: Pearl can't sit/stay She can sit, but it's really hard to keep her in position. I suppose that's something I need to work on I get frustrated because she doesn't like training. It doesn't matter how many treats I give her, she just doesn't like working. Or, if she does, she chooses to be sassy about it. Well, I guess I know what I need to do . . . Oh, I've found something that helps with the barking. I pick her up and quietly and gently exhale a "huuuuuuuushhh". That works. my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals [notify]

Behavior & Training > Previously Abused Dog, Barking, and Cesar Milan-esque Training

Winnie Mae Just let me jump- it!     Barked: Thu May 16, '13 5:28am PST  Thank you, Toto! It does make sense that a dog would respond differently, more respectfully, to a semi-stranger. Now that I think back on yesterday, when my friend pushed her chair back from the table, Pearl shut up and watched her for a little bit. "You need to consider her a clean slate now" Thank you. I needed that, a lot. It's like my head knows that I need to treat her as a normal dog, but my heart won't let me. I think it's fear. I've seen the look in a previously-abused horse's eye when asked to go back to work, and I don't ever want to see that look again. A gorgeous, beautiful mover asked to do too much too soon, so the trainer started over at square one. Walk a calm circle around me. The poor thing went violently cavorting about, galloping with so little direction and balance that she was tripping and running into everything. And the trainer was quietly standing in the middle, just asking the girl to accept her presence. On one of those galloping passes, this big mare turned her head toward me, and I saw her eye. She was saying, "I'm small. I'm so tiny you can't see me, please don't hurt me! I don't want to be here, take me out! I'd rather be dead than be here!" And I went home, and I realized that when we first got Pearl, she had a little bit of that look. The "I'm so tiny you can't see me, please don't hurt me" part. So I avoided training for a while because I didn't want to see it again. I'll try working with treats today, and I'll see if I can find any mint gum Missy, thank you for the story She had a health check last year, and the only thing wrong with her is that she has luxating (spelling?) patellas in both knees. She doesn't each much, but I'm assuming that's typical for tiny dogs like her, because the other 5-lb dogs I've met also eat very little. And her weight, though a little on the skinny side, was approved by the vet (he didn't want her to gain much, because of the knees). Okay, so another question. What should I be doing regarding the aggression? When she runs at Winnie growling and trying to get Winnie off a treat, I've started going over there, pushing Pearl back, and saying, "No!" So far, it has worked in the sense that most of the time she doesn't try going after Winnie again, but if she does, then a second interruption is all she needs. Initially, I thought I should let Winnie correct her, but Winnie is compliant and backs off the treat, then stares at me with soulful eyes. I would just give Winnie another, but Pearl would leave the first and take the second, and then would just bother Winnie until Winnie let her have both. But are there any other ways I could be intercepting this behavior? Also, in regards to nipping/growling at people, how should I treat that? Thank you all so much! my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals [notify]

Behavior & Training > Previously Abused Dog, Barking, and Cesar Milan-esque Training

Winnie Mae Just let me jump- it!     Barked: Wed May 15, '13 3:46pm PST  Okay, I'm realizing my post is a bit confusing . . . sorry, my thought process is messy Lenny, the problem with that is that I've used the interrupting technique before, and I've always tried my best to keep calm. Generally, I'm pretty good at maintaining a steady energy around animals of all sorts, be it a horse that's flipping out or my dogs. The only thing I see with this instance regarding the energy is that my little brothers weren't around, and their energy tends to be VERY crazy (heck, they make me nervous most of the time, and animals at 100% more sensitive than humans are!) Some other things I've noticed about Pearl lately: She's being more aggressive with Winnie. She would always try to take bones and/or treats from Winnie, and would kick her out of the dog bed, but it's becoming a little more serious. Her posturing and vocal qualities are MUCH more . . . mature? She's more serious about her threats. I always interrupt her, scold her, and give Winnie's bone or bed back, and Pearl usually respects that. She's started lashing out at people. Mostly resource guarding. Again, I always interrupt the behavior and refocus her, but I'm feeling a little over my head with this one. When she first came to us, she was so scared and not with it, I didn't dare to do much serious training. She bit when she first came to us: fear. When someone handled her paws, when someone woke her up, when my littlest brother ran up to her and shouted, "You're so cute!" We worked through it. Now, she's not biting from fear, she's resource guarding, she's emboldened by her new, stable lifestyle. Arg, sometimes I regret us getting her! She's not the dog I wanted: I wanted another blank slate. I can handle other people's problem dogs; I can give them suggestions and have fun working with their problems, but it's not something I want to deal with at home! But then I think, Pearl might be dead if we didn't take her. If I went back, if someone offered for me to do it all over again, I'd take Pearl again. She needed us. But now I feel completely inadequate. I can work with big animals; I can make the horses get out of my way, I can get a stubborn one moving, I can work with Winnie; heck, I even worked with a messed up young Dobe once. But Pearl? She's completely unmotivated, completely illiterate in her own language, and so tiny that I'm afraid I'll hurt her. Sorry, this ended up being a rant If things are confusing, please let me know, I do have a very messy way of thinking Could this be a "coming-of-age" spurt? Her past put her behind in emotional growth: she's about three physically, but I'd put her at half that mentally. 1.5 is about when Winnie started some teenage behavior: is that what this is? The fact that my friend could silence Pearl really hit my pride. I want so badly to be good at this, but I was afraid to do anything with Pearl because I have a history with her. I know some of what she's been through. And here's an almost-stranger to Pearl, someone who can hardly identify with her, and she gets her to stop . . . but then again, maybe it's because my friend didn't know all of Pearl's miserable past that she was able to work with her. Perhaps my knowledge of Pearl's former abuses is getting in the way of us moving forward? To anyone who gets through all this and still can say something encouraging or offer any advice, thank you so much. I'm sorry to be such a rambling mess Any and all thoughts are appreciated. my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals [notify]

Winnie Mae Just let me jump- it!     Barked: Wed May 15, '13 2:38pm PST  Well, I haven't been around much lately, but things have been happening, and I felt the need to post. For those of you who don't know, Pearl came to us about two years ago, having been through multiple homes in her short eight-month life. She had clearly been abused and barked incessantly. When I say incessantly, I mean she barked more than she was quiet. In a short amount of time, things improved drastically, but then quickly leveled off. She would still bark piercingly when someone knocked on the door/rang the doorbell/opened the door, and occasionally would just bark randomly. It was a source of great frustration for my parents, especially my dad, who took to shouting at her when she barked. Meanwhile, I was experimenting with various methods such as ignoring her, waiting until she stopped to open the door, refocusing her attention, etc. All in vain. After a time, I realized she still wasn't mentally with it enough to accept training. So, I just let things go. My parents were okay with it, Pearl was somewhat manageable, and things seemed fine. When I determined a few months ago that she was mentally there enough to have some training, I found that putting her in her crate when she barked and letting her out when she was quiet worked somewhat. That quickly fizzled, however, as we are a busy household of 6 people, two quite young, so she wasn't being consistently crated when she barked. A friend of mine has always tried to get me to use "Cesar Milan's" training methods (I say that because I don't watch enough of Cesar to know how much this lines up with his method). I brushed it off, because this friend's own dog is a little nutty, which I see as stemming directly from the way she raised him. However, today Pearl saw a dog in our backyard and went nuts. My friend kept Pearl on her lap, got very quiet and firm, and consistently went "chhh" (that annoying sound Cesar makes) every time Pearl made a noise. Five minutes later, she was quietly whining, a few more, and she was quiet. So . . . ??? I'm at a bit of a loss: these methods would never work with Winnie! Is it simply that she's a different dog, a different mentality? I'm just trying to work through this in my mind . . . my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals [notify]

Senior Dogs > Loss of Housetraining

Winnie Mae Just let me jump- it!     Barked: Mon Feb 25, '13 6:48pm PST  Thank you for your help! my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals [notify]

Senior Dogs > Loss of Housetraining

Winnie Mae Just let me jump- it!     Barked: Mon Feb 11, '13 4:07pm PST  I promised a friend that I would look into this for her, so here I am. I thought about posting to B&T or Health, but I decided to post here. I've not looked into this at all yet, except to post here, so anyway, here it goes: My friend has an 11.5-year-old male Schnauzer named Auggie. He lives in a home with a middle-aged couple, their college freshman son (19) and their three daughters who fall between the ages of 9 and 17. The family is highly functioning, very happy, joyful people who cooperate and work together well. The family has always been busy, though lately there has been a bit more stress because the wife had a surgery a few weeks ago, the husband's work has been a bit more stressful, and the son just started college in August. Now, for the behavior. Right around Thanksgiving, the wife came home with a bag full of new jeans for her son. She set it in his room on the floor. When she came back up the stairs, Auggie had peed on the bag. Then (I'm not sure how long after), Auggie peed on a notebook that a neighbor had given to them, also on the floor near a bedroom. At this point, the wife (who did a little vet science/animal behavior in college) thought that he was just upset by things that were new to the house, because both instances had been with a strange object. But then he peed on one of the girls' dresses. I don't know what all else he has peed on, but it has been enough for the husband to be quite angered. He has had his kidneys checked, and everything was normal, though I can't remember what exactly was tested. She said there were a few more tests they were considering, but again, I don't remember what she said. I can find out, however. So . . . opinions? Help? I think they should keep pursuing the medical side of it, but in the meantime, is there anything she can be doing to help him stop this behavior? She said he's never done anything like this before. What sorts of tests should they be looking into? Thank you so much! my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals [notify]

Raw Food Diet > FREEZE DRIED RAW/RAW BOOST

Winnie Mae Just let me jump- it!     Barked: Sat Feb 9, '13 4:12pm PST  I feed a mixture of kibble and freeze dried raw. You just have to know what your dog likes. Mine wouldn't touch Nature's Variety frozen. They like Addiction, love Honest Kitchen. I haven't tried Stella and Chewy's as it is quite a bit more expensive than Honest Kitchen. my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals [notify]

Winnie Mae Just let me jump- it!     Barked: Wed Jan 30, '13 4:52pm PST  Oh, felt the need to respond to this: "Except that dogs don't have the physiology of a carnivore - they have funcitonal taste buds for sweetness, unlike cats and have multiple copies of starch digesting enzymes." That's a red herring. First of all, comparing canines to felines is a bit of a stretch. If you're going to talk about functional taste buds for sweetness, find something about wolf taste buds, and then compare to dog taste buds. But, more importantly, merely because an animal can taste sweetness does not mean they are not physiologically a carnivore. Dogs have a carnivore's teeth—sharp, tearing, shredding teeth, not grinding teeth. Cats are small-prey carnivores. Period. I don't think I've ever heard of a cat—domestic or otherwise—scavenging. Dogs are opportunistic. They can scavenge, they can kill live prey: that's just their nature. But they are carnivores. Hyenas scavenge: they are carnivores. Coyotes scavenge: they are carnivores. The ability to eat anything they find, if necessary, does not make dogs any less of a carnivore. my posts | my page | msg me | my family's posts | gift me | become pals [notify]

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