new dog situation

[gailrmv]

Part Gypsy, I''m glad that you found a class! I hope it goes really well. Let us know! I am sending calm puppy vibes Chuck''s way

 

[partgypsy]

Thank you all for your good thoughts. He has been much better this week. There are times during the day he settles down, and either just hangs out with us walking around, or even lays down, and relaxes during the evening! That is amazing. His biting/mouthing has really been reduced. He is doing sit reliably, and we are working on stay. So we now have a positive feedback situation going on (he is calmer, we spend more time with him, he relaxes more, kids play with him, etc), instead of a negative feedback loop. Our oldest kid is now having him sit, gives him treats and pets him.

And the other big positive is that our fence situation will be corrected. Part of the stress is that before we got the dog my husband tore down one part of the fence to rebuild it, but once we got the dog we never got around to fixing it, so we were reduced to many many walks and general insanity. Well as tomorrow we will have a completely fenced in yard as of tomorrow

 

[iheartscience]

Date: 5/1/2008 8:03:47 PM
Author: part gypsy
Thank you all for your good thoughts. He has been much better this week. There are times during the day he settles down, and either just hangs out with us walking around, or even lays down, and relaxes during the evening! That is amazing. His biting/mouthing has really been reduced. He is doing sit reliably, and we are working on stay. So we now have a positive feedback situation going on (he is calmer, we spend more time with him, he relaxes more, kids play with him, etc), instead of a negative feedback loop. Our oldest kid is now having him sit, gives him treats and pets him.


And the other big positive is that our fence situation will be corrected. Part of the stress is that before we got the dog my husband tore down one part of the fence to rebuild it, but once we got the dog we never got around to fixing it, so we were reduced to many many walks and general insanity. Well as tomorrow we will have a completely fenced in yard as of tomorrow

I''m glad to hear your dog is getting better! I hope he keeps it up!

 

[gailrmv]

Part Gypsy, just wondering how are things going with Chuck? Are you enjoying the class? Hope all is well!

 

[partgypsy]

Hey Tandogmom! Update. Overall Chuck is doing much better, he is more calm, and that''s the main thing. My older daughter is still lukewarm about him (I think still really misses our previous dog), but our younger daughter who loves all animals likes Chuck and pets him, gives him her food, etc, so I think they will grow up being good friends. There are 10 levels for these dog classes. He has gone to 2 classes and the instructor has already checked him off for everything for the first level. As our friend said, he''s not stupid. Basically, he is very food oriented so if you have your little treats in your hand he will sit and is very good at not breaking the sit considering the short time we have worked with him, learned down, come, and is doing much better with leave it. However if you are at home and you don''t have treats he will often choose to ignore us when we tell him to come for instance. I think some aspect of his mentality since he couldn''t count on people when he was growing up he is reserving some independence, being noncommital if that makes any sense. But who knows, maybe that will improve with time.

 

[gailrmv]

Part Gypsy, I am sooooo happy that things are going better. Phew! I hope things continue to improve. It is nice when your dog is food motivated because then at least you have some way to engage them when needed! My two (especially my older one) would do about anything for a treat. It helps in "dog school." I hope your older daughter warms up to Chuck soon. It makes sense that she is still missing her first dog. I hope they bond soon! It's great that Chuck has already "graduated" past the first level. What kind of things are taught in the higher levels? I can only imagine what a Level 10 dog must know, because in Level 1, Chuck already knows more than my dogs. They are great with sit, down, and stay. They are especially great with staying (which we have worked on a lot.) They are pretty good with "no" when it comes to dropping things in the house, but they never really learned "leave it." Come is optional. We did not work on that nearly enough. Maybe we should take another class I am glad that the classes are helping Chuck. Keep us updated!

 

[scarleta]

Part Gypsy: I am really happy that he is making some progress.You are to be congratulated for your kindness, patience and persistence.I do hope that it will continue to get better and better.
As to your ( quoting you here)
"he is reserving some independence, being noncommital if that makes any sense. But who knows, maybe that will improve with time".

It could also be his personality, some dogs like to be ignored for a while and will come in their terms.Nothing wrong with that.
He may also be having a lazy day or be a bit under the weather.
Like the saying goes: "let the dog be a dog when he wants to"
Sounds like you are doing wonderful job..

 

[partgypsy]

Tandog, the interesting thing they do in this class with sit and stay, is that they do not have 2 seperate commands for those things. The dog is taught instead when you say sit, for the dog to keep the sit until they hear a break word like "okay", then they can move. It''s useful because this way I can say sit, keep eye contact, then put his food down THEN say okay and he won''t storm me while I''m giving him his food. It seems the classes are useful not just for the commands but that in learning these commands he has learned self control in other areas.
We are letting him be out of the crate when we are not at home and the last few nights just keeping his door open on his crate, so he has been choosing to sleep on an old chair instead.

But it is interesting, while he is behaving better, there is still not this sense of attachment from him. It''s disconcerting because I am so used to with our other dogs them wanting to please us, and when we say "come" them literally running as fast as they could happy to be with us. He likes us, enjoys our company, but he''s not at the point he wants to please us. I just thought all dogs were like that, but maybe we were just lucky with our first 2 dogs.

I don''t know if our daughter will warm up to the new dog, she can be very stubborn. A friend of ours has Betty''s half sister. When we go over there our daughter showers "Twiggy" with the same affection she used to reserve for Betty. Chuck doesn''t get that treatment

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