Just thinking

[fdsa487]

Doesn't it choke him, hanging from your igintion switch?

LOL, no... I tied him to the motorhome w/ a piece of yarn :laugh3: There is no way in hell he is going to break that.

 

[XJ Dreamin']

My current dog, a Springer/Lab mix knows that my wife and I are the Alphas. We have cage trained her since day one, and have established our dominance. She knows that she can play and nip at me, but not with my wife.

I had my dog apartment and leash trained before my wife and I were married. I moved my new bride into a little house with a fenced back yard, so that the dog would not be constantly under foot. The dog knew without being told that my wife was alpha female. No problems at all. The wife is dog tollerant anyway.

When my wife became pregnant with our first child the dog knew it. She would follow my wife (her now pregnant alpha female) around the house 24 hours a day. It drove my wife crazy. Everytime she'd turn around, there was the dog. The dog knew that my wife was alpha female, knew that she was pregnant and wanted to be the "aunt." In a canine pack, the aunts are one or two pack females (usually a sibling or daughter) who help the alpha female when she is pregnant or den bound with pups. They may babysit while she hunts or they will regurgitate meat for her if she stays at the den. In return, they get her protection and a place beside her at the kill.

We brought or first boy home from the hospital at 2:00pm, 52 hours after birth. I had the camera running when the proud momma came in the door with her new baby boy, and there was the dog, going apeshit: whining and licking my wife's feet. When she sat down with the baby the dog was right there, whining and whining. Not jumping up. Not doing anything that might harm the baby or draw an attack from the mother, but whinning and trying to reach up to lick the baby. The taping took a break until about 4 or 5pm. There's the dog again, still whining and simpering. Another break: 8:00pm, and the dog is still there. And she was still there at 11:00pm. She slept next to or followed momma and the baby around continuously (except for food, toilet and security patrols) for weeks.

After that baby had fallen on her, pulled her ears, tried to ride her and eaten her food for five years, she wasn't nearly as impressed when the second baby came along. When we got him home, the dog came over, took one sniff and said, oh crap - another one.

 

[XJ Dreamin']

I was driving north on University, here in Huntsville one day when an odd image caught my attention. Off to my left, in a yard on the west side of the street was a large rotty/mastif mix, bobbed and clipped in a perfect point. Nose out, ears up, front right foot up, little stubby tail straight and still. It was such an odd picture, before I took in the whole scene I had to wonder what would make a rotty/mastif mix point? A split second later the entire scene came into focus. Two feet off his nose, sitting on the sidewalk in the sun, was a big ol' orange tabby tomcat, licking his paw, not a clue in the world. The next second I was past them, rolling on up University. I never did know how that scene played out. One of those missed opportunities of life. Oh well. Maybe they were just friends having a little good natured fun :laugh3:

 

[8Mud]

There was a cat in the house, when the Weimeraner got here, he has pretty much studiously ignored the cat his whole life. The Jack Russel and the cat roll around the floor by the hour, nobody ever seems to get seriously scratched or bitten.

I had a Shepard a Rin TIn Tin clone but in extra large. Had a girl friend who decided to move in with me, don't think the dog would have ever biten her. But he seemed to really enjoy trying to stare her down. I finally gave the dog to a buddy, thinking the girl was the love of my life. Six months later, she left. I tried to get my dog back and the guy I gave him to says, he is the best darned dog I ever had and the family is really attached now.
Moral of the story, keep the dog and give the girl to an enemy.

 

[BCParker]

Caption this pic? - My Dog has Crapped Bigger than this...

 

[BCParker]

8MUD: I'm interested to know how you have trained your weimeraner to track game. Mine will not follow a scent trail very far. he will hunt anything that moves, as long as he can see it, but will often overrun a trail or be thrown off by a sharp turn the animal takes if it gets too far out in front of the dog.

Untrained,my Weimeraner seems to be much better as a pointer/bird dog. since it was about 6 months old as soon as it is off leash it starts working a pattern through the area looking for any living thing to point.(I have seen him freeze on a bird for almost 30 min without moving more than an inch.)


I originally brought up the pictures of the weimeraner because I was trying to make a point of the fact that hunting dogs, (along with working dogs as was mentioned before) do naturally revert to instinctive behavior, and are just as dangerous, if not more so, than any pit bull type terrier.

 

[XJ Dreamin']

Maybe the Germans have the right idea, they started out with a total fighting dog ban, then modified the procedure to an aggression test at 15 months, required insurance in case they made a mistake. And required a special tax, to cover the costs of the whole process.
It seems they are trying to fix the breed, by culling the undesirable traits in an organized way.
My general feeling, is the Germans over regulate most everything, but they may be on the right track with this one.

Breed them all back together, take the best of the mutts that come out and start over.

It's not so much the aggression as it is the switches that turn it on and off. When our first boy was small he toddled over and fell on Seri while she was asleep on the living room floor. She came up out of sleep, not attacking, just trying to get up. Her mussel made contact with his temple. She left a very nice imprint of her upper right canine and the two incisors next to it in his head. No skin broken, no attack, no harm done. I figured I might as well light into her, so I chased her around until she flopped and let me hold her down. I figured, he's crying - she gets punished would set up a nice off-switch reinforcement. The boy bruised up with a near perfect image of the dog's teeth on his head. It was interesting trying to explain it to everyone. "No, no. She didn't bite him. He just fell on her."

 

[8Mud]

Mine wants to point also, but I mostly use him for flushing, he will point, then go in and flush it pretty quick. I really dropped the ball, when I failed to train him to be a classic retriever, he retrieves, but I never did make a big thing about the form. Though he doesn't chew much.
I thought he may be a good tracker when he was a pup. One of his uncles was a German champion one year, right along with the blood hounds and specialists. They do have good noses.
I use mine to follow blood trails mostly, which is pretty easy for him. One drop every 30 feet and he can follow it at a run.
One thing I did notice when he was a pup. My son went into the store and I was parked maybe 100 yards away. The pup got loose and followed my son's scent right to the front door. he must have crossed a thousand scents and still held true. That's when I decided to train him to his strengths and let the other stuff go a bit.
Generally I didn't try much to train him, just encouraged his strengths. I did lay blood trails with beef blood, when he was young. But all that told me was that he already knew how to track a blood trail.
Weimaraners have a reputation for being biters, but not particularly viscious with people.
Training him to be a personal protection dog, was even easier, when he was young he wanted to attack most everybody that he didn't know. I trained him to ignore women and children and learn the difference between watch out and go ahead and have some fun. Now he just does it by my body language, I don't have to say anything. Though he is getting older now and mellower than he was.

 

[8Mud]

Breed them all back together, take the best of the mutts that come out and start over.

It's not so much the aggression as it is the switches that turn it on and off. When our first boy was small he toddled over and fell on Seri while she was asleep on the living room floor. She came up out of sleep, not attacking, just trying to get up. Her mussel made contact with his temple. She left a very nice imprint of her upper right canine and the two incisors next to it in his head. No skin broken, no attack, no harm done. I figured I might as well light into her, so I chased her around until she flopped and let me hold her down. I figured, he's crying - she gets punished would set up a nice off-switch reinforcement. The boy bruised up with a near perfect image of the dog's teeth on his head. It was interesting trying to explain it to everyone. "No, no. She didn't bite him. He just fell on her."

Your right about the switches, that's kind of what I was getting at when I said mostly parallel agendas. There is sometimes no telling what will set a dog off or why he is doing what he is doing. People and dogs have a lot in common, but there are differences that are often hard to understand.
You think of how a person responds to most situations, the first is instinctual, the second trained and the third is reasoned. Most dogs only have choices one and two. And there instincts (motivations) and ours aren't always the same.

 

[XJ Dreamin']

In our area, most of the dogs run free, but our family and one other have always made a point to keep our dogs fenced in, and never off the leash. We knew our Springer would never attack, but she protected veriwell, and we wanted to avoid confrontations.

Fergie

Our dog is behind a fence but there are several that roam free. Only two of them come near the yard. I started a thread a while back about the one of them. I made an inappropriate request that got my thread chitcanned. I walked that dog across three yards one day until he got to his own where he turned and gave me a bark. That was fine with me: that was his yard. A while later he showed up again while I was in the back yard, on the other side of the fence. I started walking at him, staring straight at him and growling (I communicate with dogs in dog, not human). He didn't even flinch. I realized he wasn't going to move because there was a fence between us. Well, I wasn't going to let him get away with that so I just kept walking and went straight over the fence. He about chit a brick trying to get his wheels spinning. He had no idea you could cross a fence. He though he was safe barking at me across my own fence. He hasn't been back. I never had to hurt him. I would just walk at him, staring him straight in the eye growling. Makes them nervous as heck, when they're off their own property. I wouldn't advise doing that onto their own property, though.

If a neighbor's dog is barking at night, I don't even notice. If my dog is barking at night, I got to get out and shut her up. It doesn't make sense, but I just feel she is my responsibility, I have to take care of it. It doesn't matter that nobody else feels they have any responsibility for their dogs. My wife says why do you bother: nobody else cares. I say, she's my dog and if I tell her to shut up she better dedang well shut up or I'm coming out there to slap her silly. Most times, I just stick my head out the door and give a good bark myself. If she's just talking to the neighbors, she'll usually shut up. If she's actually got something, she's not going to shut up 'cause she wants me to come out and help with the hunt. That's fine if it's a toad, or mouse, or lizard, but when it's a friggin' racoon in the shed I'd rather she wait till morning.

 

[8Mud]

Dog was out in the yard barking his head off, the front door was open. He came in a layed down next to me on the coach (I was watching TV), layed my hand down to shift a bit and came out of the seat like rocket. I'd layed my hand on a five pound Hedge Hog, half a dozen bloody holes in my hand, darned dog.

 

[XJ Dreamin']

Your right about the switches, that's kind of what I was getting at when I said mostly parallel agendas. There is sometimes no telling what will set a dog off or why he is doing what he is doing. People and dogs have a lot in common, but there are differences that are often hard to understand.
You think of how a person responds to most situations, the first is instinctual, the second trained and the third is reasoned. Most dogs only have choices one and two. And there instincts (motivations) and ours aren't always the same.

Well, our ancestors fit into a different nitch. When we assumed reason, we had to give up a lot of instincts. I mean, what's the use of reason if you have to react instinctively. That said, we do retain a lot more instincts than some people are comfortable contemplating. When all is said and done, however, humans got it over dogs. They are stuck serving us, not us them. People who enslave themselves to their pet (dog or otherwise) are of a mindset that I just don't understand. But, if you want to understand dogs, pretending they are human is not going to work. That said, my personal moral foundation dictates that I treat any individual animal with a level of respect. Not the worship that PETA folks preach, but a form of stewardship for a life placed in my care. That stewardship includes assuming responsibility for the animal, since it is not capable of assuming responsibility for itself.

On the other hand, a spider in the living room is not a creature placed in my care. It is a spider invading my living space. It gets the size 14EE. As my wife says, it's just common sense. I wish more people had some.

 

[8Mud]

On the other hand, a spider in the living room is not a creature placed in my care. It is a spider invading my living space. It gets the size 14EE. As my wife says, it's just common sense. I wish more people had some.

I always figured whatever the spiders are eating is likely eating what I'm eating, flying around my head and bothering me or biting me. And are worse in most instances than the spider, I pretty much leave them alone, but still get grossed out a bit, when really big ones wander through the living room or tries to share the shower with me.

 

[XJ Dreamin']

Dog was out in the yard barking his head off, the front door was open. He came in a layed down next to me on the coach (I was watching TV), layed my hand down to shift a bit and came out of the seat like rocket. I'd layed my hand on a five pound Hedge Hog, half a dozen bloody holes in my hand, darned dog.

Now that's funny (sorry). That rabbit/cat killer's mother used to hunt ground hogs (now, if you're in Germany, I'm talking woodchucks: 15-20 pounds). She never brought one home but would come back with multiple holes stapled through the rough under her chin.

An old GF from college was going home for Christmas (from MO to NY) so I offered to sit her Irish Setter at my folks' house. She stops by with the setter and my mom sets us down on the sofa in the TV room. Out of the corner of my eye I see a mouse dart through the door way from the TV room into the kitchen. I'm not going to say anything but the setter takes off like a flash. I figure, that mouse's bolt hole is just around the doorway. There's no way she'll get him. Right away she comes struttin' back with her head held high, tail flying like a flag and a little bare tale bouncing along from between her lips. She went right up to her mistress and spit that mouse out in her lap. The GF flipped out, the mouse jumped off and dashed under the sofa, and the dog was left wondering what in the heck did you do that for?! My mom never lived it down, but she made darn sure after that that there was never another mouse in that house.

 

[XJ Dreamin']

I always figured whatever the spiders are eating is likely eating what I'm eating, flying around my head and bothering me or biting me. And are worse in most instances than the spider, I pretty much leave them alone, but still get grossed out a bit, when really big ones wander through the living room or try to share the shower with me.

Yeah, but the wife doesn't like them. So, bye, bye Ms. Spider. See you in the next life.

 

[OT]

"Muffy, meet Max."
"Max, eat Muffy."

 

[Fergie]

My Dad used to raise Beagles, and had a prized bitch. Well, one day the next door neighbor's Dober got out, and tore Susie up pretty bad. Susie recovered, and for about three months, she would sit in the bushes, striking distance from the fence. The dober would come over and sniff around the fence all the time, and one day stuck it's snout through one of the chain links. Susie just about ripped the nose off the Dober. That Dober wouldn't come near her and was always submissive.

XJD- I know exactly what you mean when you say "I communicate with dogs in dog." So many don't get that, but it work a whole lot better than human.

MUD- I use hand signals in conjunction with the verbal commands. Our pup is only 6 months old, so we still have a bit of time to work with her, but she is coming along nicely. She knows to give warning abrk when people walk by the house, but will only continue barking if something is suspicious.

What is funny is when we'll catch her doing something wrong, and she knows it before we have to say anything. She'll have her head down and tail between her legs at our feet, but we still punish her so she knows not to do it.

As far as the jumping goes, she jumps on the couch and the bed. Not so much on people, as we are training her out of that. For clarification, as I have heard both ways, when you tell the dog to get down off a person, do you touch them, or just bump them of fwith your body?

This is great info and stories guys, keep it coming.

Fergie

 

[riverfever]

Fergie...

With the jumping on people...I think it depends on the scenario. If mine were to be unleashed and jump on you for attention, I would do what's called a minor bitch correction. It's simply grabbing the scruff of the neck. Hard to explain how hard to grab with that scenario. If she was on all fours, I would grab the scruff (not squeezing hard just enough for me to hold on). Then pick her up enough so that the front legs come off the ground a few inches. Then you shake once left, once right with a "No...No!!" Then let her go. It's what mom would do and IMO it's better than hitting. There is also a major bitch correction that doesn't typically get taught b/c it's more risky. Instead of grabbing the scruff, you would lightly grab the muzzle then shake once left once right. You really have to be careful with that one though as the muzzle is so sensitive and that bone is so thin that if you're pissed off...you might just do damage. Neither of these are supposed to hurt. This is really what mom would do and it hurts their feelings more than anything else. I believe it really helps to reinforce your role as the Alpha and the dogs role as a Beta. If she knew she screwed up and I touched her neck...the body language would say that she should know better. I haven't had to do it since she was a pup. I've done a major only once in 4 years when I busted her chewing some Levi's.

 

[jeepinandy]

IMO the only breed that should be banned or "put down" is the "breed" thats only intent is to have dogs for fighting other dogs. I just think that is one of the big reasons Pitbulls have such a bad rep. My nephew has 2 of them and they are nothing but big babies. I myself have a Rat Terrrier and a Red healer/Choc Lab mix. The Terrier (Ben) listens very well. And Daisy the mix PFFT might as well not even try....lol But she is getting better, she is just a pup and still learning.. Neither of my dogs would think about harming anyone... accept Ben, He attacks on command... ask the local cats, rabbits, squirrels and occasional coon... And Daisy, the only harm she could do is drown you in doggy drool.....lol

:cheers:

 

[8Mud]

Bad Dog

How would you like to be walking through the woods, look up and see that?