Fall Colours

While waiting for the Turkey to slow cook this colourful Thanksgiving afternoon, Dobie and his family went on an outing to the neighbourhood parks and trails. Here he is, sitting impatiently, waiting for me to get a half decent picture of him:

Hiking through the brush with his Dad:

Dobie the explorer with the whimsical brow:

Uh-oh, Dobie needs a potty break:

King of the hill:

I can always count on him for a paw:

Soaking up the last rays of autumn sun:

Trying to take a nice picture with my small garden but neither of us could help squinting into the sun:

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Bye for now, from Dobie and Family.

Potty training proofed!

Sometimes I thought this day would never come. With Dobie's food intolerance causing him to have colitis and diarrhea, I had gotten so used to expecting the worse to happen if we left him alone a bit longer than usual. I took him out for walks so frequently, it was hard to say whether he knew to hold it or just didn't need to go badly enough.

Well, no need to worry any more, Dobie definitely figured it out. He exceeded my expectations by refusing to potty in the backyard! He would stand at the gate to let me know he needs to go "outside". I was so proud of him, I bought him a whole box of bully sticks for being such a good boy!

Here's the bugger with his bully stick:

My Doberman is not a toy!

I have been bottling up a lot of anger lately. I am furious at how rude some people are when it comes to dog etiquette. Everywhere I take Dobie, some random person who wants to meet him will give my dog a command. I am one rude person away from cursing someone out in public.

Would you tell someone elses kid to go sit down? Or course not! You’ll have an angry parent threatening you to leave their kid alone or they’ll call the police. So what makes you think you can tell my dog to “Sit”? You can’t, period. It’s wrong. He’s not your dog.

1. I don’t know you, how dare you give my dog a command! Even if I did know you, what makes you think I would let you give my dog a command? Ask me first.
2. You are confusing my dog, how dare you presume it is okay to use a hand signal on my dog? I don't want him trained with hand signals!
3. Ask for my permission if you want to see my dog do a “trick”. Even then, you don’t get to give the command. My dog is not a toy!

Cesar Millan is right. He rehabilitates dogs, people are the ones that need training. Maybe other dog owners don’t feel this way because their dog is purely a pet. I want to compete with mine, his training is very important to me. Even so, it’s not right to presume you can tell another person’s dog what to do. End of rant.

Raising a working puppy

So what’s the difference between raising a working puppy as opposed to a pet puppy? Drive. Building and preserving drive is the main difference in their upbringing. All dogs are motivated by the same basic instincts. They come with food and prey motivation built-in. As they grow, they develop the drive to play and earn praise from their owners.

In pet homes, prey drive is highly discouraged. When the puppy chases an object and bites it, that object can easily become a hand or foot or small child. It is difficult to teach him the difference because to the puppy, these items are all fair game. So from day one, playing tug is discouraged, sitting or lying down is rewarded. Over time, these dogs learn that being calm and submissive brings them more praise and attention.

In work/sporting dog homes, the exact opposite upbringing is applied. We want to build more prey drive in the puppy. We give him tug toys and when he plays with them, we praise and praise. Eventually you can train the puppy just by holding one of his toys. He’ll be so motivated to earn a game of tug, food rewards are no longer required. Dobie has already reached this stage. He is as motivated by a toy as he is by food. Unfortunately, to an outsider, a working puppy appears to be wild. Working puppies are corrected minimally when they are little. There is nothing worse than over-correcting a dog and shutting down its drive to play. A dog that doesn’t love playing cannot be trained to work (using reward based method) because we make work the equivalent of structured play.

Things Petsmart trainers have told me:

• don’t play tug with your puppy
• flip him over on his back so he knows you’re the pack leader
• use hand signals, with treat in hand, motion him to do the desired behaviour

Things Schutzhund trainers have told me:

• play play play all the time, teach puppy that playing with you is the best thing in the world
• praise tugging, chasing a thrown toy, fetching
• give commands in a neutral tone and posture, absolutely no hand signals
• don’t let puppy look at treat in hand before rewarding, we want eye contact
• don’t over-correct the puppy, better to under-correct and let them make mistake again
• build self confidence in the puppy, ignore him if he gets startled or scared

Please try to take all dog training advice with a grain of salt. Everyone has their own methods which they think are best. At the end of the day, the best training method is the method that works best for the dog. Each individual dog matures and learns in his own unique way so as a gentle leader you need to choose the best training method for your dog.

Here’s Dobie training with his new frisbee:

Never dominance roll your dog!

Let this be my apology to Dobie. Dobie, I’m so sorry I was naive enough to take advice from a Petsmart trainer who told me to flip you onto your back when you misbehaved. I’m so sorry I did this dominance roll to you in the past. And I’m so incredibly sorry I allowed others to dominance roll you when they had no right to do so. It will never happen again, I promise. I will never let anyone bully you again.

What is a dominance roll?
When you physically put a dog on his back, pin him down until he stops struggling, adverts eye contact and submits to you.

Why is this completely wrong?
Because in nature, pack leaders don’t do this. Within dog conflicts, the more dominant dog doesn’t force the lower-rank animal onto his back. The more submissive dog rolls over to expose his stomach by his own will. When you flip a dog over by force, you are not teaching the dog to submit to you because you are the pack leader. Infact, you are communicating to them that you are a crazy dictator to be feared. The dog may still love you, but you lose his respect. You are breaking the bond of trust between you and your dog. Instead of learning submission, the dog is learning to fear you.

With a pet dog, you might never notice the difference (which explains why it is still widely taught in the pet training world). Since you’re not giving him commands and working as a team, you’ll never know whether or not your dog respects and trusts you. With a working dog, it is as clear as day. A dog that heels because it must has no bounce in his step and no wagging tail. A dog that heels because it enjoys working with his owner has exuberance and excitement in all his movements.

Even though I have not dominance rolled Dobie in a long time, I still feel the need to get this information out on my blog and apologize to him. Hopefully another puppy will not be subject to such rude handling from humans. After I learned more about dog pack behaviour, I began to notice that Dobie will expose his belly when I tower over him and say “bad dog”. He also licks after he is corrected for mouthing. In order to build trust with him again, I always praise him happily when he submits on his own accord. There are no hard feelings to being corrected and in time I hope to win his trust back.

Parading the side-walk with his stick

On our walk to the woods last week, Dobie picked up a rotting branch and insisted on bringing it home. He was so proud of his branch, I couldn’t bear to make him “drop it”. So instead, I found him a decent stick which was not rotting and replaced it!

Every day we go outside for a long walk, he picks up his stick from the porch and carries it for the duration of the walk. When we get back, he has to “drop it” and leave it on the porch. We have been in this routine for a week now and I think he is comfortable with the idea that the stick must stay outside. He is reassured that it will be there for him tomorrow.

Some benefits I have noticed from giving him a stick to carry:

- Less distracted, more mindful of not pulling on the leash
- It is obvious when he needs to potty (he drops the stick, goes potty, picks it up again)
- He’s a working breed, seems happy to be employed carrying a stick
- Good practice for carrying other items such as his water bottle

See how happy he is today!

Beef jerky stuffed pig's hoof

What happened Dobie?  Why did your crate explode?

Oh I see, you were trying to pull the hoof treat out with the towel...

My bff gave him this new treat and Dobie LOVES it.  He can chew on the pig's hoof for 2 whole hours while I watch a movie.  No other object has kept his attention for this long.  Luckily, his big mouth is unable to get all the beef jerky from the tip of the hoof.  So he can only chew on the hoof and lick at the beef.  This treat has occupied him for 8 hours before he finished all the beef jerky inside.  Made by Rollover, it can be found at Petsmart.

Food intolerance

Dobie has been battling colitis for 2 months on and off. Each time at the vet, the fecal exams come back clear and the vet prescribes Metronidazole. Then they suggested de-worming just in case he has parasites. I didn’t want to put Dobie through more medication so I tried a week on a bland diet.

At first, Dobie got his Purina Pro Plan Salmon and Rice kibble 50/50 with plain white rice. His stools became smaller, but still soft. Finally, he got acclimated to eating rice, so all he got was plain rice. This is when I saw the change. He had good solid poops, no straining, and he was able to hold it again. This confirmed my suspicions that his problems were food related. Though I’m not sure what ingredients upset his tummy.

The vet prescribed him Hills i/d. He’s doing fine on it, however I’m not happy with the ingredients. The first five ingredients are corn, brewers rice, dried egg product, chicken by-product meal and corn gluten meal. I can understand that it is a bland diet for dogs with gastrointestinal problems, but I didn’t expect a prescription diet to include chicken by-product meal! Gross!

After a week of good stools on the Hills i/d, I went to Global Pet Foods to pick up some Acana kibble. Since he’s doing well on the chicken based food, I got him a small bag of Acana’s Chicken and Burbank Potato. I’m mixing in ½ cup Acana, ½ cup Hills with 1 cup rice for him now and so far so good. Time to cross fingers and continue increasing the amount of Acana in his meal. Doesn’t his dinner look delicious?

4 months - Little dog big bark

I am so proud of Dobie. His barks are usually quite high pitched when he’s hungry or wants attention. But now I know he’s just being a puppy around us. Yesterday, I heard a big-dog bark from his little puppy body for the first time.

It was 11pm, I had put him to bed in his crate and gone to bed myself. I didn’t know our friend was dropping by to pick up an xbox game. Usually Dobie is very excited and friendly when the doorbell rings because he expects us to welcome in more playmates. He must have known the situation was different since the lights were off and I was upstairs, because when the doorbell rang, he let out a series of protective big-dog barks.

I don’t know how he changed his voice, but the barks were menacingly loud with a low growl. He sounded genuinely frightening. Brandon and I ran downstairs to see what was wrong, and when we got there, he instantly quieted down and waited for us to see who was at the door. When we saw our friend, he sensed that there was no threat and went back to sleep. Even though Dobie was in his crate and couldn’t do anything if it was a break-in, he still warned the ‘intruder’ with his pretend big-dog voice to stay away from our house.

So when people say that dogs don’t have the instinct to protect their homes if they are crated on a regular basis, you can tell them that this is a complete myth. My 4 month old puppy had the good sense and courage to use his big voice. He doesn’t just see the crate as his home, he knows he’s part of the bigger home that Brandon and I belong in. I also learned that even though Dobie has accidents inside the house, chews carpet and wets his crate, he DOES see this as his home and feels the need to protect it. I am extremely proud of my little puppy for being a brave doggy. Good boy Dobie!

Dobie at 4 months of age... *wink*

Ear posting success!

Dobie’s ears have only been posted for 4 weeks and they are standing beautifully! The trick my breeder taught me is to post for at least 3 weeks using a cup first. Then switch to the post. The reason this 2-stage process works well is that the cup helps the base of the ear set. If the cartilage doesn’t harden in an upwards position, the ears won’t stand vertically, parallel to each other.

The methodology is to start by developing a good foundation (base of the ear), ignoring the fact that the cup causes pockets. Pockets are easily removed by stretching the ear up the post. I can testify that these pockets were removed after 1 week of posting. And now, Dobie’s ears stand perfectly. I also did not need to bridge the ears. Since he had pockets and the ears leaned too far inwards, I was happy to see that the posts pointed the ears outwards.

I noticed immediately when I switched to the post that due to his low ear setting, his posts did not stand vertically. They pointed at the 11 and 1 o'clock positions. Some people opt to use a bridge (piece of tape to join the posts) to pull the posts into the vertical position, but the ears could easily lean more to one side. The cup is much more stable, doesn't move around on the puppy's head and ensures that both ears grow straight upwards.

TOTAL POSTING TIME: 3 weeks using a cup + 1 week in posts

Here he is, just shy of 4 months, and I have not posted his ears for 3 weeks: