I found these lovely posters by Dr. Sohpia Yin online. They have great illustrations of how to greet a dog, how kids should and should not interact with dogs, and identifying fear body language in dogs.
Good grief it's been ages since my last post. I really need to get back on the ball so I can stop beginning all of my posts like that! The holidays really put a dent in my blog life I suppose. I didn't really read anything new or do anything new training-wise with my dogs.
So, real briefly I'll just give an update on my pups. I mentioned that Ace got neutered back in November, and now he's all healed up! We took Harley in to the vet for an ear infection the day after Christmas, and it was so bad that they had to anesthetize her the next day to flush her ear out. They decided to spay her at the same time so she wouldn't have to go under twice and to save us money since anesthesia is so expensive. We took her to get her stitches removed Saturday morning, which was the day of her Intermediate class graduation but when they removed the sutures, the incision was still open and bleeding so we weren't able to go to class. :( But luckily, one of the other students couldn't go to class either so her graduation will be this Saturday! :) Unfortunately, my husband will be gone this weekend for work so he won't be able to attend her graduation. :( Also, when we went to the vet to get Harley's sutures removed, the vet also prescribed an anti-anxiety medication for Ace because he has pretty bad separation anxiety. We left for about 2 hours one night and when we came home, seven ornaments (plastic collectible Hallmark ornaments) had basically been shredded. And another time it was the carpet, and another time it was the dog bed, and the cinnamon pine cones from the coffee table, and my watch, and the poop bags... and the list just goes on and on. Well, I think that's all of it.
Today, I finally made the "In Training" leash clips I've had planned for months.
Today, I also bought a Thundershirt for Ace. He is very reactive toward other dogs- any time he sees a dog he barks his head off. He's not aggressive by any means, but it started when he was a puppy - he would get so excited when he saw a dog and he wanted to play with them that he'd whine and bark. And now the barking is a lot louder and sometimes turns into almost a snarling sound. Well, the Thundershirt is supposed to be good for reactivity toward other dogs and barking (as well as many many other things), and I've heard that it's a miracle worker. So I put the shirt on him when I got home and then took him for a walk to see how he would do if we saw another dog. Well, there were no other dogs out, but we heard other dogs barking and usually he'd bark back, but he didn't. Yay! The only time he did bark was when we saw the mailman, and it was only a little "woof" and then I was able to get him quiet and calm again. It's also supposed to be good for separation anxiety. I'm a little scared to try it for that though, because I think Harley would try and eat it off of him. :P
One other thing that happened today was that Harley started playing with the door stop again. She hasn't done that since she was a little itty bitty baby! And the funny part was that I just watched the video of her playing with it as a puppy last night for the first time in a while! And luckily, I got her playing with it today on video. :)
Well, thanks for pawsing. More later, I promise. :)
