New Baby

Looking at the first picture... hide those slippers!

 

Adorable...!

 

What a cutie
Hmmm....... I remember when Shiloh was a pup......... in particular the trail of chewed shoes, boots and slippers
... and those milk teeth are sooo sharp
She looks like she has settled right in and made friends with the locals

 

Congrats! That's a cute pupper right there. She looks right at home.

 

Cute! Sounds like she may realized when you put her in the crate and leave she knows it will be a while before you return. Good luck!

 

Cute pup!

 

Both seem photogenic. Cutest look on the little one's eyes and face!

 

I hope you can read this...

 

Love the rubber booties idea! Sensible too.

I have often scolded dog owners on hot days (when you can literally fry an egg on the footpath) when I find their pets distressed, their owners totally oblivious while they tug on the leash of a sadly reluctant dog who can't tolerate walking ground that burns their paws!

While I understand the reasoning behind having an animal in a crate at home, I never can get used to the idea, (unless they are at the vet). We found our dog would pretty much sleep most the time while away for the day (admittedly she had the cat for company too and was toileted before we left), and ran loose around/in/out of the house when we're home. As puppies, it was like having a baby around the house being woken up by its whining to be taken outside for toileting.

Gotta admit, animals have us pretty well trained

 

Sweet! Just look at those eyes.

 

Hey Laura Josie is really beautiful and has such a pretty face
katkat is right.......those eyes

BTW I have never used crates for any of my dogs and all have been inside dogs right from the time they were puppies. Mind you all of them have been trained to go to their own suspension bed in the family room and all have been toilet trained within two or three days arrival at our house and never had problems except with our current dog Shiloh. Shiloh is very good now....... but for the first couple of years shoes were always in danger of being chewed so you had to pay close attention to keep your shoes out of harms way. She had plenty of chew toys and things to occupy her time but she just likes to chew shoes. One other time when Shiloh was about 12 months old she was with my wife and my wife fell asleep watching TV in the lounge and she left the TV remote and the home theatre surround amp remote on the arm of her recliner chair and woke up to both remote controls destroyed and the dog looking very guilty. Luckily she seems to have grown out of this chewing habit and hasn't destroyed anything for the last 9 or 10 months.
When Shiloh comes in the car she has a bed in the back section of our Volvo V50 wagon with a cargo barrier net between her and the back seat. We also have a seat belt for her so she is safe

 

Hey Laura I always get pure pedigree dogs from breeders whose dog is at least a grand champion and that have a good reputation and are kind to their dogs. The breeder also must be in a family situation with only a couple of dogs and not breeding lots of dogs living isolated in cages in a puppy farm situation. We always check out the friendliness of the breeders, their family and especially the mother dog before we commit. After we pick our puppy at three weeks, I ask the breeder to start encouraging my pup to go to the toilet on a newspaper so by 10 weeks the pup is already mostly going on the newspaper. When the pup first comes home I stay with them for the first 32 to 48 hours and every time they go to the toilet on the newspaper I say "toilet toilet" then "good girl" and then they get a treat. The next step is to put the paper outside and reward them when they ask to go out. The third step is take the paper down the yard where you want them to go and rewards again do the trick. After a couple of weeks you take the paper away and reward them for going down the yard. Now if we say toilet toilet Shiloh will go to the toilet on cue which is handy if you are about to take her out in the car.
If you make sure their toilet area is away from their water and food area then they pick up toilet training very quickly.

Training dogs becomes easy if you firstly spend a lot of time with them and have lots of patience when introducing new skills and then always remember one thing. Dogs love positive affirmation that they are pleasing you and with lots of positive encouragement they will usually try to do the right thing and with rewards and treats on offer they will pickup new skills quickly in order to get the treat.
Hitting dogs doesn't work as it makes them fearful and then they don't respect you sometimes causing them to start biting in fear to protect themselves. Personally I don't like people hurting any animals and especially dogs.

Regarding crates I don't really have an opinion except I have never needed one and never had one. I wouldn't like to see a dog spending most of the day locked in a crate as they need to be able to run around but I have several friends who sometimes use crates and they have happy well adjusted dogs.
In my case I have always had a very large house with a huge secure yard and if I need a break from the dog or we are going out then the dog can run around the yard for a while where she has a large kennel (with verandah) and a warm bed inside.

From the pictures of your dogs that I have seen they look very happy and are having a great life with their caring owners. Good luck with Josie and I still think she is adorable.....
Cats are okay but I think dogs really are man's best friend

BTW Just a footnote.... my last two ridgebacks and my flat coated retriever came from breeders who also checked us out thoroughly .... they even came over to my house to check out if we had a big enough yard and asked all sorts of questions about vet care and shots and whether we would be doing obedience training. With top line breeders after passing all their checks you usually have to wait up to a year for a puppy to become available and to get first pick from a litter you usually have to pay big $$$$. As breeders they want to see that their puppies are going to grow up to become well behaved dogs living in a home where they will be well cared for, happy and loved.

 

Laura most people I know use a crate when they are not home until the dog is big enough to be by themselves with no supervision. They see it as a protective measure. We don't have a house dog now but I'm sure we would use a crate for a while if we had a puppy. Puppies are like toddlers they can get themselves into dangerous situations quickly.

 

This. Very much this. Crates are a great help for training dogs, as long as you use them right. They are not a dog storage box.

Puppy-Mimsy was in a crate at night and when we left the house while she was still a puppy, for just the reasons you mention. We still have the crate out, with the door off, and she puts herself to sleep in it every night. I think she likes having a spot that's only hers.

 

Tangent: Have either of you ever used the clicker method to train you dog? When we took puppy-Mimsy to her very first puppy obedience class the trainer who held it taught us how and advocated strongly for it as a very effective training method. And since it really worked we used it her first year or so, but then stopped.

The reason I ask is that I recently unexpectedly came across the clicker when I was cleaning out that one kitchen cabinet no one ever opens.I clicked it to see if it would work. The dog heard it, charged across the entire house and skidded to a stop to sit at attention, with her mouth open for the reward treat. Considering it's been five years and she still remembers it that well, I'm thinking we abandoned the clicker too soon...

 

I have heard of the clicker method but haven't used it. My first dog I trained was a flat coated retriever and she was trained as a gun dog because in those days (1970s) I used to go duck hunting. Many of the trainers were using the clicker method but I didn't think it too practical for going hunting when quietness was needed.

I use the Alpha Training method that is very effective too. Over here Alpha training is one of the systems they use for training police and sniffer dogs. It relies on positive affirmation with rewards and it has strong socialisation values making well behaved, friendly dogs an easy outcome.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/belg...-antwerp-shopping-street-20170323-gv5a71.html

 

The clicker is all about positive reinforcement as well. The idea is that you teach the dog to equate the clicker noise with "GOOD DOG YOU ARE AWESOME!!!", which means that when you instantly click the very moment the dog begins to do what you want, you immediately reinforce that behavior. Every click should, at least in the beginning, be followed by a small treat within 5-10 seconds.

The philosophy seems very similar to the method you described: Train by encouraging the behavior you want, instead of discouraging behaviors you don't want. Positive reinforcement has been proven, over and over, to be more effective when training any animal, but especially the intelligent ones.

Puppy-Mimsy is smart and food motivated so unsurprisingly the clicker method worked very well with her. After I found the clicker still works earlier this evening, we took the very first small step in a journey towards, "Mimsy, fetch beer!"

Um, your link is about a guy driving his car at pedestrians... copy-paste fail?

 

DOH!!!! ^C didn't work and I didn't check...... oops sorry.
You know what they say.... good help is hard to find

Try this and I know it is right this time
http://alphadogtraining.com.au/

 

Ah yes, that link works very well.

From reading the description of their system, it sounds very similar to the approach our puppy class trainer took, though the vocabulary he used was different. He was very focused on the importance of teaching dog owners to communicate with dogs in a way the dog understands, and then use that knowledge to build a solid relationship with the dog and establish yourself as the pack leader.

One of the most important things I personally took away from that class was to avoid punishing the dog whenever possible - punishment damages the trust of the relationship, and without trust, a dog will not be as willing to obey. That's not to say that bad behavior should not have consequences. It absolutely should, or it will happen again. But consequences are not the same as punishment, and under no circumstances ever should the dog be made to fear its humans because of something it did. You can and should be firm. Just don't be mean about it.

 

OMG! I want to put my arms around her and squeeze until she squeaks! So adorable.

Re crates: Thanks for your explanation and my hat off to you for managing FOUR dogs! Not heard of that method being used here Down Under.

Cheers

LS