eric

Well, the nice weather is finally here and we're spending lots of time outside. Unfortunately, so are the insects, especially black flies. We were outside for a few hours yesterday and when we came in, we were horrified to see that Zeke's belly was covered in angry red welts. The flies don't seem to bite Sam and Travis as much, as their nether regions are well covered in fur. Zeke, unfortunately, is a "naked belly dog" and his tender pink skin is fully exposed. He was in obvious discomfort last night, licking himself and walking with his tail down. I don't think he slept much either - he kept getting up and jumping on and off the bed, which isn't typical of him. Anyhow, any ideas on insect repellent for him? It obviously has to be something non-toxic.

The guy from ADT who sold me our alarm system told me a similar thing; you're 70 or 80% less likely to get broken in if you own a "large" dog (presumably 80lbs +). As mentioned, its basic phsychology. Why would a burglar take a bunch of unknown risks (will the dog attack, will it make a bunch of noise?) when he can rob the house down the street. My dogs are cowards, but they put on a good show while the person is still on the other side of the door. My GSD goes bonkers when strangers come up to our house (doesn't happen very often as we live in the country). One night, after we let them out back for last call, I snuck out the front door and quietly made my way around the side of the house. I crept to within 30 feet or so of my GSD, Travis, then started running full blast towards. He basically took off like a scared rabbit towards my wife, barking the whole way, to go hide behind her.

Looks like he's saying "Waaazzzup!"

Our dogs sleep in the bedroom with us, Sam and Zeke on the bed, Travis on the floor (its where he likes to sleep). My wife gets up earlier than I do to go to work, so she has her alarm set for 6:15 am. Half the time, when the alarm goes off, our GSD Travis makes this exasperated groan: "Uuuuuuuhhhhh". He goes on for like 10 seconds. Its pretty funny. Zeke in Sam will stay in bed with me while she gets ready, then the boys follow her into the kitchen to be let outside. Once she leaves, they come back to bed and sleep with me until its time for me to get up. They pretty much sleep through the night. Once in a while, somebody will jump off the bed. Sam tends to get hot and jumps off, but he just lies on the floor and goes right back to sleep.

I think alot of GSD's end up being named King or Rex.

I got a similar problem with my idiot neighbour. We think their old dog passed away because we don't see him anymore. Probably got hit by a car since they let the dog roam freely. I don't know how many times he got into our garbage. Its as if they didn't care about him. He was always outside (never tied up), never taken for walks, etc. Why bother having a dog? One day, we realize we haven't seen him in a while so we figure he's passed away. So what do my "don't care about our dog" neighbours do? Get another dog and leave it outside. Anyhow, this new dog is friendly enough dog, but he keeps coming into our yard and come right up to our backdoor. Obviously, Travis, Zeke and Sam go bananas when they see him, and its almost impossible to get them to stop barking until he leaves.

An other alternative, if you have the room in your basement, is to buy one of those outdoor, chainlink dog enclosures, and set it up inside. They're not that expensive ($200 to $300) but they provide lots more room. You can even leave toys, food and water in there. I felt guilty having my dogs locked up in little crates all day so I got a 10' x 10 ' model. This way, all three can be together which hopefully makes their day go by a little faster.

First of all, get a clicker. Stay with him outside. When he does his business, click and reward immediately. Keep doing this for a few weeks and he'll quickly learn that going outside is a good thing. Second of all, at that age, perhaps having the run of the house isn't such a great idea. You might want to confine him to an area where accidents aren't such a big deal and easy to clean up, like the kitchen. As he gets older and he gets better control, you can open up the rest of the house. Thirdly, going to the washroom in the house should be a negative experience. If you catch him, grab him with a very stern and loud "No!" and take him outside. Confining him helps because its important that you catch him in the act. If he's off in another room and is unsupervised, you're not going to catch him. Finally, let him out often. He's still quite young and its alot to ask for him to hold it for 8 hrs.

First of all, reprimanding her will only cause the problem to get worse as she will associate strangers with something bad. One trick is to always carry treats with you and give them to the other person to feed her. She will then start associating meeting people with something good. The other point would be to introduce her to as many people and situations as possbible. Is this your first GSD? GSD pups are typically quite shy, but they blossom when then hit 1 or 2 years of age. We took our GSD, Travis, to the local dog park when he was about 3 months old. He sat in between our legs and didn't budge. He was terrified of everything. After a few months, he started venturing out further and further until he was running around with this big bro Sam. Now, at 4 years of age, he is very confident. Understand, however, that at best your GSD will likely remain somewhat aloof and indifferent of strangers. Pic of Travis below [url]http://www.villagephotos.com/viewpubimage.asp?id_=6888007[/url]

In some ways, the worst shows are the ones where the owner complies just enough that they can't take the dog away. One in particular comes to mind. It was this beautiful GSD in a junk yard. He was so friendly, and you could tell he was a real charater. As soon as people approached the fence he'd come running up to see them, pick up his food bowl and run around. The Humane Society forced to owner to clear a path for the dog so he could run, which the owner did, but beyond that there was nothing they could do. He was well fed, had shelter, and adequate place to roam. But this poor dog spends his days and nights all by himself in this junkyard, as a deterent. You could tell the officers were frustrated they couldn't do more, and one of them actually said "All dogs belong in a home" and that she wished there was something they could do.

My least favorite phrase from Animal Precinct "Embedded collar" Sometimes I just can't watch that show.

My experience is that a calm, civilized, well worded letter of complaint will work wonders. Don't use profanity and lots of !!!!! Sending a letter that goes: "Dear @#%@#% I justed wanted to tell you to go #^%# yourself with a #^# in your @#$%#" tends to go straight in the trash. Just write the store headquarters, send a copy to the store manager, stating something along the lines of: "I am writing this letter to express my profound dissatisfaction with the manner that I, a regular Petco customer, and my pet, were treated by one of your employees...." If you don't get the guy fired, you'll probably get a letter of apology and some freebies. You'd be surprised at how effective it can be, plus you'll feel alot better once you write all this stuff down and get it out of your system.

What's wrong with putting him in the crate? This is hardly cruel, especially for 10 minutes. Otherwise, I agree with the other posts. You need to get your dog to associate digging in the plants with something bad.

I think officially sanctioned dog parks are great for socialization, especially for puppies. Having said that, I will never set foot in a dog part again. A few months ago in Toronto a couple dogs died and many more got sick at a dog park after eating food that had been left on the ground which had been laced with a very potent pesticide. Then, just a few days ago I heard on the radio that several dogs got sick at the only official dog park here in Ottawa, Bruce Pit. That's it for me.

In my experience regarding cold, dog's usually don't have a problem unless they get their paws wet. It could be -25 deg C and my boys think its great. If they happen to walk through slush and its -10 deg C, they'll start holding their paws up. Water soaks the fur between their pads and basically reduces its insulation. Watch your dog - he/she will tell you when their feet are getting cold. If you see them stopping and holding a paw up, this is usually a sign that they are uncomfortably cold. Time to bring them in. If you are not close to home (i.e.: out on a walk), what usually works is to hold their paw in your hand for 30 seconds to a minute. Your hands should be fairly warm (assuming you are wearing mitts/gloves) and this will temporarily help. However, you should immediately start home. Another thing to watch is the ear tips. Dog's with erect ears (like GSD's) are more prone to frost bite. Finally, alot depends on the breed. I have a GSD, a Lab/GSD and a beagle/Lab/??? mix. We've had our GSD and Lab/GSD mix out in - 30 Deg C weather and they didn't even notice. If you have a Lab/GSD/Golden mix you should be fine. Our smaller beagle mix however, with his thin coat and "naked" bellya

Start with a test for parents first, then do dog owners. [quote name='xavierandrea']:o Sometimes I wonder why isn't there a "TEST" for dog owners. Like a license or something, to check if people are responsible or not.[/quote]

I use to feel like many people here - X-mas was more of a chore than anything else. We would do so much driving and visiting on the 23, 24 and 25th that by the time we got home on the 25th we were so tired that it made it difficult to enjoy our Xmas. A couple years ago however, my wife and I decided to say "no" to our families, as in "no we're not going to spend the holidays driving around". We told everybody that they were more than welcome to visit, but that we were staying home. It ruffled some feathers, but my wife and I had a much more enjoyable Xmas. We are doing the same this year. As for gifts, I pretty much picked out what I wanted; a new cleaver, a Tom Clancy book, a computer game, a convection oven for the cottage. I'm sure she got me some stuff not on the list. My big surprise of her showed up yesterday morning - a new dining room table. Its has a stainless steel frame with a black marble top. The marble is gorgeous - dark black with white veins. She was completely surprised. I got another surpise in store tonight - her own digital camera; a canon Elph SD100. She wanted her own because my Sony DSCF717 is too bulky for her to take to work. Tomorrow, we're going back up to the cottage until New Years. Its beautiful up there, its like a postcard. We go snowshoeing everyday which gives the boys the chance to run free. They love it.

Ok, I keep reading and hearing about how letting your dog(s) sleep on the bed is really bad and will cause all sorts of dominance problems. However, we have always let our dogs sleep on the bed, and have never had any issues. In fact, we got a king size bed a few years ago so we could all fit on comfortably. I think that I would really miss it if the boys didn't sleep with us on the bed.

I think the best advice was from Cassie, and this is what we did with all our pups. There is an additional benefit of using this approach, which is bite inhibition. Since you are teaching the dog that biting hurts, your dog will be less likely to bite later on and if they do bite, they will tend not to bite as hard.

"Licking hands" is our dog Sam's night-time ritual. Every night, when I get in bed, he starts nudging my hand until I flip it over so he can lick. He'll lick for about two minutes or so, then he starts looking for my other hand. Once he finished licking that one, then he's happy and we can all go to sleep. He flips though if I don't let him. It seems to be an important thing to him. And its only at night in bed. During the day he never licks hands.

Its called "stereotypic behaviour", and is something than can occur in larger animals in captivity (polar bears, primates, elephants) as well as smaller animals such as rodents, racoons. Stereotypic behaviour is defined as an action that is repeated over and over again, that serves no purpose. It is always the result of captivity and is not seen in the wild, although the exact causes are unclear. Some people think that this type of behaviour starts off as a useful behaviour (trying to escape) but degenerates into mindless repetition. Others believe it is simply the result of boredom. Still some think that the animals actually go insane. There was some interesting research done recently with laboratory mice. This particular researcher recorded the actions of several white mice 24/7 and documented their stereotypic behaviour. One mouse had a cardboard tube in his cage and would spend the night running through the tube. One night, this mouse ran through the tube over 1000 times! Anyhow, what this fellow discovered is that the stereotypic behaviour was drastically reduced, or ceased althogether, when the mice were placed in "enriched" cages. These were much larger cages that had all sorts of interesting things for the mice to climb up, crawl into, explore, etc... The more "enriched" the cage, the less the behaviour. Mice put back into bare cages reverted to their old behaviours.

GSD's eating poop.... Seems like a common thing. My shepherd Travis has quite a penchant for poop, especially frozen poop. I've heard and read all sorts of crazy things that you can give your dog/sprinkle on the poop etc, but I have got a 100% guaranteed, surefire way to eliminate this problem. Pick up the poop. :D Sorry, don't mean to be glib but from what I've read/heard/seen its just one of the things that dogs do. The good news is that his intake of his, uh, output, has declined over the years. One of the funniest things I ever saw was related to this behaviour. I was outside with the boys and Travis was chowing down on something with gusto. I had my suspicions as to what he was eating, so I call him over. As he's running over to me, my wife arrives home and walks out to the yard. Well, the boys immediately bee-line for her and before I can say anything Travis gives her this big, wet, sloppy dog kiss right on the lips. My wife promptly stood up, gagged, and vomited. Well, ok, probably not too funny for her but I had trouble standing up.

Hi, Just a word of advice. You might be teaching your dog to react this way, hence why he is fearing more and more things. Its human nature to baby our dogs when we see that something has frightened them. You know: "What's wrong baby? Its ok?" Get down and hug the dog, speak in a high-pitched voice, try to comfort them. This is supposedly the opposite of what you should do. By comforting them and speaking in a high pitch voice you are validating to the dog that yes, this is something you should be afraid of, and that this is the way to act. What you should try to do instead is simply ignore the dog's behaviour, or if something has suddenly startled your dog, act happy. Laugh. Go over to the object, play with it. Make it a game By doing so you will show the dog that their is nothing to fear.

Sorry, That was me. [quote name='Anonymous']Yeah, that's it. As far as I know, it happens to a number of breeds. My GSD gets it, which is how we found out. We pretty much freaked the first winter it happened. Went to the vet, who referred to it as "snow nose". [quote name='Sanvean']Cute! Is "snow nose" what happens to huskies in the winter when they aren't exposed to the sun and their noses lighten? In Maltese, that's called "winter nose."[/quote][/quote]

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