On my mind recently is the fact that I am going to find myself in a rather unique position (for me!) to be able to do things very differently with Cheese to what I have done with my previous dogs. I want to ensure that Cheese and his needs are the top priority in any decision making rather than anything else, whereas before I messed up with training because I didn't know any better or because our family circumstances were different. There are also plenty of new things that I want to try with Cheese.
Training Classes
To start with, I will NOT be attending the AWFUL puppy training classes that we took the terrierists to! An awful lot of outdated dominance theory and "in the wild" nonsense was spouted at us and our puppies learned absolutely nothing in the 6 weeks we attended. They didn't even get the opportunity to socialise properly as the trainer was too afraid that the bigger puppies would squash them, despite knowing that they were living with a labrador and an American Bulldog!
Thankfully, we have since discovered the fabulous Jo and
Go Fetch It and Cheese will be going along to sensible classes with a sensible trainer.
Bran didn't start training classes until he was 3 years old, but he thoroughly enjoyed it and, seeing just how much he enjoyed it, cemented in my head that I would definitely do them earlier with our next dog. So, I'll be aiming to have Cheese become a Kennel Club Gold Citizen in the same way as his incredible predecessor but hopefully he will achieve it at an earlier age. Or, if he doesn't like it at all, then that plan can be re-thunk ;o)
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| Branston Beans ~ KC Gold Citizen |
Neutering
As all of our previous dogs have been rescues, they have either already been neutered by the time they have been adopted or have had to be neutered at 6 months to uphold the terms of our adoption contracts. Obviously, with Moss and Casey both due to hit sexual maturity at roughly the same time, then early neutering was even more critical.
However, I know a lot more now about why it is wise to wait with bigger dogs (especially ones with such prolific joint problems as labradors) until they are at least 18 months of age ~ giving them a chance to fully develop physically, emotionally and mentally (well, kind of!) before messing with hormones.
To be fair, of all the dogs we've had, the only one that really could have done with waiting to be castrated later than he was was Bailey lurcher. He may have been exactly the same dog even if there'd been the opportunity to wait until he was more mature, but he may also not have been quite such a nervous and anxious dog if he'd been able to hang on to his testosterone past 6 1/2 months.
At the moment, my plan is to wait until Cheese is 18 months old before making any further decisions, although, if hormone based behavioural problems or medical problems occur before 18 months then this, also, will have to be rethought, but I have met plenty of calm, well behaved entire dogs and bitches over the last few years so I'm keeping an open mind.
Joint Protection
I'm quite sure that some dogs are just prone to joint problems and/or are born with them and no amount of wrapping in cotton wool will prevent them from causing difficulties. Such was the case with Bran as his first limp in his elbows started when he was just 6 months old.
However, this time I have the opportunity to be putting my faith in
Kate to ensure that as much as possible is done with the genetic line to prevent the inherited problems and then it will be my job to do my absolute best to prevent problems from developing without compromising the quality of Cheese's life.
For the most part, I will be obeying The 5 Minute Rule as far as exercising goes. This involves walking a pup for 5 minutes for each month of its age per day for the first year or so of its life, so an 8 week old pup gets walked for 10 minutes a day and a 5 month old pup gets walked for 25 minutes a day. Obviously, this is not actually a "rule", but a "guide" and common sense has to play a big part to accommodate onlead exercise, offlead exercise and play at home.
As I mentioned though, I won't be compromising the quality of Cheese's life so if the opportunity to go for a very sociable group walk that is likely to last longer than his "allowed" exercise time crops up, then we
will be attending and I will manage his exercising carefully to ensure that he has a fabulous time without causing any problems. I'm also planning to block free access to the stairs and he'll be carried up and down them. I'm also hoping to train him to get in and out of the car by using our dog ramp until he is big enough to safely jump in and out, but will know that he is perfectly comfortable using the ramp if it's needed.
So not quite wrapping up in cotton wool, but proceeding with caution and thought.
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| Bubble Wrap Dog (from http://corgipals.org) |
Raw Feeding
I stumbled across raw feeding thanks to
Labrador Forums. I liked the idea of providing a diet that was as close to source as possible with as few additives, etc as I could possibly manage, but it didn't strike me as a very practical way to feed as a main diet so, once I found out about it, I used it to supplement Bran and Flora's kibble based diet.
However (there's *always* a "however"!), Flora developed a rather adverse allergy when the recipe for their usual kibble was tweaked and it was the nudge I needed to revert to preparing a home cooked diet for them. Previously, I had provided a home cooked diet for Flora and Bear when I had to carefully manage their weight because of their varying problems, but it had been a lot of faff ~ to be perfectly honest ~ and the lure of the ease of dropping kibble into a bowl twice a day soon won me over again. This time, it was crucial that I stuck with it because I couldn't bear to see Flora suffer.
However (yes, ANOTHER one!), it very quickly became apparent that Bran had a whole plethora of food intolerances. Because I knew exactly what was going into his food, it was very quick and easy for me to identify what was causing him problems. Eventually, it became apparent that just about everything that wasn't meat was causing him problems, so I almost accidentally started raw feeding.
There are two main schools of thought about raw feeding: the
BARF (Bones and Raw Feeding) method devised by Dr Ian Billinghurst and the
RMB (Raw Meaty Bones) method devised by Dr Tom Lonsdale. The main differences between are that BARF advocate adding plenty of fruit and vegetable to the diet along with raw meat, whereas RMB doesn't think that it is necessary. I actually ended up following the RMB route purely because Bran was having reactions to everything and, I have to say, I could see the difference in their coats and teeth and demeanour within a matter of days!
I was essentially following my gut (which was, essentially, following the dogs' guts) and fretted constantly that they weren't getting sufficient vitamins, etc, as my poor friend Jules can testify ;o) but she calmly advised me during each and every meltdown that I HAD to be led by what I could see with my eyes: were the dogs healthy? Were their coats soft and shiny? Were their teeth clean and white? Were their eyes clear and bright? Were they maintaining weight? Were their faeces firm and of a good colour and less frequent? Were they drinking less? The answers to all of these questions was a resounding "YES" and so I settled back and let the dogs be. And they LOVED raw feeding!
Then along came the terrierist pups and we had our first opportunity to introduce puppies to raw feeding. My loose plan had been to keep them on kibble until they were 6 months old as they had been hand reared and I wanted to be sure that they got the very best nutritional start that we could give them. When they were 4 months old, we started to give them little bits of raw mince with their kibble from time to time and when they reached 5 months, we started to give them small bits of raw chicken wings (easily scrunchable) and very quickly Moss decided that he would no longer eat the brown biscuit stuff if there was nommy meaty stuff available. Casey has always been easy to feed and will eat anything and everything. Moss has always been a lazy, fussy eater and so we were amazed that he preferred the effort of eating raw meat over the ease of chomping kibble, but we went with it and when he'd refused to eat kibble for 3 straight days, we took the plunge with the raw diet. That's how they've continued until very recently and they have been very, very healthy pups. Thanks to the complication of having them crated following their luxating patella ops and having to carefully manage their weight with keeping them entertained, we are having to be a bit more creative with their meals at the moment and they are getting little actual raw food, but plenty of cooked meats or tinned fish mixed with mashed potato or porridge to fill
Kongs, that are then frozen before being given to them.
So, with this experience in mind, it was actually one of my requirements on my list of Finding The Perfect Breeder that they be raw feeders. Common sense told me that I was quite likely to have to compromise on this one though and I wasn't too bothered as I knew that puppies could thrive on the diet once we got them home.
Imagine then, my delight, when I discovered that Kate partially raw feeds her puppies from weaning :oD The pups are fed on a combination of Arden Grange kibble, raw mince and raw tripe over 4 meals a day ~ brilliant! The best of both worlds! I discussed my plans to feed a pure raw food diet when we met Kate and she advised caution. After reading a little more and keeping my concerns about joint development in mind, I think I'll be heeding her advice to maintain a mixed diet until Cheese is a year old and then moving on to a pure raw diet.
Again though, I shall be Cheese led, and if he is lazier than Moss (please, NO!) or doesn't thrive on it, then alternatives will be researched.
Commands
For once, I WILL think about what commands I want Cheese to know, what verbal command will be tied to which action and what hand signal will be used!
Usually, I kind of fanny about a bit, get the action from the dog one way or another, then attach whatever word pops into my head to the action and try to remember what my hands were doing at the time. As you can probably imagine, this leads to all sorts of miscommunication!! We have had all sorts of bizarre and confusing experiences where several people have been giving different commands for the one action to the same dog and I am DETERMINED to avoid that happening again!
*Intermission* Funny little story: Sophie decided that when Hugo needed training she would use food related words as commands. We already knew that Hugo wasn't going to live for very long and we weren't bothered about training him beyond those things he really needed to know for everybody's lives to be a bit easier. I can't remember what they all were now, but I know that "sit" was "chips". Very entertaining to watch ;o)
At some point just before I lost Bran, I took the time to start compiling a list of all the words and commands that he knew as I suspected that he'd eventually absorbed far more than any other dog we'd had. It was quite a list and was by no means complete when he died, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it. If you're in the slightest bit interested, then you are welcome to peruse the document:
Wot Bran Knows. I'm intending to use it as a starting point for deciding what and how to teach Cheese.
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| "Chips" on the table |
Sleeping Arrangements
This will be the first time that I consciously make the decision to allow a new dog to sleep in my bedroom.
Bailey arrived and his separation anxiety became apparent very quickly and, for the sake of getting some sleep, he was moved into my room, although he slept on the floor in his own bed. When Bear arrived, he slept downstairs initially, but then the cats needed a break at night, so his bed was also moved into my room. By the time Flora arrived, the boys were good enough that I could leave the bedroom door open at night and they could choose where they slept. Flora was used to sleeping in a crate (and she ADORED a crate!) and there wasn't room for one in my room, so she slept downstairs. Bear then chose to sleep in the bed next to Flora's crate. When we moved to Wales, circumstances dictated that none of them could sleep in my room so everybody had big crates in the utility room. We moved back to Bristol and Flora and Bear slept loose but downstairs together in their beds or on the sofa. When Bear died, Flora chose to stay downstairs. When Bran arrived, she stayed downstairs to keep him company while he slept in his crate. It was only when Bran turned 2 that I trusted them enough to have free run of the house at night, and both of them chose to sleep in my room ~ Bran on a big piece of memory foam beside the radiator and Flora on a pile of duvets UNDER my bed. When Flora died, Bran chose to sleep on my bed with me and I absolutely loved waking up and him being the first thing I saw every morning.
And so, as I have just one dog to accommodate, the plan is to have a fairly large crate in my bedroom for Cheese to sleep in until he is suitably housetrained and safely big enough to be jumping on and off of the bed, for then he will be promoted to Chief Sleeper on the Mummy Bed. More than anything else, not seeing Bran's face first thing of a morning is the thing that makes me miss him the most, so I can't wait to have a sleepy lab face greeting me again :o)
Clicker Training
I discovered clicker training a bit late in the day. Flora loved working with the clicker, but then she was a delight to train anyway because she was happy to do it for a simple word of praise. Bear was realllllllllllllly hard work and pretended that he had no idea what that funny thing in my hand was each and every time I got it out for a new training session. Eventually, I admitted defeat and gave up.
I had a vague plan of using it when Bran was a pup but my clicker skills were still not great and he was very unresponsive. Every 6 months or so, I'd make a new attempt to introduce him to the clicker, but his response gradually worsened to the point that he would avoid any eye or physical contact if he knew that the clicker was out :o( Luckily, I had a very clever trainer friend to hand in the shape of
Mog and she spent some time on the phone to me explaining things in a very calm and sensible manner when I had an utter brain meltdown. Using her advice, I "stealth clickered" Bran: I was very very busy reading a magazine and drinking a cup of tea and in no way noticed at all when he was heading towards the mat that I wanted him to lay on so have no idea whatsoever who was producing the "click" noise and throwing treats at him!! ;o) It was like somebody threw a lever in his little labby brain and suddenly training Bran became a pleasure. Fortunately, Jo-trainer was a clicker advocate and we were allowed to use the clicker during our normal training classes and Bran came on in leaps and bounds.
Casey has also responded incredibly well to clicker training, but she is another one who is happy to work for words of praise, although can only learn new things from Jacob apparently.
Now that I *get* how the clicker works, how dogs learn from it and have seen what incredible results it can produce, I have far more faith in my abilities to clicker train Cheese and I know where Mog is if I get stuck again ;o)
Whilst discussing the clicker, I just want to mention two books ~ one that is essentially my bible now and one that I'm planning to order very soon.
1.
100 Ways To Train A Perfect Dog by Sarah Fisher and Marie Miller
This is the book that I recommend to absolutely everyone that ever asks for a training book recommendation and have bought it as a gift for many friends when they have taken on new dogs. I have read many many training manuals over the years and this is the most simply put, down to earth and comprehensive book I have ever read. The first few things to teach I expected to be "Sit" and "Down" but no, in this book they are "Body Language" and "Food Manners" ~ brilliant stuff!!! It covers basic TTouch movements and advocates the use of the clicker in almost all exercises. Sarah and Marie share tales of their own training mistakes and use brilliantly simple language.
2.
Clicker Gundog by Helen Phillips
I stumbled across this one completely by accident when looking for something else but it seems to cover all of the gundog type stuff that I'm likely to want to use with Cheese (bearing in mind that he is unlikely to ever actually "work" as a gundog and will only be doing it as another string to his bow). As I'm already planning to use clicker training, it fascinates me that I could expand it into this field too. If any of you have any experience of this book or clicker training gundoggery then I'd be really interested to hear about it!
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| Brilliant book |
Gundoggery
There's probably not an awful lot that I can say about this at the moment as I know very little about the technicalities involved, but I had started to explore it a little with Bran and I like to think that some breeds will just enjoy doing a little (or a lot if you're that sort of wizard!) of what they have been bred to do if they aren't going to have the opportunity to be thoroughly immersed in it.
As mentioned above, I'm hoping to start with clicker training some of the basics but will be looking into finding a kind and sensible gundog trainer nearby as well.
Being Single
Not me, but Cheese ;o)
Bailey was our first family dog, we were almost total novices and he was a Very Difficult Dog. He wasn't ever really a completely single dog as we spent a lot of time with Muppet (my friend Joss' lurcher), then we started fostering not long after he came home and then Bear joined our family. Since then, none of our dogs have been singletons, or not for very long periods anyway, and it means that my attention has been divided and I've never been able to truly focus on one dog at a time.
Cheese will have the best of both worlds as he will have doggy company in the form of Moss and Casey, but will also be the only dog that I need to concentrate on as Moss and Casey's needs are met by Sophie and Jacob.
I thoroughly enjoyed being the centre of Bran's world once Flora had passed, because I had very much felt as if I was always dancing on the outskirts of their relationship when they were together. The all-encompassing experience of Bailey's terrible separation anxiety made me ensure that every dog that came into our home after ~ whether they were permanent or foster ~ could cope with being left alone for periods of time. The foundations for Bran being alone were firmly put into place when he was a pup and Flora was still around, so I knew that once it was just me and him he could cope without my being present, but it was lovely to know that he was far happier when I was with him. Something else that I'm very much looking forward to with Cheese.
Swimming
Bran was very much a latecomer to swimming. He had a rather unpleasant experience when he was still a pup and refused to do more than paddle after that. It wasn't until he was 3 1/2 years old and we were in Cornwall and on the beach that we visit almost every year with the dogs, that he suddenly took the plunge in a very deep rock pool! I still don't know what made him do it, but he did and he swam whenever he could after that. However (there it is again!), he ALWAYS swam like someone was forcing him to swim ;o)
We don't have a lot of places nearby that will provide swimming opportunities for a pup, but I am determined to locate some and to get Cheese acquainted with water as quickly as possible. Bran loved swimming eventually and I would like Cheese to have that pleasure from as young an age as possible.
Some of the best opportunities for gorgeous sea swimming are afforded by the beaches down in Bognor Regis, where our lovely friends Jo and Richard live, so I suppose we'll just HAVE to go and visit them :oP
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| Swimming for the first time |
I'm quite sure that more things will crop up, but at the moment these are the ones at the forefront of my mind. It is another huge advantage to making plans to bring a puppy home so far in advance because I have the time to really think things through and to make decisions with Plan As and Plan Bs and Plan Cs on standby and to change my mind umpteen times before anything actually needs to be put into action.
