Howling - help please!!!!!! Chocolate for the winner!

[bella29]

Right, come on now people, serious help needed here please

My nearly 1 year old lab puppy usually wakes about 6 am and used to whimper a bit when he did.

This has now developed into full scale, hound-of-the-baskervilles howling: OW-OW-OW-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

And of course it's getting earlier and earlier as the mornings get lighter.
My current strategy is to bear it as long as possible then, when there is a brief pause in his very authentic impersonation of a Yellowstone wolf, I leap up and go down to him. But it's not helping....

Please help me - the sanity of Bella & family is at stake here. I will send chocolate to anyone who can fix this.

And please don't believe those dog books that say labs aren't noisy

The spray used on my dog was odourless, maybe there are different types of these collars used? It definitely was just like a puff of air that made him stop in his tracks.

Oh yes I could munch on my chocolate in the corner if you start a thread in AIBU!

I remember with our rescue rottie, i had some serious concerns about him - i wanted a second opinion. We hadn't had him long. So, i phoned up a well respected "dog behaviourist" who came to our house - advising us not to feed Yazz (stupid name for a rotweiller with aggression issues!) the night before. He expected us to be amazed that he did everything the guy asked him to do. He went and sat over by the guy - he told us that was because he was the most dominant person in the room and the dog sensed that and felt safe. Of course it had nothing to do with the packet of rich tea biscuits he had in his pocket that he fed to yazz every few minutes whilst lecturing us on pack theory!!

Then he left - taking £70 of our cash with him!

Blooming heck - I am in the wrong job!

I also came across some stories of the not-so-nice things Cesar does when the camera's not rolling, while I was googling his age for the Botox. Electric collars and hanging dogs up by their collars ain't my bag, I'm afraid.

Sleeps: yes, you can get non-citronella sprays. We have had our 2nd non-howling morning today but the chocolate will still be forthcoming if I resort to spray collars

If I have to get Cesar himself in to help I shall offer him a tub of Clarins for his troubles

yes and have you SEEN those bloody awful choke collars he uses, fecking spiked i tell ya!!! Spikes!

may I just say I'm not going to engage in an argument about training - there's many methods, much like child-rearing and many arguments for each one... but

your link states dominance / alpha training needs and uses violent techniques; suspending dogs in the air, holding them until they squirm no longer etc....

It doesn't.

Our dog school uses kindness and firm fairness; like you'd use on a child - not abuse; discipline.

It is also used by the two local RSPCA rescue centres to rehabilitate the dangerous dogs (the ones that DO go for the jugular of any human being) or un-homeable dogs.... THEY wouldn't use it with it's techniques if it was violent now, would they?

As an aside, spiked check chains are not widely available in the UK (if available at all) and CM rarely uses them too actually - most of the time he uses the pre-owned leather "regular" collars or a material loop collar/lead.

oh and lastly - they don't choke. They check. Big difference. A check lasts less than one second and then the collar goes back to being loose around their neck - better than a dog pulling on a regular collar and hacking away coughing, spluttering and breathing like it's got a lung condition because of the pressure on it's airway, or it's eyes being put under pressure from a "friendly / gentle leader" in which I've never met a dog yet that likes it... they all squirm to get free of the brace around its face.

But, like I said - different ways for different owners, all with their own merits; some work and some don't (but seeing the dog school methods we use, I fully advocate firm, fair and kind training)

Hey, Lewis - I did not mean in any way to imply that you use harsh methods. I put that link up to show that the pack theory was based on an unnatural study of unrelated wolves in an unnatural environment (a zoo), and that studies of wolves in the wild since then have shown that the pack theory is wrong.

Anyway, will stop twittering on about pack theory now, but I genuinely did not mean to insinuate anything about the mothods you use.

Can you just answer my earlier question, though:

do wolves use water soakers?

And Lemagain is getting back to us on Cesar's botox

If you are really pissed off at me you can always bitch slap me anyway, Lewis.

I agree, you don't have to be aggressive or harsh to be dominant. One of the things i used to do with my rotties was stand over them (horse like!) and lift them from under their chests. Not sure it ever actually did anything but i was proud of my boys.

I do believe in treating dogs like dogs, but if you take that too far, i guess that means, leaving them in the garden and making them hunt for their food. So its a compromise i guess - but dont take any notice of me, i trained my first dog the barbra woodhouse way!

Check collers or choke chains are really good - but only when used correctly. Difficult to get - my JRT needs one thats for sure, but not sure i could actually get the right angle to check him as =opposed to choke him!! I had "training" collers for my rotties - cloth coller with chain that you could pull tight but would automatically go back loose, unlike the choke chains which if you dont do it properly stay tight and are just as useless then as a normal collar.

LEM the trick with the check chain is to put in on your wrist - pull it and release - if it slides back, it's on right, if it locks, it's on back to front... also pull SIDEways, not backwards - it gets a proper check then, rather than a tug

i found it fine on a big dog, but my jrt, would it be as simple as to pull sideways?

yeah - just don't pull quite so hard as with a shepherd or you'll catapult it lol!!

Make sure you get the thin link ones, not a heavy massive one like sheps would wear (but am sure you know that) and get measured properly for it - it should just fit over their head without a lot of space around it (otherwise when its loose on its neck, it could slip off)

lmao at the thought of lil' Bob flying through the air!

I've come back for a howling/chocolate update

Hey Bella (waves at Bella)

Glad to hear your boy is keeping you on your toes!!!!

My girl is lovely but fairly lazy in the mornings at the moment! Have to shoehorn her out the crate!

Off to the vet this pm to book her in for spaying Also need to get her teats checked out as the back two are swollen and a bit saggy! Hope she is not infected or anything but apart form that is is in good health, they do not seem to bother her in the slightest. Could be hormones I suppose.

Hope your boy stops with the howling soon.

Back from vets. Phantom pregnancy!!! Pup not me, that is!

Has given me some medication to dry up the milk and settle the hormones! To be honest compared to my friends dogs symptoms when she had a false pregnancy, pup is not really bothered. Swollen teats which are not bothering her and she has gone off her food but that is not unusual. Apparently phantom pregnancies are common after a first season!

I don't know which is worse howling teenage boy dogs or hormonal teeenage girl ones!

Hope your boy is good tomorrow morning.

Hello newpup - glad your girlie's okay. Once she is spayed this will all be behind you

My boy has started behaving himself in the mornings, thank goodness! I tried sneaking out of bed to surprise him but he knows the minute I get out of bed (he sleeps directly below our bedroom)

I therefore had to resort to the tried and tested low tech method of shouting: 'Quiet!' when any howling starts. As my old girl sleeps with the pup and is herself fully ocnversant with what 'Quiet!' means, this has worked a treat

Sadly DH has had a few mornings of being roused by my bellowing 'Quiet!' in his lughole, but this is preferable to howling, don't you think?

And yes, I know this contradicts the 'do not respond' advice which even I dish out, but in this case it works!

Hello Bella.

Glad you are sorting him out!

My poor girl has been vomiting all afternoon Not sure if it is the medicine (Galostop) or whether she picked something up in the park this morning, she disapeared into the bushes and came back licking her lips! Have decided not to feed her tonight and will try again tomorrow if no more vomiting. (Medicine has to go on her food - so none tonight then) If not then back to vet

Dear oh dear, this is worse than the children!

Hope your boy has a lie in tomorrow.

Poor pup! I think Galastop can cause vomiting - give your vet a quick ring in the morning to put your mind at rest.

Yes, not entirely sure why I decided to get a pup just as my youngest started school

Had to break off there to investigate suspicious noise in kitchen - pup was eating ds's school reading book!!! I need to heed my own advice about vigilance and putting things away

So, tomorrow it will quite literally be: the dog ate my homework