Where the Wild Things Are

[barbarianoftheuniverse]

I have an eight month old Border Collie called Meg. She is far from perfect (and so am I).
Today she has been about 60/40 good. The 40 included chewing up my camera memory card which DH is sure he put safely on the mantelpiece. Every time I look down at this screen she takes a quick munch of the coffee table with her eyes on mine. This despite a 2 hour walk which included much in and out of streams.

Lilcamper, at least he didn't do it right outside your neighbour's house, as is Lurcherboy's favourite trick. I think the excitement of a walk makes him need to go right now, so I've taken to doing a couple of circuits of our own driveway before we go, then I can clear up and bin it in our wheelie before we go out. Which would be great if he wasn't a double poo-er.

Meg doesn't retrieve her ball and bring it to me. She shows it to me and then goes and chucks it in the stream and then races off to catch it further down. The stream has an orange clay bottom and now so does she.
NCIS was that book you got about things to teach your puppy any good?
Moose, I hope you are feeling better.

Finn is nearly seven months now. Normally very well behaved. DH does loads of walking with him, easily 2+ hours especially at the weekends but doesn't practice recall on those walks, atm Finn is fairly well attached and refuses to lose him but I can foresee a time when he is braver and heads for the hills.
At home DH seems to think the dog understands long complicated sentences telling him exactly why he shouldn't jump up. I know Border Collies are clever but not quite that clever. They do love each other though and DH says he's hugely rewarding to walk.

Moose- I am so glad we don't have to do park walking, I only saw one dog today and it totally ignored Finn despite him doing his most seductive wiggle at it. If a dog shows no interest in him, Finn will move on and not approach which I'm pleased with.

He spent the walk sniffing out baby soldiers who were trying to sneak around, not much point when you have a dog whose senses are never switched off and can smell, hear and see them blink!

Ooh I have a 17 month old staffy who is actually the work of the devil.
Well, not all the time. But he can be an absolute nightmare sometimes. The "bad" today included refusing to move from the park. Literally sitting down and refusing to move. And chasing the cat across the dining table.
Staffy pups are quite, quite mad until about 4 years old IME. Then they turn into BigDog who likes to sleep for about 21 hours a day, refuses to set a paw out of the door if it is too cold or raining, and hides if he thinks he will have to walk in the rain.

I make all 3 of my DCs go to puppy classes every Saturday. They were not impressed at first but they love it now. Most of the time. They were not quite as keen when LittleDog was the worst behaved dog there by a mile.

oh the shame the lovely and very experienced dog walker who has Fitz for daycare on Mondays has just dropped him back and said that he'd had to have him on the lead the whole time as every time he let him go Fitz would leap onto the nearest dog and hump as if his life depended on it

he was completely ignoring the dogwalker and took no notice of the other dogs telling him to get lost :(

wahhhh

He started when he started cocking his leg at about 5.5 months (he's now 7 months) and it's built up over the last 6 weeks and now it's really starting to cause problems

He's booked in for castration on Thursday as the vet says this may well help but the effect won't be immediate - how do I deal with this in the meantime?

He is absolutely lovely in every other respect - he's very bright, mostly well-behaved, completely non-aggressive, is a star at training class, very affectionate - it's just this sodding humping ....

Humping isn't necessarily solved by castration if it is triggered by over excitement I am afraid. Even spayed females do it.

But dealing with it means distract and redirect before he gets to the humping point.

As Lilcamper said the castration won't necessarily help - but it does for some dogs so don't lose hope.

If it is excitement he should calm down as he gets older, but you'll need to do lots of work on interruption and even better, getting his attention onto you rather than other dogs until he's matured and calmed down a bit.

What's his ultimate reward - toy/food? Can you possibly transfer/redirect the excitement onto that?

Alternatively, if he's just really hyper-excited and can't seem to come down, you could just go for calmer, quieter walks and do lots of work on capturing calmness (Kikopup has quite a few videos on this on YouTube) until he starts to settle down a bit. He's still getting socialisation at training classes, but in a very controlled way, which will reward/reinforce the appropriate behaviours, hopefully leading to the undesirable ones going to extinction.

im spending my sodding life distracting and redirecting - he's better with me but it's becoming really anti-social

Sorry, thinking on the fly here, I would say if he runs after other dogs to do it you have a recall problem not a humping problem. Common in teenage dogs, back on a long line and loads more recall practice. Don't let him run off because the more he does it the better he will get at it.

ultimate reward is a squeaky ball ... I can usually keep his attention on me with that but his socialisation is limited at the moment

interestingly he doesn't do it anything like as much with his friends he's known since he first started going out to the park, much more with new dogs

no he's not running off - recall mostly fine

hated using the longline - got us both completely tangled up in knots

it's dog central here - there's nowhere I can go where we won't meet dozens of other dogs ...

It could be displacement behaviour if he is unsure what to do around these different dogs so resorts to one of the 4 F's. Fight, flight, fornicate or fuck about.

Lilcamper, back in my day we used to say Fight, Fight or Fiddle and Fart about. I must be getting old!

basil, did he start doing it around the time he started going out with the dogwalker? Just wondering if Lilcamper is on to something there. If he's feeling a bit unsure of how to interact with the dogs he's being walked with he could be just getting it monumentally wrong and they getting overstimulated and zoned, iyswim.

If the walker is happy to keep him on the lead, it might be the best way for him to learn to relax around the other dogs. Could he perhaps start off keeping him on a lead until he shows signs of starting to relax and then move to a longline.

How many dogs is he walked with?

Hehe, I was loosely quoting David Ryan

I carry smelly biscuits, meat slices, stinking dried liver and a dried chickens foot on walkies, and the adorable little bastard couldn't care less. Leaving me looking like I'm on my way to some kind of satanic ritual.
Think I'll put her on the long long long lead that was meant for my step-lurcher...

The good thing is, when I take Finn for a walk he comes back to me, possibly because I fix him with the same evil glare I used on the DC's when they were small.
He is only a (minor) problem when the others take him out.

I have never found a treat or toy that is more attractive to the terrierist than another dog. Puppy in my pocket anyone?

Had a situation that could have been potentially very scary today. Dog was at vets and the clip on his lead clean broke off...cue dog skittering round surgery in delight. Dread to think what would have happened if walking at roadside!

it started when he started to cock his leg - about 5-6 weeks ago now and has just got worse and worse (I'm assuming as the levels of testosterone rise)

I think today was particularly bad as this was a new bunch of dogs - there's 6 in total with two adults - and although part of it was almost certainly to do with being wildly over-excited that's not the only reason

the dogwalker is lovely - and the best round here by miles as he takes them for proper dog walks and really focuses on them - rather than the majority of dogwalkers I see who have about 10 dogs on the lead and mooch them slowly around the common for about 20 mins then they're back in the car

Next time he's just going to go out with 2 other dogs to try to keep things a bit calmer and we'll see how that goes

it is frustrating as apart from this he's pretty much perfect!

I think I'm going to push for neutering ASAP just as soon as I get this OU assignment in as we will probably have to use day care for Finn soon. DD has got a job now which will involve her moving away(pesky child, first ever interview and she bloody well gets the job, proud emoticon ) so if DH's working from home and my shift patterns can't be dovetailed then it will be doggy daycare for the hound.

Oh here you all are

I have Nala a 7 month old Rhodesian Ridgeback bitch, she can have great days and other days drives me mad. She's very food orientated and a complete food thief which is hard when she can counter surf with ease. She will steal food off the dining table or out the DCs hands so anytime food is out she's either outside or in her crate.

Today she was great on her walk her BFF is a 7 month old Doberman and they adore each other hooning around, we also have two older dogs who come on out walks, they have told her in no uncertain terms who is boss and she's find with that she follows one around like a big brother.

Recall can be touch and go about 90% there. As you have said just as well they are just adorable.

at Evenbetter.

I suspect my success today was due to wearing a different coat and finding in it half a dried up hot dog sausage. It hadn't gone mouldy, just rock hard. Kept letting the dogs nibble a bit every time I recalled them!

Poo bags. Now in every pocket, on the bedside drawers. Stash in the car. Usually one in the washing machine. Found one in my work handbag the other day.... They are all empty btw...

Basildon. I don't know about the cocking leg thing though, Harry cocked his leg from about 15/16 weeks but was obviously still very much a baby, I actually felt sad!

Hector humped Harry tonight but they were play fighting and getting highly excited.