Adolescent Dog Survival Thread - Bark the Herald, furry angels sing!

[YorkshireFelix]

New thread to get us through the festive season! Angelic and naughty teenage pups all welcome

Sometimes he doesn't really touch his breakfast until almost lunch time anyway so I don't think it will bother him!

Me and dd needed to nip out to a retail park in the next town to get something she needed for school. We were gone 1.5 hours which is the longest I've ever left him (20 minutes was the longest before!) and he was absolutely fine. I could see on the camera he was mainly snoozing on the sofa or walking over to lie on his blanket on the floor. We've got dd's last ever primary school Christmas concert one evening next week and I have been stressed thinking about who we can get to look after him but I think we will just leave him at home and he will be grand 😃

That's wonderful @YorkshireFelix What a little treasure Vinny is. He's so grown up for such a youngster, he even looks more mature than his real age. You've got a real goodun there ❤

I keep thinking about dropping Bill down to two, but like @YorkshireFelix , Bill's all over the place with what meals he'll eat and when. I'm wary of moving him over to two when he goes for a couple of days barely eating breakfast.

Bill's favourite pose - bollocks akimbo. This is usually my view as he drops off to sleep of a night 😄

He is being particularly fabulous at the moment, but I am sure I'll be eating my hat once the teenage phase kicks in 😅

Bollocks akimbo 😂😂😂😂

All of your boy dogs have very... graphic poses!

Typical man-spreaders 🙄

Indeed, but note my focus on Brie's ample bosom for my photo; wee-stained white pants is not a good look 😬

Good morning from me and pupsy and this lovely gift she has just brought me!

Oh she looks very pleased with herself @brushingboots !!

Oh my God @brushingboots that's as big as her! 😄 Is it fresh? She didn't catch it herself, did she? Please say no, or you'll have a lot of fun trying to walk her in town centres 😂

@YorkshireFelix I'm so impressed as she brought it to the step and just stepped back and left it there. Didn't try and take it back, no mouthing, she just retrieved it for me and left me to consider what to do with it next. To be fair she has been taught to do that when she picks game but it's lovely when it happens out of context.

@Bupster Looked pretty fresh but not warm so I think it was a find. No blood on it or on her so don't think she's had her teeth on it, she's just carried it. She'd have a job catching one I think unless it was already half dead. It was a big one but she's picked a cock pheasant before and it was far bigger than her!

Oh lovely 😬Has it been decapitated by a hawk?

@brushingboots
A cocker doing what a cocker does best!!!

Clearly they do not have a "Pigeon Protector" in their locale 😂

@PyreneanAubrie No, it did have a head still! It looked very suspiciously intact actually so presume it had just quietly expired under a bush ready to be found by pupsy. I took it off to the 'woodland' bit of the garden for the buzzard to find, carried in a large dustpan, which I thought was more dignifying than in a Lidl bag.

@CaptainBeanThief Exactly! I would never stop her either, it gives me so much joy.

Brilliant job pupsy ⭐️

We've just had a really nice walk through the park and along the river then back down the canal. I didn't want to go into the woods to avoid the mud but he still found some huge puddles to slop about in...

I took a short video of him doing some great heel walking. Not sure if the link will work but the work I've been putting in is definitely paying off so I am thrilled.

Just saw your update from last night @YorkshireFelix about leaving V – that’s excellent progress! I reckon pupsy does her best sleeping when I’m out.

The link did work – what a good boy! Offlead heel is so, so handy. I wish I’d done more of it when pupsy was younger but we do a lot now and almost every day it gets us out of tricky situations.

He's getting really good off lead. I've been getting him to come in close or sit and wait for people/dogs to pass and he is rock solid with it now. We had three different people say how well trained he is today which is nice! Then he counteracts it by doing something mental and showing me up 🤣

The next thing I need to work on is steadiness around birds/squirrels etc as that's the only time he just will not listen to me. If he's on lead and I try and walk him past a bird or some ducks he just pulls and pulls towards them and there's no distracting him at all either.

Urg, had a really saddening moment this afternoon. Bill is friendly to absolutely everyone, people and dogs, but he has a horrible habit of barking at other puppies (mostly new ones he doesn't know) to get them to play, and he gets over-threshold and won't respond to me, and I have to drag him away and put him on a lead, because often he frightens them. Today he did that to a dog who was the same age as him but on a lead and the owners got really angry because they thought he was being aggressive. It just made my heart sink.

It was all my fault, because really I should have put him on a lead as soon as I saw that their dog was a puppy, but something in me hates having to accept that actually I can't let always him play because he's so bad at this one thing. I don't know what else to do, except to keep him away from puppies, and that makes me sad, because he's only a puppy himself 🙁.

Just having a moan here because it's a safe place. Obviously I wouldn't venture near the rest of MN to be told I shouldn't have a dog 🙄

@YorkshireFelix It’s fair to say we are not steady around squirrels but I consider them irritating so I leave her to it, as we only ever see them in safe places and she’s unlikely to ever catch one. I have done a lot of steadiness work on birds though, particularly game but also crows and pigeons etc, and find it one of the most satisfying things to work on even if the dogs don’t love it.

When pupsy was quite small we used to go to the deer park at the back of our house most days on a longline and sit and watch the deer. We’d just sit there, building up duration over time, and the goal was to be quiet and do nothing, and I’d hope to god that they’d move off so she could practice sitting watching while something ran away from her. I think that helped hugely. Harder to do with birds but you could employ the same tactics: crouch down next to him and reward for no whining/barking/pulling towards them etc. And then transfer to offlead and moving. I think that’s how I approached it but I also just reinforced either her desire to return to me or to stop dead when she saw something moving. Now she actively turns away from crows or just watches them, but there’s no way she’d have done that at V’s age and I wouldn’t have expected her to.

Just thinking about how old he is, this was about the point that I thought I'd got it licked with pupsy. About 6-8 months was a golden time. And it was at about his age that she brought me her first partridge...

Oh no @Bupster! Bill is such a little love that I can’t imagine him barking at anyone. Try not to worry – you’ll know to keep him away from that pup in future. I agree it does feel a bit miserable though not a bad lesson for him in learning that not everyone wants to play.

If it’s any consolation at all, this morning we bumped into one of pupsy’s best dog friends while we were out and suddenly without warning they were loudly scrapping over a ball she’d found in the hedge and that he was guarding from her. I went home feeling quite sad about it but there was no harm done, none of the humans were cross, and my lovely, friendly, patient dog was just the same as you know she is. And is now sitting on my shoulder like a parrot loudly 'singing' in my ear which I think means she wants to go out. Yay.

Oh I'm sorry. That's really sad that they were angry at you, especially as he just wants to play 🙁

Thanks, both of you. He was absolutely fine and unbothered by the whole experience, and the other dog owners at the park were really supportive, but I think it just made me feel I was letting him down. If he does this, and I know he does - not all the time but enough - then I should be managing it all the time, never just hoping for the best. I suppose I love him so much, and he's such a lovely pup in almost every way, that I find it hard to accept he does have some actual proper shitty behaviours that mean I need to step in.

Mr 'who me? bark? must be some other dog' 🙄