Adolescent Dog Survival Thread - get teenage licks right through the night!

[Bupster]

I've buckled and started the new thread - welcome to the horror of adolescence!

I think there was an issue with dodgy photos being posted so we’ve had the capability removed ☹️

Ahh the fish4dogs puppy bundle is really good! The salmon/trout paste/mousse is excellent – I always pick it up when I see it for enrichment as pupsy loves it.

Also very sorry to hear about your travails, @Bupster, but we will try and scream them out together in a big field at the weekend <3

You didn’t ask me but I use ‘ok’ as a release cue, though I wish I’d used her name as if we ever get a second dog I’ll have to come up with a new one for that dog. Not an imminent issue, obv, ha.

It's okay there, as it's safe, but exasperating beyond belief when he's only 20 metres from me and squirrel smells really aren't all that exciting in the scheme of things. I only had poached turkey in his recall treatos pot, but bloody hell, what does he want, lobster???

I forget his background but if he's got any sort of working lines in his lineage you may find that out and about food rewards just aren't going to be rewarding enough.

We use ok as a release word. It's good to make sure they actually understand that it's the word and not just you speaking again. Pup still flinches if you say Oklahoma before correcting herself :-)

One benefit of group gundog classes for me with our older one was the beginning was always a bit of a group therapy session 😂

That is interesting as I've always thought Vinny was very food driven, but recently even his most high value treats won't bring him back if he's found a scent or something to chase.

I'm going to order from Fish4Dogs after so many recommendations here. I find the name so funny as it's so literal 😂

Currently working from my laptop in bed and Vinny is just wired, walking around sniffing and trying to find things to steal. Hopefully he will realise how boring my bedroom is soon enough!!

@tizwozliz You make an interesting point about food rewards. I normally have steak or chicken thighs and he does love both, so turkey genuinely is a bit of a step down. It feels more like he actually can't hear me some of the time (and the rest of the time he's being Kevin).

Everyone seems to say small treatos are fine for normal training but good stuff for recall - I was wondering if I needed to make them bigger chunks and practice less (his poo will not be pleasant if he gets half a thigh each time 🙄). In the dog park he often wants to play with me rather than the other dogs, and we do, but for play to work with recall he'd have to be ignoring me for Kevinny reasons, not because he's all scentsick and can't hear me, if that makes any sense at all.

@brushingboots I didn't even know the mousse was coming! He's going to love that.

In other news, my money is on me making it through at least 36 verses of the 'you're driving me crazy' song today. I made an executive decision not to take him for an extra lunchtime outing in the car because I had a terrible night's sleep and he's already technically quite tired. Try telling him, the little bollocks. Every time I open my laptop he's on the arm of the sofa licking my face 😄 It's very sweet and very funny but I cannot get anything done at all.

I think I have just signed up for the puppy club. It didn’t say anything about samples being sent- do I have to buy them or do they come automatically?

I had to add an extra dog as I thought that they may not count Midge as a puppy, so I’m now the proud owner of a 9 week old puppy 🤣
Oh my goodness just the thought of it has added a few grey hairs!

A lot of gundog trainers don’t use food at all as they rightly say that chasing a bird or whatever will always give the dog a better high than any food you can offer, and that is true. It doesn’t stop me rewarding when pupsy does something right though, but I’m realistic that it’s not salmon pate (or whatevs) that she’s coming back for. Instead, in theory, it’s to please me and to wait for her next instruction – but I can say that now as she has grown up a fair bit.

@Bupster I don’t think you need bigger chunks – he just needs to listen and remember what he’s been taught, and some of that is a process that he needs to work through, alas. I’ve never used different food rewards for recall or training, always the same ones, but I do sometimes use the rabbit ball as a reward if I’ve got it with me – what she loves is picking things up so if she does well then I can chuck something out for her to get and then she gets a double reward.

Fish4dogs always make me laugh too @YorkshireFelix – they have some great stuff.

@brushingboots how do you use a rabbit ball? I would expect that Midge would get it in his mouth and be off! Training a ‘drop’ has been challenging too!

This is my issue too! I have a rabbit ball but the second he got hold of it he tore the rabbit off it 😄.I've since got a (better quality I hope) rabbit dummy but I don't see how I'd ever get it back.

I've really struggled with getting him to give the retrieve, though he loved playing fetch as a tiny puppy. Now he'll run after something, find it, and eventually swap, but the idea of coming back to me with a squeaky ball (for example) when he could run around and around squeaking it madly is alien to him. He sometimes brings it if he wants a game of tug 🙄

See also my boots, socks, slippers, glasses, etc etc. I can get them all back without chasing no bother, but he doesn't bring them to me to be rewarded.

@Nella68 I just use it like a tennis ball for hunting and for retrieves as it's much scentier, so ideal for that! I use it as a dummy too, though we also have a proper rabbit dummy which is held in even greater esteem. For a quick reward I just chuck it out behind me/away from me somewhere. But a good 'drop' is key as they are very tempting. As a pup I found she didn't really want to drop when I said 'drop' so I used 'dead' instead and overnight she seemed to understand that better, I've no idea why. Perhaps she heard it in the womb, ha.

There is a really good method called the clicker retrieve which is good for dogs who mess around with dummies etc – it's quite a bit of effort but worth doing.

I realised that I had broken pupsy’s retrieve pattern a bit by steadying her up too soon so now we only do very short sessions so she doesn’t get bored, and when she is returning to me I don’t fuss or call her AT ALL, or even remotely look like I want to take whatever it is off her. I just wait for her to make the right choice, present it to me even if it's sloppy, and then verbally reward and give loads of fuss. When doing retrieves she was actively playing ‘keep away’ and I figured out that I needed to go back several steps and make it fun again like she was tiny, as I’d broken it by making to too boring for her.

Bill and his friends at the dog park steal balls out of each others' mouths then taunt each other with them, even doing drive-by 'whaps' on each others' heads. They play tug with them too. It's the funniest thing you've ever seen in your life - we had an audience walking Bill and his bestie down the road this evening trying to wrest a squidgy ball from each other - but perhaps not great for persuading him that handing a ball or a dummy over nicely is the way to go. Mind you, the others bring their balls back to be thrown again, though his bestie likes to toss them insouciantly, teenage fashion, vaguely towards her owner rather than actually bring it to her feet ('OMG you're SO emBARRassing' style 😄)

I’ve realised how crap M’s recall has become- even in the house he looks at me with a side eye when I call and stays where he is. What hope do I have if I can’t even call him from another room. It’s recall boot camp from now on!

@Bupster that sounds like Midge- the game he loves is stealing the ball from another dog. If it’s just me and him he soon gets bored with a ball and will leave it behind. He likes to carry them in his mouth.

I’ve got a faux rabbit skin on a long bungee which sometimes will tempt him back to have a game of tug. I let him win and then he’s off with it in his mouth until he gets bored of it.

I have a top tip for high energy adolescent pups, it literally saved my sanity and is so easy, someone else recommended it to me when I was in despair....a dog flirt pole! 15/20 of playing with a flirt pole is exhausting for dogs.

As someone with a very hard work pup very close to coming out of adolescence what is finally paying off which helps with loose leash and recall is look at me treat. For no word of a lie, a year, every time my boy looks at me when we are out whether I ask for it or not he gets a treat. Come here = treat look at me = treat look at me voluntarily = treat.

My boy has been an absolute handful and we are finally coming out the other side at 19 months, even the reactivity. It has been a slog but the persistence has paid off! 🫶

Vinny isn't great at bringing retrieves back either. He went through a period of bringing the dummy back and dropping it for me to throw again but it didn't last long. Now he just runs around in circles with it until he gets bored and drops it far away for me to collect 🙄 He also gets bored of it after two or three times!

A rabbit skin ball has been on my list of things to buy for ages but I think he would just destroy it too. It seems to be his thing at the moment.

@Khaleesi90s nice to hear you are coming out the other side! I've always given mine a treat and positive mark every time he looks at me or does anything else remotely positive when we are walking too. Hopefully it's doing something, even thought at the minute it feels like a fruitless task 😄

@Khaleesi90s thank God for more good news!!

I’m rewarding Bill for checking in a lot - sometimes a treat, sometimes it’s a yes, go dig, or go sniff, and he’s actually doing okay with that while his brain is engaged.

The problem for me, which I suspect won’t be solved until he’s all grown up, is that the brain quite often goes ‘La la La bird, La La running round in giant circles!! Wheeeee!!’ As the owner of a similar brain I have a lot of sympathy, but there’s only so many heart attacks an hour a girl can cope with 🙄

We have been on the long line for nearly a year and I will never not let him loose unless I feel I trust him and I still don't especially now he is into hunting moles!

I’m watching the Alan Titchmarsh programme about dog training on C5.

The spaniel found the ball and then went running off 🤣

@Khaleesi90s I’m glad there is light at the end of the tunnel for you.
I’ll check out flirt poles

I have a flirt pole. Bill tries to eat the rope. And then the pole. It's like going fishing for tadpoles and suddenly you've caught the Loch Ness Monster 😄

Just taken him up to the dog park for a last poo as he won't go out the back if he can avoid it. Just outside the house he found TREASURE!! An empty McDonald's cup, still with some ice cubes. Well, Bill loves an ice cube. He carried that cup - which he could comfortably have fitted most of his head into - all the way to the pitch black dog park, where he leisurely shredded it to get to the ice, while my extremities turned into very similar blocks and I repeated 'Jesus Christ Bill have a poo' over and over again until the poor buggers in the care home next door probably thought it was the ghost of Christmas future.

Next time I'm getting a hamster.

Bill sounds such a character 😂

I bet the care home residents wonder who the hell this 'Bill' man is 🤣

@YorkshireFelix "poor old Bill, he must have eaten something dreadful, that nurse needs locking up"

I know I'm probably bringing a curse down from the thing high atop the hill, but he was SO much better today. Even managed to not yank me all the way there, played, sniffed, came back when called - I even managed to whistle him back round the corner when he ran off to say hello to a couple of dogs he'd spotted and I'd missed. Trotted beautifully nearly all the way home, though every side street had a cat so it went a bit wrong at that point - like some real life video game where you have to dodge the monsters while an actual monster you're attached to tries to drag you closer 😄

Anyway it was so nice to remember what he was like a couple of months ago and hopefully what he'll grow into again.