DOGS

My dog may have torn his ACL. My vet checked him out and can't quite pinpoint why he's limping, so we're going the conservative route for now and giving it time to heal on its own with rest, but it's a bummer, seeing my normally frolicsome dog reduced to just lying around.

Anybody ever get their dog ACL surgery? How bad is the recovery?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD-xLU5sp70
my dog has never been to a pool party :(

Benson has! He sort of stayed around the edges but it was hilarious to watch all the doggos especially the ones who really went for it.

Love those retrievers just plunging in and swimming in circles, brings back so many memories of my childhood dogs, a Chesapeake and two black labs.

Other day I was listening to lean on loud and a dog tried to attack me. Told the owner to control their dog. Today I see the same dog and confronted the owner and said that dog tried to attack me. He said I was mistaken. In less than a minute the dog tried again to attack me. Advice??

Pitbull fwiw

murder the owner

murder the dog

quit your job

burn down your house

start a new life in a new town

I just reported the dog to spca but your answer was better tbh

can i ask for some dog advice?

we've had an adult rescue dog for a few months. he's a beautiful, sweet, polite, absolutely 100% (well, 99%) well-behaved and wonderful mutt. we love him to death.

the only "problem" is that he doesn't know how to play with toys, probably because he spent most of his life basically fending for himself in a rural area, without much human attention. we have tried to get him to learn to play by combining toys with various treat games, but once he's finished the treat he shows absolutely no interest whatsoever in messing with the animals, pull toys, balls, etc. etc.

inevitably, we have to leave him alone in the house sometimes, or i'll be home but i can't devote my attention to him. he's happy to nap some of that time, but most of the time he follows me around looking at me longingly. he's a glutton for affection and attention, which is fine most of time, and at least he doesn't exhibit any of the "bad behaviors" sometimes associated w/ emotionally needy dogs.

but i wish he had something more to "do" to keep him a little stimulated when we aren't attending to him. i don't like to think he spends a huge chunk of his day just bored.

any suggestions for getting an adult dog interested in playing on his own/with toys?

I've never been in this situation, but you may want to look up how some stuff kibble or peanut butter into a Kong toy. For some dogs, this prevents them from scarfing up food in a few gulps, but its also used to keep dogs busy while their human companions are away.

And of course, dogs are happiest when they have their own companions. My 50 lb 8 yr old rescue mutt Teufel begs me for car rides to visit my stepmother and her 5 lb puppy. In my experience, caring for 2 dogs takes about 10% more time than caring for 1 (though the vet bills scale linearly).

i'd love to have a 2nd dog, for many reasons, but our lease prevents it. our dog is a bit weird with other dogs -- not hostile, but 9 times out of 10 he's just wary and/or uninterested. he lived with another dog as a foster, and apparently they barely interacted. so it's not clear that getting a 2nd dog (even if we could...) would answer the problem.

xpost

we have a kong and use it a lot... it'll keep him busy for maybe 10 minutes, tops. if something is stuck in there and he can't get it out after 5–10 minutes, he just gives up. hard to know how to help him get more sticktoitiveness.

i fostered a dog who had had a hard life and had all the traits of being very needy, not playing, and being disinterested in other dogs. never really figured out what to do about it tbh so i can't be of any help. he was small enough that i could just sit him next to me with his paws in my lap when i had to do some work on the computer or whatever. he enjoyed walks so tried to focus on doing as much of that as possible

It’s early days, especially for a rescue. My rescued whippelurcher Kenny was not a big toy guy, and according to my friend J (who adopted him at 18 months) it took a while for him to settle down and just relax around people. All kinds of weird idiosyncrasies: apparently he was a bit racist (he barked at men with dark faces) and would run away from anyone holding a broom. After a few years, Ken blossomed into a dog who was friendly with people and gentle with children, while always being food-oriented (although that didn’t make him trainable beyond walking to heel, sitting and giving a paw). You could always play Which Hand? by hiding a treat and encouraging him to choose, and go from there? Ken liked that game a lot.

I find it quite sad when when I see dogs that can't have fun or play with other dogs. There is this crackpot plumber who I know from my local park who fancies himself as a mystic dog-whisperer, and he is an obv dog-lover who takes his two springer spaniels Bill & Bob to work with him in the van every day tbf. But he comes out with some fucked-up advice. He was telling me how he converted a violent, dangerous Alsatian into a nice playful happy dog. One of his techniques was (apparently): if he bit him he'd pin him down to the ground and bite him back on his nose until he yelped. Hmm .. I'm not sure Barbara Woodhouse would have approved.

the dog whisperer fellow basically advises you to dominate the dog. always makes me feel a bit uneasy as a tactic

(i mean the one from telly)

the only toy our rescue pays attention to for longer than it takes to 1. destroy the toy or 2. empty the toy of any included treats, is an actual cow bone that we got from a "feed & seed" store in a farming area. sure, it's kind of a treat in itself, but she will sit there and gnaw on it for long periods. if you make sure it's not choke-able size-wise it seems like a good thing to try?

That guy is full of shit and has been discredited everywhere.

That guy is full of shit and has been discredited everywhere.

― suzy, Friday, February 8, 2019 6:36 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

new board description

the dog whisperer fellow basically advises you to dominate the dog. always makes me feel a bit uneasy as a tactic

My dogs have always been so grimly food obsessed that a treats regime to encourage good habits has worked for me so far. Sometimes you have to let them know you da boss, or tell them off (like when the little bastard has just ripped the arm of your best winter coat!) but the alpha thing is some 4000 bc throwback, just abuse really.

Suzy OTM re: that Milan asshole.

My favourite dog tip/training site is Dogstar Daily, and I also like Victoria Stilwell.

My own personal mantra for dogs has always been "a tired dog is a well-behaved dog", and walk the absolute legs off them whenever possible. If you have to go out during the day and you're sure that your dog is bored while you're out (can you set up a camera to confirm this?), can a dogwalker come in?

Sometimes dogs are just "on" when their human is around because they know that's what's expected of them. It's like they're waiting for you to tell them what to do. It's possible that your dog shuts down completely when you're not there, and just goes to sleep, or thinks "oh, thank god, now I can relax". Like, it's possible that the dog is not looking for you to entertain it, but is waiting for you to tell it what to do, and it just needs to learn that you don't need it to do anything, just hang out and snooze or listen to the radio or something. Routine plays a huge part in this, as does simply ignoring the dog, putting it back in its bed when it comes to you for attention. That kind of thing.

It's possible that this is not what's happening either, but it's just another way of looking at what might be going on.

I have been taking my 16 week old pup for 3-4 15/30 mins walks a day. I don't know if I'm going too far for such a young un, but he causes absolute mayhem if that energy isn't burnt off in a more productive manner.

Are you doing training with him while you're out for a walk?

I saw a guy recently who was lead training his labrador pup. It was painful to watch, and I could see how people would be put off doing it because it makes you look just ridiculous, but I was so impressed with his consistency. Every single time the puppy pulled all the way to the end of the leash, he just stopped until it came back and stood beside him again, and then he started up again. He made no progress at all, but v valuable for the pupner.

A good metric for walking young dogs is five minutes per month of age for on-lead walking, but there’s no limit other than what you find sensible if he’s off lead/sniffing around in a garden. For your guy, this month you should do 10 minutes to somewhere grassy, let him play there at least until he craps or pees, 10 minutes back.

xp
I give Douglas a treat when he get's on the lead and off the lead because he was getting into this dangerous habit of playing come and catch me, but he's really good on a lead and loving socialising with older dogs, he's not presenting problems yet so that is about the extent of my training. But if I'm honest there are probably some behaviours I'm letting go will become problematic when he gets bigger (he's rapidly growing as well - something like 3.5 times the weight he was before xmas) and probably should start using strategies like the painful to watch guy you described at some point.

douglas lmao

och it's a braw name! well probably better than Ruggles which was plan A.

we’ve got two rescue dogs. One just spends all his spare time curled up napping; the other one is a bit more nervy and when my wife was out of the house, she would spend every single second sitting at the bottom of the staircase staring at the front door waiting for her to come back. She’s only just growing out of this now after two years of living with us, and now she too is starting to take herself upstairs for a nap (mostly on my pillow which now smells of mutt the whole time, ugh). They do seem to play by themselves sometimes as occasionally there are toys strewn around, but they most often use toys to engage us in games - chase me round the house is their favourite, followed by a bit of tug of war. I do worry about them leading fairly boring lives, but compared to what they would’ve had pre-rescue it’s not really so bad.

(Pre-rescue lives = both strays in an Irish dog pound, both due to be killed if no one claimed them within a week)

What kind of dogs?

some weird mix of Irish farm dogs, mainly terrier in both though

these dicks:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BbKL3yGA5AX/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=ub4ny0pckcub

just wanted to add that i love dogs so much.

they are the best

Oh man, your short-haired dog on the left there has a look of my Milo. Now I'm a bit teary. He was the best dog in the world. (I am sure your dog is also very nice.)

calm I’m very pro-human names for dogs

calz*

lol! my last dog was called Dogsby.

Oh man, your short-haired dog on the left there has a look of my Milo

that's pepper! she's a bit nervous and tends to bark like crazy if she gets even a teeny bit excited about something. also she sings along to the radio in the car if like ellie goulding comes on. think she might be a jack russell x collie but who knows?

earlier my daft young dog vomited up a whole sock. Luckily quite a small sized ladies sock. But ffs it was at least as stressful as the John Hurt scene in Alien at the time. It reminded me of the time when poor Dogsby once swallowed a small bouncy ball a kid threw at him to fetch, and for a short period I thought he might choke to death. But at least that horrible incident had a very short moment of grim comic relief when he did this cartoonishly exaggerated scooby doo face - looking in both directions and where's it gone huh? Before he realised it had bounced straight down his gob.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFju6GSS9Xk

seriously cute!

omg the bowing and the puppies.

Hopefully this sort of televised segment reduces demand for bosintang.

Oh god. meongmeongtang

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERz5o0LXYAAhFab?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERz689IXsAUDcJH?format=jpg&name=large

a very brief interaction with a cow and her calf, at times like this I'm tempted to go vegetarian again.

<3 Douglas

Man, Douglas is ready to be friends with those cows and that is for sure.

He's been obsessed with horses since puppyhood. He's always peeping over walls to check for horses and cattle. Although I wouldn't want to test if it is a gun happy farmer who owns them fine beasts! Also have to keep him on a lead where there is barbed wire, he has some foolish determination to run at barbed wire as if it was just string or something.