Sidney the Dog

[juliet]

dogrando & I went to Battersea again yesterday, and came home with a dog!

She is an 11-month-old mongrel (bit of lurcher, bit of terrier, bit of a lot of other things) called Sidney (she already knew her name & it suits her well enough so we're keeping it), & there are some photos of her on my Flickr.

She's fairly hyper in a young-dog-type way, but she's also very eager to please, already knows Sit (and is learning quickly that I don't think it counts as a Sit unless you have all four paws on the floor and are being still), and is currently having a snooze on her bed in the corner, so she is *capable* of being calm for a while. She isn't properly housetrained at the moment (although was clean overnight), so we're working on that (I actually think the major problem is that Outside is scarier than Inside so she's a bit too nervous when she's out there; so as she calms down it should get easier. In the meantime, it is Watch Like Hawk And Take Out Every Two Hrs time.). She's a bit overvigilant at noise right now as well, but again, that should calm down over time. And she only whined for about 10 min last night when shut downstairs, which isn't bad going.

She also likes playing the Fetch In The Hallway game, and is enthusiastic about training (because it involves treats!), and she reliably comes when called (because you might have a treat, I suspect, but hey, that'll do).

(Anyone wishing to recommend games-to-play-with-adolescent-dog, do comment; my dog experience is all of slightly older dogs, and while Sugar, the dog I had as a teenager, was up for playing, we mostly played "run around the garden" with her :) ).

Comments

[adjectivegail]

DOGGGG!!! She looks gorgeous!

Re games, tug-of-war is good. However don't let the dog win all the time - they can start thinking it means they're stronger than you and therefore get to boss you about. Rule of thumb I was given (although regarding the incredibly bossy Westie in my icon) was to make sure the game ended with me winning.

Depending on what kind of a dog she is, 'fetch' might easily be turned into 'find it', where you hide the toy while she's in the hall (can be great for teaching 'stay' as well!) and then she, well, finds it. Obviously start out easy with it being e.g. fairly prominently in the middle of the floor or something.

I hope you have loads of fun together!

[juliet]

'find it' might work well in a little bit -- thanks for the suggestion! Need to start working on 'stay' soon -- it'll be a bit easier once she's better at sit in an 'actually sitting still' way.

I do have a nice solid rope tug toy, which we've played with a bit but it's not as exciting as the ball. Yeah, I've seen that advice about getting to win, as well. Currently most of the toys / interesting things live in a box in the downstairs loo where she's not allowed, and come out & go away again when the humans decide not when the dog decides :)

[adjectivegail]

Tug of war is Sam's favourite game, because his shake-until-dead insticts are pretty dominant (we gave up buying him stuffed toys pretty rapidly, he always ripped them to shreds in seconds). Fetch only works with him about two or three times in any given session, and then he just looks at me as if to say "what is the point of this? Get it yourself!" Or else chases it and then 'kills' it and drops it. We don't have a box for his toys - mostly because he preferred to bury them... but also because we managed to teach him 'I'm not playing right now' while the toys stayed out. He could play on his own that way.

'Find' was pretty handy to teach, particularly as we did it with a variety of toys, so now we can just say 'gimme the toy' and he'll go fetch one for us *g* Also he's a pretty intelligent dog and I enjoy making him think. Currently when I go up for a visit I'm trying to teach him to come and then walk around and sit right up against my left leg. Incredibly, he does remember the general principle between visits.