Sea of Pups
Sunday, June 12, 2016 at 8:36PM 
How are we doing? We had all of our output on the pads last night. Bravo. After our 8 week visit to the vet we will stop eating at night. That will be a change. This allows us to get them to sleep all night without output. Everything is a process to get them to be ready to go to their forever homes and that includes sleeping through the night.
I have tested all of them with treats. Everyone had kangaroo tendons. No fights. I had sharing but boy did they like them. Tomorrow I see if their output changes from them.
I usually test the pups with treats this way to see if any food guard. Food guarding at this age can be common as they love the treat so much that they want to covet it and simply don't know how to share yet. So when this happens I try it again to see if it changes days apart. At the time that I see food guarding, I take the treat away and say, all done. Each thing that I do is to gain insight and to enable them to build coping skills.
We will try this again in a week to see if anything changes.
They are hopping, running and playing in such a grand fashion these days. It's wonderful!
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Reader Comments (8)
Darlah, do dogs human guard in the same way they do with food? I'm trying to work out if my Hav is getting jealous when we fuss other dogs as she is developing inappropriate behaviours with other dogs.
Yes, they can people guard and protect. How are you handling it?
With great difficulty, we can't get her focus on us once she sees the dog coming our way. the one thing we noticed is it only happens with certain dogs and some pups. Our trainer didn't help, just made it worse.
Ps, my partner distracts or tries to fuss our dog, a lot of time now our dog will sit with her back to the other dog at a distance. It is hard to know why she is like this I guess she doesn't interact well with all dogs as she is well socialised. Thanks for all your information about dog behaviour.
So this is happening with walks. Do you have a treat motivated dog? Do you get stressed on the walks worrying about encountering other dogs?
Hi Darlah. My dog isn't treat motivated outdoors, and only am bit indoors.
When she gets a fixation her body tenses up and she sharp wags her tail. We do get our self in a bit of a panic at what may follow. The growl and lunge. I try to gain attention by getting down to her level and talking to her but she is very focused and stubborn so look to me doesn't work. We now crossover from the oncoming dog and friends while partner goes and chats and fusses their dog. This is only with certain dogs though others she happily wags at and does the sniffing greet and all is calm. It is quite upsetting as we did all the classes, have the theory but not the touch.
Do you have someone to walk your dog other than you? There is a term your emotions go down the lead. What that means is your dog is reacting to your concerns. Often when someone else walks the dog without that preconceived idea of what may happen they get a different result.
If her body is tensing up and she has a rigid quick tail, she is experiencing concern to fear.
Do you have 2 people who can walk the dog. When your dog reacts, go slowly and deliberately across the street and one person remains and loves up the dog your dog is concerned with. Start that far away but the dog should be able to see what is going on. When you get a positive reaction, still cross but stay closer. The goal is to slow condition and eventually get to where you can walk by without incident. It's a slow process but will work if YOU are not nervous and you realize this is an all summer project. You must be willing to step back to the last stage if you went to fast with the process and start moving forward.
We worked with our late rescue golden who was fearful of EVERYTHING. It took me a year to get rid of all her fears but storms (those were dampened but not eliminated). She had a real issue with traffic so each day I took her past a small patch of a busy street. Her fear was great. I did this many times a day. At the end of the year I had forgotten she was afraid of traffic and didn't clue into when she had forgotten it was an issue. It just happens on its on time. But I was consistent, determined and I was relaxed. I had an attitude, I can handle anything so why be upset. She was a 75lb being that would use flight as her mode of operation and that included traffic. So, I get feeling tense but if you can help yourself to get past your own concerns you will find you not only helped the dog but yourself. There is nothing more rewarding than helping a dog get past their fears.
Gee, thanks Darlah we will do this with her. We were thinking she was starting to be aggressive in a bad way.
Thank you. Norm.