Hi All.....I am back to pick your brains. I phased out Luna's lunch time feed recently. She is 9 months. This seems to have coincided with horrendous monkey business. Nothing at all is sacred, pants, remote controls, I phone! As well as escaping. Is this a coincidence or should I reinstate a small snack at lunch time? I usually let her potter about outside for an hour or so two or three time a day. Mainly if I am busy making tea and supervising homework for example, where I used to put her in her crate she now goes out for a play. But twice now she has jumped the fence and gone next door where my sister in law has her jack Russell chained in the day. She struts around in front of him going " naaa naaa n naa naaa, I'm free". She returns when I whistle. But obviously I don't really want her doing this so now she is confined to only going out when someone else is out, which is a shame really. In the afternoons she is into grand theft mainly, much worse than before. Any hints and tips? Thinking about a kong wobbler as I wonder if maybe she is a bit bored?
It's absolutely nothing to do with her not getting lunch. You don't mention what training she gets? I think getting a teenage dog into a serious programme of training leading to some activity that they think is tremendous fun - gundog work, agility, flyball, whatever - is the best medicine for the teenage months (and for life, really). She is jumping the fence because she is left to her own devices in a garden and is bored so is off looking for entertainment and your fence isn't high enough. My dogs don't go out to the garden alone. They go out with me to have a pee/poo and then do something. Usually training, sometimes a game. They don't want to stay out alone, a small familiar area of ground is boring. In terms of thieving stuff - only give her freedom in rooms where you have picked everything up.
@JulieT i think you are right. I take her to training once a week and some weeks we have good weeks and some weeks she is really stubborn. I do short sessions with her in between but maybe I need to start thinking about making it more interesting. We are very very rural so it is difficult to get to any organised agility, flyball or other activities so I really need to think about nagging my trainer to set some other stuff up or doing it myself. Once a week I take her up to the mountains to where he trains his gundogs and do some recall work with her (it is more challenging becasue of all the both smells and other dogs) as well as her other walks. Most days I do a "walk about " in our fields where every time she runs ahead of me I switch direction and she ends up galloping around the field. Good fun! Just to be clear when I say I pop her outside it isn't a garden she has to play in it's a field with baby trees in it of about an acre and a half! So yeah. Maybe she just needs a bit more. She is a great character and I want her to be happy and stretched so off to get a dummy today!
Smashing, I hope you both enjoy retrieving. I only get to a Gundog trainer once a month with Charlie, but I have plenty to do between times on my own. In fact I never manage to get everything done between visits. It doesn't really matter than it's an acre and a half - although that's a very lovely space to have of course - if a dog is alone, it's not going to engage in constructive activity (it will start thinking about mischief, as you have found out). You could lay kibble trails for her. So take her breakfast and create trails of kibble for her to sniff out. You have to get her used to doing this, but then once she is you could entertain her for a long time in such a good size garden with not all that much kibble). You'd still need a higher fence though.
You do sound in a similar situation to us. We have a fair amount of garden space, about an acre and half, which then leads out onto footpaths and fields. Bramble is 10 months old, so close in age, and now very much an adolescent, so I have to work that bit harder and keeping her engaged, whilst she learns about boundaries (preferred behaviours) I never let her in the garden alone, only because she will get into mischief, and I don't think any of my dogs really like being in the garden alone, or even together, unless it's a short supervised play session together or their morning/late night wees. Instead we have lots of short training sessions, hiding treats in toilet rolls,or cardboard boxes, and sending out to find them. I even set up a scurry for one of fosters, that was great fun! I think if the dog associates you with interesting and exciting games, it makes other training much easier, as your dog will realise this quickly and settle into what I call a "work" mode.
I'm not sure if it could be related to the change of routine. Homer becomes a complete little monkey if his routine changes and he thinks he hasn't had the attention he thinks he should be getting including his dinner at exactly at the time his tummy tells him, or both his carrot and Dentastix afterwards (given separately, he'll want another carrot if I've put down the first at the same time as his Dentastix) . Needless to say things don't always go his way, sometimes I pull my backbone out of the skeleton cupboard and tell him he's not having any more and better just go and have a lie down and think about his behaviour (in the nicest possible way).
Here you go @Sophiathesnowfairy, our scurry with Blake, a foster we had at the time. I would hold Blake at one end, with OH at the other. He then drops the dummy and Blake races down to retrieve. After a while, Blake was steady enough to place in a sit, and I would place the dummy, return to his side, then send him out for the dummy. He loved it! here are some photos.. blake scurry 2 by Marcus Hart, on Flickr scurry blake 4 by Marcus Hart, on Flickr blake scurry 2 by Marcus Hart, on Flickr
