Dog
Singing
Yesterday I saw this post over at Lagniappe’s Lair.
Apollo, in typical fashion ignored it. It takes something special to get Apollo’s attention, like the frog who’s a living toy squeeker.
But Arty, well, Arty had to sing along:
Apollo’s new collar
Apollo is coming into his adult temperment. What does that have to do with his new collar, well……
Several weeks ago Apollo slipped his Lupine martingale (a standard slip over the head style). I’ve never seen a dog manage that before, he somehow managed to back out of it such that it didn’t tighten like it normally would have when pulled on, and do so fast enough we couldn’t stop him. He then proceeded to chase the psychotic GSDs (on the property kitty corner to us) into their doggy door. I guess he decided he was tired of being barked at constantly.
That started my search for a new martingale collar, this one with a safety clasp so that it could be sized such that it couldn’t slip over his head, and still be taken on and off easily. Ended up ordering a custom collar from a guy on the mastiff forum I frequent. It arrived today.
Today, hubby was getting ready to take the dogs out for one last potty and sniff the front line before he left for work. Got leashes and collars on everyone, opened the front door, and discovered the UPS guy about to walk up the steps onto the front porch, none of us had noticed the truck pulling up. Apollo DID NOT APPROVE. The UPS guy proved to have enough dog sense to neither run nor freeze, and hubby stopped Apollo short anyway. I suspect however that a large number of our UPS packages will be left on the steps instead of by the door from now on…..
At any rate the collar fits perfectly!
The guy who does these doesn’t have a webpage as such, but he does take orders. If anyone’s interested I can put you in touch!
(disclaimer: I paid for this with my own money and no review was expected or required. The guy who made it did cover my shipping since the style was my idea and he’s sold several of the same style since then)
Why I don’t care for Cesar Milan
This post has been building for a while….so sorry if it turns into a rant.
Now, before I get started, I’m not saying that all of what CM teaches is bad. Its not. SOME of his techniques, used on SOME dogs are quite effective. He occasionally makes good points. The problem is that a fair bit of what he DOES, is NOT a good thing.
One of the message boards I frequent is specifically for the owners, breeders, and other folks who enjoy, mastiffs and mastiff type breeds.
We have a member with a severely human aggressive Cane Corso. And before someone states that’s a repetitive statement, no actually, its not. But this dog was mistreated as a youngster and so now will only tolerate her new owner. And she appears to have actually bonded with her new owner, something that is fairly amazing considering her back ground. Her aggression towards other humans appears to be mostly fear based, and she has some other fear issues with a variety of things. Her owner has been slowly working to get her to tolerate cars, for example, in hopes that if he can get her to tolerate cars without being drugged to the gills then maybe he can expand the realm of whats possible. He’s had trouble finding a trainer who’s got experience with fear reactive LARGE dogs. But he IS making progress. Its slow. But it helps that his sole goal is to simply have her not lunging at strangers if they get to close. He doesn’t need her to be a love bug, he just wants her tolerant.
We have another member who’s a big CM fan. And so this CM fan wanders through the thread where the above guy is posting on his progress, and tells him that he just needs to alpha roll his dog to show her who’s boss and all will be fine. I managed to refrain from hitting the roof, but did advise him that alpha rolling a human aggressive dog was a really bad idea….
And see, that’s my first problem with CM. And alot of other trainers to be honest. Alpha rolling, as defined by these folks, is forcing the dog onto his side or stomach in response to bad behavior. Its based on some rather outdated understandings of how wolves work in packs.
Unfortunately that is NOT what a real alpha roll is. A real alpha roll the “dominant” dog does not in anyway force the “submissive” dog to submit. The “submissive” dog rolls himself over, showing his belly in an apology. Its an “ooops, I didn’t mean it, sorry!” offered voluntarily by the “submissive” dog. All that forcing your dog onto his side or back does is show you’re a bigger bully than he is. Now yes, with some dogs, they do calm down when you do that, if that’s what your dog does that cool, consider yourself lucky. But many dogs do NOT calm down when that is done to them, they infact consider it a challenge that must be met. Or in the case of an already fearful dog it can result in the dog becoming fearful of their owner who just proved them-self to be a big bully, and when the dog has already shown a tendency towards fear aggression……
My 2nd problem with CM, is shown in this video:
And since I’m to lazy to type out all that’s wrong please read here where someone else said it better than I would anyway. Suffice to say that this isn’t the only time CM has badly mis-read a dog’s body language, it just doesn’t always end up in a bite.
My 3rd problem with CM:
First he’s showing a perfect example of how NOT to use a choke collar. He never releases it fully, the dog is constantly struggling because CM is constantly restricting the dog’s airflow and jerking on his neck. Then, he kicks the dog, more than once, to elicit a response from the dog. Watch his feet closely, he likes to use the foot furthest from the dog to do it, kicking behind him into the dog’s gut. And then when the dog reacts he chokes him some more. And then he chokes the dog until the dog collapses. His excuse: the dog was fighting me, he was trying to bite me. You know what? Every single living thing on this planet would fight and bite if someone dropped a noose around its neck and cut off the air supply. If you or I choked our dogs to unconsciousness and the animal cruelty folks found out we’d be up on charges in a heart beat. But its CM, he was training the dog, it’s ok.
There….hopefully I have it out of my system so now I can go be polite to the CM fan on the message board instead of telling them just what I think of their animal abusing god…..oh wait, maybe not.
Booties for the puppy
We had horribly cold temps this week. I’ve dealt with worse, but that doesn’t make it fun. Overnights well below zero, and only warming up to the single digits. Both dogs get Musher’s Secret on their paws regularly in the winter, but even with that the single digits and colder proved to be to much for Arty. Less than 5 minutes outside and he was trying to pick up all his feet at once to warm them up, the result was the highly pitiful sight of him falling over in the snow and crying cause his feet hurt. Made worse because he WANTED to go out, and otherwise didn’t seem bothered by the temps.
Needless to say that doesn’t work well. So off to the locally owned petstore to buy booties for him. He’s still not to sure about these things being put on his feet, but they do help keep his feet from freezing so badly. At least I’m not forced to carry him back in after barely 3 minutes!
Apollo of course is oblivious, and can’t figure out why Arty’s having such problems….
Apollo
To take my mind off my rapidly climbing Statcounter number (along with an incredibly amusing list of .gov agencies, not all of which belong to the USA), I present the following video.
There’s not much to see, sorry, we had a power outage earlier tonight. It lasted all of 5 minutes. But Apollo took offense. He is now bouncing off the windows in full voice every time he hears something he doesn’t like.
This is what I’m listening to, several times an hour (turn up the bass on your sound system, and if you’re playing this on your phone without headphones or speakers you’re missing out):
Dean & Tyler has horrid customer service: A review of my experience ordering from them
The Dean & Tyler who sells products for canines in case there’s more than one company by that name.
On 12/4/2012 I ordered a muzzle for Arty (long post coming on that, if I ever get the energy).
It shipped on 12/6/2012. Nice and quick. And I had it by that Friday.
Saturday, in the process of training him to not consider it a bad thing I realized I’d screwed up the order somehow. The whole point of a basket muzzle is that you can feed and water the dog through it, but he couldn’t open his mouth wide enough to do so. So we re-measured him and got the same measurements as the first time. So I double checked the muzzle I’d ordered. Sure enough I’d ordered the wrong size. My fault. But hey, D&T offers a service where you can email them your dog’s measurements and a picture and they’ll help you determine the right size/style of muzzle, oh, and put “urgent” in the subject if you need help in a hurry.
So Sunday 12/9/2012 I emailed, with URGENT in the subject line, asking for help fitting the muzzle so I could return/exchange the one I’d miss-ordered.
Wednesday 12/12/2012 I’d not heard from them so I called. Was informed by a “Lissette” that the sizing folks only worked over email, but if I’d forward my email to her she’d make sure they got it. So I forwarded it. She emailed back asking me a couple questions about the measurements, which I responded to.
Friday 12/14/2012 I’d still not heard back about what size might fit him better…..I was starting to get a little peeved. I sat back down with his measurements, and the measurements listed for the muzzle sizes and styles and finally settled on one that other than being to long should fit him better. I looked up the returns/exchange process info and it says to email with your order number in the subject line along with whether you want an exchange or return. Oh goody, I bet I can guess whats going to happen here.
Thursday 12/20/2012 I got an (probly automated) email from D&T asking me to rate my experience with them and the product I bought. So I did. One star all the way baby…..
Today is 12/21/2012. I have heard back from neither the sizing folks nor the returns/exchange folks. Its not like I’m ordering a muzzle cause its a cute fashion accessory…..I know all this took place the last few weeks before Christmas, and that they were probly extra busy. I work for a very small company that does online retail (smaller than D&T). We were swamped the last couple weeks. Thats normal. You know what? We still found time to call back customers who had questions or needed to return items……