nova the fox terrier

a training log and collection bad phone pics of my rude dog

[churchound]

she doesn't usually care about birds that can fly but she HATES pigeons

[churchound]

pretend training with not my dog

[desertwindhounds]

Nazgul and her sister Nura are about seven months old here. They were playing with a bowl, and rather pointedly keeping it away from Linnaeus, who was about six months old. Eventually they tired of the bowl and Linnaeus got it.

Nura lives in Scotland. At that time the dog could not enter the country until six months after a positive rabies titer. (IIRC we did the titer two weeks after vaccination.) I raised her here with Nazgul until she was ready to ship overseas. 

[churchound]

We have the same sort of law in Bermuda, except the dog has to be 10 months old unless shipped from a rabies free country.

Do you usually ship puppies out of country when you have a litter? Here almost all dogs have to be shipped in, even shelter dogs from Jamaica. Bermuda bred puppies are easily within the $2000-$5000 range.

[streetdogmillionaires]

It sure feels like the dog is taking personal calls on company time. You might feel frustrated by the interruption. Does he not respect you at all? You might even feel a little bit rejected. “I’m working as hard as I can to make this fun. Why does he not think I’m more fun than sniffing the floor?” Have you ever had an instructor tell you that you have to be more fun than grass? I have. And I took it personally. I AM FUN DAMMIT! […] We tend to think of making choices as involving motivation. Your motivations drive your choices. And they do! But what is particularly interesting for me as a (nerdy) trainer, is that it goes the other way, too. Choice can actually drive motivation. The act of making a choice, rather than having conditions be imposed on you, is motivating. It is empowering. It starts to build a bias toward action… which translates into less stress and increased motivation to Do Stuff. YAY! It’s probably the most counterintuitive thing in the world, but letting your dog sniff, and then *choose* to look at you, actually builds his drive to work with you. I realize it doesn’t do anything for your own stress level (at first), but it’s worth it. The pay off is ENORMOUS. Actually letting the dog sniff, and then choose to engage, relieves the tension of conflicting motivations between the environment and the handler. Which means the underlying emotional cause of the sniffing is no longer present. Which means the sniffing goes away. So the next time your dog breaks off from training to sniff nothing in particular on the ground, don’t panic. As long as it’s a safe situation, wait. Let him choose. When he returns his attention to you, reinforce and then send him away again. Let him make the same choice to sniff or look at you. When he chooses you, reinforce and send him away. Pretty soon you’ll discover you CAN’T send him away, because he won’t stop looking at you! Isn’t it funny how that works!

Hannah Branigan, “Camp Lethimmakeachoice” (July 1 2016) 

I love this. In a nutshell, this is the single biggest, most powerful, most difficult dog training thing I’ve been learning and working on with both Chalo and Priya over the past year. (Difficult because it takes a really concerted effort to commit to this approach, especially in contexts where the prevailing wisdom is “Be more exciting! Be more fun! Be more interesting!” Or where that voice is still in my brain, even though I know how wrong it is for my dogs.)

p.s. It’s working.

(via streetdogmillionaires)

[churchound]

We found a severely sick cat in our garbage last night. I left it there in case it belonged to someone but when I went back today it was still there. There's no way it would have survived the day in this heat so I'm taking it to the vet. I can't afford to pay for its medical bills since I'm still paying off kitty's bills so it will most likely get euthanized. It's in Novas crate and she is not happy about it, she really wants to kill it.

[churchound]

she made it up the wall where the goat lives and it ran

[churchound]

someone left the gate open to the goat pasture.

[churchound]

Alexander battery

[churchound]

Nova scared the crap out of me just now. I accidentally left gate open and went to the bathroom and suddenly no dog. She wasn't wearing a collar and her microchip hasn't been updated so I was freaking out. She was in the neighbors yard, probably hunting cats. I took her food container and called her and she ran back immediately. I rewarded the hell out of her.

[churchound]

she'll scale a wall to get to the goat

[churchound]

begging

[churchound]

[churchound]

[churchound]

When Clarence runs through a field Nova naturally wants to chase him but since Clarence can't stand up for himself he starts screaming and will bolt if Nova chases him.

[churchound]

ft. my brother and clarence

[churchound]

[losech]