Puppy! Pictures Included!!!!
So we've had our new puppy, Emma, for two weeks or so now... and I'm fully convinced she has doggy ADD. You know how with most dogs you can tell right away whether they're smart or dumb? Well.. I can tell that she's SMART, but she pretty much has a negative attention span, if such a thing is possible. But that's okay.... she can get by on cuteness for now. I'm finding that I'm learning a LOT about puppy psychology as I spend more time with her, and it's really pretty fascinating.
I feel fairly Nazi trying to discourage our friends from spoiling her every time they come over, because for some reason that's just everyone's natural reaction to puppies. Go figure! ;D But I'm a pretty strict mommy. I'm determined to have a dog I can communicate with. Thus far it's looking pretty hopeless. Hehe. However I can report that in just two weeks we've already taught her to heel, sit, stay (for very short periods), lay down, and shake. Not that she'll do any of these reliably on command yet, except sit, but she's definitely picking up the ideas quickly enough. Unfortunately as soon as I taught her to shake for treats she started assuming that she can CLAW at your hand or arm like it's an automatic treat dispenser any time she feels like it. But I think we've corrected that particular problem.
Naturally since she IS a puppy, for a while she was definitely in "Pee-On-Everything" mode.. (the people we got her from said she was already housebroken, but I'm rather unconvinced at this point) and in a weird turn of events, now that she's mostly potty trained, we've discovered that sometimes she's an excited piddler, which is supposed to be pretty uncommon in larger dogs like her. o_0 Hopefully it's something she'll grow out of. But it's only a problem when we come home at the end of the day after she's been outside for a while. And THAT'S yet another reason I think my dog has issues... For two weeks now we've been putting her out on the deck where her kennel and blankie and rawhide are every morning, and we let her back in in the afternoons when we get home. And she is STILL FREAKING OUT LIKE CRAZY every time we do it! And I dunno how it usually works, but I would tend to think that once the dog had a chance to figure out that we do in fact come back EVERY time, and that whining and howling and clawing at the door will NOT enable her to get back inside... she'd just start being calm about it after a while. But every morning when we put her outside she goes to town on the patio door, whines, howls, and destroys whatever she can get her teeth and claws into for a good solid 20 minutes before she settles down. (I only know this because I got the chance to spy on her the other day when she thought I'd left). We originally tried leaving her in her kennel inside the apartment.. but she literally ate a big chunk out of the bedding we put down, bent the METAL on the front edge of the kennel from clawing at it, and managed to SHOVE the plastic pan at the bottom (which is supposed to prevent her from peeing onto the actual carpet) almost all the way out from under the kennel -- presumably to make it easier for her to actually pee on the carpet, which she did. So we didn't try that again.
But still she's already destroyed the screen door out back, and she's somehow managed to tear the plastic cover completely off of the vent on the wall. She hasn't yet managed to damage the glass patio door itself.. but I'm thinking the metal casing around it will not come out the better for wear. And of course every day when we let her IN, she bounces between the two of us like a giant furry possessed pinball, jumping, nipping, whining... and pausing periodically to widdle wherever she may. We've kind of stemmed the piddle problem by latching her to her leash almost as soon as she bursts in the door, and then taking her immediately out the front door to her potty spot so she can let it go appropriately. But she's still quite a jumper, and despite all the corrections, and reprimands, and positive reinforcement, etc., we can't seem to get her to stop until she's tired herself out.
Secondary to all of this (and I only de-prioritze it because she's mostly been an indoor dog thus far, and we're not going to allow her to socialize outside of home until we figure out how to correct the problem), we suspect that she must have been taken from her litter MUCH too early, because she is absolutely NOT socialized to other dogs. At even the sight of another dog her hackles immediately rise and she starts growling and barking. The first time she did it Marc was walking her and we saw our neighbor/friend with his dog, Sadie, who is actually really friendly.. and Emma nearly tried to bite her face off! And it's manifested every time we take her out for walks and there are other dogs in the vicinity. It's pretty disturbing, because I've never seen any dog so automatically hostile towards other dogs without having been trained/bred to behave that way. I'm even hesitant to take her to puppy classes specifically because of this problem; I'm not sure they would allow us to enroll in group classes with her being so aggressive towards other dogs. But she's really really lovey dovey with people... so it's all just bizarre. But not having been properly socialized has definitely had a huge impact on her behavior.. because puppies are SUPPOSED to learn from eachother what appropriate behavior is. As a result she doesn't have the same bite inhibition you would expect from a normal puppy, and she tends to be mouthier than I like. Not violent or aggressive.. just.. mouthy. Even though we correct her immediately every time she does it. But like I said, negative attention span.. it's like it's never happened before as far as she knows.
BUT, I do want to declaim all of this with her extremely amazing GOOD attributes. Like I said she really loves people as long as you don't try to sneak into our apartment (she's displaying very good guard-dogging skills). She shows absolutely no sign of ANY desire to chew on the furniture, or on ANYTHING except for what we specifically put into her mouth and allow her to chew (amazing right?! I know!!). She doesn't dig at the carpet or the furniture, she doesn't usually jump up on the furniture except when she's really excited. She doesn't shed much at all, and doesn't actually smell like dog, which is awesome yet mildly perturbing. I think -and Marc has had to agree- that she actually smells like a giant hamster. It's weird, but I swear to god. She likes to lay at/on our feet while we watch TV, she doesn't bark excessively indoors, and she doesn't seem to have any dominance/possession issues with food or toys. She's learning pretty quickly, though again not as consistently as I would like, and she's a sucker for tummy rubbings. AND SHE IS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DOG!! I'm posting pictures below, but it's hard to get a really good impression of what she looks like from them. She's half husky half golden lab; she's mostly lab colored (very pale gold/cream) over most of her body, but she's a nice strawberry blonde color all along the back and shoulders and ears in the same pattern that a husky normally has grey or red on white. She also has a little sliver of white right in the middle of her forehead which I think is soo cute. She's about husky height (very short, we're talking the actual LITTLE huskies here, not the huge-ungous polar-bear sized ones), but her body is pretty long. I don't expect her to get much bigger than she is now. OOOhh I just want to smushes and smooches her face all up. Hahaha.
I feel fairly Nazi trying to discourage our friends from spoiling her every time they come over, because for some reason that's just everyone's natural reaction to puppies. Go figure! ;D But I'm a pretty strict mommy. I'm determined to have a dog I can communicate with. Thus far it's looking pretty hopeless. Hehe. However I can report that in just two weeks we've already taught her to heel, sit, stay (for very short periods), lay down, and shake. Not that she'll do any of these reliably on command yet, except sit, but she's definitely picking up the ideas quickly enough. Unfortunately as soon as I taught her to shake for treats she started assuming that she can CLAW at your hand or arm like it's an automatic treat dispenser any time she feels like it. But I think we've corrected that particular problem.
Naturally since she IS a puppy, for a while she was definitely in "Pee-On-Everything" mode.. (the people we got her from said she was already housebroken, but I'm rather unconvinced at this point) and in a weird turn of events, now that she's mostly potty trained, we've discovered that sometimes she's an excited piddler, which is supposed to be pretty uncommon in larger dogs like her. o_0 Hopefully it's something she'll grow out of. But it's only a problem when we come home at the end of the day after she's been outside for a while. And THAT'S yet another reason I think my dog has issues... For two weeks now we've been putting her out on the deck where her kennel and blankie and rawhide are every morning, and we let her back in in the afternoons when we get home. And she is STILL FREAKING OUT LIKE CRAZY every time we do it! And I dunno how it usually works, but I would tend to think that once the dog had a chance to figure out that we do in fact come back EVERY time, and that whining and howling and clawing at the door will NOT enable her to get back inside... she'd just start being calm about it after a while. But every morning when we put her outside she goes to town on the patio door, whines, howls, and destroys whatever she can get her teeth and claws into for a good solid 20 minutes before she settles down. (I only know this because I got the chance to spy on her the other day when she thought I'd left). We originally tried leaving her in her kennel inside the apartment.. but she literally ate a big chunk out of the bedding we put down, bent the METAL on the front edge of the kennel from clawing at it, and managed to SHOVE the plastic pan at the bottom (which is supposed to prevent her from peeing onto the actual carpet) almost all the way out from under the kennel -- presumably to make it easier for her to actually pee on the carpet, which she did. So we didn't try that again.
But still she's already destroyed the screen door out back, and she's somehow managed to tear the plastic cover completely off of the vent on the wall. She hasn't yet managed to damage the glass patio door itself.. but I'm thinking the metal casing around it will not come out the better for wear. And of course every day when we let her IN, she bounces between the two of us like a giant furry possessed pinball, jumping, nipping, whining... and pausing periodically to widdle wherever she may. We've kind of stemmed the piddle problem by latching her to her leash almost as soon as she bursts in the door, and then taking her immediately out the front door to her potty spot so she can let it go appropriately. But she's still quite a jumper, and despite all the corrections, and reprimands, and positive reinforcement, etc., we can't seem to get her to stop until she's tired herself out.
Secondary to all of this (and I only de-prioritze it because she's mostly been an indoor dog thus far, and we're not going to allow her to socialize outside of home until we figure out how to correct the problem), we suspect that she must have been taken from her litter MUCH too early, because she is absolutely NOT socialized to other dogs. At even the sight of another dog her hackles immediately rise and she starts growling and barking. The first time she did it Marc was walking her and we saw our neighbor/friend with his dog, Sadie, who is actually really friendly.. and Emma nearly tried to bite her face off! And it's manifested every time we take her out for walks and there are other dogs in the vicinity. It's pretty disturbing, because I've never seen any dog so automatically hostile towards other dogs without having been trained/bred to behave that way. I'm even hesitant to take her to puppy classes specifically because of this problem; I'm not sure they would allow us to enroll in group classes with her being so aggressive towards other dogs. But she's really really lovey dovey with people... so it's all just bizarre. But not having been properly socialized has definitely had a huge impact on her behavior.. because puppies are SUPPOSED to learn from eachother what appropriate behavior is. As a result she doesn't have the same bite inhibition you would expect from a normal puppy, and she tends to be mouthier than I like. Not violent or aggressive.. just.. mouthy. Even though we correct her immediately every time she does it. But like I said, negative attention span.. it's like it's never happened before as far as she knows.
BUT, I do want to declaim all of this with her extremely amazing GOOD attributes. Like I said she really loves people as long as you don't try to sneak into our apartment (she's displaying very good guard-dogging skills). She shows absolutely no sign of ANY desire to chew on the furniture, or on ANYTHING except for what we specifically put into her mouth and allow her to chew (amazing right?! I know!!). She doesn't dig at the carpet or the furniture, she doesn't usually jump up on the furniture except when she's really excited. She doesn't shed much at all, and doesn't actually smell like dog, which is awesome yet mildly perturbing. I think -and Marc has had to agree- that she actually smells like a giant hamster. It's weird, but I swear to god. She likes to lay at/on our feet while we watch TV, she doesn't bark excessively indoors, and she doesn't seem to have any dominance/possession issues with food or toys. She's learning pretty quickly, though again not as consistently as I would like, and she's a sucker for tummy rubbings. AND SHE IS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DOG!! I'm posting pictures below, but it's hard to get a really good impression of what she looks like from them. She's half husky half golden lab; she's mostly lab colored (very pale gold/cream) over most of her body, but she's a nice strawberry blonde color all along the back and shoulders and ears in the same pattern that a husky normally has grey or red on white. She also has a little sliver of white right in the middle of her forehead which I think is soo cute. She's about husky height (very short, we're talking the actual LITTLE huskies here, not the huge-ungous polar-bear sized ones), but her body is pretty long. I don't expect her to get much bigger than she is now. OOOhh I just want to smushes and smooches her face all up. Hahaha.