Monday 22 June 2020

Handling the door

Dog training can be full of challenges you never thought to face. Dog's jumping against the door and escaping from a room or the entire house is one of those things you perhaps didn't think to crash at. We have turn all our strategic door handles upside down already for 25 years. When you do that they can't at first open the door accidentally when jumping against it -and later on by purpose when they learn pressing the handle down opens the door. Even our cat tried to open the doors by jumping up to the handle and hanging from there until it got open!

See the video below how it works.



Sunday 21 June 2020

Little Pii swims


I am happy to tell little Pii has learnt to swim. She had her first moments in swimming on the 13th of June. At the age of 10 weeks. Of course I don't have any pics or videos about those moments because she needed my full attention. But now I have finally been able to make a video about her swimming. On this video she is 11 weeks old. It looks so cute that I could watch it all day long. 

She is very young to swim so we must be very careful and sensitive with it. This neither would have not been this easy if Nuka had not been there helping us around.

Sunday 7 June 2020

Learning to live



You know we had this cute little puppy in May 2020. She grows very fast and needs to learn many things despite she is just a little cute puppy.

She is very co-operative, interest about the world, fast learning, cute, fluffy...

...but you should not think she is not a little devil like all the puppies can be. She seems to be in thousands of places at the same time. She has her moments in good and bad. Still you need to be very patient with a puppy because they are babies and have not learnt it all. 

Despite Pii can be very wild like every single healthy puppy we don't keep her in a crate. Not even because she is a big breed dog with full of energy. Not even because she is so called indoor dog. Indoor dog means she lives indoors with humans.

Of course she has a crate for car travelling and vet visits. When she'll be bigger she'll travel in seat belt instead of crate. For the first few days she had a crate in the house too. We took the door out of it so she was allowed to come and go as she wished. But she rather sleeps elsewhere and we allow her to seek her "own place". We are training her to sleep in every room so that -at the end- the whole house will turn out her bedroom and the garden an amusement park. We started from one room, then go on room by room. When she gets wild we go into garden with her. Slowly she begins to learn the whole house is for the rest and the garden for the wrestle.

Also, it turn out an indoor "dog house" is not an good idea because of the fact that cat loved it. You know how cats love boxes. To avoid the conflicts we removed the crate on that very moment when we noticed the cat was in. For example now when I am writing this, Pii is sleeping under my loom.

Puppies are so clever and want to try out everything. I have had the same old heavy ceramic water bowl for my dogs for 25 years now. No dog before has push it over and believe me, there has been all kind of dogs in this house. But little Pii has one tiny obsession. It is the water. Just like Nuka... So, of course Pii managed to push it over twice on her second day in the house just because she plaid with it.

Well, because ability to swim and being familiar with the water is the lesson number one my dog must learn to save their oven lives we can't deny the access to the water from them. (Access to fresh water is also the priority number one for the animals' physical and mental health.) Because of our needs I can't tell the puppy to stop to play with her water bowl. That's why we offered her bigger bowl in the garden for her needs (24/7). In this way I can teach her not to play with the water indoors but outdoors. Just like we are gently training her to do her needs.

When it finally got a bit warmer we took Pii (and Nuka of course) by the big water. We have been there already few times despite Pii is just 9 weeks old. She is very happy about it but we have not allowed her to go too deep or swim. To avoid bad experiences; but also to keep her eagerness alive. We neither stay long to make sure it cools her down in a nice way but not to make her feel cold. Feeling cold & freezing (you know it for sure) is a thing that creates a negative memory connection with the water. More information about how to train your dog to swim and like the water you can find here.

They both love the water, to play with it... and in it. Notice how thick fur they both have. That helps a lot because they get quite hot very easy.

Cute little Pii has already dive in the sea. It was an accident caused by herself but it didn't spook her up because she has already learnt basics of diving (putting her head into the water to pick up toys she has drop in) when playing in her big bowl in the garden! 🐳





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