Sister Rivalry

For anyone who follows my blog you know that Kyah and Emma live together. Emma takes it upon herself to occasionally put Kyah in her place and Quite often Kyah needs it. Well today Kyah and Emma met Alex. Kyak did her puppy play thing being all submissive to Alex who thinks all girls are his to breed. Well to my surprise he never tried. They played chase me, body slam and bite face but never an attempt from Alex to mount and hump. On the other hand Kyah had no problem jumping on Alex's back. Now when Alex did try to have an intimate moment with Emma, Kyah did not like it one bit. She has decided that Alex is hers!!! Everytime Alex would go over to sniff Emma he would get a big bark from Kyah and a face full of teeth from Emma.I wonder if dogs are like men? Something in the way a dog looks and it's love at first sight. Or maybe Kyak just likes be strong handsome dogs? Yesterday for Alex it was Bailey and now today it's Kyah.

Shaping Behavior

I have been digesting Jane Killion's book "When Pigs Fly" and using it for training purposes @ Sit Stay & Play. I must say it has been a lot of fun. I had never been a big fan of clicker training until I started this approach with the 2 lab puppies. Now Jane would classify the labs as biddable animals, meaning they are eager to please their handler/owner. Yes it's true but they also lacked any sort of attention span!
Well in a few short weeks they are wrenching their necks when they hear the click. They have also caught on to the shaping behavior very quickly. It only took Bailey 2 short sessions to realize that if she picked up the box she would get a treat.
Now Kyah who may be Basenji/terrier mix is not what Jane would consider as biddable. but in her training session today she not only offered the sit but also the down to get the clicker to go off!!!! Yeah Kyah. Good Dog.

Austin

Now I'm not sure if Austin got his name from the city? But like Austin Tx he's pretty and tough. Although I'm not sure I should call him pretty his owner is in the military and probably wants to think of Austin as a tough guy. He is a Shiba Inu a Japanese dog. Austin is coming to Sit Stay and Play to be crate trained among other things. His owner Mike is about to deploy on his second tour, this time to Afghanistan and Austin will be staying with his friend Amy so we need to make sure we have him all trained up by the time Mike gets back.

Micky

Is a Cavishon a designer dog. A blend of Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a Bichon. An interesting mix. He is full of enery and keeps up with the labs pretty well. Being fast he is able to out run the labs but he is definitely a sturdy little guy. He and Austin play pretty we'll together. It's always nice seeing boys getting along. Micky has his own car seat so he can see put the window while his owner Leslie drives him around town a man of style!

Zephy

Zephy Is a bulldog and new to Sit Stay and Play.she acclimated herself very well with the other dogs, however Zephy likes to guard what she thinks are her toys. What she hasn't figures out yet is that they are my toys. Today while playing with Gaston she started to guard one of the stuffed animals. Gaston backed off but it was Emma who handles the situation. She walked over to Zephy and placed herself between the toy and the bulldog puppy. No growling but body language that said I decide who guards what. Zephyr backed away and made no more attempts to guard any toys, instead she decided to indulge in a mud mask to enhance that beautiful face!

Thinking about the box

Is a learning game for your dog. You can read about it in Jane Killions book "When Pigs Fly". While this sounds like a strange title for a dog training book it holds amazing foresight into dog training.
Bailey and I walked our way through the exercise, clicker in one hand and book in the other. To my delight Bailey showed many moments of greatness as she was clicked through sniffing, touching and eventually picking up the box to earn her treat. This form of training is called free shaping and it requires the dog to offer behaviors until they get the clicker to go off. In a five minute training session Bailey learned what was going to get her a treat. The idea is training becomes a game as your dog offers behaviors to make the clicker go off. When you can be 100% sure that your dog will sit at the click you can start using the command "sit" once their butt has touched the ground and eventually discontinue the click and use the word. Voila your dog is offering a sit.

Jacoby Ellsbury aka Emma

Unless you are a baseball fan and specifically a Red Sox fan you probably won't catch the drift of this blog. Jacoby Ellsbury plays center filed and can play just about any ball off the green monster and manages to make the play. I believe he is in contention for the golden glove award this year.
Well Emma could keep right up with Jacoby. She plays the  tennis ball off any spot on the floor and any bounce off the wall and makes the play. I have never seen her miss. and she never tires of playing the game. I think I have come close to wearing out my arm tossing the ball for Emma. The Red Sox scouts should definitely consider signing her for next season, with Emma on their team they might actually win another World Series!

Understanding Dog

Over thousands of years dogs have refined their communication and survival skills without the help of humans. Without our interference they are able to survive in the wild and continue on with the species. So when exactly did we decide we knew better than a dog as to how it should behave?

Probably the biggest issue people have with their dogs is jumping on people. Humans think of jumping as a bad behavior and spend hours and hours trying to stop the "bad" behavior. But how many of these owners have given much thought a to why a dog jumps? I am just as bad as anyone else. Dog jumps on me and I tell them off or no jump as they approach a person. Like everyone else I try to "fix" what I perceive as a bad behavior, but let's look at it from the dogs point of view. Early on while still in the whelping box puppies learn to approach their mother and siblings by jumping up and licking their mouth a form of greeting and submission at the same time. Have you ever noticed when your dog meets another dog one of the first things they do is to jump on the other dog. Dog is saying well hello my name is Finn. The same goes for a person, the dog jumps up to greet and the person pushes them off. So the dog thinks wow I didn't get my point across so let me jump even bigger, higher and harder.
It is almost impossible to train a dog not to do something like jumping up to greet but it is possible to train a different response like "sit" for a greeting. Trying to think like a dog is probably the hardest part of dog training.

There are days and then there are days....

Yesterday I had a new client start at daycare. His name is Austin and he is a Shiba Inu. A very cute 9 month old. However he is not crate trained and according to his co owner Amy only knows sit.

Well one thing Austin knows is how to bolt out of the gate and bolt he did early on his first day. Now the other dogs know that I am the treat lady and that all the fun happens when you head down the bulkhead and into the basement, but Austin thought there might be more fun elsewhere. So off he went and believing that he could walk on water.... he started right across the fish pond. Well guess what he couldn't walk on water nor could he swim. Luckily for Austin there was a net on the fish pond which keeps the Night Herons from eating my very expensive Koi. It also kept Austin only partly submerged. I wish I had my camera with me because the look on his face was priceless!! I swear to god if he could have spoken at that moment it would have been what the ----! Any way one wet puppy was lifted out of the pond and deposited downstairs wet but otherwise apparently not phased by the unexpected swim.

A few minutes later Bailey walked over to the full 2gallon bucket put her paw into it and tipped it over all over the floor. Now I could have been totally pissed off but thought to myself what the hell, I had bought a bucket with 2 hooks to secure the bucket from potential disaster but did I do that? No and to Bailey it was a fun game... to watch the water spill out all over the floor. So I grabbed a bath towel to wipe up the spill and despite Margaux's help I started to mop up the water only to look over and watch Bailey look at me, squat and pee right on the floor!!! The quart of water that she couldn't spill on the floor. Thank god she isn't a parrot because she would have gone home spouting the words "why you little S--t! laughing while she said this. After all how many times did I clean up pee in the fitting rooms at macy's and they were people who knew better.

Noodle and Kyah

If you don't think dogs can problem solve then you should have been watching Kyah and Noodle today.
Noodle likes to lie down in the agility tunnel and chew on her toys. I think she feels as though she's in a little cave and therefore safe. Since the tunnel is collapsed on one end the enemy can only approach from the front.
Now Kyah knows that a frontal attack is not the best position to be in. So today she chose a spot on the tunnel and jumped right on top of it! When she didn't land on Noodle she kept  jumping on the tunnel until she forced Noodle out of the tunnel! And then the stuffed toy was fair game. It was the funniest thing to watch.

Waiting

Many people will tell you that dogs have no sense of time but I think this is completely wrong. For thousands of years dogs have has 2 jobs, one is protecting their property whether it's a bone or a yard and the other is waiting. After all who is waiting for you when you come home? Who is waiting for you when you get up in the morning? And who is waiting for you by their food bowls?
Now I have noticed lately that the dogs at day care start the waiting process when it comes close to the time their owners will arrive to pick them up. Despite playing with a pack of dogs the dog who knows it is close to pick up time starts to listen for sounds. They also go to the door and check to see if anyone is there and when the owner is late and I'm talking about 10 minutes they are at the door. I find this totally amazing that even the young puppies without the aid of a wrist watch know when their owners should be there.

"Noodle" waiting to go home.

Our newest member..."Noodle"

Noodle is our newest member at Sit Stay & Play. She spent the first 4 months of her life on the streets of Dominica. She made her way to the United States in a round a bout way. She was adopted by a volunteer and brought to this country but when things didn't work out with the 2 goldens living in the house along came her new owners. They opened their house and their hearts to this pretty young thing.
Noodle is a little shy and worries a lot about food which is understandable considering she never knew where her meals were coming from for the first few months of her life. However she is very gentle when taking treats. Like most puppies Noodle will be learning to sit instead of jumping on people when she meets them and she needs to learn that biting peoples hands is not acceptable to humans even though its okay in the dog world. She has already learned many things and is very smart so she should learn new things very quickly because she is eager to please.

An ad I don't endorse...

There is an ad for Mixed breed puppies on my blog...I do not suggest you click on that link. Puppies should only be purchased by reputable breeders or adopted from shelters but never purchased on the internet.
When you visit a breeder ask to see the mother and or the father. This will be a sure sign that the puppies you are looking at did not come from a broker or a puppy mill.
You are buying a member of your family, not a piece of furniture. This puppy should never be considered as disposable. But if circumstances where to arise where you couldn't keep that dog reputable breeders will gladly take back a dog they bred.
As a breeder, when I place a puppy I give a way a little piece of my heart and I expect the new owners to cherish this animal.
Not something you would expect from someone on the internet!

"Just a dog"

The author is unknown but I felt these words should be passed along in a time when dogs are abandoned, used for target practice and treated so inhumanely. 


From time to time, people tell me, “lighten up, it’s just a dog”, or, “that’s a lot of money for just a dog”. They don’t understand the distance traveled, the time spent, or the costs involved for “just a dog”. Some of my proudest moments have come about with “just a dog”. Many hours have passed and my only company was “just a dog”, but I did not once feel slighted. Some of my saddest moments have been brought about by “just a dog” and in those days of darkness, the gentle touch of “just a dog” gave me comfort and reason to overcome the day. If you, too, think it’s “just a dog”, then you will probably understand phases like “just a friend”, “just a sunrise”, or “just a promise”. “Just a dog” brings into my life the very essence of friendship, trust, and pure unbridled joy. “Just a dog” brings out the compassion and patience that makes me a better person. Because of “just a dog” I will rise early, take long walks and look longingly to the future. So for me and folks like me, it’s not “just a dog” but an embodiment of all the hopes and dreams of the future, the fond memories of the past, and the pure joy of the moment. “Just a dog” brings out what’s good in me and diverts my thoughts away from myself and the worries of the day. I hope that someday they can understand that it’s not “just a dog” but the thing that gives me humanity and keeps me from being “just a human.” So the next time you hear the phrase “just a dog”, just smile, because they “just don’t understand”.”

News

So I thought I would update everyone on what happened last weekend. We had 4 days of dog shows. The weather on the cape for the first 3 days  was beautiful, the only problem was I forgot my sunscreen and got quite a burn on my lips!!!! However Alex's win was well worth it. He was the Winners Dog and Best of Winners and earned 4 more points towards his championship. He mow only needs 3 points and he's only 14 months old.
Tipper waited until Sunday when it it cold and windy to finish her championship. She also earned 4 points. After months of Tipper being kept on a short leash while she recovered from her pulled muscle she was able to run again. It was fun to see all my dog friends from as far away as Maryland. So we had a great weekend with great food, friends and fun.

How much Should You Pay for A Dog Toy?

Millions and millions of dollars are spent every year on dog toys, many of them not lasting more than a few hours once they get into the paws of our dogs.
The pet stores are filled with toys that capture our imagination but not necessarily our dogs.
How many of us remember seeing a child play with pots, pans, wooden spoons and tupperware? Well dogs are very similar. One of their favorite toys are empty plastic drink bottles. The cackling noise when a dog chomps on the bottle and the ability to experience the bottle with their mouths is pure enjoyment. Some smart entrepreneur designed a soft plush toy that can have a plastic water bottle inserted inside the skin. Sounded like a great idea but the dog really prefers the feel of the plastic in their mouth so, they tear the skin right off ruining the $12 toy!

The reality is a dog likes nothing better than a stick or even a clump of weed. Just like kids there is nothing better than a found treasure to a dogs way of thinking. Except maybe for a tennis ball!

Bright Orange Cheese Balls

Like anything else there is a wealth of knowledge out there for training your dog. I recently read "When Pigs Fly"In this book Jane uses the dogs natural behaviors to train a dog. I was intrigued by the "Cheese Ball Recall' so I am off to the grocery store in search of the giant barrel of cheese balls.

Margaux is going to be my guinea pig. She comes when she gets around to it where as her litter mate comes immediately.

The exercise seems pretty straight forward throw a bright orange cheese ball so it's easy to see and hopefully Margaux will run to it. As she does I run away from her, you need to keep watching the dog because as soon as she looks back in your direction you click and when she gets to you you treat. Seems pretty simple! You just keep repeating the exercise. Margaux should begin to think she is choosing to come. I'll let you know  next week how we make out. So far the basic exercises have worked, especially "charging" the clicker. I highly recommend the book "When Pigs Fly" by Jane Killion.

Nature & Nurture

I recently saw a movie on face book about a lab mix female in a shelter who had lost her puppies and adopted and raised a litter of kittens. It was pretty amazing to see the natural instinct despite human intervention take over.
While watching the interaction of a group of my dogs &Sit Stay & Play, I found the subtle behaviors of the dogs very intriguing. There are 4 bitches in this group, 2 lab puppies Bailey & Margaux, litter mates about 18 weeks old, a 16 week old fox terrier mix named Kyah and a lab chow 2 1/2 year old named Emma. Emma and & Kyah live together.
Bailey, Margaux and Kyah are coming into the age where they all want to be the alpha dog. Through their puppy play they make attempts to enforce their dominance over each other. While they all play with Emma they never push the envelope but when Bailey & Margaux get carried away with their play, Emma trots over to them and just stands there, and like magic they stop their escalating play.
When Kyah tries to enforce her dominance over the labs, Emma immediately grabs Kyah by the skin and tells her in no uncertain terms there is 1 boss in this group and I am it.
Being a rescue I'm not sure if Emma ever had a litter of puppies but to see her natural instincts at work is quite amazing. Firm and gentle with some very pesty puppies. "Good Job" Emma.

Karacters are Welcome....

And Kyah is definitely a character. Kyah who is a sister to Emma is also adopted. When dealing with dogs it's always a plus if you know what breed or what breeds might be behind the dog because genetics always play a role in behavior. Searching the AKC website it looks to me as though Kyah was Toy Fox Terrier and???? not sure what else.
She is a very funny dog, when she plays with Emma she eventually submits and allows Emma to drag her around, but when she is out with the Lab puppies, Kyah is the BOSS no ifs, ands or buts. The labs who are probably 3 times Kyah's size roll over like little bowls of jelly.
Now keep in mind that Kyah being part terrier has more energy than the energizer bunny and she can't seem to understand why the Labs don't. They chase her around in there lumbering gait for about 10 minutes and then they are falling into there holes for a rest. They can't even come close to catching Kyah. I get exhausted just watching her run and jumps with the little springs attached to her feet and sprint around corners all the while staying ahead of the other dogs. She's kind of like that little hyperactive kids who is always pushing he other kids for more action! Totally entertaining and I can count on Kyah to make sure everyone has had their exercise for the day. She is a pretty little thing with dark round eyes, nice feet a long ringlet tail and ears that sometimes stand straight up like a bat and sometimes flop right over. Another lucky dog saved by a family that had lots of love to give her and a very patient Emma who is teaching her how to be a good dog.

Emma and Kyah

Emma and Kyah visit 2 days a week.Yesterday Emma arrived with a distinctive odor, turns out last Wednesday evening she had encountered a skunk.As long as she stays dry and you don't pet her too much you can barely smell her. Emma is part lab and part chow. From what I can see the only chow gene she got was a black tongue! From her labrador side she inherited an a amazing ability to retrieve. She never gets tired of chasing the ball, bringing it back and dropping it right into your hand.

Emma's owner told me that Emma loves the water if it's a pond or a river but will not go near the kiddie pool. Today for the first time she actually got her muzzle into the pool and retrieved, yup you got it , the ball.
Emma has a tough job at Sit Stay and Play because she is the oldest dog. Running around with 4 puppies she had to give a lot of correction to the puppies when they get wild. It is almost as if her maternal instincts kick in. I see her  interactions with the puppies that remind me of the way my bitches use to react to their young. As a pure bred breeder, we spend hours pouring over pedigrees to make sure that we have correct shoulders and good rears and level toplines and along comes Emma a beautiful square balanced dog with a rear most breeders would die for! Go figure....

How Do You Spell Fun?

Well apparently w - a - t - e - r + m - u - d if you are a Labrador. The aftermath of Irene and the wettest August on record has left the bottom of the yard with a crystal clear stream and it didn't take Bailey and Margaux the 2 lab puppies long to find that spot. Ninety five percent of the yard was dry but like bees to honey the labs were off and running.

And running and sliding and tackling each other in what was once a crystal clear stream. In a matter of minutes they turned the area into a giant mud bath, and what fun they had. When they grew tired of the mud pit they set their sights on the water bucket.  When it came time for their nap I had a dilemma, bathe them and put them in their crates wet or just put them in muddy and wash the beds. I chose to wash the beds By the time I got them into their crates I had as much mud on me as they did. It didn't bother them in the least that they were caked in mud. I guess they thought it would be good for their complexions! When it comes to labs no water is off limits, they even attacked the water dish inside, spilling it 3 times and then looking at me when there was no water in the dish for a drink.

Elsie the Pekinese

I have never been a fan of toy dogs. There was always a sigh when we had to sit throught he toy group before watching all the other groups at the dog show. Perhaps I have felt a bias because of the hollywood crowd who flaunt their toy dogs as if they were accessories. And then I met "Elsie" she is a little 2 and 1/2 year old peke. What a charmer, she has a haircut that makes her look like a little teddy bear. She cruises around with the bigger dogs showing absolutely no fear! She plays with a tiny tennis ball batting it around the room and carrying it around in her mouth. She can almost roll over but needs a little help because she is pretty round. The cutest thing about Elsie is when she is out in the yard sniffing the ground. Because her face is so flat it looks like her face is completely smooched into the ground but around she goes checking out all the great smells. What I like about this little girl is how she lifts her leg when she pees....letting everyone around her know that she is the alpha bitch! Go Elsie

Our First Guest...Zaira

Our first guest at Sit Stay & Play was a very sweet 2 year old sheperd cattle dog mix named Zaira. She was a very lucky dog because she was sent up to MA and arrived in a no kill shelter where she was adopted to her forever home. Zaira was very well trained and she loved her tennis ball. I thought my arm was going to fall out of the socket because she never grew tired of me tossing the tennis ball. She spent 2 weeks with us and thoroughly enjoyed spending the day with Finnegan on the first landing of the stairs where she had a birds eye view of everything going on around her. She has a beautiful expression and there was a mahogany tint to the coat along her back even though she looked black.
She seemed to enjoy her time at Sit Stay & Play as much as we enjoyed having her!

Welcome

Sitting through the "Hurricane" Irene which actually was a tropical storm by the time it hit the area gave me time to set up a blog to go with my facebook page, my twitter account and my website.
I hope to post most days so anyone can follow the daily adventures of the dogs who come and spend their days with me.
So feel free to follow along.