Where’s my Harry Winston diamond collar?
We watched Beverly Hills Chihuahua or something last night and I asked Mother why I don’t have a Harry Winston diamond collar and don’t have my own pool and don’t get to go to a doggy spa. She sort of scoffed and said “When I win the lottery hon until then you make do your Swarovski crystal one”. Pfft!
Mother got this amazing treat making machine! She puts all sorts of thinly sliced meats and liver and tendons in it and they come out dried like chips or jerky! She kept referring to it as a dehydrator. I call it God. Mother went to the wet market (Tekka Market actually) to get me beef liver and beef tendons and a rack of lamb ribs. She haaaaates wet markets and told me she held her breath and tip toed around the entire time! She kept saying “see what Mummy does for you!!” as she snipped up the tendons (oh she hates handling raw meat too. *snigger*). She made liver treats and tendon chewies (just like my favourite ones which she used to buy from the petstores!). She says home made treats are healthier and wants to make some for friends! She’s even made some dried apple slices for herself. I didn’t like those. Ick. For dinner, I was given 2 raw ribs for dinner. LOVED them. I’m happy to hear that Mother will be feeding me raw on weekends! She’s sold on the idea that chewing the bones will keep my teeth cleaned, and she feels this way I’ll get the best of both worlds – home cooked AND raw! I like raw. I feel like the wolf in me emerges. Roowrrrr! Or whatever sounds wolves make.
Sorry I hadn’t been updating my blog much last week. I stepped on a wriggling dying bee and got stung on my paw! Mother kept slapping her forehead saying that only I can get stung on my PAW of all places. She pulled the stinger out for me (she used a tweezer then later realized she shouldn’t have because she could have forced more venom in!!) then applied a paste of baking soda and water to it to neutralize the venom. To relieve the pain she tried to dip my paw in a cup of icy water but soon gave up and let me paw the ice from my bowl instead. Fun! It was like a game! Thankfully my paw didn’t swell up and I had no allergic reaction to the sting (no vomiting, difficulty in breathing, epilepsy, etc). Phew! That’s a picture of the stinger and some of the bee’s butt flesh. It wasn’t terribly big, more like a tiny splinter but STILL!
I’m getting a new trainer! Mother is sick and tired of being pressured at every single training class to
put a prong collar on me. She will happily forfeit the $800+ she has spent for my classes if she never has to be told to “let the collar do the talking” ever again. I overheard her conversation with Grandpa where she went “If that’s the case, then I might as well just buy the collar and fire the trainer! Who needs a trainer when all you do it let the collar do its work?? That’s not training! What a load of bullcrap. I don’t need to be told at every single lesson that if I put a prong collar on Romeo he will be more attentive. I already said NO. Which part of that doesn’t he understand?! Stupid fool. Don’t come and tell me you’ve trained hundreds of dogs with a prong collar. For every 100 he’s trained this way, another 100 have been trained using a choke chain. Should I use that too!? And another 100 trained using purely positive methods! If he is such a good trainer then bloody find an alternative solution for me! I should have known. I did see an electric collar on one of his dogs. Poor Jack would yelp and cry out everytime he barked and got zap. He really ought to put in writing that ALL STUDENTS ARE TO USE PRONG COLLARS because really, we’re NOT given a choice at all. If I had known I wouldn’t have signed up. I’m surprised no one other than myself has questioned the need for such collars on their dog. Surely someone must have thought “there has to be a better way”?!?” Mother was super pissed off on Sunday and vowed never to go back to him again. She’s currently looking for another trainer.
Have a pawesome Christmas!
Raw meat! I love it too! Mummy is feeding me BARF now. And I will finish it every time! And my poo is dry plus it does not smell! Mummy and Daddy loves what the BARF is doing to me. In the past, every time when they come home from work, the house smells because of my poo. Now it doesn’t!
And good to know you are fine after the stinging incident. Bees are such horrible insects. Whenever I chase any insects, my mummy will scream and carry me away to the room and close the door. I don’t like chewing on insects but she thinks I will. Oh well. You know how mummies are like.
Yeah! We are training under the same trainer! You know what I like about Angela? She will feed me lots of treats before training me. And her bag smells of food. I like to put my head into her bag but I always get pulled out of it by Mummy and Daddy! Let me know how is the lesson! You will be smitten by Angela (treatsssss).
And a Merry Merry Christmas to you and your mummy!
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Um… what’s your major malfunction when it comes to prong collars? They’re safer and more humane than either choke chains or head halters… Don’t get me wrong, train how you’d like, but it seems like you don’t really understand the tool?
I’ll give you that the trainer sounds like a moron, though.
Also, just so you know, don’t assume that a electronic collar would make a dog bark, simply because a no-bark collar did so. Modern ecollars are incredibly adjustable and should be set on the lowest level at which the dog shows a response (like an ear twitch, head shake, etc). They are NOT used just to zap the dog whenever it’s not behaving, either.
I don’t like them. Mother doesn’t like them. We don’t like choke chains or electronic collars either. Other people can use them if they like, but we won’t. Mother says there’s no reason to use such tools if positive training works. Problem is people just go straight to using them without first seeing if all the dog needs is a little positive encouragement. Mother has seen the other dogs freeze and display all sorts of stress signals when those collars are used. She’s seen how unresponsive the dogs get. We understand the tool. We know how it works. We’ve seen it in action. We’ve seen the results. We also know it’s far safer than a choke chain. Training for us however isn’t just the end goal of a well behaved dog. For us it’s the journey. Granted ours can be and probably has been more tedious than quick jerks of the wrist but we’ve done just fine and we’re happier and closer for choosing pure positive methods. Mother wished we were given the CHOICE to continue with positive training without use of funky tools.
So far, Mother says I’ve been doing beautifully with positive training. It’s gotten to a point where I learn things is a minute and I am even able to relate what Mother is doing with her hands, with my paws – she scratches the floor with her finger, I’ll dig at it with my paw. Mother isn’t interested in only making sure I execute every single command she gives. She wants to develop a thinking dog. She wants me to use my brain and not just be conditioned to respond to cues. She wants me to want to do things out of my own accord.
Mother hopes people will give positive training a go FIRST before jumping the gun and using tools which may be completely unnecessary (or which may not? Who knows, but at least you’ve tried it and can say, hey, it just doesn’t work). Don’t take the “easy” way out. So many sensitive dogs shut down from harsher training and then piss off the owners even more.
What’s worse is that not everyone who uses the collars know how to. They’re told by unqualified people that it works to solve X problem or they read it somewhere, then they go to to pet store and buy the tool and use it improperly on their dogs. One of my dog run friends has an electronic collar strapped to its neck at the dog run. You can see where the fur and skin is fried from the box. Not everyone uses it at the lowest setting. And most of such people don’t use it for training, just to correct bad behaviour. Not enough education all around.
You and Mother have done the leg work, the research and the studying up on training methods and how they work and why they work and how dogs learn, etc. From there you two pick what ways best for your charges. Not everyone does that sadly.
Incidentally, we solved the problem of getting me more attentive simply by handfeeding and requesting eye contact before each bite. Simple and very effective. Within a week of that, I was way more attentive to Mother than some of the other dogs on prongs. Barking in class? All due to stress – no scruffing or jerking of the leash necessary. Just a good run in the morning at the dog run and lots of socialisation before class. Mother had to think about my problems and figure out what would work and reschedule things and spend more time working on me, but it worked! And I’m happy, don’t get hurt or shut down or get totally stressed out.