Today's lesson was one for me (again). A headache and bad nights sleep do not make for a good morning's training. Today did not go so well. The only plus side is Custer is doing better in the car, I think as we are now returning from our walk when the schools are starting up the amount of people passing by when the car is stuck in the traffic is now having a desensitive affect. On day one, instead of shouting when he was 'about' to freak out at the sight of a passing dog, I quietly said 'no Cus' and passed him a treat. Day Two he lay down when he saw the same dog.
The rest of the time was not good, he had no focus and getting the muzzle on was a battle and a half, then he got it off twice - I was struggling with the leads and a poo bag, and short on patience which was of course doing neither of us any favours. Having watched an excellent video on muzzle training yesterday I began that way of training when I pulled up outside the house, and will practice all weekend so he gets to like the idea better. It is a learning curve for us both.
For today's rant I must mention the level of driving at school time. Here is a tip for you drivers, why dont you try setting off in good time for School? Instead of yelling abuse at anyone who happens 'in your opinion' to be in your way? To the man in the large posh car who pulled out infront of me, then hurled abuse at me, were you surprised when you got it back? not my finest moment I know, but I will not be bullied by some bad tempered 'twit' who cannot set off on time for school and clearly needs to re-take his test to learn about right of way on the roads. Then we wonder why the next generation turn out the way they do, when this is what they are taught en route to the school yard? Also explains why dogs react in the same way maybe? Perhaps we all need a lesson in patience? I should have smiled at the man really and not let him provoke me so, something else I need to work on.......
I was thinking earlier today, yesterday's blog post may have implied we did 'nothing' with Custer's training. This was not quite the case. Although I did sort of give up on his ever being any different we did not give up trying altogether.
In September last year my husband was out of work. He used this time to take Custer out every day on the beach with several balls and teach him to 'focus' on playing ball and staying with him. This is a vast improvement on what we had. It took 3 months of repeating each day but now Custer does love to play ball and is pretty well focused on us when we do this.
The down side of course is we do NOT live in an ideal world and many other dog walkers think all dogs should socialise with each other, they have no idea that not ALL dogs wish too (or indeed owners). Custer will now not go out his way to any other dog or person, however if the other owner (despite our being in the middle of nowhere in our own space, minding our OWN BUSINESS) insists on allowing their dog to run up to him it often will not end well, involves our having to put our dogs back on the lead and have our shoulder blades renched out of our arm until the owner 'might' decide to call their dog away. When I am out on my own now I muzzle Custer as soon as I see another dog, I know he wont bite the other dog but the noise he makes and the state he gets himself into by my using the muzzle I have more confidence and sometimes it just 'might' keep the other owner away. Again, I am out at 8am in the middle of nowhere trying hard to train my reactive dog in peace, but again the other dog walker will insist that my dog MUST socialise with theirs? I often wonder if they themselves are the same with other people?
I was in the park last week with Rhubarb (my new rescue Staffie) and Bailey (the retriever above). I had them both on leads as I had only had Rhubarb a week and not too sure how she would react with other dogs, and Bailey as he can be a bit 'over amorous' if allowed to be (which I do not let him). At least four times I avoided a man with two french bulldogs off lead by turning direction, as I know these dogs just charge at others into their faces - I watched as a man entered the park with the largest husky I had ever seen and a little Staffie, the bulldogs hurtled straight up to the other dogs at full tilt, how on earth the poor man stayed stood up I dont know as he dogs reacted in fear and defence at two rude lunatics running up to their faces! The owner of the bulldogs was very cross with the man with the dogs on leads? as he could see no wrong in his own dogs actions? Again I am left wondering what he thinks I would do if he rushed up to my face and forced himself on me, or should that be okay too? why should it be for dogs on leads?
Does seem we are the minority with this opinion though.
I can but dream of an ideal world were other dog walkers might leave me in peace. Meanwhile I keep walking early, and I have just invested in a bright yellow vest from 'yellowdog.co.uk' which says 'Rescue Dog, please give space' on both sides, wonder if it will work any better?
Wow, can you believe a whole year nearly since I last posted! Yes he is still here, and no he is not any better. But we do now have a new addition in the form of a little rescue Staffie girl now called Rhubarb.
There are people (I Know) who think this was a very bad idea, but I like to think of someone I once knew with a dog far worse than Custer who adopted a new puppy.. I thought this was the most stupid thing ever, but it worked very well, the dog in question is now fine and no longer attacks anything, when he used to be the scurge of our walk. So, it will work or it wont but so far its going very well.
One of the reasons for lack of blog posts was I just gave up, I could not help Custer's behavoir and nobody wanted to help us try. Dont get me wrong, in the house he is a dream - its just the 'walkies' thing.
Last week, whilst still reading up on Staffie info I registered with a facebook group 'Reactive Dogs' this could well be one of the best things I did, they recommended some reading and I ordered some book, I have only read up to chapter 2 and took Custer out today with a different frame of mind, so far so good. yes it would be really good to have some help........but this is not going to happen, so like many things in life we are on our own so time to try again. This is easier too as Custer is a different dog at home, he is so chilled and well behaved I have 'even' left him out of crate a few times with no problems (mind you, I did take my camera from the room). Today I was back to teaching 'watch me' which he did perfectly.
One thing I have learnt from this, is you need to be in a 'good frame of mind' yourself to be able to do it, if you are tired forget it. I had a good nights rest for once last night, so dog training was a whole lot easier. Just as well as after 'reactive dog training' with Custer it was time for the first recall lesson with Rhubarb.
Not too difficult as she is in love with treats!
Lets hope I do better with both training and blogging now - time to take Rhubarb for a wizz round the block, I have found keeping her tired keeps more peace in the household. After two weeks things are now calming down a bit. Wasnt the boys, it was our new little girl who was so unsettled they were both great. Here is Custer now learning to love Dolly's too.
Its quite a while since I took the camera out on a dog walk, but we only had Custer and Jaja today and there was two of us so I gave it a go. Here he is doing a 'very' rare recall, but then there wasn't anyone else about so he might as well. I would like to say there was some improvement 3 (or is it 4) weeks into the CSJ calm herbs but I really do not think there is, I cannot recall ANY evidence of calm behavoir at all. I even tried some A.Vogel flower essence on advice of a friend, they dont work either. We have made another friend on our morning walk though, another rare soul who is brave enough to walk with us, and her dog a Springer Spaniel called Alfie, who takes no notice of Custer at all so is a nice calming influence.
Back to today... here is another photo of Custer 'attempting' a fairly 'bright' look, this does not happen so often. It was a good walk in all fairness, we went to the beach and it was just full of folk, so we put the dogs back in the car and went elsewhere for a quiet walk. We only saw two lots of people, one with small dogs that Custer is fine with, and the other we managed to hold his attention with the ball so all was well. Would have been a good walk all round accept at the end when he point blankly refused to come back, not for another ball, chicken, cheese, ham.......NOTHING, so we were out quite sometime. "Daddy" is much braver than I you see, I do not let him off lead now without him being on a long line I can stamp on! so I do not have the problem, and he is back on lead as soon as I am near others.
Jaja had a great time too, this is him having abandoned the ball he got first and Custer now trying to find it. Hard to believe our Lurcher Puppy is to be 11 this year, nobody tells him that though, he can run around with Custer (who is 2 at the end of February) with great ease.
Wonder if Custer will show any signs of calmer behavoir when he gets to 2? I have a bad feeling it is more likely to be 4 year old though......
Oh dear, I see it has been some time since my last update. Well, he is still here 'just' though I must say life is still not easy with Custer. My last post was the important day of taking down the crate, this lasted for 2 weeks, when he almost ate my camera that was the last straw, the crate was put straight back up again and Custer is put in it on EVERY occasion we go out, he is never left long - infact his longest stint EVER was on Christmas day, but as he had a long walk and play on the beach then a few hours with his toys this was not such a problem.
It seemed Custer had never done Christmas before, he had no idea - we had to teach him the fun of wrapping paper, so he now knows how to catch a paper ball and rip it to bits, Jaja did help to teach him this one.
He got two presents from his nana, this giggle ball - which he is still playing with a whole 3 days later..
..and a treat ball, one that you need some 'brains' for in order to get the treats out - Jaja loved this ball and played with it for hours, he could get the plug out then roll the ball around and get out the treats..
Custer however, could not work it out at all - last night said treat ball met its end, Custer finally got the plug out, but then couldnt get the treats out so totally destroyed the ball till he did, there is now nothing left of it.
In a desperate attempt to try calm him down a bit I have started him on CSJ 'calm down' herbs, no joy yet but they do say it takes 2 - 3 weeks to help, I have another 4 days yet before we are at week 2, really need something to help, nobody can believe he is not eating a stack of additives a day he is so loopy, and yes I do take him to the beach 'early' EVERY day for a walk and some training, but he still turns into tasmanian devil if the mood takes.
To finish, here is a picture of my Aunts rescue dog I covered in wrapping paper on the day, sorry Sophie - she is a lovely dog, gets on with all people and other dogs... almost perfect.
Whoops, after such good intentions to keep up with this blog, life went and got in the way I'm afraid...
Anyway, time for a Custer update!!! He is still here..........
Above is Custer on his new bed, very nice double duvet with paisley cover from charity shop. This was to replace his CRATE!! Yes, we got brave and finally after nearly six months we took it down, it was big enough to take over most of the room and we had hoped it would not be for quite so long. So far (5 days in) its going okay. Custer does have a habit of stealing his Daddy's shoes to sleep with whilst I am out with Jaja, but he isnt chewing them, and (so far) has not stolen anything else. When I leave him with Jaja (again, so far) he does nothing.
The walking thing is still a bit up and down. Each 'down' has a bad effect on my confidence though so does tend to set us back somewhat, which is not good for either of us. Our 'downs' are his reaction to submissive dogs, he will dominate and is rather noisy about it.. now I know it is NOT aggression, Custer is NOT an aggressive dog - this was proved when we were set on by a stray and I had Custer behind me and submitting. Problem is of course the other owner does not know this, and despite the fact I am never so far away, and do step in immediatly I still get 'what for' over it.
We have made some progress this week though, Custer has a new friend - a flatcoated retriever called 'Sam' I hope to get some pics one day to show you. Sam told Custer off twice for his dominant behavoir and now all is well, they get on great - also after initial fear Custer is now good with Sam's owner too.
Today I had a meeting with a dog walker I have known a few years on passing, she is rather experienced and despite having heard about Custer until today we had not met with her dog 'Scout' - this was an interesting meeting as she had already told me not to worry as Scout could handle unruly dogs and there would be no problem, Custer immediatly went to dominate Scout who totally ignored him and calmly removed himself, this was quite fascinating for us to watch. Apparently if the dog in question (being Custer) is not aggressive Scout will try reassure him, they too ended up playing well with Scout only 'telling him' about playing too rough.
So, at nearly 6 months in - there is such 'slow' progress going on - it really is not easy by any means, BUT there are days when it goes well, before hand there was not any days that went well.
Oh I forgot, I have now got Custer to enjoy playing ball - he just went through the motions before, now he loves it, I can even get him to ignore 'some' dogs when we play, often he does not bother with smaller dogs at all.
We still do evening walks for them both, his lead walking for Daddy is fantastic - long way from that first day, and he walks on just a collar and lead for him, I still have a double sided harness as due to the damage he caused to my right arm I cannot hold him in that now.
I try to walk away from as many dogs as I can and if I do not know the dog I will change direction, or walk in a lot of mud to avoid any trouble - just work with the dogs I know - rightly or wrongly this works for me, but if I dog runs to us - I will let go, if its a confident dog with a dog savvy owner all is well.
I think thats all for this time's update - better not make anymore promises about my next one.
We have an excuse for our absence this time, we have all been on our holiday's to Devon. Might have been a bit on the ambitious side for us really with a new rescue dog, he did find the whole experience a bit much. Though he enjoyed the 'playing in the sea' parts. I booked the holiday just after loosing our beloved Alfie, knowing it was likely we would have another dog by now I booked for 2 dogs, spent ages on line finding the right place, with a large enclosed garden. So, if the dogs were on leads the rest of the time at least they could play at the cottage. So... I was rather disappointed to arrive and find the fence to be totally inadequate at keeping 'ANY' dog inside and no gate on the property toward the car park and road! This meant the dogs to be on leads at all times in the garden, not quite what I had wanted, and was very restricting.
such a shame, as the view was stunning, there was a very large field outside the garden too that lead to a main road, so we had to be very careful. We seemed to spend most of our days searching for a dog friendly beach, the cottage was so remote there was no mobile or internet connection either.
Custer spent so much time on the lead he has got a bit better on it now, he has seemed to have improved with people - he did see a lot of them though in all those coastal villages. Though, in the back of Daddy's large car he managed to eat 4 leads - as he was not fond of being so far away from us. In my car he is much closer.
Custer even made a friend at Dawlish Warren beach, this was a nice one.. a bit of a walk to get to the dogs allowed bit, but there he met another rescue dog to play with..
The weather was challenging too, we had an awful lot of rain!! We visited Torquay one day, the weather was dreadful and of course the tourist part was not for dogs, so we found a little walk to take them on leads, went round a corner and it stopped.... whoops!!! almost lost Custer....
At least it had finally stopped raining though, was one of the worst days for the weather. Jaja was not impressed either to be on lead so much..
So good you can see him twice?? no idea why that happened.
There are more Custer holiday pics, so will do another post to bore you with them. I am now back to 'clicker' training on our beach each day, also challenging... its all quiet today as Custer ran off to play with a Greyhound - that wore him out.
