So as we take these journeys with our dogs, through our lives together, are you taking mental notes for when you get your next one? I keep thinking about getting my new dogs adjusted to water much sooner for baths, pool play and the lake. I know all dogs don't like water, but I'd like to introduce them to it much earlier than I did with the puppies just to get them used to the idea.
I'd also of course like to teach them to leash walk better at an earlier age. For those that have followed for a while, know how I have grapple with leash walking ever since having Brut and still do. It is another one of those, if I knew now what I did then scenarios that would make life just a little bit easier for the time around.
So what would you like to do different with your next dog?
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Brut Quote
10 comments:
Hmmm not showing that question to my human as then we'd be here all day. Have a great Friday.
Best wishes Molly
More socialization. We live in the country and we prefer spending our time with our animals, as opposed to people. Consequently, our dogs are not as well socialized as they really should be. It's something we're working on and I'd definitely do much more of it earlier on the next time.
I'd insist on manners from the get go! This is a bone of contention in our house. A certain black puppy can exercise manners when a certain husband is not home, or when he's out in public with other people, but when that certain husband and puppy are close to me, that puppy goes crazy and that husband does not make him behave. *ahem*
Because it rains so much here in the winter and spring, I took Sage to an indoor dog park daily when she was a puppy. She developed some fears that can't be undone and now won't go to certain dog parks (including the indoor one). Others are perfectly fine...go figure. So, I think I'd pay more attention to the cues the dog gives when it's uncomfortable in certain situations.
I would definitely get my dogs use to the water earlier!
Portia got the leash skills and riding in a car thing down pat pretty early in life. However, she is REALLY unsocialized. She doesn't like for other dogs to be around her, she seems annoyed by it. And she isn't good with strangers a bit, she especially isn't fond of children, so that's often a problem when we're at Petsmart or any park.
I would start with the clicker training from the beginning, and I'd make sure to find other dogs to socialize with. My BIG mistake with Elka is that she doesn't know other dogs, so she doesn't really know what she's supposed to be doing.
Well, on the other paw, what would I like to do different with my next human?
Well, to start with, I think it is important that all humans walk to order - so that would be "walk to the butchers," or "walk to that muddy puddle" or "stand still while I run around meaninglessly for the next twenty minutes."
It is so difficult to get a human to walk properly sometimes!
So Hurley was our "we learned from the other two, we're going to do it right this time" puppy. Yeah. So what have I learned from so-called doing it right with him? Well, we didn't give him alone time in the first year of his life so now we deal with some mild separation anxiety (if you call busting through screens mild). And I trained too much in one environment and so he's super well-behaved in one or two environments but struggles to listen to us in new places. So I would make sure those first few months of training are in as many different locations as possible and would practice alone time.
And when I accomplish these goals with a new pup, guess what? There will likely be something else I screwed up that I learn for the next one. That's the good and the bad about dogs - we keep learning from our experiences with them but we never get it 100% right. Or at least I haven't. Yet.
Every dog I get I try to incorporate what I learned from the last one. But then each dog is so different from the last one that I just find a million more things I need to learn. :)
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