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Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Who invited her?
My parents are dog sitting for a friend, and I wasn't too worried about merging my dogs and their canine houseguest over the Thanksgiving weekend. I'm a dog trainer, after all. We'll have one introductory scuffle and then we're golden, right?
Not quite.
This dog trainer spent the better part of the holiday weekend training dogs, specifically my own. Zeke and Sumner were less than hospitable to Baci, the visiting standard poodle.
Baci, on the other hand, was a dream dog. I wanted to take her home and claim her poodle-y perfection as a product of my training. She was sweet, clever, affectionate and attentive. Let's admire her for a moment (cue angel choir):
My dogs were fat, unruly outlaws. They were the redneck cousins who crashed an otherwise civil Thanksgiving.
Who? Us??
Zeke is normally good with other dogs. He's pushy, but he does ok. Sumner, on the other hand, is my "project". He was severely undersocialized as a pup (we got him when he was a year old), and I deal with the consequences of his early social vacuum every day. (People, please socialize your new puppies!) I expected to have to manage Sum's freakishness with Baci, but it was actually Zeke who had the major issue.
Zeke hated Baci. Initially, he trembled when she was near, and it wasn't fear. I was completely caught off guard.
On the first day I began to bridge the hatred gap with cheese. I spent a good part of the afternoon doling out cheese any time the dogs were able to just stand in the kitchen together. At first they got cheese for breathing the same air without lunging at each other. Then I made them work a little harder; they were rewarded for being in the same room, standing somewhat close, and able to regard each other without a hard stare, raised lip or any other provocative signal. Baci was awesome, but she wasn't above a bitchy snarl every now and then. Thankfully, it didn't take long before they all crowded around me, almost shoulder to shoulder, trying to act like they liked each other in order to get more cheese.
Behold the power of cheese....it enabled me to take this picture on the second morning:
Check out Sumner...he was "ok" with Baci, and "ok" was about as good as it got. Zeke only cares about food (as evidenced by his waistline), so Baci could have sat on his head for this picture and he wouldn't have cared. Sum wasn't nervous at first, but he was by the time I took this picture.
"She's getting closer!!"
After I took this picture I stepped in and stopped the inevitable from happening (doesn't Sum look like he's about to kick some ass?), I moved in and used my body to create a casual yet effective barrier between Sumner and Baci. I told them "No worries", and we were fine. I once heard that good dog training is all about knowing what comes next, and in this case, what was about to come next was snarkiness.
When I wasn't actively supervising them or doing hands-on training, I used management techniques like baby gates.
By the second afternoon, after a full morning of chicken chasing (tired dogs = good dogs), we had reached an uneasy peace:
Notice that Zeke and Sum are camped out, but Baci is in a more alert resting pose.
There were some additional confrontations over the weekend, but overall we did ok. I actually enjoyed troubleshooting the relationships, and managing the drama.
If you're dealing with dog-dog drama, one of the best things you can do is learn to properly read your dog(s). My parents and husband couldn't see many of the festering canine conflicts until I pointed them out. It's much better to prevent conflict than have to step in and referee a full-blown episode. The better you understand what your dog is trying to say, the more successful you'll be at helping him work through his issues, whatever they might be. The book "Calming Signals" by Turid Rugaas is a wonderful place to start.
We came a looong way over the course of the weekend, but Baci was happy to see Zeke and Sum leave, and they were happy to come home.
Recovery
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The Interloper
Who invited her?
My parents are dog sitting for a friend, and I wasn't too worried about merging my dogs and their canine houseguest over the Thanksgiving weekend. I'm a dog trainer, after all. We'll have one introductory scuffle and then we're golden, right?
Not quite.
This dog trainer spent the better part of the holiday weekend training dogs, specifically my own. Zeke and Sumner were less than hospitable to Baci, the visiting standard poodle.
Baci, on the other hand, was a dream dog. I wanted to take her home and claim her poodle-y perfection as a product of my training. She was sweet, clever, affectionate and attentive. Let's admire her for a moment (cue angel choir):
My dogs were fat, unruly outlaws. They were the redneck cousins who crashed an otherwise civil Thanksgiving.
Who? Us??
Zeke is normally good with other dogs. He's pushy, but he does ok. Sumner, on the other hand, is my "project". He was severely undersocialized as a pup (we got him when he was a year old), and I deal with the consequences of his early social vacuum every day. (People, please socialize your new puppies!) I expected to have to manage Sum's freakishness with Baci, but it was actually Zeke who had the major issue.
Zeke hated Baci. Initially, he trembled when she was near, and it wasn't fear. I was completely caught off guard.
On the first day I began to bridge the hatred gap with cheese. I spent a good part of the afternoon doling out cheese any time the dogs were able to just stand in the kitchen together. At first they got cheese for breathing the same air without lunging at each other. Then I made them work a little harder; they were rewarded for being in the same room, standing somewhat close, and able to regard each other without a hard stare, raised lip or any other provocative signal. Baci was awesome, but she wasn't above a bitchy snarl every now and then. Thankfully, it didn't take long before they all crowded around me, almost shoulder to shoulder, trying to act like they liked each other in order to get more cheese.
Behold the power of cheese....it enabled me to take this picture on the second morning:
Check out Sumner...he was "ok" with Baci, and "ok" was about as good as it got. Zeke only cares about food (as evidenced by his waistline), so Baci could have sat on his head for this picture and he wouldn't have cared. Sum wasn't nervous at first, but he was by the time I took this picture.
"She's getting closer!!"
After I took this picture I stepped in and stopped the inevitable from happening (doesn't Sum look like he's about to kick some ass?), I moved in and used my body to create a casual yet effective barrier between Sumner and Baci. I told them "No worries", and we were fine. I once heard that good dog training is all about knowing what comes next, and in this case, what was about to come next was snarkiness.
When I wasn't actively supervising them or doing hands-on training, I used management techniques like baby gates.
By the second afternoon, after a full morning of chicken chasing (tired dogs = good dogs), we had reached an uneasy peace:
Notice that Zeke and Sum are camped out, but Baci is in a more alert resting pose.
There were some additional confrontations over the weekend, but overall we did ok. I actually enjoyed troubleshooting the relationships, and managing the drama.
If you're dealing with dog-dog drama, one of the best things you can do is learn to properly read your dog(s). My parents and husband couldn't see many of the festering canine conflicts until I pointed them out. It's much better to prevent conflict than have to step in and referee a full-blown episode. The better you understand what your dog is trying to say, the more successful you'll be at helping him work through his issues, whatever they might be. The book "Calming Signals" by Turid Rugaas is a wonderful place to start.
We came a looong way over the course of the weekend, but Baci was happy to see Zeke and Sum leave, and they were happy to come home.
Recovery
dogsindeed at 7:09:00 PM EST Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | digg this
11/29/06 3:01 PM