Puppy SOS - Liturally for the puppies!!!

Puppy SOS is a show on Sky Livingit and I must say that I am utterly shocked by what I have seen on this show!
It is a Canadian show with the 'dog trainer' Brad Pattison and it focuses on training 'bad' puppies. For those of you who have never heard of Brad Pattison then let me shed some light on him for you. He is a cruel, unqualified and totally uneducated trainer who appears to have no knowledge into simple basic things about dogs which every dog owner should know or any idea how to communicate with people properly. Have a look at this,

And that is just the beginning! He has no real qualifications so he has gone out and made up his own, you can now take a BPCTE course and guess what the BP stands for?  Brad Pattison!

Now for his wonderfully terrible show.
He seems to have no knowledge into dogs at all! He has got owners putting half check collars( or a hussle up collar as he calls them) on their poor puppies, even those breeds which have weak necks and breeds prone to breathing problems. He has the owners yank the leash of their dog to get them to 'obey' and he told a little girl to ' pull hard' on the leash attached to a 8 month old chihuahua puppy! I was OUTRAGED!!!
This same puppy was dragged over a log at least twice the size of him about 10 times because he was trying to be 'in control' by not wanting to go over the log. Brad forced him into going over this log by actually pulling him over it by the collar. The dog couldn't physically do it for god sake, it wasn't trying to misbehave.
He also had the owners completely ignore their dogs, as in not to talk to them at all or give them any sort of affection either. That is no way too train a puppy!

In another episode I saw he had a 10 month old bull mastiff puppy on a leash with the leash tied around the waist of a 2 year old child! How is that in any way safe? And guess what if the child go pulled over, who's fault would it have been? The dogs according to him! That's just pure irresponsible and unsafe on his part and the parents.

He gave out to some owners for picking up and talking to their 5 month old pug puppy. The talking was actually praise on the grandmothers part because she was telling the puppy that he was a good boy for coming away from the door and the young boy was the one who picked up the puppy to bring it up the stairs, which I think is reasonable enough. Brad then proceeded to tell the grandmother that it was her fault all of it had happened ( the fact that the puppy was just being a normal puppy ) Apparently its bad to talk to your puppy and play with it. I then proceeded to watch him tell the owners to bring the puppy EVERYWHERE the go when at home, which means using the leash all the time and I saw him scream 'go' at the grandmother because she was reluctant to drag him across the floor. 

He gets people to walk their puppies with the leash around their waist, to jerk them around and basically ignore them. And I don't think that that is any way to walk a dog, let alone a puppy.  And I have seen him run up and down steep hills with 6 month old puppies, about 10 times and then get each of the owners to do it too. Does he not have any idea how much damage that could do to growing bones, particularly in large breed puppies?  Clearly not! He had an 8 month old husky puppy cycle for 30 minutes without stopping with its family. The family clearly had done no research into the breed they wanted because if they had surely they would have come across guidelines for exercise?!?!

He doesn't teach puppies basic commands, like sit or lie down. His way of teaching sit is to pull up on the leash until the puppy gives in to strangulation and sits down. How can you justify that sort of treatment to a poor puppy? He doesn't use food for training because he claims that its 'bribing' the dog and that the dog isn't sitting for you but for the food.
If used properly food is not a bribe but a very valuable training aid which is used very successfully by thousands of QUALIFIED trainers and behaviourists and some which compete at the highest ranks in competitions. A dog is not going to sit for you unless there is some sort of value for the sit behaviour and you cannot achieve that without using rewards, but it does not mean that you have to use them forever. I mean are you going to work for free for somebody who doesn't reward you? Chances are no, well I wouldn't unless it was something I loved and most dogs don't find obedience overly fun. And when faced with the choice between running free or staying with the person who doesn't reward you with anything valuable which do you think is going to win over the dog? 
Brad Pattison's training tool of choice and the only one at that seems to be the leash and his 'hussle up' collar. He always has the dogs on a leash, in the house, in the park, on walks you name it and its on the dog. What sort of life is that? Maybe he intends on telling the owners to give their dogs some freedom eventually but without the use of rewards how are they going to make their dogs want to stay with them?

I could go on and on and on about how awful Brad Pattison is but I do have other things to do.  Have a look at some of the links that follow if you would like some more evidence about this 'trainer'. And if you actually use his methods then i would urge you to please stop, for your dogs sake.

Links: 

http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/brad-pattison-on-learned-helplessness/

http://ckbales.blogspot.ie/2012/06/abuse-labeled-as-training.html

 http://trainertails.blogspot.ie/2009/07/in-dog-house-new-show-with-outdated.html

 And if you have a google you will find plenty more about him!

Please Vote for Oscar!

Oscar is in with the chance to win a year worth of free raw food!  Could I please ask our readers to take a few minutes out to vote for us????  The link is below.


Dogs first Competition!!

Please like the page, dogsfirst, and then like our photo. If you do not like the page first then your vote wont count. And then please share with all your buddies! We have to beat like 150 likes so please dont be shy and share away!

If Oscar wins he will share at least half of his winnings with animal charities every month!!!

Thank you!

Got some more catnip.....eventually!

I finally got some more catnip for our scent work! Its taken me about 5 months to get around to it.

Its a nice big bag too, so hopefully i wont manage to lose this one. Actually, I'm not even sure how I lost the last bag, it was in a big bright green tub? Maybe it was thrown out by somebody by mistake.......(mum)

So its back to scent work again, Oscar should be happy! He loves a good bit of searching, well anything that involves his nose really and I love it because it doesn't involve spending an hour laying a track for something that takes about 10 minutes for him to do, and lets not forget the hour you wait to let the track age too before you actually start it. At least with this all i have to do is hide a little tub of catnip. 

I have to find a new tub for the catnip too though, cause I lost that as well.

But the good thing is that I have the catnip!


Just a little random thing to add,

I was listening to this while writing this post and I thought I would share it with my readers (and its one of Oscars favourite songs, or so I like to think!)

Rain, Rain and More Rain!

Its been raining for nearly 2 full days now! And it looks as if it's going to stay like this for the next week (we'll say 2 weeks though because the weather people never seem to be able to get it right over here!)
Oscar ain't too pleased either! I made him go OUTSIDE in the RAIN and I made him wear his COAT!!!  Not a happy doggie at all, or should I say he wasn't at that point in time.
But none the less, it had to be done and i wanted to get it over and done with before it got dark.

So with that in mind I got ready for the and let Oscar get all happy with himself because I mentioned that I was going to go out of a W-A-L-K. Then when it came to getting Oscar ready he was only more than happy to oblige when he saw his lead but then he spotted the dreaded coat of death! :-D
To make it worse I put it on him and that just popped his happy bubble completely,or at least suppressed it until it was taken off!

He took it upon himself to sulk in the garage while i put my wellies on. He wasn't pleased with being taken away from his lovely warm fire at all!







With it being Sunday I though that the road might not be as busy, but i was wrong :-(   So we took the safer route up the quite side road (and even that had 2 cars on!) but it was like a stream was flowing down it,particularly at the sides.

Either way we had to go up it to get to the field. We got to the field and I was so glad that I had decided to wear my wellies and not my hiking boots and Oscar was probably a little thankful that he had the coat on too! This is what we decided to walk in today,

And that's nothing compared to the bottom of the field!
I let Oscar off the lead to run about but he was a little caught up avoiding the giant holes of water in the ground,and i didn't make it any easier either because when he walked next to me he ended up getting soaked! (I'm a puddle walking lunatic!)

Even in one of the dryer parts of the field he walked up on the high ground between the puddles.







And I got this look when he got splashed by me for the first time,

Hey! You splashed me!

He actually stopped and turned and looked at me as if to say ' How dare you!'

Just so you can compare the top of the field to the bottom,this is how deep the water was at the bottom,

I had lost half of my boot! And that wasn't the deepest part either! At one point the water nearly went into my boots!
There was also a big lack of grooves for Oscar to take shelter from the water!






Oscar better get used to this because I cant see it changing anytime soon! But he seems to have come back from this walk with much more energy than he left with!

On the bright side he gets to dry off in front of the stove in the sitting room, that's got to be a good thing,right?

I'm Furious!!!!!!!

This is a story about an irresponsible idiot getting a dog for Christmas and I am so very angry, annoyed, frustrated and enraged!

One of my friends has a dog and it's called Pepsi. I personally think that it's a lovely dog, very friendly and probably very smart too but sadly he doesn't live the life he deserves. He is around 10 years old and all he has ever known is the small outdoor pen that he lives in and the wooden shed he calls home with straw as a bed (which isn't changed too regularly) He is never walked, gets little or no attention and really only serves the purpose of a garden ornament. Why get a dog if all you are going to do is look at it out the kitchen window.
This friend of mine has a brother, and now he is getting another dog! :-(
He couldn't even look after chickens for god sake, and now he is being let get a dog! And not just any dog, a Husky! He has certainly chose the right breed for a first time owner, hasn't he?  (I wish there was a sarcasm font on here!)
He is going to buy this dog himself, but I'm worried that he is going to go for the cheapest one out there and that could end up coming from a back yard breeder or puppy farm! He plans on keeping this dog inside while he leaves Pepsi, the dog they have had for 10 long years, outside in his small and cold prison cell. What is going to happen when this puppy chews something it shouldn't, which he probably will? What happens if he tears the curtains down because he has too much energy? What happens when he hits his teenage years and starts acting up? What happens when his owner gets bored with him?  He will end up outside with Pepsi in the already cramped cell!
They don't seem like the people who are going to spend a lot of time training this dog how to behave properly around people or spend ages socializing him with dogs and kids and I personally think that the foolish boy who is supposedly going to own him seems like a choke chain kind of guy and one who is only interested in quick fixes no matter how cruel they may be!
I think he only wants this dog for the looks, he wants to look tough and cool with his wolfish dog on its chain lead by his side.He plans on calling this dog Max, to go with Pepsi, so that he can say that he owns Pepsi Max.  He knows nothing about this breed, clearly, if he did then maybe he would decide against getting one! Its clearly all for the status and the looks.
On top of this my friend doesn't seem to care about what her brother is about to do and that makes me even more annoyed! And because I don't really know her brother too well I am giving out to her because of all this.

I just think (and i don't think anybody could disagree with me on this) that it's really unfair to have one dog inside and another one outside, even though the one outside has been with you your whole life nearly and has been nothing but loyal( even if he didn't get a chance to prove it to them). And i think its highly irresponsible to get a dog like this (without any thought or consideration what so ever)


I will have to stop now before I break my keyboard because I am just so enraged by this whole thing at the moment! Its things like this that make me lose total faith in humanity!
I really hope that there are some people out there who feel the way I do about this.

Time to Focus on The Basics

I have always been interested in dog training and I really enjoy trick training but its dawned on me recently that I spend too much time thinking about what to teach next and then i would get all worked up about perfecting it in a certain amount of time, trying to teach as many tricks as quickly as possible.

I basically got so caught up in teaching tricks that i stopped working on the basics, the most important things that your dog should know and the things that might some day save their life. Its a lot more important to have a dog that can come back on command than one that can fetch your slippers for you. However impressive it is for a dog to stand up and dance on command, its much more important and beneficial for your dog to know the basic commands.

So with that in mind I've decided to give trick training a break. Oscar enjoys tricks but I think he wouldn't mind a break from them either. I think its time to really work on those basic commands, the sits and the downs and the stays and most importantly the recall. While I was busy teaching Oscar some pointless tricks his recall kind of slacked, and that needs work, especially if i plan on enjoying the off leash walks of the new year!

Tricks are fun to teach and they do provide dogs with wonderful mental stimulation but you should NEVER put them above the basics. Being able to roll over on command wont save your dog if he is running into the path of oncoming cars.

Sorry Mum, I've been sick

Hi readers!
Its Oscar here. Mum usually does this for me so you will have to bare with me for a little bit because I've never done this before.

I know that mum set herself a challenge to teach me the weave poles again by last tuesday but we haven't achieved it I'm afraid. :-(
I was sick on sunday, monday and tuesday and mum was worried that i had an intestinal blockage. On sunday mum gave me fish for breakfast but as much as i love fish, i just didn't feel myself and didn't eat it. So she gave half of it to the CAT! There was no way that thing was going to eat all of my food, so i nicked the other half from the plate!  I really wish i didn't though because it made me feel really funny and get sick all over the mat. I didn't even want to go for a walk. But the probiotic yoghurt helped me fell better.

So i still can't do the weave poles, but i can nearly do 4 now and mum is really happy with that!

I think i will give myself until next friday to perfect 6 weave poles, then mum will be really happy with me!

The Weave Pole Challenge

We haven't practiced the weave poles since the time that i took that picture, so Oscar has totally forgotten how to do them! He never really did them that well anyway so its probably best that we re-train them again anyway.
This is going to be the 5th method that we have tried now! We have tried the channel weave when he was younger, Susan Garretts 2x2 method earlier this year (which went badly because i never actually had the DVD), the 1 pole at a time method(which was the most successful) and we tried using guides too (which also went badly because oscar either jumped over them or went under them!)
 
Now we are trying the simple,original 2x2 method!
We had the first session about a half an hour ago and it went brilliant! Oscar got it immediately,he is going through 2 poles with ease, and with speed! I know its only 2 poles but its a start.

So I'm going to try and train Oscar 6 poles by the start of next week, lets say by Tuesday. Its a challenge really and it started 30 minutes ago!

I'll keep this updated on our progress,i might even record a few sessions! 


( you can tell that it's my week off school, can't you?)

The Bank Holidays! Gota love 'em!!!

Who doesn't love bank holidays?!?! And to make it even better its Halloween break now too! 1 week off from school....thank god for that! It was definitely a long time coming,but its here now so hurray!

We never went to Kennedy Park in end, instead we went to my grandparents for dinner which was probably better anyway considering it was raining nearly all of Sunday. So I'm planning to go some time this week,or maybe agility class but I need to see whats going on first.

Seeing as it was raining Sunday i made it my duty to give Oscar a bath. He didn't look dirty on the outside but he definitely needed it! Not so sure he enjoyed it though,either way,its done for the next few months now!

He was so happy and innocent. He had no idea what was to come..... the dreaded bath!

Please can i get out now???

The bath did serve some purpose though,other than just to clean him.........


.....it turns out he is a dalmatian in disguise!!!!






Despite the rain yesterday i cleared up in the evening which made quite a nice sunset picture which i could not resist!

And thats really all that happened yesterday!
We did more stuff today though and hopefully we will do some more things this week.

Today we did some agility,and i got out my A frame,which isn't actually finished yet but i used it anyway! It turns out that Oscar LOVES the A frame,i couldn't keep him off the thing. Any chance he got he was up it,you pointed at it and he was like ' do you want me to go up it? Cause i will,as fast as i can,so do ya,do ya??? '

Look,i made my contact!

I can do this too!

But i really do love it up here!

The A frame has other uses too........

........ Its a good place to shelter from the sun!

We also played with his interactive toy,which he really likes to play with.

We are still restricted to on leash walks because the fields still aren't empty which is a shame but we still make the most of them and the natural surroundings too!

The Dog Days...or should I say School Days?

I really should apologize for my lack,or rather disappearance,of posts lately! One word........School!!!

2 months back at this point and Halloween break is quickly approaching, it arrives on Friday! The longest stretch of the school year without a break.......I think?? 

Oscar has been good, his usual self, if not a little more energetic when we come home from school,what with being alone for a while he just cant contain himself! 
We haven't really been doing anything too interesting since i went back to school,and we haven't been to agility training in about 2 and a half months either (bold agility dog owner indeed!!!) I keep meaning to go but there is always something going on during the weekends and we obviously can't go during the week, and school can take all the blame on that one!

We came very close to getting another dog recently. Our friends (we carpool to and from school together but its really very hard to explain) took in 2 lovely gordon setters who were badly treated and skinny. There is a male,Alfie, and a female,Beth, and they are,supposedly, pure bred working gordons. 2 weeks after they arrived Beth had,to the owners surprise, 6 puppies! Everything has been going well,apart from 1 death, and i had asked about getting one and it was all looking good but that soon fell through. They are planning on selling these puppies for €400 each!!!!! And that to me is totally wrong! These puppies are not KC registered,they do not know the father (because its not Alfie), the came from a rescue dog and they have nothing standing for them in terms of working achievements (the parents not the pups obviously). And not to mention no health tests (but they aren't necessary in Ireland) 
So its a no go on that idea.
But we still may be getting another dog. A rescue dog though,i think its better to rescue. So fingers crossed!

I really do not know what to talk about? I haven't done anything interesting in 2 months!
I did take some photos of Oscar and the horses yesterday.

Large,Medium,Small!

And i have a few more photos of some kittens that I'd like to share.

Hopefully we will be able to get to the JFK center some time next week. I think Oscar would enjoy the trees and the woods and the open space....Oh and the mini train!!!!! I'd love that too,it would be nice to have an outing with him and hopefully my friend can come too.  He cant be let off leash (not that I think I'd let him anyway) but we can use the long line.

So maybe there will be many more updates to come!

Fun,Fun,Fun....and some agility!

Had another fun day today,or evening in this case! My brother has his friend over so me and Oscar spent the lovely evening outside in the garden and went for a nice walk in the field.

Oscar had dinner early tonight because it takes him a little while to eat a pig trotter and i wanted to get a walk in after dinner too.

We started off playing a few games of tug and fetch and then i took some photos of shadows. No,I'm not crazy but yes,shadows. They make really nice pictures. Sadly i didn't get great ones tonight,i was trying to get one of me and Oscar tugging but i couldn't get a good one. I got this one though,

Its not great but its the best one i have,neither of us are in the positions i was aiming for but as you can imagine,its hard to tug and take a photo of your shadow at the same time.

Oscar really enjoys jumping up and grabbing his toys in mid air so i took advantage of this and  got some good shots,this time much more successful than the shadow ones!

We also played the 'race for it' game. Its supposed to help get the dog to work away from you in agility and race ahead of you,but we will see how that goes. For now Oscar enjoys it and it gives me good photo opportunities!

He does actually get to tug and retrieve the toys too,it wasn't all 'race to get it and then me take it away',although i'm pretty sure that Oscar enjoyed the racing for it and jumping and grabbing it parts!

Tug,tug,tug,tug!!

Here i come!!!

Again,again!! Throw the toy!

That was most of the playing part,i don't think he has ever played for so long with the same toy! 15 minutes with the kong one and another 15 with the snake! Improvements! 
We also did agility,well at least a type of agility,if you could call a line of 3 obstacles agility? Thats what we did anyway,lets call it 'mini' agility! 
What was this 'mini' agility course made up of? A tunnel(it was actually 2 but they make one long one),an old car tire(yes,i'm still using that tire for yesterday!) and 1 simple jump. Hard? Certainly not,for Oscar anyway!

Tire!

Jump!

Tunnel! (with crazy ears!)

So that was our 'mini' agility all over and done with so Oscar,being the clown that he is,played some more!

I just have to show people this one,its hilarious!

He is just crazy about this snake toy!


After all the fun and excitement we had a walk to 'cool' off,and it was a nice walk too! Oscar was very good,he practically stayed with me the whole time!
I just couldn't resist a good game of hide and seek. I can't say that i hid too well though,how could it?!?! It was an open field with nothing to hide behind,so most of my hiding spots were just me lying flat on the floor. I hardly ever got to hide though,Oscar was on me like a bullet anytime i even thought to walk away from him!

Haha,i found you! Silly human!

Oscar is now fast asleep in bed. I bet all that chewing on the pig trotter took it out of him!!!  Although i will admit,today wasn't his most active day,he only got 1 walk today! I know,lazy right,but i just wasn't feeling well at all this morning,and walking around only made me feel worse but i think he has forgiven me for missing a walk and a few training and play sessions today. He isn't the type of dog who holds grudges,he probably doesn't even remember what he had for dinner yesterday! 
But with that said beagles are known to be able to remember different scents and recognize them in the future,so maybe he remembers a lot more than i think,after all he remembers all his tricks very well.

One bad thing was discovered today though. You know that new field we found,the one with the stream? yeah,that one,well the only way to get to that is to go through the second field we walk in but.....
..... thats now occupied by horses!!! :-( 
So we are back to one field again. I wouldn't mind walking in there with the horses but the electric fence is on so now i can't get in there anymore. 
And just to add to it,although not as bad as i can buy some more,i lost the cat nip!!!  Oh,wait,i never mentioned that before! Well Oscar is trained to find cat nip! I wanted to do something other than tracking(because its very time consuming planning and laying tracks every week) and something more challenging than just finding food or toys so i trained him to find cat nip. I got the idea from customs dogs,and they way that they are trained to find drugs and stuff,so i just used cat nip instead because it wouldn't harm him and it was easy to get in pet stores. But now i have gone and lost it! I don't know how,the container it was kept in is still here and i remember putting it in there the last time i used it!
I suppose i can always get some more somewhere.

I'm all typed out now,so i will leave you with this nice photo i got in the field today,

The Irish sunset!