I know it was one of my New Year Resolutions to do more agility and go to competitions with Oscar but that idea has hit an enormous bump in the road, one which I don't think we will be able to get over any time soon.
While I love doing agility with Oscar, he doesn't feel the same way about it, at least when he isn't in the comfort of his own home. He does enjoy agility at home but that's really the beginning and the end of the story. I cannot get him to focus at agility training and as a result we haven't been in a very long time and I have tried to get him to do a simple low jump in the field but Oscar wanted nothing to do with it, and the field is a regular place for us to walk (daily right now).
I thought about going to a fun show next month but after some though,and advice from some petforumers, I have decided that its best not to.
And after even more though I have decided to give it up all together. Maybe not forever but definitely for a while.We might still do some at home for fun, there is no way I am going to let all that stuff I built go to waste, but for the time being and for the foreseeable future we wont be doing any fun shows or going to training classes or anything.
Oscar has given me so many signs that he isn't comfortable doing it away from home, and I think it's about time that I started to listen to them, rather than just doing what I want to do, regardless of whether Oscar find it fun or not.
From now on me and Oscar will be doing much more playing, having much more fun walks, trying out some new tricks and hopefully going to some new places. I would really like to bring him to the beach and into the town more and, what I was meaning to do last October, bring him to Kennedy Park in New Ross.
I have to admit that I am just that little bit disappointed about not doing agility anymore but if Oscar isn't interested in doing it then there is so much more useful things we could be doing.
Saturday, 12 January 2013
Sunday, 6 January 2013
My poor boy
Poor Oscar has just come down with a suspected bout of Kennel cough :-(
Been coughing like anything all day and has brought up some white foam and clear liquid 4 times now. I presumed something was stuck in his throat at first but its now more likely Kennel cough. It started after his walk this morning and he was only in the kennels last week. Kennel cough has a 7- 10 day incubation period and usually and the kennel cough hacking is brought on by cold air and exercise. It seems to fit our situation perfectly.
Just Loaded Oscar up with some Benylin and Honey, seems to be helping with the coughing anyway but when I need it most I run out of honey! Well hopefully we will have some Manuka honey tomorrow.
Poor Oscar just wants to sit on my lap, sadly when mum is here he isn't allowed up on the furniture.
Been coughing like anything all day and has brought up some white foam and clear liquid 4 times now. I presumed something was stuck in his throat at first but its now more likely Kennel cough. It started after his walk this morning and he was only in the kennels last week. Kennel cough has a 7- 10 day incubation period and usually and the kennel cough hacking is brought on by cold air and exercise. It seems to fit our situation perfectly.
Just Loaded Oscar up with some Benylin and Honey, seems to be helping with the coughing anyway but when I need it most I run out of honey! Well hopefully we will have some Manuka honey tomorrow.
Poor Oscar just wants to sit on my lap, sadly when mum is here he isn't allowed up on the furniture.
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Happy New Year, Season's Greeting etc. etc. etc.
Happy 2013 Blog Readers!!!! A little late, I know but I've been busy with stuff.
Oscar had a good Christmas. He got a new collar (a dublin dog collar), a squeaky chicken (which he is scared off), a tug a jug (which he cannot work out) and a new toy (which he loves). He also got a tin of treats from my uncle and one of my presents from one of my friends was a pack of 2 squeaky bones!!! :-D
I a still trying to sell his dog coat because it no longer suits him (anybody????) and I think I have sold his backpack which is huge on him, although I am not to sure about that because I haven't heard anything back from the people who wanted it. Once I sell those I'll be able to get him an equafleece Tankie. And I still have to get him a fleece lined harness too.
We have started our recall training too. I got a whistle and so far it's going well, of course we are only 1 week into it though, none the less it could be paving the way to the year ahead! :-)
I am hoping to get freezer this year so that we can bulk buy raw from a supplier and I would also like to feed a little more variety. And I'd like to try out some agility fun shows this year too but we have quite a few things to do for agility before we are ready for that, mainly getting Oscar to play in other places but hopefully he will figure it out soon.
So, here it this years New Year Resolutions,
- Try and find a freezer for Raw
- Feed more varitey
- Get Oscar playing in new places
- Go to our First Fun Agility shows
- Train Oscar a great Recall
- Spend more time with Oscar and less time on the Internet
- Fence in the WHOLE back garden
- Get a job this summer
- Get Oscar measured for Agility
etc, etc, etc.
I have a list of Agility fun shows this year, they start in 2 weeks but hopefully we might be able to go to the ones in April and May, maybe even March. And there are probably some over summer, but we will have to wait and see.
The verdict is in! We are getting another dog!!!!! Dad said that if I help with the fence then we can look into getting one. Its going to be a rescue this time, I'm certain about that and I have already spotted a few dogs that might suit. :-)
So here is to a good year! * raises my mug of tea in the air *
I do have pictures to add but I need to upload them first, but you can be sure that as soon as I do they will be here for all to see.
Happy Belated New Year Everybody!
Oscar had a good Christmas. He got a new collar (a dublin dog collar), a squeaky chicken (which he is scared off), a tug a jug (which he cannot work out) and a new toy (which he loves). He also got a tin of treats from my uncle and one of my presents from one of my friends was a pack of 2 squeaky bones!!! :-D
I a still trying to sell his dog coat because it no longer suits him (anybody????) and I think I have sold his backpack which is huge on him, although I am not to sure about that because I haven't heard anything back from the people who wanted it. Once I sell those I'll be able to get him an equafleece Tankie. And I still have to get him a fleece lined harness too.
We have started our recall training too. I got a whistle and so far it's going well, of course we are only 1 week into it though, none the less it could be paving the way to the year ahead! :-)
I am hoping to get freezer this year so that we can bulk buy raw from a supplier and I would also like to feed a little more variety. And I'd like to try out some agility fun shows this year too but we have quite a few things to do for agility before we are ready for that, mainly getting Oscar to play in other places but hopefully he will figure it out soon.
So, here it this years New Year Resolutions,
- Try and find a freezer for Raw
- Feed more varitey
- Get Oscar playing in new places
- Go to our First Fun Agility shows
- Train Oscar a great Recall
- Spend more time with Oscar and less time on the Internet
- Fence in the WHOLE back garden
- Get a job this summer
- Get Oscar measured for Agility
etc, etc, etc.
I have a list of Agility fun shows this year, they start in 2 weeks but hopefully we might be able to go to the ones in April and May, maybe even March. And there are probably some over summer, but we will have to wait and see.
The verdict is in! We are getting another dog!!!!! Dad said that if I help with the fence then we can look into getting one. Its going to be a rescue this time, I'm certain about that and I have already spotted a few dogs that might suit. :-)
So here is to a good year! * raises my mug of tea in the air *
I do have pictures to add but I need to upload them first, but you can be sure that as soon as I do they will be here for all to see.
Happy Belated New Year Everybody!
Thursday, 20 December 2012
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!
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!
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
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!
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!
Saturday, 1 December 2012
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!)
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!)
Sunday, 25 November 2012
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,
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?
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,
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! |
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?
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