New Basenji person in North Seattle (pup is 1 week old)

[saralars]

Well, after more than a year of thinking and reading about them, our time is coming very soon. Our breeder is Khani Basenjis. I have questions as Kathy our breeder will tell you, I ask a lot of them. I want to give her a break for a while, she has strained her back and is busy with her children, work and puppies too!
Biggest concern right now is.. How to keep the Basenji safe in a home that is busy with our kids and neighbor kids coming and going. We will be heading to basic obedience as soon as we can. A local Basenji breeder has recomended a trainer experienced with the breed not too far from us! My worry.. that he will get let out someday! PANIC! Now, we have a G.Shepherd who is 10 and he would not go out of the yard because he is attached firmly at my hip. I am clear that our new dog won't be like this.. As I was laying in bed last night thinking about this, I wondered about training him that he can not go out the door unless he has a leash on. What do you think of putting the invisible fence wire across the bottom of the threshold. Reinforcing with him when he is the right age, that getting too close to the opening of the front door is not pleasent unless he has his leash is on. Also, please give me any other thoughts or ideas that you have. I would appreciate this very much. I am so glad I ran across this Forum and I have never posted on one before!

[pacificNWbasenji]

I reccomend a hot wire fence over the invisible fence. You can get them anywhere they sell farm supplies. You can run it along the lower part of your existing fence and it will keep you b from testing its boundaries to begin with. Good luck with your puppy when he/she comes home! Very exciting !

[saralars]

It is not the back yard I am worried about. It is a solid wood fence and secured. It is that 11 yr. old going to get something out of the freezer in the garage and not realizing the big garage door is open and leaving the door behind him open for 5 seconds. That and not so much but also the front door. It does have a wooden screen door with a good spring on it. But, I just worry about shooting out the door stuff. Yes, we will use a crate but I want the dog with us not in the crate most of the time!

[jonny b.]

T hey WILL get out even with the best laid plans. We have a 2 yr. old BRAT. He has escaped from us twice, scared the wits out of us, made us cry and then we caught him(finally, took us 45 min. the first time and an hour the second time). I really think that is why we got our wonderful guy. Someone had to lose him for us to get him. I know that is really sad, but we hope we are making him happy. If you go to the BRAT site they have a lot of very informative and helpful hints and they have links to other sites that are very helpful too. It is nice to bookmark them because there is always a new question or issue that you can refer to the sites to help. Of course there are lots of helpful, experienced people here that are very willing to offer advice too.
We live in a very small town and have 4 H that we are planning to go to their dog training to maybe learn some basic commands : sit, stay, heal etc would be very helpful. Also, my brother just got his first pup from a breeder. He got great advice from her. Baby gates at the door are great! We also only use ONE door for taking jonny out. He doesnt seem to aware that there are other exits in our house. We also TRAINED all our family and friends not to come or go without making sure they knew where jonny is. Our son let him out ONCE, and I dont think it will happen to him for a very long time. It about killed him with guilt… He felt awful.
The second time my husband fell down the stairs on the deck( in the dark, when the rest of us were and the leash got away from him. You just learn to be very, very careful.

[agilebasenji]

Is there any way to make the front door a double door type thing? Perhaps a nice little walled garden entry way before the front door? Otherwise you could use a scat mat.

http://www.dogwise.com/itemdetails.cfm?ID=DTB810P

while it's not fail-safe, it's worth working on. Leslie Nelson owns (or did) Afghans, so she knows her sighthounds.

also, look for a positive trainer, my kids love playing the clicker game.

[lvoss]

The best thing you can do is to work regularly on name response. Reward, reward, reward every time your pup responds to its name. Give it a treat so it associates hearing its name with coming to get a treat. Play the come game with the pup and your family have people in different rooms of the houes call the pup's name and reward it for coming to the one who called.

In addition to working on name response, I also establish a routine for going out so that they look for certain cues, like having their collar and leash, hearing their release word.

I have also worked with my youngsters by putting their collar and leash on, I open the door and if they rush out, I shut the door while I am still holding their leash so they can't go anywhere and then I make is sound like we are having a party inside without them. Since I have other dogs, I give them treats so when I open the door the one on the outside rushes in to see what they missed. Then I open the door again and repeat until they see the open door and look up and me looking for their "party" rather than running out.

Each of the three things have saved my dogs from harm. My front door didn't latch properly once and Nicky wouldn't cross the threshold because I wasn't there and his collar wasn't on. I have had leashes break when out on walks but my dogs have come to their names before they even realized they loose. My girl Rio accidently found herself on the wrongside of my front door when I was bringing in the groceries. I panicked when I couldn't find her, opened the front door expecting to have to search the neighborhood and there she was expecting her party. So in we came and she got her party for being such a good girl.

[saralars]

Thank you all very much!

[Quercus]

@lvoss:

The best thing you can do is to work regularly on name response. Reward, reward, reward every time your pup responds to its name. Give it a treat so it associates hearing its name with coming to get a treat. Play the come game with the pup and your family have people in different rooms of the houes call the pup's name and reward it for coming to the one who called.

In addition to working on name response, I also establish a routine for going out so that they look for certain cues, like having their collar and leash, hearing their release word.

I have also worked with my youngsters by putting their collar and leash on, I open the door and if they rush out, I shut the door while I am still holding their leash so they can't go anywhere and then I make is sound like we are having a party inside without them. Since I have other dogs, I give them treats so when I open the door the one on the outside rushes in to see what they missed. Then I open the door again and repeat until they see the open door and look up and me looking for their "party" rather than running out.

Each of the three things have saved my dogs from harm. My front door didn't latch properly once and Nicky wouldn't cross the threshold because I wasn't there and his collar wasn't on. I have had leashes break when out on walks but my dogs have come to their names before they even realized they loose. My girl Rio accidently found herself on the wrongside of my front door when I was bringing in the groceries. I panicked when I couldn't find her, opened the front door expecting to have to search the neighborhood and there she was expecting her party. So in we came and she got her party for being such a good girl.

I love the party idea, Lisa! That is great!

[lvoss]

My dogs love the party too.:) It is one of the favorite training times.

[wizard]

I'll have to try the party idea - that's a great tip - although I don't have much problem usually with Gossy getting out the door (fingers crossed).

Saralars - I think in addition to training your puppy, you should also work on training the other people in your house. A puppy is a big responsibility and consistent training by all the people in the "pack" will be important.

By the way there is a sticky thread on this forum under "training" about how to prevent escapes. You might want to read that.

[saralars]

Yes, I agree with the whole pack training. That is key to reducing the chance of escape. I started reading under training last night and realized that I should have looked there first! Thank you all!

[basenji_fan]

Scat mats work great!! I have them and all my critters completely respect them now, I actually have one that the pack is dead and I just use the mat and it works just the same.

Here's a great example; today I had new windows installed in my house and one of my windows is actually in the sun room of my home. I had the dogs outside in the yard with me, but it was getting warm already in the sunroom so I opened the sliding door so the install guy had air flow and fresh air and then I just laid the Scat Mat down and was worry free. A little while later I had go back in the house and bring in a big crate to put the dogs in since my cat was in the wire crate with her litter box (she wasn't happy either LOL), and even though I walked away and left them neither one touched the scat mat.

[Patty]

Can somebody tell me what a 'scat mat' is? It sound a very good idea.

[wizard]

Scat mats are plastic sheets with wires embedded in them and a battery pack. When activated they give the beasties a slight shock (like you might get from static). I think this particular brand is made by PetSafe and you can find them on Amazon and other websites and also at PetSmart. They come in different sizes (runner style to squares) and cost about $80 for the smaller ones. My Gosssy learned to stay off the kitchen table after only two days.

[tanza]

Scat Mat=http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2752972

[saralars]

Hi Patty,
It sounds really great to me. I googled it and there is info and pictures online and buying information. We will do a combonation with our new pup. The mat gives the dog an annoying sensation that they do not like when they walk on it. I think that I am going to use it in part of my training. I will turn the mat off when he has his leash on and he will be able to go across it but any time he does not have his leash on he will know that he shouldn't go near the exit door! I was relieved to find out about this tool along with the other training ideas that members of the Forums have given me.

[tanza]

However… you still need to be very careful with open doors, scat mat or not.... since a Basenji is a sighthound and they chase what they see... just like with underground electric fences (which I would never use)... if there is something out there... no amount of pain will stop them running through it.... and if they do, what it does stop is them coming back the other way ..... since there is no good reason in their mind to run though the shock

[tanza]

By the way, which litter are you getting a pup from of Kathy's?

[saralars]

It will be the litter of Jumoke Khani Baru and Teazer's Skylark.

[lvoss]

I would also be caution when using an aversive. Dogs do not always make the connection that we intend them to make. If the puppy is often over excited when people come over and hits the scat mat when people are entering it may start associating visitors coming over with the uncomfortable sensation. When you have people coming and going try to make use of a barrier or leash to prevent the puppy from rushing the door to avoid negative associations with people coming and going.