@jys1011:

I love the show "Its Me or The Dog" totally good methods IMO & she uses rewards for good behavior & no rewards for unwanted behavior. This is different from punishment for unwanted behavior. There's no tugging or pulling or touching…she uses sounds to get the dogs attention like an EH EH in a loud voice. My dogs do respond to that...now they know that EH EH means don't go near the window (they like to watch dogs go by & then go crazy!).

Yeah that show is great too, I trained Mali with the "shh…" and the "AHP AHP!" from It's Me or the Dog. That lady does use some CRAZY sounds, remember the episode with the insane husky? That was scary...

@YodelDogs:

What was the story? I'm curious.

"raising puppies is fun!!!!!" :D

Lol… as fun as waking up at ungodly hours of the morning can be! But no, seriously, we don't mind.

The story behind the pups is: We're part of a home school group in central florida and through the "loop" e-mail we get every week we saw a family we knew had just had a litter of puppies. There was a problem, however, because the momma had 9 pups and wasn't producing milk properly. The family has 5 children and was having a hard enough time taking care of the momma let alone 9 pups. So in swoop the college kids... (because I mean, what college kid doesn't already stay up until 3am in the morning). A few veteran 4H'ers, a computer geek, and my sister and me.

All and all the puppies are responding great! thanks to your help and the help of our vet they're eating great on their new puppy food, and with vitamins they've found a new energy they didn't have before.

vet said they'll probably have a weak immune system for a while, at least until they're 8 weeks they shouldn't be around new people or new dogs.

So we're having fun! Mali, our 1 1/2 year old 'senji just loves all this activity...
she's like

"I wanna hold the baby, touch the baby, love the baby..."

lol, anyway. thanks guys for your help!

-Han
(Mali's mommy)

@Barklessdog:

Wow it is bushy, but really a beautiful dark mahogany color.

My wife was taught by our breeder. There is an art to it. She uses human hair sissors and cuts sideways on/ with the tail fur, slowly and gently trying not to hack it up. The tip is tricky- she kind of feather's/ layers it to make it look natural. It's easy to trim the black blending fur too much.

She also trims his orange fur on his thighs, near his butt.

lol, totally off subject but I love the Naruto headband on the 'senji! Absolutely awesome… they kinda remind me of little trouble making ninjas...

(Also the invader zim t-shirt is awesome..)

I have used Cesar's "Shh…" meathod on my Mali and she responds great.

When she's doing something bad I just step towards her and very forcefully make the "shhh.." sound and she knows to stop.

I guess it just depends on your Basenji really...

We've got a 4 week old lab mix puppy from a litter of 9 who were abandoned by their mother. Our friends have the other 8 and we are all working together to keep them fed.

We've talked to our vet and are giving the 8 and Dakota (our puppy we're taking care of) softened puppy chow but I'm afraid they're not getting all the nutrients they need. Can you suggest anything?

Thanks a million guys! Let's give these guys a fighting chance.

=Hannah

(Mali's mommy and Dakota's aunt)

@red:

What a lovely tribute to Bandit - I got all sniffly reading it and will never be able to hear Africa the same way again. Hugs to you!

I bawl my eyes out every time I hear Africa, when it comes on the radio I have to turn it….

I was looking at an Italian Greyhound site today and stumbled across the story of an Italian Greyhound named Faith. When she was a pup she broke her neck… it's an amazing heart warming story of a sweet puppy and the miracle she is!

If you wanna read the story it's at the link below...
http://www.abouttimeacres.com/ItalianGreyhounds/OurDogs/Miracle.html

My hamper is in the closet and I ALWAYS have to keep it closed… I learned from my first B... if you value your undergarments and personal dignity you'll put all trash cans and hampers in a closet or behind a closed door if you don't like them displayed all about the house...

AWW!! I can't wait to seeee!!!

Ahhh yes…Lexi! I saw her on Dogster! ^^ She's a real beauty queen... atop knotch fashion expert there with that tutu... love it!

@Basenji_Boy:

My kids didn't get away with nearly as much as our B's do.:D :D

Seriously! If I'd done half the stuff my b does when I was a child I would've been in MAJOR trouble! Funny how things are different with B's… they're so amazingly different!

@JoeyQ:

I am just sitting here pondering exactly how we all "tolerate" this sadistic behavior as BB describes ;-) ! Everytime I go to clean up the next mess, I have a little "errrrrrrrrrrrrr" slip out, then calmly pick up the remains and move on. Have we become desensitized? What is it in our nature that allows this to go on??:D

you know what… you're right! when you have B suddenly things like... the 14th pair of underware she's eaten isn't such a huge deal anymore, your old stuffed animals you had as keepsakes are suddenly in your B's toybox, that paper you were writing for your college class... yeah you know the prof won't believe your dog ate it but SHE REALLY DID!, and now it's just histarical every time the dog comes out of the bathroom with the roll of toilet paper in her mouth...

You really can't do anything but be desensitized when you have a B... not only that but pretty soon you start to not care so much about material things... lol...but always come up with new and interesting ways of keeping things you hold dear in safe spots.

For Christmas this year we bought Mali a stuffed goose with a squeaker inside. She would bite it, then pounce it, dig at it, and bite it again! She tore the leg off then tried to tear the wing… but ended up pulling all the stuffing out of one side before I could get it away from her... so much for the Christmas goose!!!

That's the way our first B was… Bandit HATED his collar... he would always just slink around miserably with it on and when we'd take it off he'd be so happy!

But not Miss Mali... not in the least! She hates being WITHOUT it...

That's really weird… he's almost the same age as Mali... only 1 month older and she does the SAME thing!! Deathroll and everything!

I thought it was crazy the other day I took Mali's collar off because it was dirty. While I was washing her collar she would not settle down, she went berzerk!! Running around like a mad-basenji and just generally freaking out… as soon as it was done in the wash I brought it inside to dry and she did EVERYTHING in her power to get that thing. Finally I just put it on her (wet and everything) and she instantly ran to her little bed in the sunshine and went to sleep.

O_O does anybody else have a B that experiences collar separation anxiety??

I'm not sure what happened but when I first brought Mali home she barooed every time I would go to fix her dinner… like she just couldn't wait and she got so excitied!!!! She'd sit down and watch me start to fix it and the minute I finished if I didn't put it down right then she'd quickly remind me with a baroo that I needed to put her food down so she could eat it.

But now that she's almost a year old I never hear any noises from her anymore... except the normal "yawn" noises and that one time she growled at the new person in our house.

I wish I could get Mali more vocal... I think it's funny tho, the reason we got another Basenji was because it was quiet... and now all we want to do is make her more vocal!!

she sure does look like she loves car rides ^_^

the picture is great! you have a happy and healthy new year yourself and a Merry Christmas!!!!

from one tri-color to the other Mali says barooo to you, Nala!! Have yourself a merry little christmas!

Yeah I'm a pretty big fan… lol... plus when I saw how crazy he was the name just fit... lol