Topics created by luvdogs

Make sure they get something in their stomachs at night…or early in the morning before they actually get up. My Talker did this for awhile and eventually it stopped when we figured that he had an empty stomach.

My dogs free feed and when I'm home with them 3 days out of the week, they very rarely eat during the day. They eat at night mostly and maybe snack around mid day the next day. All dogs are different so I suppose you have to watch each and every dog. But I noticed that if we fed them in the morning, they just don't eat so we stop feeding them in the morning b/c we were wasting a lot of food. Now we feed them 1 cup at night and what they don't eat at night, they will MAYBE snack during the day----but not much.

I trained Zenu to use the bell as well, but I dont have a fenced yard so it means me getting her leash and taking her out for a walk. I can usually tell if she needs to go pee or poo or just wants to go for a walk and look under parked cars for cats, and if she's being silly about it I just tell her, "no you already went out" and she'll give up after a few rings. If she can be distracted from the bell with a ball or rawhide stick its a pretty clear indication that she doesnt really need to go to the bathroom, she's just bored and wants to do stuff.
Usually she doesnt even need to ring it since we're on a good routine of walks throughout the day, but this morning she had a bit of diarrhea and she woke me up at 5:00am and ran right to the back door and rang the bell several times to let me know it was Very Serious and Can We Please Hurry.
So, even if you ignore him sometimes when he rings the bell, he'll probably still ring it to let you know if its a real emergency.

I think the b's when the toes are warm, smell like warm, corn chips.
My b's sleep in the bed and when Shasta puts her feet on my pillow, that is what I think about.
My dogs will p/u nasty smells, but mostly from rolling in items they shouldn't.
However, I have found if you put a bar of soap down on the carpet, or one of those perfume ad things in mag, open and fresh.. my b's will roll in it like a dead carp on the beach.
Kind of funny to watch!

When you have a new puppy, there is an adjustment period… first, I keep their crates in my bedroom so that if a pup needs to go out, I am able to hear them and get them up and out... Also, did you make sure that he pottied first? Had he ever been in a crate?... They don't just take to coming into a new home and then being locked in a crate without some "crate training"....

We are training our new puppy and it reminded me of somehting I did somewhat by accident with our other 2 dogs. When we wer etrying to get them to go, we always give them a treat. At some point of frustration, I tried to get their attention and let them know we had a treat by shaking th etreat jar. Eventually, they associated the shaking sound with going potty, so with the new puppy, I started shaking the jar every time she was actually going. After just 10 days, I can shake the jar and it gets her attention and makes her pee usually, even when she is distracted and walking all around.