animals, Family, Kids, pets, Uncategorized

Bringing Up Baby

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In two weeks we will pick up our new Cesky Terrier pup in Oklahoma. He will be a about 12 weeks old. We haven’t had a puppy in the house in 20 years. That was when we got our second Welsh Terrier. We have been considering all the things we will need, such as a crate, as we are crate training, leash, collar, puppy chews, treats for reinforcement, and dog bed. We will take the breeder’s recommendations for the kind of food and the immunization schedule. We will have him microchipped. Our son is encouraging us to get a bell to hang on the back door for the dog to ring when it has to go outside. He successfully trained his West Highland Terrier to do that.

When we got our first Welsh Terrier, the breeder, who lived in Mankato, was dismayed to find out that we were psychologists. She said that, in her experience, psychologists weren’t consistent enough to raise terriers. We did pretty well with our dogs, I thought. They were terribly impulsive and naughty, but that is sort of how Welsh Terriers are. They never bit anyone, and I consider that a success.

I think that we will have more time for dog training since we have no kids at home like we did with the Welshies. Our new pup will have all our attention. I do know that I am not going to let him sleep with us, like we did our first dogs. He will sleep in his crate. I am also prepared to be exhausted for the first couple of months getting up in the night to take him outside, but that will get better with time. I think, this time, though, I will get a terrier training book our son recommended. I will show that Mankato breeder we raise can a good terrier citizen with excellent manners.

What do you consider essential puppy accoutrements? What successes or flops have you had training pets?

26 thoughts on “Bringing Up Baby”

  1. No dogs in our family, and cats can’t be trained easily. We did a bit of litter box training, making sure we showed it to each cat on their first day home, or when we moved, or when we got a new litter box or cat litter.

    Otherwise, training was usually yelling “NO!” clapping our hands, or stomping after them if they misbehaved. Dull stuff.

    Chris in Owatonna

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      1. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

        Fun times are coming to your house. I cannot wait for stories and pictures. Our dog who died 18 months ago came to us as an older puppy (7 months) with an intense urge to chew. All the time. The long, 12” chew sticks were the only thing that kept her from chewing anything in the house, and at the most intense chewing phase she went through one stick per day. Be prepared for the puppy chewing everything. Good for you in doing the crate training. That is helpful in managing behavior of all kinds.

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      3. Yes, I not only believe that you can train a cat to use the toilet, I know it, and have seen it with a real live cat – not a video on the internet. One of my friends from the British embassy in Moscow had a big old fat cat that always used the toilet. She even flushed after using it.

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  2. I’ll ditto what Chris said – I was told somewhere along the line that if my cats went out of box consistently, to rub their noses in it. I think the aberrant behavior is usually because they’re sick, so didn’t do that for long before taking them to the vet.

    I had cats instead of dogs basically because I didn’t want to spend much time training. I see now that had I invested the time, the rewards would have been great with a dog.

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  4. OT: my wife kept a sewing box, which would be like me having a makeup box. I had to do some sewing and cleaned out the box. Quite a few buttons. Isn’t there someone on here who keeps buttons, maybe VS? If anyone wants them, Holler. Not that many. Easy to mail. Most rather prosaic.
    Whenever I sew, which happens now and thewn, my miond is filled with images of my mother sewing each hevening in my childhood, sewing some of the millions of stiches which went into her quilts and clothes for herself and my sister. I can picture her biting the thread.
    Puppies anf kittens: simple. Raise them on a barn and never bring them oin the house. Problem solved.

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    1. No buttons for VS. I actually inherited boxes of buttons from two other people and it’ll be enough to keep me in buttons in my craft room for my lifetime.

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      1. Typing errors “R” Us, Clyde. As a group, the baboons are pretty good at deciphering sentences that would confound some audiences, so don’t let that stop you. Stump the baboons – if you can!

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  5. If you had YA at your house, you’d need more dog stuff than you have listed. First you’d have at least 4 beds (3 of which are currently stacked one on top of the other in your mother’s room), two different toys that hold treats, a large bucket to hold all the other toys (very large bucket), two flat thingees that you spread pumpkin or peanut butter on then freeze them, at least 4 leashes, at least 3 doggie outfits (all of which paralyze the dog), 2 different treat jars (one upstairs in your mother’s room) and one on the piano downstairs, 2 lids for the canned dog food that dog gets 1 Tbsp of each meal……

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  7. Good luck with you new puppy, Renee. Had to laugh at the notion that psychologists aren’t consistent enough to raise terriers, but what do I know?

    I have never aspired to training a cat or a dog so that they’d be anything but reasonably congenial housemates. Our pets have always had a fair amount of autonomy to do their own thing so long as it has not been intolerable or dangerous to others. Basic obedience training in a class with other dogs has been very helpful when training puppies.

    Our current doxy is geriatric at this point. Roughly four years old we got him from a rescue organization, he has been a fairly docile dog for as long as we’ve known him; unfortunately he was never properly socialized when he was a pup. He is nervous and not very comfortable around other dogs, so we gave up on taking him to the dog park. No amount of training or exposure to friendly dogs has been able to change that, so we accept that he’s most comfortable around people and animals he’s familiar with. The one bad habit, that I wish I could change, is his barking when someone rings the door bell. He barks his fool head off until they leave or are invited in, and nothing that we’ve attempted, so far, to dissuade him from that has worked. For a small dog he has a very big bark. I think he’s convinced that’s how he earns his keep.

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  8. OT – PSA for the day.

    World of the day is “spuddle” (17th century): to work ineffectively; to be extremely busy whilst achieving absolutely nothing.

    Just thought there might be a baboons or two who might find this useful.

    Lovely spring-like day out there, 54º F at the moment. My tulips have shot up several inches within the last couple of days.

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  9. I crate trained Bailey and he always slept in his crate. I think that’s a good idea. My friend guilted me into letting Pippin sleep with me in bed and I wish I had never done it. I agree with crate training. Now Pippin doesn’t mind waking me up at 2:30 in the morning so that he can indulge himself in a good scratch. He climbs over me on his way out of bed, then sits on the floor and scratches for awhile, then decides he wants to get back into bed with me. His own bed on the floor isn’t good enough. He thinks he has to claw at the sides of my bed instead of just jumping back in, which he otherwise has no problem doing. By this time I am wide awake and becoming more annoyed every minute. So if I had that to do over again, I would keep him crated at night. I could retrain him, I guess, but it might be tough to do at this point. He is very spoiled.

    I should have kept him away from the influences of other dogs too, although that would be kind of sad. My friend’s dog used to be a determined little thing who barked at everything that moved. My friend was nice enough to go pick Pippin up when I was at work and take him to her house to play with her little miniature poodle mix. A dog with a big personality can be a huge influence on a young dog. Misty taught Pippin to bark at every car that went by on the street, every person who walked by on the sidewalk, all the kids out playing, how to go nuts when there were squirrels in the yard, and how to almost have a stroke when the mail carrier came to the door. I wish so much that he hadn’t learned those things.

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  10. I am in New Orleans. Back home there is a blizzard warning for thecweekend. We may get 8 inches of snow, along with ice and rain. This must stop.

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  11. I love dog training I learned from a horse trainer and the only thing needed is a choke chain and that’s only needed for the first week after that the dog responds completely to please and to achieve my approval

    as well as this works on dogs and I have Gun for now it doesn’t work at all on children I have done five

    my first dog was when I was in high school with the VW van and he was a true hippie dog I didn’t wanna have him learn anything because I didn’t want to impose my will on him as he got older he and I became bonded at the hip we were very good friends and understood each other very well and one of the things that he did that drove me nuts was his basset hound bark he was half basset half labrador and at age 12 or so I decided to teach him how to bark on command so that I could command him not to bark it took about two weeks of training with M&Ms peanuts and I gave him a little signal opening my fingers and thumbs till like a daisy flower and telling him bark he looked at me quite quickly the first bunch of times that we tried it but when he eventually understood when I was saying bark that if he followed that up with a bark he was just elated to play the game and from that point on when he was barking I was able to give him the command and say no bark and he would listen and obey

    my next dog was a purebred basset which was followed shortly by the wolf dog and that’s when I went to dog training school and learn the tricks of horse training my teachers philosophy was that you teach the dog to respond to your command and his reward is praise that’s what I’ve gone with ever cents and it works beautifully with dogs it doesn’t work nearly as well with cats

    Clyde my typing skills are so bad that my verbal dictation has become more of a regular tool however you really should go back and double check it before you hit the send button and they often forget that part of the equation

    I hear you can train fish but I’ve never tried that may be something for a future attempt at killing boredom

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