@maru we should get together sometime. I'll be honest though. I'm mending a dog after surgery right now. I couldn't meet up until July. That's when he can leave the house again. :-/
I just realized that we have 4 JA for sure up there and another 1-2 pups on the way.
I'm pretty happy about that, I was afriad that i'de be all alone out here. We could all take a party bus down to the AKIHO/JACA show. Bay Area Akita Club
I'm pretty happy about that, I was afriad that i'de be all alone out here. We could all take a party bus down to the AKIHO/JACA show. Bay Area Akita Club
I may have gone a little overboard with the photos....photographing a brindle in dim lighting is hard lol...
@rikumom I didn't hear any barking when I approached my house yesterday. Either she eventually tired herself out from barking or was just taking a little break lol. Not too much damage though although she did poop in the crate. She did slide the removable plastic pan out from underneath her but that was my fault since I didn't latch it in properly.
I could be wrong but I don't think she has separation anxiety. She doesn't follow me from room to room. She isn't over-excited when I greet her when I come home. I have a feeling she just does not like being confined. When I go outside for 5-10 minutes at a time I let her roam around the house alone and she doesn't bark. It is only when I put her in a crate and go outside that she goes nuts immediately.
She was getting really good at potty training for a while. Then she turned into a little hell beast and is now peeing wherever she feels like it. I follow her around and try to stop her mid-stream and place her in the appropriate potty spot but she is driving me nuts =D.
I am introducing her to as many people as possible. I had another friend come over and although wary at first she warmed up to him quickly. She also tries to follow strangers that pass by the front of the house lol.
@tjbart17 oh no. I hope your pup recovers quickly! @jwgca@rikumom bay area NK meetup...I am in! lol. I think it would be fun to caravan down to the AKIHO show too.
Puppy play schedules? Do any of you have one? I take her and play with her in the morning and feed her and let her potty. When I get home from work I try to keep her awake and up and playing as much as possible until bedtime so she doesn't wake up me at 3am in the morning to play. I feel like a meanie when I wake her up from her naps though. lol
Also...did anyone's dog have trouble going potty on the sidewalk? I think she associates potty time with grass and I'd like her to be able to do her business during our walks and preferably not on my neighbor's lawn lol
@maru, you're in SF... friends of ours live in Inner Sunset and their female shiba will go pee and poo on the sidewalk, but ours will seek the little patch of grass or the base of a sidewalk tree to do his business. Boy dogs mark here and there, but girl dogs let out a big stream, unless she goes on absorbent surfaces, it runs down the street and they can step in their own pee, yew..... Considering the amount of Akita pee down the road, you probably want to train her not to go on the sidewalk but hold it until you get to a park or somewhere w/ absorbent surface... just my two cents...
I'm starting to conclude some JA pups don't like to be confined/crate trained, and will go through a random pee/poo phase (@MapleTwinkie, @Dennis_Sly both mentioned it recently) It's also possible you're not getting all the urine/poo smells out when you clean, so she thinks it's okay to go randomly.
I'm glad to hear you're not seeing signs of separation anxiety. RE: sleep and play, Meichan wasn't able to sleep through the night when she first came home, she would get up around 3 am to go pee/poo on her wee pad, then play quietly in the dark as long as I ignored her. I had to sleep in the same room w/ her for the first two weeks, the next two we tried to let her sleep alone, led to all night long squawking and crying. So I ended up sleeping in the same room w/ her, w/ the wee pad in the ex pen her first month with us. When she was about 12 weeks old, she could reliably go on her wee pads, we let her sleep in our room, uncrated, and she was able to sleep through the night. No more 3 am pee/poo.
If I was going to get another pup again, we'd put the ex-pen in the kitchen or dinning room area where there's lots of foot traffic. In hindsight, her bedroom was too isolated, too quiet from the rest of the house. Poor Mei must have been scared to be taken away from her parents and siblings and left all alone.
Speaking of wee pads, we have a giant box in storage. If you want to come over you're welcome to it.
RE: play schedule, Meichan can play quietly with her toys and chew treats, so our focus was mainly pup socials on the weekends and pup training class during the week. We found two places that we felt safe bringing her and took her Sat and Sun, and a puppy class during the week. We kept this up until she was about 6.5 months old and had a wart on her toe (common childhood disease), then we dropped out of both socials and class out of concerns for others. The wart went away before the Feb AKIHO show, but by then she was going to day care regularly and playing w/ the adult dogs, she didn't care to play at pup socials anymore (most pup socials are for dogs <6 months, they play the hardest during teething period) I'll probably get her re-enrolled in a puppy class on the weekends again just to keep up the training... it's more for the humans than for her, reminds us to practice
Maru, that's my bad on using the grass to potty. I spent a fair amount of time working with them on that and following up with a toy or kibble if they do it
FYI JACA is setup for smaller mini clubs to be formed with in it. If you wanted a Bay Area JA club.
@*JackBurton* lol no worries. luckily she loves her food. I don't even know why I bought treats. I can train her using her dinner lol. I think it'd be awesome to form a Bay Area mini JA club...would love some info if you've got any...
@rikumom was there any reason you decided on using the ex pen over crating? I have been contemplating picking up a pen to see if she does better with being left in it during the day rather than a crate. I let her sleep in my room now uncrated she has been really good about sleeping through the whole night and about peeing on the pads except when I wake up all hell breaks loose and she decides to pee wherever she likes all over the place.
it sounds like i will have to go through the same steps you took with moving her to another room and sleeping with her there for a little bit. it is taking a toll on my poor boyfriend who wakes up about 3 hours after I leave haha.
@maru, We know a puppy at 8 wks old can only hold her bladder for at most 2 hours during the day, so it was never our intention to crate her during the day when we weren't home. You can count on a puppy to stay in a crate and hold their bladder/bowel overnight, but during the day, expect them to hold an hour for every month of their age, up to 8 hours. Shibas are freaks when it comes to housebreaking. Don't expect JA to be like shibas.
Our initial set up of Meichan's room was to mimic the breeder @dogmom8's set up-- we had a futon in a spare bedroom, and we linked up two ex-pens, put the baby crate inside w/ the gate off, water bowl and plenty of toys on one side, and newspaper/wee wee pads in the corner. Meichan and her litter mates had a shiba crate in their ex-pen to check out so she was familiar with the crate, but she was never confined in the crate while she was at @dogmom8's that we knew of. Using an ex-pen to partition off the part of the house that the puppy has access is also for safety reasons. We didn't want her to wonder to an electrical cord and start chewing on it.
The size of the crate also makes a huge difference. Meichan had both a baby crate (the shiba Riku's old Varikennel) and a JA-size 36" by 48" by 30" crate with divider. She would play and eat in the baby crate, but she probably overheated and slept on the cold floor. Keep in mind we got her in late August and we don't have AC. W/ the JA size crate, it was so big that she could poo/pee on the bedding on one end and keep herself clean in the other. So that defeated the purpose of crate training.
Once we figured out Meichan was potty trained but had separation anxiety, and any sort of solitary confinement basically triggered the anxiety and made her lose bowel controls, we worked with her to avoid putting her in the situation where she'll fail. When we didn't have the choice of daycare yet, ex-pen was a better choice b/c she'd at least pee/poo on the floor, vs. in the crate she'd get herself all dirty and with the long coat, it takes a looooooooooong time to dry after a bath
She loves her crate btw, she's napping in it right now
Can I ask how big is the crate you're using right now to leave Miyuki home during the day, and how long you let her stay in it?
ps. I read @*jackburton* thread on Kaeda's separation anxiety, and the symptoms were different than Meichan's. Mei's trigger was confinement rather than if we were coming and going
@rikumom I have pretty much the exact same setup as you minus the ex pen. same size crate with a divider and also a baby crate which she will go into sometimes to chill out and chew on things. i realize that a large crate could cause her to compartmentalize and go potty in one end and sleep in another but until I get an ex pen I am afraid that is my only option. I have a pee pad on one end and her bedding and toys on another. once i get the pen set up ill put the baby crate in the ex pen. she has been pretty good about staying out of the messy stuff.
your room set up seems like a very likely solution for me since we have 3 empty bedrooms. I guess one can be Miyuki's lol.
pps. I'm in touch w/ the owner of Meichan's half-brother Mochi, another long coat from the Kawasaki's. She said Mochi would poo and pee in his crate if the door is shut, even step in his own poo, but if the crate door is open and he's fine not going bathroom in the crate
@rikumom@kafrine ahhhh nono no palace here. we actually live in south san francisco where the rent is cheaper. although I did spend a few years in the sunset and richmond district.
and that is interesting about mochi making less of a mess with the door open. I should get the ex pen as quick as possible then lol thanks for the shopping tip and referring me to doggy loot. any suggestion on height?
We had both a 30" for the shiba who has weak hocks & can't jump, and got a 48" one when Meichan came. Turned out Meichan was able to scale the 30" one, so that side later faced the wall and the 48" side faced the door. Bc we linked 2 pens together, we needed something heavy and straight to weigh down and straighten the pen
Ack...I think she ate her own poop. =[ I had her in her crate while I was getting ready for work. I saw poop stains on the bottom of her crate but no poo. I hope she does not make a habit out of this. It couldn't have been that she was hungry as her food dish was still 1/4 of the way full. >_<
Ugh... Her half-sister Sachi did that too... Sachi's mom told me she thinks dog food is too rich so the poop is attrative, so they feed human food. If you need a quick fix give Miyuki some pineapple juice or pineapple chunks.
Sachi is also Meichan's half sister on the father's side.
Miyuki will be 3 months old this week so I thought I'd post a little update =]
Apparently she prefers the coffee table to her crate. When you place a drink on the coffee table she will try to lick it through the glass.
She provides very good company when I am working from home. Although does not provide me with much input when I ask her.
She also sleeps in very odd positions. Puppy contortionist.
She is getting bigger and losing her puppy chubs...her legs are getting SO long.
She goes insane over grass.
I am lucky enough to live a block away from a fenced in soccer field. No one is ever there except for when school is let out. Miyuki gets an entire field to herself! This is a great place to work on our recall. For the most part she is good about it. I've been able to call her back from chasing random birds and squirrels...but her weakness is children. she LOVES children.
A little girl thought she was a raccoon. I think she looks like a cat.
We are working on "Leave it" because she likes picking up random bits of trash on her walks and just hold it in her mouth. You can always tell how hard she is concentrating by the position of her tail. You can tell shes concentrating super hard on a bird she sees off in the distance because she cannot be bothered to curl it up.
Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures. My camera is somewhere buried in moving boxes right now.
Aside from "Leave it" and "Recall" we are working on not being so gosh darn nippy. Damn those needle teeth! She is sleeping through the night now and potty training is damn close to 100%
She is a very rude puppy though when meeting other dogs. She will walk all over their faces and be completely oblivious. Something else to add to the list XD. All in all I think she is coming along really well.
I'd like to eventually start feeding her raw or at least incorporate some raw into her kibble diet and was wondering what the best "beginner raw" cuts of meat you'd suggest starting off with?
Hi Maru, Thanks for the photos and sharing your stories! My dog Saigo is exactly how you describe Miyuki. We got Saigo at 14 weeks; he refused to be put in a crate and would throw tantrums in there. He would pee and poo in there too. We allowed him free run of the house but had to take him potty outside every 2-3 hours. After about a month, he was fully potty trained. Now at 5 months he can hold it through the night and during the day. Saigo was bad with puppy etiquette too, he would jump and paw at every dog, wanting to play. After a few snarls and snips, now he's really polite with other dogs. Keep socializing her and she will learn!
I'm so suprised at how far Saigo's come. We will go to doggy parks and I will watch other dogs get into fights, freak out and Saigo will just be there, sitting, staring at them. We'll walk by scary dogs that snarl and bark, and Saigo will just look at them and keep walking, unfazed. He's learned to play properly with smaller dogs too, letting them dominate him a little even though he's the bigger and stronger one. We've really put in hours and hours of socialization every day, it's paying off and I think it's so worth it!
Comments
@rikumom I didn't hear any barking when I approached my house yesterday. Either she eventually tired herself out from barking or was just taking a little break lol. Not too much damage though although she did poop in the crate. She did slide the removable plastic pan out from underneath her but that was my fault since I didn't latch it in properly.
I could be wrong but I don't think she has separation anxiety. She doesn't follow me from room to room. She isn't over-excited when I greet her when I come home. I have a feeling she just does not like being confined. When I go outside for 5-10 minutes at a time I let her roam around the house alone and she doesn't bark. It is only when I put her in a crate and go outside that she goes nuts immediately.
She was getting really good at potty training for a while. Then she turned into a little hell beast and is now peeing wherever she feels like it. I follow her around and try to stop her mid-stream and place her in the appropriate potty spot but she is driving me nuts =D.
I am introducing her to as many people as possible. I had another friend come over and although wary at first she warmed up to him quickly. She also tries to follow strangers that pass by the front of the house lol.
@tjbart17 oh no. I hope your pup recovers quickly! @jwgca @rikumom bay area NK meetup...I am in! lol. I think it would be fun to caravan down to the AKIHO show too.
Puppy play schedules? Do any of you have one? I take her and play with her in the morning and feed her and let her potty. When I get home from work I try to keep her awake and up and playing as much as possible until bedtime so she doesn't wake up me at 3am in the morning to play. I feel like a meanie when I wake her up from her naps though. lol
I'm starting to conclude some JA pups don't like to be confined/crate trained, and will go through a random pee/poo phase (@MapleTwinkie, @Dennis_Sly both mentioned it recently) It's also possible you're not getting all the urine/poo smells out when you clean, so she thinks it's okay to go randomly.
I'm glad to hear you're not seeing signs of separation anxiety. RE: sleep and play, Meichan wasn't able to sleep through the night when she first came home, she would get up around 3 am to go pee/poo on her wee pad, then play quietly in the dark as long as I ignored her. I had to sleep in the same room w/ her for the first two weeks, the next two we tried to let her sleep alone, led to all night long squawking and crying. So I ended up sleeping in the same room w/ her, w/ the wee pad in the ex pen her first month with us. When she was about 12 weeks old, she could reliably go on her wee pads, we let her sleep in our room, uncrated, and she was able to sleep through the night. No more 3 am pee/poo.
If I was going to get another pup again, we'd put the ex-pen in the kitchen or dinning room area where there's lots of foot traffic. In hindsight, her bedroom was too isolated, too quiet from the rest of the house. Poor Mei must have been scared to be taken away from her parents and siblings and left all alone.
Speaking of wee pads, we have a giant box in storage. If you want to come over you're welcome to it.
RE: play schedule, Meichan can play quietly with her toys and chew treats, so our focus was mainly pup socials on the weekends and pup training class during the week. We found two places that we felt safe bringing her and took her Sat and Sun, and a puppy class during the week. We kept this up until she was about 6.5 months old and had a wart on her toe (common childhood disease), then we dropped out of both socials and class out of concerns for others. The wart went away before the Feb AKIHO show, but by then she was going to day care regularly and playing w/ the adult dogs, she didn't care to play at pup socials anymore (most pup socials are for dogs <6 months, they play the hardest during teething period) I'll probably get her re-enrolled in a puppy class on the weekends again just to keep up the training... it's more for the humans than for her, reminds us to practice
FYI JACA is setup for smaller mini clubs to be formed with in it. If you wanted a Bay Area JA club.
@rikumom was there any reason you decided on using the ex pen over crating? I have been contemplating picking up a pen to see if she does better with being left in it during the day rather than a crate. I let her sleep in my room now uncrated she has been really good about sleeping through the whole night and about peeing on the pads except when I wake up all hell breaks loose and she decides to pee wherever she likes all over the place.
it sounds like i will have to go through the same steps you took with moving her to another room and sleeping with her there for a little bit. it is taking a toll on my poor boyfriend who wakes up about 3 hours after I leave haha.
We know a puppy at 8 wks old can only hold her bladder for at most 2 hours during the day, so it was never our intention to crate her during the day when we weren't home. You can count on a puppy to stay in a crate and hold their bladder/bowel overnight, but during the day, expect them to hold an hour for every month of their age, up to 8 hours. Shibas are freaks when it comes to housebreaking. Don't expect JA to be like shibas.
Our initial set up of Meichan's room was to mimic the breeder @dogmom8's set up-- we had a futon in a spare bedroom, and we linked up two ex-pens, put the baby crate inside w/ the gate off, water bowl and plenty of toys on one side, and newspaper/wee wee pads in the corner. Meichan and her litter mates had a shiba crate in their ex-pen to check out so she was familiar with the crate, but she was never confined in the crate while she was at @dogmom8's that we knew of. Using an ex-pen to partition off the part of the house that the puppy has access is also for safety reasons. We didn't want her to wonder to an electrical cord and start chewing on it.
The size of the crate also makes a huge difference. Meichan had both a baby crate (the shiba Riku's old Varikennel) and a JA-size 36" by 48" by 30" crate with divider. She would play and eat in the baby crate, but she probably overheated and slept on the cold floor. Keep in mind we got her in late August and we don't have AC. W/ the JA size crate, it was so big that she could poo/pee on the bedding on one end and keep herself clean in the other. So that defeated the purpose of crate training.
Once we figured out Meichan was potty trained but had separation anxiety, and any sort of solitary confinement basically triggered the anxiety and made her lose bowel controls, we worked with her to avoid putting her in the situation where she'll fail. When we didn't have the choice of daycare yet, ex-pen was a better choice b/c she'd at least pee/poo on the floor, vs. in the crate she'd get herself all dirty and with the long coat, it takes a looooooooooong time to dry after a bath
She loves her crate btw, she's napping in it right now
Can I ask how big is the crate you're using right now to leave Miyuki home during the day, and how long you let her stay in it?
ps. I read @*jackburton* thread on Kaeda's separation anxiety, and the symptoms were different than Meichan's. Mei's trigger was confinement rather than if we were coming and going
your room set up seems like a very likely solution for me since we have 3 empty bedrooms. I guess one can be Miyuki's lol.
and that is interesting about mochi making less of a mess with the door open. I should get the ex pen as quick as possible then lol thanks for the shopping tip and referring me to doggy loot. any suggestion on height?
Gosh, she was tiny then, about 17# at that time.
Sachi is also Meichan's half sister on the father's side.
Apparently she prefers the coffee table to her crate. When you place a drink on the coffee table she will try to lick it through the glass.
She provides very good company when I am working from home. Although does not provide me with much input when I ask her.
She also sleeps in very odd positions. Puppy contortionist.
She is getting bigger and losing her puppy chubs...her legs are getting SO long.
She goes insane over grass.
I am lucky enough to live a block away from a fenced in soccer field. No one is ever there except for when school is let out. Miyuki gets an entire field to herself! This is a great place to work on our recall. For the most part she is good about it. I've been able to call her back from chasing random birds and squirrels...but her weakness is children. she LOVES children.
A little girl thought she was a raccoon. I think she looks like a cat.
We are working on "Leave it" because she likes picking up random bits of trash on her walks and just hold it in her mouth. You can always tell how hard she is concentrating by the position of her tail. You can tell shes concentrating super hard on a bird she sees off in the distance because she cannot be bothered to curl it up.
Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures. My camera is somewhere buried in moving boxes right now.
Aside from "Leave it" and "Recall" we are working on not being so gosh darn nippy. Damn those needle teeth! She is sleeping through the night now and potty training is damn close to 100%
She is a very rude puppy though when meeting other dogs. She will walk all over their faces and be completely oblivious. Something else to add to the list XD. All in all I think she is coming along really well.
I'd like to eventually start feeding her raw or at least incorporate some raw into her kibble diet and was wondering what the best "beginner raw" cuts of meat you'd suggest starting off with?
Thanks for the photos and sharing your stories!
My dog Saigo is exactly how you describe Miyuki.
We got Saigo at 14 weeks; he refused to be put in a crate and would throw tantrums in there. He would pee and poo in there too. We allowed him free run of the house but had to take him potty outside every 2-3 hours. After about a month, he was fully potty trained. Now at 5 months he can hold it through the night and during the day.
Saigo was bad with puppy etiquette too, he would jump and paw at every dog, wanting to play. After a few snarls and snips, now he's really polite with other dogs. Keep socializing her and she will learn!
I'm so suprised at how far Saigo's come. We will go to doggy parks and I will watch other dogs get into fights, freak out and Saigo will just be there, sitting, staring at them. We'll walk by scary dogs that snarl and bark, and Saigo will just look at them and keep walking, unfazed. He's learned to play properly with smaller dogs too, letting them dominate him a little even though he's the bigger and stronger one. We've really put in hours and hours of socialization every day, it's paying off and I think it's so worth it!