Tomoe was pretty much like everyone in the family during the two blizzards we had here in central MD. The first one was awesome fun times. The second one was depressing and stressful. The day after the second blizzard, she finally figured out that she could climb on top of the snowbanks and explore the World Outside the Fence. So we had to tether her for awhile and that was no fun for anybody.
As the snow started to thaw and we could leave her outside again without worrying about her getting out of the yard, she suddenly had this EXTREMELY barky phase. Everybody walking by the yard got a stern talking-to. I was starting to worry about the inconvenience and annoyance to my neighbors but she has gone back to being very quiet when I let her out in the morning with only a couple barks here and there instead of the string of canine profanities.
My theory is that the snow prevented the usual morning dog walkers from letting their dogs up to the fence to touch noses with Tomoe. Or maybe she is just less threatened by people now that there is less snow on the ground. Perhaps traffic along the trails in my neighborhood was in flux for awhile.
The things that make me most proud of her right now are that she is always happy to go into her crate when I need her to. She is generally pretty quiet. And she has decided that she loves to fetch! I have never had a dog that would bring stuff back to me when I threw it. Tomoe really gets this and it is one of her favorite games.
She's not good at catching yet but I try to give her some practice every day. We also play "find it" around the house sometimes - which is probably more fascinating for me, watching her decide how to search the house for her sheep. She doesn't seem to use her nose at all - she LOOKS for the sheep. Anyway she's not ready for me to put the sheep absolutely anywhere and expect her to find it yet.
What am I not proud of at the moment? For one, she is going through a phase where she will NOT come in when I call her - again. I call to her, and she'll come around to where she can see me. But then she CONSIDERS carefully whether she should come in, and decides not to. She plays the "I can jump just outside of your reach after you give me a treat to try to coax me inside" game. Of course there have been two or three times when I have had absolutely no option but to chase her. Ugh! Its just not possible to follow all the correct advice sometimes.
This monday I started once again trying to get her to hang out around the house during the day, rather than in her crate. At first she was okay, she just chewed one item. Second day she chewed a bunch of stuff I probably should have removed from her area. Third day, she chewed something I totally didn't expect her to chew. But this was exciting, because she wasn't pooping or peeing in the house! And she was eating the food I left out for her, since she never seems to want to eat in the mornings, even if the last time she ate was 6pm previous day!
But today I came home for lunch and she had made a gigantic mess, numbers one through two. So I guess we are back to the drawing board.
My friend says Kishu are sight hounds, course they do use their noses as well, but I thought it was an interesting observation. Not sure what it was based on, guess I could ask him.
Shigeru, you know....that would make a lot of sense.
When I open the upper-level door and call to her, after a while she will come running - just to where she can see me. Then I keep calling and she just looks at me.
January and previous, if i went downstairs and opened THAT door, she would have to come down the basement stairs to get to where she could see me. Then she would come on in.
I think what happens is, I call her, and since she IS a good dog, she comes to me....but her herited traits tell her that means "go to where you can see him." And then I guess I have trained her that eventually I will come out and play the game where I am the scary predator, which is one of her favorites.
Tomoe is looking good! Glad to hear that for the most part she is doing well...
And I absolutely feel your pain on the 'not coming when called' issue... Nola does the same thing. I call her, she will come to where she can see me and determine if I am more interesting than being outside... about 60% of the time I AM more interesting, but that 40% that outside is better REALLY gets on my nerves! lol. Luckily a bag of sweet potato sticks usually will convince her that I am definitely cooler than being outside.
If I may make a suggestion, you might want to practice recall with her when you don't actually care if she's inside or out.
When I was teaching my dogs yard etiquette (my HOA put up a fence next to my townhouse when Joey was about 1.5 years old), I would go out there with a pocket full of treats. Every few minutes I would call them too me, treat them, and then send them on their way. The point was to teach them that coming when called doesn't mean fun has to end. Now that we've practiced that for a few months, I can reliably (99% of the time) get them to come trotting over to me on the first call when it's time to go inside. I still treat them probably 70-80% of the time when we leave the yard just to keep up the positive association. This type of training is dependent on your dogs age and food motivation to some degree, but it's worth a shot.
I need to give that another try. I screwed that up months ago by REALLY needing to bring her in one day and reaching for her collar. I think there is no game on earth more fun that the game where I am the predator and she is the prey, because she LOVES any chance to play that one.
Lately I have been walking up to her displaying the leash and trying to get her to calm down so that she lets me snag her collar. She seems happy enough with this drill but it isn't doing anything to get her to actually come all the to me when I call.
Taro has been doing alot of scent tracking lately, he also will sniff the air when we start down wind of a pigs nest. I have seen Taro follow scent like a hound dog just without all the baying
The other week Saki really wanted to check out cherry blossoms. Taking the dog into DC to see the serious shizzie was out of the question since parking is impossible downtown and you can't take dogs on the Metro. So we hit DC ourselves on Friday (given the choice between tourists and the self-important idiots in DC who can't figure out why it is so hard to drive through the Mall on a 65 degree day in April...let's just say I am asking ice cream vendors how to get to the Metro), and then Sunday, we took Tomoe to Bethesda.
There is a bicycle superhighway that passes through Bethesda, and along this bikes-and-joggers-only road, named the Capital Crescent Trail, is a Bethesda neighborhood called Kenwood, where every home owner is required by terms of their community association contract to keep cherry trees in their front yard. It was a gorgeous walk though I became impatient with its pavedness.
Anyway Tomoe found it all terribly interesting. When we arrived in Kenwood we found a park filled with just the right amount of picnickers. The feeling in the place was so vibrant and festive without being loud or crowded. This really old guy, I think he was Sicilian, in a wheelchair with oxygen mask said to me "Excuse me, sir, but what kind of brand of dog is this you have?" I told him Tomoe was a Kishu, a Japanese hunting breed and he said, "Of course. A Japanese hunting dog. This is simply amazing. Here, I introduce to you my nephew Vincent, he is dog expert!" A couple minutes later, an extremely excited Rotty on an exendo-leash held by a boy who was not able to control the dog got all over Tomoe. Vincent was standing right there and just interposed himself...the Rotty retreated and the old man proclaimed "You see? I told you he was dog expert!" Well, Vincent said, "If this doesn't work, then I kick." But I won't hold that against him, because it was all very amusing.
The photo with me holding Tomoe was in that little park. I also included a pic I took of Saki and Tomoe. Seems like you can have a hard time finding pics that adequately show the real size of a medium-sized nihonken, so I hope these are useful for that. Tomoe's got some bulking out to do still, but I don't think she's going to be a lot taller or longer than she is now.
On the return hike, we detoured onto a local foot trail, and you know what? Really interesting thing, there were at least three off-leash dogs running around with their owners. This is fascinating to me because Bethesda is basically a town built for successful lawyers. On the Capital Crescent Trail itself, they are all like "you must verabally warn people you are about to pass them on a bike" and everyone guilts / shames / browbeats each other into following that rule closely. The side trail we were on said "NO OFF LEASH DOGS" fairly clearly, but at least three dog owners we passed didn't feel the rules applied to them.
Last weekend we took Tomoe to downtown Silver Spring to hit the swank pet store there...picked her up a Palisades pack!! Also, there was a guy who has a dog training buisness there giving "free advice" in hopes of scaring up buisness. I was only vaguely impressed with his technique, which used space-taking, collar pops, the TSST sound and all of that Caesar jazz. Nice guy though.
Tomoe was SO GOOD having her harness fitted. She was completely docile for the girl who works at the store. Then we walked down the block and had food at an Irish pub with an outdoor seating area, she lay down next to me nice and quiet as can be and sniffed and watched passers-by.
She still poops and pees while I am at work though - definitely no angel.
Are you not crating her when you're at work? I bet that would fix the potty training problem pretty quickly. Remember, it's easier to teach a behavior you want than to try to have a dog unlearn a behavior you don't like. Now that she's learned that going potty while you're away is alright, it's going to be more difficult to train her to stop.
So how do you housebreak a dog then anyway? I don't get it.
Seems to me I have two options:
1) just forget about housebreaking her, lock her up in her crate whenever we are out of the house. If somebody breaks in, hopefully they will just take all my stuff and not hurt her.
2) leave her out of her crate during the day until I come home for lunch, hope she eventually learns that when I come in and there is no mess I am really happy but when I come home to a mess I am not happy (I don't yell or rub her nose in it or anything like that, I just act unenthused to see her and speak in low growly tones).
While I have taken timelapse video of her in her crate all day and she seems quite content, if she has been in her crate she bounces off the walls in the evening. Seems calmer if she has had some housetime. I just can't do this modern thing where dogs spend all their time in crates, it just feels wrong for me.
So while 2) is obviously dumb and revolves around something like a superstition, it seems to be the only thing I can try. She is way too smart to get caught doing her business in the house, so I have no opportunity to properly negatively mark the behavior. I tried my best to praise the heck out of her for doing her business outside when she was a pup but she is too demure to do that when somebody's watching these days.
I've even made a lot of progress with keeping her feeding and water on a schedule in the mornings.
Last dogs I had, seems like they figured it out by now.
Isolate her to an exercise pen or one small room, preferably with linoleum or a hard surface, with a large area laid down with wee pads or newspaper for her to do her business. Have her crate in the exercise pen or small room but leave it open. Line the crate with something soft where she would prefer to sleep in it over the floor.
Soak up the weepads/newspapers with some pee smell from a previous accident. She's already lost her inhibition to go potty inside the house, but you can still train her to pick a spot. When her aim on the weepad/newspaper becomes good, start reducing the size of the weepad/area.
Once she goes reliably without missing, you can give her a little more room to roam and migrate the weepad/newspaper closer and closer to the door. Eventually, you want to be able to put the weepad/newspaper outside.
In the interim, use a lot of enzymatic cleaners to really clean out the undesirable areas where she's gone before. If you have carpet, buy a black light to pinpoint any missed spots.
Love the pics, it's amazing how much she has grown:)
Locking them up in the crate when you are gone doesn't have to be a permanent thing. You can do it for until she get used to holding it in while you are at work, then work towards no longer crating her.
Well, if you're against crating her, then I'd say your only other option is to hire someone to walk her during the day.
I will point out that not wanting to crate her is your limitation, not hers. My dogs were crated until a year old while I was at work. Now they get to hang in a sectioned off part of the kitchen that has both of their crates and is surrounded by an x-pen on 2 sides and walls on the others. If they are properly exercised regularly, they calm down shortly after I get home.
I'll also point out that crating isn't a "modern" thing. Dogs have been kenneled for ages. A crate is just an indoor kennel. Tomoe clearly doesn't equate being in the house were "her space" because no dog likes to soil their own space. So your options are either to confine her more so she learns that indoors is her space and should remain clean (crate her) or leave her outside during the day so she can piss and poop without a problem. You can get outdoor kennels that will easily contain a Kishu for relatively cheap. See this one for example.
If the "modern" crate thing is not your style, and you are uncomfortable with keeping her outside for the 8 hours while you are gone, but you don't want messes at home on the floor while gone... Then you could always try one of these (and take her with you):
Comments
It's about time that you blessed us with Tomoe's presence in some spam. She's looking good!
As the snow started to thaw and we could leave her outside again without worrying about her getting out of the yard, she suddenly had this EXTREMELY barky phase. Everybody walking by the yard got a stern talking-to. I was starting to worry about the inconvenience and annoyance to my neighbors but she has gone back to being very quiet when I let her out in the morning with only a couple barks here and there instead of the string of canine profanities.
My theory is that the snow prevented the usual morning dog walkers from letting their dogs up to the fence to touch noses with Tomoe. Or maybe she is just less threatened by people now that there is less snow on the ground. Perhaps traffic along the trails in my neighborhood was in flux for awhile.
The things that make me most proud of her right now are that she is always happy to go into her crate when I need her to. She is generally pretty quiet. And she has decided that she loves to fetch! I have never had a dog that would bring stuff back to me when I threw it. Tomoe really gets this and it is one of her favorite games.
She's not good at catching yet but I try to give her some practice every day. We also play "find it" around the house sometimes - which is probably more fascinating for me, watching her decide how to search the house for her sheep. She doesn't seem to use her nose at all - she LOOKS for the sheep. Anyway she's not ready for me to put the sheep absolutely anywhere and expect her to find it yet.
What am I not proud of at the moment? For one, she is going through a phase where she will NOT come in when I call her - again. I call to her, and she'll come around to where she can see me. But then she CONSIDERS carefully whether she should come in, and decides not to. She plays the "I can jump just outside of your reach after you give me a treat to try to coax me inside" game. Of course there have been two or three times when I have had absolutely no option but to chase her. Ugh! Its just not possible to follow all the correct advice sometimes.
This monday I started once again trying to get her to hang out around the house during the day, rather than in her crate. At first she was okay, she just chewed one item. Second day she chewed a bunch of stuff I probably should have removed from her area. Third day, she chewed something I totally didn't expect her to chew. But this was exciting, because she wasn't pooping or peeing in the house! And she was eating the food I left out for her, since she never seems to want to eat in the mornings, even if the last time she ate was 6pm previous day!
But today I came home for lunch and she had made a gigantic mess, numbers one through two. So I guess we are back to the drawing board.
^^
When I open the upper-level door and call to her, after a while she will come running - just to where she can see me. Then I keep calling and she just looks at me.
January and previous, if i went downstairs and opened THAT door, she would have to come down the basement stairs to get to where she could see me. Then she would come on in.
I think what happens is, I call her, and since she IS a good dog, she comes to me....but her herited traits tell her that means "go to where you can see him." And then I guess I have trained her that eventually I will come out and play the game where I am the scary predator, which is one of her favorites.
And I absolutely feel your pain on the 'not coming when called' issue... Nola does the same thing. I call her, she will come to where she can see me and determine if I am more interesting than being outside... about 60% of the time I AM more interesting, but that 40% that outside is better REALLY gets on my nerves! lol.
When I was teaching my dogs yard etiquette (my HOA put up a fence next to my townhouse when Joey was about 1.5 years old), I would go out there with a pocket full of treats. Every few minutes I would call them too me, treat them, and then send them on their way. The point was to teach them that coming when called doesn't mean fun has to end. Now that we've practiced that for a few months, I can reliably (99% of the time) get them to come trotting over to me on the first call when it's time to go inside. I still treat them probably 70-80% of the time when we leave the yard just to keep up the positive association. This type of training is dependent on your dogs age and food motivation to some degree, but it's worth a shot.
Good luck!
Lately I have been walking up to her displaying the leash and trying to get her to calm down so that she lets me snag her collar. She seems happy enough with this drill but it isn't doing anything to get her to actually come all the to me when I call.
And wow, the "snowpocalyse" is amazing as well.
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Yup, the Recall Game...call, treat and send away...that's how I started my Shikoku on recall! =]
There is a bicycle superhighway that passes through Bethesda, and along this bikes-and-joggers-only road, named the Capital Crescent Trail, is a Bethesda neighborhood called Kenwood, where every home owner is required by terms of their community association contract to keep cherry trees in their front yard. It was a gorgeous walk though I became impatient with its pavedness.
Anyway Tomoe found it all terribly interesting. When we arrived in Kenwood we found a park filled with just the right amount of picnickers. The feeling in the place was so vibrant and festive without being loud or crowded. This really old guy, I think he was Sicilian, in a wheelchair with oxygen mask said to me "Excuse me, sir, but what kind of brand of dog is this you have?" I told him Tomoe was a Kishu, a Japanese hunting breed and he said, "Of course. A Japanese hunting dog. This is simply amazing. Here, I introduce to you my nephew Vincent, he is dog expert!" A couple minutes later, an extremely excited Rotty on an exendo-leash held by a boy who was not able to control the dog got all over Tomoe. Vincent was standing right there and just interposed himself...the Rotty retreated and the old man proclaimed "You see? I told you he was dog expert!" Well, Vincent said, "If this doesn't work, then I kick." But I won't hold that against him, because it was all very amusing.
The photo with me holding Tomoe was in that little park. I also included a pic I took of Saki and Tomoe. Seems like you can have a hard time finding pics that adequately show the real size of a medium-sized nihonken, so I hope these are useful for that. Tomoe's got some bulking out to do still, but I don't think she's going to be a lot taller or longer than she is now.
On the return hike, we detoured onto a local foot trail, and you know what? Really interesting thing, there were at least three off-leash dogs running around with their owners. This is fascinating to me because Bethesda is basically a town built for successful lawyers. On the Capital Crescent Trail itself, they are all like "you must verabally warn people you are about to pass them on a bike" and everyone guilts / shames / browbeats each other into following that rule closely. The side trail we were on said "NO OFF LEASH DOGS" fairly clearly, but at least three dog owners we passed didn't feel the rules applied to them.
Tomoe was SO GOOD having her harness fitted. She was completely docile for the girl who works at the store. Then we walked down the block and had food at an Irish pub with an outdoor seating area, she lay down next to me nice and quiet as can be and sniffed and watched passers-by.
She still poops and pees while I am at work though - definitely no angel.
Are you not crating her when you're at work? I bet that would fix the potty training problem pretty quickly. Remember, it's easier to teach a behavior you want than to try to have a dog unlearn a behavior you don't like. Now that she's learned that going potty while you're away is alright, it's going to be more difficult to train her to stop.
Seems to me I have two options:
1) just forget about housebreaking her, lock her up in her crate whenever we are out of the house. If somebody breaks in, hopefully they will just take all my stuff and not hurt her.
2) leave her out of her crate during the day until I come home for lunch, hope she eventually learns that when I come in and there is no mess I am really happy but when I come home to a mess I am not happy (I don't yell or rub her nose in it or anything like that, I just act unenthused to see her and speak in low growly tones).
While I have taken timelapse video of her in her crate all day and she seems quite content, if she has been in her crate she bounces off the walls in the evening. Seems calmer if she has had some housetime. I just can't do this modern thing where dogs spend all their time in crates, it just feels wrong for me.
So while 2) is obviously dumb and revolves around something like a superstition, it seems to be the only thing I can try. She is way too smart to get caught doing her business in the house, so I have no opportunity to properly negatively mark the behavior. I tried my best to praise the heck out of her for doing her business outside when she was a pup but she is too demure to do that when somebody's watching these days.
I've even made a lot of progress with keeping her feeding and water on a schedule in the mornings.
Last dogs I had, seems like they figured it out by now.
Soak up the weepads/newspapers with some pee smell from a previous accident. She's already lost her inhibition to go potty inside the house, but you can still train her to pick a spot. When her aim on the weepad/newspaper becomes good, start reducing the size of the weepad/area.
Once she goes reliably without missing, you can give her a little more room to roam and migrate the weepad/newspaper closer and closer to the door. Eventually, you want to be able to put the weepad/newspaper outside.
In the interim, use a lot of enzymatic cleaners to really clean out the undesirable areas where she's gone before. If you have carpet, buy a black light to pinpoint any missed spots.
Locking them up in the crate when you are gone doesn't have to be a permanent thing. You can do it for until she get used to holding it in while you are at work, then work towards no longer crating her.
I will point out that not wanting to crate her is your limitation, not hers. My dogs were crated until a year old while I was at work. Now they get to hang in a sectioned off part of the kitchen that has both of their crates and is surrounded by an x-pen on 2 sides and walls on the others. If they are properly exercised regularly, they calm down shortly after I get home.
I'll also point out that crating isn't a "modern" thing. Dogs have been kenneled for ages. A crate is just an indoor kennel. Tomoe clearly doesn't equate being in the house were "her space" because no dog likes to soil their own space. So your options are either to confine her more so she learns that indoors is her space and should remain clean (crate her) or leave her outside during the day so she can piss and poop without a problem. You can get outdoor kennels that will easily contain a Kishu for relatively cheap. See this one for example.
http://cdn3.ioffer.com/img/item/140/713/767/o7DX.jpg
:oP
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