I want to get a dog but I have to work, how does everyone on broadway market do it ?

first we had to make the crate attractive.

treats and meals would be placed inside the crate with the door locked. the hounds could see this but couldn't get in. we'd then open the door and let them in for the treat or meal.

initially we'd leave the door open.

as they became more familiar with the crates we'd close the door - often with things that would take a while to eat - marrow bones or similar (these also encourage suckling action which has a calming effect on dogs)

once the crate was a comfortable place we'd feed the dogs in their crates. or just place treats in there and let them follow the treat in

our doorbell has the switch outside the house but is wireless and can be triggered by pressing a button on the actual bell bit. holding treats we would press the chime button and then walk to the crates and put the treats inside and the dogs would follow. then close the door of the crates and walk to the front door and open it.

initially the dogs would bark each time the doorbell rang, but as they became more familiar with the game it was clearly more rewarding to go straight to the crate for a treat.

now the doorbell goes and they scarper to their crates, treats are thrown in and the doors shut. we then go and open the front door and the person is not greeted by two ginger idiots throwing themselves noisily at them.

they still bark a little bit much less than before and the risk is now managed.

That's interesting. The crate being attractive bit is already done - he goes to it of his own accord whenever he sees me getting ready to leave the house, and spends time in there with bones and treats when he's on his own in the house. He's also happy to go in there with the crate door open when I'm at home, as long as I'm in the same room, otherwise he'll come and find me. So basically crate trained.

I have the same electronic door bell set up, so will try the next step...

The good thing is it's a complete behaviour change rather than trying to modify their previous behaviour. Asking Sidney to sit and be calm when someone came to the door was impossible, he had already shot into an excited state. Instead we have just instated a different output, bell rings, and it is associated with a treat and time out in the crate.

you can get your kids to stand outside and trigger the bell from the door too. our dogs got wise to the fact that one of us standing near the bell signified the training was about to start.

Good idea, will let you know how things go.

It took about ten days to instill the new behaviour. The door ringing no longer triggers a frantic scramble from the dogs or us.

OK So our lurcher Rosa is getting a bit antsy around other dogs ... ones that run at us fast and want to play, mostly. happened with Professor Green's dog in Brockley the other day. His was going a bit bonkers, he's a young boxer/lanky bulldog thing. She seems kind of scared.

We're still walking always on the lead because we're just working on recall at the moment. She's a sighthound, and looks like she might be quite fast, so we're pretty scared of losing her if a fox or rabbit attracts her away from us when recall is not attractive to her. There's a small park near us with gates where we're starting this training. Still on a house line at the mo. Will let her off once the house line stuff feels really bedded in.

Any advice on how to keep her calm whilst on the lead when other dogs are not? At the mo we've found just walking off at 90 degrees to the route we were on helps diffuse things, with plenty of reassurance to Rosa.

It doesn't help that some dogs get more anxious on the lead than off. Ours had the worst lead anxiety in the period before we finally let him off. We did have a few times when he left the park and crossed a road in the first year, which is a worry when it happens.

If you are around the park at the same time every day it helps to see who your dog likes and try and hang with them. Then drop the lead for a while and see what happens, ours was much happier but he likes to give some dogs a very very wide berth which is why the lead was frightening him.

A lurcher is going to run a fair distance usually, the ones I see in our local park are no problem but often a big distance from their owners.

Dogs will show more anxiety when they are on the lead and another dog is off lead. They tend to feel a greater need to defend their handler.

Recall is best practiced in an enclosed field and initially needs to be given high value rewards. Start with short distances and slowly build up. It can be tempting to want to try longer distances but instead it's better to practice and get 100% success rather than set the situation up to fail.

You want to have a dog that defers judgement to you rather than make decisions for itself. They need to keep on checking in with their handler.

We have been doing a lot of retrieve work (dropping dummies and sending the dogs back to fetch them). As a result out dogs are looking to us a lot more as they are hoping there is a game (and thus a reward to follow).

Our boy is very reactive to other dogs but if he is involved in a retrieve game other hounds are of no interest.

Yeah, we always try to be very friendly and confident confident with other dogs that come and say hello!

We also use very long klix (I think that's the brand name) leads for our dogs when they are exuberant but need some space. They are about 10m long so give the dog some freedom, we let them drag along the ground and will shout "gently" and lightly put a foot on the lead (to add friction) to get them to slow or about "stop" if putting full weight on and wanting an immediate halt.

Ha! Your pup looks cute!

Rudy was the opposite at puppy training class. He was always running around saying hello to all the other puppies! (which is why his lack of confidence is weird) Maybe hazel will turn out being super confident!

@AirTime

It doesn't help that some dogs get more anxious on the lead than off.

@dancing james

Dogs will show more anxiety when they are on the lead and another dog is off lead. They tend to feel a greater need to defend their handler.

You both seem to have got exactly what I've been wondering might be the case.

Thanks for advice on recall James. Some of it is definitely JUTFB but it's worth reminding to keep going on at the simpler stuff so it's really hammered home, and not rush things.

I've got this feeling that when I finally let her off she's going to be just fine. She's obviously been fairly well trained by a previous owner, just as she's 8 or 9 maybe a bit hard for her to now adapt to our versions of commands etc.

dogs are like people and learn in different ways. we actually found some of the stuff suggested to us by a couple of different canine behaviourists to be utterly useless for our dogs.

it has also been a challenge to find appropriate rewarding strategy as our bitch is very keen on food as a reward, the boy on the other hand is more keen on praise and ball retrieving as a reward. he will come back and take a treat as part of the game itself but will immediately drop it, a ruffle of the ears and throw of the ball is much more relevant to him. he is so excited and has some much adrenaline that food is not interesting to him.

on a different note

we are now muzzle training both of them. not because we think they are dangerous but because all it takes is one person to claim they felt threatened by a dog that is off the lead and it can then be classified as a dangerous dog. so they are muzzled to protect them from potential complaints. a friend of ours recently had problems of this nature and had to deal with police visits etc - it was all resolved with no further action but we'd hate to put our dogs at risk. sadly i think muzzles will become more commonplace in future.

it took a week or so of squeezing primula cheese into the muzzles to make them attractive to the dogs whilst indoors at home to get the dogs accustomed to them. the dog is not bothered by the muzzle at all, the girl scratches at it occasionally. it is really easy to reward them while wearing the muzzle with a smear of primula onto the muzzle straight from the tube.

A dog (some sort of sheep dog type breed) nipped my ankle when I cycled past it a while ago, I just chalked it up as one of those things, never occurred to me to stop and have a pop, or call the coppers.

Technically this is correct http://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Dangerous_Dog_Offences_Definitive_Guideline_9web_final.pdf

But how the police react to this is really inconsistent. Herbie has been attacked twice by the same two dogs - a staff and a pit cross - first time when he was a pup, the second time at just over a year old. Both dogs were off the lead on both occasions and clearly "dangerously out of control in a public place" - an offence. When I took it to the police in Brixton after the second incident, they told me that they don't do anything about a "dog on dog" (yes really) incident. I pointed out to them that had the dog they attacked been smaller and its owner elderly, for example, then the outcome would certainly have been different. They said that if I'd been bitten then they would take action, or if a dog had been killed then it would be criminal damage and they would act. Otherwise, not interested.

As it turns out, both dogs seem to have been moved on. The staff is missing half of its right ear following the second incident...

Our friends dog was out with a dog walker and got involved in a scrap with another dog. The owner of the other dog tried to separate the two and got nipped, no blood drawn and it was not clear which dog even bit him. The incident was then reported to the police on the insistence of a busybody who did not even see the incident.

It's this kind of stupidity that we wish to protect our dogs from.

And on the front door tip.

Something we would sometimes do was let the dogs see a reward be placed in the locked cage, they'd sit salivating watching. The moment the bell rang we'd then open the cage.

Our dog is leagues better off the lead than on. It's very easy to transmit fear or aggression through the lead, particularly with protective breeds. When we got him, he'd lunge at anything that came near, now he's perfect with me but still not ideal with the Mrs (he's very protective of her.)

In a moderately amusing episode a pug and two French Bulldogs went for him and he ended up corralling all of them and their owner by running around barking and nipping at ankles. Basically if you're not his pack, you're going to get herded!

Fortunately one of his previous owners must have been very strict on not heeling people.

I've recently been teaching him to guard which he really enjoys. He gets a bit bored with fetch and seek games, though he's great at finding the mrs if I loose her in Home Depot or similar.

On alerting at the door bell - he'll bark at strangers to warn us, typically just once or twice when they come through the front gate. He doesn't bark when we come back but just sits waiting. I'm pretty happy with that.

Here's another gratuitous pic of the wee fella from his summer holidays. Not a fan of all the driving but this was a happy moment in 'cow country.' True to breed, he is obsessed with cattle, despite never meeting any until this spring!

that post was more or @Markyboy

Took the dog out for a walk. Well he was galopping and I was giving my all on the bike.

He did not pull once on the leash me on the bike before I let him loose.

1 Attachment

He looks like a very good boy.