.

Can you believe it – twice in the last few days, the Postman Human stopped by our house and said he had a package for ME!

Max & JD the Schnauzer Brothers

How exciting! The first package was from my blog friends, Max & JD, who live in a faraway place  called England. Their humans had been travelling to another faraway place called Egypt and they had got a little present for me from there…a personalised bandana!

See? The bandana has my name on it written in ‘hieroglyphics‘ which are special writing pictures used by humans living in Egypt a long time ago…how cool is that?!

Well, as some of you know, I have a LOT of bandanas - my humans love to put bandanas on me when we go out walking – and this new one is a great addition to my collection! I couldn’t wait to try it on…and then I had an idea! Remember that clicker training game “Fun with a Box”? Well, I could do my own version: ‘Fun with a Bandana’!

Starting with the traditional look…

Then how about a bit of rustic ‘peasant style’?

Or I could do a cute retro Minnie Mouse look:

Or how about an elegant corsage?

Then there is the hot pink miniskirt… (oh, la! la! )

…or maybe a bit of Ascot flair - work those accessories, dahling!

Not forgetting (Hsin-Yi’s favourite!) – the evil Emperor from ‘Star Wars’ (er, pink version!) !

"The force is strong in you, young Jedi...but do not underestimate the power of the PINK Side"

Kasha the Dainty Dane

And as if that wasn’t all exciting enough, I then had another package from my blog friend, Kasha the Dainty Dane, who lives in a faraway place called Chicago.

This was a little thank you for me helping her to set up her blog…you’re very welcome, Kasha!

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Ooh, I love opening presents…

What beautiful wrapping paper!

Yay! A tug toy! I LOVE tug toys!

This is me doing my “Happy Dance”: When I’m happy and excited – like when my humans come home - I always have to grab something in my mouth and do a little “prancing walk” around the room…do you do this too?

.

Nothing like a good game of tug! Grrrrrrr!

Of course, I still have to remember my manners even when I’m playing tug – like I must always immediately let go when my humans say “Give” – I learnt this from when I was a baby puppy, otherwise they just won’t play with me anymore and it is no fun. I also learnt that I must never put my teeth (even accidentally!) on their skin – if I did, the tug would “go dead” and my humans won’t play with me anymore…so now I’m really careful when I’m grabbing the tug toy.

Some people think that we doggies must never win a tug game otherwise we might get a bit bossy but it’s no fun if we lose all the time! My humans let me win sometimes – as long as I will always let go when they tell me to. And they always end the game when it’s still really exciting, so I know that they are the boss and they decide when to start and stop. 

A lot of humans think that it is bad for us doggies to play tug – some even have silly ideas about it making us dominant - but as long as we are taught these important rules for playing, then it is a great game which most doggies LOVE playing and is a fantastic way for us to bond with our humans.

And guess what? There was also a present for Hsin-Yi in the box: special cards with our names and pictures on them! Isn’t it gorgeous! We love it! Personalised bandana…and now personalised stationary too!

Whew! And then as if all that wasn’t enough excitement, I also found out that I had got 2nd place at Niamh’s ‘Train Your Dog Photo Contest’ and the Reader’s Choice Award in the MangoMinster ‘Hard-Working Group’!

Congratulations to all the other winners and thank you to Niamh and Mango for hosting such fun competitions!

Hmm...I don't like the look of this...

My new home is very different from my old one back in Auckland.

First, it has those slippery wooden floors…although I have to say, I am getting much better and confident about walking on them now! In fact, even though my humans put down rugs for me, I sometimes prefer to just lie on the bare, wooden floor.

My new home is also much bigger – there are lots of rooms in the top part…

…and then there are stairs IN the house (I’ve never had those before!) which go down to a big room in the bottom part. The stairs are very narrow and steep so I find them quite difficult to go up and down.

The big room at the bottom of the house...

Because the house is built on the side of a hill, the garden at the back is lower than the front of the house.

So you have to go down the stairs and through the big room at the bottom of the house to get to the garden…

…so I don’t go there much coz it’s very hard for a big dog like me to go down so many steep steps and it is probably not very good for my joints.

But that’s OK because there is a small patch of grass at the front of the house where I can lie and sun myself…

Sunning myself in the small garden at the front...

There are some other strange things in this new home too…like a big hole in the kitchen wall where I can see my humans -

- and hey, it even comes with a place to rest my big heavy head when I’m tired of holding it up!

I made sure that I found all the sunny patches in my new home very quickly… (Hsin-Yi can’t believe that I would still want to sun myself in this hot weather but actually, I am getting used to it and have stopped panting all the time – and anyway, I just LOOOOOVE the sun! )

 And guess what? My new home comes complete with a doggie neighbour! He is a Bull Terrier and he looks very sweet – although I have only sniffed noses with him through the fence. We have not met his humans but we have heard them calling him so we think his name is Monty.

We feel a bit sorry for him because he is left alone in the garden the whole day, often till 6pm in the evenings -  his humans must be away at work a long time – but at least when they come home, they always let him into the house with them. Many other doggies in Australia seem to be “outside dogs” and are not allowed to go into the home to be with their families at all  - and are often not even taken for walks either, because their humans think that just having a big garden is enough!

When I first arrived in my new home, the rooms were all very empty…

…because our things which were coming on the ship from NZ hadn’t arrived yet. So my humans had nothing to sit on, sleep on, cook or eat with! So they went to one of Hsin-Yi’s favourite places in the world, called IKEA, and bought a few things just so they could live until our things arrived.

Our sofa in Auckland was very old and made of wool – and that would not be nice to sit on in the hot, humid weather here – so my humans sold it and got a new one here! Hsin-Yi is really happy with it because it has washable covers – which is very good for a doggie household that gets lots of hair, mud and slobber!

Here is a picture of us enjoying the new sofa…and see how big my new beanbag bed is??!!

 But last weekend, our things arrived from NZ and we had lots of Mover Humans come to the house again…

…and lots of boxes and mess everywhere…

…of course, I had the important job of supervising again!

(Hsin-Yi: our movers this time were wonderful: courteous, careful and efficient - they restored my faith in removal companies! The company in Auckland was called AusMove and their partner in Brisbane was called Wridgeways – I highly recommend them if anyone is moving between Australia & New Zealand!)

 So this week, my humans are very busy again with unpacking and sorting stuff (and they are starting to do the Work thing again too – so that’s why they haven’t had much time to help me with blogging stuff!).

 Well, one thing that hasn’t changed in my new home is my “house rules”! See, my humans have always been very strict about me following certain rules around the house – from the 1st day I arrived as a baby puppy. For example, I learnt to stay out of the kitchen, to only toilet in a special corner of the garden (NOT on the lawn!), to Sit at the front door when we have visitors and to never go out the front door or beyond the driveway unless I had permission.

Respecting the Kitchen Rule... (my humans put down some temporary masking tape to help me learn the boundaries)

 My humans taught me these rules using commands like “Out!” and “Wait”, my toileting command (“Be Clean”) and my release word, “OK!” – (in the beginning, when I was really little and didn’t understand these commands yet, they had to guide me and use barriers like ’baby gates’ to help me learn) –  it took a lot of consistent repetition in the beginning but once I learnt these good habits, it made life very easy and I could enjoy more freedom around the house because my humans trusted me.

For example, I can safely stay in the front garden by myself – even with the gates open…

Here is a video showing how I “re-learned” these rules in my new home:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpJhq3lwjwQ

A lot of people ask Hsin-Yi how she taught me these rules so well – the secret to training us doggies successfully is to be 100% consistent and to set up the situation and practise before trying to do it in the real thing. Most people fail because they don’t take time to set up and practise a situation – for example, polite manners at the front door: they only try to control us when visitors come for real and us doggies are super-excited and they get flustered and embarrassed and worried about keeping the visitors waiting…and so they let it go “just this once” but of course, we doggies learn that this means we can get away with naughty behaviour if we just push our humans long enough!

When I was learning this rule, Hsin-Yi got Paul to knock on the door lots of times, so I would get excited and then she could practise my door manners with me – and she has also shut the door in visitors’ faces a lot of times, until I could learn to remain sitting calmly when it opened!

This way, us doggies learn that we can never get away with it – not even once,  no matter what we try! – and after a while, we stop trying and it just becomes a good habit. In general, if you never give us doggies a chance to learn bad habits, we will never think of doing them. But give in to us even once in the beginning and we will try even harder next time! Every command that is given to us MUST be enforced – no exceptions – otherwise, it is better not to give the command at all, because it will teach us to ignore our humans.

Respecting the Boundary Rule

You might be wondering why my humans keep the gates open in the front garden – this is because Hsin-Yi does not like dogs that patrol and rush fences, barking at people passing. It encourages aggressive-type behaviours in us doggies, which can then start extending outside the home to barking and lunging when out on walks, etc…

Of course, it is natural territorial behaviour for us doggies to bark at strangers but it is important that humans teach us what is “our territory” and that we should stop barking once we have alerted our pack leaders (our humans). Just rushing aggressively at fences is a bad behaviour to encourage. Dogs who are kept unsupervised all the time in gardens with people walking past, often learn this bad habit very quickly!  Because we doggies think people move away because we scared them off with our barking (when actually, they would have walked on past anyway) – we think we are successful and get rewarded for it – and so we start repeating this behaviour A LOT. And if our humans are not there to supervise and correct this behaviour, we think it is OK to do this.

Us doggies will see any “barrier” as the limit of our territory and will rush to protect it (this is why we often bark & get aggressive in cars but are fine out on the street). By only having the front door as the “barrier” between me and the street, my humans teach me that my territory ends at the front door. By keeping the gate open, there is no barrier so I think that the front garden is just a continuation of the street and I don’t get territorial if someone is just walking past on the pavement. Anyway, I think even if someone just saw me behind the screen door, from the street, they would think twice about coming into our garden – gate or no gate! Hee! Hee!

And by the way, in case you don’t think I make a very good guard dog (due to certain photos with stuffies in the past – ahem!), here is a picture of me on guard duty…believe me, it’s very hard work!

Now you might be thinking that it’s a bit mean making me follow all these rules when I’m just settling into my new home…well, actually, having rules and routines and boundaries actually makes us doggies feel much more happy and secure. We know where we stand and what is expected of us – and this is very important to us. This is a common mistake humans make with ‘rescue doggies’ because they feel sorry for them so they spoil them in their new homes and think they should let them get away with things for a while…and then they can’t understand why their rescue doggies start developing all sorts of anxiety and behavioural problems! In fact, my humans have been surprised at how well I have taken the whole move and it is partly because I have had these familiar old rules to hang on to and give structure and routine to my new life!

Well, I have written a mammoth post again so I’d better stop but I hope you have enjoyed the tour of my new home!

Again, I am so sorry that I have not been able to visit your blogs – hopefully, Hsin-Yi will be less busy next week after all the unpacking and sorting is finished and then she can help me do more blog stuff again!

a family moment...

]]> http://bighoneydog.com/2010/01/new-home/feed/ 48 http://bighoneydog.com/2009/09/dancing-humanpups-furniture-rules/ http://bighoneydog.com/2009/09/dancing-humanpups-furniture-rules/#comments Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:57:28 +0000 bighoneydog http://bighoneydog.com/?p=4441 Continue reading →]]> First of all, I want to say thank you to all of those who were worried about me because of the tsunami possibly hitting Auckland after the earthquake in Samoa - especially my blog  friend, Mr Darcy the Great Dane - we were so touched that he thought of us when he is going in for a big operation himself today! (Mr Darcy has Wobblers and he is a very brave boy). Just to let you all know that we are fine and have not been swept away - in fact, Hsin-Yi was at a modelling shoot last night and didn’t even know about it until she heard it on the radio machine this morning – and I was of course too busy snoozing in my bed!!

Thank you also to everyone for your lovely comments following my bit of grumpiness! I am glad that so many of you understand that some of us doggies are more mellow and harder to motivate!

I also wanted to  say – as my blog friend, Duke, pointed out – that I agree it is important to learn to do basic obedience commands without treats. I do all my Sit, Down, Stay, Heel, Come, Stand, Instant Drop, etc without treats – in fact, I’ll even do Agility without treats! But just for Dancing, I find it much easier to concentrate and focus for the long time needed to do my routines, if Hsin-Yi is holding something yummy in her hand.

Hsin-Yi finds this a bit puzzling – she can’t understand why I can do really difficult Heeling past distractions or lots of Agility obstacles without needing food treats – but can’t do it for Dancing! Well, I think it’s because Dancing is a lot harder ‘coz a lot of the tricks & moves are not very natural for us doggies (who walks backwards normally??) and have to be done in perfect time with our humans and the music – we have to concentrate a lot harder! Stuff like Agility is sort of more fun – just running makes me excited and motivated and the whole course only takes seconds to run - whereas dancing routines usually take several minutes…which is a long time to remain focused and doing trick after trick in perfect time!  Obedience exerices are less fun but they are easier too ‘coz they are just one exercise at a time and we get to “break off” after doing each one – and we don’t have to be in time to the music!

But anyway, Hsin-Yi did say that I could learn to do it without treats if we really spent the time in training – anything is possible with enough practice! – but it’s not really a worthwhile way to spend our time when we could be learning lots of new tricks and moves – and new routines instead- which we think is much more impressive than working for nothing!

Speaking of dancing, I thought I’d show you some video of me doing dancing practice with some human pups!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLTDbgYnWQA

I’ve still got lots to tell you (updates on my Agility and swimming lessons!) and I’m having a really exciting week but Hsin-Yi has to rush off to the set again for the 2nd day of her shoot so she isn’t able to help me sort out photos and make videos…so I will have to tell you all about it later in the week!

But I’ll leave you with a couple of photos of me cuddling with my human: I am not allowed on the furniture but I’ve got my own giant comfy beanbag (which I love more than anything else!) and my humans always come down to the floor to cuddle with me, so I don’t mind!

Actually, when I was a bit sicky last year, they felt sorry for me and once invited me onto the sofa but I didn’t want to get on!  See, with us doggies, it really is a case of “what you don’t know, you don’t miss” – I’ve never been on the furniture so I never even think of it.

Hsin-Yi says it is not a bad thing if dogs go on furniture – it is just a personal choice. Because I drool lots (and I take up lots of room!), they decided to keep the furniture for humans only.

The hard part is when humans keep changing the rules – that makes us really confused and stressy. Of course, we can learn to stay off the sofa unless we are invited on – or to only go on ONE particular sofa – as long as our humans are really good about “being consistent” which means sticking to those rules ALL THE TIME and helping us learn the rules in the beginning by practising lots. For example, if we are only allowed on the sofa by invitation, then if we just hop on ourselves – our humans should tell us to get off….make us wait – and then give us the command (always the same one!) for coming on the sofa – so that we learn that we can only get on when we have permission. This is the same for doggies going on the bed as well. It might seem a bit silly going through this ritual if the humans are going to allow us up anyway but it is really important to do it, so we understand what “by invitation” means.

I'm allowed to sit sometimes with just my bum on the sofa!

However, my trainer, Flip, says that it can be really hard to have this “by invitation” rule – ‘coz some doggies are cheeky and will keep trying to break the rule and hop on by themselves, even when the humans are not around to invite them! So it is usually easier just to have a ‘Completely-off-the-furniture’ or ‘Always-allowed-on-the-furniture-anytime’ rule.

There is a big myth that if you allow doggies onto the furniture, it will make us “dominant”. Yes, doggies who are too bossy to their humans and think that they are the pack leader (and especially if they start growling at their humans for trying to move them!) sometimes need to lose their furniture privileges so that they remember that their humans control all the resources (ie. they decide when we can get the good stuff like food & toys and comfy places!) - and that they need to respect their humans more and earn their rewards…but otherwise, as long as humans show us very clear rules and always make us work for things, like doing a polite Sit first, then Hsin-Yi says letting us doggies on the bed or sofa does not make us want to rule the world like a baddie in a James Bond movie!

Still, I must say – I love going to my Vet because they have a sofa there that they let me sit on!