Continue reading... "how this freaky site works..."

GUINEVERE

Hey there;
My girlfriend and I recently stumbled across your site while looking up information for our young
Italian Greyhound, Guinevere, born 5/31/05. She looks strikingly similar to the IG you posted about
named Swanky! She not only looks similar, but also seems to have many similar behaviors.

She is a terror when she starts play biting. She has learned to start barking at us incessantly when
excited. She gets very upset when place her in her kennel to leave the apartment...in fact, I'm very
concerned about that because she seems to be rubbing a spot on the top of her nose raw while in her
kennel. She will not sleep through a whole night in her kennel...she wakes up sometimes as many as 5 or 6 times (but lately we've been working on helping her be a lot more comfortable in there...she has
been waking up two or three).

She has made great progress in house training--she will relieve herself outside as long as we are near
and the backdoor is open. If the backdoor is closed or we are not near her (i.e., we leave the room), she will almost always relieve herself in the house seemingly out of spite (even if the door is open!).

We have tried many many things to calm her play biting. We have tried to tell her no and lightly
restrain her and hold her muzzle lightly, but she will become EXTREMELY agitated and fights harder and harder until we can't hold her anymore. We've tried (and currently maintain) saying "ow!" loudly and ignoring her, which worked at first, but now seems to entice her to bite more...or, when she wants us to leave her alone, she will start biting I think specifically because she knows we will leave her alone. We will sometimes spray our hands, feet, clothes, faces, ears with bitter apple to deter her when she gets too hyper. Recently we discovered getting down and growling/barking gets her attention quick, but she will jsut start barking when we do that now.

Ok...this message is certainly very long. Rest assured, we keep trying everything we can to condition her behaviors, but we're getting stumped. I'm tired of having scratched wrists and hands, tired of her barking, tired of waking up in the middle of the night to let her outside (she does not have a UTI, the vet double checked), and worried about her little nose when we aren't near her. Could you help? Any suggestions? Also, I would love to send you a picture of her, too...

Thanks so much for your time.

SWANKY

read my professional response here...

Continue reading... "questions from readers; "swanky's clone"..."

Here we are at the end of a long road, at times it was rough but we all got through it alive and contented. Swanky is now officially a member of the society of well-behaved dogs and he has a diploma to show all visitors who come to his swanky apartment overlooking New York's coveted Long Beach spread. He no longer humps legs OR arms, knows a handful of commands and their hand signals, is somehow mysteriously a hundred times cuter than the first time we met, and his once bad decisions are turning into better and best decisions.

Continue reading... "Swanky #6 (graduation time for Swank, time for Swank to graduate...)"

He's figured out that when he goes into his litterbox and makes the "I'm going to the bathroom" noise (moving around the litter pellets, shuffling around and coming back out), that he gets a treat just the same as when he actually outputs. Mother has caught on to the trick even when he presumptuously comes out of the litterbox and sits like a pro, waiting for the bit for his imaginary feat. I've only known of one other dog who has caught onto the possibility of faking a pee for a cookie. Swanky=specialness.

Continue reading... "Swanky #5. Smart enough to manipulate humans..."

He has realized that his bed can be gutted, little by little. It's a cute bed sent by the breeder dierkings.com , with little bows of yarn jutting out of every third inch of fabric. Not the best design for a dog bed, because the yarny things become targets for tug-of-war when there's nothing else to do or when nobody wants to play with you anymore. Then the stuffing starts to come out and it's all downhill from there. It's like the first kill, Swanky gets extreme pleasure out of dismembering and removing the fluffy gut of the "animal", and if we're not careful, he could become fixated on anything that has fluff inside (pillows, stuffed animals, THE NEW MICROFIBER COUCH, etc.) So when he started acting like he was beating the tar out of this thing, I suggested it be taken away, never to be seen again.

We started the "down" command for food next. This was difficult for a few reasons; he almost never lays down in a straight line. Instead, he curls himself so tightly that he becomes a fourth of his normal size. Therefore, doing the regular "down" command was quite unnatural for him, so he put his chest to the floor and kept his teeny rump up in the air. At first, we rewarded that with the treat because, let's be honest, it was the best he could do. When we did some physical prompting (trying to gently force him into the position), he took it as a reason to start flitting around and getting distracted so we just kept guiding him with the food. Eventually, he got the motion of the position and looked semi-comfortable in the "down". We stopped there, leaving the homework assignment of repeating the protocol over and over and over and over so he could memorize it.

When I was saying my goodbyes, Swanky revealed to me that if he gets access to an ear, he will shove his entire tongue into it and frantically (but thoroughly) "clean" it out within 3 seconds. I have met other ear-loving dogs, but never one this emphatic and precise. I'm on the fence about whether that's a selling point for this dog or if it's something to be done only in the deep, dark night when nobody's around. I know it's not acceptable in certain social circles to allow a dog to do this, but he does it with such finesse that it has to be appreciated, even if you never vocalize it...

So, the third visit goes like this:
His crying fits for mommabird's leaving have dwindled down quite a bit. I had a feeling he was holding onto the thought that he was going to be abandoned again (his first owner, the breeder, "abandoned" him and sent him off on a scary plane, never to even visit him again). He had a right to be concerned, but the more his owner proved that each time she left, she always returned, the less his brain thought "catastrophe!".

Continue reading... "Swanky #3, making progressssss."