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

This time, Ninja and his family seemed a closer unit- Mom has borrowed her husband's confidence and has realized that Ninja's not plotting to murder her. She's got the restraint technique down and Ninja seems to love it now when she flips him into the alpha roll. The injury to her finger has healed (a surface scratch made by his razor-sharp canine tooth). After some soul-searching and a tetanus shot, the gang is solidly glued together. You can almost visualize them all by the piano, singing "We are Family", by Sister Sledge...

Continue reading... "ninja the beast #2"

To his owner, It's like having Freddie Krueger in the house. You can hear shrieks of terror when the two of them are together. He's got her enslaved. She's afraid to go near him, to walk past him, to touch him... But he seems like a normal puppy to me so far. Mom has had a bad experience somewhere along the way, and Ninja's presence is a psychological trigger for instant torment. By the way, he's 12 weeks old. And maybe 10 pounds. He's been reported to lunge, constantly bite, and viciously bark at people. His other issues are chewing paper, plastic, fabric and wood. They were wanting reassurance that Ninja wouldn't kill the family in their sleep. I gave just that. At most he may have some corrective behaviors, but none were shown upon evaluation.

Continue reading... ""ninja" #1"

The warrior has turned into just a regular old puppy. He's better with playbiting since the family has been using the jowl correction see Ninja #2 . They still have to work on giving the correction sloooowwwlyyyyyyy instead of rushing it and getting him all excited. I felt for the first time that Ninja belonged in this house permanently. It's official.

Continue reading... "ninja- getting better all the time...#3"

Sophie started out as a semi-fearful, but friendly parvo-resolved puppy. She eventually grew into an obnoxious but lovely tornado with teeth. One of her obsessions is rough play, complete with mule kicking, jumping and the constant use of her gorgeously white shark teeth to grab onto whatever is moving (hands, legs, really anything..). She had always been voraciously food motivated, which blossomed into a selective edible object possession problem. She began guarding special objects, some of them stolen from the bathroom garbage or from the leaf pile in the yard. Her owners were concerned about having guests over and how Sophie would react to them. She had also had issues with being picked up- she'd always avoid it and, if forced, she'd freeze up and open her eyes wider than she physically should. You couldn't help but pity her. She had some apparently bad experiences during her bout with parvo (we found out in her med. record that she'd been fine with restraining until she started having pain from the virus, then she became very nervous). Mom & Dad visualized a well-rounded dog and were smart in starting training early (12 weeks or so)...

Continue reading... ""sophie" #1"