12/21/12

The Week in Tweets – 16th December 2012

Welcome to our only weekly (ish) segment: The Week in Tweets! This is where I summarise my weekly tweets (from my Twitter account) and choose my favourite as the Tweet of the Week.

Tweet of the Week

My favourite post this week is a cute video I found where a film crew put pet dogs to the test, to see if they are any good at guarding the property. This is just a ‘silly test’, and a lot can be said about how one would really test these dogs’ guarding abilities. But it’s pretty fun to see how these dog’s reactions, and how their owners think their dog will be react is very interesting, too. The story is, “Guard dogs more friendly than frightening when put to the test“.

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12/14/12

Resources for New Puppy Owners

I started compiling this list for my puppy buyers, but realised that it would probably be of use to other people intending on adding a puppy to their lives soon. I have tried to narrow this list down to the resources that I genuinely think are the best. I understand that many people are strapped for time, so I’ve included, in bold, my favourite of the resources listed. This means that, if you can’t read all of these links, then just accessing the first one would be my recommendation.

Photo © Ruthless Photos.

Books

Before You Get Your Puppy (free download!) by Dr Ian Dunbar

After You Get Your Puppy (free download!) by Dr Ian Dunbar

The Perfect Puppy in 7 Days by Dr Sophia Yin

The Perfect Puppy by Gwen Bailey

First Call for Dogs by Dr Alex Hynes

Preparing for a Puppy Continue reading →

12/12/12

Puppies – The Third Week

Clover with six puppies in the whelping box, with the 'door down' so that they have a bit of a pen.

The puppies turned 3 weeks old, and they started to get busy! They started walking, and toys were interested to their pen. Their pen was made bigger. Grass was also added to the end of the pen, so they can start toilet training (in theory).

The puppies only met one new person this week. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t meet a lot of people – they did! Just they were all (but one) repeats of the week before.

From the 25th of November (puppies at 19 days old) the puppies started to approach people in a happy way.

A waterbowl was introduced to the pen for puppies, but no pups were really interested at this age.

The set-up in this picture was soon changed, as the puppies weren’t quite strong enough to get up the ramp into the whelping box. The whelping box came out, and so the puppies were left with just a pen.

12/10/12

The Dunbar Index

We have concluded the Dunbar series. I thought it’d be useful for us to create an index for those that wanted to quickly revisit Dunbar stuff at any point.

Training Philosophies

The #@*$ing Four Quadrants

Schedules of Reinforcement

Dog training doesn’t happen in a laboratory!

Reward Training Techniques

We have lost the words from dog training.

On Classical Conditioning

On Punishment

Training and Behavioural Strategies

Repetitive Reinstruction

Put Your Problem on Cue

Solving Problem Barking

Seven Steps to Off Leash Reliability

Fearful Dogs

Dog-Dog Aggression

Messages for Dog Trainers

Other Training Comments

Puppies

Dog breeders: Don’t produce lemon puppies

Puppy Socialisation

Bringing Home a New Puppy

Puppyhood: The Time to Rescue Shelter Dogs

Puppy Classes

Long Term Confinement Area for Puppies

Other Dunbar Stuff

Open Paw (A Dunbar Project)

The Importance of Bite Inhibition

Other Dunbar Comments (that didn’t fit anywhere else)

12/8/12

The Week in Tweets (8th December 2012)

Approximately every week, I make a post detailing the links I shared on my Twitter. I also use the Tweet of the Week to highlight my favourite link. This is the post where you get a cup of tea before you start and prepare yourself to waste an hour.

Tweet of the Week

The Notes From a Dog Walker blog posted a very thorough round up on why “It’s not how they’re raised” is a problematic mantra in many ways. The post is very well written and not a tiresome read at all, so just have a look yourself: “It’s not how they’re raised, it’s how dogs are managed that matters most“.

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