Someone I hadn't seen for a few months stopped in at the store where I work, yesterday. She asked 'how's the car coming along?'
Well, winter is setting in here, in New England, and without a heated garage, what little work I do on the Barracuda project is limited to warmer months. That project has mostly been put to bed until Spring (though I still need to get the rodent repellent protocol in motion before too long).
But the timing is good, since we have our new winter project in place: Orbit the dog.
He needs literally every waking minute we have. We knew he was a problem child when we adopted him, but we could not resist his sweet face. Even with the mischievous eyes, we couldn't say no.
At moments I think he looks like a tiny Great Dane!
His list of issues included: mouthing/nipping/play biting (which alone is not a big deal for a puppy, but coming up on 7 months old, he should already have been taught that biting people is not okay), peeing in doors/not housebroken (our Moxie seemed almost to be born knowing to go outside, but this guy was never able to get regular outdoor potty breaks so he just goes when he feels like it, no matter where he is or what he's doing! We watched him pee as he was just walking across a room!), and barking (mostly attention barking...because he seemed to not get any attention at all from his previous owner unless he was being a pain in the ass; but, also some fear barking at loud noises and delivery trucks. He's apparently afraid of turkeys, but I have to admit I tend to walk the other way when I see them in the neighborhood!)
The biting is the biggest issue I am having with him, personally.
He is teething, but has not been taught any manners or what is acceptable when biting/chewing his toys and playing. He often puts himself to sleep, simply chewing on one of his toys.
We've thrown away 3 plush toys already and we've only had him for 5 days!!
He and I are working on a time out approach to his biting me. He will jump at me with a toy, drop it and go for a bite at my hands...or my knees, if I put my hands behind my back.
I've figured out a way to make a timeout space for him, when he bites, so we will try that today if we have to.
Our major plan for most of his training is to make sure he gets plenty of time to be a puppy. His previous owner was in a wheelchair and had a home health aide...she was the one who ended up 'exercising' the pup, and I'm sure it was minimal, considering it wasn't her job!
When we had my friend's dog over for Thanksgiving, she had a big ball she liked to play with. We had an old soccer ball in the basement and decided to see how Orbit liked that game...
I think it's his favorite!! He chases it around, but he has managed to bite it in one spot enough that he can now pick it up and run a bit...mostly he just wants to play tug games all day, but I read somewhere that those games can actually encourage biting (aggressive biting). We're just steering clear of tug games for a bit, to test that theory.
(Also, I finally got a cute coat for him...which he of course just tried biting for the first 5 minutes he had it on.)I thought maybe a solid game of soccer would wear him out and discourage the biting but...not so much.
Later in the evening he was in the middle of one of his energy spurts and his biting was at it's highest. I 'washed' my hands with cayenne pepper...he basically licked it off, making a face the whole time...like he knew if he just got that stuff off, then he could get back to biting me as usual! So that failed. Though, to be fair, when we training Moxie, we used Bitter Apple to curb her chewing on furniture but it didn't phase her either.
I had tried the 'loud yelp' approach originally which didn't seem to do much, but as a last resort last night I let out one really loud, high pitched yelp that startled him to the point of 'ears up'. The next thing I knew, he was scratching at the blanket I had on me, to get under...
He fell asleep there until Hubs got home!! Not another bite the rest of the night, and he came scurrying back to me and under the covers, once he said his hello to Hubs! It may have been a turning point for us! I am hopeful.
The attention barking is getting a little annoying, probably because Moxie was not a barker. She used to bark when the UPS came to the door, but that's because he always wanted to pet her and give her a cookie.
Orbit likes to bark if you are busy doing anything that does not include him. The worst is when fixing dinner (ours or his) and he will bark and jump. He likes to be at your level.
He is learning to sit nicely while fixing his dinner. When it is time for our dinner, it's a different situation. He is a puppy after all, and wants to be where we are...eating what we're eating...sitting where we're sitting.
We have never used out 'dining room' for dining unless we have guests, or on Thanksgiving (though, this Thanksgiving we sat in the living room). We call it the mudroom, because it really is just our entryway and a place to keep a dining room table.
We have a little table we used to keep by the chimney. We have a couple bins of shoes we keep underneath. That had to be moved so we could make room for Orbit's crate.
We moved it by the back slider, but we ended up having to reposition it already, as Orbit had decided it was the prefect place to stand while we ate dinner.
(Before we moved it... edited by me, a non-artist, to depict the previous issue)
The move seemed to work! After several minutes of ignoring his barking and working on 'off' as he put his paws on us. He decided to just sit on the side table and stare at us. We figured we'd work on getting him off the table once we got the pre-game barking and jumping taken care of.
Just a couple minutes into getting no reaction from his staring, he put himself in his crate and sat quietly the rest of the time we ate our dinner!!
I couldn't even believe it! I wanted to cry I was so excited! It is funny how a little thing like that could make me forget what a little asshole he was being earlier!
Of course, as Hubs was getting ready for the evening walk, Orbit decided to lift his leg on the kitchen cabinet and pee. I caught him in the act, but it was so random! And he never lifts his leg to pee! UGH!
It's because I had just said 'he hasn't had his daily indoor accident!' In addition, though, Hubs stepped in a tiny puddle I didn't even see all day.
So, 5 days in he is not as bad as we thought (we were told he just goes whenever, wherever), but he is still learning. At least we take him out on a regular schedule so he is less likely to pee all over the house, but he's not peeing in the same spot and there's no real pattern so it's hard to figure that one out.
Originally they thought he might have an infection causing him to pee so much, but it's not as much of an issue as they made it to be, we don't think. He's just learning still...he never had the benefit of a human with the ability to teach him when he was prime for learning!
So he's our winter project. The car will be locked up for the winter. Crafts will fall to the wayside, for now. I will have to use these early morning hours on my days off to catch up on my own well-being.
So, until the next update on my adventures in dog training...
Happy Weekend!