11 posts tagged “maddy”
We trained our older dog, Oscar, quite a bit when raising him and he's turned out to be a great dog. He still gets a little too excited when friends show up, but other than that he isn't a barker, doesn't chew and couldn't hurt a living thing. He's obedient, comes when called and can catch a frisbee with the best of them. However, our new puppy, Maddy, does have a few bad habits still and Oscar has developed some strange quirks since her arrival.
First, Maddy is a barker, but not a hostile one—she's doing it for attention. Whether she's inside or out, she'll bark once or twice at a person (with or without dog), sometimes in rapid succession, until the person or dog comes closer so she can go say hi and start playing.
Early on, back around Feb-April or so, Maddy also developed the revolting habit of trying to eat stools, whether they were her own or someone else's. Now we got Maddy out of that with a few tricks fairly quickly and Oscar didn't seem to pick it up back then, but on a walk this morning I caught Oscar trying to take a bite out of what looked like a cat stool (we have a few stray cats around the townhouse complex that Animal Control never seem to snag).
My questions for you, dear Voxverse, are: what can we do about Maddy's barking? We're crating her more often and I'm training with her on more basics like come, sit, wait, etc., but I'm wondering if you have specific ideas on the barking. We're told that better training across all the basic stuff will help straighten out a dog, but we want to nip the barking thing in the bud. There are few things that suck less than a dog that can't shut up. The other question is about Oscar's potential new taste for stools. While one instance a habit does not make, I want to stomp that immediately. Aside from being disgusting, I don't want Oscar picking up any diseases.
So, what say you Voxers? Got any tips for the puppies?
Sorry about the lighting - I'm dying to pick up a new point-n-shoot camera that doesn't suck for shooting video - but look how stupid Maddy is! She's doing this more and more lately when she gets bored and we aren't able to play with her. Should we be worried?
Who needs a gym membership when you have two puppies? Granted Oscar (the bigger one) is about 50 lb and full grown at just over two years old now, and Maddy (the smaller, mostly-black one) is about 23 lb at 5 months, but still - Oscar's a workout by himself, at least for a computer nerd. When Maddy's full-grown I might be able to cancel my Bally's membership! :)
Btw: sorry about the lighting. I didn't want to spend too much time on this so I figured one take was enough.
I'm gonna try something different with this post and just embed a whole bunch of pics and videos at max size in-line. Thumbnails are for fools! (just kidding; thumbnails and I go waaayy back). Enjoy more puppy stuff!
I felt like going berserk this morning and uploading a whole lotta pics and videos. Some of this is from my trip to Macworld in January and some of it is from my brother Mike's wedding years ago, while others are assorted family shots and even the occasional dog trick. Oh yea a couple of these are even from the time I got TP'd when I lived with some friends in a house (I'm a hard sleeper).
I might have to fill out some info on a few of these to give them context, but I have other work to attend to for now. I hope you enjoy.
Pics:
... and around the ottoman... and around...
What kind of 2nd-time puppy parents would we be if we didn't shoot videos of everything she does? Clicky each of the squares - they're Mattylicious!
