Cats, Dogs, & Other Pets

[JaredL]

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wow.. things are SOOOOOOOOOO much easier for me now than they were when i first started posting in this thread. whew!

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Any advice on the crate barking or is it just a wait it out deal? How long did it take Loki to stop barking?

I think I'm going to talk to the neighbors (fortunately the people above and below me have a dog and the others in the building are on the other side of the stairwell so it shouldn't be too loud for them). Basically just apologize and try to get a read on whether they are annoyed or ok. Not really sure what I will do with that info though.

[daryn]

yeah man, you cannot give in under any circumstances. i also live in an apartment and it was definitely dicey for a while. he would bark at night sometimes and be scratching to get out of his crate and i just put earplugs in and ignored him. i felt bad if people could hear, but then again sometimes i could hear their screaming baby. tell me how it's different?

i did adjust my sleeping schedule for a while to make it easier on others. i would try to get to bed around 9-10 pm (or at least put him to bed) for a while and wake up v early as well.

he was sleeping in my room for a while but eventually i moved his crate to the other room. the first few nights he barked like crazy but i didn't give in and he got used to it. now he has no problem sleeping out there and never makes a sound. he would sometimes bark in the morning when he woke up, but again i would just ignore that until it stopped for a few minutes.. then i would come out and let him out. now he doesn't make a sound morning or night, or if he does only a few barks and that's it.

i love my dog,.. he doesn't bark like EVER.. only when i tell him to speak. i always walk past other doors in my building and the dogs that live there run to the door and start scratching and yapping incessantly... how annoying must that be! also loki knows so many tricks and learns them so easily. he makes me look like a professional dog trainer even though i have never had a dog before in my life.

[JaredL]

Here are some pictures of my dog. She's named Ko'olau after the mountains where my wife is from.

We've had her over a month now. We got her at a local shelter. They said she's a shepherd mix but random people have said everything from Basenji, Corgi, pit bull, cattle dog and a few others as well as dingo. While she does look like a dingo, and they do breed with domesticated dogs I don't see how in the hell a dingo mix could wind up in a shelter in Pittsburgh. In any case I think she's a serious mix. Other than the ears she doesn't seem to have obvious breed markings. I'm no expert but she probably doesn't have any purebred grandparents. Looking up the thread she looks a fair bit like Pumpkin Escobar's dog. Opinions of those more knowledgeable would be interesting.

She's 7 months. The vet says she's basically full grown at just under 40 pounds.

Here's a pic of her after playing in the mud at the dog park:



After the bath:

[JaredL]

Something that amazes me about dog owners is how much people act like they're humans.

We go to the dog park about once a day and there is a group of women there that are the standard upper middle class mid 30s, dog, probably not married and probably don't have kids complain about everything and everyone they know type. They don't talk about husbands or kids at all and given how much and the way they talk about their dogs I would bet a fair amount of money that they don't have kids and the dogs are substitutes.

One of them has a dog that quite regularly gets into it with other dogs. More than just playing, but not too bad for the most part. When he or the other dogs bark she yells "Tucker be nice!" or some variation such as be gentle. One day when he was particularly grabbed his collar and held him there telling him he was in a time out when he moved to go play again. She ended the time out by telling him that this was the second time he'd been bad and if it happened again they were leaving. She was 100% serious and based on her body language and what she said afterwards to her friends it was clear that she had at least some expectation that this sort of thing would work.

Another time I was there, there was a dog that was all about humping other dogs. He humped my dog when she came in but she's fixed so whatever. A lady brought in her poodle and this dog assumed the position. When this happened she started freaking out running to them and yelling. I thought ok, wouldn't be my choice to bring an unaltered female into the dog park. The dog once again tried to get on the poodle. When this happened the owner of the humper told her his dog was fixed. She calmed down somewhat but later she called her husband or someone and was saying she didn't know what to do and still acting like it was a big deal. Then her dog came over and I noticed that it was a male. So she freaked out because some dog was humping on her male dog. I mean, if I just started humping some dudes ass in the street that would be highly inappropriate, but they're dogs not people.

Then there is the much more standard let's try to figure out what the dogs are thinking game.

[daryn]

nice dog

the dog park is so much fun. lot of nice looking dogs there and it's just a total free for all. my dog loves it.