The class cost me $40.00 for 5 weeks of once a week one hour training classes.  I went in to this class with the attitude that it’s as much for me as it is for the dog.  I’m here to learn some techniques for training the Sarge, some way to keep his attention and get him to respond better to me instantly no matter what else has his focus at the time.

We walk in to this building and there are people with their dogs right at the door…generally not a good idea.  The Sarge gets all hot and bothered seeing these new dogs…he gets so god damn excited.  He doesn’t growl, bark or otherwise act aggressive…but he clearly wants to run right over to every dog and “play”.  I told him to sit and he did…but it’s like an antsy kid…he sits, kinda dances around and keeps looking up at me for the O.K. to run loose.  It was hot in there…hotter than the fires of hell and eternal damnation.  It didn’t take me very long at all to start sweating bullets and I can’t imagine the dog was comfortable at all.  The added heat to the environment could not have been conducive to a good training environment.

The initial lessons were very simplistic.  Teaching you how to “properly” walk the dog and the “focus” ideas are the ones that I’ll find the most useful from this first session.  I had decided on Friday when he damn near killed the cat that we’d work on some “alpha male” walking technique.  I assumed it would be the dog walking behind me the instructor at the class told us to have the dog walk even with our inseam.  So the first lesson was to have us all walk around in a big circle with the dog next to us.  This was a bit difficult for the Sarge, there were far too many distractions going on.  It took a bit of effort to keep him going in the proper direction and not try to go “play” with other dogs or people.  The instructor would have us make a lap or two around the room, then stop and have the dog sit.  This was no problem for the Sarge, as soon as we stopped and I told him to sit and he sat right down.  Some people had a lot of problems with this part of it.

After the walk and sit deal we were to do the “down” thing.  Again, like with sit, this was something the Sarge is very familiar with.  Everyone was doing it and the instructor walked over to me and asked if he could do it.  I looked at the Sarge said “down” and boom he’s down.  They also wanted us to do “stay”.  I looked at the Sarge, he looked at me..we both kinda shrugged…I told him to stay and he stayed.  We also did the “focus” command.  This is something I’d done a couple of times with him but never really worked on.  It took him a few tries and he was doing it O.K. clearly he’s only looking at the treat.  Hopefully we can get this one worked out.

The Sarge has “sit” “stay” “down” worked out pretty well.  It’s the walking and focus commands that he needs help with.  I think if we can get those hammered out pretty good he’ll be on the ball with everything else.  I -really- need to do something about his excitement level when he is around new people or other animals…I’m not sure how to handle this at all.

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We rolled into the yard around 5pm or so.  The folks and the kid were up at the lake messing around with the old man’s new personal sized pontoon thingy.  We let the dogs out and figured they could burn off some nervous energy.  They rounded the corner of the car…and there it was…across the yard was the black cat the old man has been taking care of for a few months now.  The cat is probably around 3-5 months old and is the only one out of the 4 that were dropped off that has hung around.  The dogs locked eyes…and took off like pack of wolves after this poor cat.  I figured for sure the cat would run…hell no, he arched his back hissed…and got his ass kicked.  He might have taken the first quick step away, but the little black dog knocked the cat down and the Sarge came in for the kill.  He had a hold of the cat, and managed to toss it in the air.  Sara and I were hauling ass over to the skirmish and we managed to get the dog off the cat before he killed it.The cat didn’t appear to be visibly harmed really.  He ran off, and I saw him a couple of times over the course of the next few days…he’s fine.  The last evening we were there he was in the house playing with the new dog (later in this story).  The Sarge was disciplined and remained on the tie out for a bit after that.

The next day mother called someone around the area that was selling shelties…so we went up there to pick up one of those.  If you know anything about these dogs you know what size they are.  This dog is smaller than the cat that got worked over the day before.  Needless to day we didn’t let this dog play with the Sarge.  We introduced them, the Sarge sniffed him up a bit…but we didn’t let either of them loose around each other.

I have no idea how to get this aggression out of the dog.  I’ve decided to enroll in some training classes tonight and see how that goes.  If the training doesn’t work..I’m going to have to think long and hard about getting rid of him.  As it stands now, I’m not going to be able to leave him alone around small animals…but if I can leave him off the leash with me around and have him not try to kill everything that would be a win.  I’m also thinking about “doggy day care” a day or two a week to promote some socialization.  I’ll have to talk to them and see how they handle fights and so forth.

It’s going to be a long road, but I’m going to employ some touchy feeling training as well as some serious alpha male training and see if we can’t get this worked out of him.

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So last night the Sarge is going through this little routine almost from the time he walks through the door to come in the house.  I didn’t figure he needed to go outside because he just came in…that leaves food and water.  He had food in his dish and there was some water.  The problem with the water though is he needs fresh water pretty much constantly.  He won’t drink it if it’s a little slobbery or a bit warm…even if it’s him that has made it a touch slobbery.  I clean out the water bowl and give him fresh water, he drinks some and is still worked up.  I’ve got no idea what his problem is.  After about 20min of this crap I told the kid to take him outside.

The Sarge was outside about 10 min and I hear him playing with what sounds like a large chunk of plastic.  I look out the downstairs window and here comes the Sarge throwing his food bowl by the window and knocking it around.  He kicks it past the window one way…throws it back the other way and comes over to the window and stares at me, with what seems to be a “do you get it now asshole?” look on his face.  The kid fills up his food and he chills a little.  I’ve no idea why the food in the house wasn’t good enough for him…but whatever.  He’s done this a few times.  If he gets pissed off enough he will throw around whatever bowl corresponds with his need.  It’s semi-handy with the food bowl outside as we put that one in the dog house to keep the food dry.  When he’s hungry he’ll take it out of the dog house and knock it over to the kennel door.  This is the first time he’s gotten pissed off enough to bat it around the yard.

Back in the day on the farm we had this German Shepard cross that, as far as I’m concerned, was the smartest dog I’d ever seen.  This dog would (I shit you not) bring it’s food bowl to the door of the house and drop it on the deck when it wanted food.  After we put some food in it, the dog would pick it up and take it out to the front yard to where it could lay down and eat and (presumably) see up and down the road.  I’ve no idea what kind of training or whatever went in to this or how we promoted this behavior, but it would be awfully handy if the Sarge would bring his food bowl over when he’s hungry.  He throws it around pretty good, but I’d like him to grab it and bring it to us….maybe we can train this in to him.

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We walk for about 30min or so and as we are getting back to the house the UPS truck is pulling up.  I wait in the driveway for the dude to bring me my package.  Just like when anyone comes up to him the Sarge starts getting really excited, dancing around and so forth.  I tell hm to sit and he does…but he’s still really antsy.  You can tell it’s taking a lot of effort to sit there without doing his little dance.  The UPS guy pretty much ignores him and walks up to me…well apparently the UPS guy got too close, didn’t acknowledge the dog, or giving me the box was a problem…in any case the Sarge got pissed.  I hadn’t heard this dog growl other than when we are playing and he does his little playful growl.  He growled at the UPS guy…like a deep, pissed off “watch it asshole” growl.  The UPS guy asked me if he was going to get bit…and I told him I didn’t think so…he didn’t and the Sarge didn’t make an aggressive move other than growling.

It was a little disconcerting initially, but looking back the Sarge didn’t lunge at the guy and I’m pretty confident that if the situation escalated like me raising my voice or this dude making some sort of aggressive move the Sarge would have gotten in to the ruckus or at least made some noise.  I’m pretty content with his reaction over all.  There was no blood shed and he’s doing his job.  My concern isn’t for myself or that I “need a dog to protect me” but if the kid is home alone and someone comes around that shouldn’t be…maybe the dogs would cause enough of a distraction she can get to a phone or something.  Most likely that’s just a “touchy feely” thing for me to pacify my own concerns about situations like that…but whatever.

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Gracie is a high energy dog…she’s got loads of energy and is just ape when you try to play with her.  She jumps around, rolls around…runs and runs and runs.  She kills small animals and chases everything that moves…but she doesn’t seem really aggressive towards other dogs at all.  She is very protective over her “home” as she sees it.  The backyard is devoid of animals on her watch.  She has killed numerous rabbits and a few birds.  She is usually the first one to bark and get up on the fence when someone she’s not feeling comes close.  Generally she is more timid and seems more “scared”.  I assume that’s why she’s the first to bark.

The dogs have a very distinct barking style…the Sarge lets off one medium bark when he’s outside and figures you should let him in…Gracie does nothing.  The grace barks several times in succession when someone/thing is close to the fence, the sarge with follow her with a couple of barks…and if someone is mowing the grass close to the fence the dogs will tear ass after them and it sounds like a dog fight when they are going after that lawn mower.  I don’t get why they go after the mowers and they never do when I’m cutting the yard.  I’m trying to break them of this and am seeing some moderate success.  They will lay off when I’m outside…now they need to when I’m not around.

Why am I leading a blog entry with this information?  Well, the other night around 8pm or so I was out in the garage messing with things.  The dogs were in the back yard and I could hear a group of kids coming down the street.  It sounded like teenage kids…and the voices/tones I heard seemed to be boys.  I paid attention to them because I heard one of them say something about the dogs.  The group was across the street, and the dogs don’t usually bark at people on the other side of the street…they are getting so they don’t bark at people walking by at all anymore unless they are walking a dog…then all hell breaks lose.

I heard one of the group say “something” that I can’t quite remember right now.  It was clear he was taking notice of the dogs and was pointing them out to his buddies.  One of them, possibly the same one, started calling the dogs…”here doggy…here doggy…”  over and over again.  I know Grace had to be at the fence watching them and was probably their target at the time…I don’t know where the Sarge was when the boy started calling to her/them…but after his 3rd dog call I knew right where the Sarge was.  The Sarge is a large short dog…120lbs of solid muscle.  This boy called to the dog(s) again and I heard the Sarge let off a single deep -loud- bark…that I haven’t heard come from him before.  Grace didn’t bark at all and the Sarge didn’t let off another one.  As soon as I heard it I stopped what I was doing and looked around the corner of the garage…I heard one of the boys say “whoa…look at that bulldog”.

Previous to this I had thought Gracie would be the one to “protect” the yard as it were…but it seems with this one scene the Sarge let me know who the leader of their pack is.

It’s also worth noting…I think my dog is racist.  I’ve got a buddy who has come over a few times.  The Sarge does not like him at all, and he’s a black man.  These boys all looked to be black.

All kidding aside, I wonder how different color people look to dogs.  The majority of people my dogs see are white, there are a couple of black kids around the neighborhood from time to time but they spend no time around my dogs.  I wonder if they look different to the dogs and this causes them to be more on guard compared to the race/look they are around the majority of the time.  I did a quick google and found nothing worth reading on this topic.

gracie

the Sarge

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For the past 4 days, I’ve had to have the Sarge on a leash the majority of the time in the house.  There have been a few times where T.C. would be outside or down in the meat shed with the old man.  In those instances I would let the Sarge roam the house off the leash.  He has tore nothing up, hasn’t pissed on anything…nothing at all.  He would be just fine off the leash all the time…if he didn’t want to eat that damn dog.

We decided to go in to town and have lunch with my grandmother.  We had to decide what to do with the dogs while we were in town.  I didn’t want to leave mine in the house because of the potential for them to destroy something that didn’t need destroying.  We decided to leave them in the meat shed.  There are still things that could be destroyed but nothing that would be a huge deal.  To prepare for this I made sure they had things to chew on, and fed them well.  I figured if they had good full bellies they would be more likely to sleep and leave things alone.  Still, I was quite concerned about them destroying any of the old man’s stuff.  We were gone for 3hrs or so, and when we came back there was nothing out of place.  I was pleasantly surprised.

The woman and I are planning on heading to the cities in Feb for a weekend.  Not only do we need to find someone that will watch the kid, but we need someone that will watch the dogs as well.  It’s not like we can just drop the dogs off at their place, we need someone willing to come to our place and stay for a couple of nights.  Given the temp outside and my neighbors I can’t just leave the dogs in the kennel the whole time.  I could pay for a kennel to take care of them…but that kind of sucks.  As dumb as it sounds, it feels like locking your kids up for the weekend…hell maybe a little worse.  My folks are planning on coming down that weekend to watch the kid and the dogs.  The monster can take care of the dogs with out any problems…so basically they are just watching the dogs.  Of course that depends on the weather and so forth.  We have a backup babysitter for the kid, but it might be an issue to find one for the dogs…hopefully a kennel can take them.

Dogs are kind of a pain in the ass.  Hopefully anyone getting one will realize what exactly you are getting in to.  They are a very dependant animal and not something you can have and just take off for a weekend anyway.  There is a ton of responsibility.  I would say there is more responsibility in owning a dog than a child…people accept children in their houses, but how would they feel if I showed up with my dog?

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link

Rescued dog mauls man in vicious attack in Woodbury

Owner, 53, hospitalized after bulldog tears at his face and severs an ear

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]]> http://www.technohillbilly.net/index.php/2009/11/03/dog-mauls-man/feed 0 http://www.technohillbilly.net/index.php/2009/08/12/its-done http://www.technohillbilly.net/index.php/2009/08/12/its-done#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:31:38 +0000 Grand Poobah http://www.technohillbilly.net/?p=3122 The Sarge has been adjusted.  He’s not happy about it, I’m not thrilled about it…but I think the women of the house are quite satisfied.

The woman asked me yesterday why I’m so attached to the dog, it’s only a dog…I’ll be the first to admit (and have around anyone that asks) that I’m way attached to the Sarge.  My decisions when it come to him are not objective in the slightest.  I’m as bad as a woman talking about her child…I’m emotionally invested and it kinda sucks.

I was sick all day yesterday thinking about the Sarge in the hospital, then last night he walked in to the house and just collapsed for a little bit.  He napped for a few hours and it seemed like he was finally able to move around a bit.  He went outside and jogged around for a couple hours, then seemed to sleep OK after that.  He woke me up around 3am to go outside so I think he’s doing OK.

It’s just painful to think about what was done to the poor dog.  Hopefully he can’t really reason out what was done.  I would think it would just remove an urge and he can’t comprehend the before and after.  It’s clear that dogs have a memory of sorts, whether it’s triggered by smell or something else, they do remember things.  They are able to remember what a word means, the Sarge is remembering how to act when he’s on a leash.  Clearly animals remember actions that cause them pain.  I believe he does not pee in the house anymore because of the swats associated with the action.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that they would remember “I used to feel…”.  I don’t think they are that cognizant.  It is most likely me (or people in general) projecting human emotions on to their pet to try and develop more of a link with them.

Another thing I’m very concerned about is how much this could potentially modify his personality.  I was hoping it would just adjust a bit of his aggression towards other dogs, and maybe fix his marking everything.  I don’t want it to effect his bulliness and his intensely curious personality.

We’ll have to see….

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]]> http://www.technohillbilly.net/index.php/2009/08/12/its-done/feed 0 http://www.technohillbilly.net/index.php/2009/08/05/me-sighs-13 http://www.technohillbilly.net/index.php/2009/08/05/me-sighs-13#comments Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:18:53 +0000 Grand Poobah http://www.technohillbilly.net/?p=3080 I finally made the call today…the Sarge is getting clipped.  /me dies a little inside.

He’s been getting a bit difficult for the woman to control, and a bit more aggressive at the people that are running around outside our yard.  I want him to bark and carry on a bit, but he’s too much of a danger to hurt someone right now.  No amount of discipline and training are going to help.  He’s going to need to be clipped along with the training.

There was also a little “incident” at the dog park this evening.  It wasn’t the Sarge’s fault, this was also confirmed to my by an independent 3rd party whom said so unsolicited.  Someone brought a dog in that was aggressive from the word go.  I was quite concerned about this, but I kept an eye on him and there didn’t seem to be any problems.  Then this lady’s dog jumped one of the other dogs there.  It wasn’t a playful messing around…nope he jumped his ass bad, women were screaming…it wasn’t good.  The Sarge comes flashing in like a k9 superman and knocks the aggressor out of the way and proceeds to occupy him.

Now, I’ve seen the Sarge mad and I’ve seen him -pissed-.  This time, he was just mad.  The other dog was going for him and he would hold it off…growl and snap his jaws but not bite the other dog.  The dogs owner (crazy bitch) was flippin out.  I told her to relax and just go pull her dog off.  I jogged over with her, and as she pulls her dog off the Sarge did what he always does in this situation…he calms down.  I called him over to me, scratched his back and told him to go play.  He runs off and the crazy bitch gives her dog a “time out”.

I really don’t know what the purpose of this “time out” is…but it’s really freekin lame.  She held the dog down on his side and scolded it like she would a child.  The Sarge walked by and gave the dog a sniff…the dog growls and the lady pops it in the head…hard.  Like harder than I would pop Sarge.  She lets her dog up, and it makes a bee line for the Sarge.  She jumps his ass and this time you can tell…IT’S ON CUZ!  The Sarge was -pissed-.  I managed to get a hold of him before he did any damage, but this dog was going to be toast.  The lady took her dog to her car.

Well, this lady had another dog, just a touch smaller than the first.  Both were aggressive when they came in, but it’s the other dog that was more aggressive.  The Sarge walked around the fence, over to this dog and sniffed him.  Now I’m not sure if the other one growled or not…but Sarge got -pissed-.  I don’t think he bit him, but he sure might have.  There was no skin broken or anything really damaged, but had I not managed to get a hold of him I think he would have messed up the other dog pretty good.  At this point the lady is freaking out, and telling me how I have a mean dog….cause her’s didn’t jump the other dogs?  Dumb bitch.

I’m totally behind the Sarge for the first two incidents.  He didn’t do anything wrong and were he to tear up the other one I would have stood in front of a judge with witnesses that said he defended himself.  The 3rd one though, he was in the wrong.  I’m sure he was worked up from the previous encounter and I should have left with him…but I didn’t and he was jazzed up and lookin for a rumble.

The good news is he didn’t bother the people at all.  He ran up to them, gave ‘em a sniff and that was all there was too that.  The crazy bitch at one point was even sitting on the ground smoking, something that would have been an invitation to play any other time, and he ignored her as he trotted by.

But, this incident and the past few days have sealed it, I am going to get him clipped.  It should curb his aggression and help him pay more attention.  I’m not happy about it and I was hoping to breed him…but I guess I need to come to terms with the fact that things are different in town than they are in the country.  On the farm his attitude would be desired and praised, in town it’s a liability.

I’m calling places tomorrow and getting it done ASAP.

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]]> http://www.technohillbilly.net/index.php/2009/08/05/me-sighs-13/feed 0 http://www.technohillbilly.net/index.php/2009/07/30/doggy-lover-doll http://www.technohillbilly.net/index.php/2009/07/30/doggy-lover-doll#comments Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:18:04 +0000 Grand Poobah http://www.technohillbilly.net/?p=3033 This is pretty gross, and I’m not sure what sick bastard would get this for their dog knowing they have to clean it….but why the hell couldn’t I think of something like this?  You know there are going to be enough crazy bastards buy this to make it profitable.

link

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