Hello...and help!! Questions

Hi.

We always had an ever reducing cycle of crating. By 4 months I reckon she would have been in crate for breakfast lunch and dinner. Purely because the kids were eating and she could be sneaky about pinching food. Usually we then let her out straight after. Fed her and she was out til next mealtime. Breakfast coincided with getting dressed etc in the morning. Depending on if we needed a bit of peace to do anything. Paint. Get dressed. Tidy up etc we just called her to bed for the time needed. (Actually usually my 2 year old daughter does it but I'm used to not being listened too) Still and always will sleep in crate overnight but after a time she just went to bed when we did so it changed frequently.

Since about 6-7 months she is out and about save for morning time dressing and breakfast. Occasionally at dinner, if we have a picnic in the living room perhaps as we usually eat at the table and as I said always overnights. Most often she just took off to the kitchen for her own naps which were/are frequent and looooong.

Ps: how are things in general for you? Behaviour, training etc?

I shoul have noted. By 4 months or so she wouldn't always nap but just lie watching the world go by or chew on a bone etc.

Thanks for the reply!

When you say "Since about 6-7 months she is out and about save for morning time dressing and breakfast", do you mean unsupervised, or supervised? It's the unsupervised that I am wondering about. Right now, I literally can't do anything when the dog is awake. I have to watch her constantly - for potty reasons, for chasing cats, for chewing on furniture, for getting in tussles with our other dog (which is due to the unfriendliness of the other dog!)

Her behavior, in general, seems to be improving a bit. She seems to listen a tiny bit better, and until yesterday, her biting had improved quite a bit. Then yesterday, she just started biting again, so back to square one!

Training is going pretty well. She had her second official lesson today. As of now, she does sit, wait (for food), "okay!" (to eat the food), and "here, here" (to come to our side). Of course, these are no where near perfected or 100% consistent, but she is doing wonderfully learning. She seems to be quite smart! (I guess Mals, in general, are). At today's lesson, we were taught loose leash walking and being approached/pet by strangers.

Thanks for your help and encouragement!

Well done so far.
It seems our circumstances differ a bit. As we have 2 very young children we tend to always have Everest by our side by our choice. If we leave the lounge for example we call her with us so she is never alone with the kids.

IN that vein i suppose she is always supervised but we could leave her in the kitchen unattended from maybe 6 months without much destruction, she still to this day enjoys a counter surf, in at the dishes, in the bin etc but in general she is ok in the kitchen, she never is left alone in the lounge as i like my furniture.

If at all we need to do anything we just put her in the crate for a bit, even if its just 10 minutes. i would say she was fairly well toilet trained at 6 months

Lynne Anne. How have things gone for you this past month? I always enjoy an update?

Hi Allan
Thanks for checking in!
All in all, I'd say Mishka is generally improving. That said, I'd say we still have a long ways to go.
She'll be 5 months on the 11th, and I believe she may be entering that "teenager" phase. She's kind of regressed in her listening and following commands. She'll generally do something if she KNOWS you have a treat waiting, but if there are ANY distractions, or if she just doesn't want to listen, she doesn't.
She chases the cats, and due to her high prey drive, this terrifies me. We are working on "leave it", but a scurrying cat seems to be too much of a temptation. We love our cats dearly, so I'm hoping Mishka can be trained (soon!) to leave them alone. I don't want any harm coming to our cats, but I also love Mishka!
She's gotten quite big already, and I'm biased, but I think she's stunning! I'll try to post a recent picture with this.
She is still biting, but we continue to work on it. Her second biggest (non-cat) issue is jumping up on everything. She doesn't seem to understand "down", lol.
She is doing much better on leash, and is very good about waiting for her food, and being quiet in her crate at night, even if she's not sleeping. However, she does not like going in it in the day, and never naps, even if I leave her in there for an hour or more. I guess she thinks she doesn't need naps. I wish she would, because I still can't get anything done - no cleaning, no working on my business, etc., because I have to supervise her all day, every day.
How is your pup doing? How old is she now? About a year almost?

Hi,

Everest will be 10 months on the 11th March, Just recently had a wee "challenge" phase this past month. Will still listen to most of her commands but likes to pause just long enough before execution to let you know she has a mind of her own.

Been a bit more "grumpy" around the kids especially when eating but again she learns quickly about who is who in the heirarchy and we are incredibly strict on these points and we can all stand to learn from each other regarding how we are feeling.

Teaches My wife and I never to be complacent regardless of how friendly and calm she is 99% of time.
Teaches the kids to listen and observe her behaviour and that she's not just a big cuddly toy
Gives her the opportunity to re-learn her place in the order of things which i believe gives her security and comfort.

Sounds to me like she is following the same behavioural trajectory as Everest (although she doesnt sound so much of a sleepy head).

We were our own worst enemy when correcting jumping as for about 2 months we would use the "down" command to get her off the couch (which sounded perfectly reasonable to us) until we realised she had learned this to mean "lie down", which she technically was a lot of the time just on our furniture not on the floor. When we switched to "off" we had (marginally) more success but we felt a bit daft for not thinking it through...........See, we all learn from each other, im sure in Everest's mind she was thinking

"ive been doing a perfect DOWN, for the last 5 minutes on this couch, wheres my bit of chicken, why is this idiot repeating himself"

I only use tit-bits for teaching new exercises once they understand the commands then I start to phase them out and replace with praise, play, game of tug, throwing the ball, or with their fav toy.
The trick is to phase out the tit-bits slowly, using them as a reward, not a bribe, just because you have them in you pocket or hand doesn’t mean they will always get one.

As for chasing the cats, the minute she tries to chase them, just calmly without speaking remove her to another room, as with everything its constant consistency.

We also have been noticing how tuned into body language Everest has become, She actually responds a bit faster and more consistently to the hand signals we use for each command than the spoken bit. Quite amazing and something we hadnt noticed until recently.

We, too, made this mistake. We actually started with "off", but she just wasn't getting it at all, and I had read that sometimes you need to change a command word if a dog isn't responding to it. So we, too, switched to "down". It didn't work either -probably because we use "lay down" as well. So now we are back to "off".

Yes!! Mishka does well with hand signals as well, so we have a corresponding hand movement for each command.

I'm not sure what happened here..however I'm going to say my dog is strong the lead and I can hold her However walking her is a struggle no matter if use harness or anything else. My partner walks her and is fine but I do have a illness so that could play a part but not a huge part.

Maybe it depends on your own weight?

Wrote on wrong question sorry lol x