We're back! Cyclists, cut paws and paddling

Poor Grey's Days Blog. Can't believe I haven't posted since October. My excuse is that I've been busy building and maintaining other blogs about other things. I shall endeavour to improve things.

Grey is well and in fine fettle. He's just recovering from a badly cut hind paw pad. £64 trip to the vet to find that we were struggling to get him to allow me to stand his foot in a hibiscrub bath or to let me put a plastic bag on it either in an attempt to keep it clean. In the end, following good sense advice from a friend, I took him down to the sea after a few days of rest at home and let him do his favourite thing. Paddle.

While he was off on rest we picked up some silly trick training at home. So he can now do 'take a bow' on cue. This has only taken me 2 years to put on verbal cue! It's taken a long while because he doesn't move well from luring to the lure being faded. We also messed around with front paw targets and we can now have a fun game of switching between running round an object at a distance 'go around' and running out to touch the object with his nose 'touch it'. Keeps us busy in the winter when we 're down to one walk per day. 

He's still a bugger on the lead and I'm thinking about tackling this. But just thinking about it at the moment. Not looking for stress.

His recalls are good and we seem to have 99% cracked cyclist and jogger chasing. Woohoo! I think it has taken about 9 months. I started pairing 'ready Grey!' with a raised arm about to throw a pebble into the sea. Very soon, 'ready Grey' has him stop and watch me ready to come in and chase the pebble. Then I did 'ready Grey' and 'wait' and then throw. I started to do this whenever I saw a distraction like a cyclist. I moved on to having some food he can clearly see. So I have my hand raised, which becomes like a stop sign. The 'ready Grey' works as a recall, but a recall tied to something exciting about to happen. The 'wait' is with the added visual cue of my raised hand. The cyclist passes and then I reward with an exciting 'Go!' and throw of the food for him to chase and eat. He now actively looks for me if he sees cyclists. I've found this a good compromise and better than a 'leave it'. He loves it so much that as it has built up over time, cyclists now equal fun games and food.

Here are some piccies from our walk today.

lovely red apple tree

Project Grey's Nails - positively training to have his nails clipped

I decided to start videoing my sessions with Grey working on him feeling comfortable having his nails handled. The video is titled session 1, but I realise this might make people think it is the first ever session in this training. Sorry! Its actually it's been a few weeks of me teaching him paw and accepting casual touches of his nails. He's also been shown clippers and the dremel and had them out near him and near food.

His nails on his front paws are really are very long now and they simply do not wear down. It seems Slovak nails being dark are very hard. This hardness makes cutting them a harder task. Hard to see the quick and more pressure to actually clip the nail.

Grey gets very stressed if I go to clip his nails. He doesn't growl he jerks away and struggles really strongly. This makes it impossible to safely cut his nails. So I'm trying to condition him to accept me gradually working towards having his nails cut. In this video Grey is not restrained and is free to leave at any moment. When he flinches I go back a step to an area of his body away from from the paw and to work again towards the paw. Have to remember to take it slow.

This first session went on too long and you'll see at the end, he gave up and didn't want to do it anymore. I'll keep future sessions shorter. It's easy to get carried away with this kind of training and to take things forward. But the best and only way really is to go at the dog's pace. I'm not aiming for him to love getting his nails done. Do we love going to the dentist? The aim is for him to be as relaxed so I can get that unpleasant clipping action over and done with minimal stress and without him having a strong pre-emptive fear of the process. This might take a very long while.

 

Working on the nail handling

We're about day 3 into working on nail handling. I worked on him from his main body, down his legs and on to his paws. He'll now let me touch his nails with a pen, insert the nails into the clip of the pen and generally let me tap the nail with the pen and scrape underneath. I have a feeling he might actually tolerate a dremel more than the clippers. So I'm going to look up dremels. Other than that, we've been back out on our beach today. Tourists have gone and we're back having the whole place to ourselves. Yesterday the car was out of action so we worked on lead walking on the square. I went back to Ian Dunbars method of waiting for sits after a giant step. It gave him lots of time to take in his surroundings. And interestingly, he was calm through loads of his usual triggers: bikes, sirens, lorries.

 

 

What's the best trick you can teach your dog?

Have had to start thinking again about improving Grey's grooming and handling stress. He recently had a flare up of the skin infection on his tummy and this then was coupled, as last time, with problems with his anal glands. So the tell tale fishy smell and him twisting round to smell his own bum and then either a sit down or a run away from himself, both with a worried look on his face. Since this started flaring up last summer, he's become a lot more stressed at the vets. So he now won't let the vet touch his back side. This has also meant him being stressed about the vets in general and procedures that he was previously fine about, like vaccinations, he now isn't.

I've started a programme of home training on general husbandry. It's something I wish I'd done a lot more of when he was little. But seeing as I can't turn the clock back, I'll start from where we are now and move forwards. These simple things will make a positive impact on our life and possibly could save it in the future. I've posted about this before, citing the US trainer, Kathy Sadao, with her experiences from working in a zoo environment. Most of the training they do in zoos on a day to day basis is husbandry. She asks why do many people use coercive methods (restraints and force) to groom their dogs. The answer quite simply is because they can. But this simply wouldn't work for a killer whale or elephant. So training plans have to be thought out.

I'm notoriously bad at finishing things that I start. This is the reason that Grey doesn't have a range of tricks he knows. But no matter. What does matter is that he won't keep still to be examined, won't let his anal glands be emptied and won't let his nails be clipped.

So yesterday, we started training on the anal gland task and the front paw handling.

Day 1:

I got the duvet out and we both sat on it. We had a session where he was lying across my legs and relaxing and he would let me touch him all over, including his bum and under the tail. I can touch his legs and take hold of his paws.

Day 2:

I got out a vet bed mat which is a cue for training and for him to sit or lie on it. He was in a sit and I'm in front of him sitting cross legged. I worked being able to hold his front legs and down to his paw. Take his paw and gently squeeze the pads. Developed into him presenting his paw into my hand and then with the addition of a pad squeeze.

 

The Road Refresher no spill dog bowl

 

Thing is with beardy dogs there is an awful lot of spillage. Especially with a dog like Grey who has a helpful habit of walking away from his bowl after having scooped up the water and opening and closing his mouth as he goes as if eating. There is an awful lot of water with a busy and thirsty slovak. This caused some problems with his duvet in the back of the car crate. So today the postman arrived with a road refresher bowl (in grey, of course!) Now we've got rid of the bowl mounted to the side of the crate that tended to slop water over when going over bumps. Happy days. We got the large one. 

 

 

UK Slovakian Rough Haired Pointer Report is now published

A very good day for the future of UK Slovaks. The health report written by fellow Slovak owner, Kate Reevel, has been published on the Breed Club website and is availble to download.

http://www.slovakianroughhairedpointerclub.org.uk/healthreports.html

It's also been linked on the following forums for discussion:

http://workinghprs.myfastforum.org/about4072.html

http://www.dogsey.com/showthread.php?p=2334293#post2334293

We Love Slovakian Rough Haired Pointers page on Facebook

Slovakian Rough Haired Pointer Facebook group

 

Grey portraits aged 3

A few weeks ago while out visiting friends in Surrey, Grey had his portrait taken. Here is aged 3 and looking very handsome. We hope to book in again after his hair has grown back all scruffy in the winter.  Penel has such a way with animals. I think Grey would do anything for her! Such a treat to have quality pictures that aren't of him up on the beach.

More info: Penelope Malby Photography