AlinaHaas

Our old man Duke

Hi all - New to the training. We've had Duke for just over 3 months. We don't know much of his background except that he was severely neglected and in bad shape when he first got to the shelter. He's a pretty mellow old dude and mostly happy to nap, sunbathe, and be loved on. I do not think he has had any training. We sort of have an understanding of boundaries and what we want from eachother, but we could do with some more structure and I am a novice dog owner. I was interested in this brain training bc his mobility is going to continue to change and I want to find multiple ways to keep him stimulated and to build my own foundation of training and relationship building with him. He's got an arthritic hip that does not slow him down when it comes time for a walk (its his favorite time) and he goes on 2 20-30 minutes walks every day. Like I said, his hips don't slow him down, but it does prevent him from sitting which a lot of training builds a foundation from. And its a bit of a process to get from laying down to standing. Is it okay to just skip the things he can't do comfortably? even though it may be more advanced. He's not food motivated at all. His teeth are all ground down. He's not in pain (we checked with a vet) but he won't eat things without inspecting them first, which makes me wonder how many rocks or things like that he's accidentally eaten out of hunger. And what he likes one day he won't like the next so the same thing doesn't always work for what training we've tried. And toys aren't as much a motivator. He sometimes chews on them but not for long (again maybe from his teeth? can't get a good grip?) Any advice on how to adjust the course or specific senior resources would be amazing. Thank you! -Alina Below is just some more about Duke's general personality and behavior if you are interested. We've been getting to know eachother over the last 3 months. He almost never barks or spooks at noises, people, other animals. He basically only barks to say "Duke's water needs attention, Duke thinks it's high time for a walk, Duke doesn't understand why his bed moved so you could wash the cover". And he does a thing where he faces away from us into a corner or wall and kinda builds up to a good harrumph of a bark. It's hilariousAnd when we stand up and gets excited and walks off looking back every few steps to see if we are following so he can show us where our attention is needed. (He has us trained REALLY WELL). He doesn't have much interest in other people or other dogs. He might look at them. If they are across the street he might whine and wag his tail but he's big and people pretty much avoid us. When there is a friendly dog he'll smell them and then kinda wander off to smell other things. Even at our one dog park excursion just to see. It wasn't very crowded. We had him on leash for the beginning to just to assess the scene and eventually took him off. He was way more interested in the smells than the dogs. He would pause politely for a brief exchange of smells and then he would nose down continue on. And after a lap around, he went back to the exit gate and kinda looked at us like okay. I'm good. It has been a struggle to find food that he'll even eat. The foster he lived with told us we had to soak all his food in water to make is soft and hand feed it to him. That didn't work at all. We changed it up and he likes kibble when it isn't soggy, we just got him a different one with smaller pieces. He gets that with brown rice. He licks up all his food, doesn't bite at it at all. I'm happy to report that he's gone from 6/7 to 2/3 in the poop department! I never thought I would know so much about dog poop or be so excited when it is easy to pick up. Sometimes he is super enthused to eat and eat two meals. Other times he won't eat but once, and I kind of have to convince him it is good. I give him a bit from his bowl in my hand and he'll be like oh wait, I do like that. He's also sort of needs one of us to be in the kitchen with him while he eats. He'll stop and look up at me every now and then, and if I encourage him that he's doing a good job, he'll keep eating. The other thing he does is he'll walk around in a circle and come back to it.