AbegaelJackson

This is my little big girl, Fraser. She is obsessed with puppies that live in mirrors and window reflections (herself). (Not sure why the image is showing rotated 🤔). She is a real sweetheart. Photos show her age 5-7.5 months (she’s 8 months now)

Oh also the walking fast/running it’s because of anxiety and it only tires him out because it is the anxiety tiring him out. Not sure if you’ve ever had anxiety or panic attacks before but it is tiring in a way that doesn’t feel good. My pup is the same way and so actually we walk VERY slowly. Like the pace that your elderly great grandma would walk at. Yes your pup will pull wanting to go faster, mine does, but you can work on leash training in these moments. The goal is you want his attention as much as possible. It will be exhausting for you, but it’s only 10min - you can do it! I haven’t looked through the full course yet as I just bought it but I am sure there are leash training tips and exercises you can do explained in the course. The key here is that by walking slow it’s like having a human breath slow. It doesn’t make the anxiety goes away but it does make it easier to pull the person/dog back from the dissociative behaviour where they completely leave their mind and are not present. After these slow walks where my primary goal is to keep her attention she is very tired when we get back because she has had to mentally work very very hard with me constantly bringing her attention back to me after she has been distracted. She will pass out hard, more than if she had ran for 30min. And with time (with mine progress is slow but there is progress) when we do these slow walks I don’t have to work as hard to keep her from dissociating and panicking trying to go faster.

My puppy is not allowed to exercise so I understand the struggle with tiring them out. We have puzzles for her and they are excellent. I have some days fed her entire meal using a puzzle. It will take 8 or 9 rounds. The other thing that helped significantly though is to do something outdoors which is “interesting” every morning for 10-15 min. To you it will be boring but basically I bring her somewhere she has never been before or hasn’t been for several weeks. For instance pick him up and let him sniff around an elevated garden. Take him to a store that allows dogs but do it during quiet hours and walk around slow to let him sniff stuff. Drive 3 blocks down the road and let him walk one block on a street he hasn’t been yet. I even take her to parking lots and let her sniff around the edges. If you have a neighbour that is ok with it, walk around their front yard. You can walk down an alley - lots to see and smell there! For us doing these things in the early morning hours has been key. It is quiet so my easily startled dog is less likely to get scared by some unexpected noise and doesn’t get overwhelmed by all the things going on. Instead she gets a chance to see and smell and be stimulated thinking about and exploring places. Most importantly she gets time outside free from anxiety, even if for only 10 minutes, and this has done major major things for her overall happiness, resulting in a much calmer dog at home during the day.

Funny what Adrienne said about how they aren’t meant to walk in a straight line. If you watch a pure bred Shepherd, the kind that are quite big and have their hind quarters low to the ground, if you watch one that has been trained to walk on leash but not trained to heel you will see it weave back and forth. There is one in my neighborhood. He never pulled, always had excellent manners, so the owner never bothered training it out of him by teaching him to heel. When they are out for a walk the dog walks slowly and weaves back and forth in front of his owner for most of the walk.

I have an 8 month old sweet girl named Fraser. This little girl is a special case. We got her at 9 weeks and at 10 weeks she was lifeless one day. I tried to stand her up and she collapsed, unable to bear her own weight. Her eyes were dim and the vet thought for sure she was dying from a toxin. She spent 4 days in the animal ER before they realized she has an extremely severe case of HOD (hypertrophic dystrophy). It wasn’t the first, or even the 5th thing they investigated because it is very rare in a dog that young. HOD is essentially “growing pains” and it is from growing too quickly. It is a condition that goes away when a dog stops growing (12-18months) and does not have any long lasting effects IF it is well managed. If it is not well managed she could end up with bent bones requiring surgery or in some cases euthanasia. That last point is the tough one. Being well managed means medication and controlling exercise. Because her case is so severe and she has it almost everywhere (shoulders, lower back, 1 of her wrists, both of her heels, her neck and her jaw) this has meant no exercise. And because of her young age she was in constant pain until 4.5 months when the vet put her on metacam. Until 6 months old she was only allowed to go outside to potty and back in. In fact the first 2 weeks we had to carry her to the road, even walking that 50 ft was too much. So it has been a huge challenge. Because also it’s Covid. There are lots of dogs and people where we live but she can only see them in short bursts, especially because she gets SO excited so loses her shit and hurts herself jumping and hitting the end of her leash and spinning in the air and landing hard on the cement from the jump. She has never been afraid of people but is hand shy and jumpy. And while everyone is very kind and patient with her and we are all friendly and there are no negative or fearful vibes, she has never seen me more than 6 feet from anyone other than her daddy in the house. She has doggy puzzles to mentally stimulate her and she is really good at them! Also starting at 5 months when she could do a bit of activity because the metacam started reducing her pain, I started doing something “interesting” with her each morning. So for example take her to the forest or to a neighbour’s garden or just a road she hasn’t been on before and let her sniff around for 10min. This significantly reduced the annoying behaviours at home of whining for attention for instance. I have tried training with her also but she just didn’t listen at all. She is not my first dog and actually my mom was a dog trainer so I started training around 10. I trained also at a kennel and At 12 my 7 month old puppy passed certification to be allowed in malls to do demonstrations for the service dog program. So it’s been really disheartening and hurt my confidence real bad to struggle so much with her. She is the hardest dog I’ve ever had! The pulling especially has been real rough (though is improving finally!) I try to expose her to sights and sounds by taking her places for very slow very short walks and also just sitting on a bench. One time she was so bad I broke down crying. I didn’t even have it in me to sit down. I was standing in the middle of the trail with my head hanging down crying with her bouncing around at the end of her leash. By some miracle no one came down the trail until I got myself together 7 or 8 minutes later even though before and after that there was someone every 30s. After I got my shit together these nice older ladies were walking and I had her sit still while they went by and they commented that she’s such a sweet girl and I said “well I just finished bawling my eyes out, so...” and then they talked to me for 20 minutes and I told them all about her history. I think I really needed that. One of them was in tears by the end and told me they wished they could hug me and gave me lots of supportive words about how I was doing a great job etc. Now in the last 2 months she has been making big gains and improving. It’s not really because of her age, it’s because her HOD is improving... she pretty much stopped growing at 6 months. It was so bizarre. When we got her she was smaller and weighed less than our cat. By 10 weeks she was much bigger than him. We were starting to be afraid (terrified) she was going to be an 80lbs giant. In 10 days in December she gained 10lbs!!! She hit 46lbs by 6 months and now she is a little under 50lbs 2 months later. I let her run for 5 min at the off leash giant field near my home once a week now. She is sore after and we have to keep her low key for 2 days after but point is she can do it now! We also go for 15-20min walks every couple days, so things are coming around finally. She is maturing. But she also is behind developmentally because of all the challenges she has faced. When she started improving a bit it because easier for me to just think of her as 2 or 3 months younger and treat her that way. So now she’s like a 5 or 6 month old. Because finally there is starting to be some progress I am going to start an actual training program with her rather than randomly training. In person classes still are not being held in my community so I looked around online. I found this course and bought it! We are going to start this weekend 🙂 Looking forward to doing the course and being part of this community 🙂 —— info about her specifically for those interested: She is a purebred MUTT. I couldn’t even begin to guess what her primary X is (I find it funny how almost every dog is considered a Shepherd cross - it’s just not statistically possible!) Her mom was found pregnant in northern Saskatchewan (Canada). Her mom looks like maybe a Rottweiler but with Shepherd colours. Her mind is probably at least 3 or 4 generations away from any purebred parent. I do believe that Fraser has the following in her due to behavioural and visual traits: 1) Husky: She is the strongest little thing I ever met. Even at 4 months she could knock me over if she bolted on her leash. And she has an incredible pulling reflex, even with an easy walk harness OR wearing a halti head collar she can pull hard and it doesn’t seem to bother her other than she has to walk kind of sideways! 2) Some kind of hunting / bird dog: She is from up north after all. And she has crazy reflexes going from 0 to 100 when she sees a bird or flying bug and it’s hard to break her attention from it. She also has small/medium floppy ears. 3) Some kind of herding dog, a collie type of breed would be my guess: She is extremely acrobatic! She does those 4 legs at the same time jumps up. Forward straight up, or sideways. When she jumps straight up she spins 360 in the air. She also sits on her hind legs to see in the distance (did this more as a younger pup) and she goes up on her hind legs and walks a couple steps when she is excited. Visually she has the white chest and paws with small tan and brown spots. Oh she also herds me, I have bruises all over my legs from her nose bumps. 4) Then not sure if this would come from the herding dog but SHE CAN RUN! A lot of racing dogs (whippets and greyhounds) used to be abandoned up north and so a lot of the wild dogs up there do have whippet or greyhound lineage. Her hind quarters are taller than her shoulders so it’s quite possible. I have never seen a dog faster than her (I’m sure greyhounds/whippets are faster of course but I haven’t met any). At the dog park she doesn’t play, she just runs and we have never met a dog that can keep up with her. When we go to the field and I let her run, this is the reason it is only for 5 minutes. In those 5 minutes she covers several kilometres, I am sure of it. She runs so fast she will trip and go rolling head over heels or sideways for 15 feet. She just LOVES running so much, aside from eating every flower she sees running is definitely her favourite thing in the whole world! Bravo if you made it this far!