PETS Thread

[nautical hyperblast]

cocoa was my parents' but she was a good dog. we played a lot, and i'm not happy she passed. my folks put her to sleep, and it was the right decision. she had a tumor--she'd been unable to keep anything down for two weeks, and for the past few days she couldn't even sit. i had a dog when i was a kid named poopy, and when she got hit, i made the call to put her down, and i have second-guessed myself since; but i understand now that it's just inevitable that you're gunna second-guess yourself.

sorry man.

[zolpidem tartrate]

Meet Parker. We've had him a little over three months now. He was about ten weeks in the first photo, four months in the second and five months in the last two. (Forgive the filters, took all of these from my girlfriend's Instagram.)

[waterbottle]

oh hell yeah parker

[viachicago]

man what a life dogs must lead

[Weasel]

my boss informed me today that if I were to pursue getting AKC certified in training, my company would pay for it and all of my consultation hours that I need to log to be considered an official trainer here would count toward my certification... worth it? Probably.

[Merciel]

Yeah it can't hurt. Plus then we can nerd out about training together!

Are you sure it's AKC certification though? They only have limited program-specific certs, as far as I'm aware.

[Weasel]

Yeah it can't hurt. Plus then we can nerd out about training together!

Are you sure it's AKC certification though? They only have limited program-specific certs, as far as I'm aware.

I can't remember exactly, we talked about a few things including the akc canine good citizen stuff (that's akc, right?). either way, any additional certification i get in any field is covered by the company, which is pretty tight.

[beave]

i had to get a shop cat put down this week and i cried about it at four different completely inappropriate times. rip fezzy

[Sleepy]

[Merciel]

I can't remember exactly, we talked about a few things including the akc canine good citizen stuff (that's akc, right?). either way, any additional certification i get in any field is covered by the company, which is pretty tight.

Yeah, that's one of the AKC programs. Anyway, I say go for it.

I kind of get the impression that the dog training market is not doing so well in this here charming city, which would be p. depressing if I were trying to make a living at it, but since I'm not it just means that I'm rapidly accruing more work than I actually want/feel capable of handling, since I'm still working for free while trying to rack up enough hours to sit for the CPDT exam. The need is still there, but a lot of people don't have the discretionary money for a trainer (esp. since trainers here are not cheap -- the per-hour rates are around $50 to $100).

I still feel like a fraud half the time, but only half the time.

[Dr. Norm Thagard]

i had to get a shop cat put down this week and i cried about it at four different completely inappropriate times. rip fezzy

[-☭-]

is it wrong to play with a laser pointer

it makes me feel guilty when there's nothing for him to catch

[bread]

I feel guilty too but it's a great way for him to get exercise. I actually have a plan to one day go to a craft store and buy one of those little packages of pom poms and pull out a little red one and be like "wow look you got it!" because Hops makes the most pathetic noise for like half an hour after we put the laser away

Careful with his (and your/your girlfriend's) eyes though, I got a new laser to replace the old one that broke and when I looked up the wattage or whatever the fuck it's called it was high enough to do damage if it lingers. The old one was not high enough to do damage, so next time I get one I'm going to pay attention to that. If I can remember what it is.

[-☭-]

sherman loves pom poms that's a good idea

or maybe i can make a treat appear at the end


i dont care about my eyes im going to die of renal failure when im fifty anyway

[bread]

Please don't make me upset

[-☭-]

god you know i spend all night trying to make sure the laser pointer doesnt lead to unfulfillment and he just drops the biggest smelliest turd in the history of his life

thanks little buddy

[tth]

[street hustler slokra]

piling things on your pets is a staple of being a pet owner

my dog loves it when i make pillow forts on her

well i guess my dog lets me make pillow forts on her

[Weasel]

I can't remember exactly, we talked about a few things including the akc canine good citizen stuff (that's akc, right?). either way, any additional certification i get in any field is covered by the company, which is pretty tight.

Yeah, that's one of the AKC programs. Anyway, I say go for it.

I kind of get the impression that the dog training market is not doing so well in this here charming city, which would be p. depressing if I were trying to make a living at it, but since I'm not it just means that I'm rapidly accruing more work than I actually want/feel capable of handling, since I'm still working for free while trying to rack up enough hours to sit for the CPDT exam. The need is still there, but a lot of people don't have the discretionary money for a trainer (esp. since trainers here are not cheap -- the per-hour rates are around $50 to $100).

I still feel like a fraud half the time, but only half the time.

Yeah, we charge $75 for a puppy consult and $120 for subsequent consults or adult consults. Pretty steep! And I feel like when i start doing them on my own I will feel like I'm robbing people, but I have a feeling i'll get over it.

In other news, I found this picture

[sconies]

Paddington just hit six months old.

[Merciel]

Yeah, we charge $75 for a puppy consult and $120 for subsequent consults or adult consults. Pretty steep! And I feel like when i start doing them on my own I will feel like I'm robbing people, but I have a feeling i'll get over it.

I've been calling myself a "trainer" for a whole, what, three weeks maybe? and I'm starting to think it is almost reasonable to charge people for my idiocy. Almost.

Once I started actually doing consultations it was pretty eye-opening. I think of myself as a complete fucking idiot because I make a ton of mistakes and my dogs so often blow me off and we're not actually very good at anything. Pongu is starting to get semi-not-embarrassing at Rally but we still have a long LONG way to go before I'd consider us decent. All the videos I post are riddled with mistakes -- which is part of why I post them, because I like to be able to chart our progress and see how far we've come, but is not exactly a rousing demonstration of my skills.

But then I talk to regular pet owners -- and these are good, committed, caring owners -- and realize that the world outside this little bubble of crazy dog school is a whole different place. There are a lot of people who love their dogs but can barely get them to Sit. Even though I'm totally sad compared to the people at crazy dog school (who are, after all, national competitors in their fields and/or people who literally wrote the best book in their niche), it turns out that I know enough to be useful sometimes. Seeing a dog make noticeable progress in a couple of weeks is pretty encouraging in getting to "hey maybe I'm not quite as incompetent as I thought."

I still spend a lot of time thinking that there's nothing special about what I do/know, and surely every other dog owner on earth must know the same/more (especially since my involvement in dogdom is relatively recent, going only two years back, and many people have had dogs much longer than that), but that feeling is going away faster than I thought it would. The first part is probably true but the second part is not.

I don't know how I feel about pricing though. On the one hand, trainers (real trainers, not me) need to make a living, and the per-hour rate doesn't begin to cover the amount of prepwork you have to do designing a treatment protocol for each dog and tailoring it to what that client is reasonably able and willing to do. Plus group classes are pretty damn cheap, and a good foundation in the basic stuff you learn at group class can head off a bunch of problems later.

On the other hand I wonder if the price of private consultations doesn't prevent a lot of people from seeking help until they are at the end of their rope, at which point it is SO much harder to fix an unwanted behavior that the dog has been practicing and getting reinforced for over many weeks or months or years.

[apostrophe]

Since we adopted our dog through the Humane Society, he came with a free 7-week class. We ended up signing up for the next class after it was over and then another after that one.
They have been really valuable, especially to someone like me who had literally no idea how to train a dog. Learning the basics and introducing the dogs to new things, and then moving to more advanced skills. My girlfriend has had dogs all her life but never really took the time to really train them, so it was interesting for her as well.

[apostrophe]

Honestly, though, if the first class wouldn't have been free, I'm not sure we would have done it...
I mean obviously we now can see the benefits, but before we started we had no idea what it would be like or what we would get out of it. So yeah, I'm really glad we signed up and recommend group classes.

[pellegrino viking essays]

hey, dudes,
what does everyone do when they go on long trips?

We've been away for a few weekends, and like a 4-day trip since we got our puppy and he's stayed with our friends who have an older dog he loves, fenced in yard, etc. He's basically been in a cooler spot than at home.

We're going on a legit 10 day vacation this fall though and our friends will be out of the country at the time. We have another friend with a dog but she'll have a newborn at the time, and our other friends all live in apartments that don't allow pets or don't like dogs so we're not gonna ask them.

Is there a good resource for finding a place to board him where my wife won't be crying all the time thinking about how sad he must be? Has anyone done the flying with your dog under the plane thing (too big to be in the cabin)...seems like that would be pretty terrible.

holy fuck, it's expensive to board your dog.

[kit fox]

I'm dreading the day I have to do that. So far we've been lucky to be able to take Cosmo with us wherever we go but I'm sure the time will come that we'll have to keep him at home
When that happens I plan on letting my little brother stay at my house, give him a case of beer, and have him take care of the dog.

[pellegrino viking essays]

yeah, wish I had that option. family lives far away. need to make friends with someone who has an 18 year old kid.

hey, you wanna come stay in a cool apartment downtown for a week and make FIFTY bucks?

[pellegrino viking essays]

i mean the quotes im getting to put my dog up in seattle are basically "maybe we are gonna have to cancel this vacation"

[Merciel]

Honestly, though, if the first class wouldn't have been free, I'm not sure we would have done it...
I mean obviously we now can see the benefits, but before we started we had no idea what it would be like or what we would get out of it. So yeah, I'm really glad we signed up and recommend group classes.

This is why I really want my rescue group to start offering free consults or group classes or something. I think it would help a lot. We get a lot of first-time adopters and a fair number of people who had a beloved dog that died 10 years ago and who was trained using force-based methods because that's what people did 20 years ago, so now they think that's how they should train the new puppy and I'm like AUGH NO NOOOOOO, but a crowded adoption event is not the best venue to get into an in-depth discussion of better alternatives. There's so much else going on that a lot of what I'm trying to communicate just can't get across. Nobody could absorb it.

But I can't even get the other foster parents to sign up for free classes on how to train their foster dogs. It's very frustrating.

hey, dudes,
what does everyone do when they go on long trips?

You saw pissydan's DogVacay.com post up-thread, right? It's a legit service, although it is just a matchmaking thing, so you'll have to do your own screening on top of what they do. But if it's in your area I would suggest looking there.

I can't go on long trips (or any trips) without Dog Mob. Pongu just freaks out the entire time I'm gone. Won't eat, won't take his medication, probably doesn't sleep much. I'm pretty sure if I boarded him he would die.

edit: actually that's not true, I once paid my brother to stay in the condo for a week and take care of Pongu. Who didn't eat or take his medication and spent the entire time freaking out. Same thing happened when SVC watched him for a week. So yeah.

[Shotfrog]

The insanely expensive doggy day care that makes Pissydan hate me also does overnights. It's about $40/night. We've left her there for a few nights at a time. She seems okay, usually acts weird for a couple days afterward. The good thing is that it's a familiar environment and there's a lot to do. If we left her at home and had somebody watch her, I think that might even be worse.

[Merciel]

So for the past couple of days I've been teaching the dogs to do alternate send-aways. Both dogs Sit. One dog goes to the mat when signaled, Sits on the mat, then comes back to his original position and Sits back down. The other dog holds a Stay. Then the second dog is released from Stay, goes to the mat when signaled, Sits on the mat, comes back to his original position and Sits, while the first dog holds a Stay.

This is like stupidly simple but it's taken me two full days to get it even semi-consistent. Here's how it usually goes when I put the camera on:



THANKS GUYS GOOD LISTENING. >:(

(Of course to make it extra awesome they are very good at this when I'm not taping.)

This is closer to what it's supposed to look like:



Anyway as the first clip demonstrates, it is pretty hard to get dogs to do different things at the same time, which is the whole reason we're even doing this dumb exercise. Getting them to do the same thing at the same time is easy: you just give one cue and they both do it. Getting them to do different things at the same time is much harder. So this is the beginning of that.