From: kkv@inel.gov (Jamie J Ferguson)
Subject: Re: puppy problems and questions
Organization: Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Idaho Falls, Idaho
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 18:19:11 GMT

In article <1993Jan27.170521.23361@cbfsb.cb.att.com> gtl@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (george.t.liu) writes:
>the other 
>problem that he has is when taking him out for a walk, he would pick up 
>everything he sees and eats them, grass, dirty snow, little rocks and stones.  
>and he is getting very very good at doing this without me notice anything 
>worng until it's too late.

Our Lab mix used to pick things up too (now everything is buried under
snow, so hopefully she'll loose this habit).  At our old house she
would pick up pine cones, and she learned that we were used to her
having one so she would hold 2 in her mouth and we'd take out one
thinking we had done our job.  Now we look more closely...  She likes
rocks especially.  She will hold her mouth closed as if there wasn't
anything in it so we have to watch her to see if she picks up
anything.  I hope she's grown out of this, but it'll be a few months
before we know for sure.

About the housetraining, none of our dogs ever had accidents in
their crates so I don't know what to tell you.  I never tried
paper training with ours either.

I'd look into puppy classes -- the class our youngest puppy is
in right now accepts dogs at 8 weeks of age, so your puppy is
not too young.  Puppy classes tend to be fun and not much work,
but it sounds like you need to use dominance techniques on
your puppy and a class is a good place to learn how.  When our
dogs start getting rebellious we practice dominance exercises
more often, and they work.  For biting, we yelp and stop playing
if a dog bites -- it works fairly well, but you may have tried
this.  Maybe growling would work?  Or if your puppy bites you
could do an alpha roll right away?

Good luck!  I'm sure you can work this out with your puppy, it'll
just take time and effort.  


Jamie

*********************************************************************
     canines:  Kenzie -- 1 yr old black Lab X
               Meggin -- 8 month old Australian Shepherd X
               Harry  -- 4 month old Border Collie X

     felines:  Kieri  -- 5 1/2 yr old lilac point Siamese
               Zak    -- 5 1/2 yr old blue point Siamese
               Duke   -- 1 yr old seal point Siamese
*********************************************************************
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Xref: sparky rec.pets.dogs:16735 ca.wanted:1712 ba.general:5733 misc.misc:4420 rec.pets:4372