Marble

yeah, congratulations! i'm so glad you found a dog even if it did take a while, she sounds wonderful and it also sounds like you're doing a great job working with her. good luck

do you have a crate? maybe you could crate him at night so he would not be tearing up the floors ? i'm not thinking of any other suggestions right now but if i do i'll let you know.

all i have to say is that my eight year old mutt is the healthiest dog we've ever owned and we've had our share, mostly labs, on GSD and one wiemeraner. i'm not a scientist so i'm not going to get all riled up and argumentative but from what i've seen there are a whole lot of mutts out there that seem to be very healthy and i know a lot of purebreds with crazy health problems. i would never condone breeding mutts on purpose but i would also probably (i can't say definitly never, you never know) never own another purebred.

[quote name='"courtnek"']BK - THANK YOU!! everyone thinks Goldens are as sweet as pie - most of them are - BUT NOT ALL!! i was working for a lady once who owned a beautiful, very gentle whippet. i commented on how sweet she was and the lady told me about how she used to love to walk her all around her neighborhood, on leash of course, but she said there are golden retrievers in every yard and one day when she was walking her little whippet some psycho golden ret came tearing out it's yard to fast for the lady to react and it bit her dog so badly she had to take her to the vet to get her sown up. so now her nice dog is terrified of all other dogs.

i guess for me it depends on whether they are in their crates or not when i get home. lady is always out except at night but dresden still has to stay in her crate when we're not home. so lady always does her wriggly sweet greeting and always get's petted and talked to and if dresden is loose (because someone else is home) she gets the same, but if she's in her crate i ignore her or say something and then leave her in there for five or ten minutes because she needs to be more patient and i don't want her freaking out every time i come and go.

meybe you can come teach dresden that :) that is pretty funny.

bk- i guess i am feeling pretty fortunate about dresden she's still a terror and has a whole bunch of annoying habits (like she still nips when she gets excited and it hurts like heck and her attention span for training is still very minimal) but she really has started calming down a little bit and she is being very affectionate. that has just started in the last couple months, she's trying to learn as many ways possible to make me pet her and she has also started the whole leaning thing .......it's really very nice, i thought she was going to act possessed forever......maybe you should think about another dog, you know how many need homes and you know blitz sounds like he needs another dog to terrorize ......ha ha.......i looked at those pictures of him in the pictures section, he is gorgeous! i need to post some new pictures of my nutcase, she's a lot bigger.........

at least she took care of it all the way, my old lab once found a really cute baby possum and seriously injured it and i was so upset my dad had to take care of it, it was horrible, it was having spasms and convulsions and it was just ghastly.

as soon as you get her we all want pictures !! you are so lucky to get to adopt a rottie. i was originally looking to adopt one too but ended up with my muttt dog, she is very protectiive and sweet and smart though....someday i want a rottie. hope your trip goes really well and all goes smoothly with your other dogs when she comes home .

hope it all goes well. she'll be fine, just keep her from running too much and licking it and whatnot. when i adopted dresden last august i paid $62, it included two vet exams and her first two sets of puppy shots at the shelter, and it included her spay fee........i felt like that was extremely reasonable......i do agree that vets charge WAY too much though.

good job! that is very exciting, it must be rewarding to see all your hard work training paying off :) i want to see pictures too! :) we want pictures! we want pictures ! :)

do you ever feel like you're raising a child??? :roll: maybe it's just me...that was really funny. :)

um, mouse ? six weeks plus another two weeks is eight weeks :) that's how i read the post but i may well be wrong....wait, maybe you're right, now i don't know which way to read it.......i think your crate suggestion is excellent by the way. my only advice is be very respectful of your older dog and don't expect it to be excited about the new puppy right away. be sure you spend a lot of time with your older dog doing things with it so it stills knows it's special, that way it won't feel rejected. i have an eight year old dog and just adopted a puppy last fall and it took the older dog a good two months to actually enjoy the puppy, she always tolerated her but after a certain period of time she started playing with her and now they really enjoy each other.

Yeah, I'm REALLY happy about this progress, after all the frustration and wondering if I was going to have to find another home for her (no one in their RIGHT mind would have taken her though). I don't know if I told you all but at one point after having her for like four months she was still so amazingly horrid that I decided since she was still a puppy and had that as an excuse that I was going to give her four more months to improve and if she was still really bad I was going to try to find someone with a really big farm for her to run on and a lot of patience, but she started improving somewhat during the next month and she started improving dramatically two months ago. However yes I am also being very selective about who uses the bottle and what for. I only let guests who are close friends or family even hold it and they have not had to spray her yet, not once. She still likes to jump on my dad but he likes to get her all worked up by making really crazy noises and doing other nutty stuff :roll: so I'm not too worried about that, she knows not to jump on anyone else but that's still something we're working on........ Hobbit- you should see how amazing her coat looks having been on Diamond for several months, her color is much richer and she's reallly really shiny. She's also I think, going to get as big as a smallish Doberman, judging by how tall she's going to be when her legs grow to match her body.......and yes, I know she probably has a lot more tricks up her sleeve (mataphorically speaking :) ) so I'm always on guard.....:) Courtnek- Yeah I know what you mean, we've had four labs and one of them always managed to escape our yard and sneak over to our favorite neighbors yard and lie in their pretty little golfish pond......it was very embarassing. That's partly why I'm so suprised that spraying water does anything to Dresden, it never occured to me that it would work as a deterrent/reinforcer with a dog......... BK- I am trying to have all the family members help with this training thing with the bottle, it's also occured to me that when my oldest brother comes with his four young children to teach them how to use it (with close supervision of course) so she starts being more careful with children...What does Blitz think about water? Oh wait, I remember something about your sister in law or someone having to drag him out of some mud pit :D

Hey- Just wanted to let all of you who have been so helpful with my problems with Dresden know that I finally found that magic key for training her. She was learning things but would not do them even though I knew that she was knew exactly what to do. We were trying to teach her to "go lie down'' while we were eating.........and she kept bothering, bugging, and annyoying us. So I (after seven months of trying to work with the little punk) thought maybe I'd try a spray bottle. So the next time she came in I told her to go lie down, she did not listen so I told her again and sprayed her with the water........I've never had to tell her go lie down twice since. It is absolutely amazing, never have I seen her do anything that quickly. So when we have visitors and she won't stop bothering them because she does not respect them I give them the spray bottle and have them tell her go lie down, just the mere sight of it is all she needs and she's gone. This morning I was trying to eat while reading on the sofa, before she'd be jumping all over me and sticking her nose in my face and being really annoying, I told her go lie down and she went immediately and laid down in another room. She's also developed this habit of barking at the phantoms :) through the front door, I always look and the only thing I ever see is, if anything, a bird or something. I've been telling her quiet and trying to praise her when she only stops barking but she stops for like a eighth of a second. So now I tell her quiet and she knows she might get sprayed so she shuts up almost right away. This is a dog who would stand there for forever and bark her head off and never be quiet when I told her to.......... Like I said I'm dumbfounded, first that she's so terrified of water being sprayed at her-she loves the creek and loved the ocean and is really good during a bath- and second that she is actually responding to a reinforcer, I mean I've tried everthing..........Anyway, it is amazing to be making so much progress with her and to have her behaving like an almost normal dog :) I'm so grateful that something finally worked :) Like I've said before, thanks for all your help.........Thought maybe someone else could use this too.......It also works really well when she steals stuff :)

me too.

Hey- Just wanted to thank, I think it was Behle, for posting that recipe of stuff to wash a skunked dog in. I've had to use it twice already :roll: on Lady of course............It works really well and she would be ostracized from many people if I did not know to wash her with that stuff........THANKS! :)

hey shady lady- i'm really sorry to hear about what happened but at the same time it is really encouraging to me that you handled it the way you did. i have a lot of respect for people who, even in such a painful situation, try to be rational and deal with people without just blasting the heck out of them. i hope things go well with your neighbor (who is very fortunate to have a neighbor like you) and that you are healed of the pain from this incident.

hey bk, i'm really sorry to hear about rinny, i've been there before too and it is hard......

thanks for your help :) i have been suprised in the last few months at how tall and skinny she's gotten and it is really funny to watch her grow. right now her body just got really long and skinny and her legs are too short and her head is way to small :) it looks like when it all gets coordinated she could be a couple inches taller.....i think she should be about a year now, or close to it but you know how that goes with adoptees.....i thought she was younger than the pound did but who knows. anyway, it's nice to have some idea about how big purebreds are, thanks very much :)

glad to hear he's going to have a good home now :) that is awesome! i'm really bad at thinking of names....took me three weeks to name dresden...maybe if i saw more pictures........:) :)

hey, i know this is probably one of those things that's kind of dumb to ask about but i'm curious........do any of you people with female dobbermans remember how big they were at a year old? i'm curious because i have a mix that is (i'm pretty sure) part dobie and part ACD, i keep thinking she's done growing and then she starts growing again.......they don't really finish growing till about two years right? just wondering, thanks for any help you all can give....she's only 50 pounds but her head is already at dinner table height, she's really tall and skinny.....thanks.

what a cute mutt, there is something about him that makes him look much more in the normal range than our mutts though bk :) maybe its because he's not looking at the camera though........:)

[quote name='luckychaos']Well looks like the poor boy was abandoned. Called the vet again and gave them the ID # and they found the phone number. it turned out that they made a mistake last time. my dad called the number and told the person I found their dog. He denied ever owning a dog then after a few more minutes he said he sold the dog to a friend. But he can't remember who he sold him to! he told us he didn't want the dog back and just to get rid of him :x. .[/quote] what a stinking JERK. glad you found him and i hope things go okay with your decisions about homing him........

yeah, that is great. lady and dresden have been a trip recently too. dresden still likes to steal and destroy things when she gets a chance, usually when i'm in another room trying to work on something. it usually goes like this: i'm working, lady and dresden are playing, i'm concentrating and don't notice when it gets quiet, lady comes in and sits in front of me and stares at me like "you need to check on that brat", i go out and every stinking time dresden has stolen something. it really cracks me up...