Behaviour Archives - Page 12 of 13

Category: Behaviour Page 12 of 13

Growling Mother, Snarling Child

On April 16, 2013

En route to the park on the hill, we were about to cross the carpark behind our block when we bumped into Donna’s mother, Dior. When I say this, most people probably think the dogs will greet each other with joy but no. Alas, somewhere in their common history at the shelter, the two dogs develop an antagonistic relationship. Today, Donna snarled at her mother on sight. Dior’s human had to pull her back too. We couldn’t even have a conversation with the two dogs leaping around brandishing invisible doggy light sabers at each other, probably.

And I wonder every time, is there anything we can do to start getting the dogs to tolerate each other so that the relationship improves over time?

Note: I would like to amend that we met Dior twice. The first time Donna was interested because she clearly recognised Dior but she did not behave aggressively until Dior growled at her. She was aggressive the second time they met.

A dog and her bones

By weliveinaflat

On April 5, 2013

In Behaviour

The first thing I ever bought for Donna was a nylon bone which frayed within seconds of Donna laying her paws on it. I went, “Oh shoot! There’s goes this expensive bone! I should have bought the Nylabone instead!” I had already read good reviews of the Nylabone online but when I went to the pet store, I somehow picked another bone instead. Yikes!

It wasn’t long that I ended up buying the Nylabone for Donna, but you know what. After a while, it seemed Donna settled in her new environment and she didn’t chew on her toys as much, and spent more time sleeping instead.

As for the first bone I bought for her? It’s still around, its ends frayed more than the hardy Nylabone. I later bought a rawhide milkbone for Donna so that we have a few bones that we can rotate and keep her boredom at bay.

But before we started rationing them, when Donna still had all her bones at her disposal, it almost seemed like Donna prefer the first bone more than her Nylabone. Or maybe its just me convincing myself that she was having more satisfaction ripping bigger bits out of the yellow bone than small slivers out of her Nylabone.

I’m writing about bones today because Mr P’s cousin’s dog Doudou is certainly having fun with her new Nylabone that we got for her. The talented Doudou has to date ripped all her toys, often within minutes, and our cousin out of desperation keeps making trips to the pet store to replenish. Doudou finished her milkbone in minutes, while Donna took weeks to work on her milkbone. So we immediately thought that we needed to get a Nylabone for Doudou.

And Doudou loved the bone. Chewed it for a long time and was so fixated that she went right back to the bone after her dinner and ignored her family the whole time!

Make no bones about it, this is one toy that should last that dog for some time at least.

Note: I did read that rawhide bones are not only harder to digest, they can also be choking risks. The packaging on the nylon bones did advised supervised play. But the whole point of getting these bones are to ensure Donna has things to occupy her time with when we are out of the house. We usually supervise her use of any new toy for a couple of rounds so we can observe and only let her continue when we see that the way she plays with the toy is safe. Then we leave her alone with it once we find it safe for her. In Donna’s case, we observe that she will usually flick her tongue repeatedly to get the chewed bits out and onto the floor before going back to work on the bone. She doesn’t swallow them. We also ensure all bones are larger than her head, and in the case of edible rawhide bones, we remove them from her once they become soft or have been chewed down to a small size that can become a chocking hazard.

Scratching and allergies

By weliveinaflat

On April 5, 2013

In Behaviour

Well, food could be one factor. We heard Doudou’s scratching got noticeably less after my cousin’s boyfriend changed the kibble she was having to a better quality fish-based kibble.

The Animal Recovery Centre does have this interesting section in their article on Nutritional Influences on Illnesses in Small Animals.

Thunder

By weliveinaflat

On March 29, 2013

In Behaviour

She doesn’t usually do this because she understands the meaning of a barrier. But when it starts to thunder loudly and the wind howls, she just wants to be near you, in the same space. She pushes into the kitchen without a thought.

For the first time, she launches herself upwards so that her front paws land on the counter top supporting her upright posture. After she is satisfied, she drops down and moves to the small yard where again she was never allowed. She peers into the gloom of the store room but decides against entering. She peers into the drum of the washing machine. The space is too small for her. There is no safe place to hide.

She finally stops by the side of the kitchen cabinet and stares out to the living room, where the thunder blares right outside. Her tail is tucked between trembling legs. You call her but she does not respond, already immersed in her own world of doggy apocalyptic thoughts.

Physically, you tap her gently on the rump to get her attention, ‘sit’, you say. She does, slowly. Does it give her some measure of comfort?

“Help me,” she seemed to be saying with her eyes perhaps. But my dear girl, no one can keep the thunder away.

You walk in and out living life as normal. There is nothing to be scared of, its just a storm, you tell her. You hold the gate for her, in case she wants to follow you to the living room. But her bottom is rooted to the spot. “Do you want a treat?” you ask, knowing full well her little head of horrors is drowning you out. You left the small piece of jerky by her anyway, and tie the gate open with industrial strength velcro.

After she realises that you are not going back to the kitchen, she makes her way to the living room and stood there in the centre for quite a while. At length, she realises nothing is happening to her. And as the thunder dies, she lies down on her own and relaxes into sleep.

A dog can’t have too many bones

By weliveinaflat

On March 26, 2013

In Behaviour

The flat was being fumigated, so Donna had to spend sometime in the balcony.

While waiting for the flat to air out, the deer antler magically appeared!

Inspection by Inspector Grass.

She wants it.

Getting pretty good at using her paws.

Abandoned.

The various bones to beguile our distracted dog. Because she gets bored of them so easily.

How not to test if your dog is child-friendly

By weliveinaflat

On March 22, 2013

In Behaviour

Being new dog owners, we of course have let certain things happen which we on hindsight should not have. Letting a strange child play with Donna outside the vet is one of them.

That was the first time we ever took Donna to the vet, just one or two weeks after we got Donna home. She had got what the doctor later diagnosed as the kennel cough.

As we did not make an appointment beforehand, we had to sit outside and wait until every animal was attended to. That of course gave us the leisure to see other animals with their owners, try to entertain a bored dog, etc etc.

Somewhere amidst all that waiting, a couple came to the vet clinic with their mongrel, a frantic pug and their little boy. We were not that clued in the signs that a dog displays at that point in time, so looking back, I can’t really say for sure if Donna was happy playing with the little boy or she was trying to pacify the little boy to leave her alone. We were also keeping Donna on a tight leash, so she wouldn’t have been able to get up to walk away from the boy even if she wanted to avoid him.

What happened was that Donna patiently sat there while the little boy invaded her space to let her lick him. He was especially amused when her tongue slipped through the gap left by his fallen front teeth into his mouth. We stopped him when he used his hands to try to keep her muzzle close, explaining to him in terms that he could understand, that he wouldn’t want some other kid to do that to him would he. The little boy didn’t mean any harm. He stopped when we told him not to. He told us how he had a fighting fish at home that got eaten by the cat. The cat sounded like a nasty piece of work that bit and scratched the little boy too. But who’s to say it may not be the little boy’s fault sometimes. He seemed to be about lower primary school age and mischievous.

We allowed him to interact with Donna (the parents ignored him the whole time), assuming that Donna was happy to have a little boy to keep her entertained, but now I really can’t say for sure what she felt then. One thing for sure, Donna patiently endured the whole encounter and we ignorantly were thankful that our dog is child-friendly.

But in an alternate reality, Donna may have snapped at the child for badgering him, for getting in her face. And we would have been at fault for not recognising her signs of unease and asking for help.

So we were lucky that night, and we were lucky that we adopted a patient not-so-little dog named Donna.

These two posts on smartdog.typepad.com are a great resource that shows you through analysis of video the minute signals of distress a dog may be sending out that new dog owners would find hard to catch:
– Dog body language: How to tell if a dog is happy, frustrated, scared, annoyed Part 1
– Dog body language: How to tell if a dog is happy, frustrated, scared, annoyed Part 2

A sleepy dog and bedtime stories

By weliveinaflat

On March 21, 2013

In Behaviour

When her ears are in this position, I think of them as Dobby ears… though its not exactly like that :P

These couple of days, Donna has been making yelping noises during her afternoon nap. Sometimes, you can see her legs and even her stomach twitching pretty violently. Think when you are making very bad hiccups and you whole body jumps with each hiccup. That’s sort of what it looks like to me, except at a faster rate than hiccups.

At first I was alarmed since we had Donna for more than two months now and she had never done that before. Then I googled and read that this twitching is normal in dogs. Should I be glad that perhaps Donna now feels at home enough to go into REM sleep?

Do your dogs twitch when they sleep and how violently do they do it?

Donna doesn’t bother our Siamese fighting fish

By weliveinaflat

On March 20, 2013

In Behaviour

… but she sometimes thinks she is entitled to fish food, so she steals the bottle of fish fish in the hopes of getting to the pallets inside. So far for her efforts, all she accomplished was a chewed bottle cap. Fish food is safe!

Mr P and I live with our dog Donna and a Siamese fighting fish.

We had the fish first. My health wasn’t very good so my husband Mr P bought two fishes to give a bit more life to our two-person home. One of the fish has since died, so we are left with one.

We got the dog later. I had fractured my ankle and was suffering from nerve problems in my toes, spent a lot of time at home alone. With all that time, we thought we were finally ready to get a companion animal. But since I couldn’t walk very much, we didn’t adopt the dog until later when I regained some mobility. Donna became very much a exercise companion, pushing me to go take a walk and exercise that foot even though it hurt everyday.

One feels livelier with a dog. Donna has this constant positive energy about her, always ready to go out and explore the world. Always ready to jump up to her feet and follow to see what’s up, even if she was napping. (OK, I lie, sometimes she only raises her head, as if trying to decide if it is worthwhile moving her whole lazy body.)

She finds such joy in simple things that she cavorts, almost obsessive compulsively, always welcoming you home with a toy in her mouth and her tail wagging like a helicopter ready to lift off. It’s as if she doesn’t move, she will explode.

And yet, when she calms down, she gives very endearing gentle licks on your toes, on your knees, on your hands, any part of you that she can reach.

The dog didn’t ask for us or it’s previous owner to give it a home. We heard Donna was abused. And when she was returned to the shelter, her mother and siblings didn’t welcome her. They couldn’t get along. The shelter had to put the dog that couldn’t get along with an old dog that could suffer her.

But Donna didn’t seem too unhappy with her lot even when she was at the shelter. There were volunteers to play with, and she could always watch the main door in anticipation of the next dog or human that comes in.

And when she came home with us, she adjusted. Sure there’s less excitement here with two quiet adults than at the shelter, but she has a roof over her head and food to eat. She doesn’t get cold and wet when it rains for days during the monsoon season. And she gets three walks a day rather than two walks a week when the shelter volunteers come in on weekends to walk the dogs.

It’s not difficult to enjoy life, the ups and downs and all it brings. The dog does it, we can too.

My dog is sometimes fearful

By weliveinaflat

On March 18, 2013

In Behaviour

We met Uncle Gardener again this morning on our walk. Donna seem to recognised him from the previous two times we bumped into him. Her tail was wagging and friendly. She sniffed around his legs, probably checking out the cat scent, but was having too much fun on her own to “sit” or “paw”. Things seem to be going well until Uncle Gardener reached out his hand to pet her on the head. She jumped and her head hung low to avoid his hand. Everything about her screamed nervous.

For all she is friendly and playful, this dog does have random episodes where she reacts fearfully. Early on, Florence had pointed out to us how Donna is so ideal in the home environment, we had thrown a toy which landed near a bunch of big boxes stacked together, that dog was almost tiptoe-ing around the boxes as she carefully grasp the toy in her teeth before cautiously returning back to us with the toy.

Donna is a very cautious dog. Sometimes we wondered if it was because she was abused in her previous family.

Sometimes, we understood that her cautiousness was with good reason. When we got a new dog in her house, friends and family who liked animals would want to visit and play with the dog. These friends and family unfortunately are strangers to Donna and when the strangers’ focus are trained on her and they make a beeline for her once they enter the house, she starts to get nervous and she will siam. Yup, at these times, she becomes the master at avoidance tactics.

It didn’t help that some family members are rough and think that they need to show the dog who is the boss first, even if at the end of the day they just want to shower affection on the dog. It also did not help that people naturally want to help the poor scared dog, and end up cornering her to pet her.

When pursued by “strangers”, the nervous Donna will usually bunch up in her bed after she gives up avoiding them. But in this picture, she just wanted to be left alone because it is her bedtime.

These situations could have ended up badly, if Donna was not the type of dog to downstress and just freeze on the spot versus becoming fearful aggressive instead. I read that a dog that downstresses may also react violently when pushed past a threshold. With Donna, we have never reached the aggression threshold yet.

Much later, I met a guy from the Save Our Street Dogs organisation at a new grooming place I was trying out, and he told me that this contradictory behaviour of being fearful and yet calm (frozen in one spot rather than kicking and screaming and showing teeth) at the same time was a behaviour that our local street dogs are genetically predisposed to show.

Interesting, so Donna is genetically programmed to go from fearful avoidance and then to fearful acceptance, without the aggression?

I’m not so sure about that. What I do know is that Donna is not incapable of aggression. She has a “mortal enemy” at the shelter called Grace, a dog whom she would with certain predictability lunged at, only to be stopped by the leash and even then, the handler needs great strength to hold her back as she tears at the air.

But we have not seen this aggression away from the shelter. Not once.

Meanwhile, we’ve tried with limited success to help family members and friends learn how to not approach Donna in order to make the introduction to her a success. (Sometimes, older folks have their own opinions and think we are spoiling the dog. My goodness, they have NOT seen a spoiled dog, I tell you!)

We have also been making Donna go to her bed and lie down in a relaxed position so that she may slowly learn to find calm there, especially when she may potentially feel fear. It’s sort of like crate training, but without the crate since we don’t have one yet.

I try to get the inquisitive little girl to go to her bed and to lie there before opening the door when the doorbell rings. She may not always stay since she is the very soul of a busybody, but she does at least stand around 2m behind me, near her bed as I answer the door, which leaves space between her and the people at the door who may need to come in.

It’s working pretty well, whether it is the dog supplies delivery man, the carpet cleaning salesman, etc. We complete our transactions while Donna stands and watches on. Sometimes, she is amenable to come closer to sniff at an offered hand, especially when she sees the nice man is delivering her food.

But yes, we do have a bit of a way to go when it comes to socialisation and helping her feel more confidence.

Yup, she also gets nervous when the weekend cleaning lady starts to vacuum the floor.