What I Love Best About My Shiba:
He loves me lots. He likes to sit on my lap and will wait for me on the landing when my husband is up with him in the morning but I am not yet up. Moreover, when I was sick a week ago with a kidney stone and basically spent the whole time in bed, he spent a lot of time on the landing outside our room waiting for me and was so happy to see me when I finally came out of our room.
He loves people. He's super excited every time he sees a person.
He's good at the vet. He was even fine when they took a fecal sample from him O_O
What I Don't Love About My Shiba:
Resource Guarding. He does this with some very odd items (so far just little soft wadded things like a wad of tissue or the soft little ball things on the end of a cat toy). Moreover, it's been hard to teach him "give" to help fix the problem. At first I tried trading and he was too interested in the treat. Then, just now I tried trading a greenie for a hot dog bit. Worked fine the first time. Second time, he didn't notice the hot dog right away and I got myself bit. Really depressed about this one. Really hoping that the trainer will be of some help with this on Monday.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
That Update I Keep Talking About
Okay, so the rat, who has been feeling a tad under the weather (again) perked up when I went to give her a treat this evening and I decided to let her out since she spent the time I'd tried to let her out earlier sleeping in her hammock. This means that I now have some free time and so I'm going to try and actually write that update on Zim that I keep talking about.
So, firstly, he was at the vet again this Monday and had his third round of shots. He had to get a nasal vaccine, which Fathead tells me he wasn't too keen on (I wasn't in there with him since we'd taken the rat in for respiratory issues and I try not to let their paths cross too much) but overall he was really good. That's great since he's been more ornery (although still not too bad) since he's stopped sleeping so much and I was a little worried he might decide to act up a bit at the vet but, no, I've been blessed with a Shiba that behaves himself at the vet.
On the note of being ornery, he growled at me for the first time today. Well, not the first time. He's growled before but it was only in play---normally when he does it he's play bowing or otherwise trying to get me to play with him. It's cute when he does that. This time, though, it was an "I don't like what you're doing" growl and it was not cute. He'd gotten the end of a broken cat toy with a little fuzzy ball on it and I needed to get it away from him. Well, he really wanted it and he wasn't giving it up. I had to take it from him by force (though I did give him a treat afterwards, hoping that he learns that giving me things isn't bad) because I was afraid he'd swallow it. So, Fathead and I are going to try and start getting him to give us things in exchange for hot dogs to a command to try and nip this in the bud before he starts resource guarding. Really, we should have done this earlier. He's never liked it when he's had something in his mouth and we needed to get it from him, this is just the first time he's actually really thought enough of what he had to protest like that. Really, we should have tried to get him to give things up on a command from the beginning (we started to but it faded when we found it hard to actually make sure we always had a treat to give him) and never taken things from him without giving him something. This is our fault but since it's only the one incident I'm pretty confident that if we just work to teach him a command and do what we should have done before and always exchange food for what he has, we'll probably never have a problem with it again. He's overall a really good-natured puppy and I think that as long as we don't abuse that, there won't be any more problems.
On a slightly more positive note, potty training has been going better. He still has accidents, but he's started signalling to go out a lot of the time. Moreover, when I brought him out tonight for his goodnight potty break he just went. I definitely think he's getting the idea that outside is the place to go potty. What's helped in this is that he's started squatting to pee, making it much easier to reward him for going and give a verbal cue that he's doing the right thing, and we've started to figure out his patterns for going in the house. As soon as he tries to go behind the chairs in the living room, he gets taken out because he's probably looking to pee or poop. Too much carpet sniffing can also be a sign (although he does that anyway sometimes so this one is harder). Not letting him behind those chairs in the living room helps a lot too---if I keep chasing him out and he has to go out he'll literally go jump at the back door to signal to go out. We're still usually having at least one accident a day, but it's a lot better than it was. I'm thinking he'll be potty trained a lot quicker than I first thought he would.
Crate training is a more mixed bag. He'd gotten to the point where he was quiet while we were away but he stilled screamed at night. This was making it hard to tell when he needed to go outside and it was meaning accidents in his crate. Finally, his distress and these accidents convinced us to try something else. We both agreed that letting him have accidents in his crate certainly meant it wasn't accomplishing one of the purposes it was supposed to---helping to potty-train him---and I thought it might be hurting it. I want to encourage clean habits where he stays away from his poop, not make him sit in it because he's had an accident. Since the downstairs bathroom had baby-locks on the cabinets, no chemicals kept in there and basically nothing for him to get into at all, we decided we'd try putting him in there one night with his dog bed, which he loves. He didn't whine at all that night. He has since grown less fond of going in there, since he doesn't like being confined, but it's still way better than the crate. He whined a total of twice tonight (as in two discreet whines) and then has been silent. I flicked two Wellness jerky treats in there to reward him for his good behavior. It's great, because it means that we can get time away from him. Before, he was either sleeping or one of us was having to watch him like a hawk. Frankly, it's exhausting to have to do that but chew treats don't hold his interest very long (bully stick=about an hour the first time he got it, antler=about a half hour) and we couldn't crate him to get a break either because as long as we were home and he in that crate, there was no peace in our house (not litterally, he would quiet down eventually at night, unlike the first couple of nights we had him, but still). Right now he's in the bathroom, safe and sound, I'm upstairs with Harley and Fathead is asleep. It's a good thing. We still plan on crate-training him, as not everyone's bathroom will probably be secure enough to make me feel okay about him being in there, but we're taking it slow. We're feeding him in there and dropping treats into it. Hopefully he'll eventually decide the crate is a good place and we can start shutting him in there without protest.
As mentioned above, Zim and Harley don't interact much and I try to keep it that way since Shibas are high prey drive. That said, the 3 or 4 times Zim has been around her, he's basically ignored her, so that's good.
Lastly, Zimmy is now 5.1 lbs at 10 weeks old. He's pretty small, even for a Shiba, but I still think that's quite a bit of growth since 8 weeks when he was 4.2 lbs. That's almost 25% growth in two weeks! I wonder sometimes if he might not have been a bit premature, given how small he is and how much he slept that first week we had him but either way, I think he'll probably still be really small as an adult for a male Shiba. Well, that is what we needed, given the weight limit on our apartment, so no complaints here. He's also about 9 inches tall at the shoulder. I'm not sure how that makes him measure up to other puppies his age, though. There's a bit less information out there about puppy height. Moreover, he was interested in chewing on the tape-measurer, so that was the best measurement I could get of him while standing. I verified it while he was sleeping though by going from shoulder blade to where he should be standing on his foot, so hopefully it's right.
Also, here's a video of Zim meeting his cousin, Molly, who is the dog of Fathead's sister, Mandy. We're doing some catching up in these, but really it's all about the dogs. :D
So, firstly, he was at the vet again this Monday and had his third round of shots. He had to get a nasal vaccine, which Fathead tells me he wasn't too keen on (I wasn't in there with him since we'd taken the rat in for respiratory issues and I try not to let their paths cross too much) but overall he was really good. That's great since he's been more ornery (although still not too bad) since he's stopped sleeping so much and I was a little worried he might decide to act up a bit at the vet but, no, I've been blessed with a Shiba that behaves himself at the vet.
On the note of being ornery, he growled at me for the first time today. Well, not the first time. He's growled before but it was only in play---normally when he does it he's play bowing or otherwise trying to get me to play with him. It's cute when he does that. This time, though, it was an "I don't like what you're doing" growl and it was not cute. He'd gotten the end of a broken cat toy with a little fuzzy ball on it and I needed to get it away from him. Well, he really wanted it and he wasn't giving it up. I had to take it from him by force (though I did give him a treat afterwards, hoping that he learns that giving me things isn't bad) because I was afraid he'd swallow it. So, Fathead and I are going to try and start getting him to give us things in exchange for hot dogs to a command to try and nip this in the bud before he starts resource guarding. Really, we should have done this earlier. He's never liked it when he's had something in his mouth and we needed to get it from him, this is just the first time he's actually really thought enough of what he had to protest like that. Really, we should have tried to get him to give things up on a command from the beginning (we started to but it faded when we found it hard to actually make sure we always had a treat to give him) and never taken things from him without giving him something. This is our fault but since it's only the one incident I'm pretty confident that if we just work to teach him a command and do what we should have done before and always exchange food for what he has, we'll probably never have a problem with it again. He's overall a really good-natured puppy and I think that as long as we don't abuse that, there won't be any more problems.
On a slightly more positive note, potty training has been going better. He still has accidents, but he's started signalling to go out a lot of the time. Moreover, when I brought him out tonight for his goodnight potty break he just went. I definitely think he's getting the idea that outside is the place to go potty. What's helped in this is that he's started squatting to pee, making it much easier to reward him for going and give a verbal cue that he's doing the right thing, and we've started to figure out his patterns for going in the house. As soon as he tries to go behind the chairs in the living room, he gets taken out because he's probably looking to pee or poop. Too much carpet sniffing can also be a sign (although he does that anyway sometimes so this one is harder). Not letting him behind those chairs in the living room helps a lot too---if I keep chasing him out and he has to go out he'll literally go jump at the back door to signal to go out. We're still usually having at least one accident a day, but it's a lot better than it was. I'm thinking he'll be potty trained a lot quicker than I first thought he would.
Crate training is a more mixed bag. He'd gotten to the point where he was quiet while we were away but he stilled screamed at night. This was making it hard to tell when he needed to go outside and it was meaning accidents in his crate. Finally, his distress and these accidents convinced us to try something else. We both agreed that letting him have accidents in his crate certainly meant it wasn't accomplishing one of the purposes it was supposed to---helping to potty-train him---and I thought it might be hurting it. I want to encourage clean habits where he stays away from his poop, not make him sit in it because he's had an accident. Since the downstairs bathroom had baby-locks on the cabinets, no chemicals kept in there and basically nothing for him to get into at all, we decided we'd try putting him in there one night with his dog bed, which he loves. He didn't whine at all that night. He has since grown less fond of going in there, since he doesn't like being confined, but it's still way better than the crate. He whined a total of twice tonight (as in two discreet whines) and then has been silent. I flicked two Wellness jerky treats in there to reward him for his good behavior. It's great, because it means that we can get time away from him. Before, he was either sleeping or one of us was having to watch him like a hawk. Frankly, it's exhausting to have to do that but chew treats don't hold his interest very long (bully stick=about an hour the first time he got it, antler=about a half hour) and we couldn't crate him to get a break either because as long as we were home and he in that crate, there was no peace in our house (not litterally, he would quiet down eventually at night, unlike the first couple of nights we had him, but still). Right now he's in the bathroom, safe and sound, I'm upstairs with Harley and Fathead is asleep. It's a good thing. We still plan on crate-training him, as not everyone's bathroom will probably be secure enough to make me feel okay about him being in there, but we're taking it slow. We're feeding him in there and dropping treats into it. Hopefully he'll eventually decide the crate is a good place and we can start shutting him in there without protest.
As mentioned above, Zim and Harley don't interact much and I try to keep it that way since Shibas are high prey drive. That said, the 3 or 4 times Zim has been around her, he's basically ignored her, so that's good.
Lastly, Zimmy is now 5.1 lbs at 10 weeks old. He's pretty small, even for a Shiba, but I still think that's quite a bit of growth since 8 weeks when he was 4.2 lbs. That's almost 25% growth in two weeks! I wonder sometimes if he might not have been a bit premature, given how small he is and how much he slept that first week we had him but either way, I think he'll probably still be really small as an adult for a male Shiba. Well, that is what we needed, given the weight limit on our apartment, so no complaints here. He's also about 9 inches tall at the shoulder. I'm not sure how that makes him measure up to other puppies his age, though. There's a bit less information out there about puppy height. Moreover, he was interested in chewing on the tape-measurer, so that was the best measurement I could get of him while standing. I verified it while he was sleeping though by going from shoulder blade to where he should be standing on his foot, so hopefully it's right.
Also, here's a video of Zim meeting his cousin, Molly, who is the dog of Fathead's sister, Mandy. We're doing some catching up in these, but really it's all about the dogs. :D
More Spam!
More pictures today (I'd been slacking off for a few days with taking pictures and posting some made me take some more today). There are even some with my dad, who met him yesterday.
I really need to do a real update but there's so much to talk about that that it's kind of a project. :D
I really need to do a real update but there's so much to talk about that that it's kind of a project. :D
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Puppy Spam!
So, I really need to do a real update, but I keep not having the time. Zim keeps Fathead and I pretty busy since he won't chew on any treat for any real long period of time (I'd say you get a half hour out of a novel bully stick or antler) and we can't crate him for peace since there is no peace in my house if he's crated and he knows you can hear him.
So, yeah, here are some pictures.
So, yeah, here are some pictures.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Making Friends Everywhere He Goes
So, Zim is quite the popular little dude. I had him outside to try and go to the bathroom the other day and the secretary for our landlord saw him and we talked for a little bit while she went to her car. Well, then yesterday Fathead and a friend of ours had him outside and the building manager came by. He was quite taken with our little boy and petted him and whatnot. Well, apparently the secretary was quite taken with him too! He told us that she's offered to watch him sometimes in the morning. I think we might take her up on it, since I think that the more time he spends with people about in his house, the better. Either way, though, I'm pretty pleases to see my adorable little puppy getting this much attention. I'm even more pleased by the fact that he's totally cool with it. I know a number of Shibas are not okay with people just coming up to them and not only does Zim not mind, but he'll actively seek it out when he's in the mood.
I'm so glad he's good with people. I just hope we can keep him that way.
I'm so glad he's good with people. I just hope we can keep him that way.
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