Pictures and A Short Update

The last three pictures are from the last day of puppy class on March 26, 2012. That was also the day he got the last of his puppy shots too, so it was a really big day for him. Now that he has gotten all of his shots and is 4 months old we intend to get him a tag for the dog park up the road and take him there sometimes. The one near our house is rarely used (the one in Urbana is nicer and more popular) and I plan to take him on Wednesdays when I don't have class so I'm thinking we'll get the place to ourselves. In fact, if we stick to the small dog area I bet we'll definitely have it to ourselves.

Zim's next "big day" is May 14 when he gets neutered right after Ben and I finish finals.

Zim's Progress

Well, it's been a little while since I've updated on Zim's progress and a fair amount has happened.

Potty-training:
He was seeming pretty well potty-trained (he'd stopped having accidents but not long enough that I was ready to declare him officially potty-trained) but then we screwed him up. I was playing a card game and it was mine turn to take him out when he signalled. Stupidly, I took my turn before going to let him out and then got caught up and forgot to take him out. He held it for a while, but eventually the inevitable happened and after that he started having a number of accidents---he wouldn't signal but would just go and we'd have to rush him outside. Obviously, this was all my fault and I feel really bad that I caused him to do that. We have gotten him back on track now (he hasn't had an accident in over a week) and I've vowed to just take him out right away whenever he signals like I should have then.

Crate-training:
Well, we had been working on slowly getting Zim used to his crate and had been putting him in the bathroom while we were asleep or away. Well, yesterday he did his first destructive thing ever and he chewed on the wall. He really only took the wallpaper off but obviously we can't have him doing that; he could hurt himself that way. So now we've had to return to the crate and he hates it just as much as before. As soon as he realized we were putting him in there to sleep, he was crying and all that work to get him to like the thing by putting meals in that was destroyed. I really wish there were a better solution here but I can't have him hurting himself.

Resource Guarding:
Zim has stopped doing this through the power of trading. A while ago a friend took a tissue from him and he didn't growl or anything. He wasn't keen on giving it up but there was nothing bad. Definitely going to be keeping up with the trading so that he never starts that again and so that his "give" stays good enough that we can take things from him when we need to and are without treats for some reason.

Commands:
His sit has always been pretty good and he'll do that basically automatically and for any reward. He's also developed a good "leave it" and "give," which I'm really proud of.

More Puppy Pictures!

Confessions of a First Time Dog Owner

Sometimes I'm really genuinely scared that I'm going to screw my dog up---and not in a having bad manners by jumping up on people sort of way (which he is well on his way to right now) but in the I'm going to let serious behavior problems develop because I don't know what to do about them sort of way.

There are several examples of this. Zim resource guards a tiny bit. He also sometimes will just suddenly growl-bark toward your face in a sort of snappy way. I actually got bit this way earlier today. Now, I think he was going for my hair (he likes to chew on hair) but I'm honestly not sure and it's the not knowing that sort of freaks me out. Sometimes I really just don't know what's going on in his little head. Is this a temper tantrum that should be gently but firmly curbed? Is he trying to play and thus just needs to be shown that playing like that is unacceptable? Is this some sort of aggression that needs to be dealt with? Frankly, I don't really think it's the latter but I do sometimes wonder. What if this is something serious that I'm missing because I have no frame of reference for what "normal" puppy behavior is---normal Shiba puppy behavior, which is high idiosyncratic because Shibas just aren't a normal dog breed.

So what do I do? Well, for now Fathead and I have resolved to keep trucking along. We've been trying to teach him "give" and I think we're starting to get somewhere and as far as the other stuff goes, we're just trying not to encourage any bad behavior. If he barks instead of doing the trick asked for, the food goes away. He barks at me when he's near me, then either he or I goes away. Hell, maybe I should start putting him in time out in the bathroom when he does that. I'll have to mull the last one over. On the one hand, it's where we keep him at night so having bad associations with it isn't something I want---on the other hand he seems to have grown to hate it where he was fine with it at first so I really wonder if that can make it any worse.

Do puppies go through an ornery stage at 3 months? I know there's adolescence but I feel like I'm getting some of that now. Is it a stage? Is it that he's finally settled into to being in a new place and now feels free to be a brat and try and run the show?

Either way, only thing to do is to keep doing my best. Really, he's kind of a dream of a puppy. He certainly isn't the "terrorist" that I've sometimes heard Shiba puppies described as. It's just little bouts of unpleasantness. He'll probably grow out of a lot of it (or he'll respond to our training) and will turn into a very nice adult dog.