I love everything about my cheeky munch monster, but there were a few occasions where she made me jump out of my skin, hit another dimension and come back. I’m looking for advice on how to keep my cool and use positive reinforcement in painful or potentially life threatening situations.
I’ll give you a few examples, but I’m sure the possibilities are endless.
Scenario 1 - pretty standard: puppy biting gets out of hand. They play, but bite so hard that there’s blood, sweat and tears. What do you do? How do you not scream a little out of pain?
Scenario 2 - they somehow (maybe due to a random leash zoomie attack) get out of their collar / harness and you want them to stop immediately, because you’re near a busy street, or just don’t want them to run away. Do you shout at them to stay? Dig into your pockets quickly to find treats? Pray?
Scenario 3 - this happened to us today: my puppy found a rose branch in the park with massive thorns on it and didn’t want to leave it. Obviously not something you can grab out of her mouth with force and you don’t want to leave it with her too long either because there’s more chance for swallowing or biting on the thorns. I tried to keep my calm and offer her a whole bag of treats but she kept running in circles with it in her mouth. What would you do? Fortunately I managed to eventually do the trade off, but it was way too long and I lost my whole daily water intake in the form of stress sweats in a few seconds.
The last problem happens to us relatively often, despite practicing leave it on a daily basis at home.
When she’s in a good, obedient mood we walk like a dream duo, but when she’s in the middle of her witching hour, it’s a living nightmare of her wanting to eat everything from the ground and me either begging her with treats or on my knees and elbow deep in her mouth to remove an unwanted object.
I’m looking forward to reading your wisdom. Thank you and all the fluffy gods bless you all.
I’ll give you a few examples, but I’m sure the possibilities are endless.
Scenario 1 - pretty standard: puppy biting gets out of hand. They play, but bite so hard that there’s blood, sweat and tears. What do you do? How do you not scream a little out of pain?
Scenario 2 - they somehow (maybe due to a random leash zoomie attack) get out of their collar / harness and you want them to stop immediately, because you’re near a busy street, or just don’t want them to run away. Do you shout at them to stay? Dig into your pockets quickly to find treats? Pray?
Scenario 3 - this happened to us today: my puppy found a rose branch in the park with massive thorns on it and didn’t want to leave it. Obviously not something you can grab out of her mouth with force and you don’t want to leave it with her too long either because there’s more chance for swallowing or biting on the thorns. I tried to keep my calm and offer her a whole bag of treats but she kept running in circles with it in her mouth. What would you do? Fortunately I managed to eventually do the trade off, but it was way too long and I lost my whole daily water intake in the form of stress sweats in a few seconds.
The last problem happens to us relatively often, despite practicing leave it on a daily basis at home.
When she’s in a good, obedient mood we walk like a dream duo, but when she’s in the middle of her witching hour, it’s a living nightmare of her wanting to eat everything from the ground and me either begging her with treats or on my knees and elbow deep in her mouth to remove an unwanted object.
I’m looking forward to reading your wisdom. Thank you and all the fluffy gods bless you all.