That ^ is Rodney trying to bury a bone on top of the couch, failing, and dropping it on Finli. Finli then decided the bone should be his.
Can someone interpret this behavior? We have ducklings. We are working with the dogs and they understand to drop their attention away from the ducklings when told to "leave it." Buddy will have to be trained more to calm down around them and eventually ignore them. He has a history of being a stray and very likely eating animals to survive. Piggy is a very intense and alert dog and I am having trouble interpreting her interest. Socially she is very submissive and tends to be playful. She is highly trainable and smart. She was definitely salivating around them but that stopped by day 3. She likes to just look at them and will go check them out if they are particularly noisy. Sometimes she is wagging her tail, sometimes not. She watches them intently when we are in the garden and the dogs are on the other side of the fence. We currently have the ducks inside in a 50gal rubbermade bin used as a brooder downstairs. It is currently covered because they are getting big and about to outgrow it totally, but at first it was not. She often can be found at the brooder watching the ducks. One night about 10 days after we got the ducklings my husband woke up before his alarm about 6:30 or 7am and realized Piggy was not in the room with us. She was downstairs standing at the open brooder with her face in the corner just watching the ducklings. He thinks she was there all night. Like I said, she's a very alert dog. I'm assuming if she really wanted to eat them it would be done. We are doing this in baby steps as much as possible, but I am a bit perplexed over her behavior. I am leaning towards whatever it is, being benign, but I'm no fool either. I think we may try some training once they are bigger with her on the leash with a mesh muzzle to see how she acts. I don't know if them running will set her off (though during play she enjoys being chased, not chasing). From what I am reading about LGDs, I don't think she'll be able to truly be trained in that capacity. She also is in no part any breed of dog known for being a livestock guardian. But, it would be nice if she could eventually be trusted to watch them in the yard without a person around. Thoughts?
Well i have never been a cat person, neither has my wife. Guess what we have? Wife saw 2 kittens on the local shelter facebook page, and really wanted them. It is so weird, she has never liked cats. They are 2 brothers, that were brought to the shelter from outside, they have been there about a month and are about 8 weeks old.
A week in and we are making big progress. This last for about 20 to 30 seconds, then the dog left the room.
My wife's aunt saw a video online showing goats playing with yoga balls. So she got a couple for our boys. So far they're not too impressed. It doesn't help that the second one is bigger than they are.
In that vein, I stuck a dogs treat dispensing ball full of dried mealworms in the coop and the ducks avoid it. Womp womp.
I've noticed lately that my one cat, Canso, has been having some pain. I mean, it's pretty obvious the way he was sitting/sleeping on the Catio: Only one thing to do... so I hit up the shop last night and did some Catio upgrades: It now features a Big and Tall section. Hopefully he enjoys it. I won't know today, probably, because it's fucking hot and humid outside (46°C on the humidex), and they're both camped out on the AC registers inside... but I'm optimistic.
Our geriatric beagle has been getting her days and nights confused. She'll sleep all day and then around 8:30 be an anxious wreck until someone goes to bed. Then her ass is up every hour all through the night, waking us up. I'm off for the Summer, so I get up and let the wife sleep. But we finally had enough and took her to the vet. Up until then she'd been getting Melatonin, 100 mg Trazedone, and 50 mg Benadryl every night with no effect. Even the vet admits its a "quality of life" issue for us, and prescribes 10mg of Valium which she said should knock her ass out. No dice. Okay, she says add back the other meds. I did, but held back 25mg of Benadryl, not wanting to kill her ( yet ). She was up three times between midnight and 0330. Last night I hit her with the full battery of meds. And it knocked her ass for a loop. She was obviously stoned out of her mind, and I felt slightly bad about it, but goddamnit she slept all night. I'm gonna fiddle with her regimen and cut back something tonight. If that don't work, we're knocking the old girl out every night from now on.
The boogey jar fixed the dogs with their bad behavior around the ducks, but... Using a Patriot PE5, an electric wire fence was installed because dog #2 kept prowling the fenceline and damaging it when she would see a cat on the other side. I just installed it on the length of fence we have the most issues with, but can easily expand it to cover the entire property line if she finds a new area to obsess over. She was causing the fence boards to push out from their screw attachments because she'd erupt in a calamity of barking and rush at the fence, bumping it with her nose. I think she got popped pretty good on 3 occasions yesterday with some minor buzzes (depending on where she is standing/grounding situation) mixed in for fun. Well, this fixed that behavior. Except because the dog is so fucking cagey and sketched out about certain things, she now won't go into the back yard... I think I broke our dog.
I'm in the process of making a second raised wicking garden. By "in the process of" I mean that I only have the rough box cut and built out... nothing more. Needless to day I found that one of my cats has deemed it to be his secret napping place. I think we all need a secret napping place.
I'm so proud of the progress the dogs have made regarding the ducks, especially Buddy. The ducks were behind a 3' garden fence and one flew out because I scared it while pulling up old corn stalks in the veggie patch. Buddy was sitting right there (he is always as close to me as possible and they are not allowed in the garden) and the duck flew down right next to him, within 5'. He kept sitting and just looked at me with a worried look. Like fuck... if I look at that duck I'm toast. I told him No and Leave It! Loudly while I scrambled out and threw the duck back into the garden. Then lots of praises for the good boy. Proof that an old dog can learn new tricks. This is the dog that was literally shaking and visibly salivating when we brought the ducks home.