Things you will do/did do differently with your next dog

[JacksonsMom]

What are some things that you maybe learned from your first dog that you WILL do different with your next dog?

I know that for sure I will immediately start work with nail trimming and teeth brushing. These were things I did not start early on with Jackson and had to work much harder at later on. Teeth brushing we are pretty great on, but nail clipping is still a chore I don't really do. So next dog will be attempted to condition to it better.

Also, from the beginning, treating thunderstorms like a "FUN" thing. Whip out the toys, the food, etc. Just in case they get a phobia. I know it may not prevent it, but I'd like to try.

Recall. I would have started much earlier. Luckily, Jackson is pretty good naturally now, but I think if I had started as a young pup actually working on and not just assuming he wouldn't run away that we would have more solid success. Up until about 10 months old, I let him off leash all the time without ever actually training anything. He got iffy after that and would sometimes dart (in the 90 acres of farmfield behind our house). Now, at almost 4, I probably could trust him but I generally still put him on a long line.

 

[AdrianneIsabel]

Nails, even though they terrify me. LOL

Teaching the pup to shape and offer from the beginning.

Training the best off-switch I can manage.

 

[Upendi&Mina]

Foot handling and nails! Upendi is awful awful awful about nails, the first time I took her to the groomer they told me to sedate her and bring her back because they couldn't do them. Mina is better, but still gets antsy and will still jerk her feet even though she tolerates it which makes her more likely to get quicked. Cara is a dream. I can have her lay down on the bed tell her to wait and go around all her toes with no problem. I do the the same for trimming between her paw pads.

 

[Laurelin]

Overall I am mostly pleased with how I raised Mia so far as a pet goes. I have learned a ton more though about sports training since getting her and would like to start off foundation work sooner and more thoroughly. With Mia I did teach her to shape young but I slacked on a lot of training. I didn't know what I was doing and so now I have a lot more pre-agility type exercises I know to work on. I'm going to do a lot more this time around.

Also I will encourage tug more. Mia came to me with a darn good tug then I never worked with it after we both discovered liking ball better. So it's not there anymore.

I'm also going to do better crate training. My dogs both suck at being happy in a crate and not being a loudmouth.

 

[crazedACD]

I really think the nail thing is individual to the dog. And I've really always known small dogs to be pretty bad about it...Ritzy is my worst, and I worked with her as a puppy. They seem to have more leverage to thrash around...haha. Romeo I've never had to do his nails, even as a puppy, and I went ahead and tipped a teeny bit the other day and he was just like whatever.

 

[Kat09Tails]

I want my next dog to be my formal obedience dog so my concentration will be there in the beginning on building a more solid foundation to learning, ignoring distractions, and one on one focus.

This also means I'll actually be traveling to shows again.

 

[Southpaw]

I'd pay more attention to instilling an off-switch and proper reactions to people/other dogs.

Probably recall and LLW early on as well. Juno is fine with both but the process would have been much smoother if I would have encouraged it from the beginning. But to be honest I didn't know you had to like... teach dogs to do that stuff lol. Lucy and Molly had me much too spoiled.

Most things I would do the same. Because my dog is pretty awesome.

 

[Upendi&Mina]

Oh and I will keep up with loose leash walking more, Cara was great on lead and then we started doing everything on a long line or off lead and her leash manners really slipped. However her recall is great.

Also I would work on appropriate greetings. All three of my dogs will jump on people if given the chance. :doh: Jumping will be something that I make sure is never ever allowed with any future puppies.

Oh and also I'd like to try solely shaping from the start.

 

[Paige]

I'd do more recall work at the start. Bandit came to me with an already engrained desire to stick close but his recall is so so if that makes sense... he won't go over a certain distance but he isn't the fastest at coming back. He will finish a sniff before he boogies on over.

 

[Red.Apricot]

Shaping shaping shaping.

Also if the puppy doesn't want to greet strangers, they don't have to.

 

[elegy]

The biggest thing that I'm trying to do differently with Bean is to not give him the opportunity to become a dog-chaser the way that Steve is. We've focused a lot on being chill around other dogs. I think he's just *naturally* more chill than Steve, and less inclined to chase, but he's getting Very Heavily Rewarded for it anyway.

 

[BostonBanker]

I started working on teaching Gusto about nail clipping when he was about 7 weeks old - he was still a screaming banshee about it.

Since Gusto is the second, he already got a lot of benefit from what I knew with Meg. There isn't a lot I would change about how I raised him. Better leash skills, for sure. More recall work. The sports stuff and in house stuff is about where I like it with him.

 

[Maxy24]

Well I would definitely meet the dog before bringing him home next time (though we still would have got him I think, it was mom's dog and thus her decision)

I would probably never adopt a puppy from a shelter again, only adults from shelters.

I wouldn't raise it around my family lol (He's never chewed a pair of MY shoes, Has only gotten maybe two of my napkins, otherwise none of MY things have been touched because I clean up or heavily coat with bitter apple).


If it happened to be a fearful or simply more reserved puppy/dog I wouldn't try nearly as hard to make it interact with people. I think that may have helped Tucker's aggression along, he felt everyone who came up was going to try and touch him because in puppy hood that's what happened, I never told people no because I wanted to try and get him socialized, and people trying to touch him is what he finds terrifying.


Otherwise I can't really think of anything. We handled his feet from early on and he was super about getting it done until he got quicked a few times, now I can't do them at all (I can still handle his feet wonderfully as long as there is no object in my hands). He follows his commands just fine for me. The problems I would like to go away I'm not sure how raising him differently would have prevented it. The barking and the new found dog reactivity.

Maybe crate training...but I don't know if it's really a crate problem or a separation anxiety problem. If it's the latter then I don't know what could have been done differently. He has screamed when isolated from day one. It would be nice for that to not be there so we could bring him to vacations with us where we stay in hotels or condos so we won't get kicked out for noise if we leave to go eat or something.

 

[yoko]

I would work on leash manners. With Yoshi she was so good at staying with me I never put her on a leash. Now when I have to she whines.

 

[Toller_08]

Probably a lot of things. I've grown up with and have myself raised a lot of dogs, but there is always something I want to do differently.

With my next puppy I want to:

Work harder at making nails a good thing (would be nice to have one dog who didn't think nails are a big deal)

Do more shaping because it's fun.

Take even more classes.

Teach obedience behaviours properly so I don't have to fix things later.

And most importantly, not stress out about making her into the perfect adult dog quickly and just enjoy her puppyhood to the fullest.

There are probably more things also, but those are all I can think of at the moment. But over all, I think my dogs all turned out pretty great aside from Dance's people shyness and there aren't a whole lot of overly important things to change. Maybe just tweak a bit.

 

[monkeys23]

I learned that I need to get a well bred working line dog and not a rescue. For a variety of reasons.

Definitely more shaping and capturing! Though I'm glad I've learned how to properly fade lures too and I'm sure some of that will be used as well if needed!

Lots of tug games and tug rewards! Backchaining and teaching the out first.

 

[Grab]

Stays. I'm teaching stays before anything else.

 

[sassafras]

Whether in spite of me or because of me, I'm overall pretty happy with how Squash is growing up, thanks to some great advice and great resources (thank you, Control Unleashed, Puppy Primer, and an awesome puppy class instructor!) I was steered towards before he came home. Also in no small part thanks to Maisy for being a very challenging adolescent and teaching me a lot about doggie minds before Squash was even a twinkle in his deadbeat daddy's eye. But there are a few minor things...

1. Make the bathtub happy fun treat place. Other than Pip for his allergies, I don't routinely bathe my dogs, so this didn't really even occur to me. The first time he was ever dirty enough to need a trip to the bathtub I think he was over a year old and he did not and does not care for it.

2. Be more strict about LLW. Although if I'm totally honest with myself, I just don't care all that much about LLW and because that sort of shines through, I pretty much suck at teaching it. So I don't know if I'll actually follow through with this.

3. I have inadvertently rewarded a few sort of annoying attention getting behaviors. Primarily pawing. But, like #2... I don't care about them all THAT much so I don't know how motivated I will be to stick to it.

 

[mrose_s]

Recall, Loose Leash Walking and LOTS more play and fun in different environments. This is probably the thing I regret the most with Quinn and now we're having to work hard to get her comfortably playing with me in new places.

I'm glad I got in early with the tail clipping. I got lucky that Quinn has 100% white nails and I've never quicked her, she's so nervy I don't think I'd ever get near her feet again if I did. Since she was 8 weeks old we've played "Clip a nail, get a treat" everytime and she's thankfully, still pretty good about it. Buster doesn't like it but he has always been good and just doing as he's told and he tells me if I go too deep.

 

[Romy]

Tracking. I really want my next dog to be a scentwork dog, but we'll see how that works out. If it's a fila or something along those lines, strong possibility. If it's an azawakh, then no chance.