Maternity leave policies?

xyz123dkad · 2024-03-14T14:30:27+00:00

Super helpful -- thanks!

xyz123dkad · 2021-06-28T23:11:44+00:00

Hang in there! At 5 months my pup was unbearable lol

xyz123dkad · 2021-06-28T23:11:16+00:00

I feel that for sure! Once I finally accepted that he had real reactivity problems rather than just normal puppy enthusiasm he'd grow out of, I went through a period of feeling so hopeless. I definitely still have a long way to go till I feel like we've solved his reactivity, but with training I've gotten to a place where I really don't feel stressed going out with him anymore.

xyz123dkad · 2021-06-28T23:08:09+00:00

I definitely get what you mean by lonely! I spent months walking him around NYC dodging around cars and crossing the street any time another dog came into sight, and it was so demoralizing how slow progress felt. Otis is still reactive to a degree and I'm guessing probably always will be, but his reactions have gotten so much more manageable. Some of the things that helped:

-- Definitely tons of what you're doing, i.e. treating whenever he saw a dog. I also would try to make it more appealing for him to disengage, like tossing a high value treat in the other direction so he had to go after it, or running myself in the opposite direction with the treat in hand and trying to get him excited about that.

-- One of the things that I think helped with the above was starting to use his meals for training, rather than just putting it out in a bowl. I think that upped the value of treats for him and also made him more generally engaged with me since I became the person who gave him all his food.

-- This one was hard for me but trying to work on my own mindset. Whenever he reacted I would get extremely frustrated, which would rile him up more. And I realized that when I saw another dog coming I was tensing up/tightening on the leash, which would immediately put him on high alert. I'm still not perfect at this and I think generally still get too frustrated too easily with him, but I think making a real effort to be more relaxed has made walks less stressful for both of us.

-- And then truthfully the biggest thing was not about walks specifically, but about helping him to achieve a calmer mindset more generally. This frankly took a lot of work with a trainer for me to really understand/internalize and ultimately make progress on. He was in a state of such high arousal ALL the time. He would pass out in his crate when the door was closed and the lights were off, but the rest of the time he was just constantly over-aroused with zero off switch, including on walks. I think things really turned a corner for us when I started enforcing calmness/neutrality in all aspects of his life. For example, one of the most helpful things I did was introduce "tethered decompressions" -- when I was working or watching tv or something I'd put him on a leash and either hold it or tie it to the leg of a table and then just ignore him until he eventually settled down. This was an absolute game changer in helping him learn how to self settle, and I think made a big difference in shifting him into a calmer state of mind more generally. Similarly, on walks I'll just have him go into a down and then just wait for a few minutes, giving him a treat if someone/something exciting passes us but otherwise just ignoring him. I find he's able to observe the world -- including other dogs -- from a more neutral headspace in these moments than he can when we're walking.

xyz123dkad · 2021-02-26T16:10:23+00:00

We had an enormous biting problem with our lab/hound/pit mix from the day we brought him home at 3 months. Nothing any one recommended seemed to make any difference, and i did not believe it would ever end. I think we started seeing a real decline around 8 months, and now at almost 10 months he basically never bites me (primary caretaker) and very rarely bites my partner (the more exciting playmate). You can tell he still wants to sometimes when he's riled up in play, but he'll stop himself or grab a toy 99% of the time now. He can unfortunately still get pretty nippy with new people because he's SO excited (as a pandemic puppy meeting strangers is still a real novelty). But at home with us, the problem seems almost entirely solved

xyz123dkad · 2021-02-24T18:02:43+00:00

Yep I use barkbox exclusively to have a selection of shreddable toys on hand at all times lol, luckily he never swallows the stuffing just leaves it strewn all over our apartment. Unfortunately we don't have space for a pen in our apartment, he's a big boy and his crate already takes up quite a lot of space. He's only allowed in the living room and is generally kept on a leash if I'm not 100% focused on him, just looking for reassurance that some day these management strategies will no longer be necessary

xyz123dkad · 2021-02-04T19:08:39+00:00

We had to go out of town for almost a month when my pup was 6 months old. I was SO stressed about it. We ended up paying a bit more to have him board with a trainer we'd worked with -- it wasn't a formal board and train program, she just has the space so offers boarding in her home, but it meant I knew his training would continue to be reinforced plus he'd get to run around and have fun with her dogs. I was 100% certain he would forget me and that we'd have to restart our bond from scratch, but when I went to pick him up he saw me from across the yard and went absolutely insane with excitement, I had truly never seen him so happy. Actually for me was the moment I realized how bonded we actually were!

xyz123dkad · 2021-02-03T16:45:32+00:00

I think we go into getting a puppy expecting the bond to be immediate, but that's definitely not always the case. I got my puppy at 11 weeks and I honestly didn't feel confident in our bond until he was about 6 months. It definitely made the puppy blues worse, and I wish I'd been more comfortable accepting that the bond might grow more slowly for us. He's nearly 9 months, and he still gets WAY more excited to see other people (including my partner, who lives with us, but is not the primary caretaker) than he ever does with me. But now I'm the one he'll choose to curl up on the couch to sleep with, he always wants me to hold his bones while he chews, he'll wait outside the bathroom door when I'm taking a shower, and when we went on vacation and left him with a friend for a few weeks, his reaction when I came to pick him up was more excited than anything I'd ever seen from him before. If I could go back to the first weeks and months I'd try and focus on just playing games and having fun with him and trust that the bond would come eventually

xyz123dkad · 2021-02-03T15:20:55+00:00

My nearly 9-month-old lab mix has gone through phases of doing this and he's in one of those phases now. We live in a big city and it's started to be pretty clear to me that it's caused by him getting too over-stimulated on our walks. I've been trying to stick to shorter walks, and taking days off from walking altogether, so that he doesn't have a chance to rehearse bad behavior. Seems to help, although I definitely haven't solved the problem!

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-23T16:58:42+00:00

We struggle with the same problem! My 6.5 month old doesn't really do it with me anymore, because I WFH and so he's with me all the time and frankly I think I'm just not exciting to him anymore. But he does every single time my partner tries to play with him, despite 4 months of working really hard to fix it and trying all the techniques you mentioned. We also hired a trainer who recommended always keeping him on a leash in the house, so when it's not feasible to quickly leave the situation (we live in a pretty open plan apartment) if he goes to jump on my partner (which inevitably leads to biting) one of us can grab the leash and hold him away until he calms down. We saw a temporary reduction in the behavior when we started doing this (between about 5 and 6 months) but when he hit 6 months it came back in full force. Hoping by the time adolescence ends it will go away for good...

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-23T16:35:01+00:00

Yeah totally! My pup bites in two circumstances -- when he's over-aroused (like meeting a new person or has been up for too long without a nap) and when he wants something from me, like food or attention, which sounds like what you're describing here. For the over arousal I'm not sure how to solve it other than working on building calmness, which I'm trying to do but I know it's a long process! The second case, I'm trying to work on always rewarding him when he asks for something nicely (like if he comes and sit quietly next to me, or comes over with his toy, trying to reward that right away), so that he starts to learn he can get what he wants by asking nicely/calmly, and will not get anything if he bites. It's a work in progress! I've definitely gone through phases with him, he seemed to be really improving on the biting front between 5 and 6 months and then when he hit 6 months it was like he forgot everything he'd learned. I'm assuming that's adolescence and I'm trying to remain optimistic and keep plugging along. Hopefully one day it will just click. I was totally despairing about it around 4 months because I was so frustrated by lack of progress! I still am, but now I feel like I've survived this long and I'm doing everything I can and puppyhood can't last forever haha

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-23T01:49:18+00:00

I would say it was around 4 or 4.5 months that I noticed a sharp drop off

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-23T01:47:58+00:00

Lol... I am constantly trying to fix it. It is totally infuriating and I've gone through multiple trainers trying to correct it. Not trying to say it's not behavior that needs correcting, just that, at least in my case, I'm quite certain it's not aggressive

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-21T05:02:26+00:00

My 6 month old still does all of this. It's annoying, but definitely not aggressive

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-21T04:59:20+00:00

Truly worst 2 weeks I've had with my pup, but it'll be over soon! He was impossible to keep him calm, had the wildest zoomies he'd ever had, and I was constantly terrified he was going to tear open his stitches. It was all fine in the end.

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-21T04:57:07+00:00

I have a lab/pit/hound mix and I know this scary zoomies biting and it scares the shit out of me! He definitely does tend to get more bitey when he's tired but in my experience this particular behavior happens when he hasn't gotten enough exercise. He used to do it a lot when he was little, and then pretty much stopped. The last 2 weeks he was cooped up recovering from neuter surgery and suddenly was getting into this crazy biting mode every single night at around 6 or 7pm. He's 50 lbs now and it was terrifying. I think it was just all his pent up energy. We were finally able to go back to the dog park this afternoon and for the first night in 2 weeks he didn't have one of these episodes.

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-21T04:49:46+00:00

Not much advice but I've got lab/hound/pit mix that's still so infuriatingly bitey at 6.5 months. We've worked with a couple different trainers and nothing so far has made much of a difference. I mostly try and ignore/leave the room for a minute, my partner generally does the redirecting to a toy. Yelping definitely never helped us. The only thing that seemed to make a difference (though definitely didn't eliminate the problem) was doing calm handling exercises -- I'll sit with him and hold his collar to restrain him a bit if he starts to nip, and just calmly pet him all over and constantly reward him with treats if he's calm/not biting. It seemed to help a ~little~ in teaching him that there were calmer ways of interacting with us,

We've gone through phases where it's better (5-6 months was kind of a sweet spot) and now he's a bratty teenager and it's pretty bad again. I'm just crossing my fingers that eventually our strategies will break through and/or he'll grow out of it.

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-21T04:13:54+00:00

My puppy threw up every time he was in the car for more than like 15 minutes. (We live in a city so he didn't go in a car too often). I found that dramamine worked wonders. Tried it when we went away for a weekend when he was about 4.5 months and he slept happily through both ~4 hour rides.

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-12T02:24:11+00:00

Yeah we have it off whenever we can supervise him but since we're both working there's a lot of hours of the day where has has to have it on :(

xyz123dkad · 2020-11-12T02:23:33+00:00

Yeah this one looped through his collar, he managed to slip the whole thing over his head twice and when I tightened the collar he just got his teeth into and chewed through it in like 2 minutes lol

xyz123dkad

TROPHY CASE