Saturday morning class~outdoors before class starts all students were carrying umbrellas and saying hello to all of the dogs. No negative reaction with any of the dogs here.
Rubin~Is really starting to focus and light up when it's time to work. No issues with him in his obedience or task other than he still has a difficult time holing the sit and tight heel on slippery hospital type floors. He also still ducks his head a bit when being petted.
Merlin~Still silly, but when he's working he looks good. Merlin has always gotten loose stool when overstimulated by play or outside stimulus like puppes or kids. He has gotten much better but it's still an issue.
Duke~Got a new leather walking harness this week! Unfortunately, my food motivated boy thinks it's a rawhide, but I asked Chris to spray it with Bitter Apple to make it a bit less appealing. He looks great in class, but is still overly food driven. Low value treats work best in that situation. I played a cd of a baby crying in class on Saturday and even his fav person (Jamie) couldn't get him to focus on her. He is very heavily bonded to her baby. Will work more on that.
Chopper~He looked good this week, still working on perfect position and attention. WPR Scott reported that he had two episodes of food aggression, both with younger dogs over the weekend. From Scott's report:
The incident: chopper was not crated. All other dogs were separate and in crates with doors closed but not locked. Choppers food had been placed on the floor at same time as all other dogs, and he was not made to wait. One of the puppies finished first and left the crate coming to about a foot and a half of chopper. Chopper launched toward the other dog. Carin was right there and stopped his charge before he was able to reach the other dog. There were four kibbels left in choppers food dish.
As for where does he eat. We have fed him in all sorts of situations. Typically he eats separately outside of his crate in the kitchen without other dogs but he has been fed in crate and in next to aiko and minerva without incident or indication other than obsessive behavior. He had never been fed unsupervised or with loose dogs other than aiko and minerva.
It has been awhile, several weeks, since the wait periods and commands during meals. He has been allowed to eat his food immediately.
We have not had any concern that he would become aggressive only that he has not slowed down. There was another incident last night although minor. He got hold of a visiting dogs rawhide bone and growled at another dog. Bone was removed from the room without incident. He has never been allowed a rawhide before.
My only speculation about why now and not before is that this was the first significantly younger dog he has been around while eating. He never aggressed toward anyone else or even speed up his feeding that we have observed.
My report to NEADS:
Two pretty significant food aggression issues sited with Chopper this weekend. My fear is that he also has had significant fear of toddlers in the past, is extremely food motivated and still very sharky with feeding by hand. Currently he is almost 9 months and is still only 43lbs. WPRs are petstitters and home board lots of dogs. Never seen a problem before this, and as you can imagine, he is very well socialized.
Up side is that he has had rawhides in the prison and has never aggressed over one as far as I know, but of course those are other NEADS dogs that don't tend to get into fights over things.
I will eval him asap. CMR
