Belle - Day Two

Belle has had a quite settled day but this could be due to the excessive heat - 30 degrees.

She has now met both Bailey the Great Dane and Sticky the little dog through the dividing gate in the house without any fuss. In fact she is quite blasé about Bailey now which is very hopeful for her settling with other dogs! If the weather is more forgiving tomorrow we may try to introduce her to Bailey out on neutral territory, all safely and gently while on long leads.

She has eaten hungrily again today but as she's a little underweight we're giving her three smaller meals rather than two larger ones. She is showing absolutely no signs of resource guarding aggression but is a little anxious around her food - indicated by extreme excitement and gobbling it down - so we are giving her lots of time and space to relax and teach her that her food is not at risk. If we were to start messing about with her food now like giving her a piece at a time, taking her bowl away (even to refill it) etc this would all simply make her more suspicious of us around her food. For at least a week we will leave her in peace to enjoy her food and relax.

It is still simply too hot to exercise her any time before late evening and even then it's a little too warm but the little exercise she has been getting, she has been very good. She is infinitely more relaxed on a longer lead than a shorter one and is learning to recall short distances now. Her general fitness level isn't good but in a growing pup this is to be expected as they should be road walking for more than about 20 minutes at a time anyway to protect their developing joints.

She was left indoors alone for an hour while we went out briefly and she simply went to her bed and slept (we monitored her via Walkie Talkie!) but I've been spending a lot of time simply ignoring her while working in my office, like now, where she has learned that even when humans are around, unless they're asking for interaction, they're really quite boring a lot of the time and she may as well chill out and snooze, especially in this heat!

So many people make so much fuss of a new dog in the home but the exact opposite is crucial; starting off with as little interaction as possible and building it up slowly. It really does make for a much happier, relaxed dog.

Belle

Well we had a blissfully peaceful night with Belle. My bedroom is directly above the office where her bed is and from time to time I could actually hear her snoring beneath me!

She'd been taken out for a 20min walk at 11pm in the lovely cool night air through our village which is all but asleep and silent at that time of night and this undoubtedly helped.

She didn't want any breakfast at 8:30 but I realised why when she barfed up a sock (haven't got a clue where she got it from). She's not the first Mastino I've ever had to like eating socks! She had no accidents whatsoever in the night and went straight out into the yard to toilet.

Belle has met our Great Dane female, Bailey, through the dividing gate in the house and has been very excited with absolutely no signs of aggression whatsoever which was a huge step forward for us. She caught a quick glimpse of our small dog and was much keener however, so this indicates work to be done. Only meetings through the gate for today, tomorrow we may try taking them outside into neutral territory. I've a feeling Belle is going to a very jumpy, rough player...

Not so good was her barking at people through the gate, but this was initiated by the extremely territorially aggressive dogs next door so we will have to ensure that if they are out, she is kept in so that she doesn't learn from their inappropriate behaviour.

Still very early days but everything going well so far. Keeping her calm and settled has been the overriding objective and will continue to be over the next few days.

New Foster Dog - Belle

Belle is a 10mth unneutered Neapolitan Mastiff female puppy that I have taken in for assessment and behavioural modification.

She's been here now for 8.5 hrs and is doing well. She is already getting used to happily settling alone for upto 30 minutes at a time without any fuss.

She's just being allowed to chill out and 'de-stress' after so long in kennels and after such a long journey from Wales to Kent.

The next few days will be critical to help her to unlearn behaviour patterns from her kennel life and learn new, calmer ones such as how to relax when she's alone, how to be calm around new people, around food and other dogs etc.

Basic, bottom-line stuff we are working on in these next 48 hours:

1. Not getting stressed when alone.

2. Learning that she doesn't have to be anxious around food.

3. Learning that she gets attention when she toilets outside, when she sits instead of jumps up, when she lies down calmly etc. Basically marking any desirable behaviour we want to keep with a smile and a pat and ignoring any inappropriate stuff. This is not the time to start using rattle bottles, spray collars or rolled up newspapers!

I'll update regularly so that you can follow her progress and learn how I get new dogs settled in and deal with any problems that crop up!

Choke Chains... AGAIN!

Yes, I'm still on a mission to disgrace the dog owners that use choke chains (and rope slip leads being used in the same abusive way)! Why aren't people realising that there are kinder, MORE EFFECTIVE methods of controlling your dog than strangling them?

"In 30 years of practice (including 22 as a veterinary advisor to a police dog section) I have seen numerous severely sprained necks, cases of fainting, transient forleg paralysis and hind leg ataxia after robust use of the choke chain.

My ophthalmology colleagues have decided views on the relation between compression of
the neck, intraocular pressure distrubances and damage to the cervical sympathetic nerve chain resulting in Horner's syndrom. I personally have seen a case of swollen eyes with petechial scleral haemorrhage and a number of temporarily voiceless dogs"

Robin Walker BVetMed MRCVS

“In a retrospective study on spinal pain, injury or changes in dogs conducted in Sweden, Hallgreen (1992) found that 91% of dogs with cervical anomalies experienced harsh jerks on lead or had a long history of pulling on the lead. Uses of chokers was also over represented in this group. This strongly suggests that such corrections are potentially injurious”

Karen Overall MA, VMD, PhD, DACVB Clinical Behavioural Medicine for Small Animals.

Both taken from the APDT leaflet entitled "Let's Teach Them, Not Choke Them" available from: http://www.apdt.co.uk/pdfs/Choke_Chain_leaflet.pdf

Belle - Looking for a Home!

Baby Belle is looking for a home. She is a 10mth old Neapolitan Mastiff and is going through the 'teenage angst' stage which is probably why she was dumped in rescue! She will need owners experienced in rearing Neapolitan Mastiffs, Bullmastiffs, Cane Corsi, Great Danes etc and can only live with a calm, well-socialised and trained older large breed male in a rural location.

Go to neapolitanmastiffwelfare.com for more details on her.