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applepie

What a rotten dog I have...

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by
applepie
, 08-17-2007 at 02:05 AM (1085 Views)
I keep repeating in my brain that I really do love my dog. I seem to forget this at certain moments. Ash, the little one, is fine. He's been really good for a long time now. It is the big one, Keeghan, that is giving us trouble. I know I posted some about him in a previous blog entry so you may know who it is I'm talking about. Keeghan is a 1 1/2 year old husky/lab/rottie mix, and he amounts to 90 (we weighed him) pounds of trouble.

He has spent the last three weeks thinking of ways to escape from my yard. He's gotten out at least four times in the last two weeks. The other day, he was out on the main road holding up traffic. I was so mad I was actually hoping that someone would just run him over:flare: :flare: :flare: Can you imagine the spectacle we made? There I am chasing after the dummy who is running back and forth across the road while cars are stopped and beeping their horns at him. To make things worse, after running around the neighborhood and road for twenty minutes or so he just stops and lets me put the leash on him. Then he just looks at me like he doesn't know what the issue was. He might not being a dog and all, but how infuriating.

His latest scrape came from chewing things in the house. Both my dogs have gone through chewing phases at about a year and a half. Ash ate over $200 in underthings from Victoria's Secret. Keeghan did his bad deed yesterday. Well his really bad deed since he's eaten other things, but this time he has gone too far. He got my Dr. Martin boots and ate them. I was already mad about that, but now I'm having trouble finding a replacement pair. They are my normal shoes that I wear every day, but they are also my work shoes and dress shoes. I live in boots and these were nice and broken in. They were just at their softest after 2 1/2 years of wearing them every day. It was that point that leather reaches before it is going to wear through in the near future. Anyway, they don't have them at the NEX anymore and even if they did they don't get my size. Journeys who also normally has them doesn't have them either. They don't get a size small enough either. I need a UK 4 and the smallest they can order them in is a 6. My only recourse is to order them direct from the company which means that the shoes I could have bought for $80 at the NEX, $100 or so at Journeys, are now going to cost me $120 plus shipping. I also have to wear a different pair of black shoes for work because they will not be here by Saturday morning. This means that I am going to be standing in 2 inch heeled boots for 4 hours on a tile floor both days this weekend. If I was walking around more they wouldn't be too bad, but to just stand in... it is like the rack for your feet, especially when I haven't worn them in more than two years.

To make him seem even worse at the moment, I wake up to him at 2 a.m. this morning growling at my husband. The dogs like to slip into bed when I'm asleep, and they've perfected it so I don't notice them. When my hubby went to move him out of the bed (he wouldn't listen to commands) the big idiot started to growl. This landed him in his crate where we were going to make him start sleeping again. Then the heater kicks in and the dog starts that high pitch whiny bark that huskys get. He was lound enough that he woke my daughter so the only thing that could be done was to let him out or have the entire household awoken.

We go through these problems every 2 months or so with Keeghan. I've already decided that when these two dogs are dead I'll not have male dogs again. Females have some problems, but I've never had the dominance issues out of females that I do with these two. It seems like he is always trying to challenge my hubby for the top male position in the house, but he readily conceeds to my authority in the house. The running bit is just him being the dog he is. I know that huskys like to run, so the escaping and going on adventures isn't surprising. It is irritating and has landed him chained to a tree (the chain is really long because we're not trying to be mean or anything), but it isn't unexpected. Oh well, he's my dog and I still love him. The deal breaker is if he ever bites anyone. Then he would have signed his death certificate. I don't know about everywhere else, but where I come from in Ohio we still shoot dogs for that. I hope everyone else is having a better couple of days.

Take Care,
Meg
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Comments

  1. andave_ya's Avatar
    Ow, yipes! hope he gets out of the phase. That's a nice name, Keeghan.
  2. Virgil's Avatar
    Escaping usually means he's not getting enough exercise Hock. Try taking him on daily walks and if you can trust him off the leash take him to a park in the morning and play fetch. Burn his energy. I have always said a tired dog is a good dog. You'll also find that his other problems will settle down too. Plus he may be trying to exert dominance. A good walk on a leash everyday will establish you as alpha. You are in control with the leash and it conditions him to obey. When he wants to stop and sniff, give him a tug and force him to move on. That age is sort of like a teenager for humans; he's getting rebellious and you need to establish that you are on top of the pecking order. Hope this helps. Just from my experience with my dogs. Oh and never allow him into bed. He is not allowed to feel superior. It will bring the alpha out of him. It's not being mean; he's a dog.
  3. kiz_paws's Avatar
    I agree with Virgil on his post. Well said. And I give you a lot of credit, Meg, for dealing with Keeghan as kindly as you do -- lots would have really lowered the boom (sadly). Perhaps a personal trainer, or doggie classes would help? (I had to have a trainer come to my place for about 5 sessions to get Pepper to learn who ran the show... bittersweet, but she behaves much better as a result). Good luck to you, Meg.
  4. Countess's Avatar
    Male dogs that have been neutered are generally well-behaved (one could argue if you cut a man's knockers off he'd be well-behaved too, but that's beside the point). Unfortunately, dogs are like people: every family has bad genes, and they have to go somewhere. The males generally turn truant, and behave like juvenile delinquents (there were a bunch of dogs that used to run in my old neighborhood. At night, they would steal the shoes off your porch and bark at you if you caught them - to try to scare you off. Dumb, stupid, immature teenagers.) The women act totally insane (a bad gene ran in my Sifu's white shephard family. The mother and one daughter from each litter were withdrawn, anti-social, frightened to death, and ended up running away, never to be seen again. I'm sure if they could have, they would have cut their wrists and had anorexia.) Keeghan might be one of these, or as Virgil said, he could just need more exercise. See who K's "friends" are: does he run with other bad dogs? Do they steal things and bark at people? LOL. You might need to make him find other friends...