Dog Breeds and training

I'd avoid the Chow part...they can be trouble.
The scar on my cheek is from a boyhood chow we had for a short stint. After he bit me, we had to put him down.

After that, my mom always swore by Aussies -- she has a red and a blue merle. Great guard dogs with a shepherd's heart, can be good around children if it's clear that's the family unit (don't make them a one-owner dog -- that's a recipe for trouble). As a child we had a blue merle which had one blue eye, one brown eye. Great dog, just got a bit overprotective of my mom, growled at us children. Eventually had to let it go because it became too attached to just one member of the family.
 
20171018_172627.jpg sorry for hijacking this thread. thought this picture of my Zoey with her Pawpaws pony was worth sharing. sideways again of course.
 
One thing I should have mentioned about training, is that there comes a point where one realizes that a certain dog is untrainable.
Then it is time to get rid of the dog, so it won't make your life suck.

On that note, I shot Jack yesterday.
I've had him for 2 years and it has been an uphill battle all the way.
I managed to zap him enough times that he wouldn't chase deer and hares, most of the time.
He'd still stray unless I kept my eye on him constantly, as in constantly!
2-3 times a week he'd simply be gone, returning hours or half days later.
He simply had no sense of "pack". While the other dogs stuck together, he'd always be off on his own, doing stuff.

Eternal vigilance may be the price of freedom, but it is not a price I'll pay for having a dog.

He would also sound like the audition for "an American werewolf in London" everytime somebody passed the truck with a dog.
Scared the crap out of people, which is not smart.
Particularly not when he is in a truck with the company logo on the side.

About 6 months ago we were packing up to go home from logging, and Jack disappeared.
We had to wait 2 hours for him to show up, so we could drive home.
I would have ended it there, but Richard talked me into giving it another try.

Yesterday a lady came up to me while I was working and said that my dog had jumped out of the truck and chased her little dog.
I didn't even have to ask what color mine was.

So on the way home I bought a pound of liver pate, Jack's absolute favourite special treat.
Got home and set to digging a grave, which the dogs found interesting as hell.
That done, I cut some slices of bread, got a gun and some eye and ear protection.
Took Jack out to the grave, we had a good time together, a bellyrub and then I made him some liver pate sandwiches.
I smeared the last of the pate on a patch of grass, when he was licking that off, his head was still, so I put a bullet in his brain.

I was sad as hell, but honestly, I should have done it 6 months ago.

This morning when I arrived in the woods at 5 AM, it was so nice and quiet, so I took the dogs for a short walk before starting.
It was so fine to walk and not have to look after the dogs, knowing that they would be within 30-50 feet of me.

Made me realize how much I've missed that.
 
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My dog is a fucker, runs off, attacks hedgehogs and anything else.

But there is no way on this God's earth I'd ever do that.
 
Sorry, it came to that Stig

My dad shot his first dog when he was 14. He had trained it from a pup and a local farmer had seen it worrying the sheep and a couple of his ewes had miscarried. He said he would shoot it but my dad said no need. Took the dog for a walk on his favourite route and shot it in the head.
 
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That's rough.

Do what you gotta do. I get it.

My friend got a dog, Jack, that had been locked in a cage at a no-kill shelter forever. Our mutual friend, who had much more dog-sense said NFW would he have chosen Jack in a million years. Jack was a fucker for years, with a human who belonged to Jack.
If you wanted to know if Kevin was coming, you just had to listen for, "Jack. Jack, Jack! Jack. Jack! Jack! Jack!

Couple years back, I almost had to boot the neighbor's huskies in the face one day after on-going issues, growling at Dahlia and I, on our property. The dog's humans rewarded the dogs with food when they came home from growling at us. Back now at the same property, the dogs are pretty elderly and they are all moving to town.
 
Hard choice, but one I understand, if not so sure I could follow through on. Hope I never have to decide.
 
It takes a certain mindset to be able to kill your own beloved pets, or even just a regular one. Most people get someone not attached to dispatch the critter. I euthanized one of my pets once and on that day I knew I didn't have the mindset. I will get someone else to do that next time.
 
That is definitely one of the heaviest posts/short stories I've read here at da House.

Thank you for sharing, and sorry you had to do that.
 
My dog is a fucker, runs off, attacks hedgehogs and anything else.

But there is no way on this God's earth I'd ever do that.

I'm not talking about the occasional foray into the neighbour's yard, but about being goine for hours, sometimes half days.

During which time I'd always be wondering if a car got him or a hunter. Remember Gerry's story about the little wiener dog that never came home?

My wife flat out refused to look after him, while we were in Norway the dogs were let out to piss and shit, the rest of the time they spent indoors.

Hunting is big business here.
About half of all the fat middleaged men in Denmark don green clothing and go hunting to try to regain some of their lost manliness ( The rest drive Harleys)
So the private forests make more revenue from renting out hunting rights and breeding and releasing millions of pheasants for massive "Shoots" then they do from timber production.
So the gamekeepers are quite literally death on loose dogs.
The only reason I can bring my dogs to work is that I over the last 30 years have got a reputation for having my dogs under total control.
If he had been seen running around in the woods, that would have ended.

In fact, if that woman had made a complaint to the State Forest, bringing them to work there would have ended, too.

No way I want to lose that.

Also, I think there may be a slight difference between being chased by a cute terrier and a 90 pds werewolf.

We just had dinner in the greenhouse.
For the first time in 2 years I didn't get up midway to check on Jack.
 
It takes a certain mindset to be able to kill your own beloved pets, or even just a regular one. Most people get someone not attached to dispatch the critter. I euthanized one of my pets once and on that day I knew I didn't have the mindset. I will get someone else to do that next time.

I usually let my veterinarian friend do it.
He is well liked by the dogs, and they are used to being treated by him.

However, we had do do an emergency suturing of Jack last winter in my friend's vacation cottage, because Jack had run into something sharp on one of his sojourns and cut his chest up badly ( Have those of you with animals noticed how they always manage to time stuff like that for when it is weekend or the vet is on vacation) after that, Jack really didn't like him anymore. Last time I took him to the clinic for shots, he acted like I was taking him to Dr. Joseph Mengele, I ended up having to carry all 90 pds of him into the clinic.

So had I done it that way, he would have died in fear.

Now he died happy, with a mouth full of liver pate, tail bumping the grass.

I thought that was a better way.
 
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