QUESTION:

Hi Judy.  I need your help/advice - Teddy Bear chews holes in my carpet.  I am not sure if he is doing it because he is mad at me, or he is board/lonely or what.  I have never had a pet chew up the carpet or destroy stuffed play toys like he does.  The only things he has in his toy box are nylabones, real bones, hard rubber balls, Frisbees, rawhides & greenies.  He doesn't do this "chewing thing" on the carpet on a regular basis.  Tonight he chewed a hole in the carpet when I fell asleep in the recliner.  He is an only "child" and when I am home he wants every minute of my attention.  He has lots of love and attention from the neighbors that take him out and walk him in my absence.  I take him everywhere with me, that I can get away with it.  And of course, he loves car rides.

ADVICE:

That certainly IS a big problem. Can't have that happening. That for sure would eliminate me from leaving him loose in rooms with carpets when I was asleep or not home. Probably what happened was, when he was young, as you eliminated his stuffed toys because he enjoyed pulling out the stuffing, he finally chewed on the carpet and you naturally raised cain about it. He found that it got your attention. You and I would say he got my "wrong" attention. But in his eyes he said " Oh, so doing THAT makes her pay attention to me!" Unfortunately he is quick to learn. So when you fell asleep "during his time" when he felt you should be playing with him, he knew what to do to get you to wake up and pay attention. It is a learned behavior that unfortunately he has learned to use well. Even in play, one of the things that most dogs like to do is tear things apart. If one dog finds a stick the other will chase it and they will play tug of war until the stick breaks. then they will chew on the stick to make it into many pieces. It keeps them active and using their mouth which is what they would do in nature. Therefore i would handle the problem the opposite of what you did. You removed all the toys that he liked to entertain himself with, by tearing them apart. Where as, I would go to garage sales where parents sell stuffed toys of all sizes for 10 cents to a dollar, and I would buy him a bunch of them. Some even really big. I would make sure they were ones that were washable as most kids toys are now days. Pull off any hard plastic eyes or noses that he could swallow. Each day when you sit down to play with him bring out a new stuffed toy to play with. That way if you fall asleep during " his time", he will take his frustration out on pulling apart the new toy. it should be far more fun to pull out fluffy stuffing than the carpet. When you wake up and find the pile of fluff, this time you can pretend to be mad, but with a smile on your face, because it was not your carpet. I would be saying "oh my, look what a bad boy you were for tearing up a toy that cost me a quarter. Oh my, you certainly did get even with Mom for falling asleep!" I would be thrilled that the fun he had and the damage to the stuffed toy cost me only a $1 and not $100 for a carpet. I hope that helps. when you do move, please remember to tell me your new address :-))

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QUESTION FROM PEGGY G.:

I bought a puppy from a pet store when she was 12 weeks old. I have had her for 8 weeks and she is frightened of everything. I thought at first it was because she was new to my house. It is just me and her and my cat. when no one else is here she is much better unless there is a loud noise, like rattling the newspaper or i drop something. But is someone comes over she runs and hides or shivers so hard that i feel sorry for her. I called the pet shop and they said i need to socialize her and take her places. I do that, but she does not get used to it and refuses to even walk on a leash if it is a strange area.

ADVICE:

Hi Peggy, you have purchased a fairly common problem found in pet shop pups. Usually the breeders that supply pets shops are only in it for the money. They usually purchased cheap dogs for their breeding stock. Cheap dogs are the ones that have something undesirable about them. Unfortunately in Cresteds one of the faults we sometimes see is shyness. There are basically two types of shyness. Environmental and hereditary. Environmental is caused by a pup being raised in a area where it does not see many things, or hear many things or meet many people.

Because the shyness is only caused by a lack of socialization, when this puppy or dog finally leaves that environment and goes into a normal busy life style, it will not remain shy. Depending on how long it lived a sheltered life, it will only take that dog a few days or a few weeks to get accustomed to a new fun life. Then it will show the normal happy personality it was born with.
The more common type of shyness seen is hereditary. No matter how well this pup is raised and socialized, it will still show a degree of shyness. The degree depends on how much it inherited.

Your puppy is this type. You know that, because living in a pet shop for several weeks (most pet shops receive their pups at 6 weeks of age even though they tell you they got them at 8 weeks because the law is that they have to be 8 weeks), you puppy had lots of socialization. Lots of people handled that pup and held it and felt sorry for it but did not want to pay the high pet store price for it.

You have had it plenty long enough for it to completely change if it could. I doubt that trying to socialize it will make any positive difference. In fact, taking it places that frighten it may just keep it practicing that constant fear behavior. You might be kinder to just enjoy this pup at home where she feels comfortable. I don't usually like to suggest a person add more dogs when they already have a problem with the one they have, BUT, in your case.. you may want to keep this in mind. Sometimes, when a shy dog has a normal dog as a companion, the shy dog is more comfortable around strange people and situations. Not normal, but much better, because they see that the other dog is having fun and not being killed by the scary people :-))

If you do ever decide to purchase another puppy, please check out active show breeders. In order for us to show dogs, they have to have good personalities. Shy dogs do not win. So show people very much care that they do not use dogs with poor personalities for breeding. It is a waste of time to produce pups we can't show, or do not even make fun pets.
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QUESTION FROM MARGURITA:

I recently got a puppy that I just adore. I want so very much to hug and kiss my puppy, but as soon as I put it near my face it goes wild and starts licking and sometimes even bites my face. How can I make it nicer and calmer when I hold it near my face?

ADVICE:

It is common for puppies to get excited and lick our mouth and face. I too love to hold them against my cheek or neck and I do NOT like them to lick my face or bite me. I SEE where their mouths have been and there is no way I want those tongues in my mouth :-))

Because there are a billion things a puppy gets in trouble for doing, I like to discipline yet be loving when I can. I use the attitude that every action has a re-action. Some re-actions are pleasant and some re-actions are not.

So when I bring a puppy to my face, I talk happily but I keep one hand petting the top of the head or back of the neck. Each time the pup opens its mouth to lick or bite, I pull its hair. I keep talking nicely and snuggling, but I pull hair only when the mouth opens. Be accurate on your timing so the pup can catch on to what is causing his problem. The first time it may take 6 to 10 pulls before the pup figures out what causes it. Each time you pick it up and love on it after that it will only take 2 or 3 times until finally it learns to snuggle with its mouth closed.

The pulls are hard enough to be uncomfortable, but not so hard as to cause the pup to cry. It is VERY important to be talking nice and continuing to pet with the hand that pulls hair. You want the pup to be happy yet figure out that an open mouth near your face is a problem.

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BARKING PROBLEMS? THE PROS AND CONS OF THE "DE-BARKING" OPERATION.

    I live in a subdivision and for the past 40 years have had between 5 and 15 dogs. My neighbors have never complained about my dogs because they know I very much CARE that my dogs barking does not annoy them.  I have a large yard and have dog doors into my house. I crate my dogs only at night, otherwise they have full run of inside and outside. Because I control the barking, I can even let them stay loose to play and exercise when I am gone to work.
    When I had Borzoi and Whippets, barking was seldom a problem. I never needed an electric bark collar or de-barking for them. Over the years I always had one or two Dobes and only the last one was a barking problem. She wore an electric bark collar anytime I was not home. That at least still allowed her the freedom to run and play, just not get me in trouble.
    In 1989, I added chinese cresteds. As only one or two dogs, they are not bad barkers, but as 5 to 15, they are definitely big barkers. Their bark is high pitched and VERY loud. They are to small to wear a bark collar and anyway, they would have to wear it at all times they were not crated. That would not be fair as the bark collars actually stop them from barking. Besides lots of their barking is for fun with each other or for treeing a squirrel.
    Therefore I checked into the de-barking operation (tubal ligation of the vocal cords). In Sarasota there are only 3 vets that are familiar with doing it. All three enter the larynx from the outside of the throat. I probably had about 15 cresteds de-barked by them. (KEEP IN MIND, debarking does NOT stop the dog from barking. They still have the fun of barking as often as they want, it is just with a whisper voice that does not carry very far.) Even though each operation was successful, some had to be done again in 2 or 3 years as scar tissue grew in and the dogs used that as vocal cords and their voices got louder).
    So NOW I take the dogs to a vet in Wildwood Fl. She does the de-bark by putting them under sedation for no more than a few minutes and reaching into the voice box thru the mouth. It takes only a few seconds and the dogs walk out of the office in about 20 min. Occasionally one of her de-barks has to be redone, but it is usually an extreme barker that I can not keep quiet during the first few healing days after it is done.
    The dogs are back to eating, drinking and barking immediately after the procedure. If they have a sore throat, they do not show it. I have probably had Leigh de-bark 20 dogs over the past few years.
    What does it cost? The last I had it done locally it was $150 a dog (the price of a reliable electric collar). The last one McBride did for me was $85. She recently built a new clinic so I expect it to cost more when I go next month.
    Why do I do it? I LOVE my dogs and want them to have fun in my big yard, chasing each other and the squirrels etc. Barking is part of their fun. They do not know they are debarked, because they still bark, just quieter.  Their barks sound
different from each other so I can still recognize who it is. They just have to be closer to me to hear them barking.
    Any draw backs? Yes, one.....if a dog is injured, I can not hear the high pitched scream that a dog can do. I can tell it is injured if I am with in 100 feet of it, but probably not much farther. With only 1 to 3 dogs there seldom is an injury of any real importance.   With my pack there could be, even though luckily there has not been in the past 10 years.
It is a wonderful feeling not to have to yell at my dogs trying to stop them from having fun barking. As I am typing this they have had a squirrel treed in the Macadamia nut tree for about two hours. It has been constant non stop barking by at least 5 to 10 dogs. Yet it is not loud enough to bother any of my neighbors or me :-))

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QUESTION:

I love your site and thought you might be willing to give me some advice. I am owned by an 8 yo hairy hairless, neutered male named Charles. He was a rescue that I adopted when he was 5 mos. old. We used to live in MA on the ocean...Charlie had a fenced in yd and lots of activity going by...he would run, stand guard, bark at everything and be very alert.

My problem: we now live in Boynton Beach, FL in a gated community...he has a fenced in yd, but very quiet with an occasional bird to chase and I think he is bored...he seems to sleep a lot. I walk him and play w/ him everyday, but I think he needs more. He loves to play but does not do well w/ most other dogs.

Question...I've been thinking about getting another dog but am unsure if it would be a good thing or not. He typically does not play well w/ other dogs and is possessive of his humans and his toys. From your experience, do you think, over time, he would adjust to another dog and learn to play

Leslie

ANSWER FROM JUDY:

It does sound like he is bored with life. He no longer has the one interest that used to keep him busy....watch dogging the property. So to give him a longer happier life, I would get him a companion of a female dog or female cat. I say female as he may not tolerate another male in his domain, but will if you get a young pup or kitten. At first he will have his feelings hurt and will hate the intruder. But after two weeks of swearing he can't stand it and is sure you have ruined his life, he will start taking a small amount of interest, but will still show it his teeth and growl at it if it tries to touch him. But by the 4th week he will actually start to chase it and play. By 6 weeks they will be best buds and you will wonder why you did not do it years ago :-)

He probably sleeps with you. that should be his own place for at least a year. The pup can sleep in a crate at night for a year. What the pup does not know exists (your bed) he will not miss. Once you have had the fun of two dogs, you will never go back to just one.

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For advice from Judy, please e-mail your questions to