bonocomet
Blue Crack Distributor
aww I love his spots!
^ Yes! We need more puppy paws and puppy bellies Can't get enough..
If you haven't seen my blog, I posted new pics of the man 5 months old now:
just wondering, ever give your dogs bones from time to time?
we used to give Lady one, now and again, boy would she near kill you if you came near her while she had it!
as of today, our gracie is a whooping 8.2 lbs at 6 1/2 weeks and got a clean bill of health from the vet yesterday.
I've never given Falstaff bones or any other kind of table scraps, but the only times I've ever seen him get truly aggressive were a few occasions where I was out walking him and he found a bone that'd fallen out of someone's garbage or something. It always threw me for a loop, because he never seemed 'guardy' with his food--I could order him aside mid-meal to sprinkle some medicine over it or whatever, and he always complied, but when he found bones he'd instantly be all hackles-up, snarling and baring his teeth at me. The first time that happened I was stupid enough to reach right down and grab for it, assuming he'd never bite me, and he not only bit hard but held on way up into the air when I yelped and pulled away. The funny thing was that almost as soon as I got it away from him, he snapped right back to normal as if nothing had happened.If they are guardy with their bones, then they don't get them. Rule is I give and I take anytime I want.
I'm still very much thinking of getting an American Bulldog sometime in the next couple years, and if I do I'm definitely going to make a point of doing those kinds of exercises this time around, whether the dog seems guardy to me or not. My guess is being a bully breed they probably have some of the same bullheaded 'charge mode' tendencies I saw with Falstaff when he spotted stray bones, and I definitely DON'T want to repeat any experiences like that with a dog that weighs 4 times as much and is even more muscular. In retrospect, I can think of other times where I saw him get into similarly excited, blind-charge behavior with toys and so on, which I just saw as 'cute, spunky' stuff, when it probably should've occurred to me that this was the sort of thing I should seek some control over, in case a situation came up where he was a little more agitated about it.If I feel they are looking at me in a guardy way then we do some exercises where I take the treat/bone/food bowl away and give it back, over and over.