Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Working on "Sit"

Well, Daisy is still pretty skittish, but she is starting to get the hang of "sit" at least some of the time. It's not smooth yet, but the training is going a little slowly because of her shy nature.

She also shows a t least a little bit of an inclination to play fetch. We have had a couple of sessions out in the yard with a raquet ball. Like all pointers, she loves to run, and will tear around the yard in circles when she is first let out into the back yard (as opposed to the dog run).

Daisy's ideal home would be with one or two quiet adults. Although she hasn't shown any problems with children, sudden noises and motions startle her. However, she has shown absolutely no signs of agression, neither with me nor with other household dogs. When frightened, she yipes and runs for cover.

I have been working on desensitizing her, and overcoming her reluctance to come when called (because she doesn't know if something bad will happen).

To try and increase her trust of humans, she has been sleeping in the bedroom.

After she goes outside, she comes back in and looks around anxiously until she finds me. If I'm in another room, she sometimes whines until I call her to let her know where I am.

As for eating, she eats in her crate, but still shows strange food behavior with the other dogs' kibble. She will slink up to an unattended bowl, snatch a few pieces in her mouth and then retreat into another room to eat the few pieces she "stole".

I have been hand feeding her outside of her crate and trying to overcome her apparent belief that she can't just walk up to a bowl and eat, but it is often tough to get her to actually eat what she is given without running away.

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