Looking for trouble

Meiby has never gotten into the garbage. Mostly because we've always had a tall lidded garbage can. In the new house, the kitchen is very small and there isn't room for that can so we just have a small garbage can inside a cabinet. While I was installing this slide out track for the can the garbage was temporarily sitting out. Meiby didn't get into it but she was certainly interested. Here she is with her little chin resting on the edge of the can making lots of snorty, sniffing noises...

You'd think she would have been in it the first chance she got but she was left alone with it all day and didn't touch it. She's a very good pug!

Happy Pugiversary!

One year ago today we first brought Meiby home with us. She was very shy at first but immediately became a member of the family. She has changed quite a bit since then but we couldn't have asked for a better pup.

Her first 2 days with us she wouldn't eat - now she lives for food and will eat anything you give her without question.

For the first 2 weeks we had a "no dogs on the couch" rule - that quickly went out the window when we realized it was just sad to have a lap dog that you have to sit on the floor to cuddle with.

She was scared to death of her first squeaky toy.

It took us a week to work out a sleeping arrangement that worked for all of us. Having her sleep in her crate in our bedroom worked for about 8 months until she figured out that the earlier she wakes me up with her whining, the earlier she gets food. Now that we trust her loose in the house, she just sleeps out in the living room.

One of the first toys I bought for Meiby was a Nylabone Dental Chew. She wouldn't even look at it for months and then all of a sudden it was her favorite thing ever. We've replaced it 5 times now and moved up to a bigger size. It's become her comfort bone.

We kept Meiby crated whenever we were gone for the first 6 months or so. We experimented with leaving her loose for short periods of time until we finally trusted her enough to leave her loose. Now she's a full time free range pug!

We had an extremely cold and snowy winter this past year and while Meiby loves the snow, she's no fan of the sub-zero temperatures. Because of this we trained her to use puppy pads when needed and this is, for better or worse, still in effect.

On January 3rd she was a year old. We switched her to adult food and had taught her lots of tricks.

This summer I took Meiby to obedience classes and she is much more observant now. She'll now wait for us to tell her to eat rather than diving into her food. She will also "come" on command pretty consistently and "get off" of me or the couch when I tell her to. She's still begs like crazy though... perhaps because someone spoils her ;)

It has been just wonderful having Meiby around for the past year. We're so lucky to have such a sweet little pug around! We loves you Meibs :)

summer

Wow, I have been super lazy with the blogging this month. Meiby has been feeling better and has been rocking at pup school. This past week she did 2 tunnels and 2 jumps in a row multiple times and is healing on a leash really well despite the fact that I have not really been working with her at home all that much.

It's been really hot the past few weeks (it's about time, really) so Meiby hasn't been getting out much except for class on Wednesdays. But when she is outside, she's good at finding the shady spots and cool surfaces to lay on.

Pug School: Week 1

went pretty well (except the trainee teacher didn't show up... hmmm). Meiby was very excited and ran around jumping up on the people with food. I worked with her on trying to get her to sit and look at me and not the treat. The big thing we'll be trying to do with her is to get her to come with no treat. Right now she'll just look at me and tilt her head listening for her favorite words... which is cute, but not what I want. They got out a big tunnel at the end of class and Meiby was all over it, running back and forth through it and stealing all the treats. I had to restrain her so the other dogs could try it. hehehe

Pug School

Yep, Meiby's going to school. A friend of my mom's teaches dog obedience classes and she's training a new teacher so Meiby (and my parent's dog and a Jack Russell) will be his guinea pigs. I went to a meeting about it last night and we start next Wednesday! Meiby is already pretty good so we should have a jump on it but there are some areas she could improve on: heeling on walks rather than orbiting, not begging, being more patient, socializing with other dogs, etc. So we'll see how it goes and I'll try to update here on her progress.

Partypalooza 2009!

Emmitt is having a pug party... or rather, um, "obedience school" for pugs. Click to see who else is attending! See you at the party, Emmitt ;)

Carrots!

Meiby's favorite snack is baby carrots. If you ask her to "show me where the carrots are" she will jump up on the fridge. I finally captured the whole event including watching her eat the carrot, pug noises and all. Fair warning, this will probably be boring if you're not in love with pugs like we are :)

Free Range

Back around Xmas time I mentioned that we were experimenting with leaving Meiby loose while we're gone and she was causing trouble. Well, she was "grounded" for a couple weeks but since then she's been a well-behaved free range pug. I can't even remember the last time we kenneled her upon leaving. As long as we make sure the bedroom doors are closed and there's a fresh puppy pad on the floor, she's a perfect pug-angel ... even over long periods of time. We still crate her at night though. She likes to be in the bedroom with us at night but we just can't have her licking our bedding all night and don't want to risk having her "soil" the bed or the carpet... so she sleeps, rather happily I might add, in her well padded crate at the foot of our bed. She gets a little treat when I put her in there and has a bowl of water and sometimes a toy to curl up with. When we wake up in the morning she's sitting up staring at us waiting for breakfast, sometimes whining a little (or a lot), but she sleeps quietly all night. Now we just need to work on retraining her to go pee outside. The puppy pads were wonderful this winter and if we take one with us somewhere she knows to use it. However, it's getting nice out again and she needs to start going outside again :)

Mysterious Smells

Since it's been so cold this winter, as I've mentioned before, we trained Meiby to use puppy pads so she doesn't have to go outside it the sub-arctic weather. We don't have a lot of space in our little house so her puppy pads are placed on top of a rug in the kitchen. For about the last week or so there has been a lingering odor of urine floating around. I looked all over, in all the corners of the house for a pee spot but didn't find anything. I thought I was just going crazy. Then yesterday I was cleaning the kitchen floor and noticed that the rug was wet on the bottom (but not on the surface). I thought we had a leak or something but didn't find anything like that either. So I hung up the rug upside-down in the bathroom to dry. I left it for a few minutes with the fan on and when I returned, I suddenly knew what the wetness was. Apparently our rug sucks any moisture to the bottom and never looks wet, so I never knew she peed on it.

So, I washed the rug and placed it in a different spot in the kitchen, leaving her puppy pad where it was originally, but no longer on the rug. When I got out of the shower, I saw that there was a #2 but no #1 on the puppy pad, but thought maybe she just hasn't peed yet today. I got dressed and came back to the kitchen to get some breakfast. Then, mysteriously, my sock was wet! I looked and sniffed around but didn't see anything wet. So I felt around on the rug, still didn't feel anything wet. Then I turned it over and found a big wet circle. Somebody peed on my freshly washed rug! But Meiby doesn't know anything about it...

Cold, Colder, Coldest

Every time I think it can't get any colder, it does. This has, so far, been the worst winter I can remember. We currently have at least a foot of snow on the ground (more like 2-3 feet where it has drifted) and today there is a HIGH of -1 degrees. There is a windchill warning of -30! What is going on? Needless to say, Meiby has not left the house in several days. She's doing a pretty good job of using the puppy pads (she still "misses" occasionally) but she's getting a little stir crazy. Poor pug! I can't wait until it's warm enough to take her on walks again...

Happy Birthday Meiby!

It's Meiby's first birthday today! We didn't have a big celebration or anything but Meiby did get a little bite of my bacon for breakfast and I took some birthday photos and video. The video is her showing off all of her tricks. The photos are really me experimenting with lighting, white balance, flash, etc...

A New Level of Cold

This weekend I don't think the temperature ever got higher than 8 degrees F. We stayed home pretty much all weekend, watched movies, stayed warm on the couch ;)

We'd take Meiby outside when she needed to pee and she'd do it right away, then walk in a couple circles and sit down, picking up her little frozen paws. I didn't want to risk her getting frostbite in zero-degree weather so I'd pick her up and take her inside and she'd finish her business on her designated puppy pad. No problems all weekend! I think she finally gets it! Of course it helps that we were home to supervise her all weekend.

I had to go back to work today and my poor (brand new) car didn't want to start this morning. It's still only zero degrees right now with a whopping high of 11 degrees today. It hurts to breathe out there!

So Cold!

It was barely 16 degrees outside this morning with a fresh coat of ice and snow. Poor Meiby peed immediately but after a few minutes outside she started getting so cold that she laid down in the snow to keep her little princess paws out of the snow. I took her inside after a while and let her warm up while I got ready for work. Then I took her out again and she did the same thing, refused to poop. Nick got her to do it later but it got us thinking about alternatives. I've heard of people having litter-trained their pugs. I think Meiby could get it without much trouble because she already looks for an absorbent spot in the house (like a towel) whenever she does happen to pee or poop in the house. Yea, we might be supporting her wuss behavior but this might also be a good solution for whenever Nick finds a full time outside-the-house job (he's home all day with her for now). Obviously pugs are not cats and won't cover their business with litter when finished and I'm not sure Meiby wouldn't try to eat the litter... I was thinking more along the lines of washable junk towels in a tray (or even newspaper) that would be cleaned up as soon as possible after her use. I'm back and forth on the idea of teaching her that it's ever OK to pee/poop in the house but I have a feeling that she's going to do it on occasion anyway. I think it might be more important to stress to her that it's never OK to pee on the carpet!

New Address! New Tricks!

As of 11-11-08 you can find Meiby's blog at www.meibythepug.com (but you can still get here via maxwellpup.blogspot.com too.)
Also, Meiby learned some new tricks this week. We're working on targeting, leave it, and stay. Some commands she gets very quickly so we keep at them (reinforcing the easy ones) but there are a few we've tried (and plan to come back to) that she just doesn't understand like "shake" and "roll over" but I think "targeting" will help with all of these. I'll try to get a video within the next few days.

Wordless Wednesday 4

Clicker Training Videos

Meiby has learned "sit" and "lay down" pretty well at this point. "Dance" is coming along nicely too...






p.s. It's hard to hold a camera, clicker, and treats plus do hand signals at the same time so sorry the videos are a little shakey ;)

Pug Tricks

We have been working with clicker training to teach Meiby tricks and basic obedience for a few weeks now and we're starting to see real results! She picked up "sit" very quickly because it's sort of natural so we moved on to "lay down". She did not get it for a long time. We'd try to place her into a lay down position to help her get the idea but it didn't help. Finally, a couple days ago I was following her around with a video camera trying to catch something cute (see previous post) and while on the kitchen tile she got bored with me and slid into a lay down. That's when I got the idea to start training her to "lay down" in the kitchen where it's easy to get into that position and within just a few minutes of guiding and clicking and rewarding, she got it! I showed Nick when he got home and we were both ecstatic to finally see some real progress. We've been practicing with her constantly since then and trying out some "stay" and "come" commands. We feel like parents who just witnessed first steps :) We're so proud! I'll try to get some video of Meiby's training within the next few days. Until then, check out this awesome pug trick video featuring Tucker the Pug... maybe someday Meiby will be this cool :)

Oh, Pug...

Every time we think we have Meiby on a good, regular schedule, she goes and throws us off again. For a while she'd poop in the morning and again after dinner. Then she started going at lunch and before bed (so I'd be waiting outside forever in the morning while she just nibbles at the grass.) She loves to poop in the house. The longest no-poop-in-the-house streak we've had, ever, is a whole week. The we start thinking she gets it and then she turns around and does it again.

However, she NEVER pees in the house... until yesterday. I got home from work, let her run around for a bit, gave her dinner and was putting things away and getting ready to take her outside. Next thing I know, I look up and she's PEEING on the COUCH! WTF! Since I caught her in the act, I scolded her and took her outside immediately. The couple times she has peed in the house before (the first week when she didn't know what was going on) she always finds a towel or something like that to pee on so we now keep all towels and clothes off the floor. Since there was nothing on the floor to pee on, she decided that the blanket that covers the couch was a good place to pee. Unfortunately, it leeked right through to the couch. I was disappointed in her but we cleaned it up and moved on.

And then later that night, I was putting fresh flannel sheets on the bed (it's getting cold!) and she peed right on the dirty sheets I'd just taken off the bed. Twice in one day! Am I failing to read her signals or is she just getting lazy? At least it was the dirty sheets though. I would have been so mad if she peed on my brand new clean sheets! What goes on in that head of yours, Meiby?



How do you train your dog not to use the house as a toilet?

Clicker Training

I like chips too!
Originally uploaded by ameetek16

I've decided to start clicker training Meiby... Here's why: She begs (as you can see) and she poops in the house way too often to just be "accidents". She's generally a good puppy though but she needs a little guidance. I read through "The Power of Positive Dog Training" and I started with her last night and she's already getting the hang of "sit". The hard part is that she's totally distracted when I get the treats out. Has anyone else tried clicker training with a pug? With any dog?

New Friends

On our neighborhood walk with Meiby yesterday we encountered a couple of tiny Yorkies. We were on the opposite side of the street and Meiby was just sort of sniffing in their direction. Suddenly on of them got loose and ran across the street over to Meiby, yapping loudly, and tackled our baby. Keep in mind that this 2 year old Yorkie is only 4 pounds. Meiby may only be 7 months old but she's 14 pounds. Meiby freaked out, ran as far as the leash would allow, and then managed to squeeze her way out of her collar. Luckily I saw it happening. I threw my coffee down and grabbed her before she had a chance to run very far. At this point the Yorkie's owner had grabbed and re-leashed him and I got Meiby's collar back on her and comforted her for just a few seconds (I didn't pick her up though, we don't want to reinforce nervous behavior.) We ended up standing around with the dogs (and their owners) and let them check each other out. Meiby never seemed to get comfortable but she did sit down and let the other dogs sniff her. I think she'll be better next time, she just needs as much exposure to other dogs as possible. I don't blame her for getting a little scared though. Especially since I know she's afraid of squeaky stuff ;)