Celebrating Northwest Farm Terriers

…into the car

Shabee — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:35:23 +0000

Until my pup, I have never had a dog who wasn’t absolutely “thrilled” to get into a vehicle and travel with me. However, his view of the world has changed my own dog perception a bit.

I am sure it had something to do with the fact that he would get car sick every time he would get into the blasted thing; and no matter what I did to “help” would work. Windows down, trying to get him to lay down and not pace, secluding him in a kenneled area of the vehicle.

Suddenly, at seven months, he decided that while he wasn’t willing to jump into the very back of our SUV, he was willing to climb up onto the floor board of the back seat, and then up onto the backseat itself. He does something I never thought he would do, but held my hopes that he would: he gets in WILLINGLY. Yes, that’s right, as long as he can clamber up onto the floor board of the backseat when he gets in, like an old man, he is more than willing to go. I should take a video as it is very funny how delicately yet with a bit of it being a ‘hardship’ he very slowly climbs into the car.

I am really happy though, that he has finally discovered his own method that works for us, as I love taking him places with me. He, of course, loves that fact that almost every place we stop has a dog treat ready for him. What more could we both ask for?

Chew-riffic!

Shabee — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:04:11 +0000

Due to the amount of chewing, I just thought I would re-stress that these guys can be very heavy chewers. It might not seem that way when they are little, but they will chew wires, shoes, boxes, etc. If given the chance. They really need to be re-directed in their chewing. If you don’t do it when they are small, as they grow you will be sorely inconvenienced when they start into their ‘heavy chewing’.

Train them while they are young what is appropriate to chew, and what is not. Also, know that they are “mouthy”; in other words they use their mouth to grab a hold of things such as your hands, feet, etc. Our boy, at six months, will grab my hand with his mouth though he has never hurt me; his teeth are sharp and while we have curbed this behavior we haven’t fully stopped it.

He will also get behind us and nip at our heels and legs when he wants to play. He can be very demanding and he definitely has an alpha personality, that requires constant regard to his place in our pack/family.

I cannot stress how smart these dogs are. They will learn very quickly, but they also will learn your weak points in handling them. If you have children/had children then you can relate to this; they will push the boundaries and make sure those boundaries stand. If you give, then they will know it. If you have an alpha personality dog, then he will continue to push boundaries for his place in the pack; this doesn’t mean you have to be cruel. It just means you need to be aware while training, that you might have to continually re-address behaviors, not because they aren’t smart, but because they will challenge the position you hold.

After the “surgery”

Shabee — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:00:05 +0000

So my boy came through his surgery with no problems. Although, I was a bit freaked out, he was SO calm the first day after I picked him up, and then the next day. The vet had told us that he needed to remain indoors and “calm” for ten days so that he would be able to heal up and not tear open his stitches. They gave us three days of pills for him to take; which we gave him and they basically helped him to sleep.

Oh, my boy is VERY vocal. It is funny, but I think he emulates us a bit in his “talking” to us, or rather whining at us. He was in pain that first day home (day two), and cried to me so I cuddled with him. Of course, as my husband had stayed home with him he told me he only cried when I was around for my attention.

Anyway, day three, he was still tender and you could tell, but he was getting his ‘bounce’ back. Side note: my dog often reminds me of tigger. He doesn’t run, he bounces. He bounces instead of running, his feet will barely touch the ground and he is hopping back up.

The next week, I would say he was back to his old self, but I honestly think he is ‘better’ than his old self in the sense that he has SO much extra energy to burn off he just can’t seem to calm down. We are now past out ‘ten day’ period, so he will be getting out a lot more and I will be trying to get him to burn it off so that he will be a bit calmer.

We will see how that goes!

Chewing up a storm

Shabee — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:41:35 +0000

So my puppy is 28 weeks old and his chewing has increased. That’s right, increased. These guys are definite heavy chews. I make sure to have some good rawhide around for gnawing on as well as a few other perfectly acceptable chews. The blanket, is not for chewing on, and he only tried to chew my boots once. As long as I have a chew within reach, and not too many scattered around, the chewing remains under control. He has learned what he can chew.

New developments; the love of whats in the trash and seeing if he can get it out and spread across the floor before we realize it. We have been really working with him the last couple of weeks to let him know that getting in the trash can is not acceptable behavior. We have a way to go, as he believes the smells in the trash are much better than us telling him to “leave it”.

The other thing he is doing is nipping at our heals. This, of course, is a trait that is bred into this type of dog. In his case it means; “I want to play! Give me attention!” He only does this when he wants us to spend time with him, of course, while I am carrying the laundry basket really isn’t an acceptable time for him to be doing this. As his energy has increased I am working on spending more time outside with him to allow him to ‘get it all out’. Its interesting how much puppies really are like toddlers.

I found a great site dogster where you can get all sorts of information. The one thing I love is that they have a weekly email that tells you what week your puppy is in and they give you a tip on what to expect or some other informative tidbit. If you haven’t discovered it yet, I encourage you to go take a look.

Sad to hear

Shabee — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:39:58 +0000

While I was at the vet, someone asked me what kind of dog I had; so, of course I proudly told them that he is a Northwest Farm Terrier.
That is when some one else in the vet’s office said they knew someone who had one of those, and gave it to the pound. I can’t imagine giving up my puppy. Perhaps they weren’t prepared for the high energy that these dogs can have. They are SO smart and they require attention and direction. Without it they will get into things you don’t want them in, and chew things you don’t want them to chew.

Lesson: If you are going to add a pet to your family, please do the research and find out what animal will be suitable for you. Figure out how much time and energy you are willing to spend. Be realistic. There are some animals that are low maintenance. There are not, however, animals that are NO maintenance.

If you don’t have time for a new addition to your family, then wait. Don’t get an animal just to have one, and then decide you didn’t really want it. Also, remember that most breeders want you to contact them to give them the opportunity to take them back rather than send them to the pound.

Neutering: sometimes its a tough decision

Shabee — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:24:49 +0000

Well, we made the decision to neuter our pup; deciding that we didn’t want to stud him out and we didn’t want him roaming and producing litters with random females.

The decision to neuter or spay an animal is always one that can cause controversy and questions. We once had a neighbor who had an ‘intact’ male and he let him roam the neighborhood unchecked. We had a pure bred dalmatian female, who was coming into heat. We would put her out in the kennel while we were gone from the house, in our backyard. We came home a couple of times and found our neighbors lab in the yard. We would call and the man would come pick him up, we explained that our female was coming into heat and asked him for the week that she was in heat, if he could put the dog on tie down and/or prevent it from roaming.

Needless to say he never did, and we ended up with a litter of unwanted pups. (Lesson: they can do it thru the kennel chain if the female is willing to back up to the fence.) Oddly, at least to me, this man was very “proud” of his dog and his wife thought we should give them the “pick of the litter”. We weren’t happy about any of it, as we were the ones who had to pay for the food, shots, and find them good homes. (We did find them all good homes, and we kept in touch with most of the owners over the years.)

His reason for not neutering his dog? He didn’t want him to be less ‘manly’. None of the other things mattered, he didn’t care how many unwanted litters his dog might produce. He wasn’t doing it to help make the Labrador breed any better. Just that he didn’t want to neuter him so that the dog wouldn’t feel like he was less of a male dog.

When you consider if you are going to keep your animal intact make sure the reasons are valid. If it is for the propagation of a breed to ensure the lines are healthy, that is one thing. If, however, you are putting your own feelings on the line instead of considering what is best for the animal, then please think harder.

We pretty much knew that we were going to neuter our dog from the beginning, since we weren’t planning on breeding him and we wanted him to not be as likely to roam. The question for us was more of when would be the best time to do it.

Of course, even after I dropped him off at the vets, I was apprehensive, not for the surgery (well okay, a bit toward the surgery as they make you sign those waiver forms, “if anything goes wrong and your dog dies…..”) but more as this was the first time that he wasn’t going to be with me.

The vet has called to let me know that he came through the surgery with no problems and I can pick him up in a couple of hours. I am looking forward to it!

Energy and Attention

Shabee — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:02:50 +0000

So our puppy is 15 weeks old; this week he has added a new attribute to his personality – that of attention seeker. The walks, toys, play time, training time are not enough for him this week and he is seeking attention on his terms.
This usually turns out to be something like; barking at my husband early in the morning while I am getting ready for work in an attempt to get him to play. (Mind you this is after he has been taken out for a walk and played with in the yard.) He will bite and pull on the bed covers and also hands.

We have been diligently working on his play biting, as this is not something that I want him to continue to build. He very rarely play bites me any more, but he is still doing it to other family members. So I have been working with them to make sure that he stops doing this.
The other aspect I am working to stop him from doing is jumping on people. Now, he doesn’t jump up on me, but he is doing this to others. Of course, the family knows how to work with him to let him know this isn’t acceptable behavior, but he still hasn’t work it out on his own, that people are not like other puppies and dogs. He believes that everyone is around for his play time and amusement. While, I find my puppy adorably cute, I recognize that these newest behaviors are not ones that I want to encourage or allow others to encourage. Sometimes it is more difficult to “train” people to not encourage something a puppy does, that it is to teach the puppy not to do it.

Did I mention stubborn?

Shabee — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:29:12 +0000

As we have been working on our “walks” suddenly, my puppy has taken to try to take me for walks. He grabs his end of the leash, puts his head up high, and walks me. Interestingly enough most of the time he is walking right next to me, which is where he is suppose to be.

You can always tell that these dogs have a mind of their own. I didn’t get my puppy to be a ‘farm’ dog, even tho that is what they are bred to be, I got him for a companion/family dog. Even tho we live in the country; and we take walks down by the river and on our property, we don’t have other animals. He is being raised as an indoor puppy who gets lots of outside activities.

When its late at night and we have to go for our last walk of the night, if its too cold outside, he will complain. Its really interesting how vocal he can be. Besides the barking, that he has taken to recently, to get our attention. He also has different groans, whines, and various sounds that he makes to indicate what he wants to do. Like when he doesn’t want to go out in the cold, he kinda whine/growls to tell us he isn’t thrilled about it. Once you get him out the door, however, he jumps around running back and forth; tail in the air, proud look on his face, grabbing the leash to ‘take me for a walk’.

Smart, Stubborn, Cute

Shabee — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:01:07 +0000

As with all puppies, they require training. I have had my fair share of puppy training over the years; mostly as I have had a number of dogs over the years.

What I have learned about the NWFT (Northwest Farm Terrier) is that they are absolutely adorably cute. They are extremely smart, and can be very, very stubborn. Add these things together and you have… trouble. Well, not exactly.

So, at almost 15 weeks, our puppy has mastered “sit” “down” “follow” “come”; we are still working on the leash training and stay. Now, when I say he has mastered these things,what I actually mean is that he knows what he is suppose to do. However, this is where ‘stubborn’ comes to the front. You can tell him to sit, and you can see the wheels in his mind turning as he decides whether or not he is actually going to do what you say. Basically, these dogs have the “whats in it for me” type of attitude.

Now, I have never owned a terrier before, but I have owned a couple of dalmatians, and not since my dals have I seen this look of quiet rebellion over take them when they are told what you want them to do, while they decide if they are actually going to do it. As I said, smart. Unlike the dals, the NWFT have a much more expressive face (in my humble opinion), so they can work their outright stubbornness with a touch of, ‘but I am cute’. I can not express this enough, you must not allow your NWFT to take advantage of you too much, if at all by using this ‘cuteness’. You must be the alpha, as every small inch you give them, they will take a stubborn mile with it.

Now, I can offer a few comparisons to the dal here; I think this occurs as they share some of the same genetic ancestry in their breeds. They are very loving dogs, they both learn much faster with positive rewards than with anything else. As an example, I was training the puppy to lay ‘down’, I train both with voice and with hand signals. As sometimes I just prefer to instruct my dog without a vocal cue.

Anyway, I was teaching him ‘down’ and he would do it with a vocal cue, but not the hand signal. Now, I was simply using a treat. So I changed up, and when he reacted to the hand signal, not only did I give him a treat, but I gave him a lot of added verbal praise along with it. That was all it took for him. Now he will follow both the verbal and/or hand signal with no problem; except for the occasional “do I really want to do this” response. {Puppy hood, you gotta love it.}

Just remember, in my opinion, any “smart” dog will respond much better, faster, and reliably to praise reactions (vocal and treats) than to anything else. Like a stubborn child, if you scold them to much they will rebel, rather than do what you want. After all, any attention is good attention, right?

First Visit to Petco

Shabee — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:54:17 +0000

The thing about Petco is that you can bring your pet into the store as long as they have a leash. So it allows you to take a puppy into an environment that is rich in sound, smell and people while at the same time it is a controlled atmosphere.
Now, I have ferrets and have done some shopping for their food and litter in the store, but to be honest, most of it is done online. (Due to the prices being a lot less; as long as I don’t forget to actually order it.)
Anyway, I digress, so took the puppy into the store for the first time and he did amazingly well.
It helps that we have been working with him on the leash since we first got him. Although he hasn’t learned to heel yet, and still pulls from a lot more than he should, but that is due to our not working with him as much as we need to yet.
He met a couple of people who work in the store, and another small dog that was in there. He wanted to play, but the dachshund didn’t want anything to do with him. However, he didn’t try to pull anything off of the shelves, or roam. He sat for a treat and people were courteous enough to ask before petting him.
I met one of the dog trainers and am considering puppy kindergarten for him. I haven’t fully decided as I have never actually taken any of my dogs to training classes and have done it myself; with very positive results. Yet, I am interested to see how they do it and this would present a very good opportunity. I already have been working on socializing him, and am taking it slow as he still hasn’t had all of his shots. (State law is 16 weeks here.) So, we are waiting that out, while allowing him to experience different environments; sounds, people, places.