“I think my job a lot of times is to make a dogs life better by training them, taking care of them, raising them properly, sending them to good homes. But if I’m honest, they definitely make my life better more often than I do anything for them.”

I’m done with work for the week and ready to load up the dogs and go home to our farm at the end of the road but there’s a big storm sweeping in from the plains. Maybe it’s best to wait it out instead of taking a chance on ending up in the ditch someplace late at night with a truck full of dogs.

Next best thing is to stay up and watch dog videos on the computer. I’m not a duck hunter but this film puts words to a lot of things I didn’t know how to say.

The River Bottom Beagles are a working pack. We spend all the cooler months in the woods chasing snowshoe hare.

I call them the Starks. Brienne isn’t really a Stark but I like her character in the Game of Thrones. Never much cared for Sansa, so in House Riverbottom, Brienne is a Stark, along with Bran, Arya and Catelyn. These Starks all get along, no wars at this Winterfell.

The Starks are from Monroe’s litter. I also have Robin and Chickadee, younger litermate sisters to July. There was a really good liter from July and Love. We raised Lincoln and Speedy, Pumpkin, Honey, Crystal and River from that litter. And Weather, Cloud and Windy from another litter, same cross.

Forest and Flair were puppies together. Same age, different litters. They just never hit it off. Oil and water, not peanut butter and jelly.

Can’t count how many littermates we have raised and trained together over the years. Lots. Way we have always done it.

Lots of folks have gotten littermates from us. More work raising two puppies at once, no question. Most beagle people, most people that get our puppies are the best! Most always it goes well.

The experts are always coming up with new stuff. Now they have discovered littermate syndrome. Guess I better tell the dogs 🙂

https://thebark.com/content/dont-take-two-littermates

It looks like we will have lots of puppies coming in a couple months. Hope you all stay healthy and take care. Hopefully we will see a lot of you soon!

Reward something your dog does and they will do it again.

Positive reinforcement works. Timing is important. Dogs work on a different timeline than people. Everything happens faster for them. You can read Alexandra Horowitz’s book Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know if you want to know the details but it’s enough to know that when it comes to experiencing the world, you are driving a minivan and your dog is driving a mustang GT. You need to reward when it happens, before your dogs brain has moved on to the next thing.

Treats work very well for rewards for good behavior. Beagles love treats. It’s embarrassing the things they will do to get them.

I don’t always carry a pocket full of treats. Every time I reward a dog, I always talk to them. I use a low, slow, calming voice. I’m usually telling them what a great dog they are, but the words aren’t important, it’s the tone of voice and rubbing their belly and scratching their ears that they love. Along with treats. Every time there is treats involved, I use the same voice.

My dogs associate that voice with REWARDS. When I don’t have any rewards to give them, that voice means something really good. Almost as good as a treat. Like today, when I had 12 dogs out and I called one by name and she came to me and I got down on her level and used the voice to reward her and I soon had 11 more dogs wanting some. That’s part of how you teach recall, among other things.

One time at the Mayo Lisa had to be intubated and because that is such a horrible experience they kept her sedated for about a week. When they removed the tube and stopped the drugs, she should have come back. But she didn’t. Her tired brain had been through this stuff so many times that it couldn’t find the way back to normal for a while.

Somewhere inside she knew, and she tried, but she couldn’t. She became very agitated. I started using That Voice, the one I use with the dogs. Don’t remember the words I used, probably not “good dog”, but the words didn’t matter. That voice calmed her down, let her quit fighting and relax. It reached some place that nothing else could reach.

If you want to communicate with dogs you need to find your own voice.

Doing what he loves best.

A family that got a puppy from me last summer contacted me and said their puppy was guarding things and growling at them if they tried to take it away. They asked for my advice and I have to admit, the answer I gave them wasn’t very good.

It has been bothering me ever since and I have been giving this a lot of thought. This behavior is called resource guarding and it is fairly common. I see it every day. Directed at other dogs. Never at me. I have to say, I can’t ever remember a dog growling at me or threating me in any way.

I just assumed it was like that for everyone and it is hard for me to accept that one of my puppies would act that way toward a person. What is the difference? I don’t know. I do know that dogs are very good at reading your body language and facial expressions. I have never been afraid of any dog. People, yes but not dogs. I have been bitten, hard enough to leave bruises and scars. But that never bothered me or made me frightened. Maybe dogs can sense that? Maybe other people have more sense than me? I don’t know.

But resource guarding at some level is in most dogs and mine are no different. I even know where it comes from, an outcross we made several years ago, and have been trying to breed it out, with some success. But I know it will never go away completely and some dogs will have it much more so than others. At a low level it usually isn’t a problem. At a higher level it starts to become trouble and when it is directed at a person it definitely needs attention.

I can’t tell you how to train it out of your dog because I have never tried. But there are several good trainers that do this on a daily basis and are very good at it. One very good one is Patricia McConnell, I would highly recommend you listen to anything she has to say about dogs.

Resource Guarding: Treatment and Prevention