Ripple's Poo Problems

[Selina27]

90 seconds is actually really long when you're sitting there counting!

I use my phone timer, so far the squeezy cheese has kept her occupied for that time, I'm not quite sure what to do afterwards!

@SteffiS I remember I started a muzzle thread 2 years ago, shall we resurrect that one or carry on comparing training on here? It's the apples that have kick started it again for me!

 

[snowbunny]

I'm conditioning Carbon to a 'don't eat icky stuff' muzzle at the moment. When I discussed his rampant kelp eating with my trainer this week she said, "Use a muzzle while you work on 'leave it' and 'drop it'". My immediate reaction was "but he doesn't like it". And this coming from someone who had a dog who, because of his breed, had to wear a muzzle a LOT and did so happily.

Anyway, my trainer and I had a long discussion about how to get Carbon to love it. All of which I already knew, but where I fall down it doing things in small enough increments and moving from indoors to outdoors (two very different contexts for a dog).

So...for you, great news is that Ripple has already successfully worn the muzzle indoors. Now you need to break down getting that outdoors by very small increments. In the meanwhile, that means walks on pavement, on lead and away from green areas where yummy things are just waiting to be gobbled up. It's a complete pain in the backside for us humans, but it has to done.

I'm feeling your pain right along with you!

This. Introducing a muzzle should be a slow and thoughtful process. Shadow wears one on occasion, and it took me a long time to introduce it inside the house then putting it on inside the gate, going through, and taking if off immediately, then building up the time that it was on after going out the gate. Also putting it on many times over the duration of a walk, for a couple of seconds at a time, always giving really good treats after putting it on and not pushing it.
If you end up with a bad association to the muzzle, it's a lot harder to fix than taking it slowly and thoughtfully to begin with.

 

[SteffiS]

I use my phone timer, so far the squeezy cheese has kept her occupied for that time, I'm not quite sure what to do afterwards!

@SteffiS I remember I started a muzzle thread 2 years ago, shall we resurrect that one or carry on comparing training on here? It's the apples that have kick started it again for me!

A different thread would be good, although I need to start training OH first to get HIM to accept the idea of the muzzle (for Ripple of course ).