Hello everyone,
I'm new to the koolie forum; I've just become the proud owner of a koolie pup! She is a handful but she's becoming more well behaved each day however I think the learning curve is much steaper for me as teaching the teacher is a full time job! I was wondering if anyone would be able to give me some advice on koolie pup rearing, especially how to stop them mouthing? Also, I used to have chooks and was wanting to get some again however I'm not sure whether this is a good idea. I suspect my dog will want to herd them and someone suggested that if she nips one and gets a taste for blood this would be a terrible thing. However, I was wondering if I got chooks before she's 12 weeks, would she grow accustomed to them?
Many thanks,
Sue

Hi and welcome Sue - all these lucky ppl with Koolie babies - my boy came to me as a teenager, and I'm so sorry I missed his baby stage. What's your little girl's name?

About having chooks, I guess there are lots of ppl here who live on properties and wouldn't even consider not having chickens because of their dogs, and have never had a problem. But I think it can be a problem if your dog is able to watch the thing it wants to herd, but can't get to them. I have had a problem with my Koolie and our chickens - he would lie for hours in this strange, obsessive-compulsive state watching them (they were in a pen). He wouldn't be fully mentally present, and nipped a couple of times when ppl touched him then. After a little while I realised that if they were in their yard, he couldn't be outside. The chickens gradually died over the years, and when a while ago we went from 2 to 1, it was interesting to see how much more balanced his attitude to them became - he can now watch that one chook, respond to cues to come away etc - haven't seen him go OCD about her. (The problem seemed to be that the darn chooks wouldn't stay together - he doesn't have to worry about that now there's only one.)

About socialising the pup to chickens, the earlier it happens the better, really. But I wouldn't worry too much about her getting a taste for blood - she's already got it (just by virtue of being a dog ;-) But of course you wouldn't want her to hurt the chickens, so introing her to them needs to be carefully managed.

We've talked quite a bit recently about puppy nipping - I'll find the thread. http://koolie.net/exons/index.php?showtopi...&hl=nipping

Congratulations on your new koolie pup!!!
And a big welcome to the forum!!!
I hope you have fun here, it's a great place to share your koolie experiences, ask for help or just have a ramble about your day and your dog!!
What's your pup's name - got any photos yet!! We like photos here!!!

With regard to the mouthing, is it just mouthing or biting?? Mouthing is where the dog has your hand or whatever in its mouth but there is no pressure from the teeth. If it is biting (mine was quite naughty at biting and nipping!) then there are various methods and it really just comes down to which one works for your dog. The method that works for me is to use a growly low voice (a bit hard being female!) and tell her to "stop that" or I just growl and I make sure I have a "I mean it face"!!! If I am walking and she does it I usually stop and growl, she now stops almost immediately, well mostly! She does still play tug of war with my clothes and I do have a few new rags now!! I have also taught her the command "off" or you can use "leave it/leave" or "no". She is getting better but it really does take daily reinforcement for the command to be effective. My pup is about 16 weeks now.
As for getting chickens, well I don't have any (but I've still got something to say!!!LOL) I would say the younger you introduce her the better and if you are worried she might hurt them introduce her to them while she is on a lead. Teach her the command "sit" now, you don't have to wait for a certain age - you can lure her into a sit by holding a treat near her nose and moving it slightly upward, her head should go up and her bottom down, saying "sit" at the same time! Let her just sit and watch the chickens under your supervision and she will learn that you are the boss and she's not to chase them. Well that's my two cents worth at least.
I'm sure lots of other ideas will come in for you so take what you think will work best for you for both the mouthing and the chickens.
I tend to "talk" a lot sometimes on the forum, sorry!!

A photo is a must on this forum and what is your little girls name?

My experience with nipping or biting. What I did with my two girls is as soon as they bit I did a high pitched yelp and then growled at them, literally a growl. Works wonders, if you watch a mother dog with her puppies this is what she does, also when two dogs play and one bites too hard the other yelps and growls at the other.

With the chickens the earlier the better, Ceejay and Izzy know their boundaries and if they get too much I have a command "enough" or "leave it" and they come away. The only problem with Ceejay is that she got to de-fleaing the chooks so I had to watch her while she was a puppy until she got the idea that chooks don't need to be de-fleaed. lol.

You will love this forum everyone is very friendly and welcoming, any questions that you have with puppy rearing we are all too happy too help.

Where abouts are you?

Oh thanks Ceejay you reminded me about the yelping!

Thanks for putting the thread link in Kooliemum - I started it I should have thought of it!! Lots of good advice in the link!

Also basic rule for us is if you start biting playing stops.

Hi Sue

Welcome to the forum!! Look forward to hearing more from you as your new little darling grows. I too would love to see a pic! We really can't help ourselves here we just love photos.

With regard to the chooks, we have them ourselves and have found having a fence around the pen a help, so that the dogs can't get right up and eyeball them and they can be let out to scratch around without the dogs having access. I would also say that having good interaction with your dog, giving it plenty of things to think about so that they aren't a sole source of amusement would help also. Also making it clear from the beginning you are boss and if you command him to leave or stop or whatever you use - you mean it and must be obeyed....should help!

Good luck, there are others here that are a lot better trainers and I'm sure will help you out more.

Congratulations - you could not have chosen a better type of dog and koolie pups are so cute and they are so much fun. Where are you located? Are you going to bring her to sheepdog school?

I have not got any advice on nipping, mouthing or chooks.

you can have your chooks, the sooner that you get them the better. but while you are looking for your chooks to buy, in fact now is the best time teach your little girl LEAVE IT! this command is very handy and will cover everything that you don't won't her to touch, chase, sniff or chew like your hand. i like to teach my pups to sit for their meals when they have got that down pat i then start with leave it, you will have to block her from getting to her meals for a day or two but it will click in fast but remember to only get her to wait for a couple of seconds the first couple of times then you can make it longer for up to a minute then as she gets older you can make her wait longer, have a release word like OK or gum nut your a click of your fingers when she has learnt what leave it means with her meals you can then use it to stop her chewing on your hand and take her for a walk on lead into the chook pen and when she looks with interest at the chooks tell her to leave it if she does not listen then you must act like mum and growl at her and hold her muzzle and add leave it again. i can take any one of my girls into the chook pen with me and know that the chooks are safe i have even sent spice into the chook pen by herself to get the naughty sheep out and i can even take quin into the chook pen, but greyson is a different story i got him much old 2 1/2 yrs old and he seemed incapable of learning anything new of a long time but he is getting much better now that he has been on calcium and has started to learn how to sit for his meals and now comes back half the time when called which is a lot better then when i first got him and is starting to learn leave it, he is a lovely dog just male and lacking calucim Ummmm must be what is wrong with half the human males lol
but anyway a big welcome and i look forward to seeing all of your pic's love pic's

Hi everyone!
Thanks for such a great welcome! I have tried to attach a personal photo of my 9 week old pup Kora but I'm not sure if I have worked it out. Haven't figured out how to attach images that don't have a URL (very confusing...).
In case the photo doesn't work, Kora is a little long haired tri colour girl and she's terribly cute. I have taught her to sit, drop and roll over however she pre-empts me now so occasionally when I call her over and ask her to sit she sits, drops and rolls over before I've finished saying 'sit'. She's so familiar with it now she rolls over for her food bowl before I've asked her to sit for it (very cute).
As for the mouthing, she has never applied pressure when doing it but I also put that down to her being so little. She is getting better though. I haven't thought to teach her 'leave it' although that sounds like a good idea. Instead, I've been saying 'no'. She understands 'no' (when it suits her) and I do growl at her and she responds well to that (although you do have to throw our whole body into it don't you? It's very performative!).
Thanks for all the advice! I think I might get a few chooks again after all! Although I'll have to fix the fence first that blew over the other day in the huge winds we had down here in Melbourne.
Thanks so much once again, I'll let you know how it's progressing!

Hi Sue and welcome. I'm a pretty new member here too and am a first time Koolie owner. Our boy Choccy is 1yo and we have only had him for a couple of months so still have a lot to learn about this breed. We have chooks and Choccy couldn't really care less about them, although in saying that I don't think he has a working bone in his body. He would rather play with his ball and our other dog. He did jump into the chook pen the other day and apparently went after one of the chooks but he didn't do anything to her and jumped back out again when he was growled at. While they are in the pen he doesn't even look at them. We also have horses, cows, a goat, ferrets and a cat and he doesn't bother any of them either.

As for the mouthing, he can do it a bit but has never bitten or looks like doing it. He mostly plays rough with my 2yo son who really revs him up (and vice versa). We use NO very regularly with him (I'm sure he thinks his name is NO sometimes!!)

If you upload some photos to photobucket (www.photobucket.com) they are easy to attach and it's free to store them there. I look forward to seeing pics of Kora too. She sounds adorable.

Wasn't that the most horrendous storm?? Haven't seen one like that for a long time and don't want to!!! Hope you didn't get too much damage. We were very lucky with none! No loss of power either so we were extra lucky!

Regards
Nikki

Hi Nikki
Choccy sounds really lovely, I wish Kora took more interest in ball games, she doesn't seem to interested in fetch. She just uses it as an excuse to taunt me, running circles around me as if I'm a sheep to be herded! I'm still coming up with an error message when I try to install a profile photo but I have tried to attach some photos using your suggestion of photobucket.com (thanks or that) so hopefully it works...
Suze
ps the power did go out up here with the storm and I think it freaked Kora out a bit!

to cute for words lol. i love her head shape very nice and i also love tri coloured koolie my girl spice is a solid tri colour and was also my first koolie

She's so lovely. Such a pretty little girl. Now I'm even more jealous of everyone else's puppies. (Even though I think Koolies get better with age).

About the atavar - everytime I change mine I have to fiddle around to get it right - but this is what I think works - if you're bringing it over from photobucket, make sure it's the right size (I think under 95 x 95), and once you put the url into the 'enter url to an online avatar image' box, take off the code tags, so that the text starts with http and ends with the file type (extension?). When I changed mine the other day, for some reason the direction I got from photobucket wasn't picking up the whole piece of code, and I had add the 'peg' of jpeg myself. Then it worked fine.



About retrieve, it would be preferrable to teach it now - there seems to be a sensitive period for learning to retrieve, much as there is for developing a sense of what kinds of things are in their social group. Although I'm not sure that any work has been done to identify exactly when it ends.

Lots of dogs who don't have a natural retrieve can develop a really strong love of the game. The place to start, in my view, based on my observation of great agility trainers, is not with retrieve but with tug. Tug keeps you much more connected to the dog and it's altogether just a more exciting game for most ppl and dogs. You can also reinforce the behaviour you want (engagement in the game) more easily because you're connected.

Here are some articles about teaching tug...

http://www.clickertraining.com/node/1355

http://www.clickerdogs.com/createamotivatingtoy.htm

http://www.clickertraining.com/node/727

I think once you have a strong tug behaviour established it's pretty easy to get retrieve, because all you need to do is, when you let go, let Kora bring the toy back to you in order for the game to continue. But she needs to really love tug first.

About the mouthing, this is what I said, more or less in the other thread about the topic, but by being allowed to chew gently on ppl (as they do on other dogs whenever they play with them) they are more likely to learn to regulate the pressure of their bite and to be able to continue to play with you, with their mouth, throughout their life. I'm not of the view, although many trainers I admire are, that you ought not allow them to play with you with their mouths. I like my dogs to be able to gently mouth when playing, and don't regard this as a problem. With my older dog, who is no longer alive, it was really her favourite game. My Koolie is more sensitive and less confident (and also has more pain) and it's not a game he's really into. And I think they might have to play it from puppyhood, which he didn't.

Kora looks very sweet! What a lovely face she has!!!

Another suggestion for getting her to chase a ball would be to hold the ball yourself and sound really excited and run around with the ball in your hand, let her look at it, roll it a little on the ground and chase after it yourself making excited sounds, see if she chases you and becomes interested in the ball. Or you could put a slit in a tennis ball and put a treat in it and let her roll it around and when she picks up the ball you give her a treat, if she gives you the ball take the treat out of the ball and give it to you. Paxy will quite often have one toy in her mouth and just roll another toy around with her feet - like she's playing soccer. Occasionally she'll manage to stuff two toys in her mouth!!

As to avatars - I've tried shrinking my photos right down and still can't load the blasted things. It's like it's there but all I get is a little red x in the photo box - it tells me what size the photo is but never appears. I'm doomed to be a ghost!! Even tried photobucket and it doesn't like that either!! Methinks it is probably the operator though - me!!

Have you taken off the codes that come with it from photobucket?

OK - here's my blonde question - what do you mean by codes??
http://s283.photobucket.com/albums/kk315/d...enytinypaxy.jpg
This is the link to my photo so what do I leave out????

(I'm learning a (very) little bit of code because of setting up my mature age student forum. It's freaky looking but satisfying when you can get it working for you. But a few weeks ago I was totally unaware of it.)

That link looks alright to me - maybe this doesn't happen for other ppl but when I copy the code from photobucket I always get IMG in square brackets in the box (definately at the beginning, not sure about the end) as well, and I have to take it off to get the avatar to work. Very cute picture, btw.

I think it has worked! I'm not sure what happened but it worked!!! Well at least I have a photo in there now. Have to check whether it comes up when I post this.

Bugger.

Edit: YAY!! Now it works!!! I'm so stupid sometimes. I shall now go and do some dog training study instead of wasting time playing with photos!!! Do I have study avoidance issues?

Hi Sue,
Kora is absolutely adorable. I just want to give her a big cuddle. Love her colouring. I love tri colours in all breeds!

She is just a baby. I am sure she will start soon. Choccy still doesn't bring it back to me, he really likes the chase. He will drop it but not at my feet and it is a matter of getting to it before Holly our Jack gets there.

Poor little girl. Some of them really hate storms don't they. We are really lucky that both our dogs are fine with them.

Nikki

PS I look forward to more pics of Kora!!!

I've got them too - I've got an exam on Saturday and one on Monday, and I spend far too much time on the net.

She is absolutely georgeous. Such a pretty and intelligent face. Ummm fetch doesn't really work too well in this household either. Ceejay has to be told a couple of times to drop it and when she does she tosses the ball to you. Yep Ceejay has learnt to throw the ball and then chase after herself and catch it and then repeats the process. So effectively she has gotten rid of the middle man, ME.

I love the puppy stage, but then I also like it when they are older too. I so want another Koolie but just not enough land. You will love having a Koolie in your life, they are a very special breed with brains and personality to match.

Thanks everyone for the support! I just came back from my first day at Puppy Pre-School feeling very dejected. Kora proved herself to be the most disruptive, delinquent student in the whole class. My adorable little buddy metamorphed into a bundle of misplaced energy. All she wanted to do was run about and investigate all the other pups and unlike the other docile little students, Kora refused to stop squirming and whining the entire time. It really was a nightmare not to mention an embarrassment! I feel I am back to square one.

And I bet the instructors thought she was a delight. Surely what you've described are good things? That she is showing particular sociability, confidence and initiative? That's how I'd interpret it, at least.

Puppies change so much as they develop, and their behaviour at puppy class especially can be totally different one week to the next.

Did the instructors provide some strategies for helping her settle? They couldn't have taught you all these things in one class lol - that would be mind-boggling - but things to consider or look into include things like taking chewies when you go places (although if she's too revved up they probably won't even make it onto her radar), massage and ttouch - acceptance and enjoyment of which should be taught when the pup is calm, away from class , 'puppy zen', teaching her to lie on a mat, rewarding her for looking at things that interest her (so that she develops a pattern of thinking 'I'm looking at that interesting thing, which tells me that if I look at mum, I'll get a reward'), crate training her and then taking the crate if that's practical, teaching her to become more passive and even deliberately relax herself in order to earn rewards.

Is she your first dog? Even if she's not, many owners tend to forget what their perfect adult dog was like as a puppy, and have OMG!! moments about their puppies doing things the older dog did too, but they've forgotten about.

Also I forgot to say it earlier, but I think Kora is a particularly pretty name.

i agree with kooliemum she was just beening her self not scared and confussed like the other pups sociability, confidence and initiative? That's how I like my pups to behave if i was to go to one of those puppy schools, spice was the last one that i took and she acted just like your little girl and now spice does agility obedenice and sheep herding so don't let it be an embarrassment for you enjoy her out going nature and if your trainer is not happy about then she/he should not be training puppy classes, her behavior will improve as she gets to know you better and as she grows. and i still think she is just to cute for words lol

Gosh she sounds like Paxy!!! All she wanted to do was play with the other pups!!! We were using food as a lure to sit, drop, follow etc and Paxy only had eyes for the other dogs. A bit like a teenager watching TV and eating at the same time and trying to talk to you!!! Although we had a lab pup in our class too and he was worse than Paxy - he had to have a barrier (to block out the other dogs) put in front of him because he was sooooo social and excited and wriggly!!

One of our exercises was to have the dog in your lap and stroke them to settle them, well Paxy did not want to be on my lap and she did not want to settle in my lap but put on the mat supplied and stroked she soon calmed down.

Don't discourage her - it's good she's not afraid and wants to socialise!! The trouble is stopping them from socialising!!!

But depending on the type of puppy school you are at will depend on what you learn. Some will focus on what Kooliemum has described some just let you have a free for all play time and others are a combination!!

Hmmm must be a Koolie trait, Ceejay still loves socialising so I guess they never really grow out of it. When I go over to my friends and we end up with about 10 dogs sometimes, Ceejay is beside herself to meet and greet everyone and then she is constantly checking that everyone is accounted for.

Don't stress too much about your pup Sue and that she is exciteable it means that her brain is fully engaged. The more curious your dog is about new things the better. Kora sounds like a very intelligent little girl to me.

I know you will enjoy yourself here and see everyone is helping you with your most adorable little girl.

Mind if I ask which state you hail from and her bloodline, she certainly has the Koolie traits.

I like to remind myself of the typs of pup she could have been.

Timid, wetting herself, hiding, afraid to be left alone, fussy eater, a pup you would always be concerned for and stressed over and here you have a true ball of energy to harness and guide, outgoing full of confidence and mischief just waiting for you in your patience, for the right word or gesture to blossom into the most amazing friend, that others will point and say I want a Koolie just like yours.

I look forward to sharing your journey with Kora, maybe we will even catch up in person one day.

hello!
That sounds great, I would love to meet up and for Kora to meet other koolies! I got her down at Wilsons Prom but I will find her paperwork and forward you her bloodline details.
I feel a lot better thanks to everyone's kind responses, and you're absolutely right. She is such a character and I'm glad she has confidence, I have been trying to socialise her as much as possible too. The shining moment was when she decided she wanted to play with the Puppy Pre-school trainer's huge mastiff by rolling around in front of it and then jumping on it's sleeping head (which was bigger than her). So no lack of confidence there, perhaps some questionable judgement though...
She has me completely figured out which is a worry. My partner (who, unlike me, exudes natural leadership qualities) tried teaching her 'stay' which he did very effectively without any fuss. She sat and she stayed and she came all on cue, numerous times. Very annoying. I don't even get to say 'stay' because the minute I ask her to 'sit' she rolls over (because the natural progression is of course 'drop' and then 'rollover' so she just cuts out the middle work)for she knows I'm a sucker for roll over and think it's terribly cute. As for 'stay'; she just follows me around...

Maybe you could trick her and ask her to "stand" from a sit!! Sometimes they just offer any behaviour because they think they'll get a treat!! That cute factor is just so hard to pass by though!