Which breed! Discussions

Add on: re forgetting their training. I think part of that was my parents doing that they didn’t fully let the dogs learn their lessons until they became second nature to them. Whenever I’d be doing a training session they interrupt with leave him alone or come inside I want you to do ___. Both them grew up old school on farms where the dogs were not really trained or anything they were just around to alert if people came and the view was sort of let dogs be dogs as opposed to them being family members so they didn’t quite get it (training a dog to perform tasks). Like to them dogs were to be alerts and or petted and or the clean up tables scraps crew but they didn’t feel that the dog was a family member.

I think you might be putting too much emphasis on wanting a reserved dog. It doesn't make the dog more protective, but it can make the dog harder to handle.

Any dog who has not been trained otherwise SHOULD want to approach people and other dogs. That is the purpose of socialization and that is what makes a confident and assertive dog.

Improper socialization, or a traumatic experience, will result in a fearful dog. It may look like "reservation", but it is fear. That fear leads to fear biting. Which means you can never trust your dog around people or dogs - even those you know.

With proper socialization, you teach your dog to see people and dogs as inherently good. With obedience, you teach them to ignore those people and dogs unless you say it's OK.

An unsocialized dog will see every person and dog as a potential threat - even that 85 year old lady walking her Westie at the park. Any person reaching towards you is a threat - even your 97 year old family member. It's like the boy who cried wolf.

A properly socialized dog won't see everyone as a threat. They are far more likely to distinguish between "Grandma coming in for a hug" and "potential rapist preparing to attack".

My Bat-dog was people fear. My Cat-dog has dog fear. It affects everything we do. The dog's stress and anxiety creates stress and anxiety in you. You cannot "go jogging" with your dog because your attention has to constantly be focused on the dog's fear source. One lapse and your dog is spooked and reacting.

You could be right about me overvficusing on reserve. It’s just things the spaniel bolting to try play with strangers us having to hunt him down more then 2 miles away after neighborhood kids either opened the gate to play with him when he was out for fresh air while we house cleaned or enticed him to jump the fence to play when we first got him that sort of makes me spaniel shy, & overly friendly dog shy .as far as owning those types of dogs.

We thought he was gone forever a few times and where we founded him? A playground 2 miles from home. Someone enticed him behind our backs (my guess kids given the fact he’d be found in parks with playgrounds in them.). I never want to go through those worries of was he hit by a car, did someone steal him, is he lost, did he get stuck somewhere and can’t get out those worries. That’s why I’m spaniel shy mostly since the ones I grew up with were well extremely friendly with everyone to s fault

It’s just you know a dog that would go with anyone anywhere for whatever reason just because someone was hey doggy doggy or something is what I’m sort of scared to get having experienced it before. That spaniel had no sense at all and had our fam in knots of worry trying to find him. He eventually settled down but I’m still spaniel shy from the experience.

Also except once when he scared a raccoon up a tree he’d never bark ever.someone must have trained the bark out of him somehow. I thought spaniels were yappy til him. Our first one Lady barked a lot. I expect neither was the norm but I’d rather a barker then a dog that quietly welcomed everyone.

Unneutered/unspayed dogs are more likely to roam in they get out of a yard.

Very few of my dogs over the years have been "roamers". It's nothing I did consciously or purposefully. I could come home and find out my back gate had been open for over 6 hours and my dogs would be hanging out on the front porch or waiting at my car door to go for a ride.

I remember chasing our dogs up the street as a kid, and I had to chase after my dad's akita when he got out. But my dogs have never really done that - even my own akita.

Maybe it's the bond between us. I don't treat my dogs like they're my children, but I do treat them as family. I hug them all the time, we cuddle on the couch, they sleep on the bed (or with Cat-dog under the bed) with me, I have conversations with them (I just spent five minutes discussing with Cat-dog what a perfect sister she is). They sit in the bathrrom while I shower, etc.

So maybe they become very connected to me and if they are out, they simply think "wait for Her, she's coming".

Or maybe it's that I don't walk them around the neighborhood, so they don't think there's anything worthwhile to go see there. Instead we drive to the river or lake or park and then walk - so maybe they think of the car as the "gate" to freedom rather than the actual gate.

Maybe it's just because I call them by name a lot. I do the same with the cats and they will come when I call, so maybe with the dogs it extends to them waiting for me.

You’re lucky. Having a dog roam is an unpleasant scary experience. You worry yourself sick that something has happened to them and you’ll never see them again. Lucky guess, btw he wasn’t fixed when we got him from his foster mom. I still don’t see why fixing has to involve lopping of body parts though when people can have vasectomies and tubal ligations. I do get the possible benefit if ones talking about doing it tons dominant aggressive dog though where less hormones would make it less aggressive in theory.

Eliminating the hormones also eliminates the female's heat cycle, it reduces the dog's desire to roam, the dog will expend less internal energy maintaining that high sex drive, and so on. It is also much simpler a procedure and less expensive. You can get a vasectomy or tubal ligation for a dog, but it will cost you. And you lose out on these other benefits (including the lowered risk of certain diseases).

As a side note about Ranger’s foster mom that we got him from I don’t think she should have been a dog foster parent. When we visited before getting him from her, she was allowing her child to play fetch with him but it wasn’t right.They were using marbles for the ball he was fetching (they the big Alley ones but still very very bad choice) he could have choked on it. Have you ever known of any proper foster parent for a dog allowing that? Fetch the marble? I don’t actually know how she got to owning him to sell him to us though. I was 12 when we got him (we had to put him down after having him 17 years). Sorry got to reminiscing about past dogs.

Re

Really? I read somewhere that most vets won’t do it because they don’t know how. I get you on the reduce wanderlust and eliminate bitch seasons but other then the risk of a bitch having breast cancer if you don’t spay, what other health issues does it prevent for either gender?

I did eventually grow to like and love him (by the time he was 13 after he showed some dogs dog behaviours that impressed me treeing a raccoon chasing a skunk out the yard without getting sprayed). That said I don’t want another spaniel. He was our second dog.

Lady was our first she barked a lot. The only thing I liked about her really though was if you talked to her she’d sit and listen and stay with you as long as you were speaking to her. Up higher on this thread I recall Spaniels being mentioned as having high bite rates before. I believe it. Lady nipped my knuckle once and I still don’t know what I did to annoy her back then, and yes she drew a bit of blood (like a couple drops) not major though.

We had lady from when I was 2 til 10 years. The nip was probably when I was 5 or 6.

Unfortunately most rescues depend on volunteers. They always have more animals than foster homes, so they tend to accept most until they prove to be bad. The rescue group I volunteered with had a foster home that they were quite happy with. Until they found out one of her foster cats messed in the carrier so the foster mom took a hose to cat and carrier. At that point, she was removed. But what else did she do before that happened. Another foster let the dog jump in and out of their broken dining room window - as soon as I heard that, I took the dog into my home. That was my shepherd/husky foster. Had she stayed with the other foster any longer she would have been ruined.

Health benefits for males also include elimination of testicular cancer, reduced prostate issues and reduced risk of pancreatic cancer.

Health benefits for females also include reduced risk of uterine infections like pyometra and uterine cancers.

There are studies that show that neutered dogs are likely to live longer than unneutered dogs. That is likely due to the above health benefits as well as reduced roaming and fighting and problems with pregnancies and delivery.

Other regions have different opinions on spaying and neutering. They also have different circumstances. Here in the states, I do not see any reason not to spay or neuter your dog unless you are breeding for the betterment of the breed or breeding working dogs. From what I have seen and heard from my Canadian friends, I believe that holds true there also.

We had a (not known at the time) puppy mill toy fox terrier when I was a kid. We preferred to sleep on my bed and would growl at me if I moved during the night. And of course, I moved a lot in my sleep. One night I decided to move him to my sibling's bed - yep, he bit me. Another time, I was walking down the hallway where the furnace was. He like to sleep in front of it. As I passed him, he jumped up and bit me on the chin. I still have that scar. Haven't been bit since, knock on wood.

A neighbor girl had gotten a dobie. One day, she was in her room and the dog was sleeping just outside the door. Her younger brother reached to knock on the door and the dog jumped up and bit him on the side of the throat. Serious damage. I felt sorry for all three of them - it was a terrible event and bringing the dog into her room could have prevented it.

I guess neutering is worth considering. Canada has mostly the same rules as the USA with regards to dogs. The only thing is as far as I know we haven’t yet got an equivalent of All-American dog class to allow unregisteredk dogs or neutered. Dogs to compete in CKC events like agility and obedience trials and unless I misread the rules (I could be confusing conformation rules for obedience and agility so I could have misread) so unless I misread the rules dogs and bitches have to be both registered with a recognized kennel club (in which country not important except I don’t think they recognize the FCI) as well as they have to be intact to compete.

Also, if my dog when I get one (I prefer un-neutered males because of the rules I just mentioned) if he achieves top obedience and the his breeder agreeed I’d like to stud him for the betterment of the breed

I wouldn’t even consider studding a dog if he only had a CD or CDX title as that in my mind while a stepping stone to UD and means to me the dog either isn’t the best option to be bred or it isn’t yet worthy because any dog can learn basics but you wouldn’t be bettering the breed taking just any dog that can sit stay and breeding them. I hope I’m making sense with how I’m explaining it.

You’d want the most talented dog with the closest conformation to breed standards to breed is how I perceive it. To me a Utility dog that conforms would be more desirable to breed even if it never had a conformation title then a dog that had a conformation title but only had a CD title. Even though abilities are less heritable then looks there is still a degree of inheritance involved (various things I’ve read suggest abilities are between 20 and 30% inherited).

So whether I get a juvenile, older adult or puppy it will probably be obtained from a reputable breeder (like those that guarantee they’ll take a dog back and re-home it if the purchaser can no longer keep the dog).

my main thing is I’ve always wanted to do obedience and add a few tricks besides with a dog.

Add on re 20-30%

some abilities are more inheritable then others and breeding dogs with those to dogs with is how they got the hound and terrier breeds and ensured they were good at their required jobs that’s why I wouldn’t consider breeding a dog that only achieved CD since there’s a strong chance that his traits of intelligence skills and trainability will be passed on to it’s progeny. That’s my thinking about breeding vs not anyway.

if my dog was top notch it’s almost be a crime against the bred if he wasn’t bred but it’d be a definite crime against it to breed a sub-par specimen that couldn’t even achieved a top tier obedience title.

I looked it up and the CKC allows spayed/neutered dogs to compete in utility and agility trials. They do have to be registered with the CKC.

Holy smoke, I’m not even German and this isn’t the 1800’s but reading myself you’d think I was Louis Doberman or Max Emil Friedrich von stephnitz or something with how I value abilities in a dog. .

I’m glad to be wrong about the intact part.

Is it possible I’m expecting too much from a dog (whichever breed) that will be my first all by myself owned dog? Or are there some breeds that would actually come close to meeting my expectations?

Expectations: protective if the need arises. Sound the alert if someone’s creeping around the property. Big enough not to trip over. Smart/intelligent. Able to achieved the top level of obedience (UD). A dog that won’t follow after just anyone who goes here puppy puppy that they’ve never seen before. Has affection for its family. Oh and can tolerate cold winters (with a coat and boots if needed). We get -20 Celsius (20 Fahrenheit) here in winter (it has gone as low as - 32 Celsius or -25 1/2 Fahrenheit on the records)