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Posts Tagged ‘havanese dog training’

Soon, the average Havanese owner gets wind of the fact that the Hav is also a deceptively fast and agile dog. The dog’s sturdy hind quarters make it capable of jumping high or far. The front paws act like those of a cat’s, which Havs also use to the hilt. The end result of all this in a household is many years of amazement, amusement and laughter, but also disaster, in the case of dogs and owners, too, that are not careful!

One important havanese training issue here is dogs that sneak in a nimble-footed trick or two, which is practically the norm when nobody is looking. Indeed, who would expect that such a dainty looking, stuffed toy-caliber dog would act with such boldness, clambering over gates? Many a Hav dog owner had to fight panic and keep calm after seeing a Hav perched at a risky height, planning a new mode towards freedom.

Granted that the dexterity is impressive, the results however, are definitely not. There is so much that assuming things about the “delicate” dog can lead to. From a dog’s point of view, getting up a babygate is a totally different experience compared to getting down. So there is no way how worse the damage of a three foot-high jump can be! More possible consequences of lack of supervision are: soiled carpets, chewed on shoes, shredded newspapers and magazines, or worse, chewed on electric cords and the swallowing of household chemicals.

But there is still some good havanese training news in all this, and it would be that not all Havs are thrill seekers. Some dogs feel the need to be up high in order to keep a tab as much as possible on all family members. The above goes to show the great need for that basic rule in construction sites, now applicable too in the case of Havanese homes: safety first! Definitely one good way to keep a canine mountain goat in check would be to get an enclosed puppy den, or an x-pen with roof panels, or the best option yet, which is a crate?

Some Havanese can be a bit mysterious when it comes to their affections. Thus, a Hav looks like it does not mind spending time with any one family member, but nevertheless it can be seen appreciating very much if together with a certain person.

But on the other hand, there is actually nothing wrong with such a behavior. But one worrisome bit is that a hav can also mysteriously be desperate for the company of a few selected people or just one person. It refuses to do anything at all with somebody, say, walks or to sleep, if the preferred person does not join in. Some owners try to dig deeper into the matter, since it is possible submissive behavior is at the bottom of it all.

The basic havanese training tips will need to be tried out first, an example of which is that nobody else interacts or calls the attention of the dog when someone else is interacting with it. Games need to be concocted, and the dog’s favorite stuff involved.

Fear can of course be a factor behind the dog’s behavior. The solution is also clear: socialization, and more positive interactions with other dogs. Indeed, there is a different value in a dog getting to meet total stranger-dogs in the park, or in a walk.

Fear is an important havanese training consideration that nevertheless needs a level head to solve, so a full stop must be put on all the actions of the family that smack of coddling or soothing in order to alleviate fear. But potentially ugly situations nevertheless need to be avoided.

To help dogs overcome fear, some owners even coax their dog to come close to what is scaring them, then giving them praise and treats immediately afterwards to help the dog feel secure.

Again, as we have seen, Havs may indeed be one-person dogs, but they generally do love their entire human family.

The last thing that a Havanese owner would expect from a puppy is that it can’t appreciate a walk. How can that be indeed, since these little ones will actually bark to demand to go on the appointed time, even if held twice a day!

How dogs handle the challenge vary according to many factors, aside from havanese training. Most owners agree that it depends on the diligence of the owner to get the dog used to the challenge, the stamina of the dog, and what’s out there: temperature, time of the day, terrain, etc. Owners can how much the dog can handle by adding more time or mileage gradually, then closely watching the dog for signs it had had enough.

Signs of a tired Havanese dog include, but of course is not limited to: a droopy tail; split nails on a few toes; and the ultimate, a dog sitting or lying on the ground, refusing to get up. In case of these signs, it really is time to call it a day.

There is another way to know the best amount of time to spend walking a dog. At least in the case of jack russell puppies, a rough rule of thumb here is that a dog can have 5 minutes for every month of age. Therefore a three month old puppy can walk for 15 minutes and so on.

Owners will therefore need to be sure that their dogs are really, honest-to-goodness enjoying the walk! If there is yet a way to improve the walk, then it would be good to know about “good” and “bad” ways of doing it. The good way is to start with the fact that the dog owner is the dog’s boss, and he or she needs to call the shots in the walk. Just to give you hint of a wrong way of walking: the next time you see a dog or dogs dragging along the walker, you can be sure those dogs are not enjoying going out with an indecisive walker.

This can be done in a few important details. First of all, the moment the dog gets wind that there is a walk, it will be waiting by the door for sure. But it will need to obey all its owner’s commands regarding sitting and being quiet and calm before it gets to wear the collar. So that’s one obedience lesson already down pat.

Next, once master and pet are out on the streets, the puppy or dog will need to be put at ease in obeying who’s boss (the walker). How? The walker will need to make unpredictable and hard to tell the route of the walk: Go 5 steps towards the park, suddenly go round a lampost or a bench, go 8 steps in the exact opposite, stop and inspect some bushes, cross 1 block to the park, stop and go on and off the pavement or sidewalk, etc. The walker will need to make the route unpredictable so that the dog will want to focus on its walker, instead of focusing on whatever disrupts its bored fancy, which can end up in the dog dragging the human. It’s essentially telling the dog that it needs to follow everything the walker wants it to do. Otherwise, if the dog starts pulling, the dog will need to sit, calm down, and wait for the signal to start out. All dog training guides have this technique, including havanese training.

For most of us, the sight of children running around, screaming and tumbling results to worries that someone might get hurt or something. Not so for an adolescent Havanese seeing it all for the first time. For the dog, all that noise and caterwauling must signal the most dreadful threat it can encounter! All this means that both puppies and children will need a good review of how to deal with each other.

For puppy homes that have active children, the next few months of the dog would be an ideal time for testing. Moreover, it cannot be anymore worth it, since fully socialized puppies have healthy personalities that will prove critical to their adult years, a time when ideally nothing in their environment ought to make them skittish or afraid. This explains why havanese training on good manners sounds so important.

But in case the puppy’s home does not have kids, what’s to be done? Children will need to be invited of course!

Obviously, only well-trained and well-behaved children will need to come over. The children will also need to be supervised from beginning to end of their interaction. Then welcome and introduce your friends’ kids, the type that your children will get to meet regularly. Last of all, invite over some of the kids from the nearby blocks, and this means the ones who are likely to tease your dog through the garden fence! But isn’t it that, both dogs and kids actually only need the ample time and chance to be able to get to know and like each other?

When interacting with the dog, the owners need to give the kids tasty treats as rewards. The kids may also appreciate taking the dog through training and handling exercises. For the first initial week of meeting, the meeting place of both dog and child will be free from disturbances. Eventually though, it is important the the puppy gets to undergo and experience the activity and noise of children, and it is crucial that things start from the youngest age allowable by your timetable and the breeder. Children’s parties are wonderful opportunities to take advantage of, where the puppy will need to get used to the unearthly sight of adults and children singing, playing games, laughing, shouting, etc. Ultimately, how a growing Havanese dog perceives and reacts to the antics of kids will be determined very much by the havanese training it got when it was still a puppy.

Havanese puppies at around twelve weeks are becoming more and more aware of the power of their senses. Sometimes, for them, everything simply must pass through their nose’s and mouth’s (or teeth, to be precise!) scrutiny. A puppy chewing on a leash is therefore something typical to expect. Besides, they are bound anyway to outgrow the idea that the leash is just another chew toy.

On the other hand, here are some handy ideas to put to use if you think its high time for some serious Havanese training action versus strap- and buckle-nibbling.

First of all, instead of the typical collar and leash, why not put on the dog a harness? With this, the harness’s leash goes to the back, putting it out of reach of the dog’s or puppy’s teeth.

Indeed, doing something about the leash is the starting point of the solution. The following steps illustrate another way of using the leash in order to discourage chewing on the leash.

Hook first the leash to the collar. Then take the leash and wound it around the dog’s neck to make a circle. Take the slack part of the leash, insert and pull through the leash handle. You now have what looks like horse’s reins, consisting of two shorter leads instead of one long one. In effect, the leash rides higher than the collar on the neck.

Lastly, here is a curious Havanese training way to train a dog to lay off the leash. The owner will walk backwards in this procedure, holding the leash of the dog. He or she will hold a long wooden spoon with a few smears of peanut butter, and entice the dog to follow. When there is some slack on the leash, the dog gets praise (plus licks on the spoon of course).

For Havanese dog owners that need to travel a lot, an easily car sick dog is one of things that anxiously need minding during the trip. It would definitely be great to have a dog with Havanese training that, upon an owner’s jangling of the car keys, is ready and waiting to be given permission to join the car ride!

Sadly, most dog owners are far from living this rosy scenario. So sometimes, a car ride means having to get the dog to sit near a human passenger, or to be held on the lap in order to avoid a very messy accident from happening. Other steps that dog owners take is to avoid certain types of roads that they are sure bothers the dog very much, or to avoid feeding the dog a few hours before the car ride.

But if there is a will, there is a way of course! Any of the following are bound to keep coming up in any discussions of how to resolve canine car sickness:

1. Some owners make sure about exercising their dogs before the car ride starting from the puppyhood of the dogs. Another common alternative is to give the dog a good walk. The effect of this is that the dog goes to sleep in the crate. Overtime, a dog accustomed to this routine will simply go to sleep during the trip, with or without the walk or romp.

2. If you are looking for effective drugs that can help your dog out of the rut, then your veterinarian is likely to recommend meclazine or Bonine. Consult first with your vet before dropping by the drugstore.

In the case of the latter, the ideal dosage is half of a 25 mg tablet before travel in the case of a dog weighing 9.5 pounds.

3. Another likely suggestion would be half a Dramamine pill for a ten-pound dog. The pill needs to be given 30 to 40 minutes before making the trip.

When all anti-car sickness tips and Havanese training tips are tried and judged, perhaps the best things to do are still to keep the dog well-exercised before the trip. An extra rare treat given to the dog before revving the engine will also associate the car ride with good stuff and rewards. But opening that car window may also be the straw to break the camel’s back.

Housebreaking sounds as easy as one-two-three from the perspective of Havanese training articles, but how come things seem to go different when families themselves are trying to manage the actual nitty-gritty of training the dog its toilet manners?

At the root of all housetraining concerns every owner has to deal with is the lack of set, automatic rules to set straight even two dogs of the same dog breed, try as we all might. All right, so in fact, things are not as worse as the above paragraph intended. While there are a million ways to help out a particular case, certain things fortunately remain changeless: pinning down the problem, and checking out any of the options within the owner’s control.

So what’s to be done about the almost universal story of the Hav that avoids making use of the dog door at night, and even balks at going under a little rain or snow, and in cases of these, prefers pooing inside the house?

Really, the problem above could still thankfully be worse! If there is a way that it could spill into “the perfect crisis,” it would be for the owner not to lift a finger and put into action some consistent and firm havanese training.

In the case of the above dog, looking for extra clues certainly help. For example, let’s say that the above dog is capable of staying inside the family car without complaining that it wants to be let out. This may hint that the dog will do all right if crate-trained. The current owners will also need to be more assertive, putting in place a daily routine that helps the dog know what is expected of it. If the dog has a history of being re-homed, then the dog may have picked up from its previous owners the bad habit of skipping bad weather.

Here are a few Havanese training tips to wrap things up. It is obvious in dog training that the dog generally must never be allowed to do just about whatever it wants, like turning down crate training, or refusing to go out when it is time to poo or pee. Things will go fast indeed if appeals are made to the dog via its favorite treats. Dogs take notice of treats, of course, first through its smell, then by sight. So getting the dog accustomed to being within the crate starts by placing treats bit by bit close to the door of the crate, until such time that they are within the crate, which makes the dog create an association between a positive experience and being in the crate.

As a lot of Havanese dog owners know, this dog breed happens to be among the smartest known, and do not think twice to show they are! For example, countless owners may remember how simple it was to get the dog to understand the “shake hands” command. While some would initiate a series of actions to culminate in the “shake hands”, others actually only pick up the dog’s paw and say to it “Shake” over and over. Then the day comes that asking the dog if it knows how to shake leads to the dog actually doing it! Thus it is obviously important that the dog be given time, sometimes several weeks, just to let all the information “sink in.”

A more systematic, or in some way methodical, havanese training way of teaching shake hands starts with the owner holding food in the fist before the dog. Usually the dog will check out your hand with their nose and mouth, but wait for them to eventually paw at your hand. Praise the dog lavishly when they do so. Some dog owners will observe that the dog will not use their paws when sitting, so some adjustments may be needed here.

At least one has claimed that the trick can be taught by putting one’s hand down, palm up on the ground, then with the same hand nudge the knee of the dog to make it lift its paw. When it does so, the owner needs to slide his or her hand under the paw and lavish praise on the dog.

If you want to try out a clicker training method, you will also need to get a tupperware cover. Place the treat on the floor and let the dog see you cover it with the cover. Now, the dog is expected to paw at the cover so it could see the treat. Click, and give the treat when they touch the tupperware. Repeat from the start up to covering the treat with the tupperware, but this time place your hand on the cover. When the dog’s paw touches your hand, click and give treat. Last of all, your hand becomes the cue, and this time there is no treat or tupperware. Then insert the word “Paw” (or “shake hands”) when the dog touches your hand. Click and treat to punctuate this havanese training.

When you are leaving the house on your way to work and you see and hear your puppy or dog “screaming” for you to stop, you know it is time to jump into the fray of Hav owners and seek answers. You are here to deal with the hot and highly discussed havanese training of separation anxiety.

Veteran dog owners immediately recommend crate training as a sure way to start working on the dog’s losing its head every time people leave. The routine will look something like the following (although these definitely can be improved some more): put dog in crate for a set number of minutes, then leave room; open crate door and ignore dog for set number of seconds; greet puppy and play with it; repeat and add more minutes.

Some owners apply the simple scheme of first leaving the dog alone in the crate for short periods of time a few weeks a day so it becomes accustomed to the idea of people leaving. The dog will predictably cry for a week or two, but it is sure to get used to what is going, once everything settles into what looks like routine.

So before anybody leaves, the radio or TV is turned on, the dog is told to be a “Good boy,” and is given a treat. Only after this does everybody make a discreet exit.

But if anybody wants to implement something that seeks to “attack” the problem from several angles, perhaps the following steps are needed.

1. Before leaving, the puppy must be ignored for 20 minutes. The goal is to get the dog adjusted to still being happy even if the owner is home yet not interacting with it.

2. It’s actually possible to get the dog to feel positive about someone’s leaving. The owner needs to give it a very prized treat that it will only get when the person leaves home.

3. A shirt or pillowcase full of the owner’s scent needs to be left inside the crate. The dog can get soothe by this if everybody leaves.

4. Before leaving, the owner has to give the dog the keyword that signals the owner will be back. It could be “Be good.”

5. Upon coming back, the dog needs to be ignored until it is calm. This further tells the dog that it will do fine without its person in the house.

Last of all, dog owners need to know that in havanese training, using the crate to remedy the anxiety does not have to apply all the time. Its door can be left open to allow the dog to have a transition period, although the end in mind is to actually have the dog have a run of the house in a few months’ time, right after the preceding steps are implemented. But even then, the dog’s tantrums need to be preempted by putting away all the rugs, covering and hiding the trash cans, securing the breakable bric-à-bracs, etc.

A too-submissive or too-shy Havanese is something that seriously stands in the way to reaching the target of an optimistic and positive-personality dog. A dog may be in such a condition if, say, it acts frightened or cowers from its owner, who simply is trying to get a leash on it, and recalls no incident of hitting the dog. Then, still another sign among the many possible is of the dog that refuses to sit when asked to do so during grooming, and actually curls up in response to the brushing. Lastly, the dog may also refuse to pee or poo when told to do so, and instead stares at the owner sideways and licks its lips, all of which are signs of submission. Where in these scenarios can havanese training play its role?

Training definitely can help improve the dog’s situation, first by helping pin down and identifying what exactly is the matter with the dog; shyness and submission are two behaviors that have different triggers, effects and of course solutions. In case of shyness, one solution is to bring the dog to at least 5 new places a week and staying for some ten to fifteen minutes. In a few weeks of hard work, it is actually possible to have a dog that is greatly improved.

In the case of a submissive dog, human body language and posture happen to have important details that dogs have a particular way of interpreting. Therefore, people who do not wish to intimidate a dog will need to avoid standing and leaning over. Instead, they will need to squat to the dog’s level and let the dog approach. A way to stand near the dog is to do it facing sideways. All these enable a person to appear less threatening.

An even more vast source of confidence builders and self esteem boosters are havanese training for puppies, agility classes, obedience, and therapy dog titles; its a great plus point that havanese dogs usually do not think twice demonstrating before people how much they learned. Lots of patience will be needed to help a shy or submissive dog overcome itself, but results are possible if the owner takes the first step!