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Open Thread

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Time to torture you all with pictures of my dog.

I stalked that spot for weeks before I got there at the right time, with the right light, with Max in the mood to sit for a treat.

Bleg time! Max has always grabbed the scruff of some other dogs to try to get them to play with him. He has never hurt a dog yet but it makes some owners uncomfortable (understandably) and it often pisses off the dog. He is especially bad with yellow labs, though, to be fair, I notice that for whatever reason yellow labs are often the chew toy at dog parks. Max doesn’t hump or do any other aggressive dominance display, in fact other than the scruff thing his favorite game is to roll on his back and shuffle under the other dog’s front legs to try to get it to jump on him. It seems like Max just loves to tussle and get jumped on.

I know how to correct most of his issues; in fact, other than being a pain in the ass teenager who fights the leash when he doesn’t want to go home he has grown into just about the perfect dog. However, the scruff thing is a stumper. I don’t want to overcorrect it and make him afraid to play with dogs in general. I also don’t want to wait until he provokes a fight and gets his marshmallow ass kicked. I have an electric collar that I have used all of three times (at setting “1”) to correct recall issues when we are off leash, but I don’t know whether that would be a good idea in this case.

Ideas?

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  1. 1.

    MikeJ

    Weird. No picture visible for me on BJ, but when I copy image location and go in a new tab I see the page.

    FFX 4, with balloon-juice allowed to execute javascript.

  2. 2.

    The Dangerman

    Squirrel!

    He’ll grow out of the scruffing is my guess (or having a flattened marshmallow ass might do the trick, too).

    (BTW, excellent lighting and colors)

  3. 3.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Has he had basic training? If so, you should just be able to command “Leave it” for him to stop the bad thing.

  4. 4.

    JGabriel

    Tim F. @ Top:

    Time to torture you all with pictures of my dog.

    At 2:10 in the afternoon? Slow day at the office?

    .

  5. 5.

    Quicksand

    I have an electric collar that I have used

    Let’s get the obligatory “you monster!” post out of the way.

  6. 6.

    Southern Beale

    This is fucked up 10 ways to Friday. Ohio’s Shelby Police Dept. considering filing drug charges agains reporter Lisa Ling for covering drug use in the city.

    For months, Ling and her crew shot scenes in Mansfield, Shelby, Plymouth and elsewhere in attempts to detail the area’s heroin problem.
    __
    After the episode aired March 22, Shelby Police Chief Charlie Roub said he was shocked by what he saw.
    __
    “There were people using drugs, talking about using drugs and in one scene, you’ve got people using drugs with a 1-year-old present,” Roub said. “The 1-year-old was also in the back of a van with his parents on their way to purchase drugs.”

    Seriously? You’re shocked? And you’re filing charges against the reporters?

    Don’t shoot the messenger dudes!

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    My parents’ dog went through a phase of similar behavior (though his target of choice was other dogs’ tails). They found that a cloth muzzle worked well. Put it on just before letting the dog off-leash at the park; he’d paw at his snout a few times and then would more or less forget about the thing and go off and play.

    Now that he’s a few years old, he’s calmed down a bit and it’s no longer necessary.

    dms

  9. 9.

    srv

    Daniel Pipes is fawning over Obama’s acceptance of the Bush doctrine.

    Obama’s rapid shedding of his own ideas and his adoption of Bush’s policies suggests that, however great their philosophical differences, Americans have reached a working consensus on Middle East policy.

  10. 10.

    geg6

    Max is one regal dude, Tim. Great pic.

    You should be able to stop him on command, saying “release” or something similar. Have you had him go to some obedience classes yet?

    And you may be fooled into thinking yellow Labs are easily cowed wimps, but that is just their good nature. Our 129 lb. Henry would kick any dog’s ass who came near his scruff, let alone tried to grab it. Henry is not your average good natured yellow Lab.

  11. 11.

    MikeJ

    @Southern Beale: The last sentence explains it: “You pick on an area like Richland County, and it makes us look like we’re the worst there is in the country. Simply not true.”

    Cops know about lots of things that happen, and are usually happy to let it continue a) as long as nobody talks about it or b) they can use it as a weapon against the wrong sort of people.

    B) explains why Seattle’s enlightened “don’t bother with marijuana use” policy leads to 90% of the people who *are* arrested being black.

  12. 12.

    kindness

    The scruff thing. I recommend you find an even bigger dog that likes to do this. Then let the two of them play to their hearts content. I suspect they will either a) both go to doggie nirvana or b) Max will figure out this isn’t so much fun after a while.

  13. 13.

    Steller

    Don’t have any advice on the behavioral issue, but just wanted to say how glad I am that you didn’t get his ears cropped. Dobies have such pretty ears naturally, and I generally hate the whole mutilation thing with ears, tails, dewclaws, etc. I understand the reason for the tails and dewclaw removal on dogs that are bred with the intention to be working hunting dogs, but still, having worked in a vet’s office in high school and having to hold the newborn pups when they were being snipped and cauterized just traumatized me (as well as the dogs, I’m sure). And helped inform my decision that I didn’t want to be a vet after all. But I’ve never understood the reason for the ear cropping.

  14. 14.

    Delia

    I think it’s basic puppy horseplay. When my dog was a puppy (some 12 years ago now) there was a dog in the neighborhood about 18 months older who would play with him. It was the best socialization he could have had. My dog, Pippin, would grab the other dog, Bear, by the scruff of his neck, just behind the ear, and they would tussle around. If Pippin got out of hand Bear would grab him in the same area and give him a nip. They could go on for hours. I think that experience has made Pippin very good with puppies throughout his life. A couple of years ago I took him with me when I went to visit my sister for about ten days. She has a male Papillon who was about 10 months. (Pippin is a 60 lb mutt.) Her dog was desperate for someone to roughhouse with and did that same grab the scruff routine with Pippin even though there was the vast difference in size. They played like that our entire visit.

    My advice is to find another dog who will play like that with yours. It’ll do them both good.

    Edit:
    I don’t think grabbing or gentle biting on the scruff really hurts them. I think mother dogs discipline their pups with nips in that area.

  16. 16.

    geg6

    @Southern Beale:

    Ridiculous.

    I hate to admit it, but I’ve watched a bit of the OWN Network shows. Far and away, Lisa Ling’s show has been the best thing on the network (though a guilty pleasure is the “Season 25: Oprah Behind the Scenes”). I haven’t watched every show, but I caught the ones about heroin addiction, transgender, and sex offenders. “Our America with Lisa Ling” has been simply outstanding stuff. Really.

    http://www.oprah.com/own-our-america-lisa-ling/our-america-blog.html

  17. 17.

    Guster

    I’ve got a Jack Russell who does the same thing, except his preferred targets are Rotties and Great Danes. My solution is to scream at him like an unhinged maniac. Oddly, this seems to only increase everyone’s discomfort. Even more oddly, I keep trying it.

  19. 19.

    shaun

    A beautiful dog and obviously an intelligent one who wants to please when he’s not being all teenagery. He will stop being a scruffhound sooner or later, but it will be sooner if you are firm but fair with him and use treats as rewards with consistency.

    A certain lead blogger at a librul blog that I will not name undergoes regular torture and occasionally physical injury at the hands (paws?) of his dogs because he never made them understand that it’s a people’s world, not a dog’s world. The sooner Max figures this out, the sooner he will be a 24/7 pleasure.

    Good luck!

  20. 20.

    RoonieRoo

    I swear I can see the thought bubble above his head saying “I’m sitting! Now give me the damn treat!”

    As for the scruffing of other dogs, it’s partly his age and partly a doggy socialization issue. You aren’t going to train that out of him. The best thing you can do is use yoru recall to call him to you when he’s doing it.

    I suspect it’s going to take him meeting another dog with good dog with strong social skills to get him to knock it off OR he’ll mature out of it.

  21. 21.

    Amir_Khalid

    I deliberately hit the 20-story limit on the New York Times website so that I could try out NYTclean. It works! I thank the Balloon Juice commenter who provided the link last week.

  23. 23.

    licensed to kill time

    @Amir_Khalid: Are you going to share the link? (Never mind, I just googled it ;-)

    I got a “4 weeks free for 99 cents!” offer today. Presumably after that I’d have to pay out the nose, no thanks.

  24. 24.

    Joe Beese

    The mantra, from President Obama on down, is that ground forces are totally ruled out for Libya. After all, the United Nations Security Council Resolution authorizing the war explicitly rules out any “occupation” forces. But leave it to the top military officer of NATO, which takes over the war on Wednesday, to add an asterisk to that ban. During a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island asked Adm. James Stavridis about NATO putting forces into “post-Gadhafi” Libya to make sure the country doesn’t fall apart. Stavridis said he “wouldn’t say NATO’s considering it yet.” But because of NATO’s history of putting peacekeepers in the Balkans — as pictured above — “the possibility of a stabilization regime exists.” … Obama didn’t signal an endgame in his Monday speech, just vowing not to use any ground forces to get there. That was exactly what President Clinton promised in Bosnia — right before sending 20,000 U.S. soldiers to enforce the 1995 Balkans peace deal.

    http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/nato-chief-opens-the-door-to-libya-ground-troops/#

  26. 26.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @kindness: This would be my suggestion as well. By the way, Max is lovely and that’s quite a good photo.

  31. 31.

    retr2327

    “I have an electric collar that I have used”

    You monster!

    Where can I get one? (what’s the Google?)
    I have two mini Aussies that are real sweethearts, but have a tendency to run off and just keep going every once in a while because they just get too excited to hear properly . . .

  32. 32.

    JGabriel

    Daniel Pipes via srv:

    … Americans have reached a working consensus on Middle East policy.

    “Working”? That is the strangest misspelling of “dysfunctional” that I’ve ever seen.

    .

  33. 33.

    licensed to kill time

    Oh, and in the ‘thanks for the links’ category I’d like to thank whoever recommended NoSquint for Firefox. I’d been Ctrl + and minus-ing forever, and now I can set each site to the most comfortable text size and it remembers it. Plus the fit text to window thing is wonderful.

    ¡Gracias!

  35. 35.

    schrodinger's cat

    @JGabriel: Are you pulling my leg? What is a world cup firefly any way? I am talking about the game with a bat and a ball. Kinda like baseball, but more fun or more convoluted depending on your point of view. There is currently a world cup(held ever 4 years) going on. The semifinal between New Zealand and Sri Lanka is on right now. Tomorrow India will be playing Pakistan in the other semifinal.

  43. 43.

    Noam Sane

    Great shot. As the owner of a yellow lab, I will confirm that they are magnets for other, more aggressive dogs…I assume that their reputations (as pussies) precedes them.

    Mine was a doormat for a while, but when he hit 90 lbs it suddenly dawned on him that he could give back what was necessary; he now bares his teeth like a rotty when necessary, and he’s been in a couple of tangles. He’ll put up with crap, up to a point.

    I need to get some instruction on the correction collar thing; just picked one up off Ebay (batteries were dead, of course, so spent another $40 to get it working). So far my Googling/YouTubing has been in vain. I’m mainly concerned with recall, want to do it right.

    Don’t be shy with the dog pics, we love ’em.

  45. 45.

    susan

    First you see the head. Over the crest of the hill appears a muzzle, drooling. It is as yet not visibly attached to anything. A limb jangles into view, followed in unhasty succession by a second, third, and fourth, bearing a hundred and forty pounds of body between them. The wolfhound, three feet at his shoulder and five feet to his tail, spies the long-haired Chihuahua, half a dog high, hidden in the grasses between her owner’s feet. The Chihuahua is six pounds, each of them trembling. With one languorous leap, his ears perked high, the wolfhound arrives in front of the Chihuahua. The Chihuahua looks demurely away; the wolfhound bends down to Chihuahua level and nips her side. The Chihuahua looks back at the hound, who raises his rear end up in the air, tail held high, in preparation to attack. Instead of fleeing from this apparent danger, the Chihuahua matches his pose and leaps onto the wolfhound’s face, embracing his nose with her tiny paws. They begin to play.

    Prelude from Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz

  46. 46.

    Michael D.

    @Steller:

    Don’t have any advice on the behavioral issue, but just wanted to say how glad I am that you didn’t get his ears cropped.

    That was my first delightful thought when I saw the picture. I don’t see a tail, however.

  48. 48.

    Betty Cracker

    Lovely dog! Don’t know what to tell you about the scruff thing.

    @Steller: I’ve got two boxers, both with intact ears and one with an intact tail, the first whole boxer tail I’d ever seen in my life. I can’t understand why anyone would cut a dog’s ears into interesting pointy shapes.

    But now that I have a whole-tailed boxer, I kinda get the tail whackage thing: Standing next to that dog when she’s wagging her tail (which is 98% of her waking life) is like being beaten in the shins with velvet-covered rebar. I’m still in the no cosmetic surgery for animals camp. But ouch.

  49. 49.

    Mark S.

    This can’t possibly be legal:

    A free enterprise think tank in Michigan — backed by some of the biggest names in national conservative donor circles — has made a broad public records request to at least three in-state universities with departments that specialize in the study of labor relations, seeking all their emails regarding the union battle in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, TPM has learned.

  50. 50.

    Tim F.

    @Michael D.: You will never find a bred Dobe in America with an intact tail. You just won’t. I won the argument over his ears (eventually) but his tail was not negotiable.

    When I mentioned to a different breeder that I wanted natural ears, she laughed and hung up the phone.

  51. 51.

    jenn

    I agree with using your recall, when necessary, at least starting out — wrestling like that is pretty common – my 2 would do that for hours on end if I let them! There isn’t an ounce of aggression in my 2 when they’re wrestling like that, it’s just full on play. But I’d probably start trying to train him what that type of play is named (“wrestle” or some such), and then when the other dog’s owners give their ok, you can let them go at it, but if they don’t, and Max starts up, you can tell him “no wrestle” to stop the behavior without having to have him stop socializing.

    Good luck! (And I wouldn’t use the shock collar for this – I know a few dogs who would have been hit by cars by now without one to back up their long-distance recall, but this seems to be something that you can pretty easily do with positive reinforcement/lots of food and praise!)

  52. 52.

    JGabriel

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Are you pulling my leg? What is a world cup firefly any way?

    (pulls self off floor after falling out of chair that rolled from under self while laughing too hard)

    Yes, of course I’m pulling your leg, dude. I thought it was kind of … obvious?

    .

  53. 53.

    Felonious Wench

    @Noam Sane:

    when he hit 90 lbs it suddenly dawned on him that he could give back what was necessary; he now bares his teeth like a rotty when necessary, and he’s been in a couple of tangles. He’ll put up with crap, up to a point.

    Mine tends to do the happy happy fun routine until another dog gets aggressive with her. Then, Happy Lab goes away, especially if the other dog is near myself or my two young sons. She’s OK with playing, but if another dog shows aggression near us, man, you’d never know she’s a Lab.

  55. 55.

    JGabriel

    Tim F.:

    You will never find a bred Dobe in America with an intact tail.

    Why is that? Do Dobe’s have awkwardly long tails? Or are American Dobe trainers just sadists?

    Not pulling anyone’s leg here. I ask in true perplexity.

    .

  56. 56.

    JGabriel

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    It was obvious and I is not a dude.

    Even better re: calling me on the obvious, and I’ll remember the not a dude part — which I kinda did remember, because I almost went back and changed it, but then thought dude was sufficiently gender-neutral now, like actor, to not require it. Guess I was wrong on that point.

    .

  57. 57.

    Tim F.

    @JGabriel:

    (1) It is considered breed standard in the US. Breeders all see an uncut tail as the mark of a stray.

    (2) Docking should be done in the first 48 hours after birth before tail bones begin to harden. It is very rare for someone to choose a pup without a minimal amount of personality matching, which starts to be possible around 5 weeks.

  59. 59.

    Michael D.

    I think we should chop off the right front foot of every Black Labrador. It will be the new breed standard and it will identify it as a non-stray. Also, we circumcise the males!

  60. 60.

    trollhattan

    @Tim F.:

    IIUC a lot of working dogs are docked and dewclawed because it avoids many painful injuries in the field. Of course, it drifts into the breed standard so can become silly with time.

    A “working” English bulldog?

  61. 61.

    Effie

    Max’s neck biting is just his way of figuring out where he resides in a pack. Even when playing as a pup, the neck biting usually signifies he wants another dog to play under his rules. Puppies, devoid of aggressive behaviors, tend to grow out of neck biting but to be safe, most trainers will suggest shaping that behavior out of him as early as possible…especially if you socialize with dogs whose owners don’t fully understand dog behavior.

    If he listens to your commands, you could try stopping the behavior when it starts by calling him to you (a zap from the collar with a verbal command can be used if he’s not responding to just verbal…overtime the zap can be extinguished). Separate him from the other dogs, give him a minute to calm down, all the while repeating the word “gentle,” then let him go back to playing. Over time, Max should associate the “gentle” command with calmer play. To curtail any over-correction, call him out of play even when he’s not biting.

  62. 62.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Southern Beale:

    This is a pretty interesting coincidence. An old friend of mine in NYC belongs to a church that does homeless outreach and worked closely with two of the people featured in Lisa Ling’s report. Earlier today she sent me a heads-up announcement about the OWN program. Now this. The fuh??

  66. 66.

    General Stuck

    I gotta get me one of those little cameras. This photo is just out of the ballpark stunning in it’s color tones and clarity. I was next planning on buying a true macro lens for my Rebel Xt, but would about give up a finger or two to take pics like this. And Max is equally stunning.

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