Yes, we have neglected this site a bit since our initial burst of excitement. But Stella is doing so great. About two months ago we took her on a trip with us up to Santa Barbara (about a four hour drive) and that was pretty hard on her. She got sick, and I had allergies, so we came back from our trip not very rested and Stella was very out of her element. I was starting to think she was going to be a difficult dog. She peed in the house several times that first week after we got back, which she hadn't done since she was eight weeks old. But after a few weeks subsided, and we got back to our normal routine, she relaxed again.
Now, she is great and huge. About 105 pounds at ten months. and she is doing so great with her training. We haven't done more training sessions, but she is getting calmer and more obedient. When we take her out to the dog park we are amazed at how gentle she is with children, how much she loves playing with little dogs, and how well she will recall and heel. She doesn't pull on her leash anymore (we aren't using the martingale anymore either- she's great on a regular flat collar!). I was walking her down the walkway at an outdoor mall, and I was literally able to stop walking, tell her to lay down, and then walk again with her following my commands. And people are amazed at how huge she is and that she is so young.
She is as tall as me when she stands on her back legs... we need to take a picture and post it.
Basically, life is hectic right now (working A LOT!) but Stella is wonderful to come home to.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Feeding a Mastiff
Stella is huge! At eight weeks she was twenty pounds. At seven months, she is now eighty pounds! (And she is actually the smallest one in the littler right now, which is pretty crazy!) Feeding a growing machine like a south african mastiff is kind of daunting. At first we fed her Costco brand puppy food. People in the store laughed at me and asked if I was feeding a horse when I stocked up with three bags of puppy food. But Stella was so unenthusiastic about feeding time. We tried to get her on a schedule, but she could care less about her food and would just graze now and then. We also worried because it was not a specified large breed puppy food. We didn't want her to grow to fast and have problems with her bones, joints, etc.
After doing a lot of research, we finally decided to switch her to Innova Large Breed Puppy food. It's expensive, but she loves it and it gives us peace of mind knowing that she is getting food that is good for her and designed for large breeds. Large breeds need to have food that is lower in their percent of protein and fat so that they can grow more steadily and fully develop. This one had the lowest level of protein we could find (24 percent- recommended for large breeds -around 25% or under). Now she loves her food and, despite what we thought when she was eating Costco food- she is extremely food motivated and loves to eat. This is very helpful to know when training her. She just wanted the good stuff.
To make eating a more interactive time, we also sometimes use the food toys for her. We have one that is like a pipe with a whole in it so she has to roll it to get the food out. Then we have one that is like an egg, and she has to tip it over for food to fall out. We plan to also get the tug a jug, which she has to repeatedly pull a rope out of a little jug to pull food out of. Now instead of her eating her meal in thirty seconds, it can take her up to a half hour, which gives us time to eat or gets her out of our way if we are doing something.
We spend a lot of time thinking about Stella's health and we want our baby girl to be perfect as she can be. For training, we use Natural Balance Turkey formula logs. This is actually a food for dogs and it is very healthy for them, but we chop it up into little squares and feed it to her as treats and rewards during training. She will do anything for these tasty (and nutritious) treats.
While I'm talking about healthy food, I would love to recommend Antlers for your dog. This is an alternative to rawhides that dogs can chew on. They get bone marrow from the antlers, and it also gives off calcium, and they come in different sizes- the first time I got her a jumbo, but obvious enough, she needed the Mastiff size. Mastiffs are HUGE chewers, and the antlers that we buy her keep her occupied for a long time. They again are healthy for her, and she is not going to choke on them like one might on rawhides. It is time consuming for her while we watch tv or do stuff around the house, and it gets out all her urges to chew, so she never ruins our shoes, phones, clothes, etc.
Even though Stella is the smallest out of her brothers and sisters right now, we feel that by controlling her growth and feeding her high quality food and treats, she is going to steadily grow to her potential and be much healthier in the long run. The guy we got her from at first told Chad that our dog must be severely underweight and unhealthy if she was only 80 pounds right now. So we went to see them, and after he saw how toned and powerful she looks, he said she will probably outlive all her litter-mates! (and she was also much better behaved and socialized than the three other litter-mates we got to see that day) BRAGGING RIGHTS!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Martingale collar
Once Stella got old enough to go outside of our backyard, we were ecstatic! We took her to dog parks, mostly Fiesta Island and Balboa Park in San Diego, but also dog beach at Ocean Beach and some smaller local dog parks. She loved exploring, meeting new dogs, and, maybe more than anything, meeting people. It was wonderful to show her off and see her grow and change each time we took her out. Having her off leash is wonderful, and she always stays near us.
But when we started taking her on walks on a leash, I always got so nervous. I just had a vision of the future and being so embarrassed by having a 150 pound dog yanking me down the street. People were always making jokes that "the dog is walking me" just because she was already so big at such a young age. I did not want to have any problems with having her heel, so we needed to properly train her. But being a first time dog owner, I didn't really know how. First, we just tried keeping her by our side, but she didn't want to be there; she wanted to explore and tell us where to go.
We tried putting her on the pincher collar, and she did not pull at all. But I was nervous about this too. She was young, and I didn't want to traumatize her with harsh correction, and I knew she was fearing the collar instead of respecting my command. She would walk great, so the next day I would try walking her on a regular collar, and I would be miserable with her pulling me along, and me getting angry and frustrated. I would get so worked up because even if it wasn't too bad, I knew if it continued with her pulling, it would get worse as time went on, and I wouldn't know how to fix it.
So then we moved onto trying the martingale harness because we had read up on it, and they said it is a softer correction because it turns their leg, and therefore their body and their attention toward you and doesn't allow pulling. So we bought it, and tried to fit it correctly, and something was just off. It wouldn't fit correctly, and after trying on several occasions to fit it right, we decided it wasn't working. Stella just wouldn't respond to it because it was so awkward for her.
Then we started personal training! Meagan and Kelly at the Collared Scholar are so awesome! They showed us the martingale collar, and we have been using it since. It looks like a regular flat collar, but its small bit of chain allows for you to give her quick corrections without overcorrecting. She responds so well, and we have been able to teach her to heel and she now walks on a loose leash YAY. I love that it isn't big and attention grabbing, but that it just has that little extra training assistance that helps when showing a puppy how to behave.
Stella looking good (well, kind of silly in this picture) with her martingale collar:
But when we started taking her on walks on a leash, I always got so nervous. I just had a vision of the future and being so embarrassed by having a 150 pound dog yanking me down the street. People were always making jokes that "the dog is walking me" just because she was already so big at such a young age. I did not want to have any problems with having her heel, so we needed to properly train her. But being a first time dog owner, I didn't really know how. First, we just tried keeping her by our side, but she didn't want to be there; she wanted to explore and tell us where to go.
We tried putting her on the pincher collar, and she did not pull at all. But I was nervous about this too. She was young, and I didn't want to traumatize her with harsh correction, and I knew she was fearing the collar instead of respecting my command. She would walk great, so the next day I would try walking her on a regular collar, and I would be miserable with her pulling me along, and me getting angry and frustrated. I would get so worked up because even if it wasn't too bad, I knew if it continued with her pulling, it would get worse as time went on, and I wouldn't know how to fix it.
So then we moved onto trying the martingale harness because we had read up on it, and they said it is a softer correction because it turns their leg, and therefore their body and their attention toward you and doesn't allow pulling. So we bought it, and tried to fit it correctly, and something was just off. It wouldn't fit correctly, and after trying on several occasions to fit it right, we decided it wasn't working. Stella just wouldn't respond to it because it was so awkward for her.
Then we started personal training! Meagan and Kelly at the Collared Scholar are so awesome! They showed us the martingale collar, and we have been using it since. It looks like a regular flat collar, but its small bit of chain allows for you to give her quick corrections without overcorrecting. She responds so well, and we have been able to teach her to heel and she now walks on a loose leash YAY. I love that it isn't big and attention grabbing, but that it just has that little extra training assistance that helps when showing a puppy how to behave.
Stella looking good (well, kind of silly in this picture) with her martingale collar:
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Puppy Time
Somehow, you find time for a puppy. Chad started coming home on lunch breaks, and we started spending less time watching tv, and more time interacting with a cute puppy. We bought her tons of toys, worked on kennel training, and had a few sleepless nights as we potty trained her. She was wonderful. Taking her out every couple of hours worked so quickly to get her potty trained, and after a couple weeks, she didn't have any more accidents in the house. I agree with Kasha though, that after the hoopla of getting them trained to go outside, you wish you had trained them to go outside, in the far corner of the lawn. oh well...
The only thing about having a puppy is that you are so excited and want to show everyone your bundle of joy, but they cant go out until they have all their shots, and after they get their exercise, all they do is sleep.
She would have so much energy pent up, so we would try to play in the yard, which gets old after a while. But oh well, she's so cute you don't mind just staring at her as she plays, explores the world, and just lays around being lazy...
Once she got a few weeks older, we started socializing her with Chad's sister's dog, Ozzie, who is only a few months older than her. At first she was so hesitant and scared, but once she warmed up to him, they had a blast!
She was so adorable, so tiny, so goofy. I couldn't wait for her to be bigger so we could take her out. But then you always miss that puppy face and all those wrinkles! I cant believe that was only a few short months ago...
The only thing about having a puppy is that you are so excited and want to show everyone your bundle of joy, but they cant go out until they have all their shots, and after they get their exercise, all they do is sleep.
She would have so much energy pent up, so we would try to play in the yard, which gets old after a while. But oh well, she's so cute you don't mind just staring at her as she plays, explores the world, and just lays around being lazy...
Deciding on a puppy
When we started thinking about a dog, I thought there was no way I would want a puppy--too much responsibility and not enough time, and I had no idea how to raise a puppy and properly train one. We looked at the local animal shelters and the humane societies, and we didn't find anything that pulled at our hearts yet. So then we looked into animal rescue groups... and denied! we tried the german shepherd rescue and they denied us. Most rescues wanted you to have experience with the breed, or experience with large breeds, etc. So that wasn't working.
Chad would always come home with some offer on a dog that someone gave him, like a free great dane is we bred her and gave the person a puppy (way to daunting for me!), and I would always say no.
But somehow, he talked me into going to see a coworker's litter of South African Mastiff puppies. We looked into the breed, and we liked that they are big protection dogs, but that they are not aggressive, they feed off your reactions to situations, and they have a long life span for being such a large breed. The more we read into the breed's background, the more they seemed like the most unbelievably perfect breed. So we went to have a look...
Once my eyes fell on Stella, there was no turning back! We went to see the puppies at two and a half weeks old (Born September 19, 2009). They were in a little kiddie pool, and as I looked at all 13 (I think... huge litter!) of the puppies, the girl with no black muzzle and the reddest coat caught my attention. I picked her up, and she was the only one I held that day. Chad has his eye on the big male of the litter, and he wanted to name him Doka (I'm so glad that didn't happen!). After that visit, Chad and I discussed whether to get the girl or boy. I wanted a girl because she would be smaller, and because I like the idea of motherly protection versus a man standing his ground. Meanwhile, Chad's coworker had guaranteed my Stella (who at that time I thought we would name Zoe) to someone else. He tried to pawn other females on me, but they didn't call to me, so after a while I said we could get the male. Then, the person backed out, and my beautiful girl was available again! We chose her and brought her home during the second week of November as a birthday gift for Chad. Stella was seven and a half weeks old and already weighed 18 pounds. And there begins the story of our parenthood (at least till we have actual human children).
Here is Stella the night we brought her home, laying next to her daddy
And here she is meeting our cat, Rosco, who was only seven months old at the time. They aren't loving family members yet, but they get along okay at least. It's crazy to see that they were so close in size when we brought her home.
So that is how we came to have the wonderful south african boerboel mastiff, our baby girl, who we love so much. And now to watch her grow...and grow and grow and grow...
Chad would always come home with some offer on a dog that someone gave him, like a free great dane is we bred her and gave the person a puppy (way to daunting for me!), and I would always say no.
But somehow, he talked me into going to see a coworker's litter of South African Mastiff puppies. We looked into the breed, and we liked that they are big protection dogs, but that they are not aggressive, they feed off your reactions to situations, and they have a long life span for being such a large breed. The more we read into the breed's background, the more they seemed like the most unbelievably perfect breed. So we went to have a look...
Once my eyes fell on Stella, there was no turning back! We went to see the puppies at two and a half weeks old (Born September 19, 2009). They were in a little kiddie pool, and as I looked at all 13 (I think... huge litter!) of the puppies, the girl with no black muzzle and the reddest coat caught my attention. I picked her up, and she was the only one I held that day. Chad has his eye on the big male of the litter, and he wanted to name him Doka (I'm so glad that didn't happen!). After that visit, Chad and I discussed whether to get the girl or boy. I wanted a girl because she would be smaller, and because I like the idea of motherly protection versus a man standing his ground. Meanwhile, Chad's coworker had guaranteed my Stella (who at that time I thought we would name Zoe) to someone else. He tried to pawn other females on me, but they didn't call to me, so after a while I said we could get the male. Then, the person backed out, and my beautiful girl was available again! We chose her and brought her home during the second week of November as a birthday gift for Chad. Stella was seven and a half weeks old and already weighed 18 pounds. And there begins the story of our parenthood (at least till we have actual human children).
Here is Stella the night we brought her home, laying next to her daddy
Mommy is taking over cause Daddy isn't posting
Hey everyone
It's Irene. I have decided that we love our dog so much, and we haven't been sharing all her exciting growth. So I think I will share some of our experiences from before we got her to how she is doing with all her training now, and how BIG she is getting. Hope you can enjoy, and maybe learn a little about this wonderful breed and our wonderful Stella.
It's Irene. I have decided that we love our dog so much, and we haven't been sharing all her exciting growth. So I think I will share some of our experiences from before we got her to how she is doing with all her training now, and how BIG she is getting. Hope you can enjoy, and maybe learn a little about this wonderful breed and our wonderful Stella.
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