The Arctic Post

Life Adventures in the Canadian Arctic

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Help, Advice needed!

Yesterday Cisco and I went outside for our daily outdoor fun. I also decided I should pick up doggy doo-doo as well. At one point I looked up just in time to see a white streak and then a black streak out of the corner of my eye. What did I see you ask? Well, our wonderful dog decided it was way more fun to chase a rabbit than to play close to home. Normally she is a well behaved dog. The only issue we have is when we sees something that would be cool to play with (bird, rabbit, dog, plane – yes she chases the planes as they come in to land and fly overhead taking off!!). For the life of me I couldn’t get her to listen to me and come back. I’ve got word in town that bear tracks have been seen by the community freezer, so the bears are very close to town. Needless to say I was a little worried about what she might come across. Last I saw they were headed out towards the end of town.

Last year we were having issues with her running/swimming after birds so we bought a shock collar. We’ve had one before, but it wasn’t waterproof and it was ruined with all the swimming she does here. She is very familiar with the collar. Normally, if she’s just wearing it she behaves. The collar we have has the option for us to just “buzz” her. It’s just a simple tone that gives her warning. She normally listens very well to the tone. Well, yesterday was another story. She was running so fast that I only saw her for a few seconds before she disappeared. Not sure where she was and how much farther she was going to go (nevermind she ignored my many calls!) I decided to buzz her and then a quick shock. Well, she still wasn’t coming back. Now, this is where I become a very bad mommy!! I was scared that she was going to come across another dog that is not friendly, or worse a bear, so I cranked up the remote to full power and held down the button. I heard a few yelps and my first thought was “oh my god, something’s happened” then I realized I was still shocking her, so I let go and she came running! I still feel bad that I had to do that, but I am thankful that nothing worse happened to her. I’m almost positive that the same rabbit has come back and is taunting her! There was a rabbit running around in front of our house for over an hour. It made the dog CRAZY!

The question is, how do I stop this obsession with chasing anything that runs, flys, etc?

Here is a picture of the culprit!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 11:39 and is filed under The Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Help, Advice needed!”

  1. April 28th, 2010 at 12:42

    Mom says:

    I can’t believe your rabbits are still so white, ours are brown. You might want to send a copy of your blog to the Dog Whisperer and ask him.

  2. April 28th, 2010 at 13:27

    Tammy says:

    You could always remove the shock collar and put her on a lead. That would curb the running and the possibility of being seriously hurt.

  3. April 28th, 2010 at 13:38

    Carly says:

    Thanks for the advice Tammy. It would definitely stop the running. I still would like to be able to let her run “off leash” with confidence that she won’t run away. I’d also like her to be able to play with other dogs without feeling the need to run at them as fast as she can….

  4. April 28th, 2010 at 18:59

    indigo says:

    Okay, this so made me smile. You have a dog in the wildest place she (and you) have ever been so far and you want her to behave like a dog on a city street and not chase after wild stuff? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

  5. April 29th, 2010 at 08:35

    Darlene says:

    I’m with your Mom on this one, send your question to the Dog Whisperer. You are probably doing the right thing by at least having the collar on her and you know she responds to things like the warning buzz and little zaps. There must be an expert somewhere that can help you with this one. Good luck, I know it is nice to let her run, but maybe you just can’t do it up there. Don’t worry, you aren’t a bad “Mom”, just a concerned one.
    Good luck and give Cisco a hug from us.

  6. April 29th, 2010 at 09:53

    jen says:

    Bah, she won’t get too hurt from the shock collar. I had some same issues with my dog, I just carried something tasty to try and bribe him back. That was the quick fix. Next we worked on “too far”, he would run a bit and then we’d call him back, make him sit, tell him he was a good boy and send him off again. We did this 1,000 times. It works now. There were a few times he ran off (we ended up driving around in the police truck around town looking for him, found him once in a ditch, attached to a child’s bike!).

    You can also try running her on leash before going leash free. Wear her out so she is too tired to run too far after bunnies. We used to let our dog follow us in the car, drove him outside of town (we loved doing this with a snowmobile too), kicked him out of the car and kept driving. He’d chase us and get completely trashed, too tired to do any “exploring”.

    We finally calmed down about things when we realized that he would never get too far and the dogs north never tried to attack him, although I thought they would, they are pretty social animals, unless tied up themselves.

    Leave her off leash, like Indigo said, for the adventure of it. There are not too many places down south you can let your dog run free off leash.

  7. April 29th, 2010 at 18:44

    Pat says:

    Catch the rabbit. Make it a pet and Cisco sister or brother. She’ll come to love her new playmate. But you don’t have to listen to me. I know absolutely nothing about animals.

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