Thursday 17 May 2018

Look into my eyes....

Apparently, a liver and white springer spaniel, should have amber eyes (or rarely they can have very bright blue like a husky). Maybe the eye colour of Ruby is still changing as for now, we reckon her eyes are more hazel green, than amber, what do you think:

She is growing in leaps and bounds and now weighs around 6.3kg. She has had all her injections, is out for short walks and undergoing training. When asked, she will sit, most of the time. Her recall is coming along nicely, especially to the whistle and she will retrieve but not always bring it back!

She is for the most part, toilet trained to go outdoors, but still has the odd accident indoors. She is dry at night and sleeps through the night.

We are monitoring her daytime sleeping as left to her own devices, she would nap rather than sleep and certainly wasn't taking the 'normal' amount of 16 - 20 hours in a day (including nights). We now put her back in her crate, with a few bits of kibble, several times a day and after whining/crying pitifully for a few minutes, will then fall asleep. This seems to be helping her quite a bit.

However, her one bugbear is biting and biting hard. She doesn't seem to have developed as much bite inhibition as we think she should have. DB's trousers have some extra vents in them now, as do quite a few of his jumpers. Being on blood thinners doesn't help as often she draws blood:(

This was expected but oft times, she seems to go overboard and works herself into a frenzy of snarling, biting and leaping at you. Again, apparently, all normal.

She just won't stop jumping up at us when we try to sit down and that is when she really goes off on one of her tirades! We stand up and ignore her, ask her to get off. She gets down, we praise her for getting down, we sit down she jumps up again. This scenario happens quite a lot. Today she discovered she can now get up completely on the chair and launched herself when I had a full mug of hot tea in my hand - it was a pretty close call, for both of us.

The vets recommend time out, trainer isn't too keen on it but time out does seem to calm her down (usually the second one). It is the one thing that really irritates us, and upsets me,  about her and we sincerely hope we can get her out of it soon. Other than that, she is a joy:)

 Have a grand weekend folks, hope the weather proves nice for you all.


9 comments:

  1. It looks like a good forecast but who knows. Her eyes are green rather than amber, perhaps there's still time to change.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe, only started changing in the last week.

      Delete
  2. You have my sympathies. Betty is now 19 months old and still quite wilful and stubborn (a characteristic of both her breeds). Most of the time she is a delight, but, like Ruby, she still persists on jumping up and sometimes gets overexcited and nips (mostly husband, rarely me). He's also on blood thinners - as you say, not good! We've found that time out does help a lot - she's very contrite when we let her back in the room after a few minutes. And quite often now we don't even have to use time out - a firm 'You'll go in your bed!' and she quietens down more or less straight away. I'm now even finding that a stern look and pointed finger have the same effect, sometimes. Our vet says that they don't really grow up until they're about 3 years old, so I would say your Ruby is still very young indeed. My advice, for what it's worth and based on our own experience, would be to carry on with the time out. Good luck.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. Hopefully the trainer will give us some useful tips.

      Delete
  3. You have your hands full, but she will be a joy when she matures.

    ReplyDelete
  4. She's gorgeous. I have green/hazel eyes too but am not quite as gorgeous!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Certainly wuite pretty, just got to perseverewith her training.

      Delete
  5. You will manage to get her out of this with training. Keep up the great work.

    I say that those eyes are hazel as well.

    God bless.

    ReplyDelete

I love hearing from you, will read all your comments and try and answer any questions you leave. Please leave comments in English. Don't forget to come back and read my reply! All comments are moderated so if you try to link it to a commercial web site, it will not be published.