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Athena`s puppytest
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What does the placements means? Links
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This puppytest is unofficial, and based on two fragments. The test have been done by myself. One part of the test is observations of Athena`s physical development from her birht to 7,5 weeks of age. The second part is a small Mentaltest to check out her courage, her interests, reactions of new gear and beeps, and how she de-react. The mentaltest resaults are current actual this testday, and depends on the puppys mood, condition this day...Still this test can help us. To accomplish the right de-reaction for a dog, is very important. Bad de-reactions may consequently in worst case be indicative that the dog in afterwards age can become apprehensive.In early stage we can detect how the dog will handle, for it, unpleasant things or sounds. The test is ment as a tool to detect, train and prevent negative reactions for the dog, to help the dog develop nicely, understand it`s conditions and the test may show us where the dog has its interests and talents regarding in use, function, sports and playing! A dog develop a lot in short time, and it`s behaviour will be influenced by genes, environment, age, how it is brought up, its holders, what it is exposed to...This test can therefor not be trusted 100 %, since this test is based upoon the puppys first weeks with its breeder! @@ Physical observations Athena was the firstborn of two pups. She has all along been little and neat, -her brother Cisco is opposite. She has been very fond of her mother Savanna`s milk, and had in the beginning a few problems to axcept the fodder. After a few days along with handfeeding, she ate her food with now problems. Athena has developed very nice,- in every way.She loves to spend time outdoor, check out new things, play, run and she make contact with other dogs. Athena is mentaly severe than Cisco, and is dominating him here. She is honouring her mother Savanna as she is getting information. She`s started to let me know if it is something she is not very happy about!I think Athena by doing this,shows me that she start to become a bit additional aware of her own mentale solid agedown,and we should be aware of this! Such dogs have easy time to administer their on toprang in the crowd. I will come back to this during the Mentaltest. Otherwise, she is more careful type of dog, who likes the stable and wellknown surroundings.By visiting new places, she can make herself more pittyful than she really is, by making sounds and clearly shows that she wants do be carried around. Avoid this! She`s just trying to manipulate her stock! She is very lively and playful inside, and loves to attack her brother when he lays down,haha...She runs a lot, and demonstrate interests in most things at the floor. Especially shoes, plasticbags, magasines...are fun to play with. Be careful what is on your floor, and check out her shewing outside. She broadens her horizon every day,- most in a positive matter. Cisco is bigger than Athena, and he manage to climb stairs.Athena have some difficulties about this, but she found herself a tecnique to do this: She runs against the stair and almost roll over the step and she is up,-and very proud of herself,haha... Athena is very active and outstanding. She is manipulative, - be very aware of this! If you ignore this, you will only in the long term make her worse regarding her development. The big will she shows, is big, persistent and consequent, we can expect she will be a handful as time goes by. She needs to be raised up in a strict og eager matter from second 1,-even though she is so small and cute.I recommend that all in her family agree about Athena`s roules. Dogs love rutines, and they easily know who is the `weak` link in the stock. Dogs are experts to read bodysigns (a dog uses about 85 % sight to know a person or other dog, rest is smell and hearing), and they will use the `weak` link to achieve their interest! In some families the dog is not allowed to bounce in the couch, but one in the dogs stock allow the dog to do so. The rest of the family cannot understand why the dog never learn NOT to jump up in their couch.Along with Athena this is a `must`. If Athena has the opportunity to transfere herself up in the hierarchy,she will juggle the entire family.Suddenly she is a problem for herself, the family, and her entourage. This will easy show when she is about 4-5 months of age and in her puberty about 10-12 months of age. Don`t give up in theese periods!!! Keep going to raise up Athena, and never forget that your best tool is to be loveable, calm, strict and consistent!!! Well, my conclusion of the fysical observations of Athena, are that Athena loves to play, she is a little problemsolver when she wants it enough, she is very interesting in her surroundings and she is very strong in mental sence! She is strong and healthy, and most of the time she tries out hers and my limits, but she is a balanced little girl. She needs a lot of credit when she is doing ok and to motivate her more, f.ex to call her back to you. She needs time ahead to learn to be handled, so please let others check out her theeth, look in her ears, touch her feet...In body she is small and compact with great angulations. Her coat is very promissing. With consistens and obidiencetraining, she will work out very fine!She is a promissing showdog, she has talent for seeking and I don`t think she will be a big star in agility, but she will probably have a great time with it! Athena needs to learn ordinary obidience! So for now it is up to you to choose activities and playtime with your Athena!!!
Mental test done August 4th 2009 @ I brought Athena to a room in the basement. This room is not known by Athena, and the test started the moment Athena put her feet to the floor. - General observation of reactions and behaviour to a new room with unknown things: Athena uses her nose and walk straight up to the cloth,wich is in the middle of the floor. She drags the cloth with her for a while, but has problems to play and smell at the same time. She choose to leave the cloth for a while, and she goes around the room, and smell at some of the things in the room. She don`t show any hesitation or to be insecure. She don`t care about the dark corners, and she is not very interested in the things here. She goes back to the cloth. With several occations she takes a good bite in the rag and shake it well and long,- until it is dead,haha. Her interest in the environment is quite low, since she only has oriented herslf in the room. It is the cloth that interests her for now. All this time I sit on a chair without moving or making any sound, just observing Athena. After a while she is very insecure,-not of her surroundings, but in my behaviour. She starts to lick herself. Third time she does the licking, I choose to stop her doing this. To lick herslf like this, is a way to compensate for her insecure feeling. She don`t know how to react on my unnatural behaviour (she don`t know me as a passive person), so to do something, she licks, -but still her negative feelings are there. If this move continues, it may lead to a nervous dog, who don`t know how to react in new things or how to handle things that are a bit sceary. What I did in this occation, worked well. I just took her by the neck and said `no`. Then I gave her some paper to check out. Suddenly, I did something for her, something familiar, and her insecurity slipped off. She retained the smelling, and now she checked out everything so much better! Just remember you can`t remove one behaviour, just replace it with a new behaviour! I were suprised by Athena`s resaults, both this and the following moments. This is why I think theese tests are so interesting, because they may give us a clue of what`s under the surface of the dog. If there is something to find, we have the opportunity to do something about the negative before it may be to late, and we can build up the dog`s strong and positive sides in a early stage. I now see that Athena may give us some more `trouble` than I first assumed. She sometimes needs help to find an acceptable pattern to react and de-react. Athena`s positive side in this moment, is her bodylanguage,wich is very clear and easy to read. During the hole moment she held her tale high,- despite her insecurity about my strange behaviour. This tells us that Athena is very proud of her self!She showed me a lot of courage, she is determined and playful, but she can struggle a bit to understand her surroundings when they changes from her normal piont of view. She has a clear bodylanguage. Study and learn her signs!This will help you to prevent other situations where Athena may be insecure, and you can make her stronger in this by knowing her well in a fysical way. - Next moment: I go to the door and turn off the light. In half darkness I stand quiet and observe Athena. She sits down and look at me and is awaiting. When she have no reaction from me, she walks around the room smelling and making some noices. She now tries to de-react her insecurity by smelling and making noices, and tries to make me give her any reaction. Again it is obvious she is very insecure about my passive behaviour, and it is very easy to read her reaction. After a while she lays down with the cloth and plays with it.Athena got none negative reactions from me, and she managed to de-react by herself,- even though she used a long time to do this. She needs more practise to do this better. Athena had no reactions when I turned the light off. - To start this moment in a good way, I play with Athena while I observe how she plays with me and the cloth. She is not eager to have a pull-fight with me. But, she has a lot of temper in the play. If this is caused by bad de-reactions from the earlier moments or this is how she is, time will show: Athena takes a good bite in the rag and pull some. To see her raction, I let her win this game. She`s obviously very proud to win the cloth, and shake it very well. As I described on top, this cloth died many times during this test,poor thing,haha... She is opposite of her brother, and don`t care to much about hunting the toy, but she is high about the things itselves,- it is hers. She is not to careful about where she puts her theets. Is this toughness, ignorens or just eager in the play, time will show.If this maintains, she needs play and bite-practise, to learn where she is aloud to put her theets. This training is not difficult. If this happens, just say `Auch`, stop the play and walk away.Then she will soon enough learn to be more careful with her bite. About her owingpossession, we should be aware it won`t develop to something negative. This may be that you can`t go near your dog when it has a bone or food, you can`t take the toy... Also this is easy to get rid of if you are aware of it. If you ignore this when it is a problem, it will take you long time to get this off your dog! Instead you can train your dog to apport and carry this thing by itself. Theese dogs love to feel they work, for instance by carrying an item. Don`t be surprised if Athena find something during her walk to carry back home!Let her do this!Athena is intensive in her play, and it is the object she wants. She seeks and is social among other dogs. She probably will need a nice but strict dog to tame her. Athena will try to dominate other dogs as she grows, at least this is what she shows for now.Therefor it is important that she meet a dog who can be gentle and strict with her. This dog should not be dominant and mean, but should put Athena in her place!Athena likes fabric toys, but also toys with noices, plastic bags, papers... Hold on to your newspapers and toiletpaper,guys... About the fabric toys, you should know a couple of things. If you buy theese kind of toys for Athena, keep an eye on the toy. Athena will probably after a while kill her fabric toy. If you see a missing eye, or the cotton inside is all over your floor, remove all of theese toys. You should now prefer to buy Athena stronger toys, f. ex a biting pillow. Play a lot with Athena, and end the playing if she gets very high and energic or she bites your fingers. If you end the game consequently, Athena will soon learn what is acceptable and not acceptable! In the beginning of her training I recommend you to use sausage, liver, fishballs...as a reward. You should never stop to reward your dog for the right behaviour, but when your dog know the things, don`t reward it all the time. I suspect Athena to be the kind of dog who eats your fingers to get her treat. This is painful, so stop this immediately you notice this! I can help you with this if you need any help, and you should get help for this if you are doing a course with your dog! After a few months with treats, you can reward Athena with a Kong or squeeky toy you can throw and she can get,instead of the treats all the time.When you have the time, I recommend you a clickercourse with Athena. This will help you to reward your dogs right behaviour at the right time. This will be of great importance for Athena! If you choose to use a toy to reward your dog, don`t let this toy be able for Athena to play with in daily use. Use the toy only when you train her! Then she won`t be tired to play with this toy, and it will remain the big reward for her! Last moment is the test of her reactions for sound. I use a metalcover and knock it into the wall. Then I observe how Athena reacts to the high and unexpected sound, how she de-reacts to the bang, and how long time she uses to de-react. I chose to do this 3 times with Athena. A dog learns very quick, and therefor the dog should have a smaller reaction the following times. Second time I weren`t quite happy about Athena`s de-reaction, so I did it once more to see if she could and wanted to de-react 100%. Athena was in the middle of the floor when the first bang appeared. Athena jumped a little bit, before she decided to look after the noice. She searches for almost 2 minutes before she gives up and lays down by the cloth. She has not de-reacted to the sound, because she couldn`t find it. I play with her, when the sound appears a second time. Since she didn`t de-react the first time, I am not surprised Athena now is more jumpy. But this time I show her the metalcover, and Athena smells it and moves on. Her de-reaction was quite quick when she had the opportunity. Athena has no interest in the cover. To please my own curiosity about this, I decided to make the sound once more. I wanted a quick reaction and a quick de-reaction. I sat down and were very busy with my papers. Athena played with the cloth when the sound again appeared. She has no negative reaction, and de-reaction is not necessary. Great, this was my intension! Athena may de-react in a positive matter, if she has the opportunity to do so! It is very important Athena de-react correct to things that she feels unpleasant. I believe Athena takes her negative and reamining feelings on to other things. This will in a bad way stop her positive development and make her nervous and insecure to new places and things. If she can handle this the right way, she will be secure, and she will handle other unpleasant things much better and easier. She is easy to read, so study and learn her bodysigns, and you can understand your dog so much better in different situations.Let her experience theese types of situations with a calm, steady and balanced person, until she don`t care about it. Remember to give her positive words and reactions when she is doing ok, and overlook things when she`s not doing it to good. If your`re not pleased with something, you can just do it once more! Athena has developed very nice till now, as a healthy, outstanding, happy, social and cuddleing puppy!I hope and think this development continues, so don`t dispear if this seems to be too much. Everything is accomplishable, so this will turn out just fine!!! A lot of people have an oppinion how to raise a dog, and they have no problems shareing their oppinion (wich they think is the right way to do things!). Remember, there is NO right answer for right or wrong dogtraining. It all depends of the breed, age of the dog, type of dog, genes, talents, how it is brought up, environment... Your best tool to raise your dog, is to know your dog, trust yourself, train to connect with your dog (trough playing and calling the dog back to you) and to be consequent in raising your dog! If there is something you wonder about with this test/observations, or about raising og playing with your dog, just let me know and I will help you the best I can. If you notice anything wrong about this test regarding the development of your dog, I will be thrilled to know about it. Theese tests are my...projects,- just to see how accurate this tests can be. It is not easy to read a little puppy and understand the signs you get (as I said before, the dog develop a lot after leaving me as the breeder). Maybe I need to have one or two more moments in the test, maybe I need to replace one moment or in best case leave it as it is for now! I really appriciate if you will let me know how you feel about your test, and how it is to read and understand! I hope this may be of any help to prevent negative behaviour and instead build up your dog! @ Best of luck playing, practice and forth development with your Athena!
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