Bones, puppy teeth & my poor finger! Advice!?

[Jack]

How do I cope? - ahhhh they're sooooo worth the effort hun. They give me an enormous amount of fun, love and pleasure

My little boy is only half Staffie, no idea what daddy was but he's weak tummied too. I think that Staffs generally DO have weak tummies but my first Mitzi had a cast iron tum til she contracted Cushings. She used to eat curries for goodness sake. Proper Indian curries - none of this weak crap for her - this lot I have now would only need to be sniffing one to get the squits

Rawhide is out of the equation in this house, as are pigs ears. They all LOVE them but Rosie gets bored of chewing and tries to swallow them all soggy and chewed up but practically whole. I lost count of the amount of times I have shoved my hand down her throat and dragged them out to allow her to breathe and stop her choking I don't ever give one a treat without giving the same to the others so now they have organic dog biccies from Pero and they ADORE them. I went looking for some Nylabones at the weekend but none of the pet stores I went to had them for sale so I'm searching online now for some that are reasonably priced as their teeth are a bit manky and need some help. Brushing only gets so much off but I have now purchased a proper dental de-scaler so I shall be attacking them with that one night this week when I fancy a battle
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Staffies are my life! Visit us at www.staffies.co.uk

[Emma Hardie]

curries?! thats amazing!

haha you wonder why they dont walk away from them when they get bored. . i suppose dogs arent ones to leave food behind

Nylabones are good for the enthusiastic chewers, but my lot get bored of them in 5 mins.
a de scaler i didnt know you could get such a thing!
does that mean i wasted 100 quid on kts dental treatment
typical!
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Emma, KT the greyhound, Robbie the lurcher, Pheonix (Pisces) & Soho (Stuart Little Junior) the Chihuahuas x
greyhounds make greyt pets! x
www.gal.org.uk

[Suzanne H]

I was growled at twice when Otto was around one, but they were slightly different and so I treated it differently.

I told him to move off the stair and he growled. That was him trying to tell me I couldn't move him. He soon found out that moving voluntarily was better than being dragged off very forcibly and banned to the kitchen.

Another time he growled when I went near his food, so I just spent a few days putting bits of chicken in. Positive reinforcement worked better than correction in that circumstance. I didn't want to stress him out about eating in front of me.

I have never seen a repeat in either circumstance. I think with the bone, the "I'm the boss" option is better than the "I'm not a threat" option .

[Jack]