Quote:
GSPs are OK with lower temps than their coat might indicate as long as they have somewhere out of the rain and up a little off the ground; certainly October in Western Washington is fine, as long as she is fed enough. Not that she should be suddenly an outside-sleeping dog, but three or four hours on a dry afternoon will make her less troublesome in the house, too.
I should introduce Abby, who lives next door and prefers to sleep in a dog house on the porch there unless it drops below 20F.
ABOUT BARKING:
in my experience, the best way to train a dog out of barking for attention is to praise them when they stop and ignore them when they're doing that horrible high pitched "you WILL pay attention to me" pointless bark. It also works for puppies crying, but I'd recommend getting a lot of sleep the week before you get the pup. All sorts of animal training works best with positive feedback,
in my experience.
exactly -- I learned, several dogs back -- LOL -- to ignore attention-getting barking (but DH yells at her, which is counterproductive, I tell him she thinks he is barking back at her)
however, nonstop barking might well annoy the neighbors ... and Roxy can and will keep it up for hours at a time, punctuated by very loud whining
(she has learned, though, that barking after we have closed the bedroom door on her for the night, doesn't buy her anything, and that's diminished to about 5 minutes of complaint)
Roxy has been used to being indoors almost all the time, she doesn't like getting her feet wet or cold (potty trips outside have been very very short if she has any say in it); so she hasn't yet grown a winter coat ... you can see pink skin right through her white coat .... the weather changed dramatically in a very short period, and I notice the cats haven't gotten their winter undercoats yet either, though they are out almost all day and half the night
Yeah, but if she's not outside some she'll never get a winter coat.
Dogs are trainable; husbands not so much.
