On Oct 30, 5:41 pm, "Suja" wrote:
"elegy" wrote in message:
i much prefer living with my girldog. i love the boys, too, mind you.
i love them very much. it's just different.

If I had my way, I think that I would only have boy dogs from now on. I
love my girldog, and many of the other girldogs I've known, but even the
most benign of them seem to have agendas, and I like my dogs to be pretty
transparent.

Suja

Yep, my boy collies have been sweet, easy-going, straightforward and
totally transparent. What you see is what you get. My girl collies,
however, tended to be more complex emotionally and to take their
likes & dislikes VERY seriously.

In terms of performance events, I've found that easy-going nature of
the boy dogs can translate into a rather casual attitude. OTOH, when
trained with a great deal of tact, I've noticed girlie collies tend to
be more much determined and intense in performance events.

Pablo is pretty happy all the time. Even when he's not totally happy
(like when he was at the vets), he's positive that happiness will
return shortly. Lucy, OTOH, is a dog of many moods - she can range
from sweet & soft (I LOVE you!) to defensive (Dammit! Someone is
riding an EVIL Skateboard down my Street! This is NOT Allowed!) to
woeful/hurt (they just don't understand how I'm the only thing keeping
them safe from the killer skateboards) to playful (Weeeee! it's
grunty hedgehog time!) to anxious (OH NO! Pablo has the BEST chewie -
Wahhhhh! None of the other chewies are nearly as good as his! I will
not know happiness without that chewie!) all within a couple of
minutes. As you can see, Lucy's thoughts contain a lot of exclamation
marks.

Chris at work,
Dogs at Home on CouchCouch

ChrisJ wrote:


Yep, my boy collies have been sweet, easy-going, straightforward and
totally transparent. What you see is what you get. My girl collies,
however, tended to be more complex emotionally and to take their
likes & dislikes VERY seriously.

In terms of performance events, I've found that easy-going nature of
the boy dogs can translate into a rather casual attitude. OTOH, when
trained with a great deal of tact, I've noticed girlie collies tend to
be more much determined and intense in performance events.


The boys are sweet and soft and transparent, and easily distractible and
easier (for me anyway) to shut down. The boys work for YOU and tend to
get all bent out of shape if they think they did something wrong. They
need a lot of emotional support.

The girls are tougher, more independent, and more likely to do the work
for the work, and who the hell cares what you think about it anyway!

I love, love love my boy dog. He's so darned easy. But Cala--tough,
uncompromising, and totally into the work; boy is she something. And
Viva, well we all know that Viva is the best dog on the planet, right?
Viva's the one who would tell me in NO uncertain terms when I screwed up
handling. As far as she was concerned, she knew the right way to do it
and I just got in her way, and get OUT of the way dammit so she could
fix my screw ups and get it done right.

When choosing a dog for work in my breed, it's the girls all the way
(and 19 out of the 20 Top Twenty Dobermans are bitches...)

"Suja" wrote in message
...

"Janet Boss" wrote in message:

But Leo puppies are beeeooootiful!

That, they are. And, they turn into beautiful adults too. This is the
breeding that I found seriously tempting:
http://www.tsavoleonbergers.com/leonbergerpuppies.asp

Suja



And this is how I can tell that you are still young: You are seriously
tempted by a HUGE breed. I'm wondering if I'll be physically up for another
GSD in 8-10 years or so.

Beth

"bethgsd" said in
rec.pets.dogs.behavior:

And this is how I can tell that you are still young: You
are seriously tempted by a HUGE breed.

Then I'm young!

I so like Irish Wolfhounds, but that's not going to happen.

--
--Matt. Rocky's a Dog.

"bethgsd" wrote in message:

And this is how I can tell that you are still young: You are seriously
tempted by a HUGE breed.

I suspect I'll always be tempted by huge breeds. No one said I have to be
sensible about it.

I'm wondering if I'll be physically up for another
GSD in 8-10 years or so.

Adult rescues. Even senior adult rescues. Win-win.

Suja

I have to agree with just about everything everyone has said. It can be
very difficult. But it's not impossible to train 2 (or more) pups at the
same time. Though a lot of it depends on just how trained you want them to
be. If you're training for show, you're going to want a lot of help
eventually. You'll probablly want help even if just training for "pet", so
get the whole family invested in getting them trained properly now.

As for gender aggression in terrier.. i can also atest to that. 2 years ago
we took in a 4 year old JRT. Her owner was going off to college and her
parents told her she needed to get rid of the dog or they were going to
shoot it (so we were told, anyway) because they wanted to get a rotweiller
(really hope they didn't....)
Anyway, we took her in. We already had 2 poms (my breed of choice) one 8 yr
old male and one 4 yr old female, both also rescues of one sort or another.
Our female pom, Pepe has always considered herself the ruler of the roost,
she is very spoiled, but completely harmless (her teeth are so dull she
cna't even chew through a plastic bag..) They seemed to get along just fine
for the first few hours. Then, while we were all in the living room, the
JRT, Willow, turned on Pepe, grabbed hold of her throat and just started to
shake her. Thankfully we were right there and managed to seperate them
almost immediately, but Pepe had some serious bite marks on her neck and
chest. I will tell you, hubby was so upset by this behaviour he nearly
wanted to shoot Willow there and then himself....
Neither of us had had experience with terriers before (outside of the
neighbor's fox terrier/chihuahua mix..) so weren't really prepared for this.
Needless to say, Willow was never left alone with either of the other dogs
for a good long time. She learned very quickly that biting us or the other
dogs was a BIG no-no (she also used to try and bitw when we'd look at or
hold her feet for nail trimming,,,) and hasn't done it since. She'd been
use to being the only dog and has serious alpha-female issues, and Pepe was
just being her normal "queen of the universe" self and they needed to settle
the pecking order.. Currently, they both think they're #1 and mostly ignore
each other, though Willow will lick Pepe's face once in a while, and I've
had no concerns with leaving them alone loose together after the first few
months.
So it is something to look out for, but alot of it will depend on the
personalities of the dogs involved.. with any luck, you won't have any
confrontations.

Davina