Loki's New Favorite Game

Loki has discovered an amazing, new, terribly fun game. It's called, Make the Human Fetch! It begins innocently enough, playing with the colored squeaky balls. Then with his front paws, he sticks one or more of the balls under the couch. Then the fun part begins! He scratches and paws at the bottom of the couch until Vi comes along to fetch the ball out from under the couch. And we all know that Vi will fetch, because she doesn't want the couch to be all scratched up. Then repeat! And repeat! And repeat! Until Vi gets so fed up that she locks Loki up in the exercise pen.

Tagged

Akira & Shiro tagged us!

Rules: List out 7 things that you never mention in your blog, then tag another 7 victims.

(1) Loki usually doesn't care for TV. But when Jordin Sparks was announced as the American Idol, Loki sat in front of the TV to listen to her sing for a few minutes.

(2) Loki is terrified of those large metal manhole covers. Well, I'm not sure what they are called. They aren't manholes, because they are not little and round. They are large and rectangular, often seen in cities. I was scared of them too when I was a child.

(3) Loki loves to lick us after we step out of the shower, never before.

(4) Loki recently changed food. He's now on Flint River Ranch, and loves that stuff. He gobbles it all up and is always looking for more.

(5) Loki lost his "fur dent" after he shed off his puppy fur and grew in adult fur. (Don't know what a "fur dent" is? See this post.)

(6) Loki's favorite toy is:

We only have one - the red and green one.

(7) Loki is snobby about treats. Sometimes when other puppy parents give him treats, he just turns his nose up at them and refuses to eat it.

Your dog looks like a...

Whenever we take Loki out for a walk, people always ask what breed he is. Oftentimes, we are asked,

Is that a ....

• Husky... No, he's not a Husky. I've even had one person insist that Loki was a Husky. Uh... I think I know the breed of my own dog.

• Chow-chow... Okay, uh, no offense to chow lovers, but really, Loki is SO much cuter than chows.

• Akita... In my opinion, this is the most forgivable offense.

• Shar-Pei.... (?) Yeah, I was confused by this one. At the time, I didn't know what a Shar-Pei looked like. Then I looked it up on Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure that the person who said Loki was a Shar-Pei must not have known what a Shar-Pei looked like either.
  

Other times, people say,
That looks like a

• Fox... Very common comparison.
  

• Cat... Yeah, we think he acts like a cat too.
  
• Teddy-bear... Well, when Loki was younger, he definitely looked like a teddy-bear, but not so much anymore.

• Wolf... I guess this must be true of all Spitz dogs.

• Coyote... Uh... I don't see the resemblance, but sure. I mean they are similar to wolves, but coyotes are just plain ugly.

(All above photos were taken from Wikipedia without permission.)

Lastly, let me finish off the post with a couple new pictures of my growing pup.

What's a good caption for this last photo?

Collar Issues

In the entire past week, our whole family (okay, it's a small family, but a family nonetheless) has been greatly affected by Loki's new lashing out because of his collar. Fortunately, Yun has been making great progress and today he got the new Lupine martingale collar on Loki twice!!

So what happened?
On Monday, the new Lupine collar and leash arrived, so I wanted to test it out. We took his old collar off and that's when all the trouble began. Loki absolutely refused to let us put any collar on him. He barked, growled, ran away, and bit us whenever we tried to get the collar on. This was new behavior. Although Loki never particularly liked having his collar taken on or off, he certainly never protested this much.

Why?
My first instinct was that he was afraid of the collar. One hypothesis was that he may have been choked too much during last Saturday's BBQ while he was on the tie-out. Anyways, I posted my concerns on Dogster's message board and also on a Shiba email list that I belong to. The Shiba owners by and large replied that this was a dominance issue and not a fear one. My breeder also thought it was a dominance issue. Okay, so I went with the dominance theory.

Dominance training
With my own fear of getting bit and reluctance to hurt Loki, I wasn't about to try a dominance approach. (Well, actually, I did try picking him up by the scruff as a correction, but Loki let out his Shiba scream. After that, I lost all confidence in myself to correct Loki in this way.) Enter Yun. After a very long time with Yun taking a dominance approach to the problem, it was pretty clear that it wasn't working. Yun ended up getting bit quite a few times, the collar was still not on, and on top of that Loki had become fearful and skittish. Great, we're moving backwards.

Gradual desensitization
Since dominance training moved us backwards, we tried gradual desensitization. The next day, I put the collar and leash on the floor in a non-threatening way and put food around it for Loki to eat up. He seemed perfectly fine with that. Then later on, I held the collar and leash in my hand while feeding him. Additionally, over the course of a few days, Loki noticed that he wasn't getting any walks. Finally, it was Yun who made the real progress in the past two days. Yesterday, Yun created a make-shift slip collar with our leash and was able to get that around Loki's neck. He promptly took Loki out for a walk, since this was what Loki really missed. Today, Yun was able to lure Loki through the Lupine collar and slip it on over his head. Yun held out a piece of cardboard (yes, Loki loves cheap destroyable toys like cardboard) in the middle of collar. Loki bit down on the cardboard and then Yun slipped the collar over Loki's head with pretty minimal protest.

Cheers for Yun
I'm so glad that he figured out how to get a collar on Loki with minimal protest. Now we just have to do it often enough so that Loki won't give a second thought about it anymore. And lastly, I have to be brave enough to try getting that collar on Loki too.

BBQ at the Balboa Lake

We had a BBQ at Balboa Lake this afternoon. Ribs, Steak, & Corn on the menu. Yum! Yum!

What's that? What's that? Corn! Dogs don't eat corn silly. Where's the meat?
Wait a minute? Where did Yun go? His head has become a giant hairball!

Sixteen Weeks Old

Loki is exactly sixteen weeks old today.

Parvo
He got his fourth set of Parvo/etc. shots today. I thought that was the end of it and now he was safe to go out and about. Much to my disappointment, the vet said Loki needed a 5th set in another three weeks. What?! Everywhere online that I've read said four sets and you're done at 16 weeks of age. Some even recommend fewer than four sets.

So I sought a second opinion. I called Banfield Pet Hospital, which is the vet clinic run by PetSmart. They only recommend two sets of Parvo/etc. shots. Um...okay. Then I called another local animal hospital, they recommended four sets. However, the receptionist that I spoke with said that Parvo is fairly prevalent in my area, so a 5th set isn't a bad idea.

Boo... I was looking forward to this day being the final set of shots. My vet told me that after 4 sets, Loki is about 98% protected, but he did not recommend allowing Loki to be out and about. So now, I'm kind of torn. Obviously, parvo is a very deadly disease and apparently, it is prevalent in my area, and I don't want a dead dog. But at the same time, 4 sets is sufficient by another local vet and 98% protected sounds pretty good to me. You're never going to reach 100% anyways. So do I take Loki out or not? I think we'll stay away from dog parks until the 5th set, but otherwise, let him out and about.

Accident
And in other Loki news, he had a peeing accident tonight - right next to the balcony door too! Boo... He was accident-free for 2.5 weeks up until today. Now the count begins all over again.

Puppy Accessories

Loki got his ID tag today. I bought it off of eBay from the seller boomerangpets. I think it kind of looks like he's wearing a bow tie. The problem with having a dog is that I want to buy more puppy accessories. And I don't want to tell Yun, because he'll just yell at me for spending too much money on a dog. But really, I think he should be glad that we don't have a girl puppy, because then I'd really want to dress her up!

I'm thinking about getting Loki a Lupine brand martingale collar from the Midwest Shiba Inu Rescue since proceeds go towards that rescue group. And if I get the collar, then obviously, I have to get the matching lead: I also have my eye on this collar from 2 Hounds Design: Martingale type collars may offer a more humane method of controlling your dog and prevent pulling, but what about a harness? Harnesses seem to be the most humane way of leashing a dog, but I think that it usually doesn't prevent pulling and in fact encourages it (think of sled dogs - harness is for pulling). PuppiaWorld has some really cute harnesses, but most of them are girly. In fact, the more I shop for dog accessories, the more I realize how few masculine designs there are. Maybe a male Pomeranian can wear a baby blue harness with white polka dots, but I don't think Loki can. What other accessories do I want? I'm thinking about getting a retractable leash or a tie out. Right now, he only has a 4 foot lead, which is good so that he learns how to properly walk on a loose leash. But if we take him for a BBQ at the park, I'd want to have a tie out for him.

I know that Yun's going to say I'm crazy and that he's just a dog and doesn't need all this stuff. But in my defense let me say that at least I don't want to get Loki this $24,266 bed from The Quintessential Pet: