Bringing Up Buster: Archive

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Feb 2nd

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Feb 2nd

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He really likes the snow. Can you tell?

Feb 2nd

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Feb 2nd

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Nov 11th

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Aug 21st

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Jul 28th

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Jul 17th

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Jul 17th

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Jul 10th

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Jun 4th

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May 29th

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May 29th

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May 29th

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May 29th

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May 13th

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Apr 24th

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Training Tip #3: I talk a lot about obedience training, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned that hand signals are more useful than verbal commands when teaching behaviors. It seems like dogs are much better at reading your body language than trying to figure out what to do based on your words— I’ve only had success with verbal commands when I was able to add them to an...

Apr 23rd

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Apr 18th

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Training Tip #2

Rewards are a crucial part of the training process. When people think of rewards they often think of treats, but it’s important to remember that every dog is different. I’ve met puppies at our weekly class that don’t even respond to treats (seriously!) but go bonkers for dog toys. In this case, playtime is a suitable reward: one could have their puppy perform sits and downs...

Apr 16th

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Apr 11th

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Training Tip #1

To make this blog a little more useful than just constant picspams of my dog, I figure I can inject a little insight into it as well. It’s probably pretentious of me to think that I’m qualified to offer any sort of training advice after having my first dog for all of three months, but there are definitely little things I’ve picked up that could probably help anyone with a pet....

Apr 2nd

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Mar 30th

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Mar 30th

Mar 29th

Mar 24th

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Mar 24th

Mar 23rd

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Mar 23rd

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Mar 23rd

Mar 21st

Mar 18th

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Mar 13th

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Mar 13th

Mar 2nd

Oops...

I planned to leave Buster in his crate tonight from 5-9 while I was at dinner and class. When I got back, I was surprised to find him sitting in my apartment… I guess I didn’t shut the crate door all the way? Well, he found his way out. So… surprise! He decided to forego his chew toys for a nice deck of cards sitting on my den table. Half-eaten cards were EVERYWHERE. Of all the...

Feb 27th

Feb 20th

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Feb 20th

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Feb 20th

Puppy love

I posted some pictures and videos below from Buster’s Play & Train class last night. I am so glad I found Unleashed, because he really gets a kick out of these weekly classes. He loves to have fun and loves to please people; he also is pretty clever and you can tell he is always trying to work out what he has to do to get his next reward. He constantly runs up to people and just does random...

Feb 18th

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Buster, Buster, and Maura enjoy some basic agility stuff and play together. Too cute for words.

Feb 18th

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Buster shows off some tricks at Puppy Play & Train class

Feb 18th

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Buster finally met the infamous Buster 2 at class last night. He’s an Irish Goldendoodle (1/4 Irish Setter, 1/4 Poodle, 1/2 Golden). They played well together, though Buster 2 is a bit of a bully if you ask me…

Feb 18th

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It’s a dog-meet-blog world →

Buster (and the blog) promoted on North by Northwestern! This was a fun interview to do.

Feb 17th

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Feb 15th

3rd Vet Visit

Went to the vet today to update Buster on his shots. He now weighs 11 POUNDS. (To put this in perspective: he weighted a little over 7 when I got him a month ago. He weighed 9 at my last visit two weeks ago.) Dude’s growing like crazy. At his next vet visit in three weeks, he will be four months old, and the vet says you can make a pretty good guess at a dog’s full grown size at...

Feb 10th