We're back!

so it was inevitable that with moving house we'd have a period with no internet connection. So, here's an update on what's been happening.

Obviously we finally moved into our house. That was stressful enough. Finding imperfections and bad DIY that was covered by furniture when I last saw the place is a bit disheartening, but seeing Tiger pacing out his new garden made up for it. There's a lot more work needs doing to this house than I thought but such is life.

First, the bad. Tiger had an incident where his lead snapped and he approached another dog while Claire was trying to catch up with him. The other dog happened to be a Japanese Tosa puppy (about 1 year old, and illegal in this country), and his owner had trained him to 'defend'. The dog bit Tiger in the cheek and held on, causing a lot of blood, a lot of screaming and the idiot with the dog bragging about his 'fighting dog'. I took Tiger to the vets, he had superficial cuts to his cheek but no stitches were needed and he got away with a course of antibiotics (and a £60 bill for me).

Backtracking slightly, the day before this happened he had his first visit to the vets. He was pretty well behaved, sat under my chair and let the vet handle him with no problems. He didn't even flinch at his first set of injections, and came away with a clean bill of health and some worming tablets, which he hate with his tea no problems.

Since the incident with the Tosa we decided to try muzzling Tiger. It took a lot of attempts to find one that fits his enormous head, but now when we walk him, he's a lot calmer, and more importantly, the people we meet on the walks are calmer, which I think he's picked up on. He's slowly progressing with his socializing with other dogs, he sometimes has a sniff, or allows a sniff, but every now and then he goes back to square one with his jumping, usually depending on how well behaved the other dog is. Having the muzzle on has the slight drawbacks that he looks slightly less magnificent with it on, and he spends the first five minutes of every walk trying to get it off, but the pro's mean he and the other dogs get a much better walk, he can get closer to other dogs more often and hopefully will learn some good manners eventually.

One episode stuck in my mind, he was playing with a white husky, no issues, then an old german shepherd bitch called Storm roamed into view. He went up to Storm, they sniffed each others backsides, which is the first time he's done that (both dogs at the same time), and I was thinking "great, he's getting some manners!". No sooner had I thought it than Mr cocky Akita tries to mount the poor old dear. She responds with a little growl and he climbs down. Tiger definitely needs to learn about dating.

His training is progressing steadily. He responds well to the clicker, but I'm trying to not do too much with him all in one go. He's got a pretty reliable sit and stay, a slightly reluctant down, and a surprisingly good 'leave it'. I've decided I'm going to concentrate on one behavior until he's got it on cue, because its one thing to do it for a click and a treat, but another thing altogether to do it in a park full of interesting smells and dogs.

Another thing the clicker has helped with is his medication. He ate his antibiotics with his food for the first three days, but on the fourth day I found he'd managed to dig it out of the piece of chicken and eat everything but the tablet. Today I thought I'd try using the clicker to help. I poured out his dry food into his bowl, which he usually gets to eat with a good on cue 'sit', but i took it through to another room, and fed it to him by hand one piece at a time, click, then eat, and so on. About halfway through I picked up about five pieces and the tablet, and wouldn't proceed until he'd eaten them all, which he eventually got and got rewarded with a lot of dry food.

On the whole he's settling in pretty well, still has a few issues, but the good far outweighs the bad. Now for some pics

The staffie in the pictures is my moms dog, Amber, who's an excitable little fat staff. The bottom pictures are in our new garden, on his first night here. We'll get some daytime pictures soon so you can see how big it is. Job 1 in the new house is to raise those fences to 6 feet so he can be off leash in his own garden. 

Moving Day

We pick up Tiger tomorrow afternoon. I'm so excited!

Claire.

Tiger makes some progress!

Today I took Tiger out with my brother Lee and his girlfriend Nikki. She has a lurcher called Bailey and we decided to try and walk them together. Given Tiger's previous encounters with other dogs, this wasn't going to be a sunday afternoon stroll. As soon as they saw each other they were having a bark and trying to get at each other, but a little less than usual. Sensing a slight advantage, I let them get close to each other, and they jumped at each other and pawed, slightly playlike, if a little rough. 

We took them both over Bunkers Hill, which is a nice little walk in Wollaston, near Stourbridge, not too far from where they live. Bailey's ok off the lead, wheras Tiger's not, so for the first five minutes, Tiger was pulling this way and that trying to follow Bailey. After this, he chilled out immediately and we could walk the two together with no aggression from either side. They progressed through the walk to the point where they were licking each others faces. I was over the moon as it showed me Tiger can be around other dogs with some work. 

About an hour into the walk we came up against an off leash rottweiler puppy (maybe 11 months). I was a little apprehensive as I thought a negative experience might ruin everything we'd built up, but we let Bailey run down to the rottie first, then Tiger, good as gold, went over and copied exactly what Bailey had done, even gave the rottie a little lick on the nose, before walking on, completely unfussed. 

He met two other dogs on the walk, one who the owner warned us was aggressive (although was small enough to fit into tigers mouth whole, I'd say), which he just walked straight past, and a collie he politely sniffed and walked on. 

My brother caught some of it on video, albeit on his camera phone. Unfortunately he missed all the good stuff, because his camera makes a noise that Bailey always comes back to investigate, but it gives you the general relaxed picture of the walk. 

Tiger Goes To Clent, Makes An Enemy, Makes A Friend.

We had Tiger again on Thursday, for a bit longer than last time so we took him to Clent Hills, which is a nearby set of hills that are on the slightly picturesque side. The day started off fine, Tiger got straight into his cage in the car, then came out nicely and got back in again when we had met up with Claire's dad, who was meeting Tiger for the first time. On the way to Clent, the bottom slipped on the cage as I hit a pothole, and Tiger got his foot slightly caught. We didn't think anything of it at the time. We got to Clent and started walking him and he loved it. He was really curious about the horses and cows, but certainly didn't seem to want to eat them.

Claire's dad, who likes his running, wanted to see if such a big dog could keep up being handled whilst running. Turns out he can.

Here he is having a look at some distant livestock. 





He walked for about 2 hours, then we went back to the car. When we opened the cage for him, he wouldn't go near it. At the time I didn't remember the pothole, and for about 30 minutes we tried to get him to go in, lifting him made him growl, and neither of us can lift him without putting our face near his mouth. Whilst we were thinking about how best to proceed, along comes some old gent with his golden retriever. This was the point that we found out that Tiger really hates golden retrievers. Much pulling and barking ensued, the old man thought it was funny, We didn't. As I know Tiger is very well behaved in the seats of a car, I tried him in the back seats, which he jumped into straight away, leading me to believe its really just the cage he doesn't like. 

We took him to Warley Woods after that, which is really more of a park than woods. Anyway, we're pretty much the only people in those woods that keep their dog on a lead. There were dozens of different sized dogs running and fighting with each other. Tiger did pretty well most of the way around the park. There was an incident where some kind of whippet in a muzzle ran over to him snarling, and at the same time a blind shiba inu wandered into his path. His head kind of did a double take on which he was going to deal with first, but Claire got a piece of cheese in front of his nose and got him doing some obedience commands, which diverted his attention while the whippets owner got a lead on him. Negative into a positive. 

The next encounter didn't go so well. An off leash Golden retriever decided he would wander over and sniff Tiger's butt. A number of Akita owners have told me that they really don't like this, especially from strange dogs, and Tiger is no exception. Fortunately, if you can get his attention on something else he calms right down, so a quick distraction tap and walk off in the other direction and he's forgotten about it, but the retriever wanted some more action, so he follows. Tiger tried to get at him, Claire moved him along again. The retriever owner, who was an old lady, gave us a tut. 

We gave him a few hours in the park, where he had a few good walk-pasts, and without wanting to push him too hard in one go, I'd be happy with a few consistent walk pasts. We went back to the car and had the same debacle with the cage, which put Tiger in a grumpy mood. A Dalmatian owner decided to take this opportunity to park his car next to ours and let his unleashed Dalmatian out. Tiger wasn't happy. I took him on a short walk up and down the path to try and work him out a bit more, then he passed a lady with an Anatolian Shepherd puppy (which was as big as Tiger), and he didn't bat an eyelid at him. So I spoke to the lady, and it turns out we work for the same organization, and she was having the same issue with off leash dogs and training her pup to get along with them. We did about twenty successful walk pasts, for both dogs, and got them pretty close to each other and they stayed relaxed, which is good progress. Watching Tiger's behavior here, since we've had him I've been trying to work out if he wants to play or he's being aggressive, but with the Anatolian Shepherd I've settled on the fact that he's confused. He just doesn't understand how to behave around other dogs, further reinforced by the fact he didn't really care about the plentitude of birds, rabbits, horses and cows he'd successfully ignored all day. Hopefully we can work it out of him. 

Anyway the pictures came out pretty good, we've got him again tomorrow, our house move has been further delayed, and I've replaced the dog cage with a dog guard to give him the whole rear of the car boot to travel in. 

Tiger's Absentee Birthday

I got a phone call yesterday from Tiger's original owners. I feared for a moment that they were going to ask for him back. All they wanted though, was to say that they had already ordered a cake for his birthday, which is today, and they wanted me to give it to him. 

This is difficult for two reasons

1) Its a really nice fruit and cream sponge cake, and I'm not sure if he should be eating that kind of thing.

2) He's still at Rich's house. 

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the cake yet, but here are some pics of it snapped by Claire. 

We're next having him on thursday. The house move is still being delayed and delayed and delayed. I hate solicitors. 

Happy Birthday Tiger.

My Day Out WIth Tiger

I had a day off, and really wanted to see Tiger, so I phoned Rich, where he is staying, and picked him up. My friends Lucy and James were good enough to lend me a cage that they weren't using until I can get one made for the back of the car. Tiger didn't look like he wanted to get in to start with, but by now we've realized he'll do anything for a tiny lump of cheese. When he was in the cage he was no problem at all, he just sat down and looked out of the window. 

We made our way to Kinver where I introduced him to my aunt and her family. Everyone was very impressed with him, he was really friendly. I'm still a bit wary when he's around children, I don't know him that well yet. He's started to do obedience commands for treats. He responds well to the clicker, and sits really enthusiastically. By the end of the day I'd got a pretty reliable 'Down'. I get the feeling he's had some unstructured training at his old home, but they don't speak english so he certainly doesn't respond to english commands yet, but he's getting better. 

I took him on a walk over the canals there, where he met his first challenge, a great bit swan. He had a little look but with a quick correction he walked on. After that he met a field full of cows, a field full of sheep, followed by a field with a horse, dog and chicken. The first two he did fine, the third was probably a bit much for him, with the other dog barking and the horse walking towards him. I had to pull him away. The thing is with him, I can't tell if its aggression or playfulness, like I said, we're still in the early stages. 

Next was a trip to Stourbridge, where he met a pub full of people. Everybody loved him, he behaved beautifully and even did his obedience sits with all the distractions around him. I met up with my dad there and we went back to his house, where my dad's westie terrier Millie. Again, probably a bit much for him, he doesn't outright go for other dogs, he just inches towards them as if he's going to sniff, then at the last second bolts for them. Maybe he just wants to play, but Millie is smaller than Tiger's whole head, so I don't really want to risk it just yet. He got to play in my dads garden. He really didn't care about the toys I'd bought for him to try, all he wanted to do was run around and play with Millie's frisbee, which is now Tiger's frisbee. 

I bought him back home to Birmingham and had to leave him home alone for about 30 minutes due to an emergency at Claire's work. When I got back, all he'd done was sit on the chair by the window and wait for us. He's really well behaved. 

After that, time was getting on so I had to take him back to Rich's. By this point he knew that the cage in the car probably meant walkies, so he got right in, with the help of a little cheese. We said goodbye to him, and now I miss him again. Surely rescuing a dog should be easier than this? Then again, if a little dog aggression is the only problem he has, he's not doing too bad (and lets face it, he's never met other dogs before).

I leave you with this slightly symbolic pic (as I was too busy to take any while I was with him). Its the dent in the sofa where he sat at the window.

my very literal Akita Rescue

Wow, things have moved on in the last few days. Let me begin at the beginning. 

I was in the car with a friend, driving down a road. I was just saying to him how I was having a lucky streak. I mentioned the fact that I'd just passed my driving test, I was moving into a new house on a week's time, and by december I would be in possession of an Akita puppy, which I was very much looking forward to. 

Suddenly, a beautiful male akita runs in front of our car. On go the brakes, he just happily trots onto the pavement. He's running around playing, there are some people standing about looking a bit scared. I happened to have a slip lead in the car, which after a bit of messing around, I managed to get on him. He was really playful, I couldn't see any aggression in him, but obviously the people in the street just saw a big loose dog. A couple of people approached me and said they were the owners, so I took the dog back to their house with them. They said "We don't want him, do you?" I was like "what???" They said "He's too big for us, he keeps getting out, we're just going to have him put down if no one else wants him." I hurriedly explained that I simply couldn't, but begged them not to put him down, and told them I'd find someone who would take care of him. I helped them put his collar on as when I first saw him, he didn't have one. His name was Tiger, and he was a handsome fawn and white Akita, roughly 2 years old. 

No sooner had I left than I began to kick myself. A few hours passed and I caved in. I went back to the house to ask if they could hold onto him for a week until we moved, then I'd take him in until I could find a proper home for him. As I walked up their street, I look up and see Tiger sitting in the middle of the road. He carried on running between the cars, so I went over and pulled him back to the house. After quizzing the people for a bit, they told me that they had let him out in the hope that someone would take him away. Even when I was talking to them, another family member opened the front door for him to run out again. Getting him back in on the third occasion was a little easier. I asked them how often they walked him, to which they said "We don't." 

So I made a decision there and then. I took him home, with the full intention of finding a proper home for him. As I walked him I noticed that he walked really well, barely any pulling, no interest in other dogs, and very placid around people. I tested him by walking him again that night, with a few friends, down to the local pub to see how he coped with lots of people. He couldn't have cared less, he let six-seven people fuss him and he didn't bat an eyelid.

The next day a representative from the Friends Of Akita's trust came around to assess and photograph Tiger to get him re-homed. I received a lot of practical advice and Tiger was his usual charming self. 

At this point, there was no way I could give Tiger up. I'm going to rescue him myself. So, sooner than we thought, we've got our first Akita. Here's some pics of Tiger:

You can see from the pics that we live in an apartment. I didn't think it was right for him to stay in the apartment, so after the second day he went to live with my friend for a week, who has the space to keep him until we move. I can't wait to have him back.