u/Beginning-Editor6280

Hello everyone! My last post raised a lot of valid questions! It made me think I never did an introduction to my dog so I thought I’d do that for much needed information as well as just building a cozy little community corner to post about my dog here.

Important note! In this post, as well as all my previous posts I refer to Lilo as mine, but she isn’t mine. She’s my mom’s dog! While I don’t plan on changing how I address her in my posts especially because I am the primary caretaker and trainer of h er besides money related issues I felt it was very important to clarify due to it limiting what I am able to do with Lilo as I am fresh out of high school with no job (I am still trying to land one 😅) and as such my training is limited to treats, toys, and scraps of knowledgeable I can pull/ improvised equipment.

So here’s some information about my sweetheart Lilo. She was drum roll please…a pet store dog (before we knew it was bad of course). She is a “miniature schnauzer” or a miniature schnauzer mutt as she is “blue Merle”. We don’t know what she’s mixed with as she was sold to us labeled a pure bred. Due to the fact when we bought her when she was around 4 months old aka when the socialization period closes for puppies I’m sure this is why she has such a hard time and a lot of anxiety.

She, as you can imagine is very anxious. She doesn’t like grooming, doesn’t like new people, is dog reactive and lacks a lot of confidence. All things I am trying to work on. We actually made a breakthrough and now she lets me shave her! Tho not around the face and head area which is fine by me as long as she lets me get some things done and I’m so so proud of her regardless.

Lilo is the type of dog who’s sensitive to a lot of things and it definitely affects our training. She’s very eager to start but if I make some handler errors her response is to kinda just…walk away. If I try to get her to re engage with an easier criteria she just doesn’t want to try anymore. We are learning and I’m sure with the right handler who knows more than me she’d thrive. When I do eventually get a job I want to see if I can get her into dog sports and see if I can afford a proper trainer for confidence building as well as learning to be a better handler for her. That’s kinda a brief introduction. She’s an anxious, sensitive little soul that is a byb girl who spent her most important developmental period in a pet store glass box alone. I love her to bits and will continue to learn for her sake so she can have her best dog life with what I can do.

Hello everyone! First off I want to say thank you to everyone who gave me book recommendations in my last post here! Thanks to everyone I have a long list of books to get and look into once I get a job and money! I actually still have a few to add to my list. I saw Patricia McConnell mentioned a lot and after finding out she is a well renowned animal behaviorist, zoologist I definitely think her books will be some of the first I'll get if all goes well in finding a job.

I digress. I wanted to pop on here and ask if anyone ever used dog headphones for their reactive who are prone to being over threshold as soon as they step outside? If so how has it worked out for you and your dog's training? To be honest I don't think its the sound at all that makes my girl go over threshold. I think of course it comes ultimately from a lack of confidence, a lot of visual cues especially things she's nervous about (exp: people, cars, dogs) and of course smells. In terms of sounds I wouldn't be surprised that that's part of it as well (inside she's pretty hardy and doesn't care about fireworks or thunderstorms which happen quite often here but that's very different then outdoors). I'd just wanna gauge if anyone has ever done it to help their dogs feel a little more relaxed. Has it affected your training and their ability to hear and respond to cues or their marker word? If they have a potential to make my girl more comfortable while we try to build confidence and make outdoors a little less scary until we can wean her off them off and use them temporarily until I can save up for a trainer. I was thinking of the brands Ruffland headphones or Doggy Hush.

Hello everyone! I wanted to post to this Reddit because I would really love some science-backed dog psychology/training book recommendations. The people I follow on dogtok are knowledgeable as hell and im sure a lot of that will be from being active in the training community/ dog sports, training classes, as well as being open to learning more and admitting when you're wrong about something.

I can't afford any of those things as the dog I live with and want to train isn't even mine (she's my mom's dog) so I wanted to see if I can maybe get some psychology and training book recommendations that are science-backed. I'd especially love ones geared to reactive dogs/dogs who are for lack of a better word, are scared of life. My pup is the type of reactive where as soon as she steps outside she's over threshold, frantic sniffing, and won't respond.

The main issue I have with finding my own books is the fact in general I don't know where to look since the training industry is unregulated and im sure some training books might be not so good or of course doesn't cater to individuality of a dog, im sure a lot of books might be in the dog physiology field might be outdated depending on when it was written, and im not 100% sure how to know if a book with the science behind it is credible for more recently written pieces.

I'd really love to learn more about what I can do, and I'd love some recommendations that are safe to get into without worrying im reading something misinformed, outdated, or noncredible to the knowledge we have today so im not misguided. I'd love book recommendations as I know the sporting community has a lot of knowledge on training!

Hello everyone! As the title implies im an artist. A very bored artist, so I thought I'd pop on here and ask for some dragons I can design hybrids of. I'm a very slow artist so I make no promises to be posting the results (tho I will try my very very best to do so because I understand it would suck to get comments and never post results). I thought this might be both a fun way to kill boredom and hopefully get some ideas on intristing dragon hybrid oc’s/Characters to make for my own original story.

Hello everyone! It's my first post here so I’m pretty excited. I wanted to see if I could get some help here until I can afford a proper dog trainer, I can trust to help me out with my dog's reactivity. So let me get started. I have a 2-year-old miniature schnauzer who is very fear-reactive. On our daily walks, she's a bit...much. I've tried to work on her reactivity solo but It's so hard.

So the main issue is her threshold. As soon as my baby steps outside she's over threshold. It’s genuinely so bad to the point that as soon as we step foot outside she's frantically sniffing, will absolutely not lift her head unless she sees another dog, person, or some other environmental factor that scares her, and won't take treats as soon as we step out. I'm not sure how to handle this because obviously if she's over threshold as soon as we step outside, and won't take treats there's no productive learning and the things we learn inside will be ignored even when it's skills specific to her reactivity.

I'm kinda at a loss on how to help her at this point. I have noticed some things that will help encourage her to take treats would be, tossing treats for her to chase, and rarely scattering treats in the grass (honestly I was shocked with this one since sniffing helps relieve stress haha). I don't really know how to “build” her threshold to make sure that once we go outside we can at least get her and keep her taking treats especially because the rare times she does she she’ll usually stop after more very frantic sniffing. Does anyone know what I can do or methods I can try to help her out?

Hello, I am a 21-year-old woman seeking a long-term preferably RP partner my age. For romance-based rps I do wlw. I am ok with oc’s and have some of my own, and I'm fine with oc’s x canon as well.

A list of fandoms.

Life is strange

Arcane

K-pop demon hunters

Warrior cats

Wolfwalkers

Watership down

Feral-based stories (I don't mind making our own story or characters so very open-ended)

Anthro stories (much like the feral-based stories this would be more open-ended to create a unique story)

Admittedly I don't know much about Yellowjackets but I found a starter for Natalie from a C.ai creator so that would be really fun. (just for clarification as well I don't use C.ai anymore but will look at it to get starter ideas from other creators or use the starters themselves with credit to the og bot creator. I had it when I was in highschool and didn't know anything about ai or how it steals from artists, or hurts our lands, which is also why I'm making this post! Plus let’s be honest it's always more fun with people!) If any of this interests you feel free to dm me! I’ll try my best to get back to you asap but it’s late here and my phone tends to be on dnd at this time so I might miss the notification sorry in advance.

Hello everyone! I’m writing here because I wanted to see if I could get any recommendations on running harnesses for my dog. For a bit of context I’ve taken up some new hobbies to lose weight. One hobby I’m interested in yet haven’t taken up yet is running.
Nearby me there is a park, and I thought it would be fun not to just get into running for myself but have my dog join me, both as a companion for my own runs but also because I think it will be good to have a new way to have her get out as well (my family doesn’t do much with her besides potty walks, and I want to change that and give her a more fulfilling life).
I’ve been researching getting into running with dogs and I’ve been struggling with how realistic it would be with a reactive dog because of a hard time finding harness choices. I know if you’re running with a dog you of course can’t restrict the shoulders and there range of motion because you don’t want to risk potential injury. Having a reactive dog however when she sees another dog she is throwing herself all over her harness and I’m afraid with a running harness she’d easily be able to slip out, especially because she’s on of those dogs who ducks her head and pulls back on her harness. Is there any harnesses that are suitable for running, as well as escape proof?
If I can’t find any suitable options I’m afraid she can’t run with me until I can get a job and save some money to buy a proper trainer to get her reactivity under control. (Important note: if I can’t find any suitable options in harnesses this will not mean I won’t still take her to the park in her no escape harness to give her a more fulfilling life. It just means the new hobby of running together will sadly have to wait until I can trust she is more manageable in her reactivity).