Big Paws Only Dog Forums

as you can see it's pretty short but she does have longer hair on her shoulders and her rump, almost like a mal's short summer coat, it "blows" there too, you can see the bits of undercoat sticking out
I LOVE my furminator!

For some reason Ruby likes  "Reach up for the Sunshine" by Duran Duran, it always makes that goofy dog grin happen. I admit I tend to sing along to it but she even likes it on it's own.
Driving in the car the other week and the song came on and she's grinning away, my friend  looks in the back seat and asked "umm what's making her so happy" so I changed the song,  grin dropped but the tail wagged "more duran duran mommy!" so I put that song back on and back came the grin...

So I'm a single woman that thought long and hard about getting dog for companionship. I loved my ex boyfriends malamute and decided I wanted one of the big fuzzy guys for myself  as I just adored his independant spirit and the talking... you mal people know what I mean.
But I was renting so a few wonderful dogs at the local shelter slipped through my fingers.
One day while trolling the net I found an add for bullmastiff/malamute cross pups and I thought the little white one was just adorable. But I was still renting and never contacted the breeder.
A couple of months later I was in the process of getting approved for a mortgage with the intention of buying the apartment I was renting. I wanted to show someone the pic of the cute white pup and typed the same key word search into Google and bam there was the same dog but 2  months older!
Seems the gent that took her couldn't keep her after all, his roommates didn't enjoy housebreaking or her shedding.
I met her and thought she was sweet, maybe too submissive but a cute and bright dog.
The day the bank approved my mortgage he dropped Ruby (then named Rubus after her blackberry nose) off at my place.
She moped a little, missing Tristan but by the weekend there was no doubting she was my dog.

Below are some pics, one of Lightning the ex's mal then Ruby who was watching me eat and well doing some classic mastiff drooling

I've used gravol and it works well. I did talk to Ruby's vet about it and he recomended 1-1.5 pills for her (she's 77 lbs)
I think at first it was anxiety but I worked pretty hard to show her that car rides lead to fun places like the park or a friends house. Now she gladly bounds into the car but trips longer than an hour can lead to a barf, thus the gravol.

I was just admiring the pics of your pup and mama

Like any proud mama how can I resist the offer to post more pics?
I got her at 6 months but was able to get a pic of her at 10 weeks and 14 pounds.
The second one is her at 11 months and shortly after a trip to emerg after she ate a bottle of thyroid pills (belonged to an old mal I was babysitting)

I use a martingale collar on Ruby, she's no newf but being half malamute she is quite strong and built for pulling. I can't make recomendations on collar types as everyone has they favorite type, but one that allows a gentle correction often has the best effect.
anyway one thing my trainer has us do regularly is what she calls the "walking excersise". We do this for short bursts at every class and when Ruby was young and trying to drag me everywhere this really seemed to help (along with the other good advice you have gotten here about changing direction on a pull or stopping)
Anyway the walking exercerise is just taking some time to walk totally randomly with the dog with sudden changes of direction and speed. Yeah it does mean you wind up correcting them a lot but it encourages the dog to pay more attention to what you are doing.
Try going from a walk to a run to a stop and keep changing the direction you are going, add lots of praise for when you don't need to  correct and after the session, then go on a normal walk or whatever your routine is. You can add "sits" and "downs" during the excersise too so it is always a new pattern of activity to keep his attention.
Doing this a few times a week, maybe even 5 minutes a day for a while hopefully will help

Marion

Hi there
My dog has been limping on and off for a few months now after an espically rowdy play in the snow.
Vet found nothing wrong with a physical exam. I saw that our daycare was having a doggie massage person in so I took her. With no prompting from me about her on and off limp she found knots in her shoulder and suggested having Ruby "take it easy' for a week or so.
Anyone else have any experience with dogs haveing muscle knots in the shoulder? Ruby does stretch often and as we normally walk to the dog park she gets a decent warm up before running and charging about like a crazy thing.

Marion