It started forever ago it seems. I call it obsessive. She will get a tennis ball and walk around with it in her mouth and act as if she wants to play. That's not the case though. Milly does not fetch and she does not really want to play. If you do actually get the ball and throw it she will run to retrieve it, but she is clearly annoyed with you and does not care for this at all. She runs up to us and acts as if she wants to play, then when we go to take the ball she runs away. She will then come back and sit just out of arm's reach and place the ball on the ground. she then starts making this weird almost whiny noise and starts sticking her tongue in and out of her mouth. It is the strangest thing I have ever seem. I will admit, there seems to be a simple solution, right? Just take the ball away. And, that used to work. The ball would be put away and you'd think that'd be enough. We even banned all balls from our house at one point. No luck. She just decided to be "crazy" with another toy. So, it's not actually the ball that is the problem, though that is her favorite toy... it seems to be a personality issue. Other than the fact that it's highly annoying (which I can overlook most of the time) it is also harmful to both her and us. If you do get the ball or try to hand her whatever toy it is- she bites you! She does not know how to take the toy from you, so her solution is to bite your hand so that you drop the toy. I've learned not to hand her toys. I normally roll them to her. lol Anyhow, the way it is harmful to her is that she gets VERY worked up about it. To the point where she seems to be out of control. She is shaking and doing that (weird, creepy) tongue thing, and is clearly in distress. She does not do this all the time, but she goes through phases. Sometimes she acts like that more than once a day for weeks at a time and other times she'll go a week or so without acting like that at all. I do not get it.
If you have any idea what is going on or any way to help her please let me know. When leaving advice, please keep in mind that we prefer positive reinforcement. We do not hit. We do not yell. We treat them as we would like to be treated- with respect.
Thanks for any ideas you may have!!
Hi, MilShelb Mom!
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry I can't offer an advice on this issue with Milly.
Lorenza does that with her balls but she never bites me.
I hope some of our friends could give you an idea about why Milly does that.
Take care
Lorenza's mom
We had a problem with our dachshund when we first got him, he chewed on his tail, once we got him over that he began to chew on his ear (yes, I know, how does a dog do that? well, he takes his paw and pushes the back of his ear until the tip goes into this moutht)....it would just annoy us and annoy us. He seemed to do it when either there were a lot of people over or right as we were trying to fall asleep. (he made the worst noise while doing it to, I can't stand that constant chewing sound!) We finally had to take him to the vet because he eventually managed to chew a small piece of his ear off (talk about blood splatters everywhere). Our vet told us that our dachshund, Klaus, was OCD. Yes, OCD. It sounds like maybe Milly's behavior might as well (doing something over and over again for some reason). It might be worth taking her to your vet or at least talking to one over the phone; they have medicine that can help her with some of her compulsive behavior. Luckily we did not end up having to put Klaus on any medication, we ended up putting a band-aid on his ear and he hated the taste, so that worked for a while and kept him from reopening the wound. Klaus was also a shelter dog and has major separation anxiety (another thing dachshund can be prone to have), so the OCD was related to that. He has had many issues since we adopted him almost 2 years ago, but we love him and if it means putting a child lock on our fridge, bringing him along with us whenever we grill right outside our dog because otherwise he'll have a heart attack, etc. then we have done those things because so far it has worked. When he does some weird things and starts to annoy us we just have to ask ourselves why. I have heard of a lot of people who have a hard time potty training dachshunds, but what we have learned from Klaus is, any accident he has is usually our fault, he was trying to tell us something, but we missed it or thought he could hold it. What we thought was annoyance was actually just a miss communication. It might be worth talking to your vet about, before you, your husband, Milly or someone else gets hurt.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the advice. I will try talking to the vet about it and see what they think. I'm in the process of finding a new vet because the one we currently go to is awful... but that's another story. Once I find one I'm planning to ask. Ours are not fully housebroken either... but I fully believe that it is due to our lack of routine right now. We are both unemployed and I have only been able to find work every now and then, so they go from being able to go out any time they want to having to go out only after 6 or 8 hours. I hope to work more on that when we have a routine.
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