!!! WOW - all those lovely pictures of all your lovely dogs - I have a great big smile on my face - fantastic to see - I will have to browse them some more!
Some of them really remind me of my own dogs.
Kali is the oldest and by far the most responsible (but lets see when Mare grows up). Kali is named after the goddess of all demons - we were told that yorkies often are named after historic personalities or gods, so it was befitting to call her that. I named her - then when we got number 2 it was my husbands turn to find a name and he is a diver and loves the sea, so what was more natural than to give her the name Mare (means sea in latin) - of course we tease her with that saying it really means nightmare etc
I had a dog when I was 11 but it never got trained, so this time I decided that our dogs were to be trained. And I am so happy we did that - we have a super trainer in Skagen who taught me how to train by motivation instead of punishment - which was the only was I knew when I was 11 years old
So our dogs can sit, lay down, dance and "give hand/paw", they come when we call them, never chew on stuff they shouldn't and don't bark annoyingly at everything - which was my worst fear.
And they learned the word "no" said in a normal tone of voice in about 3 days. We have never yelled at them or punished them or hit them, it has never been needed. They are home alone for shorter periods of time, but has been alone for 7 hours once and not a single thing was chewed up.
Of course a lot of this is because of the way we raised them, but I am sure we are lucky to get dogs that are easy learners.
They are trained to "go" outside on our little terace or when we walk them.
Kali will go sit at the front door if she has to go, but none of them can tell us if they have to go outside - we're still thinking of a way to teach them that. (Any ideas are welcome)
It was my husband who wanted to have yorkies - he is a cat guy but we are both allergic to cats and dogs, so yorkie was a very good choice since they don't have "underfur" (sorry, english is not my native language) and we have no allergenic problems with them.
We sleep with them and take them anywhere we go and they are very well behaved, of course also because they know the meaning of "no".
Kali just switched to adult food, but she doesn't care much for the adult version of Royal Canin, so I am going to try Hill's instead.
They have never had any of our food andf that means we can eat a nice juicy steak sitting on the floor right next to them and they won't beg or steal it. They will sniff what we're having and then go play with each other.
As you can hear I am very proud of our dogs, but I am also very proud that I have become such a fine doggymom who understands how to train a dog and understand a dog without yelling and punishing
I never thought that was possible, but our trainer said 2 things that I remember so clearly:
"Small dogs can be trained just as well as big ones, it's a matter of wether the human understands the dog."
and:
"It's really not the dog we're training, it's you. The dog knows it all already, it's you who have to learn"
That cracked me up - but how true it is!
I could go on and on, but this has to be it for know - thanks for listening
Mette