Training, Treats and Funny Little Ways

Millie and Milo are very fond of keeping warm, Milo in particular. They like nothing better than lying in front of the fire when it is on or finding a patch of sunshine to lie in (a bit few and far between at the moment). Milo loves a jumper and will often leap up and pull one down if he spots one on the back of a chair - Millie is not so keen and her long coat keeps her warm so Milo is inheriting lots of fetching pink outfits (he doesn't care!). At bedtime there is quite a ritual with both of them pumping, pulling and nesting their blankets to get just the right position before plonking themselves down for the night. Milo is a dab hand at using his teeth to pull a blanket right over him and we often think he has gone astray when he is actually fast asleep under his covers. The domed donut bed is very popular although it is often more fun to hide balls and toys in it and then drag it around the floor than to sleep in it.

Milo under the top blanket
and Millie on top

We have had some problems in teaching Milo and Millie new commands. They know sit but that seems to be the extent of their repertoire. We have tried paw and lie down with an ample supply of treats at hand but they just look at you as if you had gone mad as if to say "we are sitting, this is our trick, now give us a treat!" Millie just loves tummy rubs and will sit on you lifting her leg and pawing at you until you do so we have tried to capitalize on that by saying "paw" every time she does it. The other day she was asleep at the other side of the room and I was making another attempt to teach Milo. As soon as she heard the word "paw" she leapt off the chair, rushed over. leaned against me with her leg lifted ready to have her tummy rubbed. She has trained me well!

Millie wearing the cap
Daniel bought for Milo
(who won't wear it!)

The majority of our garden is surrounded by 7ft fencing but there is one panel against the house that is trellis on top of a four foot wall with a small border with ferns and heathers in front of it. Through this trellis Milo and Millie are able to commune with Jenny, our next door neighbour who is very fond of them. Every morning she places a biscuit for each of them, propped up against the trellis. Millie has very quickly cottoned on to this and now every single time she goes in the garden her first port of call is to jump up on the border to see what goodies await - if none are there she will sit and stare at Jenny's kitchen window, willing her to put in an appearance. Needless to say the poor plants are not fairing well and Daniel is threatening putting scrunched up chicken wire over all the borders. In fact the whole garden is a bit of a quagmire and our beautiful lawn is no more, just a mud bath curtesy of two excitable terriers!

There is definitely some sibling rivalry between Milo and Millie and they are equally as bad as each other. The other day Daniel was giving some fuss to Millie which I happened to catch on camera. I then looked at Milo on the other side of the room and you can see the jealousy in those eyes!

Yesterday was beautiful and the sun was shining, a vast difference from the weather of late so I took Millie up on Minchinhampton Common where she made friends with a lovely cockapoo called Goose. Daniel took Milo off on a much longer walk through several fields and was able to off-lead him with no one in site. Needless to say, he was absolutely filthy when he got home and I had to put him in the sink to wash him off. As he was a bit shivery I put one of Millie's older jumpers on him but he preferred sitting on my shoulder to dry off!    

Sleeping, Playing and Walking

We are now well past the three month stage which they say is the time you should allow for rescue dogs to settle in and get to to know you and I would say that Milo and Millie have well and truly got their feet under the table.

When they are in the house they can be absolutely lovely, very affectionate and often falling asleep. They are a little clingy and like one of us to be there with them, preferably all three of us so they have a choice of laps to sit on. Millie is quite funny as she will sit staring at us until we use the foot recliners on our chairs so she can jump up and have plenty of room to settle on. Milo, on the other hand, doesn't care how much room there is or who else might be sitting on you, he takes a flying leap and lands on the top! The have no concept of personal space at all and have the wettest, lickiest tongues I have ever know in a dog - they don't care if they know you or not, you will get kissed!

On a couple of occasions we have bought some bones for Milo and Millie to chew on and they have had hours of enjoyment from them - not so for us as everywhere we go we are stepping on chards of bone (very painful when you get up in the night and unsuspectingly tread on one) and we frequently find they have left a big chunk of one on the bed for us as a present.

Milo and Millie are very typical terriers and like nothing more than to shake and rag a toy, pulling it between them and generally ripping it to shreds. The hoover is taking quite a battering at the moment as there is constant stuffed toy fluff everywhere. So far, they have been very good and only done this to their own things, although i did find a pair of chewed trainer laces the other day! They are also extremely nosy and often use Martin as a springboard to look out the window - usually when they are waiting for one of us to come home or, in the case of the above picture, supervising the bin men. 

The main issues we have with Milo and Millie is when we are walking them as they both pull quite badly on the leads and Milo in particular will scream with excitement when we set off or if he sees another dog, a cat, a person, a leaf - in fact anything that moves. It can be very embarrassing when we walk around the estate as you can hear every dog in the area starting to bark in response so think we are getting quite the reputation. The worst is when we see a cat - and there are many on our estate (one house a few yards away from us has 9!). We are working on all of this and have had some success with different collars, harnesses and training techniques but have found the best way to calm things down is to walk them separately - no competition seems to be the key. Martin and I normally walk them during the week (going opposite ways around the block) and then Daniel will take them on longer walks when he isn't working late. He and I also take them to the enclosed field we found and they seem to be learning well to come back to us, especially if a raised hand containing a treat is shown. It is fantastic to watch them flying through the grass to get back to us, sitting as soon as they arrive for their treat and they come home filthy and exhausted but very happy.

We have also tried a special collar on Milo that you can use a remote control to release a spray of citronella when he is very bad. Daniel used it the other day and just one spray was enough to make him walk nicely and stop barking at another dog. After that he was just shown the remote and he instantly obeyed. Hopefully he will soon get the hang of this and we won't have to use it for long as, to be honest, it's not a method I totally approve of. The little video below was taken the day after this walk with Daniel and he behaved beautifully even though he didn't have that collar on.