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.
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