I never thought that I would own a dog with the word “Poo” in its name, but things get thrown out of cars and into your life. Plus the urge to breed it with a Shitzu and make a ShitPoo is just too overwhelming to give up. The final result; I am now the proud owner of a Poodle, a toy one at that…
My love of animals is well known by all my friends/family and when a dreadlocked puppy was thrown out by its owners a week ago, I was the first to put my hand up as an eager surrogate owner. Plus it would give me the chance to have a little project while traveling – a very cute one at that.
I want to try out all the apps and online tutorials to train and entertain her and see which ones work best. So far I have mainly been reading online about how to house-train her and that has worked well. She now fetches and sits on command – most of the time 
There are many great apps to help you find long walks, vets, breeders and dog-friendly bars/restaurants etc, but most are made for the UK or US that I can find – not made for here in Brazil. However, there are lots of training and helpful apps that I can try out from this part of the world. Here are the apps that I’ll be trying out:
The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan: Cesar Says… (free) – If you haven’t seen the program The Dog Whisperer yet, please do it is awesome. It basically is a bit like Super Nanny, but for dogs and doesn’t have a large greek lady soothing angry children, but a grey haired American soothing dogs. Well anyway, he basically sweet talks dogs into obeying your every command and I want some of that action for Marley. The app offers a soundboard of Cesar’s “well-known” quotes and his signature “Snap…Tsst” command, which he uses to alert dogs that he is the pack leader – this is going to be fun!!!
PetMD: Dog First Aid (£1.49) – When it comes to any little injury or illness that I have, some might say that I am a bit of a hypochondriac…but hay, better safe then sorry! Luckily for Marley, I now have this app downloaded to give me access to a huge amount of information on how to react to any emergencies that come up. This could be that she has drunk/eaten some poison, has a tick or needs CPR…well I hopefully wont need this app, but I’ll be browsing tonight to make sure I know how to react if something does happen.
Dog tricks: Best of 101 Dog Tricks (69p) – This is a must have app to get all the basics for training in one app, also I have seen lots of different publications talking up this app. Let’s get down to business…I secretly would love Marley to be in the movies/be an internet sensation – I’m not asking for much – but to achieve this goal she needs to know some moves. The tricks she can learn with this app include; sit, down, crawl, shake hands, fetch, spin circles and hoop jump (video obvs to come later). The app provides a step-by-step guide, with pics and videos included, to help you teach your pooch all she needs. There is also a log to help you keep updated with your progress – with a bonus surprise when you complete each trick!
Dog Whistle! (free) – Marley is very well behaved, but does have one annoying habit – barking – it is not all time, but when she does it is when she is at her most undisciplined. I have heard that dog whistles are good for correcting bad behaviour and also for use during training for tricks. So I have downloaded this app to see how it works.
With thanks to Mashable, The Woof Report and Blogging a Life of Dogs for helping me track down these apps.
