My Yorkie Bichon Mix

Jack is a pretty smart dog, but I find it hard to teach him tricks because he gets so excited about the potential for a treat that he doesn’t listen.   He will basically just start doing all the old tricks that we’ve taught him in the past without even being prompted.  Sitting, laying down, Up, paw all in a spastic sequence.  Imagine if humans got that excited about the possibility of getting some candy?  LOL  that would be hilarious!

In a past post I mentioned I was going to take a video of Jack doing some of his favorite tricks and I finally got around to taking it.  My wife Valarie also stars in this short clip so please tell her she looks great!  hehe

As you can see he has no idea what roll over means.  I’ve been trying to teach him that for months but our little Yorkie Bichon wants nothing to do with it.

Over the two years we’ve had Jack, he will occasionally start having these episodes where it sounds like he is having trouble breathing.  His body gets stiff, back arches and he makes this weird sound.  After doing a little pocking around on the internet it turns out that some dogs have this reflex called Reverse Sneezing.  It isn’t bread specific and at least in Jack doesn’t happen to often.  I’d say that he’ll probably have an episode once ever few months, but it’ll happen a few times over an hour or so.

Jack will stop after a few minutes, but to help your dog stop reverse sneezing a little quicker you have to get them to swallow.  An easy trick for doing this is to cover their nose and that’ll make your pup swallow.  I’ve tested this out on our borkie and it works very well.  He will swallow and the reverse sneezing will usually come to an end.  I don’t believe there is a cure for it, but we are going to show the video to our vet when Jack goes in for his yearly checkup next month.

This is one of the first videos we took of Jack.  I’m not sure if all Yorkie Bichon mixes are as curious or cautious as our dog, but it’s funny none the less.   He approached many of his other toys the same way in the early days. Now he isnt so afraid of them and runs around with them in his mouth, while pushing them to the ground to make them squeak.