Tell Me Thursday

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1. Stopping your dog – what do you prefer? On their feet? On their belly? Some combination?
2. At what point do you start teaching this?

I think this is a herding thing. I can’t think of anything where I have a stop/halt command in a training situation. Dylan stops on his contacts but there isn’t a seperate command for it, and I’ve never trained the Table since we never see it. Huh.

3. Do you have a favorite dog? I won’t tell.

I can’t lie. Kim is my favourite. I wish I had words to express further, but I don’t. I could write pages about her and still never get close to what makes her extraordinary to me.

4. What is the #1 thing a dog can do to push your buttons?

Lots of things. Dylan’s neuroticism. Latest phrase of exasperation was “Dylan, the balloon isn’t going to suddenly float down from the ceiling and eat you, you don’t have to watch it for 3 hours without blinking oh god please look at something else!” Mollie’s need to not just share the sofa but the same cushion. Kim’s incessant barking. I mean properly constant monotone bark-bark-bark when she starts because she thinks she might have heard something through the fogged up parts of her ears and then forgets why she’s barking and can’t stop. (Old dogs suck). Rio doesn’t have anything specifically annoying yet, although it’s pretty irritating when she starts alarm barking at my reflection in the window. It’s not someone outside Ree, it’s me! I’m behind you, waving!

5. Brrrrr… it’s winter. What is your favorite soup recipe?

Why are there so many cooking and herding questions on this thing?! I do neither of those things! (I love Carrot or Tomato or Potato soup. Delicious.)

Trips to the Park

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We’ve been venturing further afield this week down to the big Meltham Hall park. Apparently it’s not called that any more, but whatever, it is.

This means 15mins of on-lead road walking to get there and back, which is definitely something we need to work on. All my dogs pull on the lead, I’m rubbish at training them not to. Mainly because we never have to walk anywhere on lead, so it seems like a pointless kind of skill. I’m trying to be better with Rio and teach her not to pull, we’re about 60% there but we have relapses.

We’re mainly hitting the park as there is a big children’s playground and a duck pond, so lots of small children running wild and free. So far we’ve only managed to say hi to shy and very small children, which Rio doesn’t have a problem with, but it’s still good practise.

We have also met a very over-exuberant Weimaraner who flattened her a couple of times, and I wish I’d had Kim with me on that occasion as it might have learnt some manners. Sadly we also met an intolerant Bichon as well on that walk, not a successful day. I don’t mind people having nervous dogs – I’ve got one! – but they need to be aware of it and act accordingly. Encouraging my puppy to come closer so you can have a cuddle when you have a nervous dog on a lead isn’t good for my dog or yours.

Rio is slowly coming around to the idea that ducks aren’t scary too. We’ll see if she can get over that by the end of the week!

20 Weeks

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20 Weeks 20 weeks?! How did that happen? Rio continues to be fun and chirpy and naughty and noisy. She’s about 16-17″ tall and 13.30kg. Her puppy fluff is slowly mutating into sleek adult fur, which basically means she has a darker stripe down her back about 4″ in width.

She’s still not very comfortable with children but there is only so much I can do about that as I don’t meet children very often!

She is getting better at being left alone. I decided we were pandering a little too much to her whims; we had been letting her out of her crate whenever she asked to go outside to toilet, but I figured we needed to start getting her to hold it as I had a feeling she was using the asking-to-go-out as an excuse just to get out her crate. Two minor tantrums, no accidents and suddenly she can hold it all night and can stay in her crate for 2-3hours whilst I go out. Amazing!

Dylan and I got back to agility training this week after the Christmas break. I needed an easy week back to see where I was at (not very fit/dying after 10mins springs to mind) but I also wanted to experiment with working on Dylan’s jumping when I wasn’t moving. I’ve read recently about ETS dogs who improve when there is a lack of handler motion so they can focus on jumping only, rather than getting distracted by running handlers. Dylan doesn’t have ETS but it seemed like it might be good to try, and it did help. It’s not a naturally comfortable handling style for me (Kim always always wants me to race her) and there are times when I need to run to get into position, but on more complex sequences I need to look at reducing my forward motion.

Priorities

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Been reading lots of interesting blog posts about all the focussed training people are doing with their puppies. I haven’t been, but I’m actually happy with that. I’ve been much more interested in getting Rio to explore the world and get as much exposure to different people, dogs, and environments, and teaching her how to react and recover. So far so good!

We do need to get out and do a bit more training elsewhere though, although it isn’t something I foresee being a problem. Rio is always ready to tug wherever we are, and will offer her tricks for treats if she thinks there’s half a chance of getting some food. I’ve never known a puppy so into both food and toys, it’s weird being able to switch so easily between them! Her favourite toy is a proper sheepskin or fleece tug, but I really want to keep that in it’s current status as Best Toy Ever, so we only use it once a week for restrained recalls. We tug with other toys in the meantime.

She’s teething at the moment and apparently this is not an issue, she spits them out and then carries on with whatever she was doing. Dylan had a tendency to bleed everywhere. It probably helps that she loves a frozen Kong or icecubes which is numbing her gums, Kim did too. Dylan didn’t, icecubes were far too cold (he was a summer puppy!). He likes them now though and hoovers up around Rio as she chews.

My big priority over the holidays was REA and waits, both looking pretty nice right now. She’s targeting a biscuit tin with either rear foot (I’m rewarding attempts to target too at the moment) and I’m really pleased with progress. Waits are also looking nice, she’ll hold in a sit for 15-20s whilst I move 5-6ft away. I’m sticking with my policy of not setting her up to fail, there’s no point in asking her for a 60s wait while I move to the other end of the room. Likewise if we’re on walks, I don’t recall her if she’s clearly not going to come back. Not in a “omg Rio is running in the opposite direction after a squirrel” kind of not coming back, but if she pauses to sniff at something, I’ll wait until she’s moved on before calling her. So far so good, she doesn’t argue about recalls.