Today I woke up and had to get two 45-minute walks in before class at 9:00, so long gone are my days of sleeping in while others take care of their dogs! Game on, it seems. I decided to do the walks first and then come back and shower and eat so I’d feel human for class today. Even at 6:30 a.m. it was unpleasantly hot. Mostly humid, I guess.
I had promised myself I’d take Joker out first. I am hyper-aware of playing favorites, trying harder with one dog, investing all my physical and emotional energy towards one, so that seemed like a good plan, but somehow it failed. I think I was worried about the timing of feeding Sugar and in my head it worked out better to take her first. Also, she had shown a good food drive after dinner last night, and I was curious to see how it would be before a meal. Cue ominous foreshadowing music…
Off we went for our 45 minutes. It was pretty similar to last night’s, except she seemed somewhat more interested in me, I guess. The excitement came when I brought her back to her run and her food was already in place. She got in and started eating before I could get her slip lead off, and try as I might, I could not get her away from that food to remove the collar over her head. In fact, at one point when I pulled she growled so hard that I saw the skin on the back of her neck crinkle up, and so I stood there like an idiot while she finished her food, then pulled her back out, removed her lead, and let her back in. I felt like a fool, but there wasn’t much else I could do without risking getting hurt.
Mental note: Sugar is food aggressive. Let’s work on that, shall we?
Joker was next, and our walk was similarly…similar…to last night’s.
Today we learned how to teach name recognition, which basically involves getting the dog to pay attention to you and saying its name and rewarding it. The timing is tricky, but otherwise a pretty basic but extremely important skill. I brought out Joker because I figured he’d be worse, much more distractable, and generally a lunatic. I got him into the training building and realized his leash was on backwards, so like a genius I took it off to correct it and lost control of him. Loose dog! Big excitement. Major embarrassment. When we did the exercise, once he was back on lead, he did OK. I think I had the timing down pretty well, but I felt like right at the point where I was supposed to be cuing and rewarding, he would get re-distracted, which left me wondering whether or not to praise him or start over.
We got a 45 minute training session in during the day, and for that one I spent most of my time on Sugar. She did similarly OK. When we worked again later in the night, I worked both dogs a bit. Joker had about a five minute stint where he was totally awesome. Of course, I had just introduced him to Bil Jac, the wonder treat (aka Bil Crack because some dogs like it so much), but eventually he get distracted and forget all about me again.
I did a shorter session with Sugar, basically a walk reinforcing name recognition, rather than a training session. She was weird. First, she jumped up on me very enthusiastically about 3 times, I think looking for food. It was super-cute and NOT something I want her to get comfortable with. Then, later in the walk it got to the point where every time I gave her a treat she would kind of frolic away and bolt to the end of the leash, which is, unfortunately, the point where you’re supposed to re-give the “command,” say the name, and give the reward. So I was basically constantly doing this exercise, and no one was particularly enjoying themselves. She got very headstrong the closer we got to her kennel, and ultimately I just gave up. I think she associates that place with food, and since we’ve now learned how excited she is about food, my guess is she just wants to be there.
Anyway, we have until Monday to get our dogs walking on a loose leash and always paying attention to us. Three whole days…no problem!
I had promised myself I’d take Joker out first. I am hyper-aware of playing favorites, trying harder with one dog, investing all my physical and emotional energy towards one, so that seemed like a good plan, but somehow it failed. I think I was worried about the timing of feeding Sugar and in my head it worked out better to take her first. Also, she had shown a good food drive after dinner last night, and I was curious to see how it would be before a meal. Cue ominous foreshadowing music…
Off we went for our 45 minutes. It was pretty similar to last night’s, except she seemed somewhat more interested in me, I guess. The excitement came when I brought her back to her run and her food was already in place. She got in and started eating before I could get her slip lead off, and try as I might, I could not get her away from that food to remove the collar over her head. In fact, at one point when I pulled she growled so hard that I saw the skin on the back of her neck crinkle up, and so I stood there like an idiot while she finished her food, then pulled her back out, removed her lead, and let her back in. I felt like a fool, but there wasn’t much else I could do without risking getting hurt.
Mental note: Sugar is food aggressive. Let’s work on that, shall we?
Joker was next, and our walk was similarly…similar…to last night’s.
Today we learned how to teach name recognition, which basically involves getting the dog to pay attention to you and saying its name and rewarding it. The timing is tricky, but otherwise a pretty basic but extremely important skill. I brought out Joker because I figured he’d be worse, much more distractable, and generally a lunatic. I got him into the training building and realized his leash was on backwards, so like a genius I took it off to correct it and lost control of him. Loose dog! Big excitement. Major embarrassment. When we did the exercise, once he was back on lead, he did OK. I think I had the timing down pretty well, but I felt like right at the point where I was supposed to be cuing and rewarding, he would get re-distracted, which left me wondering whether or not to praise him or start over.
We got a 45 minute training session in during the day, and for that one I spent most of my time on Sugar. She did similarly OK. When we worked again later in the night, I worked both dogs a bit. Joker had about a five minute stint where he was totally awesome. Of course, I had just introduced him to Bil Jac, the wonder treat (aka Bil Crack because some dogs like it so much), but eventually he get distracted and forget all about me again.
I did a shorter session with Sugar, basically a walk reinforcing name recognition, rather than a training session. She was weird. First, she jumped up on me very enthusiastically about 3 times, I think looking for food. It was super-cute and NOT something I want her to get comfortable with. Then, later in the walk it got to the point where every time I gave her a treat she would kind of frolic away and bolt to the end of the leash, which is, unfortunately, the point where you’re supposed to re-give the “command,” say the name, and give the reward. So I was basically constantly doing this exercise, and no one was particularly enjoying themselves. She got very headstrong the closer we got to her kennel, and ultimately I just gave up. I think she associates that place with food, and since we’ve now learned how excited she is about food, my guess is she just wants to be there.
Anyway, we have until Monday to get our dogs walking on a loose leash and always paying attention to us. Three whole days…no problem!
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