Well, the grand plan to do an entry every night has clearly fallen to pieces. Maybe I can just offer the highlight reel for the past few days, and then recommit to a 10 minute typing session every night.
Lessee… Thursday and Friday we learned a fun way to start training the recall (come when called). You have on person hold the dog while you stand in front of it with something very tempting. You can back up a little but you need to keep the dog’s attention. Then, when the dog is raring to go, you say the word (“come” or “here” or whatever) and the helper releases the dog. We were assigned to do this 100 times between Thursday night and Sunday night. It would be fine except it can be tricky to find a partner. We’ve all really tried to help each other out, but we’re not on any kind of similar schedule, so you’re really relying on the fates to bring you someone to help you, or you have to set up a bunch of recall party dates.
Two of my roommates and I did a session late on Friday night after a few glasses of wine, and then decided it would be fun to bathe three dogs. Heck, it actually was pretty fun! We were so productive we felt it necessary to reward ourselves with a few more glasses of wine. Next thing we knew it was after 1 a.m.! I was pretty exhausted on Saturday, but still had a productive day.
We also had a great lecture about dog aggression on Friday, and since roommate A has a dog-aggressive dog, we are now helping her with a desensitization system, which involves walking past him and pelting him with chicken. Awesome! He had an OK session yesterday and a great one today. They want her to do this 5 times a day, which is pretty much impossible, even on weekends when there isn’t a whole lot going on. Just getting people with calm dogs together in one place when it’s not ass-blazing hot out is a challenge.
The dogs are doing fine with their current commands: sit, heel, place, and come. We ended up not learning the down yet. I think it’s going to be challenging for Sugar, whose only down is a flop-down-roll-over-please-pet-me-now maneuver. Joker is going to take to it fine, I’ll bet, but the problem will be keeping him down. That dog is spring loaded.
Ha, funny story. The clicker assignment this week was to get the dogs to show interest in a box, so you click whenever they look at the box, walk towards the box, nose the box, paw the box, do anything to the box. I was doing this with Joker today in the Club House, and he was doing so well: he put a foot in the box, and I clicked. He put both feet in and I clicked. Then he put all four feet in the box, and just as I clicked, he started to pee in the box. Fabulous. I then tied him to a chair so I could throw out the box.
Lessee… Thursday and Friday we learned a fun way to start training the recall (come when called). You have on person hold the dog while you stand in front of it with something very tempting. You can back up a little but you need to keep the dog’s attention. Then, when the dog is raring to go, you say the word (“come” or “here” or whatever) and the helper releases the dog. We were assigned to do this 100 times between Thursday night and Sunday night. It would be fine except it can be tricky to find a partner. We’ve all really tried to help each other out, but we’re not on any kind of similar schedule, so you’re really relying on the fates to bring you someone to help you, or you have to set up a bunch of recall party dates.
Two of my roommates and I did a session late on Friday night after a few glasses of wine, and then decided it would be fun to bathe three dogs. Heck, it actually was pretty fun! We were so productive we felt it necessary to reward ourselves with a few more glasses of wine. Next thing we knew it was after 1 a.m.! I was pretty exhausted on Saturday, but still had a productive day.
We also had a great lecture about dog aggression on Friday, and since roommate A has a dog-aggressive dog, we are now helping her with a desensitization system, which involves walking past him and pelting him with chicken. Awesome! He had an OK session yesterday and a great one today. They want her to do this 5 times a day, which is pretty much impossible, even on weekends when there isn’t a whole lot going on. Just getting people with calm dogs together in one place when it’s not ass-blazing hot out is a challenge.
The dogs are doing fine with their current commands: sit, heel, place, and come. We ended up not learning the down yet. I think it’s going to be challenging for Sugar, whose only down is a flop-down-roll-over-please-pet-me-now maneuver. Joker is going to take to it fine, I’ll bet, but the problem will be keeping him down. That dog is spring loaded.
Ha, funny story. The clicker assignment this week was to get the dogs to show interest in a box, so you click whenever they look at the box, walk towards the box, nose the box, paw the box, do anything to the box. I was doing this with Joker today in the Club House, and he was doing so well: he put a foot in the box, and I clicked. He put both feet in and I clicked. Then he put all four feet in the box, and just as I clicked, he started to pee in the box. Fabulous. I then tied him to a chair so I could throw out the box.
1 comment:
The box story was so funny I got tears and had to read it to Doug in that condition... I can totally picture him peeing in the box! Love your writing and therefore loving the blog. Super proud of you for doing this! ---Sip
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