Thinking about the box

Is a learning game for your dog. You can read about it in Jane Killions book "When Pigs Fly". While this sounds like a strange title for a dog training book it holds amazing foresight into dog training.
Bailey and I walked our way through the exercise, clicker in one hand and book in the other. To my delight Bailey showed many moments of greatness as she was clicked through sniffing, touching and eventually picking up the box to earn her treat. This form of training is called free shaping and it requires the dog to offer behaviors until they get the clicker to go off. In a five minute training session Bailey learned what was going to get her a treat. The idea is training becomes a game as your dog offers behaviors to make the clicker go off. When you can be 100% sure that your dog will sit at the click you can start using the command "sit" once their butt has touched the ground and eventually discontinue the click and use the word. Voila your dog is offering a sit.

Jacoby Ellsbury aka Emma

Unless you are a baseball fan and specifically a Red Sox fan you probably won't catch the drift of this blog. Jacoby Ellsbury plays center filed and can play just about any ball off the green monster and manages to make the play. I believe he is in contention for the golden glove award this year.
Well Emma could keep right up with Jacoby. She plays the  tennis ball off any spot on the floor and any bounce off the wall and makes the play. I have never seen her miss. and she never tires of playing the game. I think I have come close to wearing out my arm tossing the ball for Emma. The Red Sox scouts should definitely consider signing her for next season, with Emma on their team they might actually win another World Series!

Understanding Dog

Over thousands of years dogs have refined their communication and survival skills without the help of humans. Without our interference they are able to survive in the wild and continue on with the species. So when exactly did we decide we knew better than a dog as to how it should behave?

Probably the biggest issue people have with their dogs is jumping on people. Humans think of jumping as a bad behavior and spend hours and hours trying to stop the "bad" behavior. But how many of these owners have given much thought a to why a dog jumps? I am just as bad as anyone else. Dog jumps on me and I tell them off or no jump as they approach a person. Like everyone else I try to "fix" what I perceive as a bad behavior, but let's look at it from the dogs point of view. Early on while still in the whelping box puppies learn to approach their mother and siblings by jumping up and licking their mouth a form of greeting and submission at the same time. Have you ever noticed when your dog meets another dog one of the first things they do is to jump on the other dog. Dog is saying well hello my name is Finn. The same goes for a person, the dog jumps up to greet and the person pushes them off. So the dog thinks wow I didn't get my point across so let me jump even bigger, higher and harder.
It is almost impossible to train a dog not to do something like jumping up to greet but it is possible to train a different response like "sit" for a greeting. Trying to think like a dog is probably the hardest part of dog training.

There are days and then there are days....

Yesterday I had a new client start at daycare. His name is Austin and he is a Shiba Inu. A very cute 9 month old. However he is not crate trained and according to his co owner Amy only knows sit.

Well one thing Austin knows is how to bolt out of the gate and bolt he did early on his first day. Now the other dogs know that I am the treat lady and that all the fun happens when you head down the bulkhead and into the basement, but Austin thought there might be more fun elsewhere. So off he went and believing that he could walk on water.... he started right across the fish pond. Well guess what he couldn't walk on water nor could he swim. Luckily for Austin there was a net on the fish pond which keeps the Night Herons from eating my very expensive Koi. It also kept Austin only partly submerged. I wish I had my camera with me because the look on his face was priceless!! I swear to god if he could have spoken at that moment it would have been what the ----! Any way one wet puppy was lifted out of the pond and deposited downstairs wet but otherwise apparently not phased by the unexpected swim.

A few minutes later Bailey walked over to the full 2gallon bucket put her paw into it and tipped it over all over the floor. Now I could have been totally pissed off but thought to myself what the hell, I had bought a bucket with 2 hooks to secure the bucket from potential disaster but did I do that? No and to Bailey it was a fun game... to watch the water spill out all over the floor. So I grabbed a bath towel to wipe up the spill and despite Margaux's help I started to mop up the water only to look over and watch Bailey look at me, squat and pee right on the floor!!! The quart of water that she couldn't spill on the floor. Thank god she isn't a parrot because she would have gone home spouting the words "why you little S--t! laughing while she said this. After all how many times did I clean up pee in the fitting rooms at macy's and they were people who knew better.

Noodle and Kyah

If you don't think dogs can problem solve then you should have been watching Kyah and Noodle today.
Noodle likes to lie down in the agility tunnel and chew on her toys. I think she feels as though she's in a little cave and therefore safe. Since the tunnel is collapsed on one end the enemy can only approach from the front.
Now Kyah knows that a frontal attack is not the best position to be in. So today she chose a spot on the tunnel and jumped right on top of it! When she didn't land on Noodle she kept  jumping on the tunnel until she forced Noodle out of the tunnel! And then the stuffed toy was fair game. It was the funniest thing to watch.

Waiting

Many people will tell you that dogs have no sense of time but I think this is completely wrong. For thousands of years dogs have has 2 jobs, one is protecting their property whether it's a bone or a yard and the other is waiting. After all who is waiting for you when you come home? Who is waiting for you when you get up in the morning? And who is waiting for you by their food bowls?
Now I have noticed lately that the dogs at day care start the waiting process when it comes close to the time their owners will arrive to pick them up. Despite playing with a pack of dogs the dog who knows it is close to pick up time starts to listen for sounds. They also go to the door and check to see if anyone is there and when the owner is late and I'm talking about 10 minutes they are at the door. I find this totally amazing that even the young puppies without the aid of a wrist watch know when their owners should be there.

"Noodle" waiting to go home.

Our newest member..."Noodle"

Noodle is our newest member at Sit Stay & Play. She spent the first 4 months of her life on the streets of Dominica. She made her way to the United States in a round a bout way. She was adopted by a volunteer and brought to this country but when things didn't work out with the 2 goldens living in the house along came her new owners. They opened their house and their hearts to this pretty young thing.
Noodle is a little shy and worries a lot about food which is understandable considering she never knew where her meals were coming from for the first few months of her life. However she is very gentle when taking treats. Like most puppies Noodle will be learning to sit instead of jumping on people when she meets them and she needs to learn that biting peoples hands is not acceptable to humans even though its okay in the dog world. She has already learned many things and is very smart so she should learn new things very quickly because she is eager to please.