Attaining your Canine Good Citizen Title

Tipper and I are starting a 5 week course to achieve her Canine Good Citizen Title or CGC. I thought it might be a fun blog for people to follow the weekly event because I can guarantee you it will make for some fun reading.

So the first post will be the history of the CGC, my first experience with the CGC. How to find a class and other info.
The second post will be our first class and so on.

Sister Rivalry

For anyone who follows my blog you know that Kyah and Emma live together. Emma takes it upon herself to occasionally put Kyah in her place and Quite often Kyah needs it. Well today Kyah and Emma met Alex. Kyak did her puppy play thing being all submissive to Alex who thinks all girls are his to breed. Well to my surprise he never tried. They played chase me, body slam and bite face but never an attempt from Alex to mount and hump. On the other hand Kyah had no problem jumping on Alex's back. Now when Alex did try to have an intimate moment with Emma, Kyah did not like it one bit. She has decided that Alex is hers!!! Everytime Alex would go over to sniff Emma he would get a big bark from Kyah and a face full of teeth from Emma.I wonder if dogs are like men? Something in the way a dog looks and it's love at first sight. Or maybe Kyak just likes be strong handsome dogs? Yesterday for Alex it was Bailey and now today it's Kyah.

Shaping Behavior

I have been digesting Jane Killion's book "When Pigs Fly" and using it for training purposes @ Sit Stay & Play. I must say it has been a lot of fun. I had never been a big fan of clicker training until I started this approach with the 2 lab puppies. Now Jane would classify the labs as biddable animals, meaning they are eager to please their handler/owner. Yes it's true but they also lacked any sort of attention span!
Well in a few short weeks they are wrenching their necks when they hear the click. They have also caught on to the shaping behavior very quickly. It only took Bailey 2 short sessions to realize that if she picked up the box she would get a treat.
Now Kyah who may be Basenji/terrier mix is not what Jane would consider as biddable. but in her training session today she not only offered the sit but also the down to get the clicker to go off!!!! Yeah Kyah. Good Dog.

Austin

Now I'm not sure if Austin got his name from the city? But like Austin Tx he's pretty and tough. Although I'm not sure I should call him pretty his owner is in the military and probably wants to think of Austin as a tough guy. He is a Shiba Inu a Japanese dog. Austin is coming to Sit Stay and Play to be crate trained among other things. His owner Mike is about to deploy on his second tour, this time to Afghanistan and Austin will be staying with his friend Amy so we need to make sure we have him all trained up by the time Mike gets back.

Micky

Is a Cavishon a designer dog. A blend of Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a Bichon. An interesting mix. He is full of enery and keeps up with the labs pretty well. Being fast he is able to out run the labs but he is definitely a sturdy little guy. He and Austin play pretty we'll together. It's always nice seeing boys getting along. Micky has his own car seat so he can see put the window while his owner Leslie drives him around town a man of style!

Zephy

Zephy Is a bulldog and new to Sit Stay and Play.she acclimated herself very well with the other dogs, however Zephy likes to guard what she thinks are her toys. What she hasn't figures out yet is that they are my toys. Today while playing with Gaston she started to guard one of the stuffed animals. Gaston backed off but it was Emma who handles the situation. She walked over to Zephy and placed herself between the toy and the bulldog puppy. No growling but body language that said I decide who guards what. Zephyr backed away and made no more attempts to guard any toys, instead she decided to indulge in a mud mask to enhance that beautiful face!

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.