Fun with Dogs!

Sometimes I forget how fun it is to just goof off with the dogs for 1/2 an hour or so.  I have a friend’s German Shepherd Dog staying with me right now for seriously remedial leash walking but I have discovered what I believe to be as the root of the issue: he never ever looks at your face.  Ever.

Before I can fix the leash walking issues I need this dog to make some kind of connection with me.

I’ve been reading Control Unleashed which I am oddly having some trouble getting through.  I generally can’t put any new training book down but I have to MAKE myself read 1/2 a chapter of CU.  I am only on the third chapter and have already found loads of useful information but something about the way it is presented is a total turnoff to me as a reader although I am not sure what or why.

I have always hated the idea of putting “look at me” on a cue.  I want that to be the default for the dogs in my life and it is with my dogs and my daily dog clients.  I just randomly reinforce eye contact with all of them but I love Ms. McDevitt’s exercise for getting extended eye contact and played the game with Max this morning.  I held a bit of hot dog in my closed hand and just waited for him to look anywhere but at my hand…click.  The dog will eventually give you at least a teensy micro-second of eye contact….click…jackpot.  I was getting a full second of eye contact by the end of a 5 minute session at which point Max gave into the stress of actually learning and wandered away despite my bowl of hot dogs.  He’s a shepherd, he’s stressy.  So far as I know this was his first ever clicker training session in all of his six years!

Brit has been staying home most of the week so I took her with me to the store to get some beer cheese and pepcid…I know if I gave up one I wouldn’t need the other!

I have been trying to make it a habit to always take a minute to throw the ball for Brit when she comes with me nicely off lead from the car to the backyard to motivate her to pay attention to me so I sat on the stoop and played ball with Brit for about 10 minutes selectively reinforcing her for better returns or SPTs prior to a throw, etc. She was so engaged!  I forget how much ball drive that dog has.  I love her but she is wasted on me I know.

We came in and I put Brit in the living room to cool down for a minute and brought Jellybean into the kitchen to deal with her fear of the flexi lead handle.  It is getting ridiculous.  Jellybean walks beautifully on a leash, really more so than any of my dogs since I didn’t get her until after I was a professional pet sitter/dog walker so she grew up walking with all the daily dogs.  The problem is that if I need to stop to scoop, I ask everyone to sit and I set the flexi leads beside them and Jellybean completely panics about it.  I decided that some CC/DS was definitely in order and grabbed my clicker, a bowl of hot dogs and the flexi lead.  I clicked Jellybean for any interaction with the flexi lead at all for about 10 minutes.

It took me longer to write this post than it did to 1. engage with the dogs in my life and 2. teach them each something and now I have three dogs curled up on pillows and beds on the kitchen floor with tummies full of treats and some mental and physical energy burned off :-)  Go play with your dogs!!!