A friend’s very first foster dog
Training Time: Props to the rescue!
Bear and Kiko are the adorable little dudes that are calling my place ‘home’ – for now! (they’re available for adoption). A while back, some nice UYR supporters commented on their pictures and asked me how I’m dealing with their leash reactivity. Goodness knows, I am not an expert. I even feel a little weird giving advice to anyone else about reactivity, because I am so new to it myself. But then I thought, “Hey, maybe it would be nice for people to hear about this from someone who is muddling through it herself, like me!”
This post would better be titled “An Ode to my Clicker“, because I love that thing to pieces. What is a clicker? Well, let me tell you.
Actually, one is enough, if you can ever remember where you put the darn thing. And my mom will tell you: I never can, so I try to have a bit of a herd (school?) of them around.
In seriousness: a clicker is an event marker. It tells the animal the exact instant where he found the answer/performed the action/made the right choice. So often dogs of friends or family will respond to “Sit!” … but by the time you’ve reached for the treats on the counter and offered it to the dog, his butt has popped right back in the air again. What you’ve just done is rewarded the dog for standing back up, not for sitting down! The clicker eliminates this by “marking” the sit rather than the stand-up.
But just like dogs don’t come with a user manual, they also don’t arrive knowing that the “click” = right answer! This is the first and easiest step in training. For those of you who love to treat your dogs, it will be a great time!
Treats: At home just set aside a portion of dinner to be used as training treats. When out and about you’ll likely need something with more “oomph” like pea-sized chunks of cheese or packaged moist treats. Put these on the counter or in a pouch on your belt loop.
Clicker: Such an inexpensive tool considering how powerful it is … love.
Click, and then retrieve a treat and give it to the dog. You should be treating the dog within three seconds of the click, but don’t have the treat in your hand ahead of time. This is bribing, and while bribing has its place, that place not the technique at hand.
Do this several times. Click, treat. Click, treat. Click, treat. After about five times, wait a second, and then click. If the dog looks at you expectantly, like “Hey hey! That noise means food, right?”, your work is done. The marker is ‘charged’ to mean food is on the way. If he doesn’t look at you, give him the treat as before. If you’re not having success you can always return to it later in the day! Sometimes the best training sessions are only five minutes long.
If you’ve stumbled across this and are thinking “Ok, my dog has successfully turned me into a human vending machine, now what?” … keep stopping by, and we’ll stumble along together. Thanks for reading!
Ripley Adventures
Every time I see this dog she gets bigger! Blogland first saw her cute little tush back in July, and we visited her again more recently. Good thing she’s still adorable! Any dog lover will understand what I mean when I say that most 6 month old dogs are a giant pain in the butt a lot of dog. She has seemingly boundless energy and exuberance, and while smart, she doesn’t have the maturity level yet to control her impulses in exciting situations. Her parents are awesome dog owners though, and they make sure she gets LOTS of exercise, quality time with her puzzle toys, and structure with clear consequences for good and not-so-good behavior. As a matter of fact, Ripley also just graduated basic obedience class! Ripley is now an alum of Canine Campus, but she’s starting obedience level two in a few weeks. While we’re on the subject … Kiko just started basic obedience at the same facility, and I am SO obsessed with Canine Campus. The head trainer, Deven, is so inspiring and how she explains things is reminiscent of Aleksandra from Love and a Leash. The layout of the building is ingenious. There is the “main training room”, which is what most places have, and then there are several smaller rooms scattered throughout the facility. They have “two part” doors, which are apparently called ‘dutch doors. (Thank you, Wikipedia.) So, if your pup is very excitable, distracted, or fearful, you can simply go into a small room and shut the door completely, or perhaps just the lower portion. Dogs venture into the “main room” as they feel comfortable, although some stay in the individual rooms for a long time. I know most of you reading this probably aren’t in the market for an awesome dog training facility in Charlottesville, VA … but you can look for one where you live! I always love having Ripley as a houseguest, especially because I get to share her cuteness powers with you!
Dogsitting is a pretty good gig!
Mid Atlantic Dachshund Phest
Once every year, the fairgrounds in Manassas VA teems with dachshunds. It’s the Mid Atlantic Dachshund Phest, and my regional coordinator started sending out emails about it in August. She’s a planner, that one! I was lucky enough to be in town, so I got to go! I didn’t have a dachshund foster at the time (jut Bear and Kiko), so I got to fly solo. That ended up being a very good thing, because it was a bit too crowdy for my taste. For whatever reason, I like to insist I do FINE in crowds, until I’m actually in one. Then I get progressively more anxious, which usually displays as either crabbiness or total spaciness (worse than my usual distractibility). Fortunately I didn’t have a dog to watch, and my doxie-foster A who attended with me was pretty understanding about letting me escape to a quiet corner outside every 15 minutes or so for a breather. Even better, being a dogless attendee means I got to concentrate of taking lots of cute photos!
Whew, do you have dachshund overload yet? I thought the Cruella De’Ville costume was especially clever. And of course, there is that puppy! I got to hold her and I almost died from all the cuteness.
Happy dog times, everyone!
onedoglife 