More of the Same

Happy Thanksgiving!  We are grateful for our family, our friends, our health, our country and so many more things, including our now 5-month-old puppy, Ted.  So, onto puppy training...

We have been consistently working on the "down" command with Ted.  Our trainer demonstrated the technique in class with the dog on a leash.  She says the command one time and waits until the dog responds.  Some take a short amount of time...others longer.  I remember this from training our Beagle 15 years ago.  He took over 20 minutes to respond.  He was very obstinate, but he eventually became well trained.  I had an hour blocked out of my schedule to work with Ted.  We started.  Ted laid down in under a minute!  Rewarding him with praise was no problem...I was thrilled and thankful for the short time.  I wondered if he would do it again so easily so I tried it several times over the last couple weeks.  He repeats it easily again and again.  Good boy, Ted!  

On a side note, I decided to work with our older dog, Alicia, a little.  She was well trained but we've slacked off over the years and haven't asked much of her.  She was a little more difficult with the down command.  It can take 3-5 minutes for her to comply, but she will do it.  I guess we need more practice.

I watched our trainer tell a dog "Bang, Bang" to have him roll over and play dead.  It struck me as really cute so I decided to try it with Ted.  I first named the command when he was in the proper position.  Later, I gave him the command "Bang, Bang."  It took him about 5 minutes to comply and then I got only partial compliance (rolled halfway over) so I didn't give him a treat.  Finally, after another 5 minutes he got it right so I rewarded him with a treat.  He has repeated it 3 more times now, but he still delays and I have to wait him out.  That being said, I think it will be worth the wait.  My kids think it's adorable.  

I am pleased to report that Ted will listen off lead in the house and yard. Tonight, we were downstairs and I asked him to go up with the kids.  I was staying down to do some laundry and he was starting to get into trouble.  He didn't immediately comply (and he was off lead), so I stalked him until he finally went upstairs with the girls.  Just now, he was outside for his last potty of the night.  I called him inside.  He started heading to his doggie bed outside on the deck.  I stared at him until he came inside.  I would say he's making good progress, at least in a familiar setting without distractions.

Earlier in the week, he was in the bedroom with us.  The bedrooms have baby gates on them, so he has to be invited in.  He started to get into trouble, so I pointed to the gate and told him "out."  He went right out.  We also stopped him from whining or barking at the gates by shaking a penny can when he was being a pest.  Prior to that, he would cry at Abby's gate very early in the morning when he wanted her to get up and play.  She thought it was cute...the rest of us, not so much!  

Ted still needs quite a bit of help walking and I haven't been very good at practicing with him.  Here's my confession...I hate being cold.  I know, I need to suck it up and walk the dog.  It will happen as I am determined to have a well behaved dog.  

Our next training item for Ted will be the Christmas tree, which goes up on Friday.  Stay tuned and have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Ann

Good Dog, Ted!

So, I'm finally getting back to this blog after being gone for 2 weeks helping Jenna with her Wizard of Oz play.  First, let me say that Ted is a GREAT puppy!  He continues to potty in the yard and has only had a couple accidents in the house overall.  We did have a couple times when he pottied in the basement when we were down there working.  In class, our trainer suggested that we spend time with the dog in the room he is using as a bathroom so he considers it part of our house, and not his toilet.  We have done that and had no further incidents.  Yay!  Ted now has the run of the upstairs at night.  After a couple incidents of literally eating Abby's homework (which was left out on the couch), he has been very good.  (YEP, Abby went to school and told the teacher, "The dog ate my homework.")  This is a blessing in and of itself!

Last week, during class, we learned more about walking and also about the "down" command.  We don't have as much opportunity to walk Ted since the weather has changed, but I have done it a couple times.  He's largely compliant with his front harness.  He occasionally pulls but falls in line when I keep walking or walk backwards.  I suppose more time and practice will be telling.

I also did the "down" command a couple times.  I had Ted on his leash and said "down."  I was pleasantly surprised that Ted complied with the command in less than a minute.  It was wonderful!  I remember doing this with our Beagle 15 years ago and it taking about 20 minutes the first time.  I'd say we're off to a good start and that Ted has a really easy-going temperment.

I'm going to close on that note.  Off to Jenna's ballet showcase and then to dog training class.  Good dog, Ted!  We love you to pieces!

First Impressions

Good Morning!  I figured I'd better write this before the day gets away from me.  The kids are off school today and both girls have friends over for the day.  Seems like a great day to train Ted!  (OK...I am faking the enthusiasm because I am not a morning person, nor do I really have a lot of time to train the dog, yet it needs to be done...).  :-)

We had our first training class with Peggy last week.  The whole family attended.  We learned a lot about dog theory and started a few lessons to practice at home.  Our first impressions:

*  Ann - It's good to review the theory and make it a priority to train Ted so he grows up to be a nice dog.

* Jenna - Jenna gets up first in the morning.  The morning after class, Jenna says, "Mom, I didn't pet Ted right when I got up.  I waited and then I waited until he was sitting down."  Off to a good start!

* Abby - "I wish Ted would stop biting my butt."

It was a good start.   Ted wakes up full of energy in the morning and this is when he gets into the most trouble.  This is really his only "bad" behavior time.   He wants to play and this is when he is "bitey."  He will either be chasing Abby down the hall biting her butt....or mouthing with Alicia (the better of the two options). Our company was about to arrive.  I put Alicia in a separate room so I could focus on working with Ted.  I put Ted on a leash and kept him on it for the first half hour.  I mainly worked on having Ted be sitting or laying down before our guests pet him.  I also sent him into the yard to run with Alicia and did some training exercises with him to use up some of his energy.  So far, so good.  But, boy does this pup have energy!

Besides waiting for Ted to sit down before petting him, we have been working with him on looking at us for permission to take treats/food.  I have done this exercise several time without incident.  It was almost boring. Ted really doesn't take food out of my hands and he has learned not to jump up while we're eating.  That being said, I decided to have Jenna try this exercise.  As soon as she sat down with the treats in her hands, he started sniffing and licking her hands.  Then he started nipping her hands to get the treats.  I wasn't sure what to do, so I pulled him back so he couldn't reach her.  He finally sat down and when he made eye contact, she gave him the treat.  We went through this 4-5 times.  He improved with each trial.  I can only imagine what he will try to do when Abby tries this exercise.

I also took Ted to a softball game yesterday.  He was very pleasant and well behaved.  My only thought was that I need to be better with having him sit when people approach to pet him.  I remembered too late that I could manually have him sit when people approach.  We'll keep working on that.  At least he wasn't misbehaving while being pet....

And, that's about it for training thus far.  Kevin and I are still trying to figure out how to set up a training exercise for Ted and Abby to stop him from biting her as she runs down the hall.  I'll close now.  Have a great day!

Meet Ted!

Meet Ted!  Ted is a 14 week old, Great Pyrenees, puppy we adopted from a sheep farm at 6 weeks of age. His parents are working dogs from the farm and a neighboring farm.  They were bred to create additional guarding help.  Ted was the smallest of the litter.  That's hard to believe looking at him now!

Ted has made a very good transition to suburban life.  Besides being very young (and thus needing to eat and potty at more frequent intervals), the most difficult challenge with Ted to date has been the fact that he came home with fleas.  Thankfully, we assumed Ted would have fleas due to his origins and did not bring him into the house or into contact with our adult Great Pyrenees/Golden Retriever mix.  Given Ted's age and the subsequent limited treatment options, we gave Ted Capstar, an oral tablet, and gave him daily baths with an all natural flea shampoo.  We also kept him in a pen on a tile floor downstairs until we were fairly certain the fleas were gone.  He pottied in the front yard as not to infest the yard with fleas.  This also gave our older dog, Alicia, the chance to see Ted and become accustomed to his presence, before meeting him face to face. Having heard that fleas can be an ongoing nightmare for dogs and owners, we are beyond thankful to report that Ted no longer has fleas!  Yay!  Ted also had two sets of puppy shots and wormings.  He met the vet and received a clean bill of health.  Way to go, Ted!

Ted is a very independent puppy.  He's potty trained easily and early.  In fact, Ted has only had 2-3 accidents in the house.  To date, similar to our Golden Pyrenees, he does not potty in other people's yards and he has slept through the night for several weeks now.  I will confess that we have a doggy door, were diligent in taking him out every two hours, watching him while he was awake, and that my beloved husband was took the majority of the middle-of-the-night shifts.  This mommy is getting too old for things like that!  

Ted is learning to walk on a lead nicely.  We walk him to pick up our girls from school daily and I also take him to the nursing home to visit my mother, who just moved from our home to the nursing home a few months ago.  Like most puppies, he has his moments of not wanting to walk where we want him to, but he has been generally cooperative recently.  Taking our older dog with us helped that process, or I suspect we would have been dragging or carrying him more.  

I have recently started walking both dogs on a joined lead.  I started this mostly to include both dogs in the walks as well as to avoid tripping over their double leads.  After the first couple of walks, it's been a great solution.  I am not having any issues with this, although I would like to hear what our trainer thinks about the subject.  It's something I've never tried to do or done before.

Speaking of training, we started classes with our former trainer, Peggy Moran.  Peggy helped us train our first puppy, Sampson (a Beagle), almost 15 years ago.  Sam's training was very successful and he worked with my in my private psychotherapy practice for 6 years.  Sam recently died peacefully, in his sleep at home, at age 15.  This left our Golden Pyrenees very lonely and we embarked on Ted's adoption journey. The purpose of this blog is to share our training experience with our trainer and fellow students, and to gain insight into better training techniques!

Now it is my husband's turn to blog!  Thanks for reading and have a great day!

PS:  Here's a link to Peggy's website:  http://www.dogimprovement.com/