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!