She has stayed on her mat for about 2 hours with only occasional reminders if she forgets what she is doing and in the house she has generally gotten much more polite. Her owner will be pleased to know that not only has she been nice to the kitty, Roxie has been wholly uninterested in her after her initial sniff and greet. This cutie pie is learning fast is such a love sponge.
Roxie is SO close to being completely off-leash with her remote collar. All of her play time and exercise walks she enjoys the freedom of her remote collar. For her formal obedience workouts she is on a 30' leash to give her mistake making potential without letting her give up and scoot back to her kennel if she gets confused. Her confidence is growing that she knows the right answers but she still gets overwhelmed every so often and tries to get out of work by going to her room, so to speak. The 30' line lets her make that mistake but it also lets her fix it herself by coming back and completing the task instead of letting her go off and do what she wants. I plan to ween her off the 30' line over the next day or so because she is really making strides in her confidence.
She has stayed on her mat for about 2 hours with only occasional reminders if she forgets what she is doing and in the house she has generally gotten much more polite. Her owner will be pleased to know that not only has she been nice to the kitty, Roxie has been wholly uninterested in her after her initial sniff and greet. This cutie pie is learning fast is such a love sponge.
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Gus is still being a star pupil. His workouts are fully off leash and we are working around bigger distractions. He had a workout today with my small kids running around him and petting him and throwing sticks and he only made a few mistakes and when he did mess up it just took a vibration from his collar to set him right. The only thing he still toils with is the implied stay with the Down. He really wants to ooze over to your feet or to a comfy spot. He stays laying down, he just doesn't always stay parked where you left him. I always make him go back to where he was left just to reinforce that he can't CHOOSE where to lay down.
On Placemat he is doing great. With something to do (like a bone or a toy) he is happy to chill there during normal household activity for a couple hours. He usually falls asleep in fact! We are still just adding experience and distraction to his workouts and asking him to work for longer periods of the day. He is a stellar student and a fun guy to work with. Keeping the blogs short today but I'm really pleased with Roxie.
She is doing so well. She is still very puppy but she is working hard and trying to make good choices. I have introduced her to her remote collar but we aren't using it for obedience just yet. She is LOVING off-leash play time with Gus and the others but she is still a little too silly to take her leash off for obedience just yet. She will get there tho! She just needs a little more practice with self control. She loves praise and she is nice and sensitive to her remote so we can use a fairly low correction setting. She stayed on Placemat for 30 minutes today and we are gonna go for an hour tomorrow. I'm proud of this young goofball and she is so fun to train. Keeping it short today because my day is a little full but I had to update on how well Gus is doing.
Gus is doing great! He is not on his remote collar 100% and does not need his pinch collar anymore. He has had a few off-leash obedience work outs and other than being a little wiggly and nervous in the Implied Stay he did just fine. He has stayed on Placemat for an hour at a time (with something to chew on) and his house manners have improved greatly. He even controls himself around the chickens! We are moving on to proofing and just building his new skills now that he is good with the basics. Good job Gus! Little Miss Roxie had a fun day today. We are still primarily working using her pinch collar but she wore her remote today to get used to it. She is such a sensitive girl that it's easy to hurt her feelings if she gets corrected when she really wanted to misbehave but she never pouts for too long. She is also a super softie when it comes to being physically guided into a position. For example, to teach down I give her the Down hand signal and then lower myself to apply gentle pressure on her shoulders until she moves away from it (and the only way to go is down). Once she is down she gets praise. Soon she cuts out the middle man and just lays down when she sees the signal and hears the word. Well most dogs you have to apply quite a bit of pressure at first while they see if they can lock their elbows and keep from going down but Roxie was happy to oblige with just a light touch. She enjoys praise but isn't hyper about it which makes for calm workouts. Indeed I found myself giving her little play breaks just to make sure she wasn't getting bored!
We worked on Heel/Autosit, Implied Stay, Down and Come today. Her Implied Stay still needs work and her Down is only so-so (hey, it's day 1) but her Heel is good and she was even sitting automatically in her last workout. Tomorrow we are still pushing the basics. I don't think she is confident enough yet for her remote collar but I will let her wear it again just for the sake of having it on her. I hope to introduce her remote collar once she is a little more confident in her vocabulary. Gus had a decent day today. He is such a happy buffalo in the house that I went ahead and introduced him to his remote collar inside today so that we could start laying ground rules more easily. He took to the collar just fine and was not confused by it after the first couple minutes.
His obedience went well today. His first workout was a BATTLE. He is a stubborn guy and he is super strong. He wasn't sure why he should sit, lay down, or heel for me (a stranger) and so we had a few teaching moments but we ended on a high note. His second and third workouts were worlds better! He was much happier to work once he understood that listening meant he would get touched and not listening would mean the stubborn trainer would wait him out and we'd have no fun. He made good headway on Heel/Autosit, Sit, Down (this was a hard one for him today because he did NOT want to lay down in the snow), Implied Stay and Come. He is a happy dog tonight snoozing in his kennel. I'm so glad his second and third workouts were more fun for him because Labs really should enjoy their work. He just had to throw a little temper tantrum before realizing that he and I actually could have a lot of fun running around on the farm! Tomorrow we will keep on working on more of the same and if he makes good progress we will throw Placemat into the mix also. He had a very productive day today! I am SO excited that Roxie is here. I've been working with this sweet and HUGE Shepherd/Pyrenees mix since she was small enough to hold in my arms like a baby and now she is finally old enough for her Big Girl Training. Roxie is here for two weeks of obedience training. While she isn't altogether poorly behaved her owners know she is gonna be both big and potentially intimidating and so it's important to give her a good vocabulary so she isn't too much for people.
She already has shown us that she has a fun work ethic and a calm attitude with an occasional flair for the dramatic so I'm looking forward to really putting her to work and seeing what she enjoys. That said the work didn't exactly start today. It was so cold that the dogs were hitching their feet up after only a few minutes and the wind chill made everyone miserable. We spent much of the day inside learning to play nicely and to not take food from Toddlers (Roxie got scolded very sternly by an angry 2 year old today). She did very well playing with the other big dogs here and shared toys nicely. She was a little intimidated by Dana I think simply because Roxie isn't accustomed to playing with a dominant girl dog who out weighs her. But they did play nicely and Dana wasn't too tough with her. I think mostly Dana's booming voice took Roxie by surprise at first. Tomorrow we will get to work for real and start with Leash manners and some Implied Stay and go from there. Roxie is my kind of dog and so I'm excited to get her going and see how she works. More tomorrow on how she did! Welcome Gus! Gus is a very enthusiastic, bouncy, happy, slightly dorky Labrador who is here for two weeks of obedience training. He is a perfect lab with a sweet temperament and lots of energy but in keeping with most healthy Labs he has no self restraint to speak of. His owners want a polite household pet and so his ability to not just immediately do whatever occurs to him is an important skill to give him. He has no idea how strong he is or that his owners aren't necessarily having a great time on the other end of the leash.
Today was his first day here and frankly...we didn't do a ton. The windchills were so bad and the dogs' feet started hurting enough after only a few minutes that we mostly stayed inside and worked on the easy stuff while he got acquainted with the other dogs (no problems there). Tomorrow he we gonna really start the real work and get him going with his formal training. We will start with leash manners, Heel/Autosit and Implied Stay and just build from there. He is a smart and happy boy so this should go quick and be a good time too! |
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