Poppy was fun to train and I look forward to seeing her in follow ups.
My goofy friend Poppy is going home tomorrow. Her on-leash obedience is going well even though she still has a lot of puppy chaos. Her foundation is there and so we just need to make it her way of life while she matures a little bit. The important thing is not letting the little annoying behaviors slide “because she is just a puppy” but also remembering that she is doing these behaviors because of her age. So it isn’t an excuse but it is an explanation about why she is such a dorkbutt sometimes. She is a funny girl who likes to tease you into playing with her when she knows she is about to be corrected. Her owner and I will have a lot to go over tomorrow about correction timing and recognizing confusion vs defiance.
Poppy was fun to train and I look forward to seeing her in follow ups.
1 Comment
Sweet little Poppy is trying SO hard to do the right thing. She is so excited to work and go on adventures that she is still a little chaotic in her movements but you can tell she knows the words and she is getting better. She is still such a puppy that you must keep a sense of humor with her or else you'll hurt her feelings. Her primary job is still to play after all.
That said, her leash manners are improving daily, her jumping up has stopped though she still jumps -around- people. Her owners will need to really reinforce this no jumping rule or I promise it will absolutely backslide. Her Down and Sit are a little chaotic. She tries everything at once and sometimes ends up contorted into funny positions on my shoes as she tries to get it right. Her Implied Stay is...terrible (this trainer giggles about her). She stays but she flops around and vibrates across the floor until she really parks it and heaves a sigh of "oh well, I guess this is where I'll spend the rest of eternity while everyone does fun things without me". We'll continue working on it. Her Come command is coming along nicely. Only rarely does she try to bolt in the other direction to start a game of Chase Me. Usually she comes right to your shoes for pets and praise. She is being worked with on a 30' leash to give her lots of opportunity to make mistakes without risking her actually getting to run off and reward herself for bad behavior. I might suggest her owners get a long line for practice in the back yard after she gets home. Her wonderful attitude and zest for doing new things makes teaching her easy and once she grows up a tiny bit and these commands really become her way of life she will even out to being a truly stellar dog. For now we giggle at her antics and make sure we aren't being too indulgent while being fair. BOING BOING BOING! Poppy's here. A sweet little mini doodle, Poppy is very young and still very puppy. But she is old enough to start learning her manners and what we expect of her. We have to be realistic and remember that just a few months ago she didn't exist but we can start asking her for some self restraint and easy tasks, like basic obedience.
Poppy did well today with our very basic start off. We did Heel/Autosit, Down and Implied Stay. Her Implied Stay was horrible but everything else went just fine. She really wants to be right with you and so even an inch's worth of movement on my part had Poppy jumping up to come along. So we have our work cut out for us there. Her leash manners improved quickly with a pinch collar and her Sit was nice and automatic shortly after we started. Her Down command was met with confusion but then once she understood the task she took to it just fine. Tomorrow we are working on more of the above and also introducing the Come command and possibly Placemat. For now Poppy is sound asleep in her kennel next to a very large great dane puppy with whom she has become fast friends. Zoey is such a cutie pie. She is learning fast and enjoys praise. She simply cannot fathom why I won't let her lay down on my feet and tries to flop to my shoes whenever I leave her in an Implied Stay in the down. That's really the only argument we're still having pretty routinely, that she can't ooze across the floor on her tummy to arrive at my toes. Her leash manners are much better, she sits automatically almost every time. She is very responsive to Down. In a leisure walk (where she isn't in a heel) she still tries to walk with just the slightest amount of tension on the leash adn she needs reminders about that but she is settling very nicely into her new obedient lifestyle.
We had a lot of fun with Myah today. I wanted to challenge her more today since workouts had to be so short due to the heat advisory. So instead of wearing her normal remote trainer I worker her out without any corrective collar on at all. Just a lightweight 15' cord was keeping her around and she didn't really even need it. But it gave her mistake making opportunity without actively having her wear nothing.
She was a super star in all of her workouts and only made a few mistakes. Being under voice control only she was very responsive and I only had to step on her leash once to remind her where she needed to stay. Her placemat command is coming along well. If other dogs are around that are playing she toils with staying put but in a moderate to low distraction setting she was perfectly content to stay on her bed. All in all she is still impressing me and I look forward to working her out some more tomorrow. Zoey is a sweet little doodle girl who is here for a week of basic training. She has the sweetest personality but man oh man is she all puppy. She is a LOT of dog when you combine her size and her energy level. However she is the perfect age to start work and her first day showed me two things. 1) that she can, in fact, restrain herself and 2) that she actually has pretty good instincts for obedience once she gets into working mode.
She will be puppy for a while but with these two things being true she should take to training just fine and then as she ages into adulthood she will be an absolutely delightful companion. A little training and a little maturity is all this girl needs to be the absolute best Zoey she can be. Today we worked on Heel/Autosit, Implied Stay, and Come. She did well and enjoyed praise. She REALLY wants to velcro herself to you and that makes Implied Stay hard but she's getting it. She is already autositting like a champ. This will be a fun week for sure. Myah is chugging right along. Her off leash workouts are doing great and we just need to fine tune Placemat before we are squarely in proofing mode. She is also finally being her regular goofy self and isn't acting afraid of the other girl dogs here and is playing and zooming around like she owns the place (she really really wants to kill my chickens, I'm afraid she'll be disappointed). She is such a responsive dog usually her failure to comply with a command is because of confusion or anticipation (she thinks she knows what you're gonna say and guesses wrong).
Tomorrow I'm hoping to beat the heat and work her mostly very early or quite late. and spend the bulk of the day in the house on Place or Down Stay. She's such a good girl! Myah is doing SO well. She was introduced to her remote collar today and did beautifully. All we did was the come command and some off-leash play time. She is nice and responsive even with chicken distractions (she really really REALLY wants to chase my chickens.
Her obedience is beautiful also and I'm just having the best time with her.Her Heel is good, Come is great, Sit and Down are good but sometimes she thinks they are interchangeable. Placemat is good too unless she wants to play with one of the other dogs but we're getting there. At this point I consider her pretty well ahead of where I expect them to be. This is convenient because tomorrow her day is gonna be pretty boring as I have back to back lessons ALL day. But she has earned a break and so I'm happy to let her rest. Myah (I hope I'm spelling that correctly) has been here for 3 days but this is her first blog post because my site host was down for maintenance. She is a very sweet, very smiley, young mixed breed dog who is here for two weeks of advanced obedience training. She has so far been an absolute dream to work with. She has zero interest in getting into "trouble" so far and so she corrects very easily and tries very hard to get things right. Where she toils is with her attention span. She sees the chickens or a bunny or a deer and we lose ALL focus. Getting her focus back isn't necessarily difficult but I want her to be a little more reliable before we take her leash off. But we have already started grooming her for off-leash and so it should be before Monday that we start really getting her some off-leash time.
Her obedience commands are being picked up quickly and retained well and so it's been smooth sailing so far. I'm waiting for her to start really getting comfy and thus misbehaving more. She is getting along well with the other dogs here though Dana intimidates her quite a bit. For now she is curled up in her kennel snoozing before her Last Chance potty break. More updates tomorrow but she has been a star pupil so far! |
Archives
February 2021
Categories |