21 Months: Training - December 2nd - 6th, 2013

Malcolm and Jack do like each other, when Malcolm
isn't jumping on his head.

Monday - Friday

This is a shorter blog than normal because most of our work during the week was working on improving Jack's mood and rewarding calm behavior.  Jack has been over excitable about training, to the point he can't learn, so taking a prolonged break during the week was needed to let me do some research and figure out how best to approach the problem.

That and Jack was once again looking mopey and sad.  I don't like sad when working with the dogs and I really wanted Jack happy and upbeat when working on anything.  I suspect his lowered mood had to do with the fact we had a major cold front come in and it flared my pain levels dramatically and reduced their playtime in the yard.  We were hovering in single digits all week and the house was extremely cold, which made me ache all over.

Jack is sensitive to people's pain and tries very hard to comfort them, but is learning that when I am hurting I want space.  For him this causes stress and I had to make time to reassure him he was making the right choice for me.  By Tuesday evening he was starting to see what he was doing was appreciated and it improved his mood and by Wednesday he was back up and wiggly.  It was nice to see.

We worked on greeting Ronda when she came to pick him up by changing the routine a bit.  I put Dieter in the front bathroom, Max in the office and Jack in his crate.  I kept Emma off lead and leashed Malcolm and let each dog greet her and when that dog calmed would bring out the next dog and wait for the overall excitement level to lower before adding another dog.  Jack is always the last dog because he gets hyper excited and giving him time to chill in his crate keeps his excitement level down enough for a manageable greeting.  It worked very well and I will continue to follow that routine when answering the door.

Wednesday was our big day.  When Ronda arrived we worked on Jack aligning with her when laying down and not being in traffic when in public.  We also discussed the need to start teaching Jack to lay beside her on lead and staying in a down for up to 2 hours so we can eventually work on his public access training for going to movies.  Afterwards we arranged to take Jack and Emma out for a public access training session.

Jack is due for a grooming appointment.  He was
scheduled to go in on Saturday to get his Spa treatment.

We met after feeding the dogs and went to a local feed store.  In the store we worked on Jack doing proper counter balance work with Ronda and Ronda trusting Jack to keep up with her and make the right choices as they worked by feed bags.  We also worked on clicking for choosing to not sniff the stuff along the aisles, doing down/stays and sit/stays and focus.  The lesson lasted about 30 minutes and by the time we left I could see Jack and Ronda were working better as a team.

It was then Ronda offered to take us to dinner (we humans eat too) and so we went to a local Chinese restaurant.  We informed the waitress both dogs were in training, but without the practice they can't learn the behavior to work in public.  She was very understanding (she was family of the owners) and seated us in a quiet part of the restaurant to give both dogs a better chance at success.

Jack went under the table without fuss and settled for a little bit.  We were in the process of selecting our meals when Jack came out from under the table and laid on the floor in as much space as he could take.  I glanced down and told Ronda to send him back under, which she promptly did.  It was all Jack needed for instruction - he went under the table, turned and put his nose against the back wall and fell asleep for the remainder of the meal.

We spent approximately an hour and half in the restaurant.  Jack was perfect after being sent back under the table.  I was very impressed with his manners.  The one thing I need to work on with both him and Emma is when to shake off and when not to shake off.    They both shook off after getting out from under the table.

The rest of the week was spent letting Jack and Emma process the evening we'd spent.  It was a slower week than normal, but Jack made some wonderful progress overall.

Oh, we did work on opening a cabinet door with a tug on Wednesday.  Jack succeeded wonderfully and has a nice even pull when he opened the door.  I used shaping to achieve this goal and was very pleased with how quickly he got the idea.

I went to transfer the idea to the fridge, but with the cord on the fridge he tried to chew through it and not pull on it.  I need to think on that and work on teaching him to tug and not chew when working.