Is your dog ever “trained”? Are you ever finished training?

03•27•18

Cooper is a good dog.

Cooper is a smart dog.

He knows all sorts of things, from the basic obedience cues like sit and stay and down to more complex cues like shutting cabinet doors and performing tricks. Based on what he knows at this point, anything else I teach him is just for fun. Games. Tricks. Nothing too useful but definitely entertaining.

Which means, of course, that I’ve become complacent in his obedience work. Can I consider him “done,” like a cake? Finished, like there’s no more training to do?

As far as obedience, anyway, there’s nothing much to do here. Wipe my hands. Move on.

Maybe…

But it wouldn’t do either one of us any good (and it might do him some long-term harm).

I recently encountered this statement in a Facebook group that went something like: “Well, my dog’s trained, so we don’t really work on XYZ. No point.”

So, is your dog ever “trained”?

When I work with Cooper, I think of his “training” in two buckets: obedience, the stuff mentioned above that he’s mastered, and behavior, the stuff that’s harder to quantify like being scared of new objects or barking out the living room window because the wind blew the leaves in the tree funny.

The obedience stuff is important, especially in the early days of a new pup. It’s the house training, the basic manners, the useful parts of being a member of a family. There comes a time, though, when a dog has learned pretty much everything they need to… Anything else, like tricks or dog games or even sports like agility, well, that’s just icing on this cake.

Or is it?

The behavior stuff, on the other hand, has to be ongoing if you love a dog who’s anything but a happy goober. You know the kind of dog I’m talking about… No dog I’ve ever cared for has been a happy goober. 🙂 (Well, maybe Molly…)

This is the forever training, the ongoing stuff. The reinforcement and the conditioning. This is the training where one day you discover that your quirky pup is afraid of the new bird feeder you hung in your backyard, so you work on that. This is the training where you try to catch your dog every single time he, say, sees a person on a motorcycle while riding in the car by tossing treats from the bag you keep in your glove compartment.

This type of training, in my opinion, is never “done.” Unless, of course, you’re the person of a goober dog!

That said, I’ve discovered that the obedience training conditions Cooper to learn. If we’re working on a behavior issue, or if I’m simply trying to build up his confidence so that he can go to a new park without shaking like a little leaf (we’re not there yet), obedience training does the trick.

He gets into “work” mode.

He starts to focus.

His mindset shifts from “AHHHHHHOMG!!!!” to “hey, I know what to do!”

We had a great session recently when we went to the playground. We traded off pushing Violet on the little baby swing and having Cooper “work” on basic cues. On the other side of the playground, a small family played on the climbing rocks, and on the soccer fields behind us, a bunch of guys were playing a pick-up game. It was a super distracting environment, though it was a park he’s very comfortable with. And he nailed it. Of course, we thankfully didn’t see any other dogs–this would probably be a different story!–but it’s progress.

Cooper is a good dog. At home, or at my parents’ house, he’s nearly perfect.

But he’s nowhere near “trained” and we’re certainly not done training.

Even when he’s reached a happy old age, games and toys and trying new things–all pieces of “dog training”–will be part of his daily routine because it keeps his mind fit, just like research shows daily mental activity like completing sudoku or crossword puzzles helps stave off Alzheimer’s.

And so, my long, meandering post comes to an end with my conclusion being, of course, that a dog might know a lot of stuff, but training can keep him mentally engaged and mentally fit to help his aging process go smoother and to stave off boredom. He might know all his obedience cues, and we’re not working to turn him into an obedient little automaton, but training is a big, important piece to his overall wellness.

Currently, of course, we’re working on his mat work… and making great strides!

How about you and your pup? What do you think? Do you consider your dog “trained” or your training “done”? How do you work to keep your dog mentally fit and engaged? Leave a comment below, and let’s trade training notes!

Where do you find the time to train your dog?

03•11•17

Right now:

It’s 7:52 on a Saturday night.

I’m in my cozies snuggled under the covers with Cooper.

Laptop balanced on my knees. Beer on the side table.

And I am wiped.

But, this is the first chance I’ve had all week to write about time management for dog training–the theme of this past week’s blog hop, which closes tomorrow, so I’m scooting in at the very last second. Ironic, I know.

Anyway, we’ve been busy. Who isn’t, though, right? There’s always more to do and no more time in which to do it.

OK, now it’s 8:05 on Saturday night because I totally got sidetracked watching that video circulating on FB with the little girl getting the kitten?! OMG… So, so, so sweet!

But that right there is exactly my issue. Like most of you, by the time evening rolls around, it’s already been a long day of work, errands, cooking dinner, cleaning up the house, feeding and exercising the herd… where’s the time to train?? It could totally be tonight, but I’m super tired, so instead of taking Cooper outside or upstairs to work, we snuggle under the covers.

I know I’m not alone in this. Between the have-to-dos and the want-to-dos, there’s just never enough time.

So, I have two tips to share with you today if you’re in that same boat.

Here’s the trick in our house that works the very best at getting dog training into an already-way-too-full schedule:

Make training part of your everyday routine.

Seriously, it’s that simple. We train with Cooper all. the. time. (BTW, you’ll note I refer to Cooper in this post and not Emmett. Well, there’s no more Emmett training. It’s now just letting Emmett have/do/eat/sleep/whatever he wants, when he wants it. The end. Newt, on the other hand, stay tuned for a Caturday post sometime this month on that…)

First up, I will say, Cooper has his basics down. I’m not talking about teaching general “obedience” here, which I do think takes a concerted effort in focused blocks of time. What I’m talking about is the ongoing stuff, the stuff to challenge him beyond a basic sit/down/stay.

For example, Cooper has to shut the kitchen cabinet every single time we feed the dogs. (Check it out on Instagram…)

That’s great, but it becomes routine super fast. So, when I’m emptying the dishwasher or putting groceries away, Cooper tends to hang by my side, so I have him shut the cabinets and even push the drawers shut. He’s a PRO at it, and he gets excited to do it. He wags his tail to close cabinets! We keep treats in jars on the counter, so as he does his work, I say, “YES!” then give him a treat.

Same thing with his mat. He’s solid with “on your mat,” so I use it for all sorts of things that push him beyond just placing on his mat. If FedEx drops a package at the door, I’ll send him to his mat and ask for a stay. Walking to the door, opening it, grabbing the package… all while he’s holding the stay on his mat… is hugely challenging. I need to retrieve the package anyway, so adding in that bit of training takes hardly any extra time.

When we throw his ball while we watch TV or something, we’ll do different challenges. I’ll ask him to sit and wait, throw the ball, then release him to chase it down after a few seconds. Sometimes I’ll even ask for a “watch me” while he’s holding his wait.

Right now, I’m working on handing him something, like the mail, and having him, “Take it to John!” (We’re not great at this yet, so there are many a teeth mark in our bills right now!)

All of this is training–largely, for Cooper, training on impulse control–keeps his brain active, but it doesn’t take any extra time out of the day because it’s all part of the day.

OK, I mentioned two tips at the beginning, and here’s the second:

Make training part of your everyday routine.

Huh? That’s the same, right? Well, sure, but I want to emphasize that it’s not just running through the typical stuff that your dog has down pat. It’s the other stuff, too, the new and exciting things or the just-for-fun training.

Here’s an example: You put a pot of water on your stove to boil spaghetti for dinner. While you’re waiting for the bubbles, grab your clicker and a couple treats, and start working on something new. That’s dead time anyways, time most of us spend scrolling mindlessly through Facebook (though, seriously, that kitten video?! OMG…)

Or you have to call your internet provider about an outage. Well, that’s several minutes of your life on hold that you’ll never get back, but make the absolute best of it by teaching your dog a quick-and-easy trick, like luring him to twirl in a circle or something like that.

These little blocks of “found time” can be super fun and rewarding for you and your dog!

I think a lot of folks fall into the trap of feeling like training needs to be a formalized block of focused time. More like Training than, you know, training. You can accomplish a ton in tiny increments, and it keeps it fun and frustration-free.

All that said, there is tremendous value in signing up for a class, or joining a group sport like agility, or having a science-based trainer out to your house to work on specific problem areas. But don’t let the lack of time to do those things now keep you from training at all!

All you need is a few minutes, a clicker (or “yes!”), and some yummy treats, and you’ll find that you have plenty of time for dog training when it becomes part of your everyday routine!

As for the rest of my time, like the writing blog posts time, well… that’s still a work in progress.

Your turn: How do YOU find time to work with your dog? I’d love to know what tricks and tips you have up your sleeve!

My Dog-Training Mentor and Inspiration

01•12•17

When I saw the theme for this month’s positive reinforcement pet training hop–my training mentor or inspiration–my first thought went to trainers whose work I devour: Patricia McConnell, of course. Victoria Stilwell. Debbie Jacobs. Et cetera.

But I wouldn’t know about any of those amazing women without their critical predecessor.

When I started to really think it through, it hit me that my one-and-only dog-training mentor and inspiration, the one who pushed me into the world of positive reinforcement and canine cognition and group training classes and desensitization and counter-conditioning… all of it… could only be Lucas.

It had to be him.

See, when we adopted Emmett in 2006, we thought we knew what we were doing. My bestie taught dog training classes, and we enrolled in her group class the day after we brought Emmett home from the shelter. He did great in class. He did great at home. He did great at the park and at parties and out shopping.

This is so easy, we thought. Let’s adopt another.

Enter Lucas.

All of a sudden–before we even left the parking lot of the animal shelter, actually, when we discovered that he was so afraid of cars that he would. not. get. in. to go home… and what the heck do you do in a busy parking lot with dogs everywhere and you have the dog who you’ve known for 30 minutes who has turned himself into a Tasmanian devil to keep from getting into the backseat of the car? what. do. you. do.–we understood that we knew nothing about dog behavior.

Sure, we could teach tricks and manners and such.

But nothing that resembled teaching behavior.

The agony of those first few months… he didn’t want to be patted. He didn’t wag his tail. He didn’t play with Emmett. He didn’t snuggle. What he did want? He did want to throttle every single dog he saw, and we saw a lot because we lived in a dog-friendly condo building next to a dog-filled park in DC. He did want to chew our chairs to toothpicks. He did want to have total melt-down panic-attacks daily.

Once we tried to list all the things he was scared of, but it was an impossible feat. Let’s just say he was scared of the TV being on and of plastic bags, along with everything else you can think of.

Oh, and we had this crazy accident in which giant Lucas got so scared on a walk he took off like a shot, but I had the leash gripped so tightly that he flung me into a No Parking sign and into the road. My face and arms were crazy bruised, and I had my 30-day review at my new job that week.

What scared him?

Our neighbor drove past and said, “Hi, guys!” out his car window.

There were tears. Lots of tears.

But there was also this gleam in his eye. Like, we could see him in there. And he and Emmett were slowly becoming the very best buds. Once they started to play, they never, ever stopped. They began to cuddle together on a dog bed. Then he began to cuddle with us and wag and play with us and with toys. He was in there.

Then we’d open our front door, and he’d retreat.

We met with several trainers who gave him a label: aggressive. Thank goodness we kept seeking other answers because we knew he was just flipping terrified.

That was our foundation.

We knew him. We knew he was in there. We knew just how fun-loving and playful he was. It was just hard for him to access that part of himself because the defenses he built were so thick and so high and so dense that it took monumental effort to dismantle them.

Those efforts kicked off the positive reinforcement journey.

And oh, how it changed all our lives. By the time we lost Lucas in 2015, he was himself. He was that fun-loving guy that was in there hidden by fear because the fear (well, most of it) was gone.

He LOVED doggy daycare! I mean, who knew?! That first year, that second year, if you had told either John or I that Lucas would be enrolling in cage-free daycare and boarding there, we would have split our sides laughing so hard.

But he did, and he loved it to pieces.

At a reactive dog group class Lucas and I took, one of the our classmates turned to me at one point and said, “Are you really sure he’s reactive?”

Highest praise I’ve ever received.

But the thing is, I was taking that class with him seven years after we had adopted him. He was never “fixed” or whatever. We learned his triggers and how to manage them, but we worked at it. Constantly. And had backslides.

He was so fun. Such a big, fluffy ball of love, filled with light and laughter. He loved hanging out with people and wrestling with dogs.

He still had his fears, and they’d crop up sometimes unexpectedly. But, at the end of the day, I learned so much from him, my training mentor and inspiration, about patience and about perseverance. I learned how resilient a dog can be and how the best things in life take the hardest work.

He was my teacher and carried a little piece of my soul with him. I’m grateful for all the lessons he taught me, and I sure wish he were still around to guide me.

I could sure use some help with Cooper. 🙂

The gift of positive dog training: kindness

12•09•16

Let’s say you’re at school hanging out on the playground. Another kid has some pieces of candy that you really want. You have two possible courses of action: Shove the kid over and snatch a piece, or ask him nicely if he’d be willing to share. The outcome in both instances is the same. You end up with a piece of candy. But in one, you’re a jerk, and in the other, you’re a friend.

Which one do you want to be?

OK, yes, there’s no question that that scenario is a gross oversimplification, but when you compare modes of dog training… it’s not too far off. I want my dog to sit. I can ask him nicely–through positive training techniques like luring or shaping–or I can shove his butt on the ground. In both cases, he sits. Mission accomplished. But in one, I’m a jerk, and in the other, I’m a friend.

That’s kind of how I think of it, and I’d always rather be a friend.

To me, that’s the gift of positive dog training. You have the opportunity to teach–and, thus, spread–kindness.

(Obvi, this pic is from over the summer. I snapped it after a round of Recall Relay, his favorite backyard training game. He looks so stinking happy in this pic that I thought it was the perfect representation of this topic!)

For dogs like Cooper, that’s particularly important. He’s a smidge neurotic, and what he’s totally fine with one day (nail clipping is nbd, yo!) he decides is terrifying the next (omg, get those clippers away from me, you devil you!) without warning. I need to work at his pace and accommodate his neuroses, and if I were the jerk, shoving him and pushing him and forcing him to do things that truly terrified him even if they make no sense to me whatsoever, maybe I’d get the same outcome but our relationship would suffer.

I’m not working against him.

I’m not pushing him or forcing him to do anything. With positive training, we work together. We’re building a partnership. He trusts me. He knows that if he’s scared, he can count on me to be there with kindness and, OK maybe not understanding (I mean, we clipped his nails for YEARS with the same clippers and never once cut the quick or anything negative, but now it’s terrifying?! huh?), but at least with gentleness and gratitude for his willingness to work with me.

Yes, sometimes he feels uncomfortable. Once we’re totally comfortable at one step, he has to go to the next step. That’s how it works. But by being kind, by being his friend, he trusts me to guide him to the other side of that discomfort, and he knows that when he gets there, I’m going to throw him one hell of a treat party!

This post in part of the Positive Pet Training blog hop, and this month’s prompt was “the gift of positive training.” Honestly, there are many gifts: that moment when you see the lightbulb flare to life in your pup’s head, that moment when something he was scared of becomes nbd, that moment when your tired-from-working-hard dog crawls onto your lap for a big snuggle. All that, to me, comes from the kindness inherent in positive pet training.

And that’s a gift that Cooper and I can keep on re-gifting to one another for the life of our partnership.

This month, thanks to the generosity of the blog hop hosts, there’s a positive pet training GIVEAWAY! Woop! You can enter to win two puzzle toys, a selection of treats, and a trick training book (it’s the same one Coop and I use).

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Thank you to our hosts, Tenacious Little Terrier and Rubicon Days, for making this possible!

Our neighbors got a puppy… and other stories

10•12•16

Our house sits on the corner of two streets that jut off in sharp angles. This creates a backyard shaped kind of like a triangle. Our house forms the base of the triangle, and the other two sides… well, it’s a shared fenceline with the house on either side.

One of those two sides, the left side, got a puppy.

A teeny little wiry thing that loves to screech at the top of his lungs at Cooper through the fence.

So, that’s awesome.

And while THAT statement is sarcastic, what is really, truly awesome is Cooper…

He stands at the fence and wags at the little guy, like, “Hey, friend! Wanna play?” When he gets frustrated that no play is commencing, he starts whining or barking back. But here’s the truly awesome part:

When I call him away from the fence, away from a potential playmate, he actually comes. And quickly, too! The couple times either he or the dog on the other side started digging at the fence, a behavior I do not want to encourage, I used our emergency whistle, and he FLEW! #soproud

When your dog does what you ask EVEN WHEN there’s another dog barking at the fence ? #goodboy #lovemydog #positivereinforcement #barkbarkbark
A video posted by Maggie Marton (@maggiemarton) on Oct 12, 2016 at 1:30pm PDT

These people next door… we haven’t exactly gotten a handle on them or who actually lives in that house. There are a number of people of varying ages who seem to come and go. I’m hoping we’ll encounter them someday and have a conversation, like, “Hey, maybe our dogs can play together!” Or maybe, “Hey, if your dog is outside barking for like three or four hours at a time, could I just lift him over our fence and let him and Cooper play before I go completely crazy, or…?”

***

Of late–or, maybe all of 2016 is more accurate–I’ve been feeling this incredible sense of overwhelm. Some of it’s irritating (will this election ever end?!) and some of it’s heartbreaking (will this election ever end?!).

My blog was hacked. Legit hacked. It took about a month and several hundred dollars to repair and restore. I’m on the other side of that debacle now, but… I was feeling so unmotivated, and that zapped me of the remaining energy I had.

I applied to two different sponsored campaigns for next week for two reasons: They’re both products we use and love, and I needed an actual, legitimate, nailed-down deadline to get posting momentum.

I need a push.

Do you ever feel like that? Like if a project or a task doesn’t have a date associated with it, it just keeps getting pushed out into the ether? I think because my writing life is entirely deadline-driven, that when I don’t have those dates for this space, nothing happens. Whoops. Look for those next week! 🙂 (And, thank you as always for supporting/liking/commenting on those sponsored posts! Blogging is a tough business, so we’re grateful to show sponsors support!)

Watching Emmett age and dealing with the hacked site and working on the house and working through big changes in my business and on and on… and I’ve let this space get pushed aside. Which I regret because I love chronicling their lives and telling our stories.

***

All that said, and to put some accountability on myself, I’ve been reading through your comments, questions, and emails. I’ve compiled some FAQs that will become posts.

Most notably, everyone wants an update on Emmett’s acupuncture. Coming VERY soon. I have lots to say on the subject after we experienced a major setback last week.

I also want to put something together about the emergency recall I mentioned above. It’s probably the most valuable thing I’ve ever taught Cooper, and it occurred to me that I never wrote about it!

If there’s anything else YOU would like, please do let me know in the comments!

***

Finally, I leave you with this story:

Since I started this post expressing pride in Cooper’s training, I have another similar story, though the “pride” bit got a little muddled.

Last Saturday, my sister and nephew, Owen, were over here, along with my brother, his wife, and their six-month-old baby.

We had lunch for everyone, including a big box of chocolate chunk cookies. Owen was dashing around the house, and when he picked up his cookie, I asked him to park it on the sofa to eat it so that the dogs couldn’t get it… their faces are at about cookie height for Owen.

As he was walking to the sofa, he stumbled and the cookie flew out of his hand.

Cooper, mere inches away, snatched it up.

“DROP IT!” I yelled.

And… I’ll be damned… he did!

Then Owen snatched up the cookie that had fallen to the floor and then into Cooper’s mouth and then onto the floor again… and shoved it in his mouth. “It’s my cookie, Cooper!” he said through a mouthful of cookie.

Guess I need to work on “drop it” with my nephew.