Gra-ju-ay-shun Day

Pappy and I ran into Louise's owner at the dog park this morning, and she said her intermediate class at Petsmart was graduating today. Argh. I had forgotten that my intermediate class was supposed to be graduating tomorrow, and I made plans to go to my father's for brunch. I decided I needed to have a proactive makeup class by attending Louise's graduation instead.

Kat, the instructor for both dog training classes (irony noted), is pretty relaxed about hopping between classes and I had done a makeup class before. Strangely, Louise never showed up. I don't even think I'm being particularly biased when I say that Pappy breezed past the other dogs in all the tests. He is brilliant of course, and calmer than average, but mostly he just likes food. Perhaps you guessed from the penetrating gaze in his graduation photo that a treat was involved.

Kat was encouraging all of us to continue training towards the Canine Good Citizenship Test, which is offered by our dog park. Pappy could blow through the tests, except that you can't use treats. What the heck are they thinking? Pappy's first commandment is "will work for food".

In Training

Pappy, my wife, and I have been taking the Petsmart intermediate training class for more than a month. To my eternal shame, we rarely practice at home and we're going to miss a class towards the end of the session. Despite this, in my unbiased opinion, Pappy is clearly the class star. He completes all of the exercises like a champ, rarely needing a mulligan.

One of the the few times we did practice at home, I used bits of leftover steak for treats. Man, it was like his IQ went up by a factor of three. I had him doing 'standing waits' while I sauntered the length of the yard, his tail gyrating like a propeller. As soon as I released, his paws never even touched the ground.

Back To School

For a while I have been talking about getting back on the training bandwagon with Pappy. We did beginner's training at Petsmart about a year ago. It didn't leave us with the sense of total mind control over the pooch, but it gave us a little structure and did more good than harm. So, to overcome inertia, about a month ago we stopped by Petsmart with the expectation of starting the intermediate class. As it turned out, the start of class was postponed until this coming weekend. We signed up.

Since then I have been in touch with Ferndoggle, who is my model for a training-focused owner. Plus some of her dog tribe have had similar issues to Pappy concerning leash aggression on encountering strange dogs-- a situation where I feel pretty lost. She has graciously done a little networking on my behalf to find good trainers in the Maryland suburbs of DC. Her recommendations included FourPositivePaws in Greenbelt, and the Washington Animal Rescue League, which is one of the shelters we frequented while searching for Pappy.

At this point I suspect we'll proceed with the Petsmart course to stay on track. I hate to lose our momentum waiting for a different class to start up, and we had a pretty positive experience with the beginner's class. The intermediate class deals with training with distractions, where we need a lot of work. I see some individual and more specialized training available from these other sources, and I think we certainly need to look at these too for some targeted training.

Sorry-- I made you read that shaggy dog story, and don't even have a punch line.

Leash Not-So-Niceness

We're still struggling with Pappy and leash aggression (earlier post). I came across this article, which is a pitch-perfect description of our situation-- pulling and lunging towards the other dog... barking and growling... my excuses that Pappy is friendly. The worst part is that I have been losing my patience and feeling a lot less kindly towards our pup during these incidents.

Yesterday we got a Gentle Leader, having heard it can help with training. As long as we've had Pappy, we've used an Easy Walk harness from the same manufacturer, but it was never markedly effective at preventing his pulling or lunging-- generally he's good on the leash away from other dogs, so switching hadn't been a big priority.

He fussed and bridled a bit after we first tried the Gentle Leader, but from there it's been very encouraging. Already good on the leash, he doesn't pull at all with the new collar. We ran into Taz, barky miniature Schnauzer, on the trail. Pappy wasn't barking-- but mostly because he started struggling with the collar rather than fixating on the dog, so it was kind of a mixed victory. I wouldn't call him "trained" or "desensitized" yet, but it gave me hope that I can draw his focus away from the other dog and start that process.

Ga-ga for Other Dogs

For a good dog, Pappy does drive me crazy with one thing. It could be that he is young, it could be that he's a terrier, it could be that I am too nervous, but Pappy has a lunatic drive to engage every dog that he sees on a walk. From fifty feet the ears go up and he starts pulling towards the dog. At twenty feet I can no longer get his attention. At five feet, if he gets a chance to sniff with a calm dog, all is well. Otherwise, he's jumping, he's lunging, and-- no longer content to whine in frustration -- he's recently taken to barking and growling at strange dogs. I see so many dogs who can pass calmly, and I want me some of that.

He's good with other dogs at the off-leash dog park, so he's pretty well-socialized. The difference on-leash is that he's being restrained, and I am probably stressing him out. There are some interesting articles on clickersolutions.com about desensitizing dogs to other dogs, but I am still trying to do too many things at the same time. This morning Pappy had some success at staying calm while Taz, a sweet-but-barky mini schnauzer, passed by. But then Taz's owner stopped to chat and eventually the whole thing disintegrated into the typical conflagaration.

But it is always important to remember, as weird as your dog gets things could be so much worse.

Greatest Training Successes

As we've noted before, Pappy was one of the champeen students in his doggy class. He's reached some level of mastery with come, sit, and down when he's inclined to obey. But there are some things we seem to have inadvertently taught him with absolute success:

A) We have accidentally taught him to stand at the back door as if he wants to come in, then, as soon as we open the door, race out in the back yard to coax us to come out and play.

B) He used to flop down in the grass to gnaw on his squeaky ball in relative peace. In the past two weekends we have somehow trained him to come up to you sitting at the patio table, walk under your legs, drop the ball, and then start scrambling around for it so that it feels like you are sitting on a washing machine-- until you finally pick it up and throw it.

C) We learned him very early on to take his squeaky or tennis balls into the TV room, place them right next to the bookshelf, and then "accidentally" poke it under the bookshelf with his paw or nose. Then he scrabbles around with his paw under the bookshelf, occasionally whining in complaint until you pull it out. (Thankfully he never starts barking, so you have the option to ignore him until he settles down.)

It takes constant repetition and reinforcement to train one's dog to do these tricks, but you can do it too!

Beginners Training

I saw a posting on Craigslist the other day about training for a new dog in the DC area. The author talked about considering the Capital Dog Training Club, but was looking for recommendations.

Let's face it, I know bupkis about training. And I am as "fight the power" as the next guy about megaconglomerates. But, you know what? I believe in Petsmart classes... they're convenient, they're regularly scheduled, the classes fill rather than cancel, and they are pretty cheap. I don't know whether there are huge differences in the quality of trainers and materials, but 90% of the battle is the owner getting started and keeping at it. Once you get the knack, then it seems like you can read a couple of books and forge off on your own.

The Head of the Class!!

Today, Pappy graduated from beginner training school; he's got brains and beauty. During final exams, he had a record-setting run of 15 sits in a 30 second period, shattering the previous record of 13 sits from another class. He followed this with a class-best eight downs in 30 seconds. We would have tied or beat the record of nine, but for a minor treat miscue between Papster and his mom. Our secret? Under normal circumstances he is no more inclined to follow commands than the next mutt, but where there are some treats to be had he is super-focused dog. Also we took him to the dog park prior to class, where he worked all the distractability out of his system with his pals Jack and Sweet Pea.

Unremarkable update!

Pappy attended his fifth training class today, and was the star when it came to "down-stay," if I do say so myself. We went for a walk on the C&O Canal by Great Falls, and Pappy turned many heads with his unconventional good looks. This evening he gets to visit with his adopted cousin, Ruby, a mutt of great good nature. The two should have some fun racing around.
More later!!!