So another week at Dog Training with Joey. I actually look forward to taking him each week, as he seems to improve a little bit each time. He also loves going in the car with me – he gets very excited by it all.
It’s nice as well to meet other people with new dogs, and some there with older dogs. You can see people get a little bit competitive about how well their dog is doing – me included 🙂 We probably need to spend more time practising in the week and be consistent – sometimes it can seem easier to just give in!! But long term that won’t be for the best.
We got some great advice this week from one of our customers regarding the disaster we had last week with Coco. If you remember she was less then friendly! Barking, growling, snarling and generally being a less then well behaved dog 🙂
Isolde has extremely well behaved dogs. Coco and Joey would get a total shock if they moved house! From her experiences training her 2 German Shepherds she gave us the following advice:
One thing we learnt the hard way was not to bring two dogs together to class. All they did was watch each other to see what was happening. If one was stressed the other picked it up even from a different end of the hall. Getting one to concentrate was impossible if the other was around. We also found that if one of us was visible nearby the other had no chance of keeping the dogs attention.
So we decided just to take Joey this week. He was great for the first 40 mins, but he does get a little bit distracted towards the latter part of the training. Overall though I felt he did better.
So What Did We Learn This Week At Dog Training?
1. Turn Away/Ignore – Joey is a terrible jumper. He jumps up on the counters, on you and I hate to say he even jumped up on the kitchen table once! So it’s really important that we get him to stop this. Firstly because I constantly seem to have 2 muddy paw prints on my top and secondly no-one wants their dog leaping all over their visitors! So the trainer spent some time showing everyone how when your dog jumps up you should just stand still, ignore/turn away – so that your dog has no interaction from you.
I always thought you should say ‘down’ or ‘no’ – but seems that ignoring them works best. We’ve been practising that all week, as it’s one of the things I want him to get the hang of first – and he seems to be doing it less. So we are getting there!
2. Lie Down – Joey is great at sitting, in fact he sits all the time now without being asked. I think he just associates sitting with getting a treat – so figures he’ll just get in there early and sit and save time! So the next step is for him to learn to lie down for the treat. He REALLY did not get this at all. He was getting really frustrated that he was sitting and you weren’t giving him the treat. Then he was standing up and sticking his bum in the air and tapping you with his paw. So that’s a job for this week to practice. I did show him the other dogs doing it 🙂 But he didn’t quite get that either!
3. Tips for Crate Training – We got a chance to ask questions at the end and I asked about crate training Joey. He wasn’t toilet trained when we got him and so we were crate training him. Coco was brilliant at this – was like a breeze to do it – but Joey just will not stop crying when you put him in there to bed. He starts with a small bit of whining and then goes into full blown sobbing, followed by small howls. There is nothing wrong with him – he just doesn’t like to be on his own.
So the trainer suggested putting him in there for smaller amounts of time and getting him used to it. I’m not sure how that’s going to work – as generally speaking he just hates you leaving him.
Overall a good trip. We now need to decide to we alternate the dogs each week or give it another try with them both together – we’ll have to see.
Let us know how you are getting on if you are training your dogs. We would love to hear any tips you have!
