Day 3 - Change of Plans

Atticus is doing great on his name recognition and attention. I get a nice, happy response every time I call his name. It helps all his other training fall into place. Such a nice boy...

We're finding plenty to distract him to work on his recalls.

And even with a lot of distraction, he's coming consistently when called. This is great because I can use this to call him towards me and get his attention on me if he starts his demand barking. He is already improving on that and not demand barking nearly as much.

We worked on several things today that were difficult for Atticus. He worked on the stairs some. I like to carry puppies up the stairs most of the way and have them finish the top part of the stairs so they have some success. I will slowly bring them down a little bit lower each time so they are completing more of the stairs each time. I do this on the way down too. Atticus seems to have the down part mastered pretty well but we're still working on the up part. It won't be too much longer before he is too big to carry part way up the stairs so we're hoping for success on this task.

Additionally we started heading outside to work on getting in the car. I was planning on rewarding him for getting close to the car and repeating the exercise until I got a really happy response when we were getting close to the car (over time working our way into the car). But our training got sidetracked. Atticus was hesitant to go outside. In the picture above you can see he is licking his lips. This is a sign that he is not comfortable...not to mention the fact that he put on his brakes and would not move forward. I'm not sure if it was the stairs at the front of the house or the traffic noise or a combination of the two but most definitely he did not want to go further. So, instead of working on the car today, we worked on the front door. We first worked inside the house close to the closed entry way door. When I was getting a really good response from him, I opened that door. We slowly worked our way into the entry way. Eventually we got to the point where I could open the front door and he could hear the noise and the traffic and I was getting a really happy response from him. Not wanting to push our luck and pleased with our progress, I ended the session there. Tomorrow we will see if we can get out the door. If we can, we will do a similar process with the car.

I should also note, I dropped his leash when he started balking at the door. I didn't want to force him into going some place where he was not comfortable and because we were inside in a safe environment, I could just drop his leash and let him make the call whether he wanted to move forward or not.

All this hard work makes a boy thirsty....

Oh, and Atticus would like to report my dog, Sinbad, for leaving toys in Atticus' crate in trade for the ones he is stealing from Atticus. Naughty boy...crate door is closed now.

Day 1 & 2 -- Meet the crew

Atticus is having a grand time...he's not even sure this is actually work! We've been working a lot on name recognition which I know he's worked on a lot at home so I imagine it is a little harder for him here as is a bit more of a distracting environment. So frequently saying his name and rewarding him with a small treat when he looks at me in increasingly more distracting environments. I like to spend a lot of time on attention work (getting him to pay attention to me no matter what is going on around him) so that other things like sit, down, come and stay start to fall into place. It's hard to get a dog to respond to a request if they aren't paying attention to you.

And Atticus has had plenty of distractions here. He's getting along great with all the dogs. I can use play with other dogs as both a reward and a distraction in our training. It's helpful if a dog can respond to you no matter what is going on around him. Play is also an essential part of being a happy healthy puppy. He's getting an opportunity to interact with several safe dogs of various sizes and breeds. It's important to his socialization to have these types of interactions to help prevent the development of fear or aggression issues with other dogs.

And I can use the opportunities to make sure he will still be attentive to me and come when called. I'm also going to reinforce him if he comes and checks in with me during a play session. And he is very good at that! How nice to have a dog who wants to check in and interact with you even when there are fun dogs around to play with. What a good boy!

Home is a great place to practice all this attention because, even though it's pretty distracting here, it's not nearly as distracting as the outside world. I want to make sure I'm not putting him into a situation where it is too hard for him and all this practice will help when we go out on outings.

We ended our training session with an outing to a pet supply store. We worked on some nice loose leash walking. This is harder with new distractions and he was pretty unsure about the traffic. So stopping and encouraging him to return to me and then rewarding him while he was walking nicely beside me did the trick. Anytime he got ahead of me, I stopped. I don't want him to be rewarded for pulling on the leash and, if he is allowed to walk ahead, it's like giving him a cookie for pulling on the leash.

He was very excited to meet all the people in the store. They are all very nice and come bearing tasty, healthy treats. Perfect for socialization! The other dogs in the store were pretty distracting to him so there were times when I had to get distance between us and the other dogs in order to get his attention. So I used distance and I increased the rate of reinforcement when he was paying attention to me. I made sure I had good, smelly treats and I would reward him more frequently for eye contact. It didn't take long before he was being really attentive in the store. The photo was taken at the end of our visit. He started panting a bit which indicated to me he was starting to get a little stressed. It's a good time to end the session at that point. A little stress is ok but you don't want to go much further than that.

It is definitely time for a nap after all that work! Maybe tomorrow we can conquer the stairs...