Zluta's further education (and mine)
It's been a busy month. Mostly I've been busy being challenged and sometimes overwhelmed by my tiny dog. I have to say, before I go on, that this is exactly what I asked for, and it is no fault of hers that I have to learn how to handle her.
The exception to "I asked for this" is that I asked for an adult dog with this personality, but I did know that getting a puppy would entail more, and when I heard she had been separated from her mother at four weeks I knew there would be even more. But the dog I found was a puppy and I went for it. So.
Zluta's actually a good dog, is learning fast, is affectionate and fun to be around. She also is willful and impatient, and she responds to her own needs by swarming all over me and btiing. She's getting better about that, and the bites have been open-mouthed puppy bites all along, but training her out of it is a process and also involves me learning to anticipate her needs and deal with them before she starts swarming. She's seven months old so I don't expect her to have a solid signalling system in place bu the poor dear doesn't seem to know what exactly she needs at any m oment. I mean she doesn't go eat food from her dish or drink from her bowl, and if we're upstairs she doesn't go out and pee in the yard. No, for any of these needs she will swarm all over me and bite around at the air, my clothes. my flesh, the computer. I have to call her to the food dish or the water dish and demonstrate the food or water to her. On a hot day this worries me quite a bit, so I get kind of pushy about showing her the water. She would like to drink from a water bottle but this is cumbersome and when I tried to let her do it on her own she chewed the spigot part off. She does not like small water bowls but I don't have a large container to use just yet.
As for food, I have chopped up the trader joe's freeze dried liver into teensy little bits and I sprinkle a couple-few of them in her food and then she will continue after I walk away.If she had her druthers I would hand feed her one morsel at a time. This comes in handy for training because she adores being given things and will perform whatever she thinks I'm after in order to continue this transaction. Except.
At the dog park a week ago Zluta decided she would like to explore the wide world beyond, in the directions she has seen other dogs go. We've been going to Derby Park, which has no direct connection to the streets. But the walkways to the streets are not long, and we'll recall I have one arthritic knee and one in recovery fromsurgery and a sore back, so I am not fast and I can't keep up with her when she decides she wants to put distance between us. When I had to use strangers to help me capture her the third time I decided no more. At home she's pretty good about coming when called, unless sometimes wshen the big dog next door is barking, or there are raccoons partying in the backyard, or creepy sounds coming from the street. In these cases she wants to bark by god. Actualy in all of these cases she comes whedn called most of the time now.
My first plan was to take her to the little park with the fence around it and just practice recall there until she was ready. In the meantime we just went for leash walks a couple times a day and got all her intense play done in the back yard with windfall apple fetch. But then Emma reminded me of a technique I had seen before (also with a young terrier), where you attach the dog to a long rope that you hold the other end of and do recall exercises like that.
So we set out for Harvey West Park where there are hardly any other dogs, because I thought it would be less distracting.But when we got there every parking place was taken up and mostly every inch of the park itself was filled with children in every conceivable sports uniform (there seemed to bed a picnic going on in several picnic areas, and also all three baseball fields were in use). So we ended up back at Derby Park.
I was worried about clotheslining the dogs and people that were running all around, but I concentrated really hard and kept her rope out of the way. There were lots of dogs and she was excited so I didn't try training her until the other dogs left and she had mellowed out. And then we had a great training session.She came every time. We are also working on one command just for fun, which I call "Hup Hup:" it's for her to jump up to get a treat.she loves jumping and being bipedal and there's so many situations where she is learning not to do that, so I thought it would be nice for her to have one where it is the desired behavior. She does seem to love it. I intersperse "Hup Hup" and "Zluta sits" irregularly to reinforce sitting and paying attention and she seems very happy with it.
She still needs to be ushered outside quickly for pee time because she'll just pee on the floor if she gets bored with the journey to the outside. First thing in the morning she wiggles on me and I carry her down the long stairs because she will pee on the stairs otherwise. I hope she outgrows this need.
We have a fundamental disagreement about the purpose of shoes, my nail brush, and paper. I think I am winning this argument, but it is gradual. On the other hand, she has trained me to work at the computer downstairs at the kitchen table instead of sitting on top of my bed. She hates me being up there. Because it is hot? It's okay for now. She doesn't mind me sleeping up there at night and she's willing to compromise with me reading in bed.
The exception to "I asked for this" is that I asked for an adult dog with this personality, but I did know that getting a puppy would entail more, and when I heard she had been separated from her mother at four weeks I knew there would be even more. But the dog I found was a puppy and I went for it. So.
Zluta's actually a good dog, is learning fast, is affectionate and fun to be around. She also is willful and impatient, and she responds to her own needs by swarming all over me and btiing. She's getting better about that, and the bites have been open-mouthed puppy bites all along, but training her out of it is a process and also involves me learning to anticipate her needs and deal with them before she starts swarming. She's seven months old so I don't expect her to have a solid signalling system in place bu the poor dear doesn't seem to know what exactly she needs at any m oment. I mean she doesn't go eat food from her dish or drink from her bowl, and if we're upstairs she doesn't go out and pee in the yard. No, for any of these needs she will swarm all over me and bite around at the air, my clothes. my flesh, the computer. I have to call her to the food dish or the water dish and demonstrate the food or water to her. On a hot day this worries me quite a bit, so I get kind of pushy about showing her the water. She would like to drink from a water bottle but this is cumbersome and when I tried to let her do it on her own she chewed the spigot part off. She does not like small water bowls but I don't have a large container to use just yet.
As for food, I have chopped up the trader joe's freeze dried liver into teensy little bits and I sprinkle a couple-few of them in her food and then she will continue after I walk away.If she had her druthers I would hand feed her one morsel at a time. This comes in handy for training because she adores being given things and will perform whatever she thinks I'm after in order to continue this transaction. Except.
At the dog park a week ago Zluta decided she would like to explore the wide world beyond, in the directions she has seen other dogs go. We've been going to Derby Park, which has no direct connection to the streets. But the walkways to the streets are not long, and we'll recall I have one arthritic knee and one in recovery fromsurgery and a sore back, so I am not fast and I can't keep up with her when she decides she wants to put distance between us. When I had to use strangers to help me capture her the third time I decided no more. At home she's pretty good about coming when called, unless sometimes wshen the big dog next door is barking, or there are raccoons partying in the backyard, or creepy sounds coming from the street. In these cases she wants to bark by god. Actualy in all of these cases she comes whedn called most of the time now.
My first plan was to take her to the little park with the fence around it and just practice recall there until she was ready. In the meantime we just went for leash walks a couple times a day and got all her intense play done in the back yard with windfall apple fetch. But then Emma reminded me of a technique I had seen before (also with a young terrier), where you attach the dog to a long rope that you hold the other end of and do recall exercises like that.
So we set out for Harvey West Park where there are hardly any other dogs, because I thought it would be less distracting.But when we got there every parking place was taken up and mostly every inch of the park itself was filled with children in every conceivable sports uniform (there seemed to bed a picnic going on in several picnic areas, and also all three baseball fields were in use). So we ended up back at Derby Park.
I was worried about clotheslining the dogs and people that were running all around, but I concentrated really hard and kept her rope out of the way. There were lots of dogs and she was excited so I didn't try training her until the other dogs left and she had mellowed out. And then we had a great training session.She came every time. We are also working on one command just for fun, which I call "Hup Hup:" it's for her to jump up to get a treat.she loves jumping and being bipedal and there's so many situations where she is learning not to do that, so I thought it would be nice for her to have one where it is the desired behavior. She does seem to love it. I intersperse "Hup Hup" and "Zluta sits" irregularly to reinforce sitting and paying attention and she seems very happy with it.
She still needs to be ushered outside quickly for pee time because she'll just pee on the floor if she gets bored with the journey to the outside. First thing in the morning she wiggles on me and I carry her down the long stairs because she will pee on the stairs otherwise. I hope she outgrows this need.
We have a fundamental disagreement about the purpose of shoes, my nail brush, and paper. I think I am winning this argument, but it is gradual. On the other hand, she has trained me to work at the computer downstairs at the kitchen table instead of sitting on top of my bed. She hates me being up there. Because it is hot? It's okay for now. She doesn't mind me sleeping up there at night and she's willing to compromise with me reading in bed.