Mike’s Doghouse

It seems as though every time Mike and I get ready to start service dog specific training, something happens. He hurt his leg then Joella needed surgery on one of hers, and now I’ve broken one of my own! Will the fun never end?

At any rate, we are working with Mike on stopping his biting. He doesn’t hurt very often but will grab a shirt sleeve or pants leg and get skin, too. We are doing the “ouch!” and turning our back. I don’t allow the rough play anymore, either, which is hard for both of us to give up.

His scent-marking behavior is all but gone. He still marks Jo’s raised feeder every few days and recently found a new spot in the hall way after some things were moved around. Do I trust him to not hike a leg in public? Not yet, because we’ve not had a chance to get out there yet, dammit!

As we play, I use cues like “let me have it” and “get it” and others, getting him used to those terms. He releases an object easily which is a good sign.

Let’s see, what else? He’s going through a growth spurt but I don’t think he will be a big dog afterall. The last time we were at the vet’s, he still wasn’t 50lbs yet. If he reaches 70, I’ll be surprised. He’s a tall boy, just not filled out at all.

Oh, as for his hip injury, it was all soft-tissue like a strain or sprain. He had x-rays taken which were evaluated by an orthopedic vet who said all was great! Joella’s recovering slowly from her surgery. She has arthritis fairly bad in her back legs and we’ve started pain management now. Some days she is a puppy, other days she doesn’t want to move. I can understand that.

Mike is doing great with training. There are only a few issues such as Loose Leash Walking but even that is getting better. We started Basic Manners II classes last week (then had to skip the second class last night). That class is going to be quite intensive. I’m going to have to do most of it from my chair which will be interesting.

Mike’s DOWN is great! His SIT is solid although on a slick floor, or if we remain in one place too long, he will slide down. His WAIT is good but the length of the WAIT is short. He will remain still most of the time while I move around him but he will almost always get up when I move behind him. His RECALL is excellent, too. I use two different terms for RECALL. One is his name repeated in a friendly, playful, high pitched voice (Mikeymikeymikeymikey!). The other is the usual ‘Mike, Come’ and is done in a deeper, more authoritative voice. He responds to both the same. He comes charging from wherever he was, full speed.

I’ve started switching away from the clicker and more to a voice cue (Yes!). When I use the chair, it is too difficult to maneuver the chair, hold his leash, watch where I am going, and click the clicker. He responds just fine to Yes! as long as I have a treat. He’s not too sure about it if there’s no treat involved. He is very food motivated but I think he will not be too difficult to wean away from that. But I also know I will have to keep treats with me at all times for quite a while.

The one improvement I’ve seen is he is calming down in new situations. I can put him in a DOWN and he will stay there. He’s even flopped over onto his side if I remain in one place long enough. We will be going to different places and getting him used to being calm while at my side. I will have to restrict him getting pets. With Joella, it didn’t interfere with her learning or working. But with Mike, I think it will. I think with him, wearing the cape is going to be a big signal for him. Jo is the same no matter where she is (especially once she matured). But Mike will need that cape to signal it is working time vs “the world loves me and must pet me” time.

Mike and I (along with Lorna and Sam) went to our second Basic Manners class today. Technically, I guess you could say it was the first class since the dogs didn’t attend the original first class but we’ll not confuse me further and just call this one the second.

Anyway, it really felt as if a lot of what we are covering was already done in Puppy Class. Gail, the instructor for that class, stopped by to pet Mike and I mentioned this to her. She said to use this as an opportunity to get SIT and FOCUS really strong in Mike and that the next class or so will start in with new things.

We worked on SIT, FOCUS, and Loose Leash Walking today. It is hard for me to do the leash work because we are confined to a small space and I must turn around a lot. Mike is great loose leash walking in such a small space but as soon as class was over and we headed toward the door? Oy. We eventually got to the truck (after stopping many many times) and got him loaded. Mike knows SIT really well although he is trying to get away with not doing it. Part of that is my fault since I am giving him second (and even 3rd!) tries to do it. I need to get back to Say It Once.

We tried out a new harness today, another front connecting one called the Sense-ation harness produced by Softouch Concepts. This one was the original design produced before Gentle Leaders’ Easy Walking Harness. We tried this one because the design is supposed to be a little better with narrow chested breeds (such as young Mike) in that it doesn’t cut into their armpits as bad as the Easy Walker did. Mike liked it and I think I will order one. He certainly pulled less while it was on! Sam had on one of Joella’s old harnesses that has a metal ring in the front. He did so well with it that Lorna got one of the Easy Walker’s for him to try out this week. Since he is much wider at the chest, the strap shouldn’t bother him.

Everyone says how cute and handsome Mike is. He is growing taller each day! I need to get some pictures of Mike, Sam, and Joella sitting together. Easy enough since they all know WAIT. Ha.

We didn’t have it tonight. We left early to stop at a pet store and pick up some treat/bait bags. So we missed the phone call telling us class had been canceled. The training place has a policy of following the county school schedule in terms of snow days. Buncombe county didn’t have school today so class was canceled. The roads were fine. We got there with dry roads the entire way.

I’m a little perturbed but, well, there ya have it.

We’ll try it again next week.

In the meantime, Mike needs to learn more about getting in and out of vehicles. He escaped today but luckily it was at the training place and he went right to the door. Sam (and Lorna!) needs to learn, too, but I’ll have my hands full with Mike.

As I’ve said in a previous post, Mike will eventually have a long list of tasks, commands, and cues (yeah, there’s a difference) under his belt, er, collar. For now, though, we are working on the basics of good manners every dog should know.

This Tuesday we go to our first Basic Manners dog training class. Lorna and Sam will be going, too. We went last week without the dogs to meet the instructor and get our first homework assignment. We were to come up with a list of things things we wanted to teach or encourage and things we wanted to stop or discourage. (I talked more about the first class already) I started Mike’s list a few days ago.

Stuff to Teach/Encourage:

loose leash walking
off
down
come
drop it

Stuff to Stop/Discourage:

Stick eating
jumping up
calmer pre-meal behavior

We didn’t make it to the dog park in Asheville the other day but we did go to downtown Weaverville to eat outside at one of our favorite restaurants, Blue Mountain Pizza. We took Mike and Joella. Jo did very well, as always. Mike on the other hand, well, walking on the leash is going to be a top priority. I don’t walk fast anyway but it took a very long time for me to get from the truck to the tables on the porch. Each time Mike pulled or lunged, we came to a stop. I didn’t say anything, just stopped. If he didn’t turn to look at me or at least ease on the leash, I twitched it to make him move toward me. When he did, I said YES and that he was a good boy and we took a step. Sigh. Rinse, repeat. On our way back, with him having sat and watched the world go by and lost some of his excitement, he and I actually go to where we could go about four steps before we had to come to a stop. But this time, it wasn’t that he was lunging with excitement. No, the crazy pup was chasing leaves, seed puffs, and whatever else was blowing in the wind! It was funny as heck but still, when he pulled, we stopped.

As for the others, most of it he is slowly getting, except for OFF. We realized he hadn’t a clue what that meant. Since he is in the crate at night, and we keep the gate up to the bedroom, he doesn’t get up on the bed that often. He does get up on the recliner, though, and that is where we will work with teaching him OFF. It is difficult for me to teach him DOWN so I can only work on that on good days. Up on the bed, he is just too excited for me to work with him. COME he is getting good at. I am really impressed! I can say “Mike, Come” and he will…if he hears me. We also use “Mikey Mikey Mikey Mikey” (saying it very excitedly) and he will race from where ever he was.

As for what to discourage, oy, the boy has got to stop eating sticks! And bark! And walnut shells! And dirt! And styrofoam! And anything else he can find outside! It’s why he’s not out playing more. If we let him out unsupervised, he eats nothing but that stuff until his poop looks like particle board material. Even when we are watching him, he still eats quite a bit before we get the stick or whatever away from him. We call this process (pulling stuff out of his mouth, often quite far back in his mouth) Dumpster Diving. Jumping up is becoming a problem. He is bigger now (way bigger) and has the weight behind him to do damage. We’ve discouraged it, of course. It’s just time to get all serious about it now. And meal times is getting downright dangerous. He sits when we put his bowl down and waits until released. But prior to that? He’s a maddog. Starting in the morning, we will be working with that. I will get up and hold him back during the entire process, keeping him in a SIT STAY until Lorna puts his food down. Mike eats last which means each of the other four bowls going down involves a lot of “back off Mike” “stop Mike” “Mike it’s not yours” etc etc. He used to have this cute jump in the air and pivot so he is facing the opposite direction thing going when Lorna came toward him with his bowl. Not so cute now that he is over 40lbs and way way taller.

Oh, and as a side note, the medication for his urge incontinence seems to be working. Now we are just backing up and working on house training as if we’d not done anything before. He’s not drawing pictures, but he still gives no notice he has to go. We started using the timer again today and I’ll continue it tomorrow. We will also be using the new crate more. It is big enough he can move around and he likes it in there. He still insists on sleeping in the smaller crate in the bedroom. Anyway, here’s hoping the house training actually starts to take!

Like we learned in class last night, there are three stages to training. I can’t remember the first two (and I’m too lazy to get up and find the notes) but the third is the “proofing”. This is answering “will Mike do this behavior outside the normal area”.

Today I had to take the truck back to the transmission place for its 14 day check up and to have them check on a problem with it. The repair place had a “no pets allowed” sign on the door so Mike and I stayed outside. This was good for him because he was exposed to a lot of different things. We were just a few feet away from a busy side road and just beyond it was a major 6 lane highway. Cars and trucks and motorcycles were whizzing passed us. There were people coming and going from the repair place, there were employees doing their thing, and then there was Mike.

He did fairly well. We worked on SIT and WAIT/STAY. He got better at it the longer we were there. It was cool to watch him process all the stimulus in addition to me asking him to sit and stay there. The longer we were there, the better he got. He was excited when he saw the truck come to park near us. He was really weirded out earlier when some guy got in it and drove it away!

I had to push down on Mike’s butt a lot. Probably, in the beginning, I was putting him in a sit over half of the times I asked him to sit. That percentage changed and was much lower by the time the truck was repaired and we could go. I didn’t have the clicker with me nor did I have treats. I think it would have gone better if I had grabbed my bag when I got Mike out of the truck. We’ll have to try it again somewhere else.

Lorna has tomorrow off and we will be taking him and Sam to the dog park. We’ll also be taking my chair to see how much of it (getting into and out of the enclosed spaces) I can do on my own. If all goes well, it will be a place Mike and I will go often.

Lorna and I went to the first class for the Basic Manners at A Good Dog’s Life dog training. Lorna will be taking Sam and I will be taking Mike. The first class was w/out the dogs. We discussed a lot of stuff we’d already covered in the puppy class but I think me and Mike are the only ones in this class that had taken their puppy class. Mike will be the youngest there, I think, at 6 mos (cannot believe he is that old already!). Sam will not be the oldest, though. In the class Lorna started to do earlier, I think he would have been the oldest by far at only 3 yrs. The teacher for this class will not be Gail (the Puppy Class instructor) but Susan Wilson. They have very different teaching styles. Lorna “got” what Susan was saying but didn’t really follow Gail. It is what works for each of us, just the same as the dog.

We have homework as usual. Most of it Mike and I already know or do so I will just work on distractions. This is when you have the dog do what it knows outside of the normal place it knows it. So since Mike and I train inside the house, we will be going outside some and, perhaps, going somewhere else such as Home Depot again. The idea is for the dog to do what you want him to do no matter where you are and no matter what is going on around you. If a dog will do a sit without reservation while in the middle of a busy pet store or hardware store, then chances are that dog is truly trained. This is especially important for Service Dogs. The safety and health of the handler is at stake, not just being embarrassed at misbehaving Fido.

Part of our homework is to list what behaviors we do not want or want to stop and what behaviors we do want or want to continue. I’ll post my list here when I get around to making it.

Phew! We finished!

And we start the Basic Manners I class in a few weeks.

Lorna went with us to see the other puppies. It was enlightening for her to understand why I am so tired at the end of a class. And it also got her to see what class for her and Sam will be like.

It was sad to realize we’d most likely never see these other pups again, to see how they turn out. I wish them all well and health as they grow and live and love.

…was canceled due to possible bad road conditions. We got a decent snow Tuesday/Wednesday and while the roads were clear, there was the threat of ice forming after it got dark. And with it being the last class, the instructor felt it would be nice if all the dogs could be there so we’re doing it next week.

We are to work on getting the pups out to new places and new things. I may be getting My Truck back today so hopefully Mike and I (and Joella) can go somewhere. Mike’s not been to the dog park yet.

Meanwhile, Mike is doing good. He SITS and WAITS until released when we put his food down. He sits and waits when we take his leash on and off. He’s not grasped DOWN yet, though. He is good with his RECALL although I’ve not worked that much with him on it. Same with STAY.

Not much to say this time. Mike and I didn’t go. Lorna was home sick with a cold and the cold weather had me in a lot of pain. The thought of going to class was just too much so we stayed home. The instructor, the wonderful Gail, sent me an email with the homework and handouts attached.

We’ve only got one more class left and we’re to work on some sort of trick. Heck, I just want Mike to tell me he has to go outside! DOWN would be nice, too. But we will work on a trick. Not sure what, yet. Any ideas?

Joella likes to lay on her back so we tagged it with “Dead Bug”. When we tell her “Dead Bug” she (sometimes) will roll over onto her back.