Mike's Doghouse

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.