Margot had to say goodbye to her Golden Retriever friend today. She had adjusted very well to the puppies in the group.
She was a little more hesitant when meeting my older dogs. I still did the meetings one on one to make sure it was a good experience and to make sure I could still get her attention.
She did a lot of appeasement gestures. That's not bad at all but it was clear she knew these dogs were older and not like her peers.
If she's a little bit nervous about a dog, I make sure the other dog doesn't rush up to her or overwhelm her and I give her an opportunity to check out the other dog.
Once she was acclimated to one dog, I gave her a chance to acclimate to the other dog alone.
When we go a little slowly, she adjusts much more quickly. I was soon able to bring out both dogs at the same time.
All throughout, I want to make sure to reward her when she checks in with me.
She need only come up and give me eye contact but, if she is sitting, that's a bonus.
It allows me to reinforce that polite greeting at the same time.
New dogs, higher distraction so when I call her to come the first time, I get fairly close to her before calling her. I'm clear and consistent with my cue, "Margot, come!"
Our goal is to get her to respond so we want to set her up to succeed.
Now that she's coming more quickly, I expect a sit when she comes to me. This just adds a little more self-control in and prevents her from crashing into me when she gets to me.
When she is easily able to respond and I'm able to reward her, she's warmed up and we can start to increase the difficulty.
I can do that by either increasing the distance I am from her before I call her or increasing the distraction level.
This should be a fun behavior for her to do. She should love coming when called as much as we love seeing her run full force towards us when we call.
It should be a very rewarding thing for her.
She gets a lot of praise...
She gets rewarded with tasty treats AND she might even get to go play again.
Speaking of exciting behaviors, she was very excited to get to work on the Treat & Train today.
We'll warm up on duration to start since that's where we left off yesterday.
But we were quickly able to move onto distraction and I could introduce small amounts of movement around her.
As I am moving, I am rewarding her by pushing the button on the remote control.
It's hard for dogs to not follow movement so I want to make sure my rewards are timed so that she understands that I want her to stay in that position.
I was quickly able to add in more fast movement as I rushed passed her. It would have taken much longer to do this if I was manually rewarding her.
I'm also starting on working on the components of a door greeting without a guest at the door. When someone is at the door, she is too excited to learn. We need to teach her those skills without the added distraction of a guest so she understands what behavior we expect of her at the front door. When we started, I started very slowly and just touched the doorknob while I was rewarding her. We slowly built up to opening the door.
She likes this one so much she didn't even want to get up when I released her.
To help with the counter surfing, we practice putting temptations on a table or counter. If she jumps for it, I quickly whisk it away and she doesn't get anything.
But, if she sits politely....
I will give her the temptation.
Good things come to those who wait.
No comments:
Post a Comment