A short clip from Intermediate Life Skills class last night. Hamilton is practicing his leash walking skills while Wallen practices his stay with distraction. Behind the screen is Maisy who is working on being less anxious in novel settings. These three handlers are doing amazing work with their pups! I'm confident that all three youngsters will turn out to be beloved, well behaved family dogs!❤
All classes are canceled tonight due to the weather🌨. Kite and Jemma got extra training time today! Working on down with distraction.
#positivereinforcement #bordercollie #dogtraining #bluerockdogtraining
Littermates Lucy and Jemma working on wait!
Don't you love to see your dog be joyful? Jemma plays with such joy it makes me smile!
Helping dogs and people find more joy is why I created Learning with Games! This class teaches your dog concept skills like Focus, Confidence, Calmness, Grit, Relationship, Communication and Impulse Control while teaching practical skills like Recall, Drop it, and Body Awareness and tuning up skills like sit, down, and stay.
All this while having fun and playing games!
If your dog can work around other dogs then they can join the class! It starts 10/17 at 6pm. Each week we will learn several skills and then put them into practice with games that will build your relationship with your dog. We will meet 10/17, 10/24,10/31,11/7, and 11/28. The cost for all 5 classes is $160. To register click the link below!
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=22014575&appointmentType=53668048
People often ask how old a puppy needs to be to begin training. The sooner you begin the better! Here is Jemma, 14 weeks old, showing off some of what she knows.
Reed demos his "go to crate".
One of yesterday's training sessions was with Dan and Wisco. Wisco is learning to be calmer on the boat so he can go to work with Dan. I love working with them! Harrison Anglers
Huge success story alert!! In March I met Dudley. He is an 8 year old terrier x. In March he was biting his human and the other dog in the household multiple times a week. He would get over aroused and redirect to whoever was nearby. He would be over aroused by people, dogs, trucks, loud noises, or squirrels. He also would resource guard any type of food item, but also random items like pens or shoes. Yesterday was our 5th session working together. We met at Unity Park and walked out to Avenue A and back to the park and on the bike path. We saw multiple dogs, skateboards, children, adults, squirrels, bicycles, cars, trucks, and a motorcycle. At one point a plastic grocery bag blew at us and actually hit Dudley. It startled him but he never lunged or barked, and no one was bitten! You might not be able to see it in the video, but there was a dog to our left. Dudley was aware but totally calm and focused. The quality of life improvement for Dudley, his human, and the dog he lives with is just incredible! He hasn't bitten anyone in weeks now, and with a combination of managment, training, and medication, he's no longer resource guarding food or random items. I can't wait to see what the future holds for Dudley as his world continues to expand.
Teddy the 12 week old Corgi came to visit yesterday! Watch as he learns while he plays. He's learning to give up his toy by getting something really good. The first time, Lottie offers him a treat to "Trade " for his toy. The second time he offers to drop his toy before the treat even comes out! That's how we start by using food to teach a behavior and then fade the food from the picture while still rewarding the dog. We teach trade in Puppy class and Life Skills class because it's such a powerful, useful behavior.
And another "stay challenge " video. I instructed them to walk around their dogs, do jumping jacks, silly walks, dancing etc. It was a fun class!
Practicing challenging stays in class last night. Teach your dog that"stay" is a game!
Doz allowed me to grind his nails a little last night! Looking over the videos, I can see some mistakes I made. I went too long, about 10 minutes, when I should have quit with 2 minutes for each dog. But it's so exciting when you make progress! Next time I will set a timer to keep me from going too long. I only show Doz working here, but Brook was working too. Watching the video of her, I can see I need to go slower with Brook, but both dogs are making progress!
Today's installment of nail grinder training. 4 dogs, though Bel is always off camera here. The cover is on the grinder and I'm really just building a positive association with it. Reed and Glen are both pretty chill about it already. You can see that I get too close to Brook with it at one point, she jumps up but agrees to come back for a little more training. This is 2 string cheese sticks worth of training, approximately .5 cheese stick per dog.
Reed doesn't seem to care at all about the grinder.
Over the next few weeks I'm going to be teaching my dogs to love getting their nails trimmed. I recently bought a nail grinder(I'm holding it in the video). I am starting by building a positive conditioned emotional response to the grinder. I have it running and I'm feeding the dogs while it runs. Let's see how many training sessions it takes before they come running when I start it! Training all 6 dogs at once here. Next time I'll use treats that are already broken since breaking the nugget was difficult as you'll see in the video😂.
