Ahhh, my favorite thing. That nice pant when a dog has had a good amount of exercise. Mollie has had a lot of exercise today and it makes our sessions so much easier. It seems silly to exercise a dog before walking her but, unless you are walking for a long distance (several miles or more), dogs just don't get that much exercise from walking. And if she is a little more able to focus and maintain some self-control, I can reward her more for appropriate behavior. When she is rewarded for appropriate behavior more frequently, she learns much more quickly. Imagine if I could only reward her a few times during an entire training session. It would take a really long time for her to learn.
I start our leash sessions out with getting her attention. No point starting out a walk until she is checked in with me otherwise we'll spend the whole time struggling to get her attention back. I'm also going to end our walks this way. In fact, every time I stop, I'm going to expect her to sit beside me. This will help her stay more engaged with me and realize that she has a task to do (we're not just willy nilly walking on the leash). Right now I am luring her into that sit but very soon I'll stop and wait for her to sit. If she doesn't, I'll follow up with a hand signal and, of course, lots of praise when she does the correct thing.
I'm also going to be sure to stop or turn around if she gets ahead of me. Allowing her to pull reinforces that behavior. It feels good to them to pull so every time they do it, it makes it all that much harder to fix the problem. While she's walking nicely next to me, I'm going to talk to her, praise her, and give her an occasional reward. Right now we are doing this in a low distraction environment but it won't be long until we graduate to more distractions.
We keep our training sessions short and include a lot of play in between sessions so it's fun for the dog and keeps her interest. Not to mention it's a great stress reliever.
She loves the play part and gets along with all the dogs very well!
Even when some of those dogs feel a need to get really close.
And lots of time for rest. We are definitely wearing her out!
It's really nice, too, when you can nap with friends. Although I think maybe she's taking up more than her fair share of the dog bed. Not to worry, no one seems to mind. They all love Mollie!
We've been giving her appropriate chew toys to keep her mouth occupied too. She did throw up a little piece of plastic on her first night so we want to make sure she has plenty of healthy things to keep her busy. She's an adult now and has had her adult teeth for quite some time but she still has a need to chew. This might also be a little more intense if she needs some exercise. Every once and a while that little whirlwind inside of her needs to come out.
She's offering sits for greeting much more now. Once we have that pretty solid at home, we'll take our show on the road and head off to the pet supply store to work on greetings with people there.
But better rest up before that time. It's hard work being such a cute girl...
No comments:
Post a Comment