Week 2 (15 Weeks)
(04/16/12)
Wt: 17.5 pounds
Monday
Other than once at two in the morning Nova has been awesome
with regards to doing her business outdoors.
With it being the start of a new week and the whole training with
regards to going outside has concluded I want to begin other things with
regards to training. Before I go into
that however I’d like to go over some things that I started the moment I got
home for the first time with Nova:
Leash
Training/Manners:
All too often I see people being dragged around by their
dogs while on leash. It irks me very
much so because, to me, it shows that the dog is in charge not the human. Often times they will remark “oh I don’t mind…” To this I say “bull%^&*” everyone hates
being dragged around by their dog, many have just given up or don’t know what
to do, in turn they have convinced themselves they don’t care. This may also have ramifications beyond the
simple walk according to many “experts”.
Note: I’m about to talk about a certain mindset with regards to dog
training that not everyone may believe in, but it may benefit you to read it
anyway. When you let your dog lead and
pull during a walk you let your dog believe that he/she is in charge. We obviously know that we are clearly in
charge as we go where we want, this isn’t that clear for the dog however. To the dog it seems like he/she leading and
thus is the “alpha dog”. As the name
implies, alpha’s do what they want whenever they want. Many people feel that letting your dog be
alpha dog results in many behavior issues.
I don’t agree with all the things posed by this mindset, I do agree with
some points however. You should have
your dog trailing you, with little or no sniffing with all the focus dedicated
to the walk. It is better for both you
and the dog. You: for obvious reasons,
and the dog: less strain on the neck for one, it also burns more mental energy when
the dog has to focus on walk at the same speed as you.
“How do you do this?”
you say? Well it’s quite simple as is
much of dog training all that is required is consistency, patience, consistency
and more patience. I have several ways
that one may go about leash training there dog.
These are all methods I have used as I rather not talk about things I
have experienced.
Positive Reinforcement Method: Put on the dogs regular
collar (not a pinch or choke collar) and start walking. As soon as the dog pulls the leash tight stop
moving and wait till the dog loosens up, then start walking again. Rinse and repeat. The goal is to tell that dog that the walk
stops when he/she pulls on the leash.
This is by far the hardest, I did this for 3 weeks with my old dog when
she was 7 months old and it was just beginning to work. Only do this if you want to shoot yourself…
Seriously though, expect a lot of time investment with this as it does take a
while.
Pinch Collar: Many
people hate pinch collars citing that it is inhumane and cruel etc etc. Often times (but not always) these people are
the ones whose dogs are not disciplined in anyway. The concept behind the pinch collar is that a
bunch of blunted metal prongs are pointed inward at the dogs throat. Every time the dog does something incorrectly
on the walk (i.e pulls on the leash) a weak tug or correction is done, this
tightens the links resulting a pinching sensation for the dogs that does hurt a
tiny bit.
Ok, now if you’ve never seen a pinch collar before the image
above may frighten you and you may end up jumping on the bandwagon an starting
yelling “durr huurrr durrr animal derp cruelty herp”. If not now comes the good part, if used
correctly (emphasis on correctly) you can get your dog heeling at your side in
under 5 minutes. In a day or two you
will rarely every have to pull on the leash to guide your dog. At around a month you can usually get rid of
the collar and go back to simple collar.
All this can be done with almost no pain to the dog and the presents of
collar is often enough. I will not go
over how to actually use a pinch collar as there are youtube videos out there
that do a far better job than text can.
I also don’t want any misunderstandings as using this tool incorrectly
is animal cruelty. This should only be
used on walks as well, using it to bully your dog into doing tricks or other
such things is unacceptable. I had ones
of these from day one and I used it on Nova, after about 20 yards she got the
message and never pulls on the leash again.
After about a month I will put away the collar and switch back to her
regular collar. One final thing to note:
this is not the same as a choke collar, and while it may not seem like it, a
choke collar can actually hurt a stubborn dog very slowly over the course of its
life, every time your dog sees a squirrel
or something it will go after it, and many times the dog won’t give a %^&
about constricted breathing and will just pull harder. A year or two later you have a dog that has a
damage trachea and you haven’t really solved the problem.
Physical Correction (not as bad as it sounds): I really like
this method, but it does require you to really “know” your dog and to have a
really strong bond with him/her. This
also requires the dog to have some understanding of what heel walking is. I have never tried this upfront to get a dog
to heel with a leash for the first time.
Instead, many months after owning my first dog I wanted to train her to
heel without a leash. Obviously a pinch
collar wouldn’t work here. The way it
works is you get your dog to heel, every time she brakes formation you get down
to the dogs level and tell them that they done wrong (no yelling or
angriness). Dogs are a lot smarter than
you think, and if your dog knows you well it will get the idea very fast.
If you want to finally have a dog that can heel you are free
to use any of the methods listed above but I would recommend the pinch collar
by far. Nova who is 15 weeks old heels
better than 95% of the dogs I see on the trail.
She is smart and is able to do so off leash just as well with minimal
training as dogs tend to understand the concept of walking by your side. You want to make sure to let your dog run
free though on occasion. I have a large
garden that spans the entire length of my apartment complex that I let Nova run
free in. Do this only if you are
confident in your dog not running away and you can recall your dog at any time
to head home.
There are also some other rules you should setup with your
dog around the house. They go as
follows:
Permission to exit and enter: If you don’t enforce this your
dog will run in and out of the house when the doors are open. You don’t want this, for safety sake primary
but it also lets you control your dog better, rules are a healthy part of
having a dog. While you may not mind,
what happens if you open up the door to let a guest in and your dog runs out at
a bajillion miles per hour (oh bajjilion is totally a real word). Your dog is most likely running about or
greeting the guest in his or her doggy ways and some people may not like
this. On a similar note you want to
control when your dog meets the guest.
This should be after the dog has calmed down and you’ve talked with the
person for a bit, the first time this may be a bit hard but tell the guest what
you’re doing and they’ll understand.
Using furniture: I
don’t care if my dogs use the couch or bed at all, however I am aware others
may not. One of the first things I did
when I got home was to teach Nova that she is not allowed on the couch or
bed. As I sat down on the couch she instantly
jumped up, I corrected her and pushed her off.
She quickly learned she’s not allowed.
From there I let her up only when I motion her to, while she does
occasional disobey when she’s excited she gets the idea. I just need to make sure I correct her every time
she hops up.
Chewing: As is obvious dogs chew, a lot. Since I’m already watching Nova like a hawk
(unfortunately I’m a hawk with ADHD) I can catch it when she starts to chew on
a sock or something. I scold her only if
I catch her in the act and then redirector her attention to one of her toys or
bones. Overtime this will make it less
likely that she will take out her chewing urges out on my computer hardware (my
headphone cables why!?!?!) and more on her toys.
Now that I’ve gotten most of my starting “things” done I’ll
go on with the week, hopefully you’ve gotten something out of this advice. If you want more information regarding
manners and obedience please leave a comment.
Wednesday
I’ve been busy with finals stuff so I haven’t been able to
write much on this blog. When I could write it’s been dedicated to getting the
above section done, but summaries are cool right?
The previous days have been quite standard, Nova is getting
better and better at peeing outside, her bladder size sucks but that’s to be
expected. I’ve also been practicing the
“here” command or recall often in the garden and she’s become quite good at
it. On Tuesday I started teaching her
“down” and that’s gone well
.
(One of the
first attempts at down, not going well)
After about 10 tries she became and pro and was doing “down”
over and over. That’s the hard part
done, all I need to do now is slowly remove the treats and hand motions with a
ton of repetition.
(Success!)
I’ve also increased the walking distance drastically, she
now gets a 40min walk in the morning and a 15 min walk in the afternoon, and
after every walk she sleeps better than a baby koala.
(“Seriously,
you used flash as well? Let me sleep!”)
While in the backyard today Nova found another “good”
stick. Most of the time she finds a
stick and ditches it when she gets bored, but everyone once in a while she
finds a awesome stick, and she will not leave it, she will pee, poo, chase
birds, air currents etc. all the while having this stick in her mouth. It gets quite hilarious at times as she finds
sticks that are bigger than herself.
This is cute and all, however, she does get disobedient when she finds an
awesome stick so I did several things today to try to get that out of her. I would call “here” if she came right away
she keeps the stick and I let her go play.
Every once in a while I would take the stick from her, if tried to
snatch it back or hold on to it I would go “aaaat!” and then keep the stick for
around 20s. If she didn’t resist me
taking it she would get it back right away.
After doing this for about 5min she got the idea and gave up the stick
much more willing and came much faster on “here” commands. Now why did I do this exercise, first off I
want to teach her that I own everything that she “finds”, more importantly
however it shows her that if she cooperates she will get the object of interest
back, if not she loses it. This ties in
with when she’s off leash, this helps her respond better when I give her a
command while her attention is being held by something else, it also results in
less direct disobedience as I could call her back when she see’s something
she’s interested in (dog, car, ball etc.) because she thinks she’ll get the
object of her desire much faster if she obeys.
Training for this is vital as it could save your dog’s life when he/she
is running off to a life threating situation and all you have is your voice to
save your loved one.
(Not sure
where she got that stick, 2x4’s don’t tend to fall from tree’s)
Thursday
Only have one class today so I can spend a lot of time with
Nova. I gave her a nice 40min walk so
she passed out in her crate at the moment.
She still has problems with getting distracted on walks “oh look a
leaf!” but I guess that’s a puppy for you.
I finished the indoor treat training for the “down” trick and she pretty
much gets it 100%, now I need to practice it over and over again for different
situations (before eating, before coming in…etc.) until she can do it as well
as recall or sit commands. Not sure what
I want to do next, perhaps stay as that
is probably up there on mandatory commands for a dog.
Later on in the day I tried teaching her fetch and it worked
quite well, I’ll try again tomorrow outdoors to see if she can do that
yet. On another completely unrelated
note: Nova’s nails are sharp as hell! I
should really stop being lazy at trim them so I don’t lose an eye when she
decides to stretch while still in bed (yes she sleeps with me).
Friday
Uneventful day, Nova is however really good at letting me
know when she needs to go outside to do her business. No mistakes in the house today or yesterday!
:D
Saturday
Went to my parents’ house today to get shots and such for
Nova (the adoption center where I got her is near by). On a side note: when we were heading to my
parents’ house she had a heat stroke of sorts, thanks god I was able to isolate
the puke to my pants and not my dad’s nice Audi. Not sure why she vomited, maybe she’s just
not use to the heat? After that she was
her typical self and slept the whole car ride.
When we went to the adoption center I was surprised at Nova’s lack of
barking, most dogs present were barking but she just didn’t give a damn. This carried over when she was getting shots,
she just kinda sat there and took it like a champ. Overall a great day, taking her out is really
vital at this age as she needs to socialize as much as possible.
Oh and other good news: she didn’t pee once indoors at my
parents’ house. Yay!
Sunday
What originally was going to be a peaceful day went all
wrong. My friend and I planned to go off
roading with his Jeep, however we decided to leave the main trail which
resulted us getting stuck, for 8 hours…
Long story short: using 2 sets of come alongs we managed to brute force
the Jeep out of its pit.
The whole time Nova was very well behaved, I did have yell
at her when she decided she wanted to eat some of the deer poo but other than
that she stayed very close and just watched while chewing some sticks. When we had to hike out to get some more
equipment she followed calmly and didn’t run off.
(Contrary to
what the picture might suggest Nova is actually really good at not getting in
the way while using cars.)
