It’s been a few weeks since the last update, so time to set the scene again.
Having finally escaped the bandages following my hand surgery, and being set for great training feats, I promptly went out on a mountain rescue job (ironically a dog rescue), slipped and damaged some ribs, so it has been back to limited duties for the last few weeks.
Venn has been doing well on the whole, though with the occasional challenge to keep us on our toes. Despite an increasingly good performance at home we remain in the lower echelons of puppy school, and V’s capacity for weeing on the floor and trying to get to play with the other pups means that we often sit out of the way at the far end on the hall. Sally, the instructor from puppy class, describes her as “very busy “ and it seems a quite fitting description; there seems much to be done before listening to me becomes top of the list.
Here's the problem; under controlled conditions, indoors, with minimum distractions she is doing fantastically well. We have managed a six minute stay with me out of sight for much of that time. The out-of-sight bit tends to be in short bursts of say 15 seconds though we have managed one and a half minutes in one go. In these circumstances her basic commands are solid, though her walking to heel is still shaky.
Outside, and it’s a different story. I had a few days of poor outcomes when I really struggled to get any focus or compliance from Venn, and to be honest, lost confidence. This coincided with a week or so of poor weather, and it is evident that the wind continues to be a really big distraction, along with, surprisingly, the needle sharp husks of sweet chestnuts which are obviously in need of collecting. The weather and darker mornings served to make outside a much less viable training area meaning that we retreated indoors and focussed work there (which didn’t really need it). Inevitably this further improved indoor performance which only served to further polarise the situation between indoor and outdoors (or other distracting environments like puppy class), and this consequently increased my loss of confidence. A vicious circle with me practicing the things we were already good at and avoiding all the things that needed work.
It is a fairly well established phenomenon. Having learnt a command under certain circumstances, dogs seemingly don’t automatically extrapolate it to other environments. So a command learnt indoors won’t necessarily work outdoors. The process of translating is called “proofing the command” and is essentially starting from scratch again, but with hopefully a much quicker progress to the finished product.
Time to get outside, start small, and get over this hump.
On the domestic front, with the season ending and visitor numbers to the B&B falling, especially mid-week, it meant that it was finally time for Venn to explore life outside the pen, and to claim from Kip her fair share of the kitchen floor. This part of the process has not been easy for Kip, a vocal dog at the best of times, and we knew it might be noisy. It was, and remains so , though I think it might slowly be improving. Kip doesn’t like her getting too close unless it is by Kip’s choice, whereas Venn idolises Kip and wants to be with her as much as possible. The inevitable impasse can be loud and sometimes aggressive on the part of Kip. Not great if you are trying to sleep in the room above.
Literally never a quiet moment.
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