We graduated from puppy class shortly after the previous post and came away with a certificate to say we showed up and a rosette for being a puppy. To be honest, and despite the excellent work by Sally the instructor, I’m not sure we deserved much more, other than the golden-mop award for the most, ehm, “accidents.” Venn never really got past the fact that this was clearly the most exciting thing ever, and certainly not a time for dwelling on the mundanities of life such as obedience and discipline. There were only so many times I could explain that she is actually pretty good at home before it started to sound desperate.
As we concluded previously, it was clear that we needed to put more effort into getting Venn working well in a more distracting environment, and this meant abandoning our quiet, confined hallway, and focussing all our effort on the great outdoors.
Gaining and keeping Venn’s focus outside is a challenge; there are chestnuts to be crunched, leaves to be chased and holes to be dug, and there is only so much you can do when food is not a great motivator. We went right back to the basics of short “stays” and recalls being selected for their likelihood of working. The quality of rewards went back up to the best we can manage, and the reward frequency went back up to around 100% of successful attempts.
Over the space of two weeks we have managed to get the “stays” up to 10 minutes outdoors, with the majority of that out of sight (in small sections to a max of 2 min in any one block). Recalls are generally ok without too much distraction, but a good smell can still trump my call. More work required.
A particular target was to get on top of walking to heel and walking on a loose lead, two related but different skills that were sadly lacking. For a number of days we made absolutely no headway, then it struck me that I was using her release word (which would normally mark the end of a “wait”) to encourage her to get moving beside me. She presumably concluded that she was free to go whenever I said it and ended up pulling on the lead or heading off as a result. Once this was replaced with a different encouragement, things have started to improve. We still have some distance to go, but it does feel like a bit of progress.
Home life remains a little noisy, and Kip still does not share floor space freely. Curiously, however, they will both happily sit on the back seat of the truck without issue, which is a relief for all concerned.
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