Today it was another freezing morning but sunny.
07:30am – He yelled to let us know his bladder was full! After urinating for 34 seconds he was ready for his walk in the training field.
Then we walked, he pooped twice, we came back, he drank some water and came with me to get his breakfast. We walked to the kennel, I gave him his breakfast.
When I picked up his poop with the poop bag I noticed that it felt a little hard. Tonight we’re going to put water in his bowl along with his dinner. We’re doing this as a way for him to get more hydration, not as a way to get him to eat.
When they are very young you may need to wet the food to get them to eat it.
11:00am – Session 1.
Today was a colder day so my plan was to be specific and work only certain behaviors with him.
After we got to the training field I worked on his duration of down. He was able to hold this position for 10 sec. today and I was able to take 3 steps back. As he gets more repetitions of success it’s important to push the boundaries a bit more. We want this behavior to be solid so he knows that stay means stay until released. He did great with this approximation.
During our session an Amazon driver parked across the street. He had on a radio or phone going and there was a lot of talking which was distracting to Babe. This was a great opportunity to see where his focus would be and if he would be able to work with distractions. While some of the behaviors took more prompting (this could be called a regression where you need to take a step back from where the puppy was succeeding before) he still did not move toward the distraction and was able to complete all the behaviors asked. This shows me that he can be distracted however he is still able to do the behaviors. Eventually we want him to not be distracted at all and totally focused on us. I used lots of primary and secondary when his attention turned back to me.
He did great for this session and was introduced to new things.
4:00pm – Session 2.
It was pretty cold and windy today so I moved our session inside.
He did ok but had a lot of energy. Sometimes reading the puppy’s energy is good because asking for calm behaviors when they have energy is not going to be productive.
Because he had so much energy and it was so windy out I decided to work on our relationship. I played with him for a while to get some energy out and then worked on a calming him down. He did ok with this however being a puppy he is still biting quite a lot so it quickly turned into a session on teaching him what he could bite and what he could not.
Sometimes being able to morph and change what you originally plan is important in the success of both the training and relationship with your puppy.
6:00pm – play time and dinner.
8:00pm – play time and walk.
10:00pm – play time and walk.