Starting Up and Background

Let me begin by saying, I have no clue what I'm doing. This blog is more to help keep me accountable and keep me going.

My background

My last dog was a sweetheart. She was sweet and easy going and an automatic people pleaser. She had her quirks, but all in all was a terrific dog. I figured owning dogs was easy. Oh, boy how wrong I was. We now have two dogs who couldn't be more different from Dory if they'd tried. To top it off, I am essentially disabled. I have degenerative disc disease with a permanent herniated disc. My condition causes me constant pain, but that does not excuse me from failing my dogs. They're still young and smart enough to become fuzzy model citizens. It just means my training sessions will be shorter and results will take a little longer. Hence the creation of this blog. When it looks like we're getting nowhere, I want somewhere I can look back on our journey and see that we are making progress.

The Plan

Right now, my two dogs are about as untrained as they get. They pull on their leashes during walks, so I rarely take them out. They are excellent at dog parks, so at least I have that. Their sit skills are shaky and only Beckett is trained to "down" and even that is sporadic. So time to go back to the very beginning and start there.

The first five things we'll be focusing on are "sit", "down", "stay", "come", and leash walking. I will work with Abby and Beckett on leash walking every day as well as one or two of those commands.

These two dogs are as different as night and day. Beckett is sweet, but skittish. She also has a stubborn streak but is incredibly intelligent. I expect her to learn faster than Abby. Abby is strong and confident and is unfortunately missing a strong pack leader. That is 100% MY fault. It's time for me to be consistent and take back control before it's too late. She's only a year old, so I can do this.

Beckett was in one-on-one training for awhile, so I have a tiny bit of experience working with her. The trainer recommended 101 Dog Tricks by Kyra Sundance and Chalcy. It will be fun to slowly work through this book and see what I can get the dogs to do. The trainer also knew about my back issues, so she thought this would be the easiest way to work with Beckett. I'm hoping the same process will work with Abby.

So far, I have bought a treat bag and 2 leashes. One is 6 feet long and the other is a variable length leash from 25 to 50 feet. I will need those to help them learn the "come" command. I will be using their typical 4 foot leashes to work on leash walking. It gives them less room to pull and, even though they're only about 50 pounds, they're fairly powerful. No need to give them the extra length to add strength to their pull while out walking!

Leash Walking Plans

As I said before, they have different personalities. In the professional training, we learned one way to teach Beckett how to properly walk on a leash. It was to say "Let's Go" and begin walking. If the dog went past the point we deemed acceptable (i.e. went ahead of us), we'd immediately pivot in the other direction, repeat "Let's Go" and start walking. We were told that would force the dog to pay attention to us. Unfortunately, that NEVER worked with Beckett even though we worked on it for a good month or two. However, online, I found a technique where you load yourself down with treats. When the dog pulled, you stopped. You stand completely still. When the dog looks back and returns to you, you praise them, give them a treat, and continue walking. Beckett is already adjusting well to this training. Abby is a different story.

Abby just pulls harder. Awesome. I don't weigh a lot as it is. Throw in a back problem and voila! You have a recipe for disaster. She never got it through her head that not pulling was a good thing. After she almost yanked me off my feet to go chase a squirrel, I called it quits and we returned home. The "Let's Go" method may very well work better with her. That's what I will be trying with her today while continuing the treat method with Beckett.

I am currently working with them singly. I have no clue what will happen when I bring them out together. It might prove difficult with each of them training with different methods. I will cross that bridge when I get there.