One of the first things I wanted to teach Venom is how to be calm and quiet and entertain himself. He has an expen in our living room that has a bed, his toys, his water and a pee pad. He is in his pen whenever we cannot supervise him. By making sure that he is confined in his own area with stuff to do, he stays out of trouble. Here is his pen area.
The pee pad is mainly for when I am not home, when I am home, I am taking him out often so he doesn't need the pee pad and has actually used it only a few times. When I take him outside I place him in another exercise pen that is sitting on my patio outside, until he goes. After he goes I tell him good boy and give him some kong stuffin off of my finger. He spends time both in his inside and outside pens.
As you can see he has several chew toys, but he wasn't sure what to do with them, so we had a little chew toy session on the couch so he could begin to learn what they are for and how to use them.
Venom is already doing great with this and can lie in his pen quietly and chew on chewies or toys.
I also wanted to teach Venom right away that being calm and quiet gets him what he wants. When he is whining in the pen or jumping on the sides we ignore him. When he stops vocalizing and sits down I pick him up. Initially, I only required that he be quiet and I have built it up to being quiet and sitting. He sleeps in a crate and night and is taken out potty just before bed. When he goes in his crate, I give him a few small Little Star treats then close the door. Both nights he has cried/barked/whined for about ten minutes before falling asleep. He sleeps for a few hours and then wakes up and barks. I immediately get up and take him outside and put him in his outside pen and tell him to go potty. He goes immediately and then goes back into his crate and goes right back to sleep. Last night, he went out once then went back to sleep. A couple of hours later he cried again so I took him out. He peed immediately so I brought him back in and put him back in the crate. He started to cry again so I immediately took him back out thinking he had to poop and I brought him in too soon which proved to be true. He pooped immediately and then slept through the morning.
Last night I started clicker training with Venom. I just started to charge the clicker by clicking the clicker and then letting him lick kong stuffin off of my finger. I repeated this several times. I also started working on stacking him but gently stacking him (which I have been doing since he was 3 weeks old) and then giving him a bite of food. He doesn't need the food in his mouth to stack him so I don't give it to him until he is stacked which is teaching him to be stacked comfortably without food in his mouth. I also started a new method where I put kong stuffin on my index finger and then hold my hand like a gun with my thumb in front of his neck and my finger sticking out so he is looking at it (like I will do when he is trained to cue him to stand in a show stack) just for a moment and then say "yes" and let him eat it. This is the beginning of training him to stand and watch my finger. It's a brand new idea, so we'll see how it goes!
Today Venom also had his first play date with the neighbor kids Geneva, Serena and Malcolm. Before bringing Venom out I talked to the kids and explained the rules and how we would handle the meeting. They were told they could not run, scream or pick Venom up but that they could pet him carefully. I brought out the kong stuffin and put some on all of their tiny fingers and we allowed Venom to go up to them and eat the kong stuffin off. He would have had no problem going up to them anyway, without the food, but I want him to REALLY love people including kids not just tolerate or accept them so I am using food to condition a good feeling about kids.
Venom did great and the kids did great. He did startle at a loud truck going by (but quickly recovered), but just to be safe, we are going to start truck desensitization training later this week!
He is also discovering and being reinforced for other cool things like:
How to climb the steps up to the couch:
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