Teacher's Pet

Saturday was Venom's second Puppy Preschool class.  It is so much fun to have him and Rick in my class!  I mentioned before that this is a large class and so it's great to see Venom doing so well with all the other puppies.  Of course, several of the puppies are from his litter, but still. 

A few weeks ago we had an incident when going into the vet's office another owner dropped her huge Labrador's leash who then ran over and stood growling over Grasshopper, the Pekingese I was fostering.  When I picked Grasshopper up, he then ran to Venom.  Rick and I both got upset, the owner stood there, clueless as Rick tried to keep the dog from Venom.  Venom and Grasshopper seemed okay, but after the incident Venom began to bark at other dogs, particularly larger dogs, on leash.  So, we have started to work on that and he is doing great.  He was perfect in class and before he came into the training yard.  After class, I had one of my assistants do some walk bys with a few of the larger puppies while I treated Venom for looking at them calmly.  It is something I will  continue to work on with him.

Down

I am working on training Venom a few behaviors including "down" which means to lie down.  I started out by luring him down with food.  I try to just do this a few times and then, once the dog can easily follow the lure, I do it with no food in my hand which causes the lure hand to become a hand signal.  I would still click and treat once he is down, he just wasn't following food to lie down.  Luring is fine and actually quite helpful as long as you stop luring as soon as you can.  At this point, I am now adding the verbal cue.  What is happening here is that Venom is "offering" downs.  This means that if we are training he will do downs over and over on his own without being prompted because he has learned that this is something I reinforce for.  So, I get out my treats and clicker and every time I can predict he will lie down I say "down" and then mark (either by saying "yes!" or clicking) right when he lies down and then tossing the treat away so he has to get up to get it.  I toss the treat away because I want to practice many downs and I want to have many downs to reinforce and tossing the food away sets him up to come and lie down again.  Here is a video from our practice today.

Puppy School!

Venom started Puppy Preschool on Saturday!  The cool part is that his brother and two of his sisters are also in the class.  The REALLY cool part is that I teach the class!  This is an interesting class in that, for one thing, it's a huge puppy class.  There are 16 puppies in the class which is a very large puppy class.  But, I took that many because a well run, quality puppy class is really beneficial to puppies and if I don't let someone in, they might not have the opportunity to do a puppy class or worse, they may end up in a poorly run puppy class.  Also, this class has not only 4 puppies from Venom's litter but also 5 puppies from an Australian Shepherd litter!  So, we have two litters plus several other puppies in between.

When you have a large puppy class, or any puppy class for that matter, you never know what the dynamics will be like until you have all the puppies there.  I am thrilled to say that this large group of puppies did beautifully together.  My puppy classes include off leash, safe, supervised play, lecture on a puppy issue and some basic, beginning training.  The puppies are divided during the off leash play into groups that play and mesh well together.  This particular class included 3 groups.  One group was the Dachshunds, plus another Dachshund, about the same age but from another litter.  One group was the Aussies, plus a Lab, plus a Rottie, plus some little mixed breeds.  The final group is a Shih Tzu and a Papillon, both tiny little dogs.  I sometimes had the Rottie off with the little ones as he is a bit sensitive and felt overwhelmed by the wild Aussie bunch!  They all did wonderful.  When a puppy is not in a play group he is on leash with his family being rewarded for sitting, watching calmly, lying down, etc. 

I was so proud of Venom.  I practiced a few recalls with him where I called him to me while he was playing, which he did beautifully.  He played well with everyone.  He was such a good boy.