Success

It's been difficult to find training treats for Bibb. He's completely uninterested in kibble (don't blame him) or the veggie dog biscuits that the other two love. He even ignored a peanut butter filled Kong and liver treats! He has learned some things, even without the clicker, because he's very worried about "doing things right" so he pays a lot of attention to me. I'd really rather get him excited about learning new things, though, rather than worried about doing things wrong. Anyhow, it turns out that Friskies chicken flavored cat treats are what he likes.

Tandem Walking

I would really like to eventually be able to walk all three dogs at the same time, in an orderly and calm manner. First I'm working on teaching them to walk in pairs, and today I worked with Bibb and Lily.

I don't have a split leash, so I experimented with different ways of holding two leashes. It seemed to work the best to have Lily on the outside, since Bibb wants to get closer to me when he's unsure about things. I had to play a bit with leash configuration, but I finally settled on running Bibb's leash through Lily's collar (they all wear martingales), so that I could control how close they were to each other with one hand, and control Lily with the other hand. We walked several ovals in the alley to try it out. It's definitely going to take some work to teach them to walk together, but there were some stretches where they did really well. It was also awesome to stop and have them both sit automatically and right next to each other. Hopefully, the Netta/Bibb pair will work out as well. I'm not even going to attempt the Netta/Lily pair until both of them are working well with Bibb.

Bibb's Conformation Photos, Session 1

Bibb was quite a bit more difficult than Netta. He prefers sitting and lying down to standing, and I had a heck of a time convincing him to stand for me. Imagine him flopping to the ground after each of these photos, and you get the idea.





This last one is the best in terms of placement, but his back is rounded, his tail is tucked, and he doesn't have a very happy expression on his face. He was clearly nonplussed by the activity. Unfortunately, he's not very food oriented, so it makes luring or clicker training more difficult. He likes getting petted, but that makes him melt down into a doggy heap so it wasn't much help in this exercise.

I think that if I can find a reward that will really motivate him, it will work best to capture and shape the stance I want. He doesn't seem to handle physical placement as well as the other dogs do. I also need to do some research into confidence building exercises. I think that if he's more confident, he will feel less of a need to sink into a down in every interaction.

Busy Busy

I had family visit last weekend, so between preparing for that and then recovering afterward, I haven't done much training. There certainly wasn't time to work on loose leash walking, but I did work in some clicker training during feeding time.

It just takes a few minutes per dog to use part of a meal as rewards for clicker training. It adds up pretty quickly, especially if you do it every day.

I've been working on the down with all of the dogs. With Lily, I had already captured the behavior previously (taking her into a small room, letting her get bored, and clicking any time she lay down). It's now one of the behaviors she tries when trying to figure out what will get a click. Now I'm working on attaching the cue "down" to the behavior.

Since Netta hadn't already learned that lying down was a behavior that could get her a click, I used luring to teach it to her. I held a treat over her head until she sat, and then moved it towards the ground to encourage her to lie down. Well, that's how it's supposed to work, but I've never had a dog actually lie down on the first try. Instead, I used shaping in addition to luring. So, at first, all she had to do was tilt her head down a bit when the treat went by, and I clicked her for it. I gradually required more and more movement, until finally she was lying down every time I put my hand on the ground. I got this far in a single lesson that was less than five minutes long. Now I'm working on fading the hand signal, with the eventual goal that she'll lie down with just a small gesture. After that, I'll add the verbal cue.

One really nice result of this training is that when I go out to visit Netta, often she will lie down instead of jumping all over me. I make sure to always give her extra attention if she sits or lies down, and ignore her if she jumps up.

Bibb is less food motivated than the girls, but he loves petting even more than Netta, if that's possible. So he gets pets as well as food as a reward. I did the luring and shaping the down with him, too, although in his case it only took a couple of repetitions before he was throwing himself to the ground before I could even start to lure. He's a very quick study, and the easiest dog I've ever worked with.

First Real Walk

Today Bibb was doing so well on his circuits that I decided to take him up the street for some more practice with loose leash walking. He is very sensitive to leash pressure, and many times he corrected himself when got too far ahead. We had a very pleasant walk, interspersed with practice sitting.

Meet Bibb

Bibb showed up in town almost a week after we found Netta, and he made a beeline for our house. He spent a week hanging around our yard, but he would disappear down the alley if anyone approached him. He was very skittish, and despite being hungry he was very wary of the food I put out for him. He spent a week observing me as I worked with Netta before he worked up the courage to approach me. In that moment, his demeanor changed absolutely. He went from an aloof, nervous loner to a fawning love bug.

Bibb looks a lot like Netta, and they both were strays at about the same time, so I strongly suspect that they both came from the same place.

He has a very sweet personality, but it seems likely that he was abused at some point. He cringes if he is approached too quickly, especially by a man.

Current Training

I don't think he had any training before he came to me, but he is picking things up so quickly that it's hard to tell. He's the furthest along with loose leash walking, despite being the newest addition. I introduced the sit, and within minutes he was sitting automatically whenever I stopped, before I could even give the cue.

Training Goals

Basic obedience and house training, to start. After that I'll have a better idea of his talents for further training.