New puppy - or not

Two months ago I decided that I was going to move ahead with getting sheep, and if I had sheep, regardless of my fencing, I wanted a dog to protect my sheep from predators. When people think of guard dogs they usually think of German Shepherds and Rottweilers, but they have their drawbacks when it comes to protecting livestock.

German Shepherds and Rottweilers were initially bred to move livestock. This means that they have prey drive that has been redirected to moving stock rather than eating it. This is good. This also has to be trained to keep the dog from taking their inbred prey drive to it's logical conclusion. Additionally, they have been bred to bond strongly to humans and take direction from them, again, this helps redirect that all-important prey drive.

I wanted a more independent breed. I wanted a dog that could live outside and comfortably without human guidance and 24/7 human companionship. I also need a dog that won't eat my stock, because in spite of what they were initially bred for both breeds mentioned above have largely lost much of their normal prey inhibition and have been bred for bite-work and police work, making a poor choice for livestock protection even worse!!

So, I began researching, and what I found was a whole group of dogs specifically bred to do exactly what I needed. Large, independent (in fact, largely difficult to train beyond the basics!) dogs with almost zero prey drive! This group of dogs, probably most recognizable to folks in the Great Pyrenees, is large, hardy, fluffy, and oftentimes white.

So, I began researching in earnest, calling friends who had the breeds most commonly seen in the US, and crosses of them. When I looked into them, the breed I most wanted, at first blush, was an anatolian, large, grey, with a dark mask and shorter hair than many of the other dogs, they seemed to be the best bet, and in Arizona, at least they are often mixed with Great Pyrenees (Pyr) or other white fluffy LGDs.

I spoke to a friend who had owned a Pyr that she totally loved, a great dog I had met numerous times, and had since taken in a few other large fluffys. She did not like the Pyr x Anatolian at all, finding the intensity of the anatolian to be too much. It wanted to eat any dog she brought in for weeks and sometimes months, rather than settling into a new norm.

Others I spoke with had also found the anatolian and anatolian x to be too intense and too drivey. These dogs are probably great on huge open range places, or with the right owners, but, just starting off I did not need the additional challenge of a breed that might need even more work!

I found that 1/4 or less anatolian seemed the ideal cross (since crosses are more common here for unknown reasons).

I began to look.

I found a litter of 1/4 Pyr, 1/4 anatolian, 1/2 akbash (yes I had to look it up!) x. They were with stock (poultry) now (very important for bonding even at youngest puppyhood), and from working parents. However, the fly in the ointment was that these dogs were not with sheep. And I still have no sheep, and I won't for some time, meaning that bonding to sheep in the first critical months would be delayed. I elected to hold off.

Here's the rub however; it takes up to two years for an LGD to grow out of silly puppyhood and totally step into the mantle of trustworthy guardian dog. Until that time they are prone to be goofy, wander off if not penned (this habit continues throughout their lives - with some breeds being worse than others), and even kill livestock through adolescent silliness and rough play.

The sooner I got a dog, the sooner I could begin running off the coyotes who have grown complacent to my 30 pound border collies and the intermittent senile barking of my deaf German Shepherd.

Additionally, the livestock I do own, poultry, is the hardest for LGDs to bond to, and many may never bond with them, so I need time to get to work getting the stock I do own protected.

Then, I found a bunch of much younger (and therefore further from weaning and arriving at my place, and closer to the hoped-for arrival of my sheep) maremmas (yes, I also had to look these up!). These pups, in addition to being younger, are also currently with sheep, chickens, horses, cattle, and goats, so pretty much every conceivable type of stock. And even in the short weeks that they are with their mom, they will learn valuable things about how these other animals in their environment act and more importantly, how to act around them. Instead of an eight month gap between the puppy's arrival and the arrival of my stock, and no prior contact with said stock, these puppies will have a 3-4 month gap in-between their exposures to sheep (less if I can help it!!)

Lastly, my continuing research showed that this breed, once bonded with their stock are less likely to wander, and more apt to stay glued to their flock. These dogs (LGDs) wander not aimlessly like house dogs do, but to create predator-free buffers around their stock. So the behavior is bred into many of these dogs, and can create issues with fence jumping and multiple escape attempts. If I can get away with fewer of these unsavory behaviors, all the better.

Lastly, I need this dog to be wary of strangers (which it is bred for) but not so stand-offish that it makes friendly visitors uneasy.

Even though the breeders of these pups came highly recommended by a friend who also owned maremmas, I needed to meet the parents and ensure their temperaments would work in my situation. So off I trekked on a 12 hour round trip drive up to northern Arizona to meet the pups and the parents. The pups were only three weeks old, and so beyond being white, fluffy, and cute, there was really no value to meeting them. Their parents, however were the important ones! Dad (Elvis) was out protecting his stock in the field. I met him when I stopped to photograph his sheep. He charged the car from a respectful distance, barked once or twice, and then seemed more baffled and curious than alarmed. He was never aggressive. I did not linger, not wanting to upset him. I was a stranger in his pasture after all.

Mom, who was obviously outside with her pups, was beautiful and friendly. She had no issues with me approaching her (with her owners of course!) and handing her snoozing pups. I was so busy petting her and talking to her owners and watching the sleeping pups, and pushing away mooching calves that I totally failed to get photos of her!!

Anyway, I was more than satisfied with the mental health of the parents, and so, in 5-7 weeks I will again trek north to pick up my new puppy!!

Chasing geese

I have pursued herding with my dogs for over a decade(!!!). Pursued, not necessarily caught. I took lessons for several years, and Kate became pretty passable at a sport she decided lacked the all important sheep-eating part that she had signed up for. Between her lack of enthusiasm, my lack of either time or money (depending) and life, I never pursued it as I wished, with weekly lesson, a 'real' border collie (Kate is probably a golden retriever mix with border collie coloring and neurosis) and a small herd of sheep of my own to practice on. But, I have geese, and with the sale of the goslings, an X-pen to protect them from hungry dogs, Dice and Cody who both did very well at their instinct tests, and just enough knowledge to know how truly little I know.

Bring on the chaos!!  Cody is the best so far. Dice isn't certain what the rules are and when he is uncertain he disengages.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I went through the huge ordeal of rounding up the extremely displeased and loud geese and chucking them one by one into a dog crate on the ATV. Once assembled, I drive them down to the x-pen and place them into it one by one. They are often wet, having fled through various water tanks in their efforts to evade me, and often have poopy feet. The wetter the ground the poopier the geese. The need for sheep seems more and more urgent.

After the geese have been duly assembled, I head up to the house to pull Cody out of the dog run and put Ketchum in. Ketchum, who is reliable and safe when the geese are out does not need to get other ideas about how to treat the geese.

Cody begins getting insanely cited about the geese the moment she realizes that they're not at the coop, but are instead honking and complaining down at the corral. She has to be leashed for the last couple of hundred yards so that I'm not constantly pulling her back like a yo-yo.

I place her in a sit-stay and walk around the other side of the geese to give Cody the idea that she needs to move the geese towards me. Once I release Cody it's off to the races!!

When I initially took Cody out to see my herding instructor she was very one sided and could only travel in one direction around the stock, so I work hard to help her understand that she can move in both directions.

In the middle of the corral she can move both ways with a fair level of competence, but the last time I worked her I let the geese loose (yes, it was a mess!) and the geese quickly ran to the edges of the corral where there was deeper grass. Cody could only move one way when dealing with these suddenly free geese, and in doing so, often moved them in exactly the wrong direction, causing cross-arena escape attempts that led to me telling Cody to down while I tromped through the grass and weeds, ducking through corral fencing and up the insane slope of the dam at the end of the pond to head the geese off before they headed for their coop.

There was a good deal of running - by me. And since Wednesday was actually nice and sunny, the geese were panting and hot. Uncertain how much running a goose can take. I let them take frequent and long breaks which coincided with my own gasping for breath.

I was absolutely thrilled with Cody's understanding of the game. Yes, there were geese stampedes, but usually not because Cody charged them, rather because the geese are not what is termed dog-broke, which means that rather than predictably heading towards the handler (me) they fled helter-skelter for safety. A lack of fencing certainly did not help matters much.

A friend brought out her corgi pup on Friday to see what he would do with stock. Both corgi breeds were initially herding dogs; Welsh Pembroke corgis (the ones without the tails) which my friend owns are supposed to have lost much of their herding instinct on the road to popularity and of course AKC beauty pagents.

Rye, the corgi puppy, was certainly enthusiastic, but he was mostly in full on predator/ prey-drive mode. My herding instructor told me that what she looks for in a herding test is a dog that instinctively gives the stock space, and circles rather than charges the stock. Even though corgis and border collies are extremely different dogs with different herding styles, I certainly saw what she was talking about with Rye. It took all of us with sticks to keep sweeping him away from the geese to keep them from hopping out and fleeing. In several spirited chases he did assault some goose tail feathers.

It will be interesting to see if my friend, who is an excellent dog handler and trainer, is able to find any nascent instinct in Rye for herding, and bring it to the fore, so that he is less predator more partner. I am not well versed enough in herding to know what is possible and how much work it takes. For all we know Rye was so excited he didn't have time to think, and with further contact with stock he will begin to express his instincts more clearly. My house is a hell of a drive for Rye and his parents, but I want to see how it works out.

Cody for her part impressed the hell out of me in the first four days of playing with the geese and I have to remember that neither of us knows what we're doing so that the experience remains positive and fun for her.

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Understanding exercise and hip dysplasia

There is a lot of advice out there about when puppies should be permitted to jump, or run with owners, or begin training for certain activities. All of this advice stems from the idea that hip dysplasia, a common and debilitating joint disease in dogs, can be prevented or caused by our actions.

None of this is true. Hip dysplasia is the mis-growth (dysplasia = dys; wrong; plasia: molding (or in modern language, growth)) of the hip joint resulting in the femoral head (a rounded bone joint at the top of the thigh) not fitting tightly in its socket.

Exercise can neither cause nor prevent this. The disease in congenital - meaning inherited.

A puppy with normal hips can play and jump and do whatever and be fine - just as children with normal joints can play and jump and even do organized sports from a very young age and be fine. A dog with hip dysplasia, as it grows and exercises, because of the laxity of the joint, will be constantly stretching the ligaments that attach the pelvis to the femur, this will exacerbate the preexisting disease and cause lameness.

Exercise did not cause the disease; it, in combination with growth, caused the symptoms of the existing disease.

This is a huge distinction, and one that owners of puppies need to be made aware of. All of the dos and don'ts of exercise in puppies are predicated on this fallacy.

The next fallacy is that we need to wait until the dog gets older to treat hip dysplasia or that hip dysplasia is inevitable. Because hip dysplasia is a disease of growth, fixing it can be done as puppies grow. In fact it is cheaper, and better for the puppy to fix the disease before movement, weight, and age take their toll on the joints, causing osteoarthritis.

A puppy at 10-16 weeks can be sedated by a qualified veterinarian, palpated for hip laxity, and radiographed utilizing the PennHIP method, this will produce a solid understanding of that puppy's future chances of disease. This method is far superior to the current OFA standard (Adams, Dueland, et al JAAHA 1998)

If a puppy is found to have hip dysplasia, a surgeon can stop the growth of certain parts of the pelvis to change the pelvic shape; this allows better contact with the femoral head. The surgery goes by the lengthy and unhelpful name of Juvenile Pubic Symphysiodesis (JPS). This surgery, unlike not allowing puppies to jump until they are a year old, can actually halt hip dysplasia from occurring in the first place. This surgery (in conjunction with full hip replacement) is considered to be the most effective surgical treatment for hip dysplasia*.  A randomized trial of the method showed that 75% of treated dogs showed no signs of degenerative joint disease two years post op. **

Waiting until the dog is older and showing symptoms signs the dog up for a lifetime of pain, disability, drugs, blood tests (to make sure the pain killers aren't destroying the liver and kidneys) and impaired function. Stopping the disease early involves foresight, a veterinarian able and willing to recommend early diagnosis and intervention, and an owner willing to invest today to save the dog's health and their money in the long run.

No one solution fits all cases, of course, Some dogs are born with such congenitally abnormal hips that they lack a joint altogether. These dogs, while likely to benefit from the same early intervention, will likely never have normal hips, and may need more proactive surgery to hopefully avoid a life of reactive pain medication and impaired function.

Like everything else you read on the internet, please take this with a grain of salt. Check the resources provided here, and speak with your own veterinarian. But, be aware, that as I have grown older, I have noticed that more and more veterinarians seem to be falling further and further behind on the latest research. Demand that your veterinarian be up to date on recommendations. Demand that they earn those higher and higher fees that we all pay with better and more up to date information and research. It's the least that we can do for our dogs' futures.

*  Bergh and Budsberg, Veterinary Surgery, 2014


** Patricelli, A. J., Dueland, R. T., Adams, W. M., Fialkowski, J. P., Linn, K. A. and Nordheim, E. V. (2002), Juvenile Pubic Symphysiodesis in Dysplastic Puppies at 15 and 20 Weeks of Age. Veterinary Surgery, 31: 435–444. doi: 10.1053/jvet.2002.34766


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Tools

Tools are what connect us to an animal we are training. A collar, a leash, a halter and a bridle are all tools. Treats are tools. All tools communicate. How harshly they communicate depends on the tool and the handler. The discussion of tools is often tinged with the queasy whiff of religion. People 'believe' or 'don't believe' in this or that type of tool.

Tools can be largely neutral, a flat collar or a halter on a horse are perfect examples. Yes, we can use them to guide an animal, and to correct errors, but they don't have a lot of teeth, and a determined dog or horse will easily brush these tools aside to do what they please.

The harsher the tool the more vehement becomes the rhetoric concerning it.

From my horsey past I can say that I developed a strict set of rules about the use of tools, and always used the least aggressive method to produce my results. I was an excellent trainer who usually had plenty of time, so I had no issues living in my judgmental bubble of superiority.

Then a client bought a beast of a horse. This thing was a tank. Big, bullish and with just enough training to be dangerous. She bought it for her husband who had a bad back. This horse could not pull on him lest he end up in the hospital. They did not have infinite resources of time and money and I had to make this thing somehow safe for this man in less than 30 days.

I started him like I started thoroughbreds off the track and quickly learned that this method was doomed to failure. He wanted to run through me. He was a moose and a buffoon, and remedial work to put the kind of equipment on him that I wanted was certainly going to take far longer than 30 days!

So, do I tell the new owners to get a more appropriate horse? Yes. Does it work? No. Do I tell them it will certainly take more than 30 days? Yes. They spent all their money on the horse.

Do I throw in the towel and break all of my rules and put this horse in a harsher bit than I would like? Yes. Absolutely. Because otherwise he will injure his owner. I chose what I considered the lesser of evils. I could have refused to train the horse, but who does that help? The horse would either sit in a barn until sent down the road, or the owner would have been injured, or they would have found a different trainer who perhaps would have used even harsher equipment.  In what way would the horse have benefitted from my stand for purity?

I think that it is wonderful that there are skilled trainers able to get amazing results with the most neutral tools available. I am glad that there are owners willing to provide these trainers with the time to use these skills to help their animals.

I am not such a purist (though in retrospect I may have once been) as to believe that any trainer lacking these skills should not be training. I do believe that we all owe it to our pets to use kindest tools necessary to achieve the desired results in the time allotted.

Lastly, I want to point out that in the story above, the main point was that had I not resorted to tougher equipment than I felt strictly comfortable using, the animal would have injured someone. In no way am I implying that I would have used harsher equipment in the face of training failures on my part, on a fearful animal, or to speed along training for any other reason. Also, when all is said and done, I still trained the horse using far less bit (kinder mouthpiece) than most people use on their everyday horses, and with less equipment than many professionals slap onto horses willy nilly and daily.

I hope that this helps to illustrate a point. In the right hands, most tools are just that. They form a line of communication. A well-trained dog will no more fear a prong collar than a flat collar if the uses of both are clear to the dog. In a perfect world, perhaps no dog would ever wear a prong collar. In a perfect world no trainer would reach for one first. But until we live in such a world, we need to understand that the religion of tool usage can be as laced with arrogance, judgement, fanaticism, and superiority as any other religion, and as such we should divest ourselves as much as possible from such emotion.  A tool is always neutral; it is the user who turns it into something else.

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Dog Training vs Horse Training

I have now been training dogs professionally for a little over a year. I trained horses professionally for 12 years. I have found dog owners to be entirely unlike horse owners in how they approach training as well in how they approach their own responsibilities as animal owners.

Here is a brief outline of the differences that I have found in the general lay-owner for each species.

1. The learning process.

Horses have little innate need to be trained. No one will ever state that an untrained horse is in some way missing out. Horses have no intrinsic need to please their owners. No one ever asked me how to motivate their horse to learn. Horse owners train horses and horses learn whether they wish to or not.

An interesting counterpoint to this is that in spite of a dog's innate desire to please, and overall better mental health when they are trained - horse owners are far more likely to believe that training their animal is absolutely mandatory. Dog owners are much more willing to put up with issues stemming from an untrained dog.

Dogs actually must have some level of training both to live within the family structure and to fulfill intrinsic psycho-social needs - horses can get by with only basic handling skills.

Few horse owners would attempt to DIY train their horse - almost all dog owners will.

2. Problem behaviors:

Almost all horse owners will see their horse's problem behaviors as a training issue - whether they lay the blame at their horse's feet or their own, behavior is related to training.

Dog owners see many problem behaviors as intrinsic to the dog and therefore fixed, or due to boredom.

Horse owners will try to train their way past problem behaviors. Do owners will try to buy toys, special collars, harnesses or decorate the house in puppy pads in an effort to address problem behaviors.

3: Training philosophy:

Horse owners have a saying, "you are always training", which they use to illustrate the need to be endlessly vigilant about how they interact with their horse. They also understand training to be a long term - usually many months, and in most cases many years to decades - activity. Horses are rarely 'trained', they tend to always be 'in training'.

Many horses start training after a previous career has ended - an ex-barrel horse becomes a kid's 4-H mount, an ex-racehorse starts again as a jumper, an ex-trotter starts life anew as a police horse.

Dog owners think that training is a fixed experience. They 'train' for x number of minutes a day. It is also a very short-term exercise. Most dogs are 'trained' in a few weeks. Many people believe that if their dog reaches a certain age and doesn't know something she never will.

Most people train puppies and that's all. Adult dogs either know it all, or are incapable of learning more.

Training errors:

Communication with an animal can be frustrating for people and in the case of both dog and equine owners, often the fault for misunderstanding is placed on the animal instead of on the human.

In the case of horses, owners will resort to 'louder' hands and more aggressive cueing. They may move to different mechanical means to 'fix' what they have failed to train, compounding errors and needlessly causing suffering.

Dog owners over use their voice. Some 'chatter' at their dogs or 'explain', others repeat cues or get louder. When these fail, they too move to equipment to solve the problem, this leads to the same needless suffering that it does in horses.

Interestingly, horsemen are more educated about the tools that they use than dog owners. A horse owner, switching out a plain snaffle for a double-twisted-wire to put more 'brakes ' on their horse, knows that the reason that this may work is that the new bit hurts more.

Dog owners believe nothing of the sort, they will change to a harness or collar designed to stop pulling and will never ask how this miracle gets done.

Training styles:

Horse owners tend to see training as methodical. Halter training is done from birth, a lot of thought is put into method and style of training and it begins as soon as it can. Then comes longing and long-lining and then slowly at year two or three under saddle work.

Dog owners tend to slap a collar on the dog and expect the dog to 'get it'. Owners rarely think of how the environment affects their dog, and are shocked when their dogs make a hash of walking on a leash in a new environment.

As stated above, no horse owner wonders how to motivate a horse to learn. This is partly because training in horses is a one-way contract; the trainer trains, the horse absorbs. The horse does not get a say in how he feels about training. A good trainer will adjust to learning style and speed as well as physical limitations, but will never expect the horse to eagerly engage in the learning process. That is not to say that horses may not enjoy being trained, or that some horses do not actively participate in their training, it is merely to observe that neither of these is a prerequisite.

Dogs are expected to engage in the process. Partly because it makes training easier for us, and partly because we feel better as trainers if we see that the dog too gets something from the interaction. Dogs who are 'shut down', 'dull' or 'flat' are more difficult to train than dogs who are eager and involved. We expect the dog to engage in the process, and if they do not they are generally considered to be at fault.

Obviously these are generalizations, and they are based on the experiences of one person, but overall it appears that the general populations of people owning these two species both expect their animals to perform certain actions reliably; horse people have largely seen the method to attain this as training, whereas it appears that many dog owners think that these expectations can be achieved through osmosis.

Bad Dog!

That's what my husband said when he saw this:

(In case you can't tell what you're looking at, that black thing at their feet is the chewed up corpse of an ATV seat - seat number three, in fact (and don't think the dog on the left (Dice) looks guilty, he always looks like that when asked to do anything. He smooshes his ears and gets all happy and silly - it just photographs as guilt.))

But you can't be a bad dog if you don't know that you are doing something wrong, and of course, there's the problem.

I had failed this dog.

I work hard to ensure that my dogs never make mistakes inside the house. They are never permitted even a second without supervision until I have instilled every house rule to them over and over again, and they have proven to me time and again that they can be entrusted to make only good decisions. I watch them likes hawks.

And my dogs are fantastic inside.

Outside is a different matter.

Outside there is almost nothing that they can destroy, so they destroy nothing; there are few places in my yard where they can dig that would bother me, so they don't dig inappropriately. There are endless sticks to chew and lizards to chase, so they never get bored and chew or chase things that they should not. 

Until they do. Until a mouse runs into an ATV and the dog chases it there and tries to get it out by any means necessary. Until that same dog discovers that it isn't one mouse, but mice, and they are hiding in all the ATVs and in the engine compartment of my car and my truck. Until then.

Then they, in this case, he, is a bad dog.

Of course this destruction cannot continue. A problem that begins explosively within a period of several weeks and progresses to this level cannot be ignored.

So, what to do?

This is how dogs end up homeless.

That is the easy, and to some, sensible, solution. There are likely thousands of homes where a dog like this will not ever again have the opportunity to destroy property to capture rodents; he is well-trained, loving, beautiful, and friendly. He would find a home, a normal home where there is no opportunity to chase rodents into cars.

But, is it fair for the dog to have to deal with the disruption and confusion of a new home when it is I and not he who has failed? When it is I who am the bad owner, not he who is the bad dog?  After all, he doesn't know that his actions are criminal.

But, and this is an important but, is it fair to have to live with a dog that destroys hundreds of dollars of ATV seats in the space of a few days? Is it fair that he has done thousands of dollars of damage to two vehicles, one brand new? 

Whenever we look at a dog's behavior, as much as we want to place all of the blame on the owners (which, in most cases is accurate) we also have to admit that there are behaviors that many people would deem inappropriate enough that they cannot continue to have it at all. That's where we are with this dog. There can be no more destroyed vehicles, no more chewed up seats. We have reached the land of zero tolerance.

And, of course, none of this took place when we were watching, so as furious as my husband is at the dog, we have no recourse. Unlike a child we cannot explain to him what he is being punished for and ground him for eternity or take away his internet. The deed was done, and adding to the frustration is the fact that there will never be justice. The dog will never 'pay' for his criminal behavior.

So, the only way to go is forward. I immediately begin to rack my brain for solutions. Solutions that will serve to help the dog understand that murdering vehicles to get to rodents is illegal, while ensuring that in the interim he doesn't cause still more mayhem. It takes work, and now, it takes supervision outside as well as in. It means that his outdoor life is now as circumscribed as his indoor life. It means working on impulse control, and more training, and keeping him away from the vehicles for as long as it takes. And it will take a long time.

Most of all it will take work, diligence, and effort. There can be no quick fix for this. I cannot stint on the commitment to both my vehicles' resale value, and my dog's ability to continue living here. Both are important. I am not one of those people who is capable of living with any behavior a dog may throw at me, there are absolutely situations that I would find untenable - this is actually quite close - but since his actions threaten no lives (except - presumably - mice), I am willing to deal with the changes necessary to help this dog succeed at my house.

I bring this whole thing up to illustrate several points: 1) If we don't teach the dog that something is wrong, then it is ok. 2) If we do not see something happen, then there is no 'explaining' the situation to the dog and punishing the dog retroactively. 3) Depending on the act, this can cause extreme anger and frustration in the human, and it will take effort to keep that from spilling over into the relationship with the dog. 4) Complex behaviors, especially those we were unable to nip in the bud, or we have a low probability of witnessing in person (such as a mouse sprinting into the guts of an ATV with a dog in hot pursuit) are time consuming to solve. 5) no one has to live with a behavior they do not like, but the alternative is not neutral to the dog. Some dogs take disruption and rehoming in stride, believing all strangers are their best friends - these dogs rehome well. Sensitive, wary, and weird dogs, like Dice, do not rehome well - it took me about 6 months of daily work to connect with this dog. 6) working through issues takes time, and work, and commitment, and failure to do so will end in failure and frustration.

Cody thought the ATV seat on the floor was a piece of agility equipment and kept climbing onto it looking for a treat.

The first six weeks

My classes run one hour a week for six weeks. My beginner class is usually filled with dogs who were recently adopted or whose behavior has now become annoying. My expectation for pet owners is that they will train their dogs a minimum of 15 minutes a day for the duration of the class. That means, in a perfect world, dogs will have received 12 hours of training in those six weeks (I'm allocating half an hour of training for my one hour class as well, some have more talking some less.)

Twelve hours. In those twelve hours dogs will learn some neat 'tricks', such as 'sit', 'watch me', 'down', and 'spin'. They will also begin to form the basis for the concept of walking on a loose leash (some dogs do this better than others, and some owners are better than others at training it). We will work on 'fixing' common problems: pulling, barking at strange people and dogs, lunging at other dogs, house breaking issues, recall issues, and the like.

Mostly, though we will set the dogs up to learn. Most dogs come into my beginning class with nearly no skills. They have never been asked to do anything.

Dogs want to please us, and so training, where the dog understands that something is expected of it, but doesn't know what that something is, can be stressful to dogs and owners. Many dogs come to class largely divorced from the actions of their owners. They live fairly independently of the person on the other end of the leash, and have never seen that person as terribly relevant outside of fulfilling basic animal functions such as companionship, food, water and shelter.

The first six weeks teaches the dog that his owner is relevant, and pleasing his owner, even if he is uncertain how at first, has tremendous rewards. The first six weeks sets the dog up to understand that learning is fun, that it is worth seeking out, and that mistakes are ok. It allows the dog to try new things, it opens up their personality, it lets them understand the basic structure of their lives, in many cases that understanding brings confidence and comfort.

Yes, six weeks is a very brief time. Six weeks will do little by way of producing cool tricks to show family and friends, but those first six weeks opens the door to a world of possibilities, and nothing pleases me more than watching the dogs 'get it' for the first time, knowing that everything to follow will be that much easier for them.