Sharky’s Diary – Chapter Four

Sharky’s Diary – Chapter Four

At this time of the year I am so pleased that I put in a lot of time with Sharky in his first couple of months – he is now 8 months old. I have been very busy with work (yes horror of horrors, I have to do something to fund my dog activities!), and have not had a lot of time to spend with him. I am pleased to say that I have achieved all the basic things that I wanted my pup to be able to do ie:

Be toy motivated
Be food motivated
Have control around doors, in the ute, feeding time, on lead etc.
Be well socialised so has a nice nature around other dogs and people.
Is happy to offer a variety of behaviours
Travel and sleep happily in the ute

Because these things are second nature to him, it makes life so much easier when I don’t have as much time. I have lots of toys spread around the back yard, so can pick one up at any time and practise his waits, releasing him to tug on the toy. I do this anytime I think of it such as when I am hanging out washing, picking up dog poo, getting the mail etc. It only takes a couple of minutes, but because I do it so often Sharky gets a lot of reinforcement.

I have done crate games with Sharky (based on Susan Garrett’s methods), and that is very good for building drive and control. Recently I decided that I wanted Sharky to wait in a down while I trained my other BCs because I am too lazy (or I should say, don’t have the time!) to get out a crate out. Cannon is very noisy and enthusiastic while he is being trained, so he was a good distraction. I started with sending Cannon over one jump to a toy, then immediately rewarding Sharky with food for holding his wait, then releasing him and playing tug. I built up on that, rewarding Sharky often and praising him for his wait, always giving him a really good play time after releasing him. I can now train Cannon for 10 mins or so with Sharky waiting patiently.

The secret to getting a nice consistent wait is to reward often. I have seen a number of people lately with pups who have “wriggle bum” issues, rather than knowing they should sit still. My view is that this is because the handlers do not reward regularly enough. It is not a sin to give a pup 10-20 rewards at a time for maintaining a position! It is important that your pup does not move towards the treat if you are trying to get him to hold his position. To fix that, hold out hand to pup, if he moves, quickly move hand back towards you without giving him the food. He will quickly realise that he is not allowed the food until you say so. A useful control game that you can also play is having pup in the down position, and putting a bikkie on the floor on front of him. If he moves towards it, remove the food. Only let him have it once you have said “ok” (or whatever your release word is). This reinforces your release command, and also emphasizes the point that you are in control of the food/game.

And for those readers who are having a wee snigger about my lovely waits with my bestest boy Cannon, all I can say is that I should have trained him a lot better, and I am not ever going to have the same issues again! Part of my issue with Cannon is that he gets anxious about me leaving him. I have practised waits with Sharky in lots of locations with lots of distractions from an early age. He is very relaxed about being left because I have made it so clear what he is supposed to do, have given him heaps of rewards, and it has always been based on positive training. Occasionally Sharky might misunderstand and move. If this happens he doesn’t get a reward, generally I just look at him, he thinks about it a bit, then moves back to where he was in the first place. Because I spent so much time ensuring that he was very focussed on me in the early stages, Sharky has a huge desire to please me and that makes him very easy to train.

Last month I said I would describe some issues that I have had with teaching contacts with Sharky, and how I have resolved them.
To start with on the stairs, Sharky did not look down and focus on the target, so when I released him he did not drive into a nice hard nose touch, because he wasted time looking at the target first. I started doing lots of nose touches on his target away from the stairs again, re-creating his enthusiasm for the game with lots of verbal encouragement, and rewarding for quick touches.
When using the travel plank, I would hold Sharky by the collar, say “ready ready go”. Then he should have run onto the travel plank from the side, into the 2o2o position with a nice hard nose touch on his target. Often doing this, he would dawdle into the 2o2o position which is not something I want in the future. I corrected this by stopping holding his collar. I had taught him to release toys by holding his collar, and think he was a bit confused. Now he runs around my body onto the travel plank.
At times I repeat too many times with myself forward of the travel plank. Then Sharky starts looking forward to the toy and the release, without the nose touch. I correct his by doing rapid reinforcement of the nose touch while in the 2o2o (ie click and treat for every single nose touch rather than waiting for multiple touches). I also try to send Sharky ahead of me so he nose touches the target while I am still behind him.
At times Sharky has not understood what I am trying to teach him. My command for the nose target was “touch” while my release command was “tack”. These were too close together, and it took me a while to realise it. I wondered why Sharky was not doing a very fast takeoff when I released him on “tack”, and I think it was because he was wondering if he should be doing a touch or a tack. Since I changed the command to “nose” he has been a lot better.

I hope to have time over the Christmas holiday break to remember all the things that I was supposed to be teaching Sharky, and sharing them with you in the new year.