August 6th, 2011

I love catching "funny" behavior in my dogs.  In this video I am annoying Darcy and she starts barking at me.  When she is in a certain mood she hates it when I stare at her (most dogs don't like this anyway), make funny faces at her and then gasp when she barks.  Something else to notice in this video is that she is pretty conflicted.  She is telling me off (barking, ears back, tail wagging) but she also does a lip lick at 24 seconds and is often looking away which means she nervous and doesn't want to start conflict.  Just goes to show that you have to take in to account the whole dog rather than just a specific behavior.

May 31st, 2011 - Nose Work

Our clients are always looking for easy ways to entertain their dogs so here is a simple nose work game that any dog with a sense of smell can do!  I'm just putting a few treats in a box (always the same box) and mixing up the boxes so Darcy has to find it.  It's a great way to get some energy out of your pup without a lot of work on your part!

Resource guarding - the good, the bad and the Darcy

Lately we have been making some changes to our web site here at Collins Canine are would like to utilize our blog to help get more information out to people.  Our highest priority is to keep dogs in a home and we feel that education is a crucial part in that effort.  To help with that we are going to start posting some more general training information here.  For those of you looking for a Darcy fix, a lot of the pictures and video will still have her in them.  

To start out with I want to post some videos of "good" behavior.  Here are some videos of both my dogs around different resources.  We have always worked with a lot of dogs that have resource guarding issues and found that it is often helpful to see some dogs that do not guard resources.  In these videos I use both my actual hand and what we call an Asses-a-Hand.  As trainers we often use this devise so we don't risk getting bit ourselves.  One other note on these videos - they were taken by my five year old son so they are a bit wobbly and have a bit of a commentary.  When I made these we had an urgent need so he was the only one around.  But it does bring up a good discussion relating to this topic and children.  Resource guarding is a very serious issue in general but it is something that children should never be around.  Kids usually have a very hard time recognizing when they should not be around the dog so relying on the child to keep away from a dog when they have a resource is a recipe for disaster.  When kids are around they often carry around food or have toys that the dog may decide is his or hers.  When we are working with a dog that has any sort of resource guarding issues one of our first questions is if the dog will ever be around kids because it will have a huge impact on what we need to set as our goals.  While neither of my dogs ever had any issues we resources it is something that we still worked on extensively.  Only because of this would I allow my son to be in this situation.

Here is a video of Bella, our ten year old Rottweiler around her food.  She likes her food but isn't crazy about it.  After we adopted her at a year old we did extensive work with resources since we knew she would be around kids at some point.

Here is a video of Darcy, our three year old Pit Bull and her food.  She is food crazy and scarfs it down no matter what.  She has never had issues with resources and since we adopted her we have not done as much work on resources as we did with Bella.  Busy mom syndrome I guess...

This is a video of Bella with a rawhide.  Both dogs love rawhides more than any other toy out there.

Lastly, here is Darcy with the rawhide.  She does get a bit upset as evidenced by the hard stare she gives me when I grab the rawhide.  She does relinquish it though.

August 9th, 2010

Ahh, again the slacking.  I guess I have not so much slacked on Darcy's training but on the writing about it.  The end of summer is approaching so I am going to try to get back to writing as my son goes back to school.  Darcy is on a pretty good routine but almost too good of a routine.  I have been running so much with her that she actually recognized my running clothes.  By the time I am tying my shoes she is bouncing off the walls.  She has become a pretty good runner but as I discovered recently, she is REALLY good at running while I'm biking.  I decided to try it one day (because I had a death wish?) and it went very well.  I only have to take her about 1 1/2 miles to knock her out for the day.  The really cool thing is seeing her actually running.  Her natural gait for my running pace is a trot.  When I'm booking on the bike she finally gets into a good gallop and it is a beautiful thing to see.

As far as training, we have still been doing agility though I think we might try flyball soon just for a change of pace.  We have also been having one of my trainers, Amanda come over to work with Darcy. Amanda is who stays with the dogs when we go out of town so it is very important that Darcy is ok with her.  I can't remember if I mentioned it before but Darcy has been having some fear issues with people in the home when I'm not around.  My worst fear is that we will be on vacation and Amanda will call saying Darcy has cornered her in the den or something.  But Amanda has been coming every week and just rewarding her as she walks around the house and she said it has been a while since Darcy had any issues.  We have also had a DAP collar on her and Amanda said she has really seen a difference.
We are also starting to have the neighborhood kids come over to work with Darcy for the same issues.  Not only are they regularly running in and out of our house but someday Justin will have friends his age coming over so I don't want her to have any issues with them.  As I've learned from working with so many clients whose dogs are afraid of people coming in the home it takes a lot of work so we are starting now.  I'm sure both her and Bella will know when it is someone coming in the house that shouldn't.  And who would come in with a Pit Bull and a Rottie anyway?  :)

4/28/10

I'm in kind of a philosophical mood right now.  The day started out volunteering at my son's preschool which I love doing.  Today it was still fun but the kids were NUTS.  Then we progressed into a difficult day with clients and other business controversy.  The controversy followed me all the way to agility class today with Darcy so I was sure that it would be unproductive.  I don't know if it was the low expectations I had or what but to my surprise we had the best class ever.  Stacey had us do our first run with our arms plastered to our sides and with NO verbal cues.  I'm Italian and do obedience training - I gesture wildly and talk to my dog.  This was hard.  But Darcy was a champ - I was amazed.  Afterwards I was actually giddy with how exciting it was to see her run like that on so little communication from me.  What Stacey made us realize is that we are often confusing them with all our flailing and chatter.  It was so good to take a step back and trust my dog that she knows what to do.

That started me on a better trend of emotions.  When I got home I started looking at some photographs made by my friend John Caruso and now I am centered.  Thank you Stacey Hawk and John Caruso!

4/22/10

Some are good days and some are bad. Sometimes even within a class things go from bad to good. For the last three weeks Darcy has been not feeling the agility class. She's run incredibly slowly or just balks at every obstacle. The first half of class last night was still the same. I reconsidered if I should continue doing agility with her since she just didn't seem to enjoy it. But then during the last run was a huge turn around. She ran like lightning and took all the obstacles (weave poles, wing jump, tunnel, tire and four jumps) like a champ. The whole class cheered as she finished. I can only imagine how it feels to have a good run like that in a competition!

As a little aside from my normal discussion about Darcy, I wanted to give people some good ideas for things to do to burn your dog's energy up that doesn't involve a lot of work on your part. Two reason I am thinking of this - one is that Darcy has a bit more energy as the only day care she was comfortable at, All For Doggies, just closed. And two is that I have been talking about these things to a lot of clients lately so I wanted something for them to reference. Here are some good ones:

1) Do Something Different Game: Involves getting the dog to continually perform a different behavior for a period of time. Check out earlier postings on this blog for a demo.

2) Treasure Hunt: Instead of putting your dog's food in a bowl, place small piles of it around the house so he or she has to "hunt" it down. Start out easy with the food in plain sight but you can eventually get to having the food in a room with the door ajar or under pillows or rugs. Obviously as long as the dog isn't eating the pillows or rugs!

3) Find Me Game: For this game your dog must either have a great Sit/Stay or you must have two or more people. Have the dog in a Sit/Stay or have one person hold the dog and the other people moves away to the other side of the room and calls "Find Me". When the dog reaches that other person he or she gets rewarded. Just like with the Treasure Hunt, start out easy but eventually you can be hiding in closets or behind furniture.

4) Three Card Money (sorta): Take three plastic cups (or playing cards if your dog won't eat them too) and put a treat under one of them. Move the cups around and then let them go. Your dog will undoubtedly find the treat though he or she might knock over all the cups to do it. It's a party pleaser regardless!

5) KONGS: Feeding all your dog's food in Kongs will use up mental energy in a positive manner which is always beneficial.

All these activities will burn up mental energy which is just as tiring as burning physical energy. The more energy burned throughout the day, the calmer and happier your dog will be!

April 12, 2010

As happens with most people and training their dog, I too have slacked. Well, Darcy has still been in classes (just agility for now) but I haven't been good about keeping up with the information about her training. I am hoping to do that now.

Here's an update since November. Darcy and I have started volunteering for Safe Humane Chicago which we are very excited about. So far we have just gone to the orientation and gotten approved but we haven't attended any events yet.

The biggest news is that last night Darcy passed the Canine Good Citizen test! Yay! I am so proud of her!

Also as an update to previous training issues we've had with her. She hasn't destroyed anything since I wrote about the couch last (knock on wood!). We still have a bit of a problem with her getting things off the kitchen counter when we are gone but the worst we've lost is a loaf of bread. Not the best but it passed. Literally. Since it only happens when we are gone I think we just continue keeping edible things off the counter and maybe the habit will go away. It keeps our counters cleaner anyway so thank you, Darcy!

So I will try my best to keep this updated better! Hope you enjoy!