Day 3 -- Ready to Work!

Zoltie is really starting to enjoy his new friends. With groups, he likes to stay towards the outside of the group so he can check everyone out from the perimeter. He plays great one on one with another dog but knowing that he is a little more cautious with a group of dogs allows me to structure his play so he's not overwhelmed. If I see other dogs crowding him, I can watch his body language and know when I need to intervene. Since the dogs have good recalls, I can call them to me and they will happily leave their playmates to come to me. It's also good for Zoltie see the other dogs really keyed into the humans. When everyone else runs quickly to the human, there must be something good going on.

Zoltie trying to decide whether he wants to join in on the fun.

Now that Zoltie is much more checked in and not as worried about what is going on in his environment, we can really focus in on some training. He's starting to get the hang of the automatic sit for greetings. He forgets sometimes but the more he practices, the less jumping he does.

Right now it's really important that I pay attention to his behavior. If he comes and sits in front of me and I don't notice it and reward him, he's likely to jump up to get my attention. At this point, I want to reward him every time he sits in front of me. For Zoltie, getting attention is a HUGE reward. Telling him what a fabulous dog he is while I'm slowly rubbing his ears and down his sides is very rewarding to him. Occasionally I will give him a treat, especially if it's a really distracting environment. But for the most part, just giving him a lot of praise is going to go a long way with him.

And now we can start the beginnings of stay. Stay is broken down into three components; duration, distance and distraction. In the beginning, I'm just going to work on these one at a time. I start out with duration so I give rewards at regular intervals in order to keep him in position. I step on his leash so that, if he does get up, he can't go far and I can get him back into position. I'm going to keep my sessions short in the beginning and increase the time as he gets better.