Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Dinner and a lesson

The best trick we discovered with puppy Kodo was to use his meals as a training session.  Gets the dog OK with hands and food (less likely to develop food aggression if hands coming toward you means MORE food not something being taken away), you are likely to have their full attention, good chance to work consistently on a command without making them fat with extra food, plus good bonding time in general.  We started the same process with Dozer and are feeding him separate from the other two since he and Tali seem to have the same attitude toward food (would eat themselves into footstool-shapes if given the opportunity).  Once he has a bit better impulse control we can maybe start blending them into the same room in different corners, but for now a baby gate or a door are always between them.
So we have been meal-training Doz for several days now and he has 'sit' really well and 'down' pretty well, though he still needs the hand gesture tucking toward his chest for that.  Also working on 'wait' and 'gentle'- very important when you are fast moving and have shark-teeth.  :D  He is kinda getting his name too. He is a very smart boy I think, it is just a matter or breaking past the puppy ADD and the frantic-ness of energy he has and I think he will be an awesome dog to work with.


-bc


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