It's a dog's tail!!!! Climbing stairs, leads, toilets, grabbing and holding and more - Part 4

Since my last blog Scarlet has come along in leaps and bounds and as I wrote about in my last blog I have been doing extra training on the lead as well as in forcing sit and stay techniques.

It seems like ages ago that Scarlet was unable to be walked on the lead without her being dragged, but today you wouldn't realise that it is the same dog.  She quite happily walks along right next to me in the heel position and no longer lacks behind or pulls on the lead, she still does get excited when there are other dogs around and especially cattle and horses.  I'm sure some more trips out to see our horses will soon take care of that.

How to get your dog to climb stairs on command

Scarlet will now constantly wait at the bottom of the stairs going up the back of our house and will not venture up until she is told to.  This was achieved by stopping her at the bottom of each stairs by installing a gate, this gate allowed us to stop her from climbing the stairs while we were unable to be with her. Then we would open a gate and hold it back until she stopped pulling on her collar, once this was achieved we would then ask her to climb and as soon as she did we would either give her loads of encouragement and/or chicken neck pieces. We also performed this at the top of each stairs so she will only go downstairs when asked.

This form of training is very effective and is something I use I just about all tasks that I'm teaching her.

How to get your dog to chase and hold until told to release.

This very technique is something I have been using to teach Scarlet to chase something and to hold it until I allow her to let go.  For example, I will sit her down in an area without distraction and grab one of her favourite toys which she likes chewing on, then will wiggle it in front of her face to get her attention while calling her name.  If she moves from her position were quickly hide the toy until she settles down again, then at that point I will bring the toy out again.  Once she is calm and has her eyes set on the Tory I will then give her the command to chase the toy down and I will either drag along the ground or hold it in my hand to her to chase, all the time hitting her words of encouragement and stroking her back.

When she does actually make contact with the toy I will also give her loads of encouragement and move the toy around so she is forced to keep a firm hold or she will lose it.  Sometimes will allow her to actually take the toy from my hands, were sometimes she takes it because of the strength the ferocity of her head shaking. This is something I was doing at the beginning to give her the confidence that she can grab succeed in taking her toy back to her bed.  In the last few days I have been making sure that I have a firm grip of the toy so that she neither can take it from me and I don't give it to her, where the only option from their is that she has to hold on until I tell her to let go. At this stage I will be on my knees with a pocket full of dog treats and then once given the command to let go it is up to her to release the object, if this does not happen within the first few seconds I would grab her head and force her lips into her teeth, which in effect is like biting your own lips.  The longer she resisted the harder I would push and the more it would cause discomfort, all the time giving her the command to let go.  As soon as she let go of the object I would give her loads of praise and stroking and feed her the dog treat which I had ready in my hand.  This type of training would only go on for about 20 minutes three times a day and after three days she will now wait until told to chase the object, hold the object no matter how much shaking and pulling I would do, and most importantly released the object as soon as I give her the command.  This type of training has shown to be very effective in not only her future job as a pig dog, but also letting of my wife's shoes (which I must say is a very safe option that Scarlet!).

Scarlet will now let go any object which she has him a mouth on command even if the command is from one of the other family members, I'm not sure how she will go when someone outside the family gives her instructions.  My plan is that she will totally ignore anyone except family members as there might be a need in a protection role to hold on and not let go.

Toilet training is crap!!

In the last week Scarlet has also become 99% house trained and will no longer go to the toilet inside (99% of the time anyway ) or in her laundry bed during the night, and I must say it seems that this was surprisingly easy.  I remember some 10 years ago when I trained my first dog, toilet training seemed to take months and months but since that time I have learned a lot about dog social structure and the desire dogs have it to please and be fed, which I am using to my advantage.

20% weight gain each week

Scarlet has been growing quite rapidly as expected and she has been putting on 20% of body weight each week, when we first daughter at home she was a bit over 5 kg now a three weeks on she weighs almost 8 kg and I would say has doubled in size.  She has slowly been growing taller but at length has been growing faster and if she stretched out she would roughly be about half my height all around 80 cm long. Just to think the collars I bought only a few weeks ago now fits her so there is little chance she could slip away the non-pinching choke collar can be used more effectively.

Well that's it in this, hopefully by the time I write I will have been out hunting and scored myself boar skins, which will assist tremendously in my training to her to track down large boars.

Until my next post.....