Obedience round 2

I went to the Bigger Brain for one more obedience lesson, before I try a class lesson with other dogs. Kai my usually energetic dog has decided that she is going to be very mellow at this place. No jumping, no fetching, no pulling her leash. Meets another dog and chills by the fence she knows I went out of earlier. We work on her walking and I end up buying a different leash. It seems to work and she loves the hot dog treats that I buy her and chop up for treats as we walk. Fast forward, she is being complimented by people for not pulling on her leash, so I try just a few minutes ago with her old leash. We walked this morning no problem, but that was on her new leash. Now the squirrels are being lunged for, and she is choking herself trying to get to them. Chicken hot dogs I guess do not smell as nice or are as fun to chase as a squirrel. So I cut our walk short. She seemed surprised but waht am I to do when she is choking herself. Does that affect her, NO. She is now running around my house playing soccer with herself. At least she finds things to do. But today I had to put her into time out. She was chewing the undersides of my chairs in the living room. The stuff that covers the springs. If you look at it from across the room it looks like I have a thousand years of cobwebs under the chair. So I put her in a three minute time out. She has not gone back to trying to pull it down again, but did try to eat my Native American throw on the back of the couch. That is now in the bedroom with all the other things that I have to hide from her. My room is a storage closet for all things Kai chewable that can be removed from her jaws of chaos. Puppies so much fun, ha ha ha. Hope the family can handle it tonight, I am off to book club, yeah me I get a break.

Not so obedient

My trainer told me that when Kai either pulls from behind or runs forward, I am suppose to jerk and release until she is compliant. I do not have a choke chain, but use a leash with bungee cord action and regular collar. We do fine until she sees another dog, in which case she pulls to try to get there, but I have to stand firm and give her these jerk reactions, until she submits. By this time the dog is usually far ahead and we continute this jerk action all the way down the sidewalk, until the dog is no longer close. My favorite pulls are trying to get to a squirrel. Those tree rats must know she is being trained and they are not at risk because they stand in front of her as we jerk down the sidewalk. Also the robins are having fun with this training as well.

But on the positive note she is doing better and the majority of the time she is on my left side and walking with a slack leash. I do let her sniff occasionally so that she knows her way home and what other dogs are in the neighborhood. She seems to like the bigger dogs over the smaller dogs.

I am training my daughter and husband on how not to let the the dog jump on them. They maybe harder to train then the dog. I have to admit, I forget and let her jump on me, then I remember. So hopefully we will get better. Kai is doing well with this but seems sad. We give her praise when she approaches us without jumping. She really is a good dog.

As for the nibbling, we stop petting her when she starts to get rambunctious and nibbling. I have not found gates yet but I stop what I am doing is moving away from her. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be always effective. I really must be consistent.

So I think that us humans maybe the disobedient trainees.

Obedience Training

Kai and I went to obedience training today. Kai had no idea what we were doing and for the most part was very good. I on the other hand have much to learn. Like how to stop her from "nibble" or should I say nipping at me when she wants to have me toss the ball. How to ignore her when she is jumping on me so that she understands that I will only give her attention when she is being good. And the part I hate the most how to pull her so that she knows I mean business about the walk but not hurt her, so she chokes to death.

So next week I go back and hopefully I will have learned something.

Shoes and socks

Well, I thought that I may have bypassed the shoe thing, only to find Kai gnawing on shoes. SO I asked everyone to put there shoes away. Kai is a ninja, able to sneak into a closed door and steal shoes. That is what happened this morning. Maybe the door was open at some point that allowed my dog to sneak in, grab a shoe and hide it away, but the door was closed when I found her with the shoe. So how did she do it. I think my husband may have gone into get something and Kai always seizes and oppurtunity to go into the secret chamber.

Two days prior, my husband let the dog follow her into the room and crawl under the bed. This is where I had placed a pair of shoes that I just bought. My husband brought the shoes to me telling me I should put them away and the dog won't chew on them. The straps were completely chewed in two. How do you fix a sandal where the straps are chewed in two? Of course, my response, "If you had not let her into the room, the shoes would have technically been put away." I have rescued his shoes, slippers, socks, etc, every day.

So I have had advice and this week I will get more. The biggest thing is to say NO instantly upon seeing Kai with something she is not supposed to have and then replacing it with the correct toy. This should work, except Kai, barks at me and before I can get the item is running around the house. I am pretty sure she is telling me "No, I will not give up my shoe." This unfortunately makes it a game. Maybe she is bored, but I cannot play 4-5 hours a day with her. Walks threee times a day and me training her or playing fetch I thought would be enough, but I think I need to find her some other outlets, besides chewing up my things.

Sneaky

As previously mentioned I live with a picket style fence. One part is new and one part is old, as we did not see any reason to renew the one side. Well, I think I need to renew or fix the old fence because I have an escape artist.

Unfortunately, Kai spent her day cooped up from 9:30 to about 2, because I had a funeral to attend. I took her out at around 8 for a walk and when I came home we went for another walk. It was such a beautiful day that I gave Kai a bath taking off her collar and tags. Then I let her outside and followed after her as we both had to dry off. I brought books, magazines and the paper thinking after our walk that Kai would be tired. I did not realize that she still was energized, nor did I realize that a food truck was sitting at the school yard. Delicious smells wafting into the yard.

I looked up from my book to see my dog on the otherside of the fence heading down the street without her tags, leash or me. I called to her, she turned, realized that I was not with her and came back. I asked her, not expecting an answer, how did you get out. She promptly showed me by going over to the only loose board on the old fence, nudging it aside and escaping through the branches. Then she ran back and forth and finally down the alleyway with me in hot pursuit. She headed for the front yard but, thank heavens, ran into my neighbor who picked her up and gave her back to me. I put her in the house and went scrounging for a hammer and nails. Unfortunately, none of my nails did the trick so I had to place tons of stuff in front of the fence and see if there were any other potential escape routes.

My neighbor told Kai she should not tell me all her secrets, I just think it is funny that she did. Tomorrow I head to Lowes, crawl under a hedge and start nailing the fence pickets back in place. Anybody have any bandages for scrapes that I am sure I will have?

Thank you for reading my adventures with Kai, I think I am up for many more excursions into the wild side of a puppy.

Game played through a fence

Sooo, I was throwing the ball with Kai today and it went through the bottom of our picket fence. I thought well Kai you have another ball, you will have to wait for me to get that ball. I went to get her other ball.  I threw it and she got it and took it to the fence and pushed it through the fence with her nose. I went to get both balls and brought them back to the yard thinking that it was a fluke that she pushed the second ball through the fence. NO, no, no, Kai took the two balls that I just retrieved for her and ran over to the same spot and pushed them through the fence again. When I told her that I was not going to get the balls she tried to get under the fence. and got caught. I retrieved the balls but put them away because I was not going to climb down the hill again.

She has found the balls but I am not going to throw them and I will see how long before she comes to get me because she pushed them threw the fence again. I think I tired her out as much as she tired me out because she came in to rest.

Success

I am happy to say that my dog loves to go on walks. She is still a little frightened of things, but when I pull out the leash and say let's go for a walk, she lets me put it on her. Then she drags me to the fence. I am trying to make sure that this is the only way she gets out of the fence.

The other day we had a near catastrophy on our walk. My dog loves my neighbors dog Parker, the other day we were on a walk and Kai decided she wanted to turn back to the house. I did not know that PArker was across the street with his owner, until Parker broke free and ran to Kai. We were in the middle of the street with cars coming, luckily there is a stop sign, but hopefully they would not have run us down. Kai laid down in the road and then proceeded to jump up and down on Parker. Parker is about two dogs higher then Kai, but they love to play. Parker's owner was not to thrilled as he is trying to teach obedience. We finally wrestled them to the corner. I am sure the cars that had piled up behind us were either scared to death or having a lovely laugh at these two dogs playing. I am sure as they watched Parker break free that they thought Kai was going to be a Scooby snack. Thank heaven for them being acclaimated to one another.

It is because of Parker that I think she lets me put the leash on her. She watches Parker through the fence and then she wants to follow but I tell her she must have the leash. So out we go and she would follow the path that Parker took. So now we walk and she is not afraid of the leash, but she likes people who smile at her versus people who do not when we are walking.

Another success is that I actually got her to walk by the river, not near our house. We had a nice stroll and she only got scared a couple of times. She did not like the sound of the water fountain so I could not get her to drink from the dog water fountain that the park has, but she did go to the river to drink. For a lab/boston mix, she does not like to get her paws wet with water. But she loves snow.

Who knows what lurks in the minds of dogs.