Skipper's journey

A lot has gone on in the last few months of Skipper's life that could upset a dog. He lost his owner who he'd lived with his entire life of nearly 8 years. He was then driven from his known home in Iowa to Chicago and the next day boarded on a plane and flown to Seattle, WA. He then spent some time with a family full of kids and pets and had trouble fitting in thanks to him not really understanding how to hang out with big dogs.

Add to all of this his Jack Russell genetics and you could have a mess on your hands. However, in spite of a few rough patches he is doing amazingly well. I've been watching him closely the short time he's been with us and one thing that I've noticed is that he gets overly excited in new situations and zones out his humans. He's so focused on whatever it is that has engaged him (barking dog upstairs, sound in the garage, bird outside the window...) that it's like he can't even hear me. Add to that the fact that he doesn't seem to have had much training beyond the "sit" command and you have a dog who isn't used to looking to humans for info.

When a dog gets overly worked up, even if it's a happy/nervous excitement like Skipper's, it can often lead to reactiveness. The dog is so fired up that what could just be a "hey, give me some space" bark from another dog can be interpreted as a "bring it on buddy, I wanna kick your butt!" Not a good thing.

My plan for Skipper is to start working on basic commands with him so it becomes an ingrained habit for him to look to humans for info on how to behave. I want him to be tuned into me enough so that if we are in a new environment I'll be able to talk with him and get him to focus on me and connect with me before he gets worked up. It's not that he's hyper or crazy, he's just easily overstimulated. I have to say, this guy was probably quite a handful at age 1 or 2 or even three, but at 7 he's just ready for fun and eager to please and interact with his humans.

So we've started with a "sit-stay" and he's worked from just a 1 second stay (I did say he was distractable) up to a full 10 seconds and that's with the dogs barking upstairs. He quickly learned "lay" from a sit position but that will need work for him to fully understand it without leading him into it. Most important, today we started doing a "look at me" exercise and a "touch it" exercise. Since I don't want to overload him with a bunch of new stuff I think we'll continue to work on the stay and the "look at me" commands since they are so important. The guy is so dang smart that he picks something up almost immediately and he's really praise motivated so we don't even need to use treats much - a good thing since he needs to lose a little weight.

Overall this is an amazing dog - house trained, loves kids, loves people, playful and great on leash. The skills he's learning now will help him be more comfortable in new situations and more in tune with the lucky human who welcomes him to their home.