Monday, May 21, 2012

Working towards tolerance


Langley is an active, young, goof of a boy who is pretty big and tends to run into and over things rather than slow down.  Bo is a 6 yr old, set in his ways, easily disgruntled Chihuahua who we love to pieces but he can be a bit of an ass to the youngsters at times.  But I have to say, if I was a short little chubby guy and a young muscled crazy teeny-bopper kept (seemingly on purpose) running into me I'd get nervous and worked up too. 
It has been a challenge but over the last couple of days we've been doing tons of clicker work and training with both dogs.  Langley is getting rewarded (both with food and praise and always a click) for redirecting from Bo's barking to look at me.  He's also working on basic manners and a few tricks that help redirect him to what he sees as a fun game when Bo is growling at him and he is just dying to get in on some action.  Luckily he's very food and praise motivated and is picking things up in no time flat.  We are also rewarding him for "chill" time which is when he lays down and chills out on his own. 

Bo, on the other hand needs to be desensitized to our crazy spaz of a pup.  To do this I put Langley in his wire crate and then have slowly been working on basics with Bo.  We were surprised to learn that this boy is already a whiz at the basics - down, stay, sit, spin and he even threw a "roll over" at me.  So after we knew he had some tricks up his sleeve, I started working on the tricks closer and closer to Langley's crate, rewarding Langley for staying calm during this.  We've been doing this for 2 days and tonight I got to the point where this picture was able to be taken.  All three dogs, calm, not barking or demanding, not marking or posturing or height seeking or screaming or fighting... and did I say NOT BARKING!!!!  While I recognize that this was just a little moment in time and we still have a lot of work until we get to a point of relaxed tolerance, I'll take the hope that 30 seconds of "down-stay" gave me tonight.

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