![]() Thanks to amazing friends he still got walked and played with every day, and had all the exercise and engagement time with people that he needed. For the next three months of his life I did not have enough energy most days to get up to make myself some food, leave along train and socialize him the way I would usually do. Unfortunately though, when he was five months old I got quite sick with pneumonia. Party and I had two wonderful months together after I brought him home. Those First Couple Months Are Really, Really Important He is my first dog who is exclusively treat-trained. Eventually I realized that I was wasting so much time training him how to literally eat dog food when we could spend the time learning fun tricks or agility or obedience…so I stopped. Throughout all that he did not actually refuse to eat or train for kibble – it just slowed down things so much that we could never find a training flow. As soon as I tried to fade the ball, hello the chewing ritual. Show him a ball, offer a piece of kibble and throw the ball right after made him swallow the kibble. This again only worked as long as the toys were right there. I tried to make him swallow quicker by using toys. While that worked, it did not transfer into non-sneaky kibble feedings: these were still crunch-crunch-crunch. He would swallow a piece of hotdog without the chewing ritual, so I would give him a couple pieces of hotdog, sneak one piece of kibble and more pieces of hotdog. When this didn’t change his eating habits, I tried to change them by training. I stored kibble with salami in the hopes of increasing the flavor. I would put the soaked kibble into little tupperware containers in my fridge and line them up by soakiness until it looked like I collected my dog’s post-meal puke. I soaked it, for minutes, for hours, in the microwave, you name it. I experimented with every puppy kibble brand I could get my hands on. Kind of hard to keep a rate of reinforcement of 18 per minute if your dog can only eat 12 treats per minute, and this is if he does nothing but eat, behaviors are not yet accounted for! Even the tiniest pieces of puppy kibble Party would (and still will) not swallow in one bite, instead he chews them with astonishing slowness, moving them around from one side of the mouth to the other, until after 5 seconds he finally swallows and looks at me with an expression of exasperation about this unusually difficult-to-eat food. This one was the universe whacking me in the head for years of my arrogant claim of “You do not really need dog treats, all dogs will train for kibble!” I really believed this to be true (I actually published a YouTube video on that topic) until a little black and white fluff ball showed my what he thought of kibble: It was edible, but required a lot of time. Here are the big lessons I learned from my Not-A-Border-Collie: ![]() There were lectures on humility, rethinking, patience and trust. There are few things as cute as waking up in the middle of the night and having a fluffy ball next to your pillow that makes puppy sleeping sounds.Īs with every dog, he has taught me so much more than I could ever teach him. He still makes the sounds very young puppies make during sleeping: an adorable combination of sighs, groans and whimpers. Unfortunately this was never successful, so he stopped that after a bit.) (Yes, he actually waved at other dogs for a while. Want to have that ball in Steffi’s hand? Wave. See someone with dog treats? Sit in front of them and wave. It was one of the first tricks I taught him and he quickly learned that he could get anything with a well-timed wave. He gets incredibly excited whenever he sees me (while the Border Collies barely get up from the couch when I enter the house) and he has kept his number one puppy habit to this day: Waving. When we clicker-train he still places his feet with the same slow deliberation and deep thoughtfulness as a puppy in his first couple sessions. He is every bit as unreasonably happy, strangely clumsy and inconceivably cute as a three month old dog. Party however – he may be my eternal puppy. She always trained, moved and thought like a grown-up dog. I’m not sure if Kix ever was a real puppy, the only puppy qualities she had were needing to pee every 10 minutes and destroying everything inside my house. Fusion was still a puppy in terms of wildness and (uhm) being uncontrollable at times, while being a hard worker and incredibly coordinated and physically capable. Of my three dogs he is by far the one who is still the most puppy at his first birthday.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |