It has been absolutely forever since I updated this blog, and for that I sincerely apologize. We've had many things over the past few months that I thought "I need to get this up on the blog" ........ but somehow life is just running me ragged and I haven't had time/energy to keep up with this. Started Dog Walking in August and dearly love it. However, it's one more thing that uses up my time during the day, and all my other responsibilities to kids, dogs, family, house etc still remain. :)
Fizz and I have been trying to work on a calm hold with the db. Our training in general is very sporadic at this point, often done in 1-2min spurts w/out pre-planning (bad bad trainer!). We've worked on this off and on. What I've seen recently is that the first hold will be calm, and then the subsequent ones will be mouthy, and the bar on my db is getting trashed (and its maple!). I tried bringing out heavier Db's to work with (my SchH1 and SchH2 db's), but still the chewing. And when I look in her eye, it is not stress that I see, but rather "Imp eye" .......playful, mischevious, puppy. Pure and simple: puppy!! Yes, she's 13mos, and many times I get very intense adult-like focus and work. HOWEVER, as Rottweilers go, she's still very young and I have to keep that in mind. I suspect that this issue will resolve itself most easily with maturity, and I refuse to make a problem out of what is not really a true problem.........and so we've not been drilling on this or saying "I must have a hold by X deadline!" and forcing the issue.
I decided today to do a bit of work, using one of her chew bones. It's a very dense rubber nylabone, shaped like some sort of femur. She enjoys chewing on the epicondyles, but will often carry it around the house very calmly. B/c I've seen her carry this calmly of her own accord, I chose to use it for today's training. She'll also carry James' rain boots very calmly, but I suspect I should not encourage that by using them in training. ;)
I've been working with her holding calmly = I say "out" and take the db from her. If no calm hold, no "out" and no reward is available. At times, I'm also using a "yes" to mark the calm hold. If she starts to chew, or lies down with it, I simply take the db away, no negative verbals......simply the loss of opportunity to be rewarded. If you're not calmly holding your db, you have no ability to earn reward. I was happy with how today's session went over all. We'll be taking our alternative db to training this afternoon. :)
Fizz working on db hold
