July 10, 2008 - Settling In

Today is the second day of class and we spent the morning session talking about the course requirements and grading system. Too many requirements to detail here. We also talked about how to care for our puppies per the school's requirements.

I got my baby girl today! She is officially mine now! She is sleeping, finally as I write this post. Her favorite past times are eating my shoes, eating my shoes, eating my shoes, and eating the cords to my various electronics.

We have our first assignments with the dogs. We are working on the basics...hand feeding with a clicker, sits, downs, etc. The sits and downs are to be done with the dog sitting perched on a utility bench. The utility bench becomes the place where the dogs rest and stay when we are not training them. It's impressive to see all the class dogs lined up in a row sitting on their perches waiting to be given the command to climb down.

The best part of the day, aside from becoming a dog mom again, was when the instructor evaluated the dogs that students brought from home. The purpose of the eval is to help the student get a feel for whether or not their dog is suited for the type of training and what, if any, obstacles they are likely to face when trying to train the dog. Potential issues that would make training more difficult are...

1) If the dog is not treat motivated. This means that the dog will otherwise have to be trained using some amount of force. (IE - using a treat to motivate the dog to sit vs. physically pushing the dogs button into a sit.)
2) If the dog is fearful being handled by a stranger. This is an indication that the dog is likely to be stressed during the training process if handled by anyone other than the dog's owner.
3) If the dog becomes and remains timid after receiving a collar correction. This is another sign that the dog will likely be stressed. It's better if the dog rebounds quickly.
4) If the dog becomes and remains timid following loud noise. Dogs used for narcotics search, for example, need to be ready to do their job in conditions where things are falling around them since crack houses are rarely pristine and orderly.
5) If the dog has no interest in chasing a ball. Prey drive toward a ball is the segway to teaching dogs how to search for narcotics. The ball becomes the reward!

One other interesting thing I learned---how to get a dog to poop when you need them to. Light a match, blow the match out and let the match cool, then insert in the dog's butt. No, I'm not kidding! Something about the charcoally stuff on the end of the match works like a suppository.

Why would anyone want to do this? Because if your dog poops in the show ring or on a trial field you are automatically disqualified. So stick a match in your dog's butt just before you are due in the ring and...voila!

You may be asking yourself, why not use a regular suppository? Because matches are much cheaper! Duh!

Gotta go potty Mika now. Don't worry, I'll stick to the natural way!!! ;)