Tempting toys

Our leave it command is getting a whole lot better, but we still make mistakes, especially with his old squeaky toy and his old kong.  Those toys have been declared off limits for him, ever since he outgrew his puppy kong and he tore up his squeaky toy.  I figured they'd make good leave it items from now on.  We have continued to work on retrieving without the object being thrown.  Significantly less interesting for him.  He can now pick up a really boring, generic rubber ring on cue!  Not consistently yet, but we're getting there.

Duke is learning 5 minute stays in his "place" and it is definitely helping him with house manners.  It's kinda cute how he just looks so expectant when he is lying there.  Our work is rewarded.  Duke gets a nice slab of turkey breast for performing his stay, and everyone else gets an evening free of chaos.  He still has some "episodes" where he decides it's more fun to run around, but they are diminishing with an increase in structure.  He just "graduated" from both puppy class and basic obedience, and his S.T.A.R puppy medallion should be coming in the mail any day now.  His trainer said he looked and behaved more "manly" this week, which is saying alot considering he's a ramubuctious tween at 7 months.  I bought him a "manly" collar to go compliment his little "coming of age".  Now we will move on to off-leash training, a whole new challenge for everyone.

Some commands we will work on these next few weeks:

heel - 15-20 step clicks in familiar environment, 2 step clicks in unfamiliar
place - get those 5 minute stays consecutive, then attach a verbal command
leave it - set up temptations on his walk
pull - he actually has no problem pulling in tug, it's really about the out command
get it - a hand delivery would be nice (right now I only expected him to pick up the object and drop it)
shake - just cute, no functional service dog value

Leave it.

Wow, the leave it command is hard to teach to a mouthy, curious, 7 month old Lab puppy.  Lets just say it's a work in progress.  We've done the exercise with his old disemboweled duck toy, that actually quacks like a real duck.  Very tempting for him.  I noticed if I don't time it correctly, it's too late and he'll go in for the grab.  We're both still learning.  If the "interesting" item is less so, the exercise is obviously easier.

Duke has a habit of picking up illegal items and running around crazily with the contraband in his mouth.  As funny as it looks, it's not very becoming of a well-mannered dog.  Our trainer suggested using the bring command.  He doesn't know this so well.  A big no-no is chasing him around in order to get whatever he has, because that's like a play reward.  Also, given the size of our living room, it would be hard to catch him anyway.  More fun for him, more stress for us.  The problem is that he sometimes picks up pencils and other dangerous/expensive things.  What to do?  He won't listen to the bring command, so am I just supposed to let him run around with a pencil in his mouth?  That can't go wrong...

I guess the obvious answer is get everything off the floor.  Easier said than done.  My sister can't walk, so we put her school books, writing utensils, and CDs on the floor so she has easy access when she's in the living room.  Imagine having to clean up your entire office every time you leave for a break?  Like I said, easier said than done.

Possible solutions:
-keep eyes glued to him (the problem is the original behavior is attention-driven, so this sometimes exacerbates it)
-solidify the place command
-solidify bring, leave it, come
-keep him on a long lead in the house
-practice get it (fetch) more often

None of these solutions are perfect, but we will implement all of them.

Good things we accomplished: 
-heel 4-5 steps/click
-leave it (but he knows when he's being set up)
-automatic down in the place command
-starting the  shake trick (this would be fun to develop into a say hi command)

So, my family adopted this 3 month Lab puppy (Duke Ellington) from Anti-Cruelty, a Chicago animal shelter.  The behavior report he came with said he showed mild food aggression and was timid and fearful.  We decided to take our chances anyway, since he was so young.  At the time, we didn't have a service dog in mind because we weren't sure how much a service dog would actually be able to help my quadriplegic sister, considering she has no fine motor skills.  I started to think about it more and more, and decided that I have nothing to loose by at least setting a goal.  At the very least, he can learn to retrieve the phone for her and offer companionship when she has to stay home alone.  I am also thinking of training him to alert my sister to curbs and stairs, since she has no depth perception.  It's a problem when she's in her power chair.

House training was a breeze, and Duke didn't follow through on his behavior report, thankfully for us.  He wizzed through basic obedience commands, but is not yet used to my sister's voice, so that will take time. Duke is now 6 months old, so sometimes he acts like the great dog that he'll become, other times he's just a goofy and rebellious adolescent.  Also, we need to introduce more distractions into our training, as his IQ drops about 20 points when there's a hyperactive dog any where near him.  We have been taking him to beginner training classes to combat this problem.  Currently we're 3 weeks in to the program, so still too early to see significant change.  The plan is to keep repeating the beginner training class at least for now, because he needs to learn how to work around untrained dogs, not necessarily ones that have been going to class for a while and have some manners.

As for socialization, I bought him an "in training" cape from things4yourdog.com.  We have been going to restaurants about once a week.  So far, we have met very little contention from business managers.  One guy tried to tell us to leave, but I informed him that under the Americans with disabilities act, my sister has the right to have a service dog with her.  The federal law does not actually mention anything about SDs in training, but I didn't let him know that.  He had no problem with us staying after I explained the law to him, but we won't be going back.  The majority of employees are very welcoming towards us, and you notice their warm smiles when they see a 6 month old puppy with a SD in training cape.  Duke behaves himself very well, and usually falls asleep while we're eating.  If I could just train him to lie under the table, we would be golden.  He thinks it's a scary dark place under there, so we will work on the command "under".

This is Duke on day one, still at the shelter:

Duke at about 3.5 months.

If Duke were in a professional organization, he would be raised by a puppy raiser and have structured obedience coaching and socializing sessions from the organization.  We don't have that luxury, so we have to improvise by going to pet dog training classes.  I was lucky to find a dog behaviorist/trainer in the Chicago area that is willing to mentor our training and help keep us on the right path.  I have consulted alot of books about dog training in general and found a wide variety of methods, most surrounding the positive training philosophy.  The Teamwork books/DVDs are really helpful, but I have not bought the second DVD yet, because we're not ready for actual SD work right now.  I plan on using this year to teach him the basics of directed retrieval and polish up his basic obedience with tons of distractions and socialization.  I have no practical experience in this field, but from my research, year one is the foundation year.  Then by next year, my hope is that he can polish up his directed retrieval in all conceivable situations that my sister would need to use him.  I will call our trainer to see when a good time would be to start training for curb alerts; at this moment, it's solidifying his basic obedience.  If he was going to be only a pet dog, the obedience he has now would be acceptable (he gets tons of compliments about how well behaved he is), but we need to keep improving in order to reach our goal.  He's a dog, so naturally there's a prey drive and a social drive we have to teach him to control.



Duke looking miserable with his ice bowl.  It's a hot day without AC.