Swiss Lick Swissies

Cautious Canine, Week Two

Friday, May 1st, 2009 | Beowulf, Indigo

Last night was our second Cautious Canine class.

Homework in the past week was auto check in, meaning I’m trying to get Indy to pay more attention to me (or Dan) in general. When she makes eye contact, aka checks in, she gets rewarded with a treat and lots of praise. And it can’t be because she knows we already have treats. She’s seeking us out, checking to make sure all is well.

Apparently, this is not a new thing to do. More than one person I’ve spoken with works with their dogs to stress this behavior early on. I’ve taken classes with 3 separate organizations, and it’s the first time it’s ever been mentioned. Granted, I was told to praise Gryffin when we first started in classes with him because he was doing it on his own, and it was frequent.

I wish someone had suggested it earlier. Just working on it Thursday night through Sunday helped when we had family over (people she doesn’t see frequently). She was a little nervous, but didn’t do the barking thing for more than a minute. She adjusted, and I worked on check in with her while they were there.

We did an exercise in class last night called Treat reTreat. Basically, the trainer stood about 20 feet away from Indy and would start tossing treats in her direction. She would gradually toss them a shorter distance, luring Indy until she was about 2 feet away and was taking food right out of her hand. This was not a hard exercise for Indy since she’s very food motivated. It’s when someone pets her (or tries to) that she will freak out. But it was interesting to see how stressed the other dog got and how resistant she was to moving too close. She got with about 10 feet of the trainer.

One thing I wish trainers would take into account…not everyone has trained with them before. Every facility does things slightly different. So each time I go to a new place, I get reprimanded for doing things different than they do. They should offer some sort of orientation for the people if you’re new to them. It’s a bit stressful to me to get reprimanded, which I am positive Indy picks up.

We’ll see where things go with this next week.

Tags: Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, Swissy

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