Bammie: Will I Be the New Demo Dog?

Training a new dog is difficult. Being a new dog is difficult, too, (especially when your predecessor was as awesome as I am -- Love, Chubbs) and I hope that by giving you updates on my progress, you can see that even a dog trainer's dog faces frustrating training challenges.

The last few days have been going very well. I can be reactive on walks. I am prey driven and get excited about basically everything. It has been Mom's goal to make me her new demo dog for reactive dogs and therapy dogs, but in order to do that, I have to behave perfectly on leash. That's not easy for me.

When training a reactive dog, you have to teach them something you want them to do instead of react. Mom usually teaches her clients a simple "look" command. Thus, my alternative to barking is to look at my mom. I can do this very well without distractions, but with them, I am still struggling. I want to look at the other thing, even if I'm not reacting! To help your dog learn that looking at you is the right move, it's really important to reward when your dog makes the choice to look at you rather than at the thing. In the later stages of training, you don't want to wait to reward until after you cue them. Instead you want to reward your dog when he initiates the desired behavior. People often miss this behavior, teaching the dog that to get attention they must first react before they obey to get the treat. To avoid this, reward every time your dog looks at you (particularly in the early stages)!

I am not at the point where I can look away from the thing I want to chase. Cats are the toughest. Man, I want to bark at them. A dog that barks at me is next toughest. I mean, that guy has it coming! But in the last few weeks of training, I have definitely been improving. Earlier this week, I was able to look at Mom almost the entire time that a dog passed on the other side of the street! Then, a few minutes later, I walked past a dog that was staring at me, and I didn't react at all. I briefly looked at Mom without a cue, and she got very excited. I knew I had been a good boy and started nosing at the pocket where Mom keeps the treats, but she had run out. What kind of dog trainer is that? I got praise, which is nice, but not as nice as liver.

Then, the next night, I went completely crazy pulling and barking at a cat. Hey, you win some, you lose some. If you're training your dog, reactive or not, stick with it. We will improve!

Love, Bammie