ROSANNE ROSANNADANNA: Demo Dog in Class

Last night Rosanne accompanied me to the Gym for my Start Right class. There were three young dogs in class, all girls. Rosanne was an excellent teacher's dog: she demonstrated Name Game, Following the Mum (prelude to loose leash walking), how to play tug and click/treat for a good pull on the toy. We had a great class with everyone being very active! The puppies and young dogs were all distracted and all over the map at the start of class, then totally focused and engaged by the end of class. Rosanne was not quite all there, a little less "all there" than she usually is. Maybe she was still sleepy from the car ride.

I found a really good occupier/chewie for her - a little piece of bully stick stuck in the end of a small Squirrel Dude.

MYSTERY FOR THE DAY: Why do other trainers reinforce one's puppy for having feet up on them? This is becoming a regular thing when we go to the Gym and I need to find a nice way to explain the Rules for Puppies - FEET ON A PERSON GETS YOU NOTHING, FEET ON FLOOR GETS YOU EVERYTHING.

After last night (two different people were petting her while she was standing up on them), she's up all over me this morning - a situation I have not had since she arrived. Do I put a sign on her X-pen? I really really do not want this reinforced and NOW is the time to stop it, not later when these same trainers decide it's now annoying to have her jumping on them.

Jumping on people is so easy to extinguish if you set the rule in place and *always* follow it. It's so much easier to never let it get started than to fix it later as a teenager.

LITTLE TIME WITH JOEY:
Rosanne had a little yard time with only Joey this morning. Here's a video of where they are so far. If Joey only knew how much fun Ziva gets from playing with Rosanne, he would probably want that same fun. But right now, she's a pain in the tuchas for him.

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LISTERINE RINSE:
A friend of mine suggested rinsing Rosanne in Listerine to help with the itchies. She's a breeder and says that puppies often have bacteria on their skin and the Listerine will knock that out. So, OK, I did it. I made up a pitcher of 1/3 listerine and the rest water and drenched her in it while outside on the grooming table. We'll see if that works or not!

VISIT TO AUNTIE LYNN:
We had a visit with Auntie Lynn today. Rosanne had eaten a full breakfast this morning and, as a result, was not much in the mood for training. She fell asleep (as usual) during the car ride to Lynn's. She was NOT in the mood for any training when we got there. She was either:

a) not interested in me because of the Listerine dip
b) not hungry because she ate a bowl of food for breakfast
c) still sleepy from the nap in the car

She was just rather not herself. We hung out for a bit - she saw the goats in Lynn's pasture and barked at them, but would not take treats in order to do some goats = good things. When I picked her up, she wouldn't lick my face like crazy. I could be a big giant poisoned cue now - representing the evils of Listerine.

She played with Ziva for a bit. She had her leash on and Ziva got really into hauling her around by the leash (it's attached to a front-attachment harness). It was extremely hard to video as they kept dashing about pretty quickly.

Rosanne met Lynn's other dogs, Liam and Jake, so as to be ready for her coming 3 1/2 days staying with Lynn and company. She started to loosen up a bit and was eventually back to her licky, snuggly self. She enjoyed the Trader Joe's meatballs for some Mine! training with Lynn. She also laid on my lap for a long time, just relaxed and snuggly which is the first time for that.

After we got home, I did not feed her lunch. She had a nice long nap. After she woke up, she had about 20 minutes of chewing while I was on the computer. This seemed to get her fully awake as she was *ready* for some training!

We did a bunch of tugging with the pink octopus, working tug into left and right circles. We did a big bunch of rapid click/treats for standing. I even paused for a count of 2 seconds, then cued "sit" while she was still on her feet - twice! Wooo hoooo! Learning stimulus control!

After that I went back to the computer, looked down and discovered her first ever offered down. Wow! Click/treat! We then worked on offered downs for a bit with her giving me several. Some were a sit first. When nothing happened as a result of a sit, she pounced into a down. I accepted those this time but next time we will work on only downs w/o a sit first. For now, it was important that she understood belly-on-floor as a possible opportunity for click/treat.

I guess it's fair to say I learned two things today:

1. Rosanne needs to wake up slowly from naps.

2. Rosanne isn't likely to want to train if she's eaten a meal in a bowl. I'm going back to putting her meals in a bait bag and using it as reinforcement for desired behaviors.