Bromancing my Beck

After back to back posts whining about Beck, I feel I need to set the record straight a bit. He is an awesome dog and I don't regret adopting him, even during his trying times. As a commenter pointed out, dogs who are sweet and cuddly and give us the time of day, are easy to bond with, and to forgive them their trespasses.

Except  for the times when Beck is stalking the not really evil Daisy, or barking, or acting a young fool, he is a blast to work with. I saw a lot of potential in him (*obviously*) when he was my foster dog, but I also saw a lot of potential for a disastrous placement. Between his brain power, high energy needs, and his mild separation anxiety I knew he was not the dog for the average pet owner. Honestly, aside from basics that he would need for adoption, (stop jumping on top of people!), I didn't spend much time at all working with Beck until after March 4th when we adopted him.

Since I made a list of his issues, it is only fair that I write the behaviors that Beck has learned in 5 weeks. This is a dog who did not even know how to sit.

Beck has learned his name and to pay attention and watch me, sit, down, paw, paw an object, leave it, hit an easy button, howl on cue, sit stay, down stay, heel on and off leash on both right and left side, auto sit, come!, target my hand, an object, and a  target stick, boing with 4 feet off the ground, get in, sit front, finish right and left, say his prayers, jump up on something with 4 feet, paws up ( 2 feet) , crawl, play dead, roll over, spin, twirl, put his head all the way to the ground front and side (settle), go through my legs, back up fast, back up on both right and left side, jump 20 inches, send to a jump, bounce jump, down on a table, off, default down, 101 things to do with a box, go out around an object, go to his mat, target a mat with his hind feet, bow, sit up pretty, dance on hind feet forward and backwards and in a circle,. Whew! I am sure there is more, but well you get the idea. Only a few of these are proofed, but that is a lot of new info in just over a month. Yea!

The dog has excellent retention and it is mind boggling to me what a sponge he is. Hard to imagine such a great and needy dog in a shelter  for more than half of his life. I spend lots of time day dreaming and trying to figure out what is important and what in what order I want to teach him new behaviors. I have worked a lot on back, since it is a key behavior in Freestyle and my last 3 dogs have kind of sucked at it. Every night at dinner time, he backs up to his mat. Very enthusiastically I might add.

Today is not his day Beck's day for training. As I mentioned the other day Poppy is here for a service dog tune up, and she will be coming with me every where I go today. Poppy got a play pass yesterday because she looked like this pretty much most of the day. 

Service dogs should never be taken out in public access dirty, and when I tried to rinse her off, she stuck her whole head in the hose with such joy, that I just gave in and let her have a party. She took forever to dry, and by then it was too late and I was toast. So this morning,  she was not allowed access to my swamp yard. The yard  is a major loosing battle right now with all the rain we have had. Poppy came out with me most of Saturday and she did long downs yesterday while I was working with Beck. That was hard work for her and then she got lots of ball time and lots more mud. Poppy  will need a good grooming before I can take her any where today.

We are also watching a friend's Aussie and well, it is total spring break mayhem over here! I can tell you what, this never would happen  if Charlee was still here.  That dog knew how to keep order.

I told Beck to just say no, but he led Scout on. and on. and on.

As you can see, the pups are pooped at the end of the day. 

It's all good.  

Today is also Valli's first day of school.  Wish her well in class tonight.  She has her first meet and greet on Friday and she has to cram.

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Trainer's note. Scout's humping is not sexual.  It is a displacement behavior brought on by being a herding dog with lots going on around him that he cannot control.

. When in doubt. some dogs hump. 

Snowzilla and the wag more hump less fest

With the French Toast Alert at high, it was time for some storm prepping.

First I hit the supermarket market last night, and bought the mega gianormous toilet paper. Rest assured that the good junk food is hiding underneath.

This morning I awoke with images of my two new male foster dogs frozen shut in my house, ala blizzard on Little House on the Prairie. If you follow me on twitter (@gooddogz), you may have been following the hump fest 2011. Each night before bed time was the worst. Let's just say that my living room saw a life time worth of action dominant male canine play. I was inches away from trying a squirt bottle, but because both dogs were shelter dogs and I want to earn, not loose their trust, I thought ok, lets see what happens if I wear the heck out of them. The humping starts after the dogs get '"excited." (not that kind) and I wanted to see what would happen if I kept arousal (not that kind) on the down low.

With a  massive leap of faith in not only the dogs, but my ability as well, I let both fosters off leash in the woods this morning for the first time today.  It was a picture perfect walk with my two dogs along with  Beck and Kingsley dragging light leashes -in case I needed help catching them. I have to say I was really proud of the dogs and myself. Over the last year I have developed a system of integrating shelter dogs into the household and it is all about relationship. The next group of fosters, I will try to videotape. Basically I use Dawn Jenks choose to heel/come method combined with a work to earn program. While I walk in my yard, the dogs are rewarded for choosing to hang around with me. I make recalls fun. I often tell my students to practice recalls like fishing. Catch and release! My yard is big enough that I can tell if they are blowing me off and if they do, they don't get off leash in the woods or beach. We did meet up with a few people and dogs on our walk this morning, and both foster dogs were awesome and came right back when I called them. In some ways, I think teaching recalls to once abandoned dogs is easier than dogs that were raised as puppies and have gotten real life self rewards again and again for mis behavior.

Check them out!

Beck and Kingsley are the nicest  dogs, and if anyone wants to sponsor either of them to stay here for life,we will gladly accept. . Both dogs have updated bios found here for Kingsley, formally Buck

 and here for Beck.

Beck jumped my 5 and a half foot gate in a single bound to get to me, and he is going to take a little longer to find just the right placement for him. Dog sports anyone? He is a blast to work with. Beck didn't even know sit when he came and in a few days he learned sit, auto sit, walking decent on a leash, down, target, leave it and my favorite, no humping. All this is a huge improvement from the jump and hump that he arrived with just over a week ago. Interesting to note that the fosters have pretty much done a reversal from the dogs that we met in the shelter. It turns out that Kingsley loves to jump on people he knows!  Both dogs love to be lap dogs.


Part of the fun of fostering  dogs for me, aside from saving them from life behind bars, is figuring out the puzzle of what they already know, and how they can learn what they need to know to be adoptable FAST. It brings out the behavior geek in me. Each dog who has passed through my doors have given me an insight on what my clients live with. I have said this before and I will say it again, I think all trainers should foster at least one dog a year if at all possible. Of course for a multitude of reasons, this is not always possible.
By the way, tiring the dogs out did the trick and it has been a happy evening of wag more hump less.