My Pack

So before I get too involved in this blog, I thought I would take a second to introduce you to my pack-o-fur.

The first trouble-maker to enter my life is 6 year-old Farley, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi:

When I say that he's a butt-pain, I mean it in the nicest possible way. He's what I would call a "house-dog," meaning that beyond the silly pet tricks like dancing and closing doors, I haven't done any competition-style training with him. He knows what he needs to know to survive in the house, and other than that, his main function is to make us laugh. 

The Corgi puppet show (Farley, right, and his brother Oscar)

Farley is very full of himself. Despite his size, he's unwilling to back down to anyone, and is willing to brave being stepped on or accidentally punted across the kitchen if it means that someone might actually drop some food (nickname: Speed Bump).

Fun Facts about Farley:

This dog can hear transmissions from space, and will alert us to said transmissions by waiting until everyone is quiet and concentrating on something to issue a pee-in-your pants style high-pitched bark/howl combo. He is unapologetic about this.

This is the gassiest dog you will ever meet. Please, if you visit us, do not give him a drop of milk or a nibble of broccoli. If you do, our eye lashes will be curling for hours afterwords.

He is an obsessive licker. We have figured out, though, that when he gives us intense tongue-baths, he is actually cleaning the spot where his head will soon be resting. Apparently, he thinks we humans are filthy animals.

Farley has an auto-immune disorder that nearly resulted in his euthanization at age 2. After trying every possible drug and treatment with no success, I put him on a raw diet that I had been researching, and he has been 100% ever since.

Funny Farley story: When Farley was young, I trained him to close car doors, after struggling with grocery bags and kicking the door shut myself and then tripping over the Corgi. I thought, "Why not teach the dog to do it?" Well, that came back to haunt me. During a trip to the pier on Cape Cod, I parked my car and opened the back door to let Farley out. The little darlin' tried to be helpful, and closed my car door...before I had gotten the keys out. It was more than a little embarrassing to tell the locksmith how my dog had locked my keys in the car.



Next in line comes my once-in-a-lifetime dog, Carbon vom Kraftwerk, a working-line German shepherd:

14 weeks

From the moment I got him at 8 weeks of age, I knew this dog was different. Confident, brilliant, drivey and hilarious, this guy made me earn his respect...but once I did, a bond developed that won't ever be broken.
Carbon is now 5 years old, and has had Schutzhund training, narcotics training and Personal Protection training. I was offered a ridiculous amount of money to sell him to a Boston police department, but I declined. Naturally. This dog goes nowhere if it isn't with me.


Carbon has had formal training, yes. But what really impresses me about him are these two things:

1.) His ability to understand what I want with little indication from me. I can just look at him in a certain way, or I can speak in complete sentences (no need for a command or cue, even though he knows them). After over 19 years of working with dogs, he comes the closest to human intelligence in a dog that I have encountered. And I've met some smart, smart dogs.

2.) His sense of humor. There have been countless times that this dog has me clutching my stomach in laughter after being awake for mere minutes.

Click HERE for a 30 second video of Carbon that is sure to make you smile.

I hate to give the impression that Carbon is perfect. Far from it. He's pushy, opinionated and often obnoxious. But he's perfect for me. There's a saying in dog training that you don't get the dog you want...you get the dog you need. In this case, I got both. I've learned far more from him than he's ever learned from me. 

8 weeks

Carbon's ball obsession has gotten him into hot water

At 18 months, with a sea shell that he inexplicably adopted.

Carbon at 8 weeks, my son at 6 years.

Schutzhund training in Texas with Rob Dunn

Fearless in his searching

More Schutzhund training. 18 months of age.

And people wonder why his neck is so big...

And finally, meet the smooth coated Border Collie, Fizz.

Fizz was a dog I rescued in Texas. She was discovered at a nightmare of a training facility: she was used for narcotic detection, and was only let out of the cage to train. No dog does well in constant confinement, but Border Collies are especially effected. She would spend her time chewing on the cage, and as a result, snapped off one of her canines (which had to be removed).

Me and Miss Fizz, off-leash healing exercise

After I received Fizz, I trained her in agility, Search and Rescue, Schutzhund BH, and AKC obedience. She was also my demonstration dog for training classes and seminars and clicker training, and showed a remarkable ability to rehab aggressive or fearful dogs.

Fizz is aptly named, as she is a ball of fire! She's always happy...relentlessly happy! Nothing gets this dog down!

When I decided to relocate from Cape Cod to St. Louis, I had a difficult decision to make. Fizz is an asset to both my training business and my life, but requires a huge amount of exercise. Walks and fetch just aren't enough for this girl.

One of my best friends is a marathon runner, and had been training with Fizz for over two years, developing a strong bond. Since exercise is paramount to Fizz's happiness, I decided to "time-share" her with my friend. She is currently living in Cape Cod with him, still enjoying her runs and her life.

Fizz, pictured here with her marathon running buddy, Eric.

That's it for the dogs! For those of you interested in my non-canine animal companions, here's a quick look at my 3 ferrets: Alan (albino), Steve (sable) and Tesla (champagne):



The 3 Most Important Things to Know When Trying to "Speak Dog."

One of the most important things a new dog trainer can learn are the three main principles in dog training:  timing, consistency and motivation.

Armed with these three principles, you can train a dog to do just about anything! If you are ever finding yourself having difficulty in training, or if it seems to you that your dog is confused, ask yourself if you have fully observed these three concepts.

1.) TIMING

A dog has a period of 1.3 to 1.5 seconds in which to associate a cause with its effect. This means that the saying “catch them in the act” is absolutely true! This applies to both corrections and rewards and praise.

With rewards, it’s necessary to provide the dog with the reward at the exact moment the dog does what you like. If you’re teaching a “sit,” for example, you would want to provide the reward at precisely the moment the dog’s rear end hits the floor.

This is usually very difficult, however -- by the time you have fetched the treat out of your pocket and moved towards the dog, the dog is now standing! And since we know that the dog associates the reward with what they were doing at the exact moment they received it, the dog will associate the reward with the standing, not the sitting you were trying to teach!

This is why the advent of training with markers has become so popular; by teaching a dog that a word or a click is followed by a reward, it becomes much easier for the trainer to tell the dog exactly what it has done that has earned him a valuable reward. It is a highly effective way to communicate with a dog.

While a mistimed reward slows down learning, too many mistimed corrections can have even greater consequences.  To correct a dog for breaking a “sit-stay” five seconds after he got up is meaningless. Again, the dog will believe he is being corrected for whatever he was doing at the moment he got up. If he gets up from his “sit-stay” and comes to you and you then correct him, he will think he is being corrected for coming to you.

Also, too many mistimed corrections and your dog may begin to think that nothing they do is ever right, and they will shut down. This is called learned helplessness. Some dogs labeled submissive are actually not submissive by nature, but have acquired learned helplessness through bad training. It makes the dog insecure and it makes you seem unpredictable and untrustworthy…and possibly scary. You can see how this could be detrimental – Mistimed corrections can not only slow down learning, they can also harm the relationship between you and your dog.

2.) CONSISTENCY

When training a dog, you must be very clear. There is no grey area. A rule is a rule is a rule. This means that if you do not want your dog to jump up on you when it’s raining and they have muddy feet, then they cannot be rewarded for doing it (by pats or verbal praise) when it is sunny out.

If you’re in a great mood because you just got a promotion at work, you may happily greet your dog when they jump up on you when you get home. However, don’t be surprised when your dog doesn’t understand why you yell at them for jumping on you the next day when you're not feeling so happy.

A dog that is allowed to jump on adults will not understand that they cannot jump on children or the elderly. Likewise, a puppy that is rewarded constantly for jumping up will turn into an adult that doesn’t understand why the rules have suddenly changed.

Again, this does more than make your dog confused on the issue of jumping, it can also make you seem unpredictable and untrustworthy. You must strive to be 100% consistent in your training! This will result in a dog that feels safe and secure knowing that there are well-defined rules and boundaries in their life with you and your family. As a bonus, you’ll also have a dog that doesn’t jump up on people… because they never get rewarded for it!

3.) MOTIVATION

A simple way to understand the concept of motivation is that a positive consequence makes a behavior continue and a negative consequence makes a behavior stop.

You communicate with your dog with praise and rewards when they do something you like. As a result, the behaviors that you reward will begin to occur more often. You communicate with corrections (a verbal “NO!,” a leash correction or withholding of the reward, etc.) when they make mistakes, or are breaking clearly defined rules. As a result, the behaviors you correct (if they are timed correctly!) will begin to decrease in frequency.

Both rewards and corrections must be motivational to the dog. You want your communication to be meaningful. That means that your rewards must be good enough that the dog is inspired to strive for it in the future. For example, if a dog doesn’t like to be petted on the head and that is the reward you use when he does something correctly, you have actually provided a negative experience for your dog!

If you are in a high-distraction environment, the reward you use for ignoring the distraction has to higher than the promise of the rewards the dog would get from paying attention to the distractions! You should know that some dogs prefer a game of fetch or tug to food, while others live for praise. Some dogs prefer Cheerios over steak! Let your dog tell you what they like…do not put your own preferences on your dog if you want your training to work well.

A correction should be enough to stop the behavior…no more and no less.

APPLYING THESE CONCEPTS

As you train, think of these factors: If your dog is not responding or is acting stressed or confused, ask yourself whether you are really being clear with your dog. Does your training fall into harmony with these three concepts: Is your timing correct? Is your training motivational? Are you being 100% consistent? If you are not answering “yes” to all of these questions, you cannot expect miracles from poor Fido. Practice every day!

**If you have any questions you would like addressed on my blog, please send an e-mail to: amber@HigherGroundDogs.com and put BLOG in the subject box.**