A good week

[slbose61]

This past week I focused on several training issues with Preston. The first being potty training. After reading the potty training thread, I started Preston on Tues (I think). He has been making progress, with only one accident inside that I'm aware of. What normally takes him an hour of doing nothing, along with serious squirrel distractions, each day I saw a small improvement in the time it would take him to pee. Well, this morning we had a breakthrough. I took him out first thing, told him to go pee and he immediately lifted his leg, nothing came out, but he was very proud of himself. I told him good boy, but to try again. He ran to the bush, peed, and created his own little party. We stayed outside for a couple of more minutes, I told him to go pee, and he did it again! About an hour or so later, I decided to do a little experiment. I put him out, told him to go pee, but I stayed inside to watch. He kind of meandered along, looking at me, I repeated "go pee" and he did it! Again, he created his own party and came running to me for a treat. He did this three times today. Tonight, he came to me making a little fuss. He doesn't bark, so I am learning his body language instead. I asked if he had to go outside and he became excited. I praised him as I went outside with him, and within seconds he went pee. I am so proud of him!

The second problem was not eating his food. He would only eat if I was in seeing distance, otherwise he had to be with me. I had been leaving his food out all day, but this week I stopped doing that. I gave him 15 minutes to eat, or I put up his dish until the next meal. If I was out of the room and he choose to be with me, the food was removed after the required time. By day two he caught on and ate quite a bit more. Now he finishes his food within the 15 minutes. He runs to see where I am, runs back to eat, and will repeat this several times. He's learning!

The third problem is what I thought was his wanting to be with other dogs, but becoming aggessive once he was near them. After reading the info on body language, fear, retraining, etc. I started working on "close", comforting him with words everytime he cried and howled to be with another dog, standing between him and another dog if one was approaching with no owner control, redirecting him if he went spastic at the sight of another dog, and so on. Huge difference already. As soon as he starts to whine, he stops when I tell him I understand. Twice, owners walking their dogs with no obvious control, approached us while encouraging their dogs to "play nice with the little doggy", yet telling me they are friendly. One was even growling...can I say Idiot owner! I immediately got in front of Preston, nicely told the owners it was not a smart idea to approach since he's a rescue and is not used to other dogs, is in training, plus their dog is approaching agressively, and so on. Both backed off immediately, I praised Preston for his sitting quietly, and walked away from the dogs.

We are also working on "look at me" and he is picking that up pretty well. He even glanced at me a couple of times, well sort of, when he was distracted by squirrels and rabbits.

We are making great progress...I am so proud of my boy!

[Mattie]

I love these success stories but they do make me a bit weepy because of the amount of hard work that the owner has put into their dogs to get this improvement.

Well done, he is a very lucky boy to have found you.

[slbose61]

Aww, thank you so much Mattie.

This morning...I took him out, said "go potty" (I say go potty, not go pee as I said I did in my original post), and he did it immediately, no leash, and with squirrel distraction! He doesn't empty his bladder completely, so I waited a minute, said "go potty", and again he did it immediately! In a five minute time span, he peed five times upon command! He was so proud of himself that playtime was more important than eating...

[jacksdad]

way to go. lots of hard work paying off...feels good doesn't it?

[slbose61]

way to go. lots of hard work paying off...feels good doesn't it?

It does feel good! We just returned from a walk around the fishing pond and he was so good. Preston also received a wonderful compliment from a gentleman that was fishing, who commented that Preston was one of the best behaved dogs in the neighborhood Then the little sneak tried to steal a hotdog (bait) as he pretended to show interest in a Catfish the man had just caught

[wvvdiup1]

Great to hear things are going good with your training, slbose61!