Training Journal - Lily and Rider

Lily J.

Lily Jarrard is an eight week old King Charles Spaniel.  She is very food driven and is very smart.

First Week - June 3rd

I started with Lily first because when i met her she seemed to me to be the one that would learn faster.  We started off with a basic food luring game, where I placed a treat in my hand and had her follow it.  This showed me that she was definitely food driven.  She followed my hand like it was nobody's business.  Next I started her on "come."  I didn't introduce the cue quite yet, but I began by calling her name and every time she came I gave her a conditioned reinforcer followed by a treat.  She did great with this, within 15 minutes she was coming almost 100% of the time.  Because she was doing so well, I went on with the release cue.  This one was a bit more difficult, it's hard to say release before a dog gets up when they are so bouncy.  We worked on this for a little while, though not with much progress.  Next I started placing her in a heel position, this is something that I needed her to be able to do before I could teach her to focus.  She did very well with this, so I stopped on a good note for the day.

Second Week - June 10th

Today we started off going over homework and I gave Ms. Jarrard a housebreaking plan so that she could help stop her puppies from urinating in the house.  Lily was being very inattentive to Ms. Jarrard.  She wasn't listening and was being very stubborn.  I gave her some tips on how to take care of this issue and it has worked well over the week.  I was unable to really get through to Lily on Tuesday, but on Friday she was doing much better.  We decided to do two 30 minute sessions per dog, per week.  This way they would be able to learn better.  On Friday Lily was much more responsive.  I started with Rider and by the time we got to Lily, she was ready to learn.  She learned "lie down" as well as reviewed "heel," "sit," "come," and "focus."  She did very well, and once or twice she started to "sit pretty," without having to ask it of her.

Third Week - June 17th and 20th

This week we started doing the 30 minute per dog sessions twice a week, instead of the 1 full hour at a time.  I figured the attention span on a 10 week old puppy would be short.  And I was right.  So we worked on sit-stays mainly this week.  Lily was doing well with the other cues, she was sit on cue instead of having to lure her.  She was also laying down without much help.  Her stays weren't great but I didn't expect them to be.  The second session on the other hand didn't go quite as well as I would have liked.  She was being very stubborn, I had to have a couple dominance talks with her.  She just wouldn't listen, so we stopped it there and I will work harder with her this coming week. 

Fourth Week - June 24th and 25th

Today was an interesting day.  We started off with Lily's brother for 30 minutes and he was "eh."  But Lily was good this session.  I finally figured out why they have been having issues lately with not listening like they should.  They have gotten too dependant on treats and won't do what you ask unless you have treats to give.  So we're going to go ahead and wean them off treats for the most part, the only time they will get full-out treats will be when they are learning something new.  Otherwise they will get a treat every other time and then two without treats and one with, and so on.  But we worked some more with sit-stays, focus in the heel position, automatic sit in the heel position, and down stays (which was a new one).  For the most part Lily was much better this session than the last one.

Fifth Week - July 8th and 11th

This week wasn't so great, came back to find that stuff hadn't been done, for good reason of course.  But I tried to go on anyway, but to no avail.  Lily wouldn't listen for the life of her, being very stubborn.  We called it quits pretty quickly.

Sixth Week - July 14th and 18th

Monday wasn't all that great, again she wouldn't listen.  She was being very hard headed and there was nothing that I did that seemed to work.  But on Friday I came with a new game plan.  My wife suggested to me an idea that I decided to try.  She told me that instead of training the whole time and working the pups to the bone, why don't I try letting them have a break every now and then.  Well it worked, I went in, trained for 10 minutes, let her play for 5 minutes, then worked for another 10 and let her play for 5.  This worked great, she was much more attentive and focused.  We had a good lesson.

Seventh Week - July 21st and 25th

Monday went pretty well, Lily worked hard, and played well.  Though she did have an episode of fear for some odd reason.  But I think we figured it to trying to use the treat holder.  So I gave that up and we went back to working.  We decided to sort of start over and slow down a bit.  And she did great.  We worked on stays, leave it, heel, and others.  But she should be learning more new things soon.

Rider J.

Rider, brother of Lily is also an eight week old King Charles Spaniel.  He is very attention driven and also very smart.

First Week - June 6th

I did Rider later on in the week, he wasn't quite as food driven as Lily was.  He was more attention driven.  He did very well though, I had the owner working with him while she worked with Lily, so he was doing very well for that.  We had a couple of accidents during the session, he urinated on the carpet and floor.  But other than that he did very well and we got a lot done.  I had 15 minutes to spare at the end because he started to get restless, so I worked on Lily a little bit more.

Second Week - June 13th

As I was saying before, we decided to change to two 30 minute sessions per dog, twice a week instead of a 1 hour session per dog.  This has worked out to our advantage, both Rider and Lily were much more responsive.  We started out working on "come," "sit," "heel," and "focus."  He did very well with this and so we started with "lie down."  He was very responsive to this, he got it on the first try.  The only issue we had was that he wanted to lift his butt up in the air as we was laying down.  This will be good later when we teach the bow cue, but for now that couldn't happen.  So what I did was I waited until his butt was all the way on the ground before I praised him.  This worked well, by the end of the session he was laying down with his butt on the ground.

Third Week - June 17th and 20th

Rider has been doing very well.  He has impressed me a lot.  We worked with him first before we work with Lily, to teach her its not all about her.  And Rider does great, he gets a little excited from time to time, but other than that he is quick learner and very eager to please.  We worked with sit-stays mainly again.  He sat for a full 30 seconds the first session, which was very impressive.  He was doing so well in the second session that I started working him with shake and roll over, which he did very well.  We'll see if he shows up his sister again this coming week.

Fourth Week - June 24th and 25th

As I was saying in Lily's section we've decided to start weaning off the treats almost totally.  It was because of Rider that I figured this out.  He did not start out well today, he was very stubborn and a bit obnoxious.  He started to calm down near the end of the session but not good enough to really teach anything new.  We worked on the sit, with some sit-stays.  But mostly I worked with him on calming down.  He just gets too antsy sometimes.  Hopefully with the new arrangement with the treats the next session will go well.  Also at then end of the hour I thought of a good innovation for training.  But I will speak more on that later after I make sure there isn't already one out there.

Fifth Week - July 8th and 11th

Rider was the same as Lily this week and we'll leave it at that.

Sixth Week - 14th and 18th

Rider did better than Lily on Monday but not by much.  On Friday though, with the new game plan in action, he did great.  He was wonderful, he did everything right.  We finished off on a good note and I was happy for the end of the week. 

Seventh Week - July 21st and 25th

Monday went fairly well, though Rider started with a weird start, he feared me for some reason.  So I started off by playing and petting him until he was better.  Then afterwards he did great.  We finished off with  roll-over and working on automatic down.