With travel and visitors and such, Ziggy training has fallen by the wayside. But today we picked it up again, to make more concrete the command "mat."
I'm still trying to come up with a hand signal for "mat" beyond pointing to it.
For whatever reason, Ziggy was really challenged about pointing when I first got her - she did not understand it at all. We've overcome that (unless: shenanigans where she pretends to not understand even when she does).* But she will reliably go to "mat" as soon as she understands it, as good things happen there. Sometimes she just lies on it for comfort, though she has two beds and two couches and lots of other spaces to lie on.
She will hold mat well, even now letting me go out of sight before i call her, trusting that I will. She immediately bounds to me, happy and proud of herself.
And I'm trying to follow Karen Pryor's training on a dog overreacting with people at door, but here's my problem. Ziggy will hold "mat" for a pretty long time, and I can walk to the door and jiggle the knob, and if she knows nobody is there she will hold it and watch me. She's reliable about this.
But if we add in somebody actually here, all bets are off. All training is immediately completely evaporated from her brain.
This makes it hard to train because it's not the training. Ziggy learns very easily and happily. It's that her brain short circuits with any kind of stress and she becomes a melted puddle of freak-out. OHMYGOD THERE'S SOMEBODY HERE HE MIGHT BE AN AX MURDERER OR READY TO HAND ME FRESH STEAK OR BOTH.
To call her reactive is such an understatement. It's better explained as: she becomes a complete wild beast and unable to respond to anything civilized until the stressor passes.
Sigh.
*My BFF noted several examples of how Ziggy is clearly very bright. For example, she is fed kibble in a treat ball that she pushes around to make the kibble roll out. Whenever nearing a high couch or any other spot where it could get stuck, she carefully navigates it away. I hadn't even noticed that.
I'm still trying to come up with a hand signal for "mat" beyond pointing to it.
For whatever reason, Ziggy was really challenged about pointing when I first got her - she did not understand it at all. We've overcome that (unless: shenanigans where she pretends to not understand even when she does).* But she will reliably go to "mat" as soon as she understands it, as good things happen there. Sometimes she just lies on it for comfort, though she has two beds and two couches and lots of other spaces to lie on.
She will hold mat well, even now letting me go out of sight before i call her, trusting that I will. She immediately bounds to me, happy and proud of herself.
And I'm trying to follow Karen Pryor's training on a dog overreacting with people at door, but here's my problem. Ziggy will hold "mat" for a pretty long time, and I can walk to the door and jiggle the knob, and if she knows nobody is there she will hold it and watch me. She's reliable about this.
But if we add in somebody actually here, all bets are off. All training is immediately completely evaporated from her brain.
This makes it hard to train because it's not the training. Ziggy learns very easily and happily. It's that her brain short circuits with any kind of stress and she becomes a melted puddle of freak-out. OHMYGOD THERE'S SOMEBODY HERE HE MIGHT BE AN AX MURDERER OR READY TO HAND ME FRESH STEAK OR BOTH.
To call her reactive is such an understatement. It's better explained as: she becomes a complete wild beast and unable to respond to anything civilized until the stressor passes.
Sigh.
*My BFF noted several examples of how Ziggy is clearly very bright. For example, she is fed kibble in a treat ball that she pushes around to make the kibble roll out. Whenever nearing a high couch or any other spot where it could get stuck, she carefully navigates it away. I hadn't even noticed that.
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