Obedience Number Three

Last night we were pleased. Blarney wasn't a star but close to it. He's very distracted by all that goes on around but in spite of the excitement performed most moves with aplomb. We will continue to reinforce voice commands rather than hand signals. In the kitchen, when we have his undivided attention, the hand signals work well but with distractions the voice is more reliable. To get him to see a hand signal often means bending way over to put the hand in his face. We'll be concentrating on having him hold a DOWN, STAY in the face of many distractions.

Blarney & Tazo Spin and Give 5

It's always an extra challenge to get two dachshunds to perform together. Lots of fun!

Playing With a Ball

No dog ever loved a ball as much as Blarney. It would seem he'll do anything for it. In this video he digs the ball out of a crumpled paper bag. It's a great time consumer and a fun workout.

Obedience Again

Last night's class seemed long. It was definitely a struggle for Blarney to keep his concentration for 45 minutes when all around him there are noises and moving dogs. The strain shows on the owners too. We're constantly bending to the dog and coaxing him with treats. We ran out again last night. It must have been a meal's worth. We had purposely only given Blarney a half portion for dinner, in fact the instructor had suggested no dinner at all but knowing how our boy loves his food we figured half was a fair compromise.

We came away with a few things to work on, mostly to do with obeying sit, down and stay in the face of distractions. We're also going to use a new command, Watch ME for keeping the B's attention.

Obedience?

We went off to official obedience training last Monday night. The venue was a large gymnasium called the "field house" with a divider down the middle. Two groups were in session. That's a lot of dogs! Our group was ten, mostly excited puppies. Distractions were all around us as we tried to keep Blarney at a "heel" or "stay". He did very well for Joan but was all over the place for Dave until we discovered Dave's commercial treats weren't as appealing as the homemade ones Joan was using. Seems there's a nose-leading, irresistible smell offing from the homemade liver treats.

We've been practicing heel, stay, down and sit from a distance and both on and off the leash. Blarney is excellent! A video will be part of our next post. We've begun using pieces of the evening meal as training treats. It draws out feeding time. Left alone with his food portion, Blarney can down it in under a minute. We keep telling him to "slow down" but he doesn't heed our advice.

Potty Training Secrets

Every doxie owner knows these little fellas can be hard to train. Blarney is no exception. He's nine months and counting but we still have accidents. Maybe the word "accident" is a little generous. It's more like "If you think I'm going out in the wet to poop, give your head a shake. I like quiet, dry corners." Thank goodness peeing falls under a different category. Blarney loves to mark the property so he always seems to have a little left when he's coaxed outside.

And coax we do! One of our favourite ways is to throw out a ball. We have accumulated a colourful collection of a certain variety that squeeze 'n squeak at least for a few weeks until Blarney bites them to a peaceful demise. The squeak becomes a quiet, popping rattle as the air leaves the ball and then the ball recovers its shape. At first he only liked the noisy ones but lately his interest in old, quiet ones has prevailed. Thank goodness! The squeaking was noisy punctuation during a conversation.

The ball gets tossed out into our backyard fern beds and Blarney sets out to find it, day or night, in any kind of weather. If he finds it and arrives back quickly with ball proudly filling his mouth, we know he didn't go. If he stops to do some "business" he drops the ball and returns empty mouthed. The balls accumulate in the yard for picking up later.