I've put this thread in here as most of what I'm teaching Caoimhe is geared towards working. I've been working out a very rough week by week plan of what I want to work on with her. Obviously most of it is ongoing and some things take longer to pick up than others but I like to have an idea, however vague, of what I'm doing as we go along. She is currently just over 5 and a half months old.
The plan for week one is:
- to teach her her name
- to get her sitting reliably to a verbal command, hand signal and whistle
- to teach her to lie down to a verbal command and hand signal
- to start teaching her to stay put when told to sit (i.e. sit means stay)
- to keep on with her lead walking training and the 'heel' command on and off lead
- to work on her recall to a verbal command
- to start putting the recall to the whistle
- to start teaching her the 'look' command
She is not getting 'walks' as such at the moment, I take her to the big park over the road 6 times a day for between 10-20 minutes at a time and break this up into play, training and letting her pooter around. This seems to be a good balance of physical and mental stimulation as she is a pretty settled and content pup in the house, she's still into everything if she gets the chance but she's very well behaved for her age.
All her trips out are on her own just now, she hasn't been out with Tilly and Rodaidh yet and she won't be until I'm happy that her training is well underway, I want to be able to focus on her 100% and I want her to focus on me and not on running around with the other two and going too far from me (I may make exceptions for the game fair and meet up as I want her to be exposed to new situations too but as a rule it's individual walks only at this stage). The furthest I let her get from me is about 10 feet but I'm finding that she's naturally coming back past me without me having to call her most of the time. She has a natural, instinctive close quartering action which is really excellent.
I'm trying to make the bulk of her rewards praise and play but at this stage I'm also using small food treats - a mixture of halved Nature's Menu chicken treats, halved PAH puppy bones, small cubes of cheese and small bits of hotdog sausage - and I will phase the vast majority of these out as she progresses in favour of the '3 p' rewards I always use of praise, petting and play.
As to how she's doing so far, she has picked up her new name very quickly and now looks at me when I say it. She was already sitting to a verbal command and a hand signal and I have also introduced the whistle to this and she's now sitting reliably to one long loud-ish blast on the whistle to a distance of about 3 feet away from me. She has picked up 'lie down' very quickly with the aid of small pieces of cheese as lures. Likewise the 'look' command is going well, I get her attention with a small treat, hold it up to my face and say 'look' as she looks at me then reward. I've started introducing her to the clicker as it's useful for things like this. Teaching her that 'sit means stay' is in the beginning stages, I start with her sitting in front of me, reinforce the hand signal and verbal sit command and take a step backwards. She has shown herself to be a natural at the art of the Cocker Shuffle
but she was very good this morning and I managed to get 2 steps away from her and back again twice without her moving.
She is still in the stage where she naturally wants to stay near me and she's recalling very well to a verbal 'come' command. I've started to introduce the whistle cue (two pips) as she's running towards me. I'm doing this by a combination of calling in a very high pitched, excited voice, using a squeaky toy as a lure to get her attention, running away from her while calling her excitedly and generally running around like an idiot calling her and encouraging her to follow me.
Walking to heel on a lead is about my least favourite thing to teach a dog and it's going slowly. I've started to teach her the 'heel' command and positioning off lead using treats and a ball as lures which is going ok but on lead she is still getting herself (and me) in a bit of a tangle, she'll get there though she'll probably be like the other two and end up better at heeling off lead than on.
I think that's it so far, she's a really lovely pup to work with, she's really bright and really keen and I'm having a lot of fun with her, she's keeping me busy!
You do forget how intensive having and training a puppy is though, I really don't know how anyone does this with more than one pup at a time or why they'd want to, I'm glad she's 5 months and not 8 weeks old
