Stonecrop News: January Update

Little Miss Truffle is about 4 months old now and about 15 and a half pounds. She has so many engaging behaviors, like burrowing under her crate mat to sleep under it, so if you glance at the crate it doesn’t look like she is in it. Sometimes she sleeps next to her crate rather than in it.

She also likes to lie right by the back door, I think it is cooler. Her favorite game is tug, and luckily she is good with Give, because she has more energy for tug than her humans do.

I am also lucky (in terms of training) that she is very food-motivated. I use her meals as training opportunities, and cut her food up in little pieces and use it to reinforce attention, sits, downs, stays, stand, holding her feet, playing Gotcha (where I jump around and wave my arms and grab her harness and say Gotcha and give her a treat – so that hopefully if/when I ever need to do that in real life she won’t freak out) and teaching her to touch a target. That is all fun and usually she is up for it.

My challenge with her at this point is her intense reactive barking. She is just wired that way, and I want to use positive training and not try to scold/yell/punish/correct/threaten it out of her. I think that would only lead to other unintended problems, because any negative treatment would have to be severe, because this is a strong instinct for her. But I don’t want intense reactive barking to become her ingrained modus operandi! It will be a challenge to see if her human being is smart enough to figure out how to condition her to settle for just a few woof’s in exciting situations. For Truffie, exciting situations are legion: dogs barking in the distance, dogs in sight, cars going by, people walking towards us on the trail, puppy class when she is on leash (off leash she is ok), cows, sheep, horses, squirrels, birds on the feeder, rabbits, and I’m sure many more that I have yet to experience .

The two situations I am focusing on are cars going by and other dogs. Since we live back a long lane, she doesn’t see cars at home, and I was startled to see her strong chase instinct when out and about. We are working on finding situations at a distance from these things where we can work on relaxation and having a little self-control, and hopefully reduce the distances over time.

A great side benefit of getting a puppy around Thanksgiving is that you will be so active you won’t gain as much weight over the holidays! Even going out in the cold has the good side that you burn more calories in the cold!

Here are Viva and Truffie relaxing at Camp Gone to the Dogs...no, wait, that's our living room!