The Dog Blog

I had an interesting client last week. These people had a very fine lab that I had worked with before for various issues and have always been quite pleased with it.

The issue was that in the past this pup had ‘eaten’ a couple of the family birds, and had been corrected (as it should have been) to the point that it was now scared of any bird in the house. She was fine with birds outside but in the house, not so much. In any case a new Solomon Island Eclectus arrived in the home two weeks ago and I was called to work on the fear issues.

When working on something like this the basic starting point is plain old behavior modification and desensitization works. Getting the dog to ‘do it’s commands’ when it gets nervous is a fabulous way to start.

So, after about 5 days of training here is the note from the owners:

“We all seem to be getting along! ”

Mission accomplished for the dog trainer.

Well, today I get to train a border collie to activate it’s new tennis ball launcher. Yep, self directed tennis ball fetching for a border collie. We probably won’t get it completed today because there are so many steps but this dog is on it’s way to fetch nirvana.

If you are interested here are the steps:

Drop tennis ball in the holding hopper

Have dog move to the launch button on the launcher

Press launch button to launch ball(s)

Repeat until utter exhaustion.

Sounds fun huh!

Here is a short video from youtube of a dog doing a similar job.

Border Collie and tennis ball launcher

And this one with the whole routine:

Lab doing retrieve and drop for tennis ball launcher

Chuy, a favorite client dog just won a photo contest. I thought I would post the picture for all to enjoy.

By the way, they did let Chuy out of the bag!

Let me out of here, now!

On occasion I get the opportunity to train with a real working dog. Hunting dogs are my favorite because I just love to watch them work.

I got an email recently from one of my clients that included pictures of her dog who is away at hunting camp. I always like for my clients to send their hunting dogs away to camp so that the are able to work a LOT on live birds, more than most owners every have the time to accomplish.

In any case, here is a picture of Viva on point and doing what she does best which is tracking down birds. She’s a great dog and I know her owner is very proud of her these days.

Pilfering the dog information on the NY Times website again:

This is one that simply must be read by anyone serious about their dogs or training them.
Grrr, Sniff A cognitive scientist leads a tour of the sensations and thought processes of dogs.

http://bit.ly/Dd5Jf

Great read NYtimes

Sorry for all of the nature photos this week but I just had to post these. It was such a beautiful morning today that the dog and my 6 month old daughter went for an hour and a half long hike.

Your dog will be happy with the walk and you will too if you get to see sights like this.

And this one:

Steve Haynes
Fidelio Dog Works

As a dog trainer, everything comes in waves. It seems like all the sudden I’ll have 20 Viszlas in a row, or 10 standard poodles in a row, or everyone is having the same sort of issue with their dog all the sudden. Well, that’s happening this month for sure.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting lots of calls from new and previous clients who are reporting that their dogs are doing odd, out of character things. One of my favorites was a lab mix that decided to eat through the drywall of every corner in the house, down to the studs, while the mom was away at work. In other cases, it’s been things like general destruction of toys, television remotes, underwear, eyeglasses….even plain old going nuts in the house for an hour at a time.

Initially I was a little puzzled with these reports since I knew a number of the dogs quite well. That ended last week when I realized that we’d had 60+ days of above 100 degree temperatures this summer. Then it all came clear. No one is walking their dogs and the poor little guys are going nuts. They have cabin fever.

All this destruction, chewing, general unfocused rambunctiousness is classic behavior for dogs who are not getting enough exercise. They are just trying to burn off all that pent up energy in one way or another and their poor owners are thinking they have suddenly gone nuts. That energy has to go somewhere and for a frustrated lab it’s probably going to squish out around the edges and manifest itself via chewing. Despite my warnings about temperatures previously, we’ve got to find a way to get them outside and moving.

I was really happy to see TONS of people out walking, running, and playing with their dogs on Saturday morning when we had a bit of a cool spell. I was on my bike at 6:30 am and haven’t see that many folks out walking their pups in weeks. The dogs looked happy to be out and getting some quality owner time, and the owners looked relieved to say the least.

Now, I’ll be the first to say “don’t walk you dog when it is 105 degrees out there”, but I’ll also be the first to say “get up earlier in the morning and walk your dog for 45 minutes every day.” The destruction factor will be much less in your house, your sanity will be considerably improved (by your dog being happier, and possibly you as well) with the exercise time.

So, when you call me this week and tell me the tale of what was most recently eaten in your house, the first question I’ll ask you is “how much exercise is the pup getting each morning?” Be ready for the question, and if you tell me less than 30 minutes we’re going to have the dog trainer talk. Always the dog trainer talk about exercising.

And, as a final note, remember the joke dog trainers tell each other when we get together. We say that if everyone walked their dog for an hour every day we’d all be out of a job and working in a call center cube within 72 hours.

Steve Haynes
Fidelio Dog Works

At a meeting this week I had an interesting questions. One of the parents has a child that has been injured and is now going to be living with limited mobility and probably a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. In the course of discussion we started talking about Service Dogs, what they can do for him, how to get one, and most importantly in the short term, how much one costs.

Today, I noticed this article in the NY Times which covers all of those issues and does them in a way that makes it clear what happens when a service dog comes home. Needless to say, a well trained service dog is expensive to acquire, and expensive to keep. It’s something to be aware of for anyone looking at doing this.

Steve Haynes
Fidelio Dog Works

This post is going to be short. Probably mercifully so.

I had a very strange client request today. This client asked me to speak to their son about the responsibilities of owning a dog. This is his First dog to be truthful, but…

My client wanted me to specifically speak to her son about picking up the dogs poo in the yard. How did we get here? How does it come to pass that you need your dog trainer to explain to your 20 year old child that they need to pick up their dog’s poo in the yard?

Responsibility> to finish up this post, I would say that it’s a good idea to discuss the responsibilities of owning a dog before you bring the dog home and the yard is filled with poo. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Now, enough of this stuff, let’s get to actually training dogs, not people the rest of the day.

Steve Haynes
Fidelio Dog Works

What on earth do all of those components in the title have in common.

My oldest daughter is going to Montessori school in a few weeks and last night we had our first meeting with all of the teachers and staff who will be working with her classroom. It was a wonderful gathering, and once people started finding out I was a dog trainer and not a cube dweller and that I trained dogs for a living they started coming up to me to ask questions about their pups. That’s not unusual for me at all, but one of the interactions was precious to me and made me start thinking about my clients.

The founder of the school and I started talking about life in general and once he asked what I did for a living he asked “how long does it take to train an owner?” Ahh, the crux of the matter and the hard part about spending all day with dogs.

That owner issue is always on the radar with us and one that no decent dog trainer can dismiss in any level of detail. Finding the right words, visuals, motor skills drill…to get an owner to understand what you are saying is a constant ever changing effort. When you get a bunch of dog trainers together one topic will ALWAYS come up; “Dogs are easy, people are hard.” Evidently it’s the same with Montessori parents. The kids are easily trained in the ways of Montessori but this gentleman said that the parents were quite difficult to bring into the fold, even when they wanted to adapt to the ways of the school. It’s a matter of adjusting habits, managing routines differently, and Expectations. It was a wonderful conversation with this gentleman and I hope to dive into more depth on it with him in the future.

That word Expectations is a slippery thing though. I ran into a problem with it this week as a matter of fact. We had a client who signed up for a number of classes to help her get a Canine Good Citizen certification on her dog. My associate trainer went out for the first session, evaluated where the dog was in regards to the test and started assigning homework for the owner and dog to work on. As with all of my clients, I checked in a day later to find out how things were going and the questions started rolling in from the owner.

“If the dog sits and accepts a pat; but moves, stands, licks, etc will it be breaking the exercise??

ETC is a big word there.

“How is she scored if an aggressive dog approaches her?”

The same as if another dog were to approach. Under control.

And a few others

All of these are clearly outlined in the CGC requirements and we do our best to help people get through the test as quickly as they can. But, as things turned out when I stared answering her questions, her Expectations of what we would do were quite different than what we actually do. What I do not do is just hand out CGC passing test willy nilly as some other trainers do here in Austin. I take the test seriously as I believe it is an excellent tool for determining basic temperament and level of obedience that dogs possess.

We administer the CGC test in a real life environment with real life distractions in order to make it as accurate as possible. And, if you don’t pass all 10 items on the test you need to go back and do some remedial work. I have high Expectations for dogs and owners who take the CGC test and I should hope that the owners would respect what even a minor title like CGC means in the world of dogs. It not a gimmie test by any means, but it is doable by everyone I’ve ever worked with. Like life it takes effort, practice and patience to get through it. It’s not something you should Expect to acquire just by signing up for 3 lessons.

Training the owners, training the dogs, and training kids all comes back to the same place. Patience and practice. None of this stuff comes to you in a box from Best Buy, you’ve got to work for it.

Steve Haynes

What you see if you work and practice

After an hour of long line work this pup could manage a heel off leash with her owner. Such is the power of good training and an attentive handler.

By the way, this is only the second lesson for this pup. The owner is working hard and it shows.

Steve Haynes

Post From My iPhone. Dog training on the go.

When training a dog to be off leash we always start with a super high tech dog training tool known as a long line. 20 feet of string that is generally really hard to use correctly for most non dog trainers.

There is no shortcut though for doing this the right way. Anything else is shortchanging the dog.

Off for an hour of longline work with a client now!

Dog trainers don’t really go all in for technology. I mean the collars and leashes really haven’t changed that much in the past 2000 years. That doesn’t stop my clients from wanting to know what we trainers do all day. So in response to my blog readers, I’m going to start publishing some posts from the road using the now ubiquitous iPhone.

Yep, photos, words, the whole gig. You want a feel for my days, here it comes. Hope you all enjoy.

To inagurate this endeavor, here is my first mobile post and photo of the things most dear to me this time of year for dog training work. Enjoy!

All my best,
Steve Haynes
Fidelio dog works

– Post From My iPhone. Dog training on the go.

What do you do with your toddler when your out training with the hunting dogs?

My oldest had a great time the day we took this picture. She “trained” the dogs for about two hours and was a great help throwing the dog slimed hunting bumpers. I guess I can be proud she started a couple of years before I did with dog training!

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works

I’ve been training with these clients for a couple of months. They called me when the classes they were taking at another location just weren’t meeting their needs. As I’ve said before, dog training is more art that science, and the trainer at the other place they went was a pure “method” trainer and couldn’t work outside her box.

In any case, this lab pup has proven to be a complete joy. She’s been a challenge at times for the owners but she’s really smart and really willing to do what you ask of her. The main issue now is that she has gotten bigger and has TONS of excess energy. So today, in the cool of the morning, we stated training her to “heel” to a bicycle. After they build up her stamina (takes training just like it does for us) she’s going to be a trail running dog at Emma Long Park and will accompany her Dad on his morning bike rounds of the neighborhood. She’s got a good life for sure.

Our next step with Maddie the Lab is to get her off leash trained so that she can “bike” and “run” without the hassle of that darned lead on her. It won’t take her long to get there.

Note of Caution: Do NOT just take your dog out attached to the bike. You’ve got to train them to do this correctly or you’re in for big trouble. Also, be sensible and don’t make them run long distances with you during the head of the day. They don’t handle heat as well as we do.

Enjoy the Picture!

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works