Echo Update

It’s been awhile since I updated the website. Apologies! There’s a lot to update about Echo the German Shepherd, who I met last year and have been working with ever since.

Echo will be turning 4 years old in a month or two. At this stage of his training, he has made awesome progress with in-house manners, and he is no longer afraid of the world outside his pen. However, we are still seeing tremendous struggle learning leash pressure; he feels the pressure when he pulls, but he isn’t making the connection that when he relaxes, the pressure goes away. Echo is also struggling with both comprehension and retention; although his owner was told that he knows how to heel, Echo has been consistently showing that he doesn’t even know the cue, never mind the action.

At this time, Echo is learning how to play with toys, and how to play appropriately with his humans. He still gets overly excited and tends to jump at whoever holds his ball, but he’s been making great progress with learning impulse control. Outside, toys are not an option; Echo has come out of his shell to a point where he is excited and curious about his environment, and all he wants to do is sniff everything, all the time. To help counter this, we have been working on his leash manners on the road, and using the grass by the sidewalks as a reward. So far, this has been working really well for him, as he is finally starting to focus more and try harder to do what we’re asking of him.

Distractions are a really big challenge for him to ignore, both indoors and outside. Over this past year, we’ve come to learn that Echo is on the spectrum; paying attention is extremely difficult for him, and giving eye contact does not come easily to him, even if we’re using food rewards. We’ve had to modify almost all of our usual techniques to accommodate his learning challenges… but, he is learning. It’s very, very slow, but he’s been showing us that he wants to learn, and that he can learn.

Today’s session was held outside, in his front yard – which is now fenced so that he can be off leash. We worked on “focus up”, we did some recall, and we started working on his heel. We made the lessons as fun as possible, giving him tons of excitement every time he succeeded. By the end of the session, Echo was tired and happy; his tongue hung out the side of his mouth, his eyes were bright and sparkling, and he had a big grin on his face. He was a very happy boy. ♥

Despite his learning challenges, Echo has actually made a phenomenal amount of progress in his training over this past year. Recently, he was taken to a party being held at a family member’s home; the owner told me that, a year ago, that was impossible, as Echo was completely out of control at that time and could not be trusted to stay off counters, leave food alone, and not steal food right off of people’s plates or out of their hands. We can personally attest to Echo’s progress with greetings: He no longer jumps people coming in the door. Instead, he greets calmly at the door and then immediately heads back up the stairs to the living room, where he waits in a sit position for the person or people.

All in all, while it’s taken a year to get him to this point – and while he is still struggling with leash manners – Echo has made absolutely phenomenal strides in his training. We still have a long, long way to go with him, but considering that he is on the spectrum, Echo is doing very, very well.

Have a great day, and remember to stay calm and lead on.