Lacey is 9 weeks old today.  She is making wonderful progress with her potty training, and she’s developing the ability to focus during our training sessions.  She is doing very well with the “sit” command, and she is learning “leave it”, “off”, and “down/lay down”.  She is also practicing “chew toy” – a command which initially began as a redirection technique for when she starts to chew on the furniture or other inappropriate things.  Lacey taught me this technique; I did not teach it to her.  She was chewing on the dog’s bed, I caught her and told her “no chewing”, and without missing a beat, she stopped chewing the dog’s bed, she reached for one of her chew toys, and she started chewing on it, instead.  That was so unexpected but so awesome that I had to reward that behavior.  Now, when she chews inappropriately, I am practicing that “chew toy” command with her and make sure the behavior is positively reinforced every time.  Thanks, Lacey!  🙂

Last night, Lacey was taken to her forever family for a visit and some burst training.  Burst training is training in very short bursts.  It’s perfect for a puppy Lacey’s age, since their attention span is pretty much at zero when there are tons of other things around to distract them – in Lacey’s case, her human child, who she stuck to like glue.  We were there for two hours, and Lacey spent a total of maybe 10 minutes actually working.  LOL  😀

Leash training is a little more challenging.  Lacey is very uncertain about the leash. She feels slight tension on her collar and instead of moving forward on her own to ease it, she fights it and bites at and tries to chew the leash.  Once she becomes more familiar with how it works, though, that behavior will resolve.  It just takes time, patience, and calm, consistent energy.

Kennel training is a very different ball of wax.  Lacey is extremely fearful of the kennel, and we don’t know why. What we do know is that she needs a lot of help overcoming that fear, so today, we are going to begin that process.

I am working on filming Lacey’s training sessions. I think it’s important that her progress can be seen as well as read about.  Have a great day!

Lacey’s first full day with us was mostly quiet.  She played with some of her toys for a bit, she explored the house a bit more, and she had her first guided swim (in the tub, and with me holding her up). But mostly, she just vegged out. This is exactly what she needs for at least the first few days of her new life.  The stress she had to deal with over the past week was tremendous, and she needs time to just kick back, relax, and settle in.

Today we are officially beginning her training. She has issues with the leash and the kennel, so we’re going to start with those. Over the course of the day, I’ll be changing things up for her by teaching her sit, down, and stay.  It may seem like a lot to put on an 8-week-old puppy, but in actuality, it’s not that much. Each session is 5 to 7 minutes, every hour. As Lacey gets older and starts to master the lessons, the session times will increase to about 10 minutes every hour.

Frequent instruction teaches the puppy stamina, focus, and patience.  As a Support Animal to an autistic child, Lacey must be patient and calm at all times, and she must be able to focus on him when she is out in public settings with him and his parents.

If anyone has any questions or insights, please feel free to leave a comment.  As humans, we tend to get so close, emotionally, to our canine friends that we don’t always see a different, more effective way to achieve a training goal, and I am no different in that regard. I do try not to get attached, but honestly, I don’t think it can be avoided.  You can’t live and work with an animal every day and not develop a bond with them.

Thanks for visiting. Have a great day!