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Casper the Terrible is in basic training! Boot camp for puppies! Since Morgan’s home early, school and even sports haven’t started yet. She has all day, day after day, to face the egregious nightmare she brought to our farm. You know, her puppy.
Casper the Terrible.
Don’t be sucked in by that sweet face. He usually looks more like this:
I enlisted my longtime friend and professional dog trainer, Kat (or KateS as she’s known on the forum). She’s been emailing back and forth to Morgan with exercises and tips on getting Casper under control. The first night, we screamed and yelled and cussed at him all night then let him sleep five minutes before getting him up to learn how to make a flotation device out of a set of coveralls in three seconds while he was wearing them and in the water.
Oh, wait, that’s Navy boot camp.
Okay, so actually we let Casper sleep all he wants and we don’t yell at him and he may never make a flotation device but he can sit now! And pay attention! Soon, we expect Kat to have him doing back flips and baking pies!
Here’s how we do sit: Morgan shows him she has a treat. She puts the treat right by his nose then she holds it up over his head. His nose goes up to follow the treat….
….which makes his butt go down.
Then she says “sit” and gives him the treat.
And a scratch.
She moves away from him and does it again, and again several more times, and repeats the entire exercise series every couple of hours through the day.
She’s been doing this exercise with him for several days now and each day she adds a little more, like making him wait longer and longer before he gets the treat. She can even get him to sit now without a treat at all!
She started working on a new exercise yesterday. This one is geared toward getting his attention. She practices a few “sits” with him then she puts a treat over Casper’s nose–then pulls it slowly up to hold it between her eyes while she says watch me. The goal is to eventually get him to respond, without a treat, any time he hears watch me, which will lead to getting control of him when he’s doing something we want him to stop doing.
Like chewing on Boomer’s face.
Boomer’s been supervising closely. He wants to be sure it works.
Me, too! I can’t wait till we get to the part where he learns how to bake me a pie!
For more dog training exercises and tips, check out Kat’s dog training blog here.
Posted by Suzanne McMinn on July 24, 2010
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6:27
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Morgan is doing a great job. Cant wait to check out your friends blogs for tips we could us some new advise. lol.
6:50
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I read Kat’s blog everyday — some great advice and knowledge!
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6:56
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8:07
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I’m impressed that Casper can make a flotation device.(:) Our dog would eat it!
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Heeheehahahaheehee! Made me laugh in a silly way.
Looks like he’s a good student so far!!
8:27
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2:37
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‘Wait’ keeps them from bolting out the door until you give them permission to move – makes it easy to open the door.
We offered treats when they were ‘on the rug’… makes them go and sit and wait on a rug or towel or anything on the floor you point to. A trip to the vet is a breeze because you point to the scale – say ‘on the rug’ and they go over sit on the scale and get weighed… easy breezy.
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He’s coming along nicely, though! Good for Morgan for sticking with it.
10:49
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You’d think for the amount of groceries we feed ‘em, food rewards would work. Alas….Sit, Stay, Hush and LAY DOWN do NOT work. Nope, nope, nope. lol