Day Six -- What's That Over There?

There are a lot of distractions out in the world that can easily divert a puppy's attention. We start out working with puppies in low distraction environments and start to build up their ability to work with distractions around them. In addition, there are things we can do to help them work through a distraction when they might be in a little over their head. Luna thinks Sinbad is a swell distraction.

We practice a lot of name recognition and attention first in low distraction areas, then we start to add in more and more distractions. So far, so good...she's got this down! If I were out and about with her, I would look ahead to see what might distract her and I would get her attention and reward her for eye contact before we even got to the distraction. I might even need to increase the rate of reinforcement (how often I was rewarding her) as we got closer to the distraction.

We do that with not only her name recognition and attention but also with commands, leash skills, etc. We certainly didn't mean to have this many distractions around when we were practicing her down but everyone seemed to wander over at once. But what a trooper...she handled it very well!

Luna says, "Look Mom, no treats!" She's offering a sit almost all the time for greetings now. Of course, that's with someone she sees every day. She does well with new people but that adds a level of excitement where she might make a mistake. Those are times to get right in there and reward her with a treat when she's being so good. A biggie, too, is to make sure you are verbally praising her when she is doing this. We still want to make sure this is paying off well for her.

We've had a variety of dogs come in to meet her. Luckily, with all the service puppies I work with, we have no shortage of dogs for socialization. This also adds a bit to the distraction level so we can see if she is still responsive even though there is another lab puppy, Rosario, to visit with.

Yep, still very responsive. She's very quick when you ask her to do something even with a lot going on around her.

Her biggest challenge? Food. Poor Luna. I feed the dogs in shifts so there is no tension around the food bowls and I can monitor everyone and make sure they are behaving appropriately. Luna is on first shift because she has an internal clock like no other. This is her very pathetic "I'm sure they forgot I'm supposed to be on this shift too" look. She's doing awesome with "drop" except if it involves food. If I drop a bag of treats and she gets it, she gets that wild little puppy look in her eye and try to hide it. At this point, I want her to come to me with the food item. She does this but you can tell by the look in her eye she's trying to figure out if she could get away with running and hiding with it. I ask for a drop and she does it and I pay her off BIG! Several treats and lots of praise and she's a happy girl and we were able to manage the situation without a conflict between the two of us. If I were to have been really stern with her, she would have likely tried to avoid me and maybe start to guard her treasure. With some more practice, she can get to the point where she doesn't get that frantic look in her eyes when she's swiped some goodies.

She's figured out the whole bark thing and she's doing really well with her house training. Just a couple of accidents (or the start of an accident) on our way towards the door. Oops...that happens. She's still a baby and this will improve with time but she's definitely getting the idea.

The smile on her face says it all...she's having a good time. We all are having a good time. She has been a joy to have around.

And Billings thinks it's pretty cool that, even though he's a couple weeks younger, he can still show her the ropes. Well, at least he can show her where the air conditioning vent and the cool tile are located. Life is good...