I am feeling sad today. Today is Miss Kinetics's last day here. Today is Spa day and she will get her beauty treatment so she will be all ready for the next stop in her journey tomorrow.
Kinney was not here long this visit, it was actually a pretty short visit-- but it seems like she has been here a long time...In a good way ;-). When Kinetic got here we had a rough day or two to start with... but then we really clicked and started to get each other, since we clicked and began to understand each other I have had a really good time with Kinetic and I am going to miss her. If I had known we were going to click like we have I would have volunteered to take her a little longer.
My whole goal for this visit was teaching Kinetic to come when someone called her, and make sure when she got near I could grab her collar. People grabbing you means all fun stops. Anyway, I was pretty proud I came up with some games where Kinney got to play some games that she seemed to think were fun, and I was able to get her to come to me when I needed her too, the best type of situation in dog training-a win-win situation where we all get our needs met. I was lucky and hit on some games she really liked. How much fun is that???? I used some of the things I have been reading about from BAT which is such a cool training method-Behavior Adjustment Therapy which was developed by Grisha Stewart http://functionalrewards.com/
I LOVE training my dogs, but got to say I am also really starting to like working with dogs that are not my dogs sometimes. It is a totally different challenge then working with your own dog. With your own dog you have a bigger investment in getting something trained, so I think you might rush things a little more or worry about it more.
I think you can be a bit sloppier in your training with your own dog because your dog really wants to work with you- a dog who does not know you does not have a big reward history associated with you so they might want to work with you and they might not so you really have to earn their trust and use good training principles otherwise the dog can just decide this game is really not worth playing.
I think working with dogs I do not know as well teaches me to watch much closer and evaluate what I am doing a lot more. When I work with Cricket I know what she likes and what she doesn't, I know what will probably work, sometimes she surprises me but I basically know what I can get away with, how fast I need to go, how long to work, what type of treats will work best, so I always try to pay attention to all those things, but sometimes I probably do better ten others...but with a dog you do not know you have to really watch each of those factors and pay attention since you just do not have a big bank of prior knowledge to draw from regarding this dog;-). The other thing is that you do not have as much time to work with a dog you don't know...usually you have to make the most of the time you have and work efficiently, no putting your goals on the list to work on next week. Maybe I should do more pretending my dogs are someone elses dogs, LOL,perhaps I would see even more results in my dogs??
Ok- the cutest trick Kinnetic just started offering(I taught her but now she is coming up and doing it when she wants my attention) is when she comes up to me she does the cutest play bow. The bow seems like a default position that she really likes, so she gives me great duration - it keeps her from jumping on people, and it is super cute. Figures a couple of days and I can teach another dog to be a lot less likely to jump on people, but my baby-Cricket is two years old and is horrible about jumping on people, LOL, might be time to focus on that myself with the Crickster.
ps, Kinetic is waiting to go to Japan in February, so she has been waiting for her forever owner to really start her training, the owner is going to have a blast--this is one smart girlie!