Getting to know you...

I may or may not have been singing that song to Alfie all morning.

For my other dogs, I've been able to teach skills while also getting to know them and develop our relationship. They've all been quite food motivated, so it's been pretty straightforward. Alfie isn't NOT food motivated, but he's not all that excited by it, either. So I need to find a treat that he really likes. He had some of my chicken from dinner last night and seemed to like it pretty well, so that's where we will start. 

This meant training last night didn't go quite as I'd hoped. He was easily distracted. But when I tried to give him a toy break, did become obsessed with the toy. So I ended up using a mouth click and the toy as a reward and we got a little further. 

Luring got us a bit further, so I will play with that *a little.* it's not my favorite way to train.

So my takeaways from last night's training were that it's not that he needs resets so much as more motivating pay, more focus work, more clicker loading, and more just overall relationship building. In other words: slow down. 

That's ok. :)

Some highlights:

And on that getting to know you point...

Alfie was loose with all 4 dogs last night for the first time. Luna doesn't seem to understand how to play with small dogs, so he was doing a bit of growling. Luna got a little stressed by the whole thing and started chattering and drooling. I think his being intact is exacerbating that a bit, too. But by late night, we were snuggled on the couch together.

I took him to the farmers market this morning and let him just walk the perimeter. He was very cautious and barely even looked at me. His tail tucked a little sometimes. He's not as people oriented as my other dogs, so yet another difference. Once again, the takeaway was to go slowly and let him make the decisions to investigate or not-- I think this is where a little BAT will help us and perhaps the Fenzi class for nervy dogs (Boogeyman) depending on how we are doing next time it rolls around. Overall, though, he handled it very well. He doesn't totally shut down and he's not reactive. I think he will need some confidence building and exposure. 

Slow and steady. Slow. And. Steady.