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Post by bobbenson on Feb 6, 2007 2:39:47 GMT -5
I have a 5 month old Boxer puppy. I live in a condo and need to take him out for a walk to do his thing. I like to combine this with taking him for a training walk. At this point I would just like him to walk on my left, sit on command. That's it.
The problem is this. A potty walk, I need to let him sniff and move around, sometimes dragging the leash for a scent to do his thing. Sometimes he goes more than once. For leash training, I want him at my side. The problem is I'm doing both at the same time.
What I have been doing is letting him do his potty thing. Once that is done, I say heel and try to walk him next to me down the side walk. That works ok, but every sent he gets or sound from a passing car etc he stops. In another thread teaching the 'watch" command was suggested, which seems to make a lot of sense.
My question is: how do you combine the potty walk with the training walk without confusing a 5 month old puppy? At that age, I have no idea if he is sniffing around for the fun of it or needs to go a second time???
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Post by sibemom on Feb 8, 2007 19:41:10 GMT -5
OK to get their attention THEY HAVE TO BE TIRED ;D What I would do is not do the potty walk and the training walk right in a row I would do the potty walk and then a play session to get him all tired AND THEN I would spend 5 to 15 minutes on a training walk. By playing with him and letting him expell some of that extra energy you are going to get much better results I would also end the training walk with a very short play session as a reward, but of course only after you decide that the TRAINING IS DONE for the that time. Try that and see if that helps. Also leash corrections for sniffing etc... are ok to do on a pup this age, but that is why letting him explore his world for awhile before you expect him to pay attention and walk with you will help.
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Post by Aussienot on Feb 9, 2007 17:00:58 GMT -5
In my classes I teach two kinds of walking. Heel is a formal, focused, strict position command. Loose lead walking is the normal 'let's go for a walk' position where the dog has some latitude about his position as long as the lead stays slack.
The dog can be on either side (your choice), and he can be slightly behind or slightly ahead (your choice) and he can have as much freedom to sniff as you want him to have - All as long as the leash never gets tight.
I can explain more about Loose Lead walking if you'd like, but what I'd like to bring up is that the potty walk should be sort of relaxing time for the dog. Heeling can be hard work, and a puppy does not have a great deal of mental stamina yet.
And especially for a male dog, freedom to mark occasionally (when you allow him) is part of his social dog development. So is sniffing around and interpreting his world. A bit of sit, and a bit of watch or an occasional down is a good thing; but my advice is to save the 'heel' for training and use loose lead walk for the potty walks.
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Post by bobbenson on Feb 11, 2007 18:51:49 GMT -5
I've been taking your advice for the past few days and indirectly some of it prior to making the post. I take him out for his do your thing walk. Then I play with him. Then I go for a controlled walk. When he is tugging at the leash or getting ahead of me, I either tell him to sit or change directions while saying heel. I am also repeating the word heel frequently as he is walking next to me. When he gets distracted or ahead of me, I give him choke chain corrections or may hold the leash taught until he is at my side again. He stays at my side going away from the house, but walks ahead when we are returning home. The walks are typically 30 to 45 min which seems to be longer than is recommended for 5 months, but he seems to like it. When he gets distracted, I give him a correction as well. Other than mildly pulling at the leash returning home and easily distracted, he seems to be doing quite well.
Any more suggestions / comments?
Thanks for your help everyone.
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Post by Aussienot on Feb 12, 2007 1:05:43 GMT -5
What you are doing sounds good. The only thing I would add is to give him a cue word of warning just before the correction. Just before you correct, say a word like "easy" or "close" or something that means you are too far away. Then correct.
Before long, you should be able to get him back into position just with the cue word, as he will try to "beat" the correction.
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Post by kaos on Feb 12, 2007 20:48:41 GMT -5
Alternatively you could teach your dog to eliminate on cue, then you can use the rest of the time to walk or train as you see fit.
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Post by bobbenson on Feb 12, 2007 21:59:23 GMT -5
>>Alternatively you could teach your dog to eliminate on cue, then you can use the rest of the time to walk or train as you see fit.
How do you go about this?
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Post by Dom on Feb 13, 2007 8:34:01 GMT -5
What we did was wait for Sadie (a puppy at the time) to begin to eliminate then we began saying a command "Go potty" over and over until she finished then gave her praise or treat. Since she was a puppy, we couldn't be up beat with the command or she would get distracted. We were only upbeat with the praise. We don't give her treats anymore. The only problem we had was we trained her to eliminate in a certain part of the yard and she refused to go anywhere else. We finally realized we had to start from scratch when training outside of the yard. Also, we had to train the command off leash and on so she understood both. She will now stop what she is doing to potty when we tell her too. The rest of her walks are heeling then a sniffing break as a reward. She isn't allowed to pull on the leash during sniffing or heeling. If she pulled we didn't move forward and soon she realized that if she wanted to move around she needed to have a loose leash. We also did what Aussie suggested and gave her a warning sound before the leash went tight. She got many more sniffing breaks as a puppy compared to now. My other suggestion is to pick a command you feel comfortable saying in front of people. We used a different command in the beginning and people would look at us like we were crazy.
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Post by bobbenson on Feb 13, 2007 19:22:21 GMT -5
Curious, because as part of potty training I say out and good dog repeatedly when he does his thing. I also say out and hit a bell by the door when I want to take him out for a potty break. I wonder if I could be indirectly training him to do what you suggested with the word out. I use the word walk for a training walk. If you ever don't like using a word in english, just look up the same word in some other language
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Post by Dom on Feb 14, 2007 8:40:29 GMT -5
We didn't teach Sadie to ring a bell to go outside. We did teach her "outside". If she needs to go outside she will find us give us "the look" and do a short whine to be let out. The bell is a great idea though. We did hit a snag when potty training when she was a puppy. At one point, she wanted to go outside every 30 minutes. This was after we had worked her up to 2 hours of holding it. We thought she had a UTI. She was actually out smarting us. She had associated getting a treat to squatting and not actually eliminating. She would run outside, squat, we would say "Good" then reward. We didn't notice she wasn't urinating every time. After we adjusted the "go potty" command to when she actually started eliminating she understood. Just goes to show you how important the timing of the command and treat/praise are. I would still add a command to get him to potty. There are times, like car rides, that your aren't exiting the door of your house. He may associate "out" with being let out or going potty. It just depends on how and when you are using it. We had Sadie on a strict feeding and potty schedule so we knew 10 minutes before she did when she had to eliminate. To this day, she follows close to the same schedule. We do have more of a "grace period" now because she doesn't have the puppy bladder anymore.
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Post by bobbenson on Feb 14, 2007 10:43:53 GMT -5
So you give a treat when the dog does it's thing? I've just been praising him, but maybe a treat would be a little more reinforcement.
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Post by Dom on Feb 14, 2007 11:00:54 GMT -5
I say treat out of habit. The "treat" would be praise, a good petting, a tug game, or food treat. Sorry about that. I always alternated the reward. The only marker I always use when she finishes is "Good" (short/sweet/upbeat) then the reward. Rewards were given a lot during the training process. Proofing was a bit different. We rarely use food treats anymore. They are hard to keep track of and sometimes it is hard to give the treat at the right time when teaching a command. A delay can change the entire definition of a command. That is one reason why I mark her desired behavior with "Good" the instant she finishes or her butt hits the ground for a sit. Hopefully I will always have my voice. My husband may hope otherwise. ;D Sadie learns quickly with clicker type training. Elsie on the other hand, doesn't grasp that type of training.
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Post by bobbenson on Feb 15, 2007 14:31:58 GMT -5
I had to laugh, because when you first posted treat Dom, I thought that made sense. I took him out and said potty (you are right, you feel kind of silly) and gave him a treat when he did his thing.
That started two days ago. This morning when we went out I said "you need to go potty" He immediately sat down - probably just doing whatever to get a treat. When that didn't work he immediately urinated while looking at me for a treat. I gave him a treat.
I tend to just use treats for learning something initially, sit for example I gave treats for the first week. When he was confident in sit, I quit using treats except for rare occasions.
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Post by Dom on Feb 15, 2007 14:48:51 GMT -5
It sounds like your pup is going to be a sponge when it comes to learning commands. Take advantage of that. Sadie was the same way. Once she understood "Sit" everything else was a cake walk. Food treats can be distracting for a pup. Sometimes they see the treat and run through every position you have taught them (sit, down, paw) in their eagerness. (Great for capturing btw.) That was another reason we used a marker "GOOD" when she did a command correctly and kept the food treat out of sight for "go potty". A quick note, get a treat pouch or one of those aprons with the front pockets like the employees use in Lumber stores. You don't want to stick your hand in your pants pocket to find day old liver like I did. I agree with you. I will use treats to teach a command then fade the treats out once they understand it. We use to joke that Sadie had a hotdog learning curve. When we wanted to teach something new we would cut up one turkey frank. We would lure her into the position we wanted. She would always wait till there was only one piece left to follow the command on her own. As far as saying "Go Potty", my husband doesn't like the command but it is MUCH better than what we used at first. He whispers it to Sadie if people around. I have to agree that watching a 250lb man tell a 85lb dog to "go potty" is amusing.
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Post by sibemom on Feb 16, 2007 8:18:35 GMT -5
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