Loose leash walking practice drill

I am re-posting the following with permission from the author Gwen_Dandridge from the following link:

 http://www.goldenretrieverforum.com/golden-retriever-training/226074-leash-training-101-a.html

1. start walking (in a place where it is easy to change direction). 

2. The second the dog hits the end of the leash turn around abruptly (do not call your dog) and start off in a different direction.

3. The dog will have to follow. 

4. When the dog AGAIN get to the end of the leash and you feel the least pressure on the lead, turn again and confidently head out in another direction.

5. Keep repeating until your dog is walking with a loose leash. 

6. Practice for ten to twenty minutes each day until he watches you and doesn't pull.
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What I really like about it is that it seems like it teaches two things at once: 1) loose leash walking; 2) your dog learns to check in with you more and focus more on you!

I'm really excited to try this out sometime:)

Recall practice!

So the boyfriend started helping me work on recall drills with our puppies. Friday and Saturday we took both the dogs out to a field and called them one at a time while one person held both dogs and the other called the doggie to them. It was a total blast and weather permitting, we'll do it again tomorrow:)

Tonight, I just took Lucy out to practice because I was alone and since she's the puppy she's the one that needs the most practice. So I took her to the field and there was this young girl age 10 or so who loved Lucy so much and wanted to help me train her. So she helped me practice recall with Lucy. And Lucy got practice "to come" to a stranger!!

Then Lucy and I practiced some down stays for the first time. Before it's only been sit stays. So she's starting to generalize the behavior. I've also learned my lesson to do these stays for very short periods of time at short distances in new circumstances so she's 100% successful. I can get her to sit stay for food no distractions for 3.5 minutes no problem but any distraction and all bets are off. So time to start working on lots of short stays in all kinds of scenarios.

But the best part of tonight was the walk home. She was bouncing off the walls so happy and pleased with herself. She would run 4 feet straight ahead and at the last second before it ended up with her pulling on the leash I would say "Lucy come!" And she would stop mid hop and bounce straight back to me! It was so great to see that even though she was super over stimulated happy bouncy she came when called every single time! So having turned it into a game is obviously working already! And of course lots of good treats.

I feel like we have the beginnings of a solid recall :) and with Josh's help, both of our doggies will become pros at this!!

Puppy Sleep Over

Last night, Tucker and Ellie came over for a sleep over in our itty bitty apartment to visit Lucy and Buddy.

Poor Buddy hardly appears in these pictures till at the end. He wasn't super happy about these other dogs on his home turf stealing all the best toys and sleeping spots.

Tucker - 5ish months in these pictures, 55 pounds yellow lab

Lucy - golden retriever 25 pounds 4ish months here

Ellie - 4yrs old black lab/part golden

Buddy- 4 yrs and all American mutt

Tucker pissed everywhere he's so excited, Ellie barked at strange noises because she's not used to being in an apartment, Lucy and Tucker had a blast (they're in puppy love... Just look at the looks on their faces) Buddy just did his own thing and tried to stay out of the way...

Buddy and Tucker

2 more from when Tucker was maybe 10 weeks.

Tucker all growed up!

Here's a picture of Tucker with Lucy taken last week. Tucker is close to 60 pounds in this picture and 5 1/2 months old. He keeps on growing!

Meet Tucker!

Cody Bear the Wonder Bear passed 6/17/13. He was truly such an amazing dog. Our hearts were broken. Shortly thereafter, all of us got puppies, unable to be dogless for long. Mom got Tucker (I named him!:), T got Loki and I got Lucy. 

Here are some pictures of Tucker at 7 and 8 weeks old. These days Tucker is a monster of a pup and still growing. 5 months and 60+ pounds. 

9 or ten weeks here:

Growing up:

Recent training progress & upcoming goals

• No accidents in over a week! This dog is finally house-broken?! I think our one mistake that delayed this a bit was by not crating her when we left the apartment at first. We were afraid she would bark. We would come home and there would be accidents when we weren’t there. Finally, we just decided to crate her while we were gone. Suddenly, it just clicked for her.

• No barking in crate! And she continues to get better about settling down and just letting Josh sleep during the day after I leave for work.

• Loose leash walking success! Seriously, before age 15 weeks we didn’t walk her at all pretty much because she wasn’t completely vaccinated and we were so afraid she would get parvo or some other dreadful stuff. She’s almost 19 weeks now and I have to say that she is unbelievably amazing on the leash for a puppy. Mostly, she’s distracted (but not too crazy or super pulling, mostly just going left to right to everywhere lol) for about the first half mile and after that she pretty much just settles into it. She knows what she’s supposed to do and that’s good enough for me. Mostly used clicker training at first. Bought a halti, used it once. I’ll use it more if she gets super crazy at pulling as she gets bigger. Will continue to work on this and work on distractions.

• Learned shake really fast!  Time to teach her something completely new while we work on the other basics. Next up, “Drop it”.

Upcoming training goals:

• Working on a longer in-sight stay – build up to 5 minutes over the next two weeks (right now max we’ve done is 3.5 minutes)

• Working on out of sight stay – we have done very little practice on this. So, time to switch it up a bit and incorporate some this.

• Work on “Drop-it” (right now zero/little concept). Really important for her to know because she gets into EVERYTHING. This dog will literally lick the dirt off the ground.

• Reinforce come command to build foundation to start building on this further.

Other goals still on the list:

• Off

• Wait

• Touch

• Up up (lol - eventually have her be able to turn off the lights for when I'm really lazy!!)

• Jump

• Put it away

• Pick it up