Day 3 continued: Introducing the target stick

This is a photo of Kathy and Einstein the day she brought him over to us. You can see how bright and confident he is around her.

Last evening I introduced E to the target stick. It's a simple thin dowel, about 4 feet long. At the end, I taped a square of blue painter's tape, just to give something very definitive visually at the end of it.

The point of this silly stick is to teach the dog that if you touch this stick, you'll get a treat. We then use the stick as a tool to shape a bunch of other behaviors (jump up onto this table, heel, etc).

Karen Pryor can explain the training of a target better than I can. Click here for a great article from her.

E was definately performing the behavior in its first phase-- standing near the stick, looking at it, and occasionally touching it with his nose. All very good.

Later, my friend Paris (9 years old) who is really great with dogs came over to help me socialize E. He was very uncomfortable around her. She sat perfectly still, avoiding direct eye contact. He wanted to run. I would never pull him over to her and force the issue, that can permanently ruin a dog. For about 30 minutes she worked with him, holding cheddar cheese on her hand on the ground, staying perfectly still. He'd gingerly tiptoe up and take the cheese but was still very nervous. We had success but also realized that he needs a lot more work in this area. Whoever adopts him will need to be willing to rewind and probably repeat some of this process. My experience has been that once a Sheltie bonds to its owner, it grows in confidence and all of this comes faster. When K brought E over to our house the first time, and when he met me, was visibly better at meeting me (because of his bond with Kathy) than he was this time, meeting Paris. He stayed on my side (away from Paris), looked the other way, tried to pull away, and when he realized I wouldn't give him more leash, he asked to be held. That seemed to comfort him a lot. When I was holding him, he was actually closer to Paris than he was before (she and I were sitting on the ground right next to each other).

Paris's mother, Janet (also my friend), came over to help. Again, he was very scared. J sat quietly next to Paris. I took E behind them and held him and encouraged him to smell their backs and hair. We made a bit of progress. He was more willing to take a treat from Janet than from Paris-- this was probably due to his traumatic interactions with the child in his original home. Janet left. My friend Sandy came over, and we were all talking a bit and the talking and lack of focus on E seemed to actually relax him a bit. I held him a lot, too.

All in all, this kind of slow socialization is going to be very important for him. The problem is that the progress will "stick" more when it's done with his final owner, but I hope to at least establish some positive history with him while he's here.

So far, E has spent most of his time either in his crate, or out for short periods of training, exercise, and bodily functions. Now we'll work on having him spend more time out and about in the house with us.

We don't have a doggie door here, and we treat E as though he were a dog who was not housetrained-- though I firmly believe that if he can get outside he'll go in the right place. The problem comes when a dog doesn't know how to communicate to you that he needs to go. We have not established this yet with him. In our house, we hang a ribbon of jingle bells on the door to the backyard. Our dogs have been taught to bump it with their nose and jingle the bells when they want us to open that door for them. (This is something you teach using targeting. See article above).

So for the next few days, we'll have E out of his crate more, and we'll tether him to us. That simply means that he's on leash in the house, attached to me or Dennis at all times. This is known as the "umbilical cord" technique, and it serves two purposes. It accelerates the bonding between you and the dog, and it restricts his freedom such that he can't sneak behind the couch and have an accident. So it sets him up for success. And in our case, it forces him to interact more.

In K's household, he was out and about in the house all the time. So he's definitely used to that, it's not like he wants to stay in his crate all the time (though he does love his crate.) We're just rewinding to establish success in this new environment.

If you're not familiar with the value of crate training your dog, read this article here.