Doing great....

E is continuing to do very well. He tries to initate play with me, but I don't quite understand the game. What seems to work best at this point is when he jumps up on the sofa and hops and dances and then stops and says "pet me and hold me". He is clueless about toys. I don't think he's ever had one and at this point he doesn't know what to do with them.

Paris (9 yrs old) came over yesterday to help train him and she's so great with him. He was MUCH better with her, and warmed up within 2 minutes, taking treats from her hand, off her knee (we were both sitting on the ground). We started target-training him to nudge the lid of a coffee can (on the ground). I would click and Paris would drop the treat. He is consistently nosing the lid. We're going to evolve this so he noses it no matter where it is, ie, taped onto the wall. Taped behind the ribbon of jingle bells (this is all leading up to teaching him to nudge the jingle bells to ask me to open the door so he can go outside, which is how our own dogs currently do it). Once he nudges through the bells, we'll literally make the target lid slowly disappear, by cutting off a bit each day. We'll also put the ringing on command, and voila, a new desirable behavior.

We went around for a LONG bike ride yesterday, with 2 of my other dogs too. We encountered a lot of scary distractions, and he only really reacted to 2 of them. And he recovered quickly. Took him around again this morning with the other 2, and again, he does just great. The K9 Cruiser is the best thing since sliced bread.

When I get home, he's very excited to see me, and he'd like to stand 12 feet away and bark and play keep away. I am changing this pattern. I ignore him, don't make eye contact (when he does this) and go get treats and start giving treats to my other dogs. He'll come forward, I'll click and give him a treat, we do this a few times and then I ask him to sit, again, I C/T. He cannot run and bark if he is sitting and earning a treat. So rather than fighting the undesired behavior, I set up a situation where he gets rewarded for giving me a desired behavior.

He doesn't bark all day, we've verified this with the neighbors. He will bark when someone comes to the house, when someone walks their dog by the gate (as do my other dogs, too). Neighbors have reassured me that he's not annoying them.