Buddy Clicker Training Session 5 & 6

Session 5 - I think this was on Monday the 17th.  I waited too long to write about it, so I don't remember much.  We reviewed sit and down which he does great.  He did get confused on down because I wasn't sitting on the floor like when I taught him, but he did get it in the end.  After that we worked on come and he did fantastic.  It was SO weird though because he kept 'resetting' himself. Normally when teaching a puppy to come the hardest part is getting them far enough away from you to call him again.  Buddy would come running to me, sit, take his treat and then spin around and run to my dad's chair (not jumping in it, but laying in front of it).  I have no idea why, but it was super helpful because I could just keeping calling him without having to move around.

Session 6 -  This was today.  We reviewed sit, down and come.  He was resetting himself after the recall again like last time.  Then I started working on beg (I call it sit up).  He is sort of standing on his hind legs, but that is fine to start with.  I will refine it later into a sitting position.  Beg is great for strengthening a dog's hips, but by the same token they also have to build the strength to be able to do it, so we're going slow. 

After that he was tired (we had been playing hard before training) so he plopped down on the cool tile floor.  Since he was laying still and tired I decided to work on his down stay.  He did SO much better than I expected.  I've never cared for teaching puppies to stay (although I know it's necessary and I always train it anyway) because they are so bouncy and always breaking it, but he only broke it a couple of times.  I started out just saying stay, waiting a second, clicking and treating.  Then I worked up to saying stay, stepping back one step, stepping forward, click and treat.  Then I'd add another step backward away from him.  I made it to three steps before I called it quits.  I don't ever want to keep going to the point where he gets bored or frustrated.  Eventually I'll work up to turning away from him and walking circles around him, but that will be a while.  We have to take baby steps with such young puppies.  Since we found him at four weeks it's easy to forget he's only nine weeks old.  We keep forgetting and wanting to treat him like he's older, because he is SO smart.  Then he does something that is typical puppy to remind us he's a baby.  I'm having so much fun working with him!!