Introducing.....

 I love his half blue eye and his one ear up, one ear down. So cute!

Introducing Hank the Goatdog!!!  I've posted about Hank on Instagram, but I haven't officially introduced him here yet.  I wasn't looking for another dog, but you may remember my parents rescued a four week old puppy Buddy this year and they were having trouble containing his energy.  He couldn't play with Jackal because he's too rambunctious and Jackal is old and easy to hurt and/or knock down.  My best friend had a dog she rescued that she wasn't able to keep and she asked me if I wanted him.  At first I said no because I just wasn't looking for a second dog, but eventually I changed my mind.  I'm glad I did!!

Hank is about a year old.  We're guessing he's part German Shepherd (I'm positive about that) and Australian Shepherd (maybe?) or Catahoula (maybe?).  Something that comes in blue merle.  He's been hit by a car before because his back leg healed crooked, he's missing teeth and a toenail, but he's FAST!  It doesn't slow him down at all.  He is the perfect playmate for Buddy, but also gentle enough to share a home with Jackal. 

I've been wanting to get some nice pictures of him, but it's difficult because he's camera shy.  I finally got out my new (old) camera and managed to snap a few that I love.  He does not like the flash, but he tolerated it.  I have no idea why the flash kept going off since it was broad daylight outside.... ahh what a learning curve a DSLR is! 

Hank is a shy, nervous dog, but with time and consistency he has really come out of his shell.  Everyone here has fallen in love with him.  Enjoy the pictures!!

No pictures please!  He has slouchy, submissive posture most of the time.

I think he was abused at one time.

"Please stop taking my picture!"

Playing hide and seek with hubby.  So cute!!

Notice the big dog in the right? That's Buddy!!

Can you believe this tiny little four week old puppy has turned into this big dog??

Isn't he adorable!!

He is definitely half Pit Bull and half something else, maybe Australian Shepherd?  It's weird we ended up with two stray mutts from two different counties that appear to have Australian Shepherd in them.  It is a popular breed in our area, so maybe not that odd.  Enjoy the rest of the pictures of Hank and Buddy!

"OMG what is that??"

 Buddy doesn't know how to pose like Jackal does, but he accidentally poses really cute.

 His straight up ear and tail kill me.  So funny.

 He reminds me SO much of Jackal many years ago.

Aww I haven't looked at old pictures of Jackal in SO long!  They are the same tan with the same white toes and chest.  The biggest differences are the ears and patterns.

 Sorry, back to pictures of Hank.

 "Watch your tail Jackal..."

 Whack! "You so did that on purpose!"

 Jackal is still my most handsome boy!!  Love him!

 "I don't want to look at the camera..."

Sorry for the demon red eyes.  Don't know why the flash was going off in broad daylight...

Hank is such a unique and handsome dog!  I'm glad we gave him a chance and made him a part of the family.  I hope you all will love him too.

P.S.  I totally forgot to mention Hank is named after one of my favorite book series from when I was a kid, Hank the Cowdoy!

I LOVE this series, even now.  It is so funny!  If you know anyone with kids who love to read this is a definite MUST read.

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!!

Buddy Clicker Training Session 4 - Video!

I did some clicker training with Buddy after work today and he did great!  I started off reviewing sit and down.  He knows them so well!  He just needs to learn the vocal cues.  Buddy is the smartest, most enthusiastic puppy I have ever worked with.  When working on down I like to toss the treat a short distance because it gets them out of the down so you can ask for it again.  He runs after the treat, hits it with his paws like a cat sending it skittering across the room, chases it down, eats it and then runs back to me at full speed and slides into a down next to me (literally like a baseball player sliding to home plate).  My mom got a short video.  It's poor quality because it's in bad lighting and off a cell phone, but you can see what he was doing.

Direct Link for Video

After that I worked on "go to bed" to have him go into his crate when asked.  He was confused at first because he was trying to follow my hands around the back of it, so I started reaching inside of the crate to drop the treat.  He followed my hand in and I would click and he'd find the treat.  Within less than a minute I was sitting a couple of feet from the crate and tossing the treats inside it.  One time he didn't see me put the treat in there so I just sat still and waited.  He lay in front of me looking at me and then jumped up and ran into the crate.  I love watching puppies learning how to problem solve and think!!

After that I was talking to my family about what to teach next and "shake" or "sit up/beg" were popular choices.  I tried out both to see which one he would catch on to quicker and I think I'm going to do sit up.  He's at the mouthy stage and grabbing his paw is too tempting to nip at my hands.  He sat up once, but then I could tell his attention span was gone so I ended the session.  He is so smart and enthusiastic it's hard not to get carried away.

I think from here on out I'm going to do weekly posts with his sessions because as the sessions get more frequent I don't want to fill up everyone's feeds with posts too often.  I know some people aren't interested in dog training and will probably skip over these, which is fine.  I'm mainly keeping this as a record for myself.  At this rate he's going to learn tricks so fast I won't be able to remember them all!

Clicker Training Buddy - Session 2 and 3

Session 2 - May 23rd - On Buddy's second session we reviewed sit, which he did perfectly and I started adding in the voice command.  Since it was going so well I decided to try down.  The cool thing about clicker training is you don't have to force the dog to do anything or try to trick or lure them into doing anything.  You just wait and they learn to think for themselves.  So I sat there with my fist (treat inside) on the floor to get him to think about going down because I'm impatient and I like to give the dog a hint. 

The thing with Buddy is he just sits there and stares at me or he goes in circles around me.  Completely by accident he ended up under my arm and I just kind of smushed him gently to the floor.  He laid down, so I clicked and gave him the treat.  It took no time at all for him to figure it out after that.  It was funny though because he kept going under my arm to lay down.  Silly pup!!  Eventually I had him laying down all by himself without any assistance from me.  I haven't started adding the voice cue yet.  I try to keep sessions short so that he stays interested.

Session 3 - June 6th -  I reviewed sit and down with him.  He got sit immediately, but it took him a minute to remember down (it had been a couple of weeks).  He picked it up very quickly though, so I decided to move on to the next thing.  Since he's very mouthy and nippy (herding breeds yay), I decided to teach him to hold something in his mouth.  The awesome thing about clicker training is that if they do something wrong (like jump on you), you teach them the opposite behavior (sit).  It's a positive way to correct misbehavior and it works great. 

I picked out one of his toys (a bone) and held it out in front of him.  He didn't want to bite it, but he was panting because he'd been playing really hard so I just stuck it in his mouth, clicked and gave a treat.  Within less than a minute he was biting it on his own.  We obviously have to work on holding it in his mouth for longer, but with dog training you have to work on one criteria at a time.  New behavior, then duration, then distance.  You don't do more than one at a time or they get confused.  Anyway I don't want to rant about dog training, but I'm definitely excited to be getting back into it.  :)

 Sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures, but he is SO cute!

That smirk!!

Introducing Buddy!

Sorry for only having one picture.  I'm on a computer I don't normally use for blogging so I just emailed this picture I shared on IG to myself.  This is Buddy, my parent's new puppy!  My dad rescued him off of a busy road where someone had dumped him.  He saved his life!! When he stopped Buddy was standing frozen in the middle of the road.  When dad got out of the truck Buddy ran underneath it.  Luckily with a little coaxing he came to him.

They took him to the vet the next day (this was three weeks ago) and they said he was only four weeks old.  Can you believe someone would dump a four week old puppy????  He was wormy, hungry and slept a lot at first, but now after deworming, shots, a bath and good food he is a whirlwind of energy!

It's anyone's guess what breed he is, but we're pretty confident he is at least part Australian Shepherd.  He doesn't seem fluffy enough to be a purebred.  We also thought Catahoula because of his color and webbed feet, but we're not totally sure.  It will be easier to guess as he gets older.  With his color and ears I still definitely think he's mostly Australian Shepherd.  I will get some current pictures of him soon (this one was a couple of weeks ago I think).  Maybe I can break out the good camera this weekend.  I might have to go out of town though so we'll just have to see.

So the reason I decided to blog is because today was his very first clicker training session (he's 7 weeks old now)!  I want to blog about it like I did with Jackal because it's a great way to keep track of what we're working on and what worked or what didn't.  So I broke out the clicker and his dog food with the intention of just charging the clicker (click, feed treat, click, feed treat, etc. until they know what it means).  He was doing so great that I actually taught him to sit too!!! In the very first five minute session he's ever had.

If you're not familiar with clicker training the way it works is you use the click to mark the behavior that you want.  It's such a wonderful method of training because it teaches dogs to problem solve and seek good behaviors.  So all I did was sit there and watch him.  When he sat down naturally without me having to touch him or lure him into it I clicked and gave him a treat.  In less than a minute he was sitting so fast I could barely click or say the word sit fast enough.  I was having to toss the treat on the floor just to get him to stand up (Jackal was the same way when he was a puppy). 

So he knows how to sit.  He obviously doesn't know the word yet, but that will come in time.  I'm telling you this puppy is SO scary smart!!!!  He's going to challenge my creativity I'm betting.  I think we can outdo Jackal's record of forty tricks for sure!  Anyway I'll try to get pictures and video sometime for you, but I'm not making promises on when.  For right now I'm just super excited to be training a dog again.  I've missed it so much!

P.S.  If you want to see a video of Jackal doing all forty of his tricks you can look back at this old post here http://myfarmerlife.blogspot.com/2012/04/jackal-40-tricks-video.html.  That will be our goal to beat someday.

P.P.S.  There has been things going on at the farm, but I haven't had the time or energy to post about it.  Most of the goat kids are sold.  I'll try to do an update post sometime, but I don't know when it will be.  I have lots of pictures I've taken with my new camera, but just no time to edit or upload them.. Oh well.