We work with kids all the time around here at Fidleio Dog Works. Almost every family wants their children to be involved in working with the dog and that’s a great thing. The more the kids work with puppies and older dogs, the more the relationship becomes cemented and the stronger the bonds become.

There is a downside though. Kids have short attention spans, and puppies have shorter attention spans. Sometimes this can cause a bit of friction in the house. When working with your kids, remember to keep the sessions very short, usually 2-3 minutes works great for this. These short sessions are fantastic for the dogs as well.

With puppies, it’s always better to train more times per day for shorter segments. We would much rather have you do 10 sessions of 2 minutes than to sit there and try to get the puppy to work with you for 20 straight minutes. It’s just to much for their little minds to take in most cases.

Along these lines, I’m posting a link to a video of my daughter and me working with a schnauzer pup on the “Place” command.

You’ll notice that the puppy and the daughter have roughly the same attention span on this. Still, I’m proud of both of them. The puppy learned the place command perfectly and my Daughter isn’t bad on the command either! Now, if she’ll just do that when she turns 16…..

All my best,

Steve Haynes
Fidelio Dog Works
www.fideliodogblog.com

This has been a puppy month at Fidelio Dog Works.

I’ve got a number of clients that have gotten new pups in the last few weeks some of them brought from as far away as northern Canada. Getting these little guys shipped is no small task and we had a number of days where we were wondering if we would ever manage to get the the little guys and gals to their new homes. But, by this past week all were here and settling in nicely and it was time to start training.

If you’ve read any of this blog you know that I’m a HUGE believer in getting puppies into training early. I really like to start with them at eight or nine weeks old as they are generally really receptive to the training we do at that time and we’ll get roughly eight weeks of training during their imprinting phase which is enormously important.

Sammy, one of the lab puppies I’ve been working with for five lessons now just graduated to walking with me off leash yesterday. He’s 12 weeks old and already has his place command, come, sit, heel, finish (come around to the heel position when you come to me). This is pretty impressive even for a 12 week old dog. Needless to say, is owners have been putting in a LOT of work with him but it just goes to show you what can be done if you start training early and do it the right way.

Hannah is a little Golden puppy that we’ve done just two sessions with at this point but she already has her sit, walk on the correct side, sit when the handler stops moving and come commands down quite well. I had worked with Hannah’s owners before with another of their dogs but they are completely amazed and how quickly little Hannah is picking up on the training we’re working on. I fully anticipate Hannah will be off leash trained by the time she’s 16 weeks old at the rate she’s going.

So, if you are thinking about getting a puppy in the next few months book your trainer now (doesn’t have to be me but book someone) so that you get the amazing benefits of working with the pups when they are young. You won’t be sorry and you and the pup will have a much happier life together.

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works
www.fideliodogblog.com

A couple of months ago I got a call to work with a client that had a particular dilemma. He is a hunter and last year a deer that he had wounded managed to escape and he wasn’t able to find it. Now for hunters this is a VERY bad thing. It’s not managing the wildlife correctly and it’s wasteful.

So, Ken, being the good, responsible hunter that he is decided that he would never let that happen again so he wanted to train his new Patterdale Terrier pup to track wounded deer so that he would never loose another one.

I won’t go into detail of how we did all this tracking work (lots of time out in the cactus studded woods gives you some idea) but this little dog was a natural born tracker.

Zada, the pup, has the true traits of all great Patterdales, she is VERY TENACIOUS. That means that if the trail of the deer went over a cactus, so did Zada. It just didn’t matter what she had to go through to find the deer, she would do it!

Imagine my surprise last night when Ken sent me some pictures of little Miss Zada tracking a Squirrel. Well, now, I’ve never exactly taught a dog to track squirrels but it looks like Ken’s been working on this and, as expected, Zada is doing her dogged best to find whatever she’s told to look for.

So, take a look at the pictures below of Zada tracking her quarry and know that she is only the second dog I’ve ever seen that can literally climb trees!

And, by the way, Zada doesn’t need the fire department to come help her down from 20 feet up in the trees.

Enjoy!

Steve Haynes
Austin Dog Trainer
Fidelio Dog Works
www.fideliodogblog.com

Technorati Tags: puppy, Tracking dog