It's Chuckie!

This morning, it finally hit me who Zane reminds me of. . . Chuckie from Rugrats! They both have unruly red hair. They are both irrationally scared of normal things. They both speak in a nasally voice (ok, so Zane's voice isn't really nasally, but anytime I "speak" for him, it's always in a nasally voice.)

Go here to see a clip of Chuckie:
Chuckie and the Potty

The new behavior he's learning: targeting with a rear foot. I do this by having them back up to a large target and gradually decrease the size of the target. He's backing up and putting one or two rear feet on the target, so he's getting it!

Cat Dog

Zane in the cat tunnel.


Isn't that ridiculous?

He finished his Focus & Control class last night. There was another dog there that is leash reactive, and he and Zane have snarked at each other before. Last night they were doing head-on mat races without even looking at each other. It went very, very well. The class helped him a lot.

Zane - 9 months (almost)

Fast Progress!

Today I was out cleaning up all the stuff that blew around in our recent windstorms. While I was out there, I rearranged some of the agility equipment. As I moved stuff around, I looked over, and Zane was standing at the end of the dogwalk waiting for me to watch. As soon as I did, he walked up it and walked across! Woohoo! He offered that all by himself. Of course, he got cookies and pets and loving for doing it. He got on and off all by himself several times and even turned around once (without me asking him to). This evening, he also went over the A-frame without needing help. Now granted, they are both lowered, but this is major progress for him.

Then I was wanting him to do a line of jumps and move out ahead of me. As we passed the 4th jump, he would veer off to the dogwalk which was nearby. I guess it's been reinforced enough now that it has value again.

Room Searches

This morning Zane did 2 box searches, then I filmed a room search. It's fascinating to watch the dogs work.




And here's Bella doing the same search.

Unroll a Mat

Here's Zane working on unrolling a mat:



I thought I filmed Bella learning it from scratch, but it didn't record! She learned it in about 30 seconds. She's so amazing.

We met a friend for agility practice today. I sent Zane over the dogwalk there - worked on stopping on it and sitting on it. Then went to the A-frame and learned he's scared of it now too. So more work. Before we left, he offered to get on the dogwalk again. Yay!

At home, I lowered the A-frame to very low so the height doesn't scare him. It will be regularly added to our training now.

While at the agility place, I went off to another area and did some nosework searches. He didn't find one. It was in the middle of a big wood pile. He knew it was somewhere, but couldn't figure out where it was. So that's a puzzle to work on.

Retraining the dogwalk

Zane is having fun unrolling the yoga mat. I think I need to move him to a rolled up carpet!

Zane is on a program to re-train the dogwalk. He's never been completely comfortable on it. His goal is to get across it as fast as possible. I want him to be comfortable. And after his fall yesterday, it's going to take some work. The first thing I did was lower the dogwalk. Then I started rewarding any movement on it. Then I had to get him to stop on it. And we worked on sit and down on it.

This evening when we went out, I had him go across it a couple of times (he still wants to avoid it), then just scattered the rest of his meal across it. He went back and forth eating his dinner.

Here's a vid of this morning's work.