Sometimes training feels like a dance. It's a dance of work, reward, and the final payoff of rehabilitation. In some cases the rehabilitation is a constant upkeep of maintenance. Sometimes not so much. Sometimes progress never happens. I've always been a realist but Spudz makes me want to be a dreamer.
The progress Spudz has been making has been mind blowing. He is a dog who people were scared of even though he has yet to show any aggression to humans. His size alone is intimidating. He's tall, lanky, and strong. He is the proverbial large black male pit bull. And, he was out of control. Being untrained and unsocialized made him dangerous. He was the dog who didn't know to look to his human as to what to do.
Notice the past tense speech yet? I can proudly say that Spudz is learning. Learning is huge in a dog like Spudz. Spudz out in the real world without people who understand that he had never been trained or socialized would have been doomed. I'm lucky enough that Becky, the head of Scott County Dog Rescue, agreed to do anything possible to help Spudz. I still remember her phone call to me telling me he had attacked another dog. It wasn't a question of what to do, it was a question of when do we start.
Last night there were puppies at the rescue who were just born. That was exciting but I had my main goal and it never changes. I needed to work with Spudz. When I let him out of his room he does his laps around the center of the building and then he is on his rear at my feet. I had a treat in my hand. I had the leash! :) Nothing is ever that easy though. I had taught Spudz that when I place my palm out to him he is to touch his nose to it. Soon as he saw my palm he pranced and started tapping. To him this is a fun game. He doesn't realize that what I'm teaching him is that when he sees my palm he needs to move to it. This is how I'm teaching him to redirect. No matter what, he sees my palm and he is learning tap it with his nose. With this process I am slowly moving him where I want him.
He tapped my palm 15 times with no fails. He really has picked up on my game quickly. I did some focus exercises with asking him to look at me for treats while I say his name and again, no fails, constant success. I do an exercise where I let him free roam and call him to me. Not so many successes but he looks at me as soon as I say his name. To me, that is progress. With dog training there really isn't failure, I think. As long as you have progress of some kind, you have success. While some dogs learn slower than others, all dogs are different.
I figured I had subjected him to exercise enough and it was time to use the leash. I use a modified leash belt to walk dogs. This gives me hand free control if I need to grab treats to redirect and it never transfers my tension down that leash. This is ideal for a dog like Spudz who really is nervous when he's constrained. This way he feels loose and is still getting exercise while learning to walk on a loose leash. At first it's his first reaction to run away and try to get away from the leash. I just stand there and be peaceful. It takes him a matter of less than a minute to realize "Okay, this is another game". He moves to me and sits down. I give him a click and a treat and we move. Soon as he starts to pull away from me, I stop again. This way I'm never setting him up to fail. I'm letting him learn at his own pace to come back to me and then we will move. We did this for about 15 minutes before he just sat there and didn't want to walk at all. He had done enough and I'm proud of him. He's learning at a pace that I thought impossible. Now if only he liked cats, then he could just come home with me.
Mentioning home, Greyson has either injured his front left leg or his growth defect is catching up to us and he has the onset of arthritis. We will be finding out tomorrow which it is. I know we were given a shortened time with him but I'm not ready to let go of him without a fight. After all, he is my baby and my biggest triumph when he can stand 10 feet from a dog who he normally would try to lunge at and instead ignores it and focuses fully on me. He's come a long way from being the crazy puppy from hell. He may always look like a puppy but he has grown leaps and bounds mentally and is my heart.
So while Spudz has taken two steps forward in being a normal dog, I've taken one step back by curling up on the couch to keep Greyson calm and inactive today. Normally we would do training games and keep him active even if it's just hiding stuff in boxes for him to search out. Instead, I just loved on him and kept him at my side all day. Tomorrow will be another day though and then we will see where we go with my own personal little boy.
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