Never Stop Training

Yesterday, Patricia McConnell posted "Gotta Love That Recall" on her blog, and while I read and recommend her as often as I can, I also noticed the specific phrase which I've poached for the title of this post: Never stop training.

I'd been thinking about this lately, in fact, when a certain long nosed miss started nosing up to peoples' plates in a manner she had not otherwise displayed. I may or may not have been mostly unbothered by this, for it was rarely, if ever, my plate she was getting too close to. This is Elka, who I can leave in the car with McDonald's or other takeout and she will not touch is. Elka, who has been in a room with a coffee table full of nachos and dip and even pigs in a blanket and not touched a thing. Elka, who dropped a turkey sandwich she had in her mouth when I said "drop it", and left along a dropped tupperware of taco meat when I said "leave it".

(forgive the old picture, I don't have a new one of her lurking in the "safe range" of food that is not hers)

Paws up!

Two years ago (!) I had my Command Clinic: Pawmania post, wherein I listed the paw tricks Elka had, such as "give me your paw", "high five", "pattycake", and "Testify!"  Since then, I've added one more, or am in the process of.

See, I can hold my arm out as though to receive a falcon in flight and tell Elka "paws" and she'll put her paws on that arm. I'm expanding that cue, so that she'll put her paws on the object I'm indicating, rather than the arm I indicate with (so, if I use my left arm to indicate, rather than my right, she puts her paws on the object, not my arm. This required a few trials [I have a fading scratch on my bicep], but she's getting it.)

Friday Fun: Elka the Talking Doberman

I don't have any video yet (I know, sorry), but one of the tricks we're working on with Elka is video-worthy: saying "Hello".

I've mentioned that Elka is very vocal, and that she says "out" when she needs to go outside to eliminate. I don't know how many talking tricks we're going to end up with (probably not as many as Mishka the husky on YouTube), but a few seems pretty cool, and viable.

The reason I even got the idea is because of this situation: A few months back, one of our college neighbors knocked on the door. It was her birthday, she said, and she was having a party. If they got too loud, she said please come tell them, and they would cool it. I was amazed and pleased; none of our college neighbors had ever done such a thing. She introduced herself (I forgot her name), I introduced myself, and Elka, who of course was standing next to me. She looked down and said "Well, hello Elka!" and Elka looked up at her and said "Hello." I was so floored I couldn't even think to reinforce her or anything, and we finished our conversation and went our separate ways. I turned to Jim, who was on the stairs, and said "did you hear that?" He had.


So, now with the lovely weather we've been having, we've had the screen in the front door again. Elka is re-acclimating to those sounds (people walking past, car doors, the screen jostling in the wind) and will alert us to each one of them. Awesome. Since they don't all need our attention, I've been working to redirect her. She hasn't yet said "Hello" cold, but will make reinforceable "Hello" noises once she starts going and then I say "Elka. Hello!"

She's a bit confused so far as to what I'm marking, but she's getting there. And she's "talking" more, which makes me think maybe we'll add more. I also don't want to muddy her "Out", which has gotten pretty reliable.