Callie's Training

Callie is coming along really well with her training. She is now fully potty trained and lets us know that she needs to go out by standing at the door. We are working on her ringing the bells but we where not being as consistent as I would like. We are working on being better at it.

We are working on her Sit, Down, Touch, Place, and Stays right now. She is doing well with them and we are going to be adding onto those commands this week by adding distance and duration to the stays. She is not quite ready to add higher distractions but she will in the next week or two. I will be posting a video of a training session with her in the next couple of days.

Her nipping, biting, and chewing things have calmed down quite a bit. She knows to chew on her toys and we have used vinegar a couple times to deter her from chewing objects. We also have redirected her a lot when it came to chewing and nipping. She has a lot of different chew toys. They are plush, soft plastic(kong), hard plastic (nylabone), rope toys, and hard chew bones (marrow bones from the pet store). They need all different types of chews because they will get bored with the same chews all the time. You can put away some toys and rotate them out so they are like new toys when they are brought out to play with. A bored puppy is a destructive puppy. They will find what every they can to occupy the time whether its your nice couch, walls, cabinets, kids toys, etc. They don't know the difference. Keeping their toys available to them and redirecting all the time will teach them to only chew on their toys.

I'm going to talk about potty training for a minute. I cannot stress enough how important it is to watch your puppy 100% of the time when they are out of the cage and letting them out every 15-30 minutes depending what point you are in your potty training. Also, only giving them one area in the house for the time being. So our set up for Callie was only allowing her in the kitchen/family room (which is just one big room) and having the door shut that goes to the rest of the house. Her downstairs cage is in there with two beds and a basket full of toys. On top of her cage is her leash basket. When she needs to go outside we can easily grab her leash and our jackets (which are on top of the cage as well). The cage is right next to the door to go outside. Honestly, we did not treat her when she went potty outside for one reason. The day we brought her home we started potty training her right away and giving her treats for potting outside. The next day she had diarrhea all day so we didn't want to give her anything extra besides her food so we didn't give any treats for going potty outside. The whole next week she didn't get any treats because we wanted her stomach to calm down. By the time she was better she was so distracted outside she didn't really want to take the treat so we just stopped it. I would just use verbal praise every time she went pee or poop outside. When she had an accident inside, most of the time we would be able to catch it, make a loud noise by stomping of the floor or clapping our hands and she would stop and we would take her outside and she would finish outside and get verbal praise again. Also, when she was outside I would tell her to go pee or poop. I put the two on different commands and now she knows what they mean. For Callie, this worked really well and she started to catch on. Now she goes to the door when she needs to potty. Some other signs she gives us is she stops playing, starts to look for me to go outside, or acts a little skirmish when she needs to poop. If we are upstairs and she needs to go potty she starts to whine and head towards the steps. Every dog is different when it comes to potty training but this gives you an idea to work with. If you want to potty train your puppy faster, follow these recommendations and they will stop going potty in the house. If you give your dog too much freedom in the house they will not catch on and they will continue to go potty in the house.

I won't go on a tangent about how important it is to be consistent with your puppy when it comes to training them but it is so important. With everything from chewing, biting, jumping, potty training, and basic commands. They all need to be consistent and daily. Think of it this way, the more consistent you are now with your puppy, the faster they will pick up on the good behaviors and the bad behaviors will go away faster!

Another thing we started doing with Callie is having her eat out of a slow feed bowl. She would inhale her food so fast that it would be gone in seconds. Now, it takes her about 2-3 minutes to eat her bowl of food. When we first gave it to her, she was confused and tried to run to Riley's food bowl and eat his food because she didn't know how to get her food out of the bowl. We brought her back to her bowl and let her figure it out. After a couple minutes she figured it out and started eating. It took about 5-7 minutes the first couple times but now she figured it out and can eat faster. I do have a video of her eating out of her slow feed bowl which I will post on this blog. The bowl I order is Outward Hound Slo Feeder. It is a really nice bowl!

Lastly, Callie and Riley are starting to become best buddies. They play a lot together and sleep together when she is out of her cage. He will still snap at her at times when she is being to much for him but that is good. It teaches her manners. It is good for her to have a playmate that can teach her doggy behaviors that humans can't and it has been really good for Riley. After Sadie passed, he would just lay around and sleep most of the day. When we could go for walks that would make him happy but he really needs something more. Callie has been awesome for him. He is a much happier dog and is playing a lot more now. Puppies really do bring out the puppy in older dogs. I have a video of Callie and Riley playing which I will post as well.

In the next few days, I will have a video up of a training session with Callie. I hope it helps you with your training!