10/21/09 - Barking at the Neighbors

Where to start….Lets start with the neighbors. Seems like a strange place to start a dog training story, but it all ties back together in the end.

So a couple years ago we move into this new house. Nice house, great neighborhood, great school that is exactly a five minute walk (and most of that is through the soccer field). We really felt like we had found where we wanted to be for the next 10-20 years.

Didn’t take long, though, until we met the neighbors. Dad seemed nice enough, mom kind of keeps to herself, and the daughter seems to be going through that teenage “everybody sucks” phase. We all grow out of that eventually, so you can’t really hold it against her.

But they had five dogs. Five. (the law in this town is 3, we looked it up). Normally a lot of dogs wouldn’t bother me, but these dogs barked. Constantly. We couldn’t be in the back yard without getting attacked - or more accurately, without the fence getting attacked because we were on the other side of it.

This went on for awhile until we couldn’t take it anymore. So we decided to try to be grownups, and my wife called them and got the machine. She left a very non-emotional message along the lines of “couldn’t help but notice that your dogs spend a lot of time outside during the day. Since I’m at home with the kids I’ve got some free time and would be happy to work out a schedule, maybe let them out and then back in at certain times during the day? It’s become very difficult for us to use our backyard due to the barking – but we know how busy things can get and we would be happy to help in any way we could”

Their response was deafening in its silence. Then we notice, a couple days later, that two of the dogs don’t seem to be there anymore. As chance would have it I bumped into “dad” one day and mentioned that the dogs seem to be much quieter. His response was that his wife responded poorly to our message and immediately took two of them to the pound. That was certainly an over reaction and not our intention, but you can’t control other people so we went on trying our best to keep our dog quiet, and rationalizing that their three smaller dogs, while still barkers, aren’t nearly as loud as the other two. Except when their other daughter is visiting and brings her massive dog with her. When she’s there they keep him locked in the house, and his bark rattles the windows whenever we’re outside at all, front yard or backyard.

Interesting side note: After three summers the only time we've ever the people in the back yard is when the dad is mowing. We notice this because we tend to be in our yard a lot, playing with our dogs, eating dinner on the deck, barbquing, playing on the swings, etc....

Time goes on and we learn a little more about the family. Turns out the daughter (she’s 16ish now, so this has been going since she was 14 or so that we know about) lives, in the house, with her boyfriend. Apparently she’s manic depressive, and he’s the only one that can calm her down.

We’ve experienced many of her dramas, typically culminating with her in the driveway screaming “F*** YOU” at him at the top of her lungs for 10 minutes or so, but he does seem to have her best interests at heart – I’ve never seen him act angry or violent towards her and she does eventually calm down.

Be that as it may, your 14 year old daughter should not have a live in boyfriend. Seriously.

But wait, there’s more: Last summer we received a frantic call from one of our other neighbors –our neighborhood has a high percentage of post-retirement age couples – and one of them was on the phone, terrified because she heard one of the fights going on in the driveway. She had already called the Police and was calling to ask us if we knew anything about the family. She confided that she was afraid of them, and that the loud profanity going on in the driveway made her feel very nervous and fearful.

Trying to be good neighbors, we called the family and asked if everything was alright, but they accused us of calling the cops. That led to the best comment of the summer, my wife was out late one night working in the yard and so was the dad from next door. She tried to make some light-hearted banter about yard work, and he said “yep, seems like we’re always gardening or snooping”. What do you say to that?

So there’s the background, lets talk about dog training. Fast forward to yesterday, my wife was working from home (Monday’s are big days for her, usually 5-6 hours in front of the computer) and shuttling the kids back and forth from school, doing the laundry, making dinner, cleaning the house (we also had a mouse this weekend, that’s always good for some drama).

And oh yeah, the daughter’s “condition” means that she is being home schooled. So all this time we thought they were all working so hard, she and mom were actually home, they just chose to not hear their dogs barking 6 or 7 hours per day.

My wife left the house for 45 minutes and, since it was a beautiful day, made the mistake of leaving the dogs in the yard.

When she got home she found an unsigned note on the front door complaining about how the dogs had been “barking all day”.

Trying one last time to be the grownups, she went over to the house with the note and the daughter admitted to leaving it. My wife, in front of “dad”, apologized for the barking but explained that it couldn’t have been “all day” and that in the future they should just call or knock on the door, we wouldn’t leave our dogs out on purpose.

The girl said she tried, but we were “in and out all day” and she could never find us at home (lie. The house was empty for a grand total of 45 minutes). Then she said “just shut the door on her dad” and “dad” said “thanks for coming over” and closed the door.

So needless to say we are done trying to be nice neighbors. From this point forward, every time we hear a fight, we call the cops. Every time they let the snow go more than 24 hours without shoveling he walk (the law in this county) we call code enforcement.

Which affects my training schedule. Sweet Emmy went to work with me for the whole day yesterday. She made lots of new friends, both dog and people, and was really very well behaved. By 4:30 she was very very bored, but I think I can find some more interesting treats to keep her interested with in the future. Frozen peanut butter kongs anyone?

She had no accidents, and walked very confidently around the office on a “loose leash”. She sat when told, waited patiently outside the kitchen and generally behaved herself very well.

So at least our dogs are not barking. Frannie is happy to have the house back to herself for most of the day, and at her age really just wants to sleep on the couch most of the time anyway.

Let’s hope for more of the same today.

10.18.09

Training Emmy 10/18/09

No Pictures today, Blogger doesn't seem to want to upload them. What do you expect for free?

Believe it or not the Emmy training continues – the amount of time and attention it takes from our already busy lives explains why I haven’t updated this blog in so long.

We’ve now completed two of the five, hour long training courses offered by the Humane Society. Its actually a six week program, but we missed the first one.

I’ve found them very helpful, as much because they offer me some positive reinforcement as for what Emmy has learned.

One big thing I’ve learned is to use more treats more often in training. I’ve always avoided treats, because I felt like I would end up with an overweight dog that won’t stop begging. That doesn’t seem to be the case though, and during yesterday’s class Emmy was doing an excellent job of walking on a loose leash (walking by my side without pulling on the leash) not a true “heel” but a comfortable way to walk.

Each day after work I take her to a large field nearby and throw the ball for her. She’s already very good at bringing it back to me and its great exercise for her.

I’ve noticed however that after four or five fetches the excitement of the field overwhelms her and she stops coming back. Luckily she’s still young enough to be afraid of being alone, so when that happens I just say “OK, I’m leaving you now” and I turn my back and start walking or running in the other direction. Within a couple of seconds I hear her running to catch up. At that point I take out a treat, say “Emmy, come” and then reward her for doing it. Hopefully in this way she’ll think it was her idea.

Potty training is also going well – she is now sleeping from 9:45 until 4:15, and I think I’ll increase it to 4:30 tonight. Within a couple weeks she’ll be sleeping until 5:00, which will make my life easier.

On the downside, she’s still a puppy. For most of the day she’s great to be around, but for some reason the hours of 2:00pm until 5:00pm are “crazy time”. It seems like no amount of walks, ball chasing or attention is enough – these hours are filled with barking, nipping, jumping---basically all the things that puppies do that we wish they wouldn’t.

So that’s about it for today. Training continues, not as fast as we would like but faster than we had any right to expect.

October 3, 2009 - Socialization

Last night Emmy and I attended our first Puppy Socialization class at the Boulder Valley Humane Society. Basically you pay $10 to sit in a room while somebody else monitors how your dog is playing with other dogs. As silly as that sounds, I think it was money well spent.

One mistake we made with Frannie was to not take things like this seriously enough. When she was this age she, like Emmy, was very smart and had an older dog to play with all day long. We took Frannie to one or two puppy training classes, but she was so small and timid she just hid under a chair and then threw up from the stress.

Besides, she learned how to sit on command after two or three tries, so we really didn't see the point. Eleven years later she's a 60+ lb dog who sits, comes when you call most of the time, and that's about it. She also has "issues" from time to time with other dogs, strange people and things like that.

So we're going to make sure we socialize Emmy. The current school of thought, at least the one we're following, is that you have to expose the puppy to as much as possible within the first three or four months of life.

So in the two weeks that Emmy has been with us she's been to my office twice (four hours each time) been to Petsmart twice, been to Lowes once, taken a walk during the elementary school after class running club and just about everything else we can think of.

She's already showing less "mouthing" behavior, which is great since she will always be around kids.

During the puppy class last night, only one other dog showed up - a sweet 10 week old mix named Berlin. Some sort of cattle dog possibly, but she also looks like she might have some sort of terrier in her. Berlin had been the previous week and had been overwhelmed by the number and size of the other puppies. Since this was my first time I was at first a bit disappointed that there was only one other dog, but in the end I think it did Emmy a lot of good.

Under guidance from the instructor we introduced the pups, and Emmy quickly established her dominance. In fact she was so dominant that I was feeling a bit embarrassed, but the instructor watched the proceedings closely and as soon as Berlin showed signs of needing a break, she broke up the play time by squeezing a very loud squeaky toy and squirting them with a water bottle.

In a very short amount of time Emmy learned that tackling Berlin wouldn't get her to play, and biting Berlin wouldn't get her to play, and barking wouldn't get her to play, but taking a toy and running away would.

Once that pattern was established the play was much more even and I'm sure Berlin had as much fun as Emmy.

These are lessons I'll try to incorporate into my own training, and I'm pretty sure we'll be back for at least one, if not two more puppy socialization classes. Next on the agenda is to sign up for the six week training class. While I'm confident that we have the resources to train her ourselves, external feedback is always helpful in a situation like this.

Potty Training update: Emmy is now sleeping successfully from 10:00 until 3:15, and has still not made a mess in her crate or, other than during the first night, in the laundry room, her expanded "safe" area.

Unfortunately she has peed in the living room with no warning each of the last two nights between the 8:00 and 10:00pm walks. I think this is partially because by the end of the day she is exhausted, and partially because she doesn't completely "get it" yet.

Last night I was able to interrupt her and continue the pee outside, so maybe we'll make some progress now.