Ready!

Tessa is SO ready to start training classes! She has really come out of her shell in the last couple of days. She often has a happy grin on her face and she is taking a much greater interest in everything that is going on in the house. She is also somewhat bored and if I don't get her mind engaged pretty soon, she is very likely to start making up her own jobs!!

I absolutely love this stage of things with a new dog. Everything is still new. We are about to get started on something that I love, and I am pretty sure she is going to love, and it is all ahead of us.

I know that I will make mistakes with Tessa, but I am determined not to make the same mistakes that I made with Dean. The first of those was thinking that I wasn't going to make any mistakes with him. No, I won't do it all right just because I've been through a lot with Speedy, Maddie, and Dean. Tessa is an individual and some things that I did with them won't fit her and I will need to do some things differently. I sincerely hope that my experience will help me to be more attuned to her needs and that I will make smarter choices with her, but I know not to take anything for granted. Thank you, Dean, for teaching me that lesson so well. It wasn't a pleasant thing to learn, but every dog I ever train in the future will benefit from it.

I am also going to take thing slow with Tessa. I tried to rush Dean into everything because he was so smart and it seemed like he would just pick everything up quickly. Four years later I realize that rushing was a big mistake. I will move Tessa along when she is ready and I am not going to put a timeframe on anything. But everything is going to take as long as it takes.

I am going to keep my expectations reasonable. Right now my only goal is to help Tessa find and stay at her comfort level in training situations, both at home and at class. At first that will involve having Maddie along for the ride. I know Tessa well enough to know that she will get to a point where she won't need Maddie for her security anymore and she will be ready to go it on her own. But if that takes a whole session, or even two, or longer, that's OK. I tend to think she won't need Maddie right with her for very long, but we will have her help as long as she is needed.

Tessa has come so far in such a short time. There are some very distinct hurdles to overcome, but I am confident that if I am patient with her, she will overcome those things and I believe she is going to put her whole heart into these things. I just see that in her.

There are two things, in particular, that we need to work on - slowly. One is her comfort level with people approaching her. She comes up to me quite readily at home, but she is even still a little skittish when I approach her directly sometimes. She has gotten a lot better. She no longer runs out of the room to see a safe place! Now she just skitters off to the side and then comes back in a few seconds. Strangers will be a bigger challenge.

I plan to use a mat and Open Bar/Close Bar with her for this at class. I plan to get a really big mat that both Tessa and Maddie can fit on, and then play the game in class whenever someone is approaching us. The presence of Maddie will give her the comfort level to remain under threshold during this game. Once she gains some comfort level with this, I plan to teach her Look at That and play with people approaching. Oddly, I think I will be able to use people approaching with dogs to help her be more comfortable.

The other challenge is that she is not entirely comfortable with being lured to do things. She is very suspicious of food in the hand when it starts to move. She does not offer any behaviors yet, so shaping is really not an option. And she is just as suspicious of a target stick as she is of a hand with food in it. This is just a skill she will need to learn. She did learn it with being lured into a sit. Again, at first she used to run out of the room and seek safety when I did this. Now she sits on cue quite beautifully and her sit is actually a confidence booster. I love this dog!

I have decided to start Tessa with a lure/reward approach and later move to a lure/click approach and get into shaping later. I think that the benefit of getting her brain engaged into formal training as soon as possible outweighs the downside of waiting a bit on shaping. I know she will get to a a point where she is ready to start doing some offering for clicks, but she just isn't there yet. I don't think it wise to wait until she gets to that stage before starting this. In fact, I think that starting this will help her along in that. Speedy started with lure/reward and it didn't do him any harm, and in the end I don't think it will be a bad thing for Tessa, either.

So, of course, getting Tessa comfortable with the lure is a priority. At her pace, though. At class I will have her watch Maddie with this a lot.

In any case, Tessa and I are ready! Just one week now until we get going!