The tintinabulation of the bells, bells, bells...

So we continue to struggle with potty training, mostly due to our own laziness and the hubby's variable schedule which makes getting the pup on a schedule a challenge.  Another thing that contributes to our laziness and thus, our difficulties getting Rogue potty trained is the dog door.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Why blame the dog door?  Because it's lazy . We just assume that because the puppy goes potty outside and because she can easily go in and out the dog door that she will potty train herself.  Well, she doesn't. In fact, she'll go out there and romp her little heart out with Steel and Ruby and come running back in and pee on the floor.   Why?  Because she was having fun outside and didn't think about going potty until she came in and then, well she hasn't really been rewarded for pottying outside nor has she been punished for pottying inside so hey, anyplace convenient will do.

Bad dog parents.  Bad, bad bad.  No cookie.  The dog door makes it easier for us to be lazy and trust me, after one or the other of us has been at work all day, the last thing we want to do is stop whatever we happen to be doing to relax and let the puppy out.  So, potty issues continue to plague us at home.

Interestingly, when we're elsewhere, if Rogue has to potty, she will go and stand next to whatever door we came in and look at us to let her out.  Any place, any door.  That's generalization and that means she's a pretty clever girl which makes us even more lazy asses for the fact that we haven't gotten her potty trained at home.

Interestingly, when I asked my husband to pose for me holding a sign that said, "I'm a dog trainer and haven't house trained my puppy and she's already 3 months old" he refused.  Can't imagine why.

 Thankfully, I know how to improvise.

  

I can train my dog to jump over my arm but I can't potty train my puppy.

And thankfully, my husband has a good sense of humor.

So, even more frustrating is the fact that when I am in the kitchen, Rogue will stand by the door and look up at me when she wants to go out.  So she does at least have an idea of what we want so what's the disconnect (besides the lazy dog door)?

Well, Rogue is deaf which means that she doesn't know how to communicate with someone she can't see.  She doesn't know what sound is.   She knows what it feels like to bark, and whine and make those adorable crooning noises but she has no idea what it sounds like or that it can be heard outside her range of  vision.   Now, she has some concept of that because her crate is completely covered at night and she still knows that if she barks and whines, we will come and get her out.  

What does this mean?  Well, it means expecting to teach her to bark to be let out will require us to teach her to bark on command and then get her to do it before we let her out.  Did I mention we're a little lazy?   Yeah, so the husband bought bells for the door.

 

I have no idea how much he paid for this but I could have made it for $2 with stuff from a craft store.

Now some of you may be wondering why bells.  After all, the dog is deaf, how does she hear the bells?  She doesn't have to.  All she has to know is that if she paws at them, we will come and let her out.  Easy peasy.  We used bells with Steel after we had the same problem for the same reason (dog door and lazy asses)  We stopped using it after Steel started using them as a summon human spell.

Stay tuned to see how this works.

Rogue continues to grow and has more than doubled her size since we got her.  She continues to fear nothing and love people.   People love her too but I wish they'd stop petting her when she jumps up on them because now we have a jumping puppy problem.  (grrrrrr)

 

Honest, she's just as cute with all four paws on the floor.

Keeping everyone busy the past week has been hard since a heavy rain turned our back yard into an ice rink and we don't want any torn ACLs.  So there's been a lot of ball and toy chasing in the house.  Rogue isn't really fetching because Steel always gets to the toy first so she just waits for him to head back and then gnaws on him until it's time to throw the toy again.   He's a very patient older brother.

So, I leave you with two pictures of the evil little imp taken 6 weeks apart.  Wow!

Look at that itty bitty puppy                                                                  She's getting so big!!

  

  Teh end

 

 

What happened to my perfect puppy?

She was doing so well.  We had default sits going all the time.  She was checking in regularly and her recall was bang on.   What happened?  Why is she backing away when I try to recall her?  Why won't she come anymore?   Is there something wrong with my puppy?

Grab a glass of wine, we need to talk.

 

The problem, of course, is not the puppy.  The problem is the people.  Yep.  We got lazy.   When we first got the puppy, we were working with her multiple times a day.  The husband had her out socializing at every pet store within a 10 mile radius and we worked the training over and over and over and then life happened.  She was so good, we stopped training.   She stopped getting rewarded for recall and so stopped leaving whatever fun thing she was doing to come to the human who was not going to let her go back to the fun thing she'd been doing.

Public enemies 1 and 2.

 

Now, the only problem above that is mostly a deaf dog issue is the recall.   Since she currently does not have a drop it or leave it command, we have resorted to recall to get her out of dangerous (as far as we're concerned, fun as far as she's concerned) situations because she was so good at it so she started associating recall with that thing she does that ends whatever fun she was having.  Can't say I'd blame her for not coming.   The fact that we'd stopped using treat rewards, didn't help the situation either.

 

All is not lost, of course.  We go back to the beginning, rewarding all those great behaviors and trying not to use recall to get her out of trouble unless we have something fun to reward her with when she does it.  It doesn't have to be food.  I've used recall when she was trying to get on the bed to torment her big brother who was teasing her and then when she came, I picked her up and plopped her on the bed where she could annoy him to her heart's content.  

 

Laugh it up, human.  Your slippers are toast.

 

But all jokes aside, there is a lot of going back to the basics for us.   We know better.  We did this same thing with Steel when he was a puppy and we swore we weren't going to do it with her.  I guess old habits die harder than we thought.  

 

We also came to the rather startling realization that she doesn't know how to go potty on leash.  We've never leashed her for potty because she was always in a fenced yard or the xpen in the garage.  So now that we're taking her on longer trips and she's bold enough that putting her down unleashed is not an option, we've realized that if she's on leash, she has no idea what she's supposed to be doing.  Wow, total training fail.  We should have followed more of Sofia Yin's book.

 

The point of this is that what's happening with us isn't unusual and we don't suck because we got lazy.   Especially with intelligent dogs, it's easy to say, they've got it so you don't have to work on it anymore.   The solution is simple.  Get back to basics and do what you started and don't stop before you're really done.  

 

Rogue is over 16lbs now and all legs.  She has never met a human she doesn't like and finally has good dog greeting manners.  I was even able to take her with me to evaluate a dog for rescue.  She was a champ.

 

She has a temper.  You can always tell when she isn't getting something she wants because she has a very frustrated bark.  She has a ton of unusual vocalizations because she can't hear the sounds other dogs are making to imitate them.  She knows what making sound feels like even if she can't hear it and she knows that certain physiological activities get her specific results.  She doesn't realize she's making a sound because she has no concept of what a sound is but she does know cause and effect.  She has an adorable little croon we want to try to get a recording of.

 

Seriously, she's a giant puff ball of evil.

 

Still, she is a very sweet puppy and loves to snuggle.  She has never met a human she didn't like and people are constantly stopping us to ask if they can pet her.  I can let someone she doesn't know hold her with no real fear of her doing anything more than giving them a good licking and maybe a nibble on the nose.   I guess we'll keep her.

 

 

I don't have time for that.

A well trained dog is a lot of work.  A deaf dog is no different, though I have to say that Rogue is not nearly as much additional work as I thought she'd be.  Since we often use hand signs or body language cues to teach new behaviors with our hearing dogs, it wasn't a big change in teaching Rogue.

But back to the time thing.  Training takes time and time is a precious commodity these days so how do you get all that training into a busy schedule.   One great way is commercial training which is using those annoying commercial breaks during your favorite show as a time to do a little bit of training.  It's actually a perfect amount of time for a dog/puppy's attention span.  You can teach come, sit, stay, off, on, and just about anything else without taking your butt off the couch or missing a moment of your favorite show.

Potty time is another great opportunity.  Sit or lie down before you open the door, stay before you let them go outside and a nice recall to bring them in (assuming they're not running in the moment they're done because it's freezing outside). Make your dog do something for their dinner.  You know they want it.  Make them do something for you before you give it to them.

Figure one hour of TV (8 commercial breaks), two meals and four trips to potty has given you 14 training sessions in one day at no additional time cost.

Cold paws, cold paws cold paws!!!

In last week's puppy class, our homework was to work go to your mat. This is an easy trick that has all kinds of uses.  So, while I was cooking this weekend, I put the mat where it was out of my way and got Rogue to sit on it.  I would periodically give her kibble while she was seated on the mat to the point where she just stayed on the mat.  This works really well to keep dogs out of your way in the kitchen by the way.  I can't wait to show her off in class tomorrow.

Speaking of class, one of our teachers is Belle.  Belle is a deaf double merle Aussie who is a Master of Tricks, has one nosework title, and has her therapy dog certification.  The only reason she doesn't have any Agility titles is because the AKC won't let deaf dogs participate.  Belle does practice agility, she just can't compete.

The lovely and talented, Belle.

I understand Belle and her human, Roxanne are now working on their Champion of tricks. Here is one of my favorites.Belle Go Hide.  

Yeah, I'm thinking that took more than one day to perfect.

As for our evil little imp, I know a lot of folks have had issues with the cold weather.  On the few nights that she gets me up in the middle to potty, we still use the potty pen in the garage, however, for the most part, she keeps busy with Steel and Ruby.

Yup, even on the coldest day, they're out there chasing each other and a toy around.  Now, we keep play time to about fifteen minutes but she's loving the bigger two dogs even if she isn't quite big enough to catch them and this makes three tired dogs which makes me a happy camper.

Rogue also had her first disc dog practice over the weekend.   To our surprise, she's not the only deaf dog in the Midwest Disc Dogs organization.   

 

This is Storm.  Isn't he beautiful?  There are multiple disc dogs around the country who are deaf and two that I know of who only have three legs.   How cool is that?  Dogs are amazing and kudos to the humans who let their 'disabled' dogs do what they love.  

And to finish off today's entry, here's Rogue with her first experience with a disc.

 

Clicker training the deaf puppy

Clicker training is an awesome way to teach your dog.  Thinking dogs especially love to figure out what it is you want them to do and the mental exercise is just as tiring as physical.  I'm not going to go into too much detail about the hows whys and wherefores of clicker training since Karen Pryor already does a heck of a good job on her website and has lots of cool books and videos as well,  http://www.clickertraining.com/

Having a deaf dog creates challenges for clicker training since a deaf dog can't hear a click.  Now, the click is just a marker.  The fact that it's a noise isn't as important as the fact that the dog knows that the marker means that they did something right.  What you need for your deaf dog is some kind of visual marker that does the same thing.  Enter... the flicker.

Why yes, mine is the color coordinated one.

Now I know some folks use a laser pointer because you can use the dot to direct the dog, however we've seen some bad OCD behavior come out of frequent use of them and don't recommend them.  We are having our vet look into seeing if there's any actual research on the subject other than our personal experience and I'll let you know if we find any but suffice it to say, we don't use them.

 

What we DO use is one of the little LED keychain lights ($10 or so at Home Depot) with  a ping pong ball (color optional) glued on top of it.  We made another version with an LED Christmas light bulb on top but we liked this one better.

  LED keychain light              Ping pong ball

We add the coiled wrist strap because it's not that easy to juggle flicker, treats, hand sign and puppy with just two hands.  Why the ping pong ball?  The ball makes the light bigger and easier to see and completely avoids any type of beam or spot that can cause the OCD behavior.  

There are still challenges with the flicker over the clicker though.   A hearing dog can hear the clicker whether its in their line of sight or not.  The flicker has to be in their line of sight and since puppies spend the majority of their time with their noses on the floor looking for that one thing you forgot to pick up to chew on, it's harder to get it in their field of view.  Thankfully, that field of view is quite a bit larger than ours.  

Once you get past that, though, the principals are the same.   Mark behavior with the flicker and give the dog a treat.  Rogue gets great focus when the flicker comes out. She knows it's time to work.

 

As for our newest addition, she got a clean bill of health from our vet on Friday and was a whopping 12.8 pounds three days before her 11 week birthday. Considering the fact that she was only 8 pounds at 8 weeks old, she's growing like a weed.  

These two pictures were taken exactly three weeks apart.

 

This past weekend, she went to socialize with local kids at the sledding hill, even going down the hill once with me.  (It wasn't pretty for me, that's all I'm saying)

I want to go again.  Can we go again?

She played ball with my two other Aussies, Steel and Ruby, and was as determined to get that ball as the others, no matter the fact that she is too small to keep up.

 She is learning our two dogs' body language so even though she can't hear warning growls, she knows when they are not pleased with her behavior.  This doesn't mean she won't push it, but then, she's a bratty little sister.  Even Ruby, who is a little on the high strung side, will play with her and Steel will actually take toys and initiate play.   The only one who is not thrilled is our 13-year-old, Allie, but Rogue has learned not to bother the old dog... most of the time.

Coming up next time, Rogue's hero, Belle.  A deaf dog who does agility, therapy and a whole lot more.

 

Potty training 101 or no plan survives contact with the enemy.

So, armed with Sofia Yin's book, Perfect Puppy in 7 Days, (http://drsophiayin.com/perfectpuppy?utm_campaign=Product+Page+Clicks&utm_source=PP), we were all set to get Rogue to potty training perfection.

Enemy number 1 (and 2)

We have a pair of great horned owls that live around us and while it's kind of cool to hear them arguing in the night and they do a lot to keep the rodent population under control, it is NOT cool when taking a puppy who is still rabbit sized out in the middle of the night for potty breaks.  So, I have to bring one of the other dogs out with me to keep the owls interest in other things and that causes a lot more trouble.  Thankfully, this is only at night.

Enemy number 3 

 

Yeah, it's cold.  Really freaking cold and with  negative degrees and a yard full of snow, those pink baby pads get cold and she was starting to limp after only a couple of minutes.

Enemy number 4 

Oh yeah, she looks cute...  but while the principal of offering a click and reward after potty is a good one, it's a lot more of a challenge when you can't use an audible clicker and the puppy has to be looking AT you for it to be effective.  And we don't always remember to bring treats because we don't want to be out there either because it's cold.  Did I mention cold?

So, how to solve the potty dilemma?   We took the borrowed x-pen (later on why that wasn't working for puppy containment and put it in the garage with puppy pads in it.  The garage is much warmer than the outside, there are no dogs or other fun things in the x-pen for her to play with and the owls haven't figured out how to get in the garage yet.  So far, it's working.  There's nothing interesting in the pen so we get piddle (or poop) within 30 seconds of putting her in there.  Then she gets out and gets love.  Of course, it's only the first day.  

So, why the x-pen didn't work.   Rogue doesn't like being separated from us.  This is something we'll have to work on but after she's through the fear period.  She is a confident little girl when we're around but doesn't like to be on the other side of any type of barrier.  I suspect that because she can't hear us, she needs to have access to us to make sure we're okay.   I don't have this problem when we crate her for sleeping because I put a blanket over the crate door.  So, alone in her crate/room is fine, but alone in a pen NEXT TO MY COMPUTER WHERE I AM SITTING, is not  

It is important to remember that every puppy is different and no one book can tell you how to handle every situation so read a lot of them so that when your puppy does something not covered in book number one, you have other ideas to fall back on.   Improvisation is key.

So, other than the perils of potty training and our failure of having a perfect puppy in 7 days.  (The book is awesome, by the way.  We just aren't.) we have been busy with more socialization.  Rogue went with me and Ruby to a disc dog event in Ohio where she schmoozed with some of the champion disc doggers while we threw discs in blizzard conditions for disc dogs that didn't understand why we weren't enjoying it as much as they were.  

Yeah, I got this.

Do I think it was a coincidence that the over all winner was the one player from Rogue's country of origin?  Not a chance.  :)

So much awesome for a little puppy to absorb

Thankfully, Rogue travels well because we had bad weather coming and going.  She was great in her box and pottied like a champ whenever we stopped.  That's going to be key for taking her to disc dog events in other states and countries.  

But you know, it's good to be home.

Technically, this isn't my home, but it IS how Ruby and I felt after a weekend of disc dogging and puppy wrangling.

I'd better go, someone has been out of my sight for too long.

100 dogs 100 people 100 days

Socialization is so important for a puppy.  This is as important if not moreso for a deaf puppy.   Rogue has to learn visual cues from dogs because she can't hear growls or yelps of pain.  She came to us with pretty good bite inhibition (Thanks again to her wonderful breeder) but she also came fearless.  Fearless is great but it means that we have to be particularly careful about her exposure to people and other dogs.  Good things can come with good socialization in those first hundred days but bad things can cause problems that will take a lot of time and training to fix.

So while quantity is good for socialization, quality is probably more important.   So, we played it smart.


We started small.  Little boutiques are going to have fewer people and fewer dogs and they often have a store dog that is well socialized.   Much less stressful on the dog than rushing into a large store. 

Go Dog Go is a local boutique and they loved Rogue there.  Even the store cat liked her.

Another place that welcomed her was our local Home Depot.    They might not all allow pets but ours does and there were a lot of employees and customers that were just dying to meet the fluffy little puppy.

Since she did so well in a smaller setting, we did take her to Petsmart and she wowed everyone she met.  We kept her in the cart to prevent accidental encounters with dogs we didn't know.  Rogue is fearless and would have no problem marching up to any dog whether or not that dog was interested in meeting her.  That could spell disaster for our social girl.  Socializing with other dogs is a lot about control and knowing your dog and knowing the dogs you're introducing her to.

We lucked out this year.  Our local Petsmart had puppy play time which was an hour of play for puppies up to 4 months old.   This was an awesome opportunity for Rogue to socialize in a controlled environment with young puppies who could match her energy level and enthusiasm.  There were 8 puppies in addition to her and they all romped and played very well with only a few time outs when someone got over excited.  And honestly, what's more fun than watching puppies play?  

Rogue was particularly fond of Staley, a young blue heeler.  They spent most of the hour wrestling with each other.  The good news is, Staley and his people live nearby so we see lots of playdates in the future.

The other advantage of all this socialization is that it's mental exercise for a young puppy.  It tires them out almost as much as that hour romp with other puppies.   Rogue has gone out socializing just about every day since we got her and even visited the vet today just for a playdate.   She doesn't know she gets her shots next week.

In the end, socialization gets the puppy what the puppy wants and gets you what you want...
This:

A little peace and quiet.  

I'm so happy my little deaf girl is so fearless and that so far, (knock wood) nothing has happened to rob her of her fearlessness or her love of people.  Her lack of hearing certainly doesn't seem to bother her and while I could really use the ability to tell her no when she grabs my pant leg, we've had to make adjustments and redirect or remove ourselves from her instead. 

It's been an awesome week so far.   She has a great default sit and we're working hard on recall.  This weekend she goes to her first disc dog event and can meet even more people and dogs.  I can't wait.

Rogue's first puppy class

Those of you who know my husband is a dog trainer might be wondering why we are taking our puppy to a puppy class with another trainer.  There are a couple of reasons:  1) The hubby and I don't do teacher/student relationship well no matter which of us is the teacher and which is the student.  2) The trainer for this class has a deaf aussie and 3) Curt loves to watch other trainers teach to give him more ideas.

So Wednesday night, we piled miss Rogue into her almost too small for her already crate and drove an hour and a half to take a puppy class with two other dogs.  One is a 15 week old underexercised mutt... I mean designer dog, named Toby.  But instead of calling this shi-tzu/bichon hybrid something like a Bitzu or a shichon, they call it a teddy bear dog.  No, I'm not kidding.  Toby wants to flying tackle, jump on everything that moves.

Puppy number 2 is a 16 week old chihuahua mix rescue that has some confidence problems, named Tinka.  She wanted to play but Toby's energy was wasaaaay too much for her.

The instructor had them play two at a time so that we could all see play behavior,  Toby's people were upset with his 'aggressive' play behavior.  There was nothing aggressive about him, he was just HIGH ENERGY.

Rogue took a few minutes to wake up when she was playing with Toby and then it was all out, run, jump, chase and play.  After a few minutes, she was starting to realize what all Aussie puppies do which is, "Hey, they can't turn like I can."  That was when Toby got replaced by Tinka. 

Now Rogues' favorite game at our house is bounce twice and leap at the other dog's face.  Our dogs have been patiently trying to teach her that game isn't cool but she's fearless and likes to do things her own way so I was a little concerned when it was her chance to play with Tinka.   Much to my surprise, Rogue dialed down her energy and was very gentle with Tinka.

She played rough with her siblings at the breeder and plays rough with our dogs so why the difference?  Apparently, Rogue was sensitive enough to the other dog's energy, that she realized that if she wanted to play, she had to dial it down and she did.  Wow, from an 8 week old puppy.

We already have her coming and sitting at our feet if she wants attention or to be picked up.  She loves being picked up.   Curt is working touch with her and we practiced that in class.  We also took them into the vet rooms and treated them for being on the vet table.   The trainer got out some obstacles  and odd feeling items and let the puppies explore them.  Rogue and Toby were fearless.  Tinka was a little more nervous but did pretty well.

Rogue was the star of the class and sat very nicely when we needed her to and worked touch like a champ.   Because she's deaf, holding the hand out for her to come touch it with her nose is our current recall.  I have started using it any time she looks at me.   We have to work her keeping an eye on us very hard this young because she can't see what we want her to do if she's not looking at us so getting her to make regular eye contact no matter what else she's doing is very important.

The added bonus of puppy class... tired puppy

At our house, Steel is starting to play with her.  He'll hold a tug toy and stand there while she pulls for all she's worth.  I have to admit he looks a little bored as if he can't believe that's all she's got.   Ruby is still hesitant.  Rogue's energy is still a bit too much, but it's getting better and Rogue is learning that if she wants to play with other dogs, she has to do what they want to do.

Any time you feel like actually pulling, kid, let me know.

 

We actually were pretty prepared for having the puppy, except for all the things you can't do because you have to watch her.  Keeping an eye on her is a full time job and while she can be crated when she's napping, she throws a hell of a tantrum if she's not tired.  We're getting used to our new routine and I have to say, other than not being at all responsive to auditory cues (which has the added bonus that she doesn't wake up if you drop something or the other dogs go ballistic because the mail man is here), she's a normal puppy.  We've nicknamed her the evil little imp.

Release me, mortal or I will devour your soul!!!

But since I'm not about to make that trip up to Canada and back again and she really is freakin adorable, I think we'll keep her.