Posts Tagged ‘Trooper
Shop Dog Bootcamp
The Trick Ponies of Chincoteague are going to allow a special post about the dogs today – because even though its not “pony” related, it is clicker training related.
What the dogs look like most of the time
Everyday two very special dogs accompany me to work. Ammo (who appears a lot on this blog) is my 1 year old Dachshund and Trooper is my parent’s 2 year old Australian Shepherd/Lab mix. Both dogs have been coming to “work” at my shop since they were about 8 weeks old. Ammo is at the shop 24/7 with me and Trooper gets dropped off and picked up at different times depending on what my parent’s schedules are like. I taught both dogs at a young age what it meant to be a shop dog. This means being quiet, staying out of the way – basically just being a well behaved dog. Most of the day I get dogs that lay around sleeping and when they do play wrestle its very quiet. Being a shop dog also means greeting customers – its pretty much their main job other than to keep me company.
Trooper (being the first and only shop dog for a long time) has always been great with customers – he greeted them with an enthusiastic tail wiggle (minus the tail because he doesn’t have one) and he would NEVER bark at customers, not to mention he had free reign of the shop and wouldn’t ever dare leave even if I had to prop the front door wide open. Enter Ammo. I love him dearly – but he is a dachshund afterall – and if you know nothing about Dachshunds…all you really need to know is that they are STUBBORN. They are hard to house train, they bark a lot, and they love to hunt. I think that if you can train a Dachshund…you can train any animal.
Front door to the shop
So with the arrival of Ammo came the puppy gate. Ammo didn’t care to listen to the boundaries of the front door and being a pipsqueak at 3 lbs. he easily snuck out with customers. With the gate came some new issues. Trooper (being used to greeting people at the front door) started standing up on the gate to greet people – and it didn’t help any that my customers loved this and would pet and reward him. And as Ammo got older he started to realize what Trooper’s excitement was all about – and he developed a barking habit. As soon as someone entered the door he’d let out a few quick barks (mostly over his frustration about not being able to see over the gate as to who/what was there). But after 3-5 barks he’d settle right down.
So now I have a dog on the gate wiggling like crazy and a dog that barks (not to mention customers who are so excited to see dogs that they don’t realize they are rewarding what I deem to be bad habits…whats even worse is some of them bring the dogs cookies). Its not the greeting I want people to get when they walk in the front door – despite the fact that most of them love the dogs. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve sort of let this issue slide for a long time. In an effort to help the customers and not look like the crazy dog trainer I sort of cover up the situation. I usually pick Ammo up so he can see who is there and will stop barking and Trooper I push off the gate after my customer’s give him a pat.
My "ammo"
This has gone on too long now and I decided that on Wednesday it was time for Shop Dog Bootcamp. My plan was to get the dogs to sit (quietly) when customers entered. To do this I decided to use clicker training to reward them when they sat as someone entered and slowly increase the duration of time I asked them to do this. My hope was that by the end they would associate someone entering the door with sitting (and then being rewarded).
So I placed a jar of dog treats by the front counter and waited for my first customer. I decided that even if my customers thought I was crazy I’d simply explain to them what I was doing. The first few times I showed the dogs the cookie first so they knew that complying to my request would be totally worth it. I tried to be aware of when I thought someone was coming in the front door so that I could have them sitting and waiting before they even entered. This started to work, but occasionally I would be in the back and someone would come in before I noticed. But I was successful in getting them under control much quicker than I ever was before.
By Thursday I was noticing some improvement. I successfully had “no issues” for maybe 2-3 customers and even when my husband came to pick me up (people they KNOW always get a really enthusiastic hello) they both sat quietly and never made a peep. My husband was quite impressed because he knows how they can get.
Below is a short video of the boys in training.
We had some small setbacks throughout the day – afterall my main goal is to help my customers and sometimes if I get too many people in the store at once its hard to then also try to train the dogs at the same time, but I’m trying my best.
So hopefully soon I will be able to report that the boys are well-behaved shop greeters. But if anyone has suggestions on how to help the boys learn their new task at the shop let me know!
Happy Halloweenie!
In the spirit of Halloween here are some pictures of my Dachshund, Ammo, and his best friend, Trooper, dressed up in their favorite bearable costumes.
Ponies aren't supposed to eat Dinosaurs
But mom....he tastes so good!
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
Its a Dog Eat Dog World
I thought today I would share with you some photos that I took of my Dachshund, Ammo and my parent’s Labrador/Australian Shepherd mix, Trooper last weekend. Let me first say that Trooper and Ammo are the best of friends. They “play” together for hours on end and although it may seem like they torment eachother at the end of the day they really do love one another.
Ammo loves to snap at Trooper’s ankles – he’s determined this to be Trooper’s weakness and Trooper likes to body slam Ammo by flopping ontop of him. They really are entertaining – I could watch them for hours.
Ammo is turning one next week and we’re planning to throw him a first birthday party – complete with edible doggie cake. I will definitely share the photos from that adventure! And if you can’t get enough of Trooper and Ammo you can see all of the photos by clicking here.
Ammo
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
