On Saturday Andiamo will be four months old. Time has passed way too fast. I want him to stay our baby, but I also want to see him grow up. It is a tug-of-war on my heart. Andi will go to one more kindergarten class, just for fun, then he will be starting Companion Dog Obedience on Monday, September 14. This class is really just Obedience, and will take him through to getting his CGC (Canine Good Citizen title). We will concentrate on the basic behaviors such as absolute recalls; stay; leave it; heel (or walk with me) which in our case will mean just to stay within about 10 feet. I train "heel" too, but I am not concerned with competition Obedience. I just need a casual performance from my dogs. I want to know they will not jump out of the car when the door is opened. I need to know they will stay put when the drive-thru gate is open on our property. He is already doing this! :o) I need him to "leave it" when he would be inclined to pick up a piece of food on the ground, or get into some deer poop. I do not need the precision that competition obedience requires. I don't need a perfect heel when we go on walks, but I don't want to be pulled on the walk. I also want him to be friendly, but he must keep "4 on the floor", no jumping on people. These are the things he will be learning in Companion Obedience. He already knows some of them, but he will get better. It is much easier to train a 4 month old pup how to walk on a loose leash, than to teach a strong adult dog how NOT to drag you down the road. He does not pull me now and I just want to be sure it stays like this. He also does not jump on people and I am very pleased with that. He is learning to greet new dogs without jumping on them or getting in their faces. He was house-trained in two weeks or less and he is very easy to train. He loves to please me.
All of my White Shepherds have been easy to train except one. Quest was a demon and a clown. It did not make me love him less, but I suffered a lot of frustration. He settled down by the time he was about 3 to 4 years. It was worth all the frustration. He was worth the frustration, and in his defense, I was not as good a trainer as I am now. Also, I had less time to spend training him than I do now. As he matured he became the best agility dog I could have imagined. He was everything I wanted in a dog, it just took a little longer than it did with Spirit (my first WS). Quest was the best at nearly everything I let my dogs learn. He was very "high drive" and various instructors who helped me train him, found out (just as I did) that Quest would figure out his own way of accomplishing most anything. It was never what you expected but often a better way of doing it.
Just as an example: My dogs all enjoy the interactive toys, where a tiny treat is hidden under a plastic bone, or cup, or is in a tiny drawer of a board game. They have all leaned to open the little drawers or lift the little cups to find the treats. Quest preferred the more direct approach. He would just pick up the entire board and shake it. It worked. The treats would fall out of the drawers, or out of the cups and bone molds. It also got him attention, which was his strongest motivation for most anything. There will never be another Quest, and I suppose that is just as well, as I don't think I have the energy and patience to handle that anymore. In spite of it all, he was working on his Masters in agility and he absolutely was the most dependable agility dog you could imagine. I could practically stand in the center of the barn and just verbally direct him. When once, he passed the entry to the teeter and, he found himself at the opposite end, which was several feet in the air ... he did not bother with going around to the end he was supposed to enter, he just reached one foot up and hooked the end of the board and brought it down - then he walked up the board and rode it down to the ground, and went on with the course. He had his own ways of doing things and I have to admit I enjoyed him more than I can say.
Andiamo is the teacher's pet, without a doubt, she even admits it. She said it surprises her because she is a "Labrador person". I don't believe she has ever really known a White Shepherd, but Andi has her hooked. She adores him and she is so impressed with how smart he is. She said she has never met a German Shepherd with a temperament as good as Andi has. She uses him as a demo dog and continually asks me, "has he already been trained to do this?" The answer is always no, but he does watch and listen while she explains things. Some people have asked me if it took long to teach him English. It didn't :o). I think he may already know numerous languages. He may be an old soul; my Spirit was.
Andiamo already knows that when I tell him to stay, and then I open the drive-thru gate, he must stay put in the spot he is in when I direct that behavior. He knows he must not jump out of the car until he is invited. He does not jump on people. He comes when he is called (almost all the time), and he is learning "leave it". When I ask, "what have you got", meaning what is in your sweet little mouth, he normally will spit out the rock, or new found toy (of sorts). Occasionally I need to reach in and help him decide to eject the item. That is one of the things we need to work on perfecting. He will come back to me when I call, approximately 98% of the time. That, of course will get worse before it gets better. My aim is 101%. I am very consistent and absolutely determined when it comes to something that can mean his safety. He already knows the basic "sit", "down", "shake hands", and then there is "no bite". A lot of that has to do with his teething situation. He makes good use of frozen wet wash-clothes. I can live with this a little longer, while he gets his beautiful new big boy teeth. When I say "ow" he stops biting and kisses me instead. Did I mention that I am crazy about this puppy?
I allow my adult dogs to tell Andiamo when there has been enough biting. He did not get the nickname of "Gater-mouth" for nothing. After Pirate stopped playing with him for a few lonely and sad days, he has gotten the picture about chewing on his family members. He loves Pirate and Journey. Journey won't put up with it, but Pirate is a softy and he let Andi chew on him too much. I was assuming that Pirate would correct him, as both Spirit and Quest would have. When I started seeing scabs on Pirates neck and his cheeks I realized I needed to step in and help him a little. It took a few days. Now Andi knows what not to do and Pirate trusts me to help him keep the little "gater-mouth" in line.
So now the training becomes more intense, still fun, but more important and with a lot of praise and pride over success. This little guy, Andiamo, is a perfect candidate. He is smart as can be and he really likes to please me. The hard part of having multiple dogs, especially smart ones that enjoy performing, is that you cannot just train one. I try to allow at least 15 or 20 minutes for each dog if I am going to work with one. It doesn't matter what you are training, just that you are spending one-to-one time with each dog and that they feel the pride of accomplishing something. We always end our training sessions on something that is done right. You don't need expensive treats. Although if you have something really flavorful it is worth holding it back for things done especially well. I use Natural Balance dog food rolls, made by Von Patten. I slice it and then dice it into tiny bites. All my dogs love it, it is high quality and it is not expensive.
Below are a few memories from kindergarten:
"Oh wow, a new classmate and she looks like me!"
"Hi, I am Andi, want to play?"
Andi plays "slap the floor" with Chet.
Another Shepherd - now Andi's new best friend.
"That is our instructor, Kim on the right side of photo. On left is Diesel and her mom; next is a little Dachshund; then my new Shepherd buddy (he will be in my Obedience class too, maybe I can find out his name".
"One of my friends accidentally slobbered on my head a little, but that's okay".
