Heel is considered one of the basic dog commands. In a heel, your dog keeps your pace, close to your leg and attention straight ahead. Ebony is not good at the classic heel. Ebony’s main job to date has been to protect my left side.  I call her my fuzzy left bumper as she protects me from running into the things that I can’t see on my left side.  She is very skilled with helping me navigate with the shopping cart but she does that by walking about 1-2 feet ahead of me. She helps pull the cart and nudges it with her nose as needed to avoid obstacles.  Unfortunately, that is not heeling and I am working with her to pull/nudge with the cart but otherwise stay at my side while walking. 

Through a lot of snafus we missed the dog training Sunday and I was angry, sick and frustrated. When I got back home, my assistant came over and decided to try something new.  She worked with Ebony, my service dog, off-leash and Ebony did great. Without the distraction of the leash, Ebony stayed on her pace, keeping her eye on Eileen.  I have been practicing heel off leash with my service dog to do little things like taking out the garbage, getting something out of the car etc and she has been spot on.  But if I say “heel” with the leash on, she wants to be about a foot ahead. I think this is going to be another slow lesson in relearning, just like we had to relearn “in”.  For a long time “in” meant sit by the open car door and wait for someone to boost her in. That worked when she was 12 pounds but when she hit 50 pounds it was vital that “in” meant hop into the car and settle into her spot in the backseat. Unfortunately, that took about two months before she was consistently hopping in the car as soon as she heard “in”.  Hopefully “heel” won’t take as long (crosses fingers)!

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Ebony’s Puppy Kindergarten Graduation picture. She wasn’t wild about wearing that graduation cap but she did great with her Sit-Stay to get the picture.

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The puppies were hyper excited at the beginning of Petsmart puppy class today.  We were supposed to be demonstrating Sit-Stay and Down-Stay.  There was a family standing outside the ring and the three children were a huge distraction for my goldendoodle puppy.  Still, Ebony did great on the Sit-Stay.  It took two tries to maintain the Down-Stay for 15 seconds.  Then, we focused on meeting others.  Ebony did really well with this. Jumping has never been an issue for her.  I would give the comment Visit and she would sit and wait for the person to pet her.  We had to tell some of the store employees that could not pet the puppies. I would tell the person no then get Ebony to Watch Me.  She did great!

Next Jennifer, our excellent trainer,  laid out some toys and some nice stinky bones in one of aisles.  We were to walk with a loose leash down the aisle. If the puppy pulls at the leash for one of the objects, they were told Leave it and we were to keep going.  The first time, Ebony strained for one of the bones but immediately responded to Leave it. She walked perfectly down the rest of the aisle, ignoring the objects. We repeated this three times, each time Jennifer moved the items closer together.  Each time, my cute puppy walked on a nice loose leash and ignored the tempting objects.

At the end of the class, we turned to a trick.  To teach her to shake, Jennifer had us tap the back of the leg where it attaches to the foot. Once the puppy raises her foot, they get a click and a treat.  I was really tired at the end of the class and I was getting confused as to how to transfer from the tapping of the leg to holding out my hand to shake. Ebony was also confused and we could see her thinking about it and trying to figure out what I wanted.  By the end of class, she would put her paw on my hand about 50% of the time when I said Shake.

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Ebony is always the star when it comes to the Stay command in puppy class.  That is, as long as she is sitting.  Down-stay is a real challenge for her.  She is slow lie down but then she hops up after about five seconds. A 30 second sit-stay is really easy for her it is just the down-stay that she has a hard time with.  I think that part of the problem is that she still needs a hand signal of pointing to the floor to lie down. When I give her the treat or pet her for lying down, I am bending over.  As soon as I stand up, she pops up. It is the same problem if I am standing up or sitting down.  I need to figure out how to reward the down without bending over.

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Thank goodness for the leave it command. She gets to hear it a lot. The good news is that she seems to be tiring of the wastebasket as treasure game. My goldendoodle puppy has set her sights on something much more interesting, the cat’s food.  Long ago, when Fergus was a puppy we built a pedestal for the cat’s food.  It kept it off the floor so he quickly learned that was off limits.  Last year at the age of 18, the cat started to develop arthritis and could no longer jump on the pedestal. Fergus still thinks anything on the floor is fair game so we built her stairs up to her food pedestal. 

Ebony, the smart goldendoodle puppy  that she is, has figured out how to knock the dish off the pedestal by  climbing up on her hind legs and batting it down. So she is tall enough to do that but still small enough that she can also climb up the steps to the pedestal. If she hears leave it, she will skulk away. As soon as we are out of the room, she will slink back and try it again.  She literally licks the floor clean around the pedestal.  We have one dining room chair blocking the stairs and a second one blocking the pedestal itself. Still, if she has more than a minute unattended she will try again, even if the cat food dish is empty! I am perplexed because I can tell her to leave a dog treat on the lawn and she will totally ignore it. Cat food seems to be an entirely different story.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would be delighted to hear them.

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Although Ebony has had the task of ringing the bells to go inside down for quite awhile. Today was the first day that she rang the bells to go outside by herself. I was almost beside myself with excitement.  I think I scared my poor goldendoodle puppy with my enthusiasm but I was so glad to have this break in her house training.  Fergus was so easy to house train but she has continued to have the occasional accident inside if I am not totally diligent. This was the first time that she took the initiative to let me know that she needed to go outside.

Its amazing how the little things in life can so totally make your day!

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Today’s Petmsart Puppy class focused on the puppies learning how to ignore distractions, well at least try to ignore them! The main focus of today’s class was to keep the puppies attention while confronted with a variety of distractions from shoppers to other dogs to fish to birds to the rodents.  Although the other dogs really distracted, especially by the birds and rodents, Ebony really didn’t seem to care about them.  She readily followed commands while right next to the other cages. Definitely a good sign for a service dog!

We also introduced down to the the stay command. Ebony is great at the sit stay but the down stay was giving her troubles. Definitely something for us to work on.

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Ebony is absolutely delighted that she has discovered puppy treasure chests in the house. Of course to us mere humans, these puppy treasure chests are just wastebaskets whose contents we would prefer to stay buried! 

Thank goodness she is well versed in the “leave it” and “drop it” commands.  This little Goldendoodle puppy is getting lots of additional practice in obeying these commands.  The funny thing is, I can tell her to leave a yummy lamb treat in the backyard and it will still be there lying on the grass an hour later.  Her head is back in that wastebasket 10 minutes later nosing for a clump of Fergus hair or a piece of paper.  This week I have heard about two dog trainers who admitted defeat over training their dogs to stay out of the garbage. They have  decided to keep their garbage up high or in another room.  Maybe I am being naive, but I refuse to do that. I won’t say that Fergus, my golden retriever, never gets into the garbage but it is maybe twice a year and always when something like a paper towel used to drain bacon grease is at the top of the garbage can. I expect at least that level from Ebony, the Goldendoodle, since she will be a service dog.

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I purchased a multi-function lead today. It can a double dog leash, short leash, long leash or cross over my shoulder. The shoulder functionality is why I purchased it. I was having really a hard time trying to navigate the cane and a puppy on the leash.  With the shoulder function, the leash is a little shorter than average which helps keep her at my left side. She is much less likely to dig her heels in and try to stay put when it is time to “let’s go!”  That has been our biggest walking struggle to date and this shoulder leash is really making a difference. 

To help train her to stick close to me, we tried keeping the leash on in the house for a bit. It worked really well. If I was sitting, she laid at my feet. If I was ambulating in my house my little Goldendoodle stayed at my side.  I was also able to introduce the concept of “working”. She is not allowed to play when on this shoulder leash.  The only drawback so far has been that it is relatively heavy for her. It doesn’t work  to have it attached to her while we are training on the come command.

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Well, we are halfway through puppy training and I am feeling pretty good about our progress. Although she still sometimes struggles with loose leash, she consistently follows the other commands that she has learned. Last night she got a hold of a washcloth that had dropped on the floor. She dropped it immediately on command. Later when she threw up pieces of semi-digested washcloth, she immediately obeyed the command to leave it. I figured that those were unfortunate but realistic tests of her ability to understand and follow the commands.

In class today, she was the star of the stay command.  While other dog owners struggled to get their dogs to stay even 10 seconds, Ebony was quite content to just sit and stay.  To train the puppies to stay, we instructed them to sit and they held our hands out and gave the command to stay. They received a treat right after the command and 15 seconds were given a release command.  Although we weren’t supposed to walk away from them at this stage, Ebony seemed bored. She had no difficulty staying while I walked away to the end of the leash length. Everytime, she stayed until I released her. Again, I was praised on my selection of Ebony as a service dog. She was totally focused on me and awaiting my command.

The come command was another story.  Jennifer the trainer, would hold the puppies while the owners got them excited about a treat in their hand. Then the owner was supposed to go to the end of the training arena and call their dog enthusiastically. The puppy was to get abundant and exhuberant praise when they followed the command.  Jennifer encouraged us to use a word or phrase other than come to prevent confusion at dog parks etc.  Every other dog bounded to their owner when Jennifer released their leash.  Ebony would continue sitting and look at me quizzically.  When she would decide to come check me and the treat out, she walked slowly and seemed to be wondering what all the fuss was about.  We moved out to the store aisles. Every other puppy would run pell mell to their owners the entire length of the store aisle but not my Goldendoodle puppy.  She would come when called, albeit slowly, if I less than 10 feet away. If I was farther away, she would stay sitting at Jennifer’s feet.  She wouldn’t take her eyes off of me but she wouldn’t come to me either.  Frustrating and confusing. We have work to do!

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