Training Azza

Azza: I want that toy! Mimi: Get your own damn toy! Harry: ...zzzz....

 I've been focusing on recall and loose lead walking with Azza since those are things she will need all of her life. But Azza's training continues to get more complex as I discover things I like and don't like in her behavior.

Her housetraining is nearly complete although I don't let her spend too much time out of my sight. But that is for other reasons, not out of fear that she is going to pee on my expensive carpet. 

On the relatively benign side of things, Azza charges towards people who pass us on the golf course exercise path. It is 10 or 12 feet wide so she does make a clear effort to move towards them. I detect no aggression, only puppy exuberance. But that behavior is utterly incompatible with life in this camp (she jumps on the wrong Saudi and she's gone and perhaps me too). So I've been teaching her that as soon as we see someone coming within about 20 feet of us (from any direction), she is to come back and sit by my side, and hold the sit until released, while getting lots and lots of treats. I specifically try to treat her when she looks at the person then immediately looks back at me. She's getting really good at this and will quickly move from a position in front of me (where I prefer my dogs to walk) into a sitting heel position by my side (facing the same direction as me). Often the only command I have to give now is "Azza, come!" My goal is to eventually get her to continue to move past these walkers and runners but for now, having her sit is just fine.

Since she likes to tug, she needs to learn the rules of tug. They are three: I initiate and end the game. She doesn't grab the toy in my hand unless invited to do so. She drops the toy on command. Having a solid "drop it" has proven extremely useful with the terriers so I started there. I do have to hold her scruff (hold, not shake) but a few seconds of waiting and she drops the toy. I immediately present it back to her with a "get it!" command as reward for dropping it. This training is going very well. She will even tug outside.

I hope to build in a fetch behavior since she likes to tug so much (bring the toy back to me and we'll tug some more) and am playing around with that but only casually, not with any focus at this time. I prefer that she and I just play without too many rules and restrictions.

Her bite inhibition with me is pretty good now. She clearly knows when her teeth grab finger instead of bear. Even Harry sometimes makes a mistake. But Azza will need a bit more training in this area.

She's got a few behaviors that are not so benign. A few nights ago, I realized that I forgot to put her fish oil capsules in her dinner bowl. She is growing so fast that her skin is flaky. So she gets four fish oil capsules a day. Anyway, as I bent down to toss them in her bowl, she freaked out and tried to attack me, growling and snarling and lunging at me. Whoa nellie!! Cujo rears her head at only 14 weeks.

I've never had a dog that was that aggressive about guarding. And I definitely don't like that behavior. I need to be able to extract things from my dogs' mouths, including bones and their food bowls, whenever I want.

As a result, I've been handfeeding Azza at least one of her meals each day (messy but effective) and I randomly touch her back and shoulders while she's eating. Tonight I was able to pick up her food bowl while she was eating and put it back down immediately and she didn't do anything. I will continue to work this for quite a while.

Azza also has some major fear issues: parked cars, trash bags shaken out to be put in the can, me coming down the stairs with an armful of laundry (it's the laundry, not me), machines that make noise, dogs barking in the distance, unexpected non-food objects in familiar places, workers in yellow jumpsuits (Upul pointed that out and I have since confirmed it with my own observations)...the list goes on and on. She nearly had a heart attack when I opened the dishwasher for the first time in her presence.

I'm working on teaching her a wide variety of replacement behaviors, mostly tricks such as nose touch to hand, spins, go through my legs. I work on those when she is not stressed but I have not done enough repetitions to make these things accessible to her when she is freaking out. I noticed that it helps when passing scary things like parked cars to use the happiest, highest pitched voice I can make to tell her to "come!" So I'm learning a lot too. She's much softer than the terriers and is challenging me to soften up my own handling and training.

But the real push in this area is to get her to investigate new objects, not flee from them in fear. So tonight I introduced her to free shaping with the clicker. I figured she was operant so the main hurdle would be her fear of the new objects. I started with a cone. It took much longer than I thought but she did put her nose on the base and on the top. Then I put a small board down in order to get her to put a paw on it. Wow! Was this a surprising training session! She did just about everything she could to NOT touch the board. If I nudged it by accident, she would scoot a few feet away and we'd almost have to start over again. But I did get her to nose touch it in different places.

In contrast, Mimi will nearly come unglued in her attempts to get in, on, through, under, paw on, paws in, mouth on whatever I put in front of her if she knows that I have clicker in hand. 

Azza is going to see random contents from of all sorts of drawers and cabinets and closets over the next few weeks, and she will get rewarded for anything she does with these objects. I am hopeful since it is clear that she is a smart dog and learns quickly.

In my opinion, these behaviors are a product of her living feral for those early weeks. It makes sense for a feral puppy with few defenses to stay away from anything that doesn't look like food. These behaviors were already in place when I got her so I suspect it will take some time and patience to move her to a new space.

But hey, she and Harry and Mimi went on their first morning walk together two mornings ago. It was a bit chaotic but I'd say that progress is being made!