Am I the only one who looks for a more complicated explanation than what's really happening? I tried to explain away Talos' lunging and barking behavior by attributing it to his adolescence.
Yeah, turns out that's just not the case.
Well, it could be a contributing factor, but the real reason he's lunging and barking is, well, because I haven't done enough foundation work with him.
Sad, but true.
I took him to class today and while he did much better than I anticipated, it was very clear that we have a lot of work to do.
The Down Side:
- His sits are very slow. (He's slow to start them after I give the cue, as well as slow to actually execute them. For the dog trainers reading this: his latency and speed are the pits.)
- He doesn't have a very good stay.
- Duration of eye contact is minimal (five seconds or less)
The Up Side:
- His name recognition and "Look" are terrific.
- His loose leash walking is quite nice.
- Downs are terrific.
- His "settle" (go to his mat and lay down) are spot on.
- When given the opportunity to play with another dog, he's got good social skills and takes doggie corrections very nicely. (The Border collie did not appreciate Talos smacking him in the face with his paw and he told Talos by snarling and snapping his teeth. Talos understood precisely what the Border collie said and the paw was not thrown much after that!)
So, while there are more ups than downs, we have a lot of work to do. The morals of this story:
- Recognize small bits of inappropriate behavior and do something about it before it becomes big chunks of inappropriate behavior.
- You can never spend too much time on the basics!
Amen, amen and amen!!! :-))
Was just thinking about that same thing my PIT Victoria. Gotta work on that Recall, and fun things like laying down and staying down while in public!!!