Memphis

If you've known me for a long time (at least since High school) you'd know that I used to work at a private dog kennel. That was by far my favorite out of all of the random places that I've worked. If I could make enough money doing that again I would quit my current job in a heartbeat. (don't tell my boss that!)

I had a lot of responsibilities at the dog kennel, but my favorite by far was teaching and training the dogs to do new things. Especially the new litters of puppies. I had to teach them how to walk properly on the leads, agility, and how to behave while being groomed. (Little exciting fact: One of the very last dogs I had the joy of working with before my boss moved out to California, "Sky", just recently won "Best in Show" at the 2012 National Dog Show. It's so awesome to see her success! She is a beautiful one of a kind dog and the people that have worked with her for the past few years have helped her grow into one of the very best show dogs I've ever seen! So a huge congrats to everyone that has been involved in that!)

The best thing was that part of my job was to encourage the dogs in their personalities. In other words I got to play with them. Each dog has a different personality and needs to be encouraged in good behavior and corrected in the bad. (hopefully when I have children someday I won't use the same signals to correct them as I've learned to do with dogs. haha)

I bring all of this up because even though I haven't worked at the kennel for about 3 years or so but I am putting the skills learned there to work now. A lot of people (when they find out what my old job was) ask for my advice on dog health and training. Usually it's just "should I take my dog to the vet?" or "my dog won't stop doing this. What should I do?" Well over the last couple years I've gotten a bit rusty. After I dropped out of my Vet Tech courses (Can't be a vet assistant with shaky hands and with me having a tremor that runs in my family, I couldn't continue on with the courses) I had no need to continue learning about animal behavior and health. As with any education, if you aren't putting what you learn into practice, the knowledge on the topic will begin to fade until you start using it again. So recently I started to brush up on animal behavior and the puppy training process because.....


We have a new family member!

Everyone meet Memphis!

Memphis is a mix of Blue Heeler and Red Heeler. That is why he has the kind of markings that he has. This Sunday he'll be 10 weeks old. We started potty training the second we brought him home from northern WI. He now (just about every time) runs to the back patio doors to let us know he has to go potty. Unfortunately if we don't see him at the door right away he pees right on our doormat. Seems like he's still got the toddler mentality of not realizing he has to pee until he can barely hold it any longer lol. But he has made huge steps forward very quickly when it comes to any training that we do. While Sean and I are still trying to get in the groove with our schedules we have started slow with any training. We are starting with only 5-10 minute training sessions. Mostly when he is in the middle of playing. We want him to understand that learning new tricks is very fun. By doing so, we've noticed an eagerness to learn new things! I LOVE the curiosity of a young puppy and the humor in watching him explore new things. I'm playing with the idea of training him myself to be a "helping" dog. It's something that's been on my mind since my time at the kennel and I want to see how difficult it is. I plan on sharing our experience and definitely sharing the fun things that we teach him. So here's the first of hopefully many videos! (If I keep myself in gear with actually documenting all of this, ha!)

I had Sean record this literally 3 minutes after I showed him how to "touch". After this video I started using other objects as well and asked him to touch it. He's got it down! I am so excited with how quickly he learned this trick and it makes me look forward to the more complicated things I want to teach him down the road. 

A little note: Heelers are an independent breed. They are not typical dogs to submit. They are definitely known to be dominant. So keeping that in mind we have to be very careful with how we start training him and especially with how we correct him when it comes to bad behavior. If we are not careful and consistent with showing him who is in charge and correcting him, he will later on become unruly. These dogs are also very smart and are originally bred to be cattle dogs. He WILL try to start herding people or other animals and nip at their feet if we don't teach him otherwise.  Again we have to be very consistent!