Raising Ragnar – 7th Instalment
5th July 2018
Training Diary Day 305-332
6th August 2018
Day 273-282
Actively training Erik has been a bit of a challenge since the puppy’s arrival. Erik has settled to being a puppy sitter very well and seems to be enjoying the interactions. We managed to do some training with the pup whilst Erik was in his crate and that worked well. He was quiet and calm in his crate whilst I worked Ragnar. The next day I used the raised bed as his locator point and he did a great job of watching me train the puppy whilst not leaving his bed, even though Ragnar did a few visits which made things a bit difficult for Erik. I am also using the bed to get Erik to stay inside whilst I take the pup out to toilet when he is a bit distracted by Erik and can’t concentrate.
The boundary part of the crate games is being very useful whilst I am in the early stages with the puppy. I also think that the self-management part is also helping with Erik playing nicely with the puppy. He used to get very over aroused and shouty when playing with Branston, my previous spaniel, but with Ragnar, I can see him working to stay calm.
We did, however, manage to get another training session in with my friend and her dogs. Erik managed to lie down and was less noisy this session. The other dogs were working very near to him and several times came over to him to show him their toys. He coped really well and I think within a few more sessions Erik will be able to have the door open again. Once he can cope with this situation I think he will be able to cope with most other training sessions as he finds these dogs the most exciting as we spend the most time together and he has grown up doing lots of fun things with this group of dogs and their owner.
Day 283-292
We have been pretty much on house arrest since the puppy arrived so I’ve not been able to do much work with Erik other than maintaining his criteria now that the puppy has arrived and the puppy isn’t maintaining criteria!!! Things like not going out of the front door even though the puppy has gone.
Erik continues to be an excellent role model for Ragnar and we managed to get some more training in one day when we went over to my friend farm to train.
We started the session with Erik having some long retrieves, singles, splits and blinds which he did very well. Then I put Erik away in his crate and my friend got her dogs out one at a time. We were training quite close to the crate so that I could go back and reward the good behaviour so that was quite a challenge for Erik. On the whole he was very quiet, every now and again he had a bit of a quiet whinge but not much and not for long. He managed to lie down for a lot of it. I had the crate door shut. He seems to be less hyper and starting to expect to be crated so we will see how things progress. I am happy with how things are going so far. This session he watched me throw dummies for all five of my friends dogs, in total probably about 30-40 mins.
Day 293-300
This week has been a bit chaotic as I was looking after the puppy, teaching and preparing for the weekend workshop that I was running. So Erik didn’t do much focused training although he came out and did some crate training during the morning session of the workshop and after about an hour he managed to lay out flat and relax. He managed to chill out even though the other dogs were working quite close to him.
He was a bit squeaky in the car so I just covered him up and he was fine.
Day 301-304
We did another group crate training session and Erik was very good again. He is continuing to do a good job with the puppy and is managing largely to maintain his criteria despite having a puppy around!
