Blog 1.6

To start off, I will answer some questions. One question that was brought up was how have I followed my action plan so far. So far, I believe I have been following my action plan well. There have been weeks, though, where it was impossible for me to accomplish what I needed to because of me being in quarantine and other students being in quarantine. All in all, Jerzey and I have done all of the skills that were on my action plan and have even perfected some! Another question was how much time I spend a week training him. This all depends on what I am doing. On average, per day, I spend at least 30 minutes training him. The last question I had was why I give Jerzey anxiety treats. I give Jerzey anxiety treats to help calm him down on our walks. This helps him tramendously. Okay now that we've got some questions cleared up I will start on my blog! So last week I was unsuccessful in that Youtube video. Jerzey, as well as my other dogs, got excited when they heard the leash. Then it turned into a wreck. This week I tried it again and it was difficult. I went into a different room where my other dogs were not to avoid the extra disturbance. Jerzey got very excited and thought that we were going for a walk(very smart, but not quite what we were doing). I put a bunch of treats in tupperware container and placed it on the floor where Jerzey could see it. He would listen to me when I called his name, but he did not want to do this exercise. Before, I had already been working on somethng that is very similar to this, except not in an isolated area. This is one thing that Jerzey and I would work on on our walks. I think I will be done with this exercise (the tupperware one) and try a new one that he will like. This next week I will research and attempt any that I find would suit he and I. I've been trying to go different places on our walks to help Jerzey get use to going to different areas and not just one. Along with this, I would also go to the fairgrounds and let him just run. Doing this builds trust between he and I. This allowed him to run and still have to make the decision if he should go to the buildings nearby or if he should stick by me. More often than not, Jerzey would go run and then would come back and walk with me for a little while and then he would go back and run. I would say that he did a very good job and listened to me very well at the fairgrounds. On our walks, we worked on everything that we had previously been working on. He did very well on our walks this week. Although he was stubborn and it took a couple of calls to make him do the commands, he still did them. He does still have a hard time walking by other dogs. He gets so anxious and scared (I think) that he just whines. All in all. I think that this week, even though it was pretty much the same routine as last week, was successful. For next week, I will be researching a new technique to help bring Jerzey's attention to me. I am challenging myself to not walk Jerzey with his training collar next week. I want him to be able to perfect all of these commands without using a training collar since I wont be able to use it once we perfect everything and become certified.