Sit! Down! Stand! Good Girl!

Well, Daisy's training has officially begun. Not that I was slacking during her first week in the house or anything. I'm close to having completely reconciled my Big Dog Ownership Skills to my Circus Dog Ownership Skills. From earlier posts, you all know that our Daisy is quite adept at sleeping on the couch as well as in the bed. Her skills of manipulating cranky Scottish men are unparalleled and her cat-like agility is... well, supremely cat-like. In general, she is a darling 4 pound, 9 ounce pet and as my daughter said, "She clicked right into our family."


At twelve weeks she is formally learning SIT, DOWN, STAND in sequence. Puppies are taught these three commands in sequence with bait (ie. stinky food; I use BilJac liver treats) to train not only the brain but the muscles. Retention of formal, spoken commands at 12 weeks is somewhat still limited but developing. Hand signal are introduced by hiding the bait in your command hand. Capitalizing on a pup's ceaseless appetite and keeping the sessions short and fun for the pup are a great foundation for a good cooperative relationship with your dog. This is true for big dogs too. They benefit greatly from happy training sessions in the formative months and often one can avoid behavioral problems if positive, friendly handling is first employed.

Kids can also be introduced to the training, though this is subjective to age and ability (of the kid, not the dog!). My daughter has a tendency to give Daisy the whole treat after one sit rather than have her work all three commands because "She's SO hungry!" Just so you know, ALL puppies are hungry ALL the time; but that is why bait training works so well in the early months. Younger children can be employed as distraction. You can see Angus is doing his best to play with Daisy in the above picture yet she is still holding her commands.

As you pup gets more and more proficient at the commands you can extend the time of the command held. Not to brag but Daisy's up to a five second sit and just did a single five second down and stay.

One final note on this, training makes dogs TIRED. Most of you with pups have experienced the Frenetic Puppy Behavior (I will post a separate article for this alone) that is completely normal for young dogs. If you can map the Frenetic Periods during the day (most pups have two to four a day) you can start the training just before and capitalize on the explosion of energy.

Deconstruction of a Dog Trainer

Today I will be giving Alan his first formal lesson in puppy training. Daisy has been with us for six days so far. Ordinarily I would have instructed the whole family in puppy basics on day one or two. The size thing is really throwing my training sensibilities for a loop.

Please don't misunderstand me and think I'm am untried with the "mini-minis." I have trained oodles of small breeds. In fact, the smartest dog I was ever hired to train was a toy poodle named Midnight that finished an in-kennel, three-week, off-lead training program in 8 days. I've always loved training Pugs for their sheer enthusiasm and I can't count the number of Maltese headcases I've had to redirect. The list goes on. However, I always said the small breed owners are usually less persistent, consistent and demanding of their small breeds as they can simply pick them up to cease annoying or unwanted behavior.

Somehow I have become one of these less-than-demanding, complacent owners. Despite all my education. Despite every lesson I have given to the contrary of my current behavior. Despite the fact that I know I could potentially create a monster-diva that will rule the house with iron (if not supremely delicately sized) paws. In these pre-dawn hours I am ashamed to call myself a trainer and am tempted to turn in my Trainers' certificate to National K-9 and submit myself for retraining.

I find myself quite torn and my inner dialog is running like a really poorly defended Lincoln-Douglas debate.

(Daisy must NOT pull on Ella's hair as it will set her up for other negative chewing habits)
(But she is so cute! Besides Ella doesn't seem to mind and is laughing)
(Daisy will progress to chewing clothes and possibly biting if it is not stopped now. You could face a lifetime of poor habits)
(But she is so cute! Besides she's only 12 weeks old! We have plenty of time!)
(Daisy is not learning to respect NO. You must train her to respect NO and your commands!)
(But she is so cute! And she's just a puppy and having fun. And how much damage could she do? Her mouth is so little! And she's so cute!)
Etc. and so on.

You see how this is going. I would never, NEVER accept or make excuses for a Rottie, Shepard other larger pup pulling on my four year old's hair. If Daisy were a Rottweiler, she would have been treated to at least of half an hour of structured puppy-play and command training. I have to remind myself that I got Buffy, our last Rottie, when she was 5 months old and I cracked down on her immediately. She was required to sit and stay at the door and only enter or exit after her handler did and commanded her to pass through the threshold. She was required to sit and stay for her food. She was doing 5 minute down commands on the leash. Daisy, at three months old, is extremely proficient at sleeping in my lap, burrowing around our feet in bed and standing on the couch cushions cat-style. I think that because small breeds are sooooo small we trainers qualify the dog as younger and less capable. At least when they are our own and the last dog we can reference was over 60 lbs!

So in response to my own Sucker Behavior I will put on my trainer's hat and gloves and get to work today. Alan doesn't so much need the lesson as much as I need to remind myself of what I am capable of and that size really doesn't matter when it comes to the dog. This little four pounder cutie-pie can certainly do what my Rotties all did.

OK, at the very least I can teach her to hop up in my lap for a cuddle!!!

Would you rather...?

I've been getting up at 5 am. Now, I'm sure most of you think that this is due to Daisy being 12 weeks old. Indirectly, yes. You see, my darling daughter simply cannot bear to wake up and not check on her puppy.

So we are up at 5, having some coffee and watching the end of Sesame Street (who knew it was on at 5?). The question is: would you rather have your kid or your dog wake you up?

Now that I have had a cup of coffee I'd say either. Life is good even before dawn.

Mr. "That's Not My Dog" has left the building!

I was informed this morning that Daisy is Daddy's Dog.

Mission accomplished! Thanks to all the Accomplices!

Dogs and cats... living together! Mass hysteria! (Not so much)

Alan thought that a house dog was a bad idea as we have Pepper. Pepper is a cat. A not very nice cat. She barely tolerates my presence in the house and I often refer to her as Al's first wife. She is not cuddly with anyone but Al and often she gets "pissy" with him. She will swat at you as you walk by. She has scratched and hissed at both of my children on numerous occasions. She hates my mother as well (to be fair my mom really doesn't care for cats either and has shooed her unceremoniously off the counter where we keep her food dish so our son Angus doesn't eat too much cat food). If tempestuous would be a kindly, accurate description of her, bipolar would be the unvarnished truth.

When Daisy arrived Alan initially declared her "not [his] dog" but after a few minutes he put the onus on Pepper. "If Peppi doesn't like her, the dog goes." My response was that Pepper hates everyone! Not a fair test at all. Accomplice #1 agreed with me. I told Al that Pepper would probably swat at Daisy a few times and the relationship should evolve at its own pace. He wanted me to put the puppy on the bed with Pepper (Bad Idea #1). This would have been the short path to Daisy's return to South River and I refused. Daisy had already been around cats and proved she was stable and not too interested in messing with the Clawed Ones.

Long story short: Pepper LOVES Daisy. The Cat Who Hates All has made a friend. Let's hope it lasts!

I didn't see this one coming.

Funny. She doesn't look like a Rottweiler

So my new dog is NOT a Rottweiler. So what? You wanna fight about it?

I have made the jump to toy dog owner rather rapidly and I'm pretty sure I know why I haven't had toy breeds before.

I'm a HUGE sucker.

With the big dogs, you don't worry so much that they are cold or hungry (anyone who has had a Rottweiler knows they are hungry all the time! They were Roman dogs of war after all so they really are Italian IMHO). Yesterday, I bought a sweater for Daisy. A SWEATER!!! I was so embarrassed that I kept laughing. I took my son for his morning 5 mile run/walk at the Long Branch promenade and Daisy came along. I think she walked a total of 30 feet the entire time. I had put a soft blanket in the under-basket and she rode most of the time with her head out looking at the ocean. She barked a HUGE blue pitbull and I found myself nearly sprinting away, terrified she would be bitten, hurt, mauled by this massive dog. (OK, who am I? I own a dog BIGGER that that one?)

Oh! and my dog training judgment has been altered as well. Daisy barked the crate her first night. So I went and got her (while barking, Training Mistake #1) and brought her into bed with me and Al (Training Mistake #2).


Since my whole tough, RottenGirl image has been shattered I'm considering getting a fancy dog purse. To match my steel-toed Dr. Martin's!

Christmas came early... without a crisis councilor!

Well, I did it. I got a puppy. This is not -so much- an out-of-this-world kind of thing for me. In fact, for the last 28 years I have only been without any sort of dog for 6 days back in 2000 when I lost Bandit, my smallest Rottweiler, to cancer in Los Angeles. We still have Dopey Lopey but as I have blogged earlier, he is not really a "performance" dog.

I found myself looking casually (and secretly) on petfinder.com. I asked the Chief Buddy Amato of our own NJ animal cops (an unbelievably great guy if you don't know him of haven't seen him in the Asbury Park Press) for a recomendation letter in the event that I found THE DOG FOR US at one of the shelters or through one of the bazillion rescues in the North East. I glanced at the classifieds a number of times. Not really seeing THE DOG FOR US, I told my friend Christine that the right dog would find us and that I was committed to find a Family-Type dog. My Proposed Pet Requirement List began to read like the "Hurry, Nanny" song in Mary Poppins:

Small young dog required. Must like kids, cats, be thoroughly house trained and like-able. Must be calm, cute and smart.

Note: this description is a serious departure from my past dogs, all of which were over 60 lbs.


Now, I never expected to find love on Facebook. About a week ago, my friend Alicia posted a message about a female, toy poodle mix that needed and immediate home. Well, I thought, Ella has been asking about getting a "french poodle" so it wouldn't hurt to ask. After some back and forth about the puppy and the foster mom Lori (who I had gone to school with but had not yet friended on Facebook) I got to see the puppy. All puppies are cute and looking at her was the clincher. I got on the phone with Lori and made arrangement to "meet" the puppy. She told me her name was Daisy. My aunt lost a mini poodle not long ago named Daisy. Hmm, odd coincidence. I called Lori back the next day and told her that I may just want to take the puppy home if I really liked her and asked would that be ok?

Note: at the this point I have NOT consulted anyone in my family.

I enlisted Accomplice Agent #1 to take the ride with me and had Accomplice Agents #s 2,3,4 and 5 on standby for the expected explosions back at home. Under the guise of shopping, we got the Canine Contraband and raced back home to present Al with his new dog. You see, as with Lopey, I don't do Trial Periods with dogs. Once you claim them, you keep them. Lopey was picked when he was born into my hands. Daisy was mine as soon as I saw Alicia's post.

Al's first response? "That's not my dog."

Well, Al fancies himself a bit tougher than he actually is. In the last 48 hours I have been accused of "hogging the dog," attempting to make her mine and mine alone (apparently by training her) and not being a puppy sharer among other things. When I hand her over to him, he just melts and lets her kiss his face and talks to her in the high squeaky voice. Last night, he played poker on the internet and apparently Daisy was helping... by standing in his lap and blocking the screen with her little skinny body.

So no councilor was involved. The police were not called. No locks were changed. But I DID have to agree to a Vegas (or other debouched location) trip with his brother when he comes to visit this winter.

I think I can suck it up. Daisy is really, really cute!