Category: Life Skills

Day 45 – May 21, 2023: fresa Condesa, puppy’s first time IN a dog park, teaching relaxation and playground time

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It’s Sunday, and it’s the day of the monthly Sungay Brunch (a traveling queer and somewhat fresa daytime brunch party thing I occasionally go). It’s always at a dog friendly location which makes it perfect to socialize your puppy!

Today was Chai’s first time. We went to Parque España first to get some of our need to move out!

Parque España and fresa Zuzu’s.

There’s lots to see at Parque España!

We also watched kids at the playground (normalizing kids running and screaming is a big deal for herding dogs!)

Playground puppy! “Kids are normal and boring and there’s no need to develop herdy feelings towards them.”

Dog park puppy!

I then spontaneously let Chai into a dog park for the first time in her life. It wasn’t too busy and she wanted to greet one of the dogs inside – so why not. She’s not a baby puppy anymore (I wouldn’t take a dog under 5 months to the dog park because they can’t get away or defend themselves at all.) A slightly older, bolder puppy? If she wants to go into the dog park – into the dog park we go!

In the video below, you’ll see how Chai’s tail position changes after the first 2ish minutes in the park: it starts out low but then goes up. A working Border Collie’s natural tail position is low when relaxed. However, when confident and exploring new territories – and overall when confident and being a puppy! – the tail tends to go down and up with the puppy’s confidence level.

I use the opportunity to charge Chai’s formal recall cue – “Schnee!” – in a distracting environment and protect her from the Great-Dane-mix-looking dog when he comes too close for her to be comfortable. My overall advice for a fairly confident puppy: allow them to explore freely. If they stick to you or hide behind you, they are asking for help – give them what they are asking for in order to turn yourself into a traveling safe haven for your dog. This is HUGE and will help you as they get older (and faster and more independent): you are building the tendency to run TOWARDS rather away from you in the face of perceived danger.

Sidenote: if your puppy is a bully, don’t take them to the dog park. It’s not fair to everyone else there. Instead, find opportunities for your puppy to socialize with adult dogs who can set appropriate boundaries.

The art of doing nothing

After our stint at the park, we made our way to Zuzu’s Rooftop – the location of today’s Sungay Brunch. Chai did an amazing job mastering the initially scary stairs! And then just hanging out … my little superstar! Practicing the art of doing nothing since 2023!

One of THE most important skills for a busy dog like many Border Collies and other workaholics is the art of doing nothing. There are several ways of getting there and you can mix and match. One example is what I showed here and also here with Puzzle: mat work CU style. Another one is what I show in my older mat and crate protocol: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4. And yet another one is just taking your puppy places when they still need a relatively large amount of sleep and setting them up for success by letting them play or run around a little before providing a mat and a chew in a stimulating environment – this is what I’m doing in the video above, in this post. You can stick to one of the above approaches or use all of them in different situations – whatever works for you and your dog! There are also other protocols out there such as Karen Overall’s Protocol for Relaxation. None of these are “right” or “wrong,” “better” or “worse” – it’s all about finding what works best for you and the dog in front if you!

3 caveats

+ First, don’t only crate your dog in a car and expect them to be able to relax in a crate elsewhere. Cars are VERY specific contexts and in my experience, dogs don’t generalize well from them.

+ Second, don’t exhaust your dog completely before taking them to a stimulating place to relax (like in the video with Chai above). She still has fuel to keep going – our stint at Parque España was not much longer than it took me to film the video and take the pictures! If your puppy falls asleep due to exhaustion, this does not tend to carry over into real relaxation once they are a little older (and don’t get exhausted easily). Trust me – I’ve made that mistake with Phoebe!

+ Third, if your dog is fearful, don’t start with crazy environments like the one in my video above. Pick a quiet corner of an indoors space or a quiet park – whatever your dog is more comfortable with – and slowly increase criteria from there once your dog is able to relax!

May 18-20, 2023: puppy adventures in husbandry, UNAM, playgrounds and eating at restaurants!

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Day 42 – May 18, 2023

Not a lot happened today … BUT I got some husbandry done: clipping (“Claws!”) Chai’s nails on the right back paw. No problem for my superstar!

Day 42 – May 19, 2023

Husbandry

+ “Claws!” on the left back paw.
+ “Brush!” (with a break between the two husbandry procedures)

UNAM adventures

Game, Chai and I went to UNAM, saw and met strangers, practiced recalls, got paid for check-ins and hung out with fellow Border Collies!

Because it rained, the space around the big UNAM flag had turned into a pool and we played in the water and going up and down the stairs until a security person kicked us out.

Fun with fellow Border Collies at Las Islas!

Inside spaces

I took Chai by herself (solo adventures are SO important in my book!) up and down the scary elevator (still carrying her in and out). Then I put her into the puppy and we walked through the Walmart corridor and to the bank.

Day 43 – May 20, 2023

Parque Hundido

Chai and I went to Parque Hundido – which was quite busy since it was Saturday! She played with a Chihuahua (making me very happy; I want her to interact with dogs of all sizes!) and we hung out at the playground so she could observe kids running, playing and climbing.

Parque Hundido, located in Colonia Extremadura Insurgentes.

The bestest girl waiting for my order of pambazos at a Parque Hundido food stand.

Playing briefly with a Chihuahua, a whistle recall at the right moment and a sweeping view of the playground:

More playground time: watch and learn! (I had her on a leash and walked her around the playground and then we just watched from a distance. I only unleashed her to play with the Chi.)

Playground time! Getting used to kids running, screaming, laughing, playing, riding bikes …

Pizza outing

Chai and I then went to have pizza for lunch with a group of people I know. She did great inside the pizza place, mostly resting near my chair and chewing on a rawhide! I’m not much of a restaurant person – but if it involves socializing my puppy, count me in!

Pizza, rawhide and the art of doing nothing.

Further errands

I also took her to a bakery and a pharmacy and then had her wait in the car crate while I looked at an apartment. (And important exercise: I don’t want her to ONLY be in the car crate when I’m in the car myself!)

She did great on all her adventures today! Go Chai!

Chaiary: 6 days with Scarlett

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I dropped Chai off with my dogsitter-turned-friend for 6 days: April 30-May 6.1

Scarlett has become one of Game’s favorite people. If anyone needs a dog sitter in Mexico City – reach out to me and I’ll pass on the information!

Scarlett sent me videos and pictures of Chai throughout the week. She also started training her to go on a potty pad in the corridor of her apartment: she was looking after a German Shepherd puppy as well. That dog’s owners had asked Scarlett to potty-pad train their puppy, so Chai just got the same approach. I am proud to report that according to Scarlett, Chai simply picked up that skill (“Oh, is this where you want us pups to go? Sure; will do!”).

Scarlett’s teaching approach was praise and feeding Chai (a single time!) when she went on the pad and gently scolding her (a single time!) when she went somewhere else in the apartment. From then on, according to Scarlett, Chai knew where to go! Smart girl!

Some pictures I got over the course of the week:

I can’t believe how tiny Chai used to be! (It’s July 24 as I’m intending to publish this post and Chai is a lot bigger today than she was in this picture!)

… and the videos! Scarlett looked after several other dogs and Chai got to play with them all. Below are 6 short clips I edited together:

Apart from conviviendo with all these dogs, Chai made friends with Scarlett’s housemate (her primo) and another primo of hers who was visiting the days Chai stayed with Scarlett. She also taught Chai a rock-back sit to ask for food and took her out 3 times every day – sometimes by herself, sometimes together with another dog.

Chai slept by herself in the corridor without complaining and went on pee pads for the first time. Lots of great new life experiences in a new neighborhood (Polanco) for a little Border Collie!

Chai is getting to know different parts of Mexico City – and her third apartment since being with me!

Avoid routines?

Some dogs – among them Border Collies – thrive on routine. They are the high-strung, highly sensitive individuals of the dog world: intense and sensitive, intelligent and maybe just a little neurotic (in the best colloquial sense of the word). Of course not every Border Collie is that way, but I venture (based on my own breed stereotypes as well as personal and anecdotal observations) that compared to other breeds, many individual Border Collies score high on one or more of the above traits. Both Hadley and Mick did – in very different yet similarly intense ways. So did client’s and colleagues’ Border Collies. Then again, my clients are often my clients because their dogs are difficult, and my colleagues are crazy dog people like me. My sample may not be representative of the Border Collie population as a whole. But I digress!

I remember reading – it must have been years ago and I may be misremembering the source, but I believe it was on Sara Carson‘s FB page – that they purposefully avoided creating a routine for their dogs, starting in puppyhood, in order to guard against routine dependency. I don’t think this has been studied in dogs, but it’s an interesting thought.

I suspect – just watching different dogs and humans grow up, hearing friends reminisce about (or shudder thinking back at) their own childhood and parents talking about their kids – that there is only so much influence we have on our animal’s (or our own or our kid’s) dependence on structure and routine versus go-with-the-flow-ness. Just like raising your kid to be an extroverted person doesn’t seem to make them so if that’s not who they already are. I suspect – and again, I have zero citations for this so it’s really an opinion – that routine-dependency is a relatively stable personality trait for most (not all – nothing is true for everyone) animals and robust to change.

Take, for example, dogs who perform in front of large audiences (like The Supercollies) and travel a lot. Yes, Sara may not give them a routine when they grow up (for example they don’t get breakfast or dinner at a certain time every day). But of course Sara also selects for dogs who are already likely to succeed living their kind of lifestyle by choosing as wisely as they can. Being an excellent trainer with lots of connections in the dog world, Sara knows how to choose wisely and has access to the kind of dogs they want – dogs the average person may not have access to or know to select.

So are we seeing the result of genetics OR of having grown up with a carefully instrumented lack of routine when we see a resilient Border Collie who does well with change? I don’t think we can tease the two apart (without doing experiments over several generations of dogs).

My dogs have traditionally not had strict routines, and ever since reading Sara’s post years ago, I think that it can’t hurt to keep things that way – even though I’m suspicious of the idea that we humans could possibly have this much influence on a dog’s personality. It’s a scary thought that we can mold another being to that extent (I mean not teach them skills or develop a relationship, but sculpt their personality). Which is a good reminder: I should probably be equally suspicious of my home-alone and dogsitting theories as I am of Sara’s lack-of-routine theory!

Be that as it may: Chai is growing up without a strict routine. For example, there are no fixed meal times because most days, I use all her food in training. There are no fixed training times either: I train when I have time and that’s different every day.

So far, Chai seems to do well with that just like my other puppies have. (I do think that’s just who she is though, and the same goes for Game. Both these dogs are VERY easy-going examples of their respective breeds. Not of the dog population as a whole – but of their respective breeds for sure. Game, like Sara’s dogs, was carefully selected to do well with my lifestyle. She’s not from a random breeder around the corner – I flew to Amsterdam to pick up a puppy from a particular breeder and a particular litter after doing my research. Chai on the other hand? Pure luck!)

Grit was raised the same way as my other puppies but never turned into an easy-going dog. That’s just not who she was (neither were her parents), and my training and socialization didn’t change her personality. (They did, I believe, make her the most reliable and socially neutral she had it in her to be. But there is a genetic and in-utero/early-life-experience ceiling that we cannot break, try as hard as we may. That, too, is my opinion based on personal experiences with my dogs and client dogs.)

And just think about yourself: were you born the way you are? The answer is probably yes and no. You both already were and you have become: every day, we get incrementally closer to who we are going to be and at the same time, the person inside of us is still the one who was born however many years ago and will always be. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.

(1) If I had publishing this post right after getting Chai back from Scarlett, it would have been a personal story about what Game and I were up to in the meantime. But time has passed and things have changed. So today’s post is about Chai’s adventures with Scarlett, and the upcoming May posts will be about Chai, Game and dog geekery. I’ll leave out my most personal stories, pictures and videos. In case someone in these stories reads my posts: I’m NOT leaving out the personal parts because they were not important and meaningful – quite the opposite. They were SO important and meaningful that I don’t want to share them with strangers on the Internet. I’m leaving out the personal parts because I hurt. They are still very much with me and close to my heart. That said, they don’t take away from Chai’s May adventures – so those are what I’ll be talking about on this blog!

Chaiary, day 22 – April 28, 2023

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Chai had another good adventure today: we took the car to Mercado de Muebles Vasquo de Quiroga. There was no throwing up on the way there OR back!

Mercado Vasco de Quiroga is a big indoors/outdoors market composed entirely of tiny furniture stores.

Bit by bit, Chai is getting to know all the parts of Mexico City! Unlike the commercial stores in Coyoacán, pretty much every single one of the furniture stores invited me to come in WITH my dog. It was great! Chai got to explore narrow indoors spaces and we had the opportunity to use our greeting protocol (approach flat open hand voluntarily; get fed if choosing to approach) with two storekeepers.

Exploring inside and outside the mercado de muebles.

Chai also got to meet a free-roaming Pittie in the outdoors part of the market. After a bit of polite sniffing and walking together (see video), I dropped the long line and the two dogs enjoyed running and playing.

Sidenote: socializing with other dogs doesn’t necessarily mean playing. Just being at liberty (not training to heel or ignore the other dog) around each other and doing things together (sniffing, walking) counts just as much and some dogs – especially once they are not puppies anymore! – prefer this kind of relaxed social time over playing.

After getting back from the furniture market, I treated myself to some yummy street food – and Chai got to practice hanging out without begging.

Street food pro!

I also spent some time working on my platform game with both dogs … it’s going to be a lot of fun once we’re done videoing all its parts and are ready to share it!

Chaiary, day 21 – April 27, 2023

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Have a snippet of good-morning play with patient Game on the floor! Now that Game knows Chai well, she lets her crawl all over her while rolling on her back.

Sidenote: is my dog “socializing” (dog trainer speak for “learning to get along with other members of a certain species”) when playing with other household dogs/humans?

No! Family, friends and strangers are 3 distinct categories:

+ (Almost) every dog – even the most fearful one – will learn to trust human and canine household members.

+ Many, but not all dogs will make friends (human and/or canine) if given the opportunity.

+ Not every dog will get along with strangers (human and/or canine).

Having a multi-dog household or lots of human housemates doesn’t mean you get to skip socialization outings. That is, assuming that you want to have the most socially confident and at-ease-in-the-human-world dog your puppy is capable of becoming! Having other canine and human household members doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t replace experiences with strangers.

That said, genetics are a HUGE factor in who a dog is capable of becoming. So is their in-utero environment and the first 8 to 12 weeks of their lives which most puppies won’t be spending at their future home but at the place they were born.

Doing everything right once you’ve got the puppy doesn’t guarantee you a socially easy dog because the sensitive socialization period is already closing. It just nudges the dog into the direction of social at-ease-ness. How far in that direction an individual dog can go is still largely out of your control. If you hope for that social dream dog, you’ll still want to stack the deck in your favor to nudge as much as you can: head out there and socialize your pup in the way that is right for the two of you!

… end of sidenote!

In the morning, we practiced walking next to heavy traffic together with Game. Apparently, Chai knows how to make this look as if she had been doing it all her life! I’m happy and impressed with her!

They have certainly become friends! Sleepy after their morning outing.

We visited a corner convenience store in the puppy backpack Scarlett lent us. It’s starting to come in really handy for all the indoors training I want to do in places that don’t allow dogs (but won’t mind them as long as their paws don’t touch the floor)!

Chai in her (that is to say Scarlett’s and Nazli’s!) backpack.

Chai and Game also had another Las Islas UNAM adventure to be around people and dogs, run and have fun! There were SO many students today – and walking between them was no problem at all! Chai was neither magentized nor the least bit concerned. She was mostly interested in finding food scraps between the groups of people. Surprise dogs coming up from behind, like the Schnauzer, didn’t faze her either.

During the week, the campus is teeming with students! There are less dogs than on the weekend, but Chai had a good time meeting a few anyways!

Chaiary, day 19 – April 25, 2023

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The new home is feeling homey already!

Husbandry

  • “Brush”: after my “Brush” announcement, Chai got brushed. Her puppy fur is starting to come out!

Exploring the area

Here’s a brief clip from our morning walk in the new – loud! – neighborhood:

We also mastered weird metal stairs after first having mixed feelings about them! Go Chai!

Chai’s first two Uber rides

Chai and I took an Uber to Scarlett’s – my dogsitter-turned-friend’s – house. We were going to meet Nazli (one of Scarlett’s regulars) and Chai was going to get used to her new friend Scarlett who I was planning to board her with for a few days. I don’t like dropping dogs off at a new place or with a new person for the first time when I am going to leave them there – it is important to me that they get to know the space and their caretaker first so it feels a bit like going back to a familiar place when I do drop them off. And just as important: I want any potential dog sitter to get to know my dog before committing! Chai did great during the Uber rides even though they took quite a bit!

Meeting Scarlett and Nazli

Meeting Scarlett and Nazli went well. Apart from peeing on Scarlett’s living room floor, Chai had fun with all the toys she found scattered around the apartment and was curious about engaging with Nazli (who wasn’t quite sure yet what to make of Chai, but has made SO much progress since the last time I saw her! Scarlett, you’ve been doing a fantastic job with your part-time dog!)

In the thumbnail below, Chai is older than in the video that goes with it – that’s because it has taken me months to edit and upload old stuff so there’s a bit of a temporal discrepancy.

Chai found a fun toy at Scarlett’s house and made fast friends with Scarlett and Nazli (right).

Staying home alone

From the first or second day I move to or visit a new place, I make sure every dog living with me gets to stay home alone – without me and without any other dogs or people – for at least a few minutes. (That is given the dog doesn’t have separation anxiety.) By means of establishing that being alone in a new place is a perfectly normal thing and everyone always comes back, I guard against the development of separation anxiety.

Does this work with every dog? Of course not. Nothing works for every dog. Some dogs are genetically predisposed to develop separation anxiety (for example the Weimaraner breed and the offspring of parents of any breed or mix who suffer from separation anxiety).

However, if your dog is not or only mildly predisposed, the few-minutes-right-away approach is a great way of guarding against it!

Even dogs without a predisposition can easily develop separation anxiety if after months and months of never spending a minute alone, they are suddenly left behind for a long period of time. Rumor has it (I have not seen any actual numbers or studies on this) that “pandemic puppies” suffer from separation anxiety more than pre-pandemic dogs because suddenly, all the owners were working from home. I don’t know if that’s true, but I sure know that it is REALLY hard to live with a dog who can’t stay home alone – and as someone who loves to travel, I want to set my dogs up for success if I can. (I may still fail – not with Chai, she is doing great – but with a future dog. Genetics is a bitch, and while I’m furthering Chai’s relaxation when home alone, I also got lucky: I don’t know her parents, but she does not seem to be predisposed to separation anxiety.) It is also a work in progress that NEVER stops. Game gets a few minutes by herself in every new place we move or visit. Every single time, right away – and that’s even though she’s almost 6 years old. It’s a behavior you need to actively maintain (at least if you have my kind of lifestyle and my kind of breed-related (very close) relationship to your dogs).

How do you get the stay-home-alone training in? Easy enough if you live by yourself! Just take your other dog(s) for a walk around the block and leave one at a time behind. It doesn’t have to be long once your dog understands the principle: if you leave them in a particular space, you’ll always come back for them.

Chaiary, day 16: kids, a new park for Chai and positions!

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To continue in the spirit of yesterday’s kid encounter, I decided to go hang out at a playground with Chai today: maybe we’d find a few more kids to watch yell, run and play, and one or two to have positive interactions with!

We walked to the playground at Jardín Santiago Xicoténcatl in Álamos for this: a change of scenery from Parque Las Américas.

Mexico City has LOTS of great parks.
The dogs and I have yet to find one we don’t like!

We hung out at the quietish playground for a bit and mastered a scary playground staircase. Chai voluntarily approached and got fed by two kids at the playground, and by 6 adults around the park. We then also watched people playing soccer and field hockey, dribbling basketballs and working out (boxing; outdoors gym). So much to see! I’m really happy with how well Chai did today.

We ended the day with luring positions (sit, down, stand) with Chai’s dinner and a round of brushing. More power to the puppy!

Chaiary, day 15: more old and new friends, mats at cafés and a little husbandry

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Today, we went back to Emi’s café to hang out for a while. Chai got to spend time with Emi, who has already become an friend, and his wife Rosie who I shared I co-working day with today. Rosie will hopefully also be one of Chai’s permanent friends.

I see socialization (of puppies to people) as a two-tierd approach:

  1. I want the dog to have neutral/positive feelings towards strangers. If a puppy starts out hyper-social, I will work on lowering those feelings to neutrality. If a puppy starts out a little hesitant or shy – like Chai did – I’ll make sure to create as many positive interactions as possible. The protocol for this – for Chai; it might look entirely different for a different dog! – is letting her approach a flat hand voluntarily (no food, no food smells). If she does – give the stranger food to feed from the flat hand; then move on – ideally without them touching her.

    This works with Chai because if a stranger doesn’t follow my instructions it won’t be a huge deal. If I had a puppy who panicked if things didn’t go perfectly or a dog who didn’t recover for the rest of the day when an encounter went sideways, I would NOT use random strangers and there might be no food at all.
  2. I want the dog to have a circle of friends that does not only include me. The reason I consider this important is that I want to be able to leave my dog with other people when I travel, or to have a friend come in and walk or feed the dog if I’m gone for the day. And I want the dog to feel good about this rather than deprived of me.

    This is something best built in puppyhood. If you give your dog a circle of friends in puppyhood, they tend to – in my experience anyways – be able to open up to new people as adults as well. Again, there are huge individual differences at play here as well. With some dogs, you get the circle-of-friends behavior for free. With others, you’ll have to work really hard. With others yet, you will never reach this goal despite your best efforts. As always: train the dog you have today, not the one you wish you had.

    Border Collies are sensitive and occasionally suspicious dogs, so I definitely want to invest a lot of socialization time in the ability to make friends – human and canine. So far, on Chai’s list of regular friends (who are not me), I plan to have 8 people – friends who are either dog trainers or dog lovers and who Chai and I have regular access to. I want to build out these relationships to the degree that I could leave Chai with any of them and she’d be happy.

    This is particularly important to me with Chai because I still plan on placing her – so I don’t want her to depend on me, the person Chrissi, but remain open to letting other folks into her inner circle.

Going to Emi’s café means working on both of the above: Emi and Rosie will hopefully be permanent friends of hers (tier 2), and hanging out at the sidewalk café for a few hours comes with lots of opportunities for (tier 1)!

In addition, we always practice mat work out here: once Chai is tired of the world, I’ll get out her mat, and she’ll naturally gravitate towards it and doze off: that’s how you set the stage for success:

If you want to work on a calm behavior (e.g. relaxing on a mat), wait until your dog’s curiosity and need to move are saturated. If you want to work on a high-energy behavior (such as toy play, recalls etc.), work with a dog who is well rested and chomping at the bit to get moving!

A circle of friends. Left: “Emi always has treats for me!” Middle and right: “I like you, Rosie! Let me climb all over you!”

Apart from Rosie and Emi (tier 2 – permanent friends!), we also worked on our approach-voluntarily-and-if-you-do-so-get-fed protocol with 7 strangers (tier 1 – neutral/positive feelings about strangers). Well – in fact, it was only 4 total strangers: people #1 and #2 were Mitsu and the person who owns the store next door, both of whom we see every time we go to Emi’s café. Person #3 was Hugo who was working in the street and stopped by for some Chai love – and who may end up in tier #2 rather than #1.

Of the remaining 4, one was a kid. I’m always particularly happy about this because kids tend to be more difficult than adults: they move erratically, they can be noisy and they are at a dog’s eye level. It’s easier for a dog to perceive a kid as a threat than an adult, and I want to make sure this does not happen for Chai. Who knows – maybe her future family will have kids, and their kids will have friends!

Here’s our co-working superstar, ready to rest on her mat after some excitement! Rosie is having té chai in her honor.

And the highlight of our coffee and co-working day, caught on camera: Chai was able to keep chilling on her mat in the presence of a strange dog who stopped for a drink and walked past! Go puppy!!!

Later today, we worked on brushing again – a behavior we currently get for free, but need to keep practicing in order to ensure it stays that way! I announce “Brush!” and then Chai gets brushed all over.

It is fascinating to me how different different dogs experience husbandry behaviors: some will really struggle with them. Others couldn’t care less. Chai tends to the latter side of the scale, and I want to keep her there.

Chaiary, day 13: stay home, grooming and charging Chai’s formal recall

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After another exciting day, we stayed home again to practice chilling rather than being an athlete or adrenaline junkie! Chai got brushed all over and the nails on all four nails clipped (she’s such a good girl about this – I simply announce it and do it and Chai lets me). We also started charging her formal recall cue: “Schnee.”

Play and chill at home with Game.

Charging “Schnee” (this video may be from one of the subsequent days rather than from day 13 – we first started in the house):

Staying home also always means, of course, that we practice quite a lot of home-alone time: after all, Game gets her long walks even when Chai doesn’t.

Chaiary, day 14: Parque las Américas with Game, long line pressure practice, lots of play with Game and meeting and getting fed by 11 strangers!

Day 14 was on the more exciting side again: lots of confident dog encounters!

One thing I love about Mexico City is that it is so easy to encounter dogs of all sizes, shapes, ages and morphologies. From pugs to Great Danes to everything in between – you name it, we’ll meet it!

I beat my own record and roped charmed 11 strangers into allowing Chai to voluntarily approach and then feed her. AND she got to assist me for my first online class videos: giving in to leash pressure and long line handling!

As I mentioned in a previous post – I would not usually feed the behavior of hitting the end of a leash and then reorienting because smart dogs will learn to hit the end on purpose in order to earn a treat. I’m only doing this with Chai when out with Game every once in a while these days because I want this leash pressure response for her formal recall distraction set-ups (which we will get to in a bit). So here is the piece I do not recommend you replicate with your own dog:

On the other hand, what you see below is something I do recommend: these are my two favorite long-line handling ways that avoid rope burn or squished fingers/broken hands with strong dogs who might crash into the end of a long line. There are more methods out there and if you’ve already found what works for you and your dog – no need to change what you’re doing! On the other hand, if your hands keep getting injured by your dog – try the leash handling techniques from the video below! One of them may be the winner for you!

If you need more support to figure out your long line challenges, join us in Out and About! Gold spots are full, but you’ll get to work with a fantastic TA in the FB study group at Bronze!

Chaiary, day 10: taking it slow; just chilling and a little shaping at home

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After yesterday’s excitement, we made sure to have a quiet day at home: I don’t want to turn Chai into a super athlete unless I know she’s going to be a sports dog – which I don’t know yet! So rather than having exciting social experiences or lots of exercise, we stayed home, just chilling out and working that little Border Collie brain with a shaping project!

Chaiary, day 11: Parque las Américas and Emi’s Café

Since socialization is THE most important thing for a young dog, after yesterday’s quiet day, we’re back to it today! Because it was another busy one for me, I started by taking both dogs to Parque las Américas – our favorite stomping grounds – again.

We watched boxers doing their thing and a kid playing basketball:

Boxers and basketball with Game at Parque Las Américas.

Then, I dropped Game off at home and Chai and I headed to our friend’s café around the corner – a 3-for-1 trip for Chai: she got to see a regular dog friend, watch the world go by (it’s a decently busy street) and interact with some of it (dogs, people) and practice resting on a mat. And I, of course, get the best of all: great company and the amazing food Emi makes!

Left: seeing one of 3 dogs at the café (no greeting), middle: interacting with Mizu, one of the café regulars, right: time with our friend Emi.

Below is a video showing some more of Chai’s time at the café! There’s a lot going on on this sidewalk!

Stimulation makes for calm and quiet puppies – the best kind of antecedent arrangement for matwork!

Below: from sitting on her mat at the café to lying down to dozing off!

From sitting on her mat at the café to lying down to dozing off. All voluntary behaviors: setting the stage for success!

Btw – today is sign-up day at FDSA. Chai and I will be playing in Shade Whitesel’s Toy class. For me, there is no better training motivation. I know, I know – taking sportsy classes with your foster dog is dangerous territory. I like to live on the wild side.

I’ll also be teaching this term: Out and About, a class about being out in the world and having adventures with your dog! Whether that means teaching settling on a mat, leash skills or advanced recalls – I’ve got you covered. We’re full at Gold, but if you grab a Bronze spot, you’ll get to work with a TA this term!