Category: Puppies

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, days 23-24: April 29-30, 2023

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Day 23, April 29, 2023

We started the day with another trip to the furniture market where Chai voluntarily approached and got fed by two more strangers.

The furniture market is great for puppy in-store training!

Food hand positions: a common vocabulary

Back home, I worked on the meaning of different food hand positions:

+ I use a particular hand position for luring that means “follow my treat until I release it.”

+ A closed fist means “stay away from the food.”

+ Food in open flat hand means “take the treat.”

Developing a common vocabulary about food hand positions makes a HUGE difference for future training!

… and more exciting things!

+ Both dogs worked on our platform game and Chai worked on positions.

+ Chai also went through the Walmart corridor and into a corner convenience store in the puppy backpack.

+ We practiced the “brush” announcment.

+ … and finally, we practiced passing the two Pitbulls who are tied up to the left and right of the street I have to walk in order to get out of the plaza I live!

Today was a BIG day for a puppy – I just wanted to get a few things in before dropping Chai off for her first overnight stay with Scarlett tomorrow! So today included more action than usual. More on passing dogs and overnight stays in a separate post!

Day 24 – April 30, 2023

Las Islas

Today Chai will go to stay a few days at Scarlett’s. We made sure to get the puppy crazies out by visiting Las Islas before dropping her off.

Left: the calm before the storm. Snuggly morning pups! Right: fun at Las Islas for Game and Chai.

Husbandry

The tired pup got her nails done before being dropped off: “Claws” announcement and clipping nails! The back ones were easier today.

Sliding doors!

On the way to Scarlett, we quickly stopped at Petco to pick up food for the week. It was a different Petco than the last time – but wow, Chai strutted in and out through those sliding doors like a pro! Go puppy!

Being looked after/spending nights with people who are not the dog’s primary caretaker in places that aren’t home: something to practice from puppyhood onwards!

It’s important to me that a foster doesn’t get too attached to me. Ideally, we’d be doing this with all our puppies, not just fosters: having someone we trust look after them for a few days now and then. If you don’t have that option, just dropping them off with a dog friend for a few hours or overnight is also enormously helpful. I am planning on repeating this experience in the future so Chai gets used to staying with other folks every now and then.

To set my puppy up for success, I will visit my friend or dog sitter WITH the puppy before dropping them off. That way, the dog gets to know the space as well as the person. Even if they only spend a little bit of time there, it will help them adapt. When I actually do drop them off, they will be coming back to a familiar place and see a familiar face rather than being abandoned with a stranger in a strange place.

As a rule, I do not leave my dogs with complete strangers (I would in an emergency, but that really is the only reason).

Scarlett’s dog sitting business continues to grow, and because I want to eventually adopt Chai out, I did NOT give Scarlett instructions of how to interact with Chai or how to handle her around other dogs she is looking after. Instead, I asked her to just do things her way. I want Chai to get used to different ways of being handled, and this is a fantastic opportunity for exactly that! After all, I don’t know who will end up being her forever home.

With my own dogs, I do leave precise instructions about how to work with them/walk them/treat them when I leave them with someone (and I only leave them behind if I absolutely have to!)

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 17: lots of dog traffic at our “home park” and multi-dog whistle recalls with Game

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We worked on multi-dog recalls today! I love being able to do this anytime I have a puppy joining an adult-dog household. I’ve had multi-dog householeds for a long time – just having Game for a while was an exception rather than the rule. And as a rule, I always have both a multi-dog recall that means, “Everyone come!” (in my case, the cue is whistling) as well a “formal” recall cue for each individual dog that refers to just them.

Formal, multi-dog and informal recalls

I teach the formal recall cue that will be just for the new puppy in set-ups, following my 6-week protocol. The multi-dog recall is different: here, I jump right in as soon as the puppy is attached to my adult dog and will follow them around. Now I can start using the multi-dog recall my adult dog is reliable and familiar with: I whistle – the adult dog comes – the puppy chases them – I mark and reinforce both dogs. Especially if your puppy is still pretty young, you can use this recall even in difficult and highly distractiong situations from the get go: puppies aren’t independent enough to want to be left behind – so when your adult dog comes running, so will day, no matter what!

Initially, the cue for your puppy is your adult dog running. After a few repetitions (how many it takes varies widely and depends on your individual puppy), a cue transfer occurs: the puppy figures out that your multi-dog recall cue always precedes the other dog running towards you, which reliably predicts treats materializing near you. Once this happens, they will start coming back on the verbal cue alone and don’t even need the adult dog’s help anymore! Voilá – you’ve got a multi-dog recall on a verbal (or whistle) cue!

There’s a third kind of recall I use until the formal recall is well established: my informal pup-pup-pup-pup recall. I use this anytime I am not 99% sure my dog is going to come and if it doesn’t work, I don’t sweat it. I still reinforce anytime it does work, of course – and most of the time, it will. However, having this additional informal recall cue helps protect the formal cue I’m building and will ensure that the success rate of the formal cue stays as close to 100% as possible. Once the formal cue is strong, I tend to ditch the informal one.

Video diary time!

In the video below, you’ll see two of Chai’s first sessions of this exercise. At this point, she is just chasing Game. A few days down the line, she’ll figure out that my whistling, not Game, is the most salient predictor of a treat being available near me.

The video below shows the rest of today’s park adventure: lots of people and dog traffic! AND in the end of the clip, you’ll see another whistle recall. This time, Chai shows up first. There’s a tiny bit of latency and she’s trotting, not running – but we’re getting there! The cue is already picking up meaning!

Chai’s strangers-are-okay protocol

Chai also voluntarily approached and then got fed by 4 strangers during today’s adventure, 3 of whom were kids. The confidence-around-people building continues – despite moments like the ones in the video above, where people just reach for her because she is cute. Go puppy!

In case you are confused: these videos are not from the day I’m publishing them (July 3, 2023) but from Chai’s 17th day with me (April 23, 2023). It just takes time to edit videos and transfer my hand-written notes to my blog, and I haven’t kept up. I want to keep Chai’s diary chronological, so bit by bit, I’m catching up! While Chai is 6.5 months old today, the day I publish this post, she was only 4 months old when these videos were taken and I started writing this post. Time is a strange animal!

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 8: more Narvarte adventures

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Good morning play: increasingly patient Malinois make excellent chew toys!

The next day – Chai’s 8th day with me – was the first time I took both dogs out together. This still isn’t what I’ll usually do – puppies and adult dogs in my house each get their own walks unless I don’t have time to take them separately. Today, I didn’t have time, so they both went out together in the morning. Walking together means the puppy loses out on one of the most important skills I want them to practice: seeing me leave the house with another dog and being fine. No problem for everyone to go out together every once in a while, but until the puppy is about a year old, I want it to be the exception rather than the rule: FOMO is a thing, and the time to avoid creating it is now.


Left: waiting for quesadillas con flor y queso. Middle: hanging out at the park while I eat. Right: adventures are tiring!

We headed to our usual spot: Parque Las Américas. Chai imitated Game – every time Game peed outside, so would Chai. An excellent idol to teach her that the place to do your business is outdoors!

Together with Game, Chai’s confidence was also bigger. She wanted to go everywhere Game went and trusted that what Game did was safe. Due to Game’s presence, we also got some leash pressure work in: if Game (off leash) went further than Chai’s 5 meter leash allowed, she would reach the end. I’d stop and wait for her to reorient, click and treat.

This is not how I teach loose leash walking (this is the fastest way of creating the behavior chain of pull-in-order-to-get-a-treat!), but it’s a great way to teach a puppy to give in to leash pressure rather than show opposition reflex. We’ll need this skill once we’re introducing distractions for Chai’s formal recall cue, “Schnee” (German for “Snow”).

Parque Las Américas in Narvarte

Today, the only treats Chai got out and about were for reorienting after reaching the end of the leash and, on the way back … from a new friend! We met Hugo, a street vendor who told us they loved Border Collies and had one as well as a Beagle at home. In fact, they had been dreaming of getting a second Border Collie … We spent quite a while talking to Hugo in the street, and Hugo fed, lured and scratched Chai under her chin. We exchanged numbers and made plans to meet up sometime with Hugo and their BC to see how the two got along and for Hugo to get to know Chai better.

Chai has decided the funnest way to play with Game is to use her razor sharp puppy teeth: