Clicker Training with Abby

I have a confession to make. . .

I never train my dogs.

I never train my dogs for a few reasons - the first of which is because I am lazy. The other reasons contribute to my laziness: 1) the kids are afraid of the "click" sound of the clicker. I though I could fix this by buying the i-click. This clicker is quieter, but after about 10 clicks, the dogs start flinching when I'm about to click. 2) I have too many dogs. It is difficult to keep one dog calm, quiet, and manageable when you are "click and treat" -ing the other one. Mole already has anxiety around food and when someone else is getting food and he isn't. . .its almost unbearable. 3) My dogs already do everything I ask. My approach to my "training" is more management based than obedience based. 4)Mole has a bad back and pocket really doesn't care. 5) I have Abby.

These all contribute to my "un-trained" dogs, but I also find myself getting frustrated owning dogs that don't/can't do anything fun. I trained shelter dogs for years, I taught countless training classes, and I made quite a nice chunk of $$$ doing in-home private training for awhile. I LOVE training. I need a dog that I can do something with, and when I look around the room, all I really see is . . . Abby. . .slim pickings here. . .

After thinking about all the reasons that I can't take Abby to training classes, I decided to pull out the rusty old clicker and start doing some things with her myself. After all, people PAID me $$ to train their dogs, why shouldn't I be able to train my own???

I have to say that Abby surprised the sh*t out of me. Not only is Abby flighty and weird, but I also suck at clicker training. My specialty is hardened, adolescent, shelter dogs! Not the meek and mild scared dogs. Abby took to the clicker quick. I guess starving for 6 weeks will create an extremely food motivated dog! We took things slow but she still picked up the basic "touch". I got her to take a few steps, turn to the side, and touch both hands. I was amazed at how quickly this dog could learn. I have heard stories about their intelligence, but I was sure that it had skipped Abby's generation. After all, this is a dog that regularly falls off her own bed! But I guess I was wrong about this little feral dog of mine. She has come a long way this past year, so maybe she can go farther then I ever imagined. . .

Now if I can just get her to stop peeing on the bed. . .