Training a Bear

Sometimes you get a dog that is a perfect match for his or her name. And as you can see, Bear matches his name.

Bear was in last weekend for his first Manner in Minutes training, and he was a delight. His owner brought him in the week before for an evaluation. I could tell right away he would be fun to train.

I had to talk to Pat Muller, the wonderful trainer who came up with the Manners in Minutes training system a couple of days earlier. I mentioned Bear and told her he was a Golden Retriever/ Chow mix. I had not seen that combination before but told her I thought it would be a great one to work with. Pat, who has worked that mix before, confirmed that those two breeds make a delightful dog.

Now the Chow Chow is a “serious” breed. They are a nice dog if well socialized and under control, but dangerous if they are not. Golden’s on the other hand are all about fun and attention.

So Bear was very serious about fun and attention.

He left here with all the basics in place. He will be back next weekend for follow up. I am looking forward to the session

Doug

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Pushing a Pumpkin

We picked up Chicklet, our female Lakeland, in September of 2004. In October my wife put out the Halloween decorations. She immediately seized on the plastic pumpkin we had by the door.

Periodically she digs it out of her toy basket. She will grab it and shake it, she will stick her head in it, and often she will push it around the floor with her fiercest growl. She will put other toys in it and then get them out and shake them. She will play with it for quite some time, and then unexpectedly leave it and go on to something else.

For the longest time I thought it was just one of those goofy things dogs pick up. Then I thought about what Lakeland terriers were bred to do. Unlike the other terrier breeds that are used to go after foxes, the Lakeland will not only bolt the fox out where the hounds can kill it, it will also go into the den and kill the fox.

Now in the Lake County of England, where the breed originated, fox are not hunted for sport. Most of the farmers have sheep and the fox endangers the sheep herd. So for economic reasons the Lakeland was developed to be able to go in the rocky terrain to make a kill so that the farmer did not lose sheep. They have been known to spend up to a week tunneling and digging to get to the fox.

When I read that I knew why Chicklet pushes the pumpkin. In almost every breed, play is also practice for the work they were originally bred to do. Chicklet is practicing pushing rocks aside to get to the fox.

And it isn’t just Chicklet. The picture is a puppy at nine weeks. Izzy saw the pumpkin and started working with it immediately. Izzy is a proud graduate on Pikes Peak Manners In Minutes and a wonderful dog. Hopefully I told her owners to get her a pumpkin, otherwise she may appropriate theirs this October.

Doug

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