Boogie's blog

Back to Bootcamp

August 11, 2009 at 2:22 am 4 comments

DISCLAIMER: This blog post was written in 2009. We no longer do Obedience Training using “dominance”-based methods. We no longer use collar corrections. These methods made Boogie MORE TENSE, MORE TRIGGERED and more prone to aggressive behaviors. We switched over to reward-based methods in February 2010 and saw improvements. 

It has been a long time since the last blog post… We went to the vet today and the Boogs is suffering from summer allergies. We had the same problem last summer – he chewed and chewed on himself until this tail and thighs were full of bald pink spots. This summer, things look much worse because the raw pink spots are on his face… and his ears are also raw, crusty, scabby and bleeding. I told Dr Reina that I had tried everything including Benadryl. Should I make Boogie wear a cone to prevent further rubbing and scratching?

Dr Reina: “You can put the cone on, but he will still be itching and in agony.”

So, he gave Boogie a shot of cortisone and some ointment for his ears… we will see if there is any improvement this week. I hope his face and ears will heal. If Boogie continues to scratch then I am to give him cortisone pills.  I love a long endless Summer but for Boogie’s sake, I can’t wait for it to end.

So, back onto the training stuff. To recap, Boogie started Obedience Training a few months ago and we got as far as Lesson 1 when our trainer Jill suddenly fractured her hip and was out of action. I said I would prefer to put lessons on hold until Jill is healed… and now, a couple of months later, Jill is back on both her feet and ready to move onto Lesson 2.

Just one problem – Wes and I had slackened off on the training rules and most of what we achieved in Lesson 1 has gone out the window. Oops.

Boogie’s Progress:

HEEL – good with sprenger collar. Otherwise, nope.
SIT – good, most of the time.
STAY – er… sometimes
DOWN – only with treat. No treat, no down.
GO TO YOUR PLACE – er.. nope. We let Boogie off-leash and he has been free-roaming the apartment and jumping freely up and down furniture. We lost this one.
CRATING – He now sleeps in bed but I still crate him when I go out. Jill said it’s ok for him to sleep in our bed as long as he doesn’t hate his crate. (whew!)

Jill insists that we get Lesson 1 down pat (especially the ‘Down’ command) because Lesson 2 builds on stuff that we should have mastered in Lesson 1… so, sigh… it’s back to the beginning we go.

I pulled out my ThankDogTraining Lesson One notes today – OMG there are 8 pages. In an attempt to motivate myself and have all this stuff sink in once and for all, I decided to draw up a summary of the Lesson One rules and notes… Can you tell that I am trying very hard to make this fun for Wes and myself?

I can tell you that we definitely have broken all the golden rules…

Here we go again.

Entry filed under: Skin issues, Training, Vet visit.