5:30 a.m. Rise and shine for a 3 mile walk through the neighborhood and surrounding woods.  2 1/2 miles on the road at heel and 1/2 mile free on a path through the woods.

6:30 Breakfast – 1 1/2 cups dry food.

7:30 Off to work with me!  Salon Receptionist.

12:00 Brief walk and bathroom break.

3:00 Head home and turned loose in fenced in back yard.  Free play till dinner.  I am usually working in the yard and throw her a ball occasionally between chores.  Training during year one (sit, stay, come & heel).

6:30 p.m. Dinner 1/2 cups dry food.

7:30 Light brusing on the back deck paying attention to the ears, tail and chest.  Retire to the family room till bedtime between 9:30 and 10:00.

This schedule is adhered to every day as much as possible.  She loves it, anticipates it and is happy!  Yes, on weekends we alter it some, which she is flexible enough to accept, but for the most part routine is best!

Happy Holidays from Pantops Pet Salon!  With Christmas right around the corner, it is time to get dolled up for the holidays! Please take advantage of our $5 off coupon for the first part of December, as well as our Saturday hours for the Holidays!  We hope the season is treating you well this year, and look forward to seeing you soon!!

Our Holiday Hours are as follows:

Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we open at 7:30 a.m.

Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday we open at 8:00 a.m.

We are closed when the last appointment leaves, so we are flexible!

We will be closed December 25-28th, and January 1-3, and resume normal business hours on January 4, 2011. 

Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year! Laura

I was heartbroken. I didn’t want to get an older, already trained dog. I wanted a puppy whose need for training would keep my mind off being sick. I couldn’t wait until I was done with chemo-I needed a dog to help me through it and I don’t really know when I’ll be “done.” I’ve had some good experiences with shelter dogs but I’ve also met some who had aggression triggers and health problems that surfaced months after they were adopted.

Then a newsflash appeared on the website where I found the puppies. A three-year-old named Blazer needed a home. He came from a fellow responsible breeder so health and temperament history wouldn’t be an issue. But he was already trained in Obedience and Agility, what does that leave me to do? I also couldn’t get over the idea that he was Someone Else’s dog. I felt like taking him home would be like dogsitting for my neighbor’s Golden. Sure, he’s a nice dog. But no matter how long he visits, he’s never my dog.

But then I met Blazer. I walked into a house packed with seven Beardies in full coat. One touched his nose to my hand while the others swarmed in a mass of hair. I instantly liked this dog but figured he wasn’t the one available. “That one’s Blazer,” Lucy, the breeder, said. I looked closer—he was the only black and white dog. My last dog was a black and white Springer so my mom and I both have a thing for that color! I sat on the floor to pet the circling dogs and Blazer kept coming over to gently lick my cheek. When the pack settled down, Blazer sat on the side of the kitchen with my family as if he was already ours.

My favorite part of seeing him was when Lucy brought him out to demonstrate his agility work. He zoomed out the weave poles and jumped up high—he looked like he was having a blast! He tripped up a few times so I’m looking forward to taking some agility classes to hone his skills. I also realize now that his foundation in obedience allows me to branch out to work on more complicated training exercises including therapy and scent work.

If it had been any of her other dogs, I wouldn’t have been sold. I would have had to visit some more older dogs until I found the right one but Blazer is Special with a capital S and when my friend adopted her older Lab, she said she had a similar experience. Puppies are cute, but remember that you can fall in love with an older dog too so when looking for a new dog, consider the pros and cons and what would be best for your situation.

A whistle marks a correct behavior for dolphins. After they hear the whistle, they get a treat. Typically, Karen uses this technique to convince an animal to repeat a behavior, or to move closer to the desired behavior so the treats are repeated. With Malia the dolphin, she decided to try a game now called Show Me Something New. So she would only whistle/treat a new behavior, thus encouraging Malia to be creative and explore new ways to earn her fish. The first few behaviors Malia came up with were normal things that dolphins do… waving fins, a tailslap, etc Eventually she ran out of those behaviors and began to branch out. She offered aerial flips and twirls, even a beautiful upside-down jump that Karen has never seen another dolphin do.

Then, there was Malia’s art project. The cement at the bottom of her tank was covered with a thin layer of silt. For her new behavior, she swam circles at the bottom of the pool and used the tip of her dorsal fin to make beautiful loops in the silt. Karen tried the Show Me Something New game with another dolphin. Hou did a few flips, spit, and nodded. He “was able to innovate, but Hou was not Malia. Malia, face it, was an artist.”

You can try the Something New game with your pet—not just dogs, if Karen can train a fish then cats can be trained too! A version of the game is called 101 Things to Do With a Box. Set a box on the floor and say ‘Yes!’ (or use a clicker, etc) and treat each time your pet does something new. Don’t cheat and give suggestions, just wait it out and see what happens.

If you’d like to know more about Karen’s style of training (clicker training, in the dog world), the best resource I’ve found is actually a free e-book called Mind to Mind: Training Levels. I do highly recommend “Reaching the Animal mind” for the psychology involved and hilarious anecdotes but “Mind to Mind” has more practical instructions.

Let us know what your pet comes up with!!

The fascinating thing for me about this type of training is that it gets your dog’s brain working. Typically, I have trained my dogs to sit by luring them with a treat. But they’re not really thinking about sitting, they’re thinking about the food and happen to come into a sit position because I lift the food over their head. I’ve also tried pushing my dogs into position—it’s not harmful but it’s not getting them to think either. Using clicker training, I instead “shape” behavior by click+rewarding each step the dog makes toward the desired behavior. Once they’re doing the behavior consistently, you can begin adding a cue/command and gradually decrease the treats. If you’re lucky, you can also “capture” a behavior. For example, a sit. Even wild puppies eventually sit down for a break…there’s your chance to click+reward. Once your dog realizes that his actions make you give him a reward, he might even start “throwing” behaviors at you to see what he can earn!

You can see an example of teaching a Great Dane to go to bed in this video.

For more about clicker training (and an entertaining read about a crazy Border Collie), check out “Shaping Success” by Susan Garrett.

Some other training tips to keep in mind:

-“Charge” your marker at the start of each session by clicking/rewarding for nothing

-Keep training sessions short and fun (timing depends on the dog)

-Avoid corrections (ie if your dog lays down instead of sitting let the lack of click/reward show that it’s not what you wanted)

-Aim for success—keep your reward criteria easy enough that your dog is earning a treat 70% of the time

-Vary rewards (sometimes no reward, sometimes a great reward)

-Heighten the criteria for rewards to be earned

-Use jackpots (lots of treats/really good toy) for breakthroughs

-End on a high note even if it means going back to a much simpler behavior

Erika took a tour around the different sections of the facility and saw several people from the TV show as she visited a variety of animals including pigs and horses! She said she saw volunteers feeding the pigs popcorn and that there were harnesses for taking them out on walks. She choose to volunteer with the dogs–you can spend as little or as much time as you’d like and even do doggie sleepovers. She choose to take Harley, an Australian Cattle Dog and he turned out to be quite the celebrity around Kanab. While she was walking him, a guy eating at a restaurant ran out to say hi and when she took Harley out to dinner with her, even the owner knew him. Harley was very well behaved though Erika mentioned that Best Friends has such a specific training program that they tell you not to do any training with the dogs because it might interfere with their process. She tried to take Harley for a jog too but he was real relaxed and didn’t seem to understand why this crazy lady kept trying to get him to run!

What a great vacation! She got the gorgeous backdrop of the canyons and helped brighten Harley’s day with affection and exercise.

Check out more about Dogtown on the Best Friends website. You can follow blogs and the progess of dogs seen on the TV show or join in some of the workshops they offer including a week-long intensive seminar on starting an animal sanctuary, Behavior and Handling classes, art and even Jin Shin Jyutsu for your dog.

I don’t remember much but with out a doubt, one of my stongest memories was of the care and treatment of dogs at that time and in that place. We didn’t own a dog, but many neighbors did. Most were kept on a chain attached to a dog house. Alaska is the home of the sled dog, and the packs were cared for purely as working dogs. Even today, most Huskys and Malamutes are chained up to the doghouses and the poop and pee freezes for a nice brown and yellow mess. When the snow was 2-3 feet deep, the dogs actually tunneled to their houses- chain and all!

Given our perspective with the companion dog environment (where FiFi sleeps in our bed, sits on the couch and is served chopped chicken over rice), the Alasken dog owner would be reported to the humane society with a recommendation that they be chained to a dog house buried deep in the snow. But these ancestors of the wolf existed naturally in far harsher conditions. At one time, they raised their young in an earthen den, and traveled thousands of miles during the day in a pack, hunting everything from mice to baby elk. Life was rough, and a case of pure survival. Maybe having someone provide food and water and blankets in a doghouse for a sleigh ride isn’t so bad after all!

But I still am a little haunted when I remember those burrows deep in the snow, knowing one of my favorite animals lay below.

The Sprouse twins, ready for Halloween!!