I took her to the Vet today for her 3rd shots. Her behavior was embarrassing. She wouldn't let him look in her ears and he had to trim her nails because I have been having trouble getting her to let me clip them. He needed to get his assistant to come in and hold her for him. He recommended that I get a trainer and said we may need to use medication. I guess he wasn't impressed that I already have a trainer. Oh, and need I mention that she growled at the cute puppy in the waiting room that was just trying to greet her?
Which bring me to a description of my challenges.
I had worked so hard with her litter. I did early neurological stimulation, played all kinds of sounds for desensitization, touched them all over in order to teach them to have their mouths, ears, and nails worked with, had them exposed to all kinds of surfaces to walk on, gave them many different moving objects to walk on to get them used to having stuff move under their feet. You name it. I did it. And here she is, scared to leave the house (except to go into the back yard). She seems ok with people! Yea!! But she has a temper tantrum when I try to take her out the front door and no way will she allow her nails to be trimmed. I can play with her feet all day long but get the nail clippers out and she goes ballistic She struggles and tries to climb out of my arm. She did the same thing when the vet tried to look in her ears. I can mess with her ears all day long. Pull on them and peer into them. But oh dear, let the vet get the otoscope out and no way.
I have to keep reminding myself of all her great qualities. She is smart as a whip and can learn very quickly (if I can get her attention), she does great in the crate and will sleep through the night. She really doesn't seem to be afraid of people. So far, she's shown no signs of separation anxiety. She adores Brinkley and she makes a great lap warmer on a cold winter's morning.
So far, we have worked on her name, which she seems to know but doesn't always choose to respond to it yet. I do see that she will look at me when she is not distracted or anxious so we're getting there. She has a great little sit on hand cue, no verbal yet. She will sit for her meals and is getting better at waiting until I give her an ok to eat, her "come" has degenerated - she used to be better but lately she is ignoring me, she is pretty darn good at "it's yer choice/zen/leave it" - I can drop a cookie on the floor and she'll wait until I give her a treat. I do have to go in the laundry room to train, however because the other dogs are too big a distraction for her now.
One of my problems is that I don't have a solid plan for training. I need to start a schedule and even if I need to alter it, I just need to get something on paper. I'm going to work on re-reading the puppy CU book and use that as a planning guide. I've been using Pat Miller's Power of Positive Dog Training book which I used to train Brinkley initially. I'll probably use both of them. I keep going back to Susan Garrett's Puppy Peeks as well but what happens is that I spend more time reading than actually training. I really need more discipline myself:-)
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