Doodle Work

I don't remember exactly how it came about, but somehow Dominic gained the nickname Doodle.  It's not his only nickname, but probably the most frequently used.  He is also frequently referred to as The Doodle.  It's cute and it tends to work with his personality, but in no way has any reference to the doodle fad.  Anyhow, Dom has been getting some obviously focused work since he is now an only child.

With Miley's passing, it has either become noticeable or he has developed some mild discomfort for certain objects and situations.  He's never been a super confident dog and I think that no longer having his big sister to lean on has dealt more of a blow to that confidence level.  There are things around the house that Miley wasn't super thrilled about and I thought it was just her.  Either Dom also had a low level of discomfort with them or he now finds the scarier without Miley around.  Regardless of which it is, we've been tackling them.  I've sort of taken it as my first order of business to get myself back on my feet and back into a more regular training schedule.  Baby steps.

We started with the spray bottle.  I'm not sure how this developed, but Dom has HATED the spray bottle.  Which is incredibly inconvenient at dog shows when I'm wanting to cool him down a little and keep him hydrated.  Miley LOVED the spray bottle, so I'm really not sure where his fear of it came from.  I definitely don't use it as a punishment, especially since I want them to have positive associations with it.  So we've been working on desensitizing and reconditioning it as a positive thing.  I'm happy to report that it's working and was really simple.  I started by just treating him for nose touching the bottle itself.  After that I started spritzing a little bit out, which got him interested.  And gradually we worked up to full sprays that he was happily lapping straight from the sprayer.  I knew this wouldn't be all that challenging.  He likes drinking and he really likes drinking from moving water sources, so the spray bottle was producing the reward.  I just had to encourage him to get past his initial fear of approaching the bottle and things moved quickly from there.

After the spray bottle came the baby gates that I have in a couple locations in my house.  He has no problem with x-pens, but is uncomfortable passing by the baby gates in close quarters like the hallway leading to my bedroom.  I never noticed that he was uncomfortable with these, most likely because Miley's level of discomfort was pretty obvious.  I was not great at being consistent working with her, and she never really got past an alright level.  I always thought that Dom was fine.  But as it turns out, he is also a bit uncomfortable.  I can't think of a time where he's knocked the gates over or had a negative experience, but maybe Miley's dislike of them was enough to condition him to dislike them without knowing why.  So we've been working on that.  I do want to grab some video of him working on it and I wish that I had taken video from the get go to visually record his progress, but so it goes.  It's a work in progress and I'm happy with how it's going.

The other thing we're working on is his comfort level in tight spaces.  This gets a little challenging because of his ever exuberant tail.  The more happy or the more uncomfortable and unsure he gets, the more forcefully his tail swings.  This can be problematic in certain tight spaces where he potentially knocks things over.  Places like that, I will just generally avoid working on as he doesn't really need to be in those locations in my house.  Tanner and I did do some cleaning up and rearranging of the office so that there is now more space for Dom to comfortably move around in there.  Dom is slowly building up his comfort level and getting better about entering that room.  We're getting there.

And other areas that we've been working on are building up hind end strength and the dumbbell hold.  I will have a separate post about Dom's dumbbell work, because unsurprisingly, I am needing to do things a little differently with him than any of the other three.  Naturally. ;) But it's been fun trying different routes with him.

This post hasn't been exactly the most stimulating, but I am TRYING to get myself into a schedule of posting.  Which means getting myself back into a mind set of specific content for posts.  I hesitate to say that I think I am starting to find a more manageable balance of everything in my life and will be able to not only carve out the time for regular training, but also allotting time for the blog and making some videos, which I really enjoy.  So here's to finding balance and trying not to berate yourself too much when it's bloody well elusive.