Dutch Shepherd Forum

Hi there,

My name is Kelly and I may or may not own a DS. The jury is out on just what Izzie is other than spoiled rotten. I'll be posting some pictures of her on the photo board shortly for opinions. We adopted her from a local rescue early last year.

I'm the mother of two, and am spectacularly bad at figuring out what to about myself.

Hey Kelly in VA,

where are you in VA? I'm outside of Charlottesville.

Welcome! How old is Izzie? She's cute! (saw your other post...)

Greetings, Izzie and your good-looking rescued baby.

Ditto on where on Virginia. I have a few old stomping grounds around Virginia and DC. As for Charlottesville, fond memories of midnight trains from DC to there to "visit" friends at UVA law school...about a million years ago.

Izzie, any idea of age or her past life? What's been your experience with her thus far? Have you had dogs before?

(If you stated her name, I can't remember....)

I'm down in the Hampton Roads area, straddling the NC border.

Izzie was somewhere around a year old, as best the vet could tell, when we brought her home last June. She'd been picked up as a stray, possibly pregnant, chock full of worms including heartworms (yikes!) and a nasty case of mange. Her cute face caught the eye of an animal rescue group who raised the money to treat her motley crew of problems. At that point she had spent about half her life in a shelter. She moved from one rescue up to another that is local here called Animal Rescue of Tidewater where we found her.

We had recently had to say goodbye to our pooch Bean, a lab mix, at age 16. A few months later the house was just to empty so I started looking. Bean had left some mighty big paw prints to fill. It was a fluke that I found Izzie, surfing the web in the wee hours of the morning I looked on petfinder and there she was. I never realized how involved it can get when adopting, the reference checks, vet references, home checks etc. It was absolutely nerve wracking, especially after we had met her. Long story short, she came to live with us. Since her actual age is a mystery we decided her official birthday is now June 13th, the day she came home.

My experience with her thus far, she is one in a million. She had a few accidents when she first got here, but as she figured us out and we got to know her that stopped and the carpet is very thankful. She does have separation anxiety that I'm working on. When she first arrived she had to be kept in her crate whenever I left the house, she would almost do backflips in her cage when I would come back, poor girl. But I am happy to say she can be left to roam the house now, although she watches me drive off, the front door has a large frosted glass oval with a thin strip of clear glass at the edge that she peeks through.

Bean had stolen my heart for 16 years, I didn't expect that it would be stolen all over again by a tiger striped goof that is addicted to squeaky toys. And I do mean addicted. After having her kill several squeaky toys I discovered that you can buy replacement squeakers and sew the toy back up. So she has a collection of what I call Frankentoys. A dragon with no legs, one wing and half a nose. A couple of ducks/geese missing beaks, wings, and tails. A pig that was advertised as being virtually destruction proof. Key word. Virtually. Izzie proved that she can not read and had no idea the pig was indestructible. The pig no longer has a snout, ears or a tail and has had it's belly resewn twice. I amuse myself by using different colored embroidery thread (seems to hold up better than plain thread) to sew up the wounded. A few of her toys have a rainbow of battle scars stitched up. Once they are back in battle, if they can survive the initial Izzie attack they generally will make it for awhile. She has a toy basket that she "shops" in, I've never seen anything like it. She knows exactly what she is looking for and roots around in the basket until she finds it. Now if I could only teach her to put the toys back IN the basket I'd be in heaven.

She definitely has the herding instinct, if I don't move down the steps quick enough to suit her she doubles back and offers to help.

Wow, ok I'm going to end this book before I get a second wind going.

Kelly,

Izzy is so lucky to have found you! She sounds like a special girl who has found her right place in the world.

If you are serious about wanting her to put her toys away herself, I can tell you how to teach that. If it was just an offhand comment (and funny, too), won't waste anyone's time...

Izzie sounds fantastic!! Gwen shops for toys in her basket too.. in fact she now checks out all baskets to see what she can find...

I would be very interested to teach her how to put them back as it seems that what ever room we are in has a collection of at least 8 toys. When my husband and father-in-law were working on the upstairs, she would take toys up there and deposit them in various places. Such a huge goof!

Welcome

Welcome Kelly and Izzy!

Thanks

And Leih, I would love to know how to teach her to put them back, any tips and/or hints, suggestions would be more than welcomed!

Izzie wrote:Thanks

And Leih, I would love to know how to teach her to put them back, any tips and/or hints, suggestions would be more than welcomed!

OK then

It takes a little while to train, but works great.

It helps if you have an "out" cue (whatever word you use for your cue). If you don't have that, teach it separately.

The cue I use for this behavior, once you have the whole behavior, is "go to bin." Use any cue you want, of course.

You start by taking a low pan (like a cake pan), put a treat in the bottom, have the dog get the treat. WIth the low pan, this is easy (and so rewarding ), so once the dog is doing this easily, you graduate to a deeper pan (small sauce pan, for example). Again, once the dog gets the treat from whichever pan/container you are using, easily, you keep increasing the size/depth of the container. Move up to a sauce pot, then a stock pot (or bucket), etc.

At this point, you can add your cue, "go to bin" or whatever you're going to want to use (I use this for throwing trash out in out trash bin, etc, as well as depositing toys in a bin). So, "go to bin," the dog runs there and gets the treat. Start moving the bin around, sending the dog to the bin from different sides/positions/distances. You want the dog to rush to the bin to retrieve the treat.

So, once your dog is retrieving a treat out of a bucket (I love to use these for this training), and is comfortable with the container (will get the treat easily, no hesitation), you can now start to use your "out" cue.

Have the dog come to the bin/bucket/container, give it a toy or object over the continer, then give the "out" cue, and when the dog drops the object into the container, big party, rewards, etc. Be ready to prevent the dog from retrieving the toy from the bin once it's been dropped into it.

Repeat this a bunch. The dog gets used to dropping the object into the bin/bucket. Now, you can combine the cues..."go to bin," the dog takes the object to the bin, then "out" and dog drops the object into the bin. With enough repititions, you can drop the "out" cue, and "go to bin" will result in the dog going to the bin with the object, and outing it into the bin. (Make sure to have a big party the first couple of times the dog outs the object without that cue...)

At this point, it's a big game. Start with a bunch of the dog's toys, give the dog a toy, "go to bin," dog rushes to bin to deposit toy and then get the reward, repeat with another toy. Move the bin around the house, send from different distances, use all kinds of objects (wadded up paper, plastic bottles, etc.). The goal is to get the dog to deposit whatever you give to it in the indicated bin, period (no messing with the object, in other words).

And, start changing up the bin. Use different objects as bins...boxes, small waste cans, clothes baskets, pans, whatever. You want the dog to come to understand that whatever you indicate is a bin is where the object is deopsited.

Once you've got all this, it's a piece of cake to get the dog to collect its toys and deposit them in whatever you use for a toy basket. Make sure to use the dog's toy box as one of the bins when you're training. And, it's also fun to teach name discrimination, so you can tell your dog to "go find your ducky," then, "go to bin!"

It takes less time to train (with these smart dogs) than it does to write it all out. I had Geyser doing this by 4 months, and now, at 9 mos, she'll throw anything out in our trash bin, tho there are some things that remain a challenge (food wrappings and paper, mostly). Eventually, I"ll teach her how to open and close the trash bin door, but not until she'll leave the trash alone on her own .

Eventually, I'll teach her to deposit several things in a bin (I use a milk crate for this kind of thing), then retrieve the correct item on cue. But, you don't want to have the dog retrieve something from a bin until the depositing behavior, and leaving it there, is very solid.

happy training! report back!

I ll have to think about this since Gwen already goes to her toy box and roots around.. .... I get back to you and let you know what I come up with ..

Leih, that's sounds so good I'm just going to try it with Dingo for the fun of it!

Marjolein wrote:Leih, that's sounds so good I'm just going to try it with Dingo for the fun of it!

It's really a blast. Fun to train, and they just love running to the bin and depositing stuff...and it's something you can do indoors when the weather sucks :fluffy:

leih merigian wrote:...and it's something you can do indoors when the weather sucks :fluffy:

Which is good since I live in north-east Germany (almost in Holland)