Demand Barking ...

is the topic of the day.  Tor is a terrible demand barker.  He has been since the day he arrived.  It had been getting better before we started an approximately 2 1/2 week period of back to back house-sitting gigs.  He did very little of it when we were away but it has come back with a vengeance since we've been home.  I have taken the approach of not paying any attention to him when he is barking and only approaching him when he is quiet.  However, I'm not sure how much more of this my neighbors are going to tolerate.  He is nearly doing an adult dog hold and bark in terms of volume and tempo.  It's no little puppy bark anymore.

I think it will be especially annoying when I get up at 4:00 a.m. to use the bathroom before taking them for a potty break and starting our morning routine.  I have moved him into Gata's crate in the bedroom to sleep at night.  He seems happier about that but the little fart is definitely attached to me and does not like it when I am out of sight.  It makes me wonder how you tell the difference between demand barking and separation anxiety?  I think it is just generic demand barking since he also protests if I am doing something with Gata but ...

OK - training progress

Tor is doing well at the little bit of stuff that we have been working on.  We continue to work on "Outs" in play sessions every day.  Changing the toy or the location or whatever definitely ups the ante for him and leads to more problems again.  Definitely need to keep working on this.  His play retrieve is great and he brings the ball back and usually drops it in my hands for another go.  Love that :-)  His position changes are great and he is actually getting sits and downs out of motion most of the time.  I need to work on his stand more to build fluency with the command in all different forms.  Tend to do too many from the sit, which is how we started.  He is also getting the idea about holding the position until I release him.  That is all good.  Heeling is still mostly a pipe dream but he is moving well on both sides of my body, doing spins from either side, and quite comfortable in a "Place" position.

His focus is incredible and I really don't even need to use a leash on him in the park though I still do.  He would think about chasing cars if we were close to the road.  He's shown that inclination a few times.  It's funny to watch him though.  He watches me so intently that sometimes he can't even walk forward because he is bouncing around and maintaining eye contact.  He looks like he is stalking me and contorts himself into some of the weirdest positions.  Too bad we probably won't be doing Ring - it would be incredibly easy to get him doing all the backward heeling.  Maybe I'll do it anyway.  Though I suppose I should start with just plain heeling ;-)

Considering doing Michael's leash pressure work with him in the next little while.  I think he would benefit from it and don't think that it will screw up our tracking.  He definitely has a bit of a stubborn streak in him and I would really like to be able to walk him on a flat collar easily sometime in the future.  Still using a front pull harness for walks with him.  This all holds true for Gata, too.  I may also try the leash pressure stuff with her.  It would be interesting to see how it goes with her in comparison to Tor and if it impacts her tracking.


Gata continues to do really well with her Agility basics.  We did some distance work today.  At some distance between roughly 28 and 35 feet from center her desire to stay close to me outweighs the pull of the pots and she starts cutting to the inside of them.  I started working them individually again with some success but it seems to be a critical distance with her since even that was very difficult.  I think it will be easier for her when I use jumps rather than pots but I should probably do that soon.  We also worked on stays and backward releases.

Poor Gata, she is destined to be forever perfecting the positions that I screwed up with her when she was a puppy.  Her stand is really the only position that is fundamentally correct.  Her sit is beautiful except for the hover butt that she does when she is in full "on" mode - almost any time we are doing out of motions, particularly in competition.  Her down is slowly getting better but I think will always be a little slow and something other than a true fold-back down.

Really need to decide what to do about Tor's demand barking.  I hate to put a bark collar on him but this really can't go on much longer and it shows no sign of going away.  Really have to think about that one ...