Books by Ian Rogers
Books by Ian Rogers
When I first started walking Jilly I reinforced all her basic commands, praising everything and giving lots of rewards. I felt I needed to concentrate on obedience training because she wasn’t used to me being in charge and I didn’t want to go everywhere with her on a lead. I got her to shake a paw on the command ‘How do you do?’ and go from ‘lie’ to rolling on her back at the command ‘Roll over’. It was all a matter of catching the moment - for example, rewarding her and saying the words if she pawed for a treat I was holding. When she was at ‘lie’ I would hold a treat just beyond her snout and draw circles in the air with it. She rolled on her side almost immediate and got the reward. Later on I would push her a bit further over before rewarding her, so building up the response. (Later in life, when she got a bad back, I rewarded the lesser movement. You have to adapt to the dog’s needs).
As an underconfident dog, Jilly would meet other dogs, allow mutual sniffing for a few seconds and then suddenly snap at them - to their surprise. She did this one day to the my neighbour’s dog so I bent down, put my mouth right by Jilly’s ear and snarled. Both her ears went back and she rolled her eyes as if to say: “Oh, you don’t like that! I didn’t know you could speak dog!” If she growled when another dog approached, I’d hold her collar or pull the lead close and say “Quiet! I do the growling!” When the dog had passed each, I’d stroke her head and say “Good girl. Good calm dog.” She will now walk past other dogs as if they are not there, even if they start to bark and carry on.
After a rainy walk, or after running through wet grass, Jilly didn’t like being towelled dry. She would tolerate it round her head and ears and on her shoulders but grumble and pull away if you tried to dry her tummy, hindquarters or tail. I had been told she would sometimes snap. I started to make towelling (whether she was wet or dry) part of her ‘just got home’ training/reward regime. She knew she would be rewarded for obeying the commands she had mastered so she expected to be rewarded for ‘let’s towel’. I started with the areas she tolerated and then, week by week, extended the towelling to other areas. If she grumbled, I’d speak to her sternly but also not press on too far. We often played with the knotted up towel after drying her, building up good associations with it. I don’t think I ever punished Jilly (unlike with some dogs when I had less experience of training them). A stern word or a sharp ‘no’ was enough for this sensitive dog who really wanted to be loved and to please. Consistency, patience and gradually building up to the desired result were the answers with Jilly. Soon I could dry her all over and she was increasingly happy at letting others do it too.
Jilly also growled and snapped when people tried to pull seeds and burs out of her fur. She would whimper before growling as if her skin hurt so I tried the softly-softly approach with this, too. I would be firm that she should stay and keep still but tease a few hairs at a time out of the prickly bur. If she whinged, I’d give her some praise and let her have a brief break before starting again. When I finally got the bur out I’d put lots of praise into my tone of voice as I showed the offending object to her. She liked to take it in her mouth and then spit it out! It’s what she’d have done if she’d been able to pull it out herself. She treated the seeds of ‘goose grass’, also known as ‘love hearts’, a bit differently. After they had been eased out of her fur, she take them, hair and all, and eat them!
There was a good walk in fields beside the local river. She loved to chase and fetch her ball in the fields so I wondered whether I could help her to overcome her water aversion and to learn to swim. At first, we played ‘lean -over-bank-and -let it drift down-to-you’. She enjoyed the new challenge, just like when she was a puppy and learned to race round the sofa for a toy dropped behind it. As the water was only 6 to 8 inches deep, I later stood in mid-stream and threw the ball towards Jilly, on the bank, but the just out of her reach. Jilly would leap in, grab the ball, and clamber out as if the water was red hot! Gradually she started wading in and gallumphing after the ball, making clumsy bounds to avoid wading. Every bit of progress got lots of praise and encouragement. Easy catches and easy retrieves were mixed in with more challenging ones. As we moved to deeper water, she did start to swim. She’d head directly back to the bank and try to climb out at impossible places. If she could, she’d jump from one half-submerged tussock of grass to another to reach an easier exit.
Was I being fair on this chicken-of-a-dog? Actually, yes. As soon as we reached the river, she would rush down the bank and look expectantly at me to throw her ball. She enjoyed the challenges and loved overcoming them. It was my job to increase the challenges bit by bit as I judged her ready to progress. Once she could swim confidently, she sought out any water of any depth on any walk! An inch of water in a ditch and she’d be in it. A muddy pond - wonderful! Her owners got fed up of the wet, smelly dog. Jane complained that she couldn’t keep Jilly dry on any walk - she always found water somewhere! Eventually we all had to avoid water on our walks for a while because Jilly developed a skin rash from being wet so much. She needed ointment from the vet and I was not a hundred percent popular!
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