A Heel Fan

In the last couple of days Jax has shown tremendous improvement on his "heel". We've graduated from working in the back yard. We can now walk down to the end of the block and back, doing a few stop-and-goes and figure eights along the way with Jax maintaining a heel position despite the smells and noises of a residential city block. Of course, he needs a reminder every once in a while.

And again, I'm amazed at how he learns. We've done this "heel" exercise on the sidewalk in front of the house for a couple of days now. It's a stepping stone to being able to take him on walks around the neighborhood that will be pleasurable for us both. Today, I decided to mix it up a little and walk through a neighboring yard in one section instead of using the sidewalk. It became immediately apparent that Jax associated "heel" with being on the sidewalk. That is, on the command "Jax, heel" he headed for the sidewalk. It's hilarious to see what he actually associates with the command. Training him seems almost like a slow specialization procedure: When he gets praised he associates all of the current situation with that praise. Then, we refine his association by slowly whittling away all those other associations by varying the environment while praising the behavior. It makes sense from a low-order logic point of view, but I wonder if it's really what goes on. Does his little brain take a snapshot of the situation surrounding the praise (and I do mean snapshot, timing is critical), or are there just things that he notices?

Meanwhile, it still sucks to be around the house when he's confined to his crate for very long with no one in the room. Efforts to repeatedly leave the house for short periods (1min or less) before returning to praise his calm behavior (while still leaving him in the crate for a minute or two as we wander around the house) have yielded little fruit. He's okay for about 35 sec after we leave, but there seems to be a psychological barrier for him to get over before we can extend this time.

So, now I sort of wonder about the tough love approach. Does he just have to get over it? If we leave him at home regularly for an hour or two in his crate, will he figure it out? After the strange associations with the crate door (see "Beginnings..."), I'm careful to make him stay when I open the door, and even to make him get back in the crate and stay a few times (with door both open and closed on different iterations) immediately after letting him out to make sure he understands who's in charge and that being in the crate calmly on command gets him praise (and chunks of ham - again, he probably notices one more than the other). We don't want bad associations with the crate. Or, worse associations anyway.

Oh! and last night he performed a flawless sit-stay in his crate while we ate dinner (in the same room). More progress!

Finally, Jax is gaining weight rapidly. Unofficially, he's now close to 23 lbs, or about 5 lbs heavier than he was 14 days ago. We have to go back to the vet next week for vaccinations, so we'll find out just how much of a chow hound he is (it's the treats, really). It's just puppy-fat ;) When he gets a little older we'll be running together 3 mi or so a day. The fat won't last.