Puppy Training
I am getting quite a lot of questions on puppy training, what tricks do I teach to Momo, what are we focusing on etc. I have to admit Momo doesn't know a lot of tricks yet. But she sure can do one thing really well - she can play!
Like with my other dogs, I was really excited to start clicking to Momo as soon as she came into my house. I started with very easy shaping games - look at me, nose target, paw target and so on. After only a few tries I realised that Momo is not like other dogs I trained so far. She is still a baby in so many ways, she is very eager to please me and she has absolutely fantastic ideas. But the more I tried to click to her, the more she was nervous, not knowing what I want from her apparently put pressure on her (even though I had no intention to put her under stress) so I decided to do things a bit differently with her. These are the few tricks we learned so far.
A few days later I was drinking coffee with my mother who is a very good therapist for humans and has absolutely nothing to do with dog training. We were discussing different school systems around the World focusing on early specialisation at extremely young age. She claimed that children who are forced to enter the school system very soon are more prone to become nervous, burned out or develop mental diseases as adults. Her exact words were something like "at that age children should be rolling in the mud because that is how they learn. Only grown ups think that playing is not real work - but they forget that when you are 2 years old, playing is actually very serious work!". This was pretty much what I observed with Momo so she got me thinking, like the missing puzzle I was looking for.
Momo has plenty of time to learn different tricks. We still do short shaping games with plenty of playing in between, but I am very careful that she remains as relaxed as possible. Which tricks I teach in what order is not nearly as important to me as simply teaching her to offer behaviours at this stage. I tried to teach her to "sit" already 3 times but ended up teaching her to walk backwards, lie like a frog and slide on her ass backwards instead. As I said Momo is full of ideas and that's totally OK for me. What matters at her age the most are socialisation and play. There will never be better time for that than right now.
As my mother wisely said, at Momo's age she should discover the World around her by rolling in the mud, playing in different environments and with different shapes and materials. She should learn to be relaxed anywhere she goes and be comfortable enough to show good drive no matter what is going on around her. She should learn how to run, how to bite and how to catch her prey. I learned a lot about difference between being nervous and being driven with Tani already. Of course due to her breed she is supposed to be nervous and hectic, but she definitely has the tendency to go over the top, much more than Tani ever did. So well, I don't want to make the same mistakes with Momo. I want to make different ones because - this is how I learn :)
