Update On Sapphire
After almost three months here with us at the Animal Rescue League of Boston, Sapphire was adopted and has been in her forever home for 5 months now. Her mom and dad are extremely happy with her. There have certainly been a few challenges along the way but that has not swayed Jean and her husband because they immediately fell in love with Sapphire (now named Millie).
Jean and Millie enjoy a daily run together, which gives Millie the exercise required for a dog of her excitement level. Jean also does a lot of training with her because when visitors come over, Millie gets excited and likes to jump and mouth hands and clothing. This can be embarrassing for Jean and her family, so we have worked together to teach Millie the proper way to greet visitors. Two very helpful training programs that Jean uses with Millie are the Say Please Program and the Name Game.
The Say Please Program creates and maintains relationships with people, in a non-confrontational manner, by teaching the dog to sit (or perform another trained behavior) in order to gain access to what he or she wants.
Jean taught Millie that the jumping and mouthing gets her absolutely nothing from visitors; no love or attention. She kindly asks visitors to ignore Millie if she is jumping up on them or grabbing at their hands or clothes. The visitor is asked to stand like a ‘statue’ if Millie is being jumpy. Millie learned very quickly. She prefers to have attention rather than being ignored therefore she usually cooperates. If she makes a mistake she quickly remembers that the visitor will not pay attention to her if she is jumping but will get all the love in the world if she is sitting. In addition to that Jean has incorporated the Say Please Program into anything that Millie wants in life. If she wants her leash put on Jean will only put it on when she is sitting, if Millie wants to exit the house Jean will only open the door if Millie is sitting, if Millie wants to have her food bowl put on the floor Jean will only put it down if Millie is sitting, if Millie wants to get out of her crate, Jean will only let her out if she is sitting, and the list goes on. This helps to calm Millie’s excitable behavior in many different situations.
The Name Game is very important for Millie as well because it gives Jean a little bit more control when she becomes over excited. Millie responds quickly when her name is called, but this wasn’t always the case. It has taken Millie some time to understand the game especially because of her lack of interest in food. If she has someone to jump on and play with, that’s much more fun than any treat, so we had to be creative in our training. Jean AND her treats had to be more motivating than every visitor. To start the training, we didn’t have any visitors present – this keeps the distraction level to a minimum so Millie learns the game first. Then when Millie responded 90% of the time on the first name call…Jean could start incorporating some visitors. Jean would call Millie’s name and as soon as her head turned to look at her, Jean would act very excited praising, clapping and bouncing around as soon as Millie made her way over. This excitement from Jean would only get higher and higher so that when Millie made it over to Jean,she would get lots of treats, praise and a lot of petting. In the beginning Millie would immediately jump up on Jean so she was taught the Say Please Program hand in hand with the Name Game. so that it turned into Millie getting to Jean and immediately sitting.
This worked very well for Jean and she still works with Millie on this technique to keep their skills sharp.
This is also a pre-requisite to Coming When Called or Recall – so if Millie gets off leash, Jean will jump right into the Name Game and Millie will surely respond knowing how fun the game is!
