Dogs, as we all continue to stay home and practice social distancing, I’m sure there have been a few moment of rebellion from those of you trying to retrain your humans. Asa and myself also hit a few bumps in the road when we were helping Mom and Dad with their sit/stay back in 2018. So in our continuing series of How to Train Your Human, we’d like to re-share with you this post on adding distractions to their sit/stays as motivation to dogs everywhere to keep trying!

Stop Goofing Off (July 31, 2018)

I’m beginning to question if Mom and Dad are taking their training serious.  Asa and I are rocking their sit and stay training.  I admit at first it was difficult to watch Mom and Dad wander farther and farther away from us, while we just sat there.  I may have even panicked a few times and followed them.  And yes, I also barked words of advice once or twice, especially when I wasn’t directly next to Mom as she prepared my breakfast.  What if she forgot my strawberries?  Asa also went through a period of adjustment of not being glued to Dad’s side while he works.  In fact, in a moment of desperation he army crawled from the corner of the room where he was sitting, under Mom’s desk, until he was next to Dad.  I had to explain to Asa that it is Dad’s supervisor’s job, not his to monitor what he does at work.  After that, Asa reluctantly stopped interfering with Dad’s training.  Therefore, as the week progressed Asa and I got more comfortable releasing our invisible leashes and watched with pride as Mom and Dad explored their newfound independence.  Well that is as long as they continued to keep an eye on us as their center of attention.

So this week in class, after praising Mom and Dad for their progress, their trainer said we needed to add more distractions.  I wholeheartedly agree!  All this walking in circles around us was nonsense.  We need to add real world scenarios to our training for Mom and Dad to fully appreciate the importance of what we’re trying to accomplish here, namely not always having them hover while still maintaining our control over them.  Therefore for this week’s homework I decided that I would use Dad’s smartphone, while Asa took command of Mom’s camera.  We’d also both take turns with the remote control finding what we want to watch on TV, rather than letting Mom and Dad always choose.  You know, just everyday distractions that usually take Mom and Dad’s undivided attention away from us.  However, before we can enact our plan, we have to get them to focus.

Clearly Mom and Dad misunderstood the point of this week’s lesson.  Rather than watch as we played with their toys, they started having fun without us!  Worst yet, they were the ones deciding whether we could play with them or not!  Would you believe I dropped my ball in front of Mom, and instead of immediately taking me out to play fetch, she simply said “sit!”  What was she thinking?  She’s not the one in charge, I am!  Mom and Dad should be the ones asking for permission to use their toys not us.  But I’ve decided to be the bigger dog here, and not resort to my usual go to move of tantrums.  Everything is a teachable moment, right?  Besides, the trainer did say to expect moments of rebellion.  After all, Mom and Dad have had 6 years of doing what they want, of course they’d resist the new routine.

So there I sat watching them play until I could sit no more!  My breaking point wasn’t watching Dad trying to juggle Asa’s squeaky toys in front of us.  Nor was it when Mom randomly decided to collect all the wonderful sticks in our yard without my guidance.  No, my breaking point was when Mom and Dad started playing a modified game of fetch in front of us that they called “catch.”  Even Asa, who somehow managed to keep it together during the flying squeaky toys, lost his mind on this one.  That’s my bacon scented squeaky ball, STOP GOOFING OFF!  Wish us luck, this is going to be a difficult week with Mom and Dad playing instead of being focused on us and their training.