Only Quiet Puppies Get Attention

Quiet puppy in his crate

Raising a puppy for Susquehanna Service Dogs is 10% dog training knowledge, 90% patience.

Patience to open and close a door 10 times before the puppy waits for the cue to go on through. Patience (and speed) to pick up the food dish 7 times before the puppy waits for the okay to chow down. Patience to spend 10 minutes to walk 6 feet down the sidewalk just so the puppy walks on a loose leash.

And patience to outlast a barking, whining, crying-so-pitifully-you-just-want-to-snuggle-him puppy.   

Doppler is generally quiet in his crate. He goes in quietly at night and sleeps from the time I go to bed to the time I wake up. He’s quiet in his crate at work, snoozing away or chewing on one of the many toys that Fire uses as pillows. He’s quiet when I bring him back home at lunch time and crate him for the afternoon.

He’s definitely NOT quiet, though, when I come home from work, crossfit, the grocery store—basically anytime I come home and he thinks he should be let out of his crate. Then he starts making sounds that I have never heard come out of a dog. He barks. He whines. He cries. He moans.

Because he’s being raised as a service dog, I have to train him not to bark. He needs to learn to be quiet in his crate and everywhere else. Barking does not get him the thing that he wants. As SSD says, quiet puppies get attention.

Doppler usually starts barking about 10 seconds after I get in the door, and he keeps it up until he sees me. I’ve been waiting until he’s been quiet for at least 15 seconds, and then I let him out. However, that didn’t seem to be working. I think he figured he could cause a ruckus and then just stop when he saw me, which is not what I want him to learn. So today, when I got home from work, I completely ignored him for a good 10 minutes. (I knew it wasn’t imperative that he go outside right away.) I fed Fire, changed out of my nice clothes, started a load of laundry, and read about 10 pages in my book. Doppler barked. He whined. He pulled out all the possible noises that he could make.

But somewhere around the second page in my book, he got quiet. I stayed out of sight reading for another five minutes, and only then did I walk over to his crate. There he was, lying calmly. If he had started barking again, even once, I would have turned around and gone back to my book, but he kept his cool, and out we went.

I’m going to use this method every time until his default setting is “quiet.” I have high hopes and lots of patience.

In other news, Doppler did fantastic at my training workshop! I came prepared with power treats and lots of toys, including the bacon-flavored bone. It took him a little while to settle down, and he kept trying to chew on the chairs and table, but eventually he fell asleep. He only barked a few times right before the lunchtime break, but I suspect that was just because he needed to go out. Since the presentation was still going on, I just hustled him outside so he wouldn’t keep disturbing everyone else. Overall, I think he did splendidly for a 10-week-old puppy.

Doppler snacking on a carrot during my workshop

Oh, and Doppler learned a cool new trick! Or at least I think it’s cool. I can drop the leash at work and he will continue walking beside me as if I were still holding it! Cool, huh? He’s definitely getting better with self control.

At ESC (early socialization class) last night, we started learning two new cues: “down,” and “go to bed.” We’re shaping “go to bed,” which means that we break the behavior down into tiny steps. We started by putting a towel on the ground and clicking and treating the puppy for looking at the towel. Then we clicked and treated for walking toward the towel, then for stepping on the towel. Eventually, the puppy will go to the towel, lie down, and stay there on cue. Doppler was coming along nicely, considering it was the first time he ever did it. Almost immediately, he was walking onto the towel. I have a feeling he’s going to pick this cue up pretty easily.

“Down,” on the other hand, is going to be more of a challenge to train. We started by putting the dog in a sit and then luring the dog into a down by holding a treat in front of their nose and s-l-o-w-l-y lower the treat to the ground, clicking and treating as soon as the dog’s elbows hit the ground. Well, at first, I moved the treat too quickly and Doppler just stood up and stretched his neck down to try to gnaw the treat out of my hand (ouch, puppy teeth!). When I moved the treat more slowly, he plopped down to the ground. Success! Click, treat. I did that three times, and then tried it without a treat. He went down without the treat a few times, but then he seemed to lose interest and just sat there. I worked on “down” with him again today at the office with similar results. “Down” seems like such a basic cue, but I think I’m going to have to be patient with him. He may need to be lured more than three times. I might also try doing very short training sessions, ending them before he loses interest. I have no doubt that he’ll eventually learn “down.” It just might take a little longer than “sit,” which he picked up in about 15 minutes.