Quote: re: the growing puppy... only one thing to say about that... enroll in obedience classes NOW! if you haven't already. the command 'leave it' is the most important one any of my dogs have ever learned. it can apply to chickens, questionable food items, other people... pretty much anything you would ever want your dog to ignore. (and some things you would have never thought of until it occurs.)
no training is instantaneous, but a constant day-to-day thing, each day reinforcing what they learned on previous days. you have to be consistent and persistent. one of my instructors at the equestrian school i went to said "every time you interact with an animal, you are training that animal. whether you realize it or not." and that is very true of puppies. if you let something slide once, it's learned. it is 10 times harder to unlearn it.
Sunny, my going on 3 year old standard poodle, has a VERY high prey drive (catches rabbits possum and squirrels regularly). as a pup, that applied to the cats, other dogs, and pretty much anything that moved. as a service dog (in training), I use 'leave it' and 'look' way more often than probably any other commands when we're in a new situation and he gets distracted.
when i first got chickens he was just a year old, and had already had 6 months of puppy class, beginner obedience and had gotten his CGC. so he knew 'down' 'stay' and 'leave it' quite well. when i got chicks, 'leave it' was the primary command when he got too focused on watching those tasty morsels run around the brooder. when they went outside into a pen, again 'leave it' told him it was NOT ok to try to whop them with a paw thru the wire. and once they were free ranging, it went to a down, stay, with leave it if the chickens went too near him. only once did he try to 'whop' a chicken with his paw, and an immediate NO! BAD DOG! and leave it! and he got the idea. not long after i was able to trust him to free range with the chickens without problems. but it took months of daily training to get to the point where he considers the chickens part of 'pack' now not 'prey'. (AND the dogs are fed raw, with a large portion of their diet chicken. but they don't associate the feathered variety with the cold cut up pieces-parts. for more info on that you can PM me or click
here for some basic info on the model i follow.- BARF aka Biologically Apropriate Raw Food / Bones And Raw Food)
though to this day he can't resist running thru the middle of a group just to watch them scatter, and jumps over any that don't move fast enough. LOL
