How are your puppies doing?
Hello again everyone! Just wanted to touch base again on the training. Naga is now completely housetrained. We have trained her to sit by the door every time she has to go. We did this by only allowing her out this particular door when it was potty time, and over the course of a month and a half she caught on. Some dogs can do it quicker, others slower. I think she is generally average as far as her learning rate goes.
She has also finally gained my trust to be with the chickens without a leash. I still never let her out with them alone, but we have been spending a lot of time with them every day and she has been pretty desensitized to them. A trick I learned while doing this was to take her favorite toy out with us, and every time I thought she was about to start chasing them, I would direct her attention to the toy and we would play. It's probably not a good idea to play with your pup if they've already started chasing the birds though, that will just teach them that chasing them is good. I would only do it when she stared at them more than a few seconds. Now, she sits among them, but mostly minds her own business. I trust her enough to be up to 50 feet away from her while she is loose, and I feel like I can let her out of my sight for very brief periods if I have something I'm working on outside. By brief I mean less than a minute. So far she has made big improvements in this area! Desensitization is the key! Find a way to make the dog think the chickens are boring. Or at least not as interesting as what you have in your hand.
Naga is really doing great with every aspect of her training. I have followed parts of all the training suggested by you awesome BYCers, but mostly I have followed the general outline described by Chickensrdinos. If you are new to this thread, her method is on page 1 or 2. The only thing left that she is really struggling with is the cat. Every time I post on here she has made small improvements, but she still has a long way to go in this area. She has gotten to where if she absolutely can't resist playing with the cat, at least she plays appropriately about half the time. Mai (the cat) seems to enjoy occasional play sessions with Naga so long as she doesn't get rough, but like I said she only plays nice half the time. I have not figured out a way to desensitize her to Mai like I have the chickens yet, which is strange because they live together, whereas she is only with the chickens about an hour a day. How did you all do it?
Well that's the update, now time for a story! Naga proved her worth the other day by saving my husband from a scorpion sting. I wasn't there, but he told me he was sitting in his chair in the living room and Naga was asleep, but suddenly she woke up and walked over to him, staring at his leg. She immediately lunged for his leg, and he thought she was going to bite him, but instead she pulled off a scorpion that was crawling on him and killed it!! Maybe not as great as those stories you hear about dogs saving their owner's lives, but she has become quite special to me, someone who normally doesn't even like dogs. I think she could be transforming me into a dog lover... She also showed up at our house on hubby's birthday.
