We’re still working on it.
Yesterday, I went on my first real hike with Penny. This differs from our orchard walks in that we were out in the woods with a lot of unknowns.
My goal is to get her to walk with me off-leash and reliably come when I call her. She’s fine off-leash — she doesn’t go far and she seems to stay out of trouble. But she doesn’t reliably come when I call. And that’s just not acceptable.
I’m hoping its because she’s still a puppy. We figure she’s about 5 months old.
She’s also still tiny. I weighed her yesterday. She was 4.7 pounds. The vet seems to think she might get up to 6 pounds.
It’s hard to photograph her for two reasons:
- She’s almost all black. It’s really tough to get a good exposure of her features. Photoshop’s Shadows/Highlights feature really helps.
- She never stops moving. To get this shot, I had to place her on top of a rock that was too high for her to jump off of.
Anyway, here’s the latest photo:
I’ll keep working with her. Eventually, I think she’ll come around. She’s not a dumb dog. She just doesn’t have her priorities straight yet.
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When we trained our pooch we put him on a long leash. We said “COME” and then pulled him to us with the leash. We did this over and over until he reliably would come. When he refused to come, on went the leash for many more training. He did not want retraining so he always comes when called. We never used treats.
This is how we trained our Dalmatian years ago. Our last two dogs were apparently trained by previous owners.
I’m doing Petco training and I’m very disappointed. All treat-based; not practical. Now that I’m done with my book and cherry contracts and have more freedom during the week, I’ll work on her with the leash method. I think she’s smart enough to get it.
Thanks!