Thursday, June 05, 2008

Emmy's training

Since I started watching the show It's Me or the Dog, I've started training Emmy to not bark and get very upset when Ed leaves to go to work. I've been waking up early so that when he leaves I can get her attention and give her plenty of praise when she does a good job. I've found that she doesn't like a sharp clap. She cowers a little, so I have to use the "bap" noise even though I feel very silly. I think that she thinks that I'm going to hit her and I don't want that. Today when Ed closed the bedroom door to leave she barked a few times, spun in a couple of circles then jumped up on the bed to look out the window. However, her usual barking and scratching at the window did not happen at all. She cried a little but kept looking back at me for reassurance. I gave her lots of kisses and let her look out the window while I pet her so that she knew that I was still with her. One down--being left alone and chasing bikes to go. She's been pretty good with being calm until I walk out the door, but she still barks like someone is trying to kill her or something when I'm out the door. She calms down after I get to the gate, but still, I'm trying to stop that habit. I just don't know how yet.

Ooooh Victoria (the trainer) is using a soft lead on the Great Dane in the show like what we use on Emmy. I think this weekend I'm going to try to train her off of the soft lead. Hopefully that goes well. I probably could do it today or tomorrow since I've been waking up so early. I want to try to finish reading Maya Angelou today so that I can quickly breeze through Twilight before moving on to more Advanced Project reading.

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