This morning we met up with Tammy with Phoebe at Target! Last week when we met them, Hestia was a mess. She kept rearing up on her hind legs and she barked a couple of times. I was very embarrassed!
I asked for advice, and one of the pieces of advice was to do the Look At That (LAT) game. This means whenever the dog sees another dog, you click and treat. This makes it so that they look at the other dog, and immediately get a signal from you that they are getting rewarded, so they look back to you for the treat. Over time it will transition to the dog seeing another dog and expecting that they will get a treat and so automatically looking back to you whenever they see another dog.
I don’t know if it was the LAT game or the fact that I had my clicker out, or a combination of the two, but Hestia was a hundred times better!
Tammy and Phoebe were waiting for us outside Target, and by using LAT, I was able to walk right up to them, getting only about 3 feet away! Hestia never once reared up! It was so awesome! We stood outside for a while chatting, while I really reinforced LAT. Phoebe was great at ignoring Hestia, and it made it so easy for me to practice with Hestia. After a while, I noticed that Hestia would look at Phoebe, and then before I could click, she’d automatically look back to me! I clicked and treated that for sure! I was so proud!
Next we went into Target. Hestia hasn’t been in this store for at least a year, and it was Phoebe’s first time. They both did so well! We walked all around the store, up and down aisles, and through food sections and non-food sections.
We worked on walking next to each other, and for Hestia the hardest part was following behind Phoebe. She really wanted to be next to her or in front! A few times Hestia was so excited by Phoebe that she started to jump up, but then turned and looked back at me! I was SO happy and jackpotted her for this!
Several times around the store we stopped to do some obedience, and we got some great pictures! Brad wasn’t with me, so I had to manage pictures and training at the same time. Hestia made it a snap! Her stays were on point! And she did such a great job ignoring Phoebe that we were able to place them very close to each other with them ignoring each other!
After walking around and training for about an hour, we headed across the parking lot to Dunkin’ Donuts. I had a coupon for buy one get one free latte! We sat and chatted for what seemed like about an hour. We talked about all sorts of stuff, and it was great. After a while I realized it was probably time to get back home. So I looked at the time– we had been at Dunkin’ for two hours! The time flew by!
Unfortunately while we were at the coffee shop, it had started to rain and our cars were all the way at the other end of the parking lot. Now it wasn’t just raining a little, it was pouring down rain! We debated for a while how to make a run for it, and then we headed out. Hestia is so little that she was getting swallowed up by some of the puddles and couldn’t keep up with Tammy and Phoebe, so we yelled our goodbyes as we ran to our cars.
It was so much fun! We are going to have a great time training together, and I am SO proud of Hestia. Really she was 100 times better today than she was last week. So much improvement!
In the pictures, Hestia is a small white and black Japanese Chin with a smushed nose and googley eyes. She is wearing a galaxy themed vest. Phoebe is a black standard poodle wearing a lavender vest. I am a woman with long curly brown hair and a teal dress. Tammy is a woman with long brown hair and a purple shirt.
The last one is a video of the pups ignoring a moving and talking dog!
