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Pupforum presents your training questions answered by professional dog trainers.
Simon has a Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Psychology and specialized in Canine Behaviour. He was recently the first New Zealander approved for membership to the IAABC, and he is also a member of APDT Australia. Simon founded Dog Guru in 2002. Dog Guru has helped hundreds of dogs and their owners with training and specialist problems, and is also a dog trainer for the ministry of Education. Simon lives in Auckland, New Zealand with his wife Michelle and two golden retrievers. Sherlock is often used as a demonstration dog in schools and retirement villages. He was also used as a demo dog in the Auckland pet expo in 2004. Training is always using positive reinforcement.
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7/22/2005
This is the second column on our new baby. If you have not read the first one ensure you do so before reading this one so that it makes a little bit more sense. These are not to give you an insight into my life but to give you some ideas if you are planning to bring a baby into an environment with established dogs. It does not matter how great the dog is, you want to ensure you do everything right to get the dog used to it’s new life. With my dogs they are used to being left at home for 4-5 hours during the day alone so they can sleep, but this is no longer possible with my wife being home all day.
My two golden retrievers have had to get used to a number of changes. The first of these is meeting our daughter Rebekah and learning that unlike the cat and mum and dad, this little bundle is not for jumping at, barking at or licking (even though Sherlock the eldest dog has smuggled in a few licks!). This is very foreign to my dogs as they are very sociable with everybody and to have something so small in the house taking up all our time is a little confusing.
However they have settled into the routine well, which means we have no routine and they are kept awake at night like us with the crying baby. It also means that any routine they had which was two to three walks a day has gone out the door and they always have someone home.
This is all lovely I hear you say but what have you done to make them happy and get used to it. Well you may remember that in the first column we taugh
t them not to go into the nursery. This has worked very well and they don’t normally go anywhere near it now. They are quite happy waiting outside. The other thing we have done is to teach them that when Rebekah is lying on the ground that they have to keep their distance. We have done this using good old positive reinforcement with the leave command which they have done for a while. Whenever they go up to her we just say “leave” and they leave her. The other day all three of them were curled up with Rebekah.
The next mission of the day was how to get them used to the stroller. I had taught them briefly what to do before we had the baby but it was clearly a little different with a crying baby in the stroller. So we had to teach them that each dog had their own side of the stroller and this did not change at any time. May have been a little boring for them but they do get huge grins on their faces when I pull out the stroller so cant be too boring. We also ensure that we go every now and then to off leash areas.
All in all it has been very successful. We have no problems with the dogs. We never leave them alone with Rebekah because even though they are highly trained they are still dogs and they may just get too excited for one second and jump up so we make sure we are with them all the time. But taking some simple steps means that they will still love you. Just give your dog lots of attention still and don’t despair if for a couple of days you cant take them for a walk, they will forgive you, even though they may dig a hole. All the best
Simon Goodall is now a member of IAABC (International Association of Animal Behaviour Consultants). This means the information you receive is the most up to date.
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