May Day Eight -- The Things I Love About Sia

I woke up this morning and wondered what our "theme" for the day would be. I try to have a theme for the pictures in the blog to help tell the story of our training. The first thing that popped into my mind was, "The things I love about Sia!" And then I second guessed myself and thought, "What does that really have to do with training?" As the day wore on and I thought about it more, I realized it had a lot to do with training. First of all, enjoying the dog you are working with helps to put you in that place where you and the dog are having fun working together. This keeps the dog and the human engaged. Secondly, figuring out a dogs' strengths allows me to focus in on that during training to help increase the successes. Thirdly, finding what a dog enjoys gives more opportunities to reward behavior.

So here are just a few things I love about Sia:

I love when I say no to her in a calm voice, she stops what she is doing and comes over and licks my ear. Sinbad had to be my model for this because I couldn't manage to get a picture when she does it to me.

I love that Sia will settle even when there is a lot going on around her. Sometimes this is hard for her but she gets better and better every day.

I love Sia's nose and how she uses it to explore her world. She's so curious and adventuresome. Knowing this allows me to use exploring her environment as a reward for her. Walk nicely with me for several feet and you can be rewarded by being allowed to sniff around in a bush. Stay in your down for a couple of minutes, then you can go say "hi" and sniff the cat. What a great thing to let the nose lead for a bit.

I love that Sia takes the most care of the loudest toy in the toy basket and doesn't tire of making it squeak. I also love that she will readily give it up for a minute while I make a quick phone call.

And I love that she will happily share her favorite toy with any one of the other dogs.

I especially love that she likes to be so close. It's fun to snuggle with her and makes for an easy reward when she likes that contact so much. It's no wonder I woke up this morning thinking our theme for the day should be "The Things I Love About Sia!"