Let’s all give a warm welcome and words of encouragement to the newest members of our Gives Back Program! Justine and her husband Jim, their children Carson & Casin, and their fur-children, Gunner (4 years young Labradoodle) and Honor (1 year young German Shepard).
Justine is a detective in the Milwaukee area and has high hopes for Honor to develop into a therapy dog for everyone at the station. Justine stated, “…in my field of work and a lot of first responders during this time there is nothing better than coming home after a horrible case/day and having those two sweet dogs greet you at the door, with so much love in their eyes, kind of makes it all go away in that moment”.
Gunner tends to be protective of their home and is a bit shy towards people. Although Honor is an extremely lovable dog, she has a tendency to turn that love into excessive jumping. She has also been backing Gunner up with protecting their home.
Over the next few weeks, we are going to work on calming them both down and getting them a ton of socialization. Follow along on their journey with the hashtag. #HONORingThoseMakingaDifference
#SuburbanK9GivesBack #DogTraining #SuburbanK9Milwaukee
Lesson #2
During Gunner and Honor’s first lesson with their trainer, they worked on learning how to walk in a proper heel. This will give both dogs the ability to stay calm in any situation and make walks more enjoyable! Although, Gunner just needed a little tweaking to get him walking in a focused heel. Honor went through the whole process of learning to heel. By the end of the lesson, they were both making strides.
By laying a foundation by teaching heel and that both dogs know their obedience, we were able to start the second lesson with working on distractions. Most dogs can do well with listening to sit, down, stay, and come with not much going on, but the more important thing is listening to those commands with distractions present. They did well enough for the first time that their trainer was even able to start showing their owners how to get them to quiet down and not bombard guests at the front door!
Lesson #3
When it comes to dog training, things aren’t magically fixed in a day. Training dogs new things and getting them to be extremely successful with the training times time and repetition. Gunner and Honor’s 3rd lesson started off with being calm and responsive when people ring the doorbell and enter the home. This is a hard situation for them. It took a moment to get them to calm down but then they were able to be successful with staying calm and listening. This is something that they will practice at the beginning of each lesson to make sure it continues to get better and stays better!
Today’s focus was both dogs staying calm while Justine gets ready to take them for walks. They both get so excited to get outside that it’s a hassle for Justine just to get her shoes on. Both dogs practiced and were quickly successful with down stay commands while Justine got ready! While Justine took Gunner outside, Honor decided to get jealous and scratch at the door but by the end of the lesson Honor learned to stay more calm instead of jealous and destructive!
The Justman family was given homework to continue to work on both dogs stay commands with heavy distractions going on. They practiced two ways during their lesson to help give them ideas on how to work on it daily. The first was while Justine pretended to get ready to take them for walks. The other distraction was throwing their treats all around them and expecting them to hold their stays. Because most dogs love treats it’s usually hard for them to listen properly when they’re present and this is why we love to use them as a high distraction; that way it helps us to prepare the dogs to listen in high distraction situations that we can’t set up!
Check out this video of both Gunner and Honor listening to their down stay command with treats tossed around! TAKE NOTE… both dogs learned their commands in German so you will hear Justine say “platz’ for their down command, how cool!
Lesson #4
A huge stressor for the Justman family was Gunner and Honor’s chaotic greetings at the front door. They both love people so, new guests can be very overwhelming for them. They’ve been working hard at staying calm in those situations, and man did they show off!! Their trainer Lauren rang the doorbell, and as she came inside, both dogs sat nicely and waited for her! Notice, they’ve also been learning to take turns on greeting their guests. They were both taught the “get” command, and this lets them know that their turn is over. This command makes things a lot easier as they are no longer competing for attention! Gunner loves to have all the attention, so this was hard for him, but he did stellarly!
Once Gunner and Honor were successful with greeting guests, they headed outside to work on walking nicely in a heel together. Up until this point, Justine has been practicing healing both dogs individually to get a better handle on them and make them successful. Ideally, she’d love to walk them both together, in a heel, and have complete control over them. They exceeded expectations! Honor had to be reminded a few times not to stare at others. Besides that, they stayed in their heel 95% of the time and had no reactions toward other dogs or people!
Lesson #5
Remember Gunner & Honor from our Suburban K9 Gives Back Program? Well, these two are officially halfway done with their lessons!! They tend to feed off each other’s excitement when walking beside each other, and that’s when managing them can be challenging. They’re doing better each day with it!
During their fifth lesson, their human brothers had friends over, and man did they show off! As we all know, they love people and are working on containing their excitement when guests arrive. Well, they did amazing with the boy’s friends! They both sat nicely away from the door and let the kids come. When they were released, they both greeted the kids without trying to topple them over! Keep up the great work, boys!!
#HONORingThoseMakingaDifference #SuburbanK9GivesBack
Lesson #6
Today Gunnar and Honor spent a good chunk of time on some intense off-leash training. They also worked on walking together and ignoring all distractions while on the leash. It went well at first, but then they decided to get a bit stubborn. But no worries! Their owner, Justine, and their trainer, Lauren, kept working with the dogs until they got better at it again.
When a dog is struggling with a task, we take a step back to analyze the situation and see what we can change to see the results we would like to see.
After we analyze the situation, we continue to work with the dog until we see continuous success, and that is just what they did.
Lesson #7
It has been some time since their last lesson, and these two fur babies have decided to turn off their listening ears when they are off-leash.
Since they are not listening all too well, most of the lesson was spent taking a step back. Lauren, their trainer, spent a great deal of time working on resetting their ‘state of mind’. And boy, are they doing a lot better!
Oh, and Justine just reported to Lauren that they had people over this past weekend, and the dogs did great! Honor only needed one reminder to stay off of their guests! Their friends were complimenting them left and right because they could see how far the two have come.
Lesson #8
During lesson eight, we continued to work on door-control. Honor would stay in the other room perfectly, but Gunner still has some trouble waiting. Gunner will bark out the window, and Honor will feed off of the barking. In these situations, Honor will stop with one correction, but Gunner does not like doing so. Gunner is the worst, especially when it comes to the mailman and delivery people. His trainer Lauren brought a dog from our Board and Train program onto the driveway, and Gunner only barked once. She then brought a second dog from our Board and Train program onto the driveway, and he did not bark at all. The rest of the lesson was spent doing E collar work and building their confidence.
Lesson #9
Justine is now able to take both dogs for a walk at once in the morning when there are fewer people and dogs out. When they are separated they are great. Their older son was even able to walk Gunner!
Door control went much better when I arrived! There has been no jumping in the past several lessons. Gunner only barked once, when the doorbell rang.
Went for a walk to work on Honor heeling as she is starting to pull more and find a better e collar number. We had both Honor and Gunner and we were able to successfully pass a dog with no reaction!
The final part of the lesson was spent in the backyard working on obedience with the e collar. I had their two sons come out back to work on distracting the dogs as well as play with them to get them more excited with the E collar. They did well with obedience.
Lesson #10
We worked on Honor going up and down the stairs to the basement. She was terrified at first but we worked her through it! Now she can enjoy the cool basement with her Dad while he works!
We took Honor and Gunner to a nearby dog park to work on dog passes. Neither of them reacted to any of the dogs inside the park. There was even a dog running up and down the fence as we were walking and they both did not react! We worked on obedience in public. They both held their stays as people brought their dogs in and out of the park.
