Author: John Dow
Just when I think I've got my dog Tuxcitto in control he gives
me a demonstration that this well may be a life long pursuit.
Tuxcitto is a Border Collie that has an uncanny learning
capability. Not from my dog training skills but from
observation. He watches everything that goes on around him.
And you never know when he's going to add one and one to get
two. Tuxcitto excels in obedience training when in sight or
when his master is around. All I have to do is show him what I
want him to do and then repeat it for a few days and he nails
it after that. His ability to learn has always been obvious
from the first day we brought him home.
But he also learns on his own. We have a good-sized front and
back yard. And both dogs (I have an older female dog named
Spoofy) know that they can do anything they want as long as
it's in our yard. We live in a small community and have lots of
neighbors with dogs. From time to time one of them comes over
for a visit.
No problem there except the temptation for our dogs to go run
with the visiting dogs is too much to handle sometimes. Since
most neighbors are dog owners this is not a problem. Except
that my dogs are supposed to stay in my yard. That's the rule.
But we all know rules are made to be broken.
So one day a friend's dog comes over to play and Tuxcitto
follows him back to his yard. I happen to see this and go out
and call Tuxcitto to come home. Tuxcitto comes back and
everything is fine. I look back out a few minutes later and no
Tuxcitto. So this time I call him home and bring him into the
house.
If he can't follow the rules, inside he goes. I go about my
daily tasks and forget about it. Some time later I glance out
the window and to my surprise, there's Tuxcitto out in the
front yard. And along with him are our two inside cats. Both
these cats stay inside since they are both scared of their own
shadows.
After a quick look around, I see that the back bedroom sliding
glass door is open. Great, Tuxcitto has learned how to open the
sliding glass door. This is not a good thing since we have
several around our house. And although it's no big deal for
Tuxcitto to get out, the cats are a whole different issue. So I
close the sliding glass door and go round up the animals and
bring them inside.
Knowing that Tuxcitto will gladly give another demonstration of
his new trick, I walk out another door to the backyard and wait.
Within minutes I see him use his paws on the end of the door and
pull it open. It took him about 5 seconds. Did I mention that he
all ready knows how to open doors with doorknobs? He learned
that trick in his second week at the house.
Now I have a challenge in that it's much easier to teach
Tuxcitto how to do something rather than teach him not to do
something. So now I had to figure out a way to teach Tuxcitto
not to open the door. One way that I've had some good success
with is to demonstrate a certain result that he doesn't like
when he fails to follow my commands.
So I started with showing him the door, then telling him no.
Tuxcitto understands no, so I believe he understood that the
door was not something he was to go near in the future. But
that doesn't always work when I'm not present to reinforce the
command.
So I then locked the door and both Tuxcitto and I went back to
the other part of the house. I don't know if he went back and
tried to open the door that day but I believe he might have
knowing his nature. A few days went by and I decided to test
his memory.
I work out of a home office so the dogs and the cats generally
follow me around all day. If I'm in the office they usually
come in and lay down near me. If I go to the kitchen, or
anywhere else, they follow me. So I set up the test by going
back into the back bedroom and unlocking the door and going out
into the back yard.
I came back in and did not lock the sliding glass door. I then
went back to my office, with all in tow. So now I keep a close
eye on Tuxcitto to see if he would make his move. I've made the
mistake before of under estimating his intelligence and I'm not
going there again.
Sure enough, after a little while he got up and looked at me,
and I ignored him, and he sauntered off. As soon as he went
down the back hall I knew where he was going. I quickly slipped
out another door and went to stand out of sight but close to the
outside of the back bedroom sliding door.
I heard him start trying to slide the door back and walked up
close enough to be in direct sight when he came out the door.
As soon as the door opened I said his name and then told him no
in a very stern manner. He froze, caught in the act. I came in
through the door and told him no again and sent him to his
couch. When he does something he's not supposed to he gets sent
to his couch, which is leather I might add so it's not too harsh
a punishment.
We went through this ritual about 3 more times before he
figured out that it was a trap. I don't care if he doesn't open
the door because I told him no or because he thinks I'm waiting
outside to catch him. Either way he understands that you don't
go open that sliding glass door.
>From time to time I do catch him looking or even walking up to
the sliding glass door but he doesn't try to open it. The crazy
thing about this whole deal is he can go outside anytime he
wants. All he needs to do is go sit by the front door. I let
the dogs out many times each day, whenever they want.
Now if I could just get Tuxcitto to resist the temptation to go
out of the yard I would be overjoyed. But I know that that may
be too much for his personality to handle so I cut him some
slack. After all we all have our weak spots and his are few.
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