day one

Day one really begins with day zero and the previous two years. Enter Copper. Copper is our miniature australian shepherd who overall is a fabulous dog, but has a couple of issues that we have been trying to work on but have come to a head two days ago. But that's not all. Enter Sara Beth: our border collie. We had Sara for a year before we got Copper. While she has her own set of obedience issues, she is a great dog too. But, she has picked up bad habits from Copper or her issues haven't been addressed because we are more focused on the other dog or the task of taking care of two dogs at once.

We have two months to get Copper in shape and Sara Beth too before we reevaluate.

The problems we need to fix:

* food aggression when trying to steal Sara's food

* leash aggression inside of our condo building and out on walks


Food Aggression: Day One:

* Decided to only feed both dogs once a day so that they are more responsive to treats during training times
* Hand fed Copper his dinner a little bit by little bit. I held my hand in his bowl while he ate from it. We didn't start feeding Copper until Sara had started eating from her bowl, and I fed him such small amounts at a time that she finished before we did.
* Food bowls will be kept up in the closet except during times of actual feeding.
* In the future, I will let copper eat from his bowl, but put obstacles to help slow him down. If he can handle it, I will try to take away his bowl while he is eating. The idea is that this might frustrate him, but if it's in small increments and he gets praised for responding well to it, he may get used to things interrupting "his food time".
* I'm not going to let him lick sara's bowl after meal time (hence putting the bowls up in the counter). I think this might be making him think that he is entitled to some of what's in that bowl because he is allowed to lick it.


Leash Aggression: Day One:

* took both dogs to petsmart and practiced walking around one on one. We practiced sits and stays and walking around the store with other dogs in the general vicinity.
* Copper did really well. He was even invited to sit in a class for a few minutes and did really well. I could tell he felt submissive in this environment. The goal would be then to figure out how to get him to feel submissive in our problem environments.
* Sara Beth did well. She is really good at sits and stays. I was surprised at how well her heeling and loose leash walking was considering those were the main struggles in our training up until this point. She actually seemed more negatively reponsive to seeing other dogs than Copper had been, so I think the leash aggression will be an issue for her too, but overall, we had some really positive experiences at petsmart.