Babe continues to grow and develop. She does not think of herself as a small dog. Often times Babe takes on Emma, our American Pit Bull Terrier, and harasses her to no end. Emma is way more tolerant than I would be if I had pint sized munchkin hanging from my ears or jowls. Last week marked a shift in the roles between the animals in our household. Steve, the cat, is not rumbling with Babe as often because Babe has grown by one pound and is testing her baby teeth out more often. We of course have been and will continue to take her to pet dental care as we do with all our pets to ensure her teeth are always as healthy as they can be.
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At the beginning of last week, I introduced Babe to clicker training. I choose to use a tongue cluck as my marker signal with her. The first session was spent charging the marker signal by pairing the cluck with some freeze dried liver. Babe caught on very quickly, so the next step was to use the marker for behaviors I wanted to capture. Babe started offering sits more regularly when she realized sitting got her attention. I now captured the sits with the marker signal and followed it up with a treat. Ah ha! Now I could use the cue Sit, mark it and reward it. With in minutes Babe understood the word and now does it on cue more than 90 % of the time. For the second clicker session, I taught Babe to Target onto my hand.
(if you turn up the volume, you’ll hear me tongue clicking Babe and then later giving her the cue “Target”. You will also hear Jasmine, my parrot in the back ground making noises as well. At one point, early in the video, she says Good Girl)
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