You know it's all about the place..

I have touched on the fact that we had some challenges with Hazel initially in regards to appropriate inside behavior. One of our issues was that at times, she would get overly stimulated and had the doggie crazies x 1,000. It was beyond the typical "doggy zoomies" and was actually dangerous behavior around my daughter. It became dangerous instead of "fun" because she was completely out of control and didn't care what was in her pathway. She could potentially hurt herself by running into tables (with sharp corners), or one of us by taking us out! It's completely fine and normal to be crazy silly, but this was too much. Hazel needed an "off" switch. I needed to train her to respond in a way that unwanted behavior stopped immediately, no matter how amped up she was. I decided to teach "place"..a very common command, nothing earth shattering, but it literally changed our lives!

It was apparent that Hazel had endured some harsh training methods in the past, because as soon as I started working with her, she shut down. Her body language was fearful and she pancaked to the ground. It broke my heart! This is when I decided to introduce the clicker to her. Some dogs can be afraid of the loud noise a clicker makes, so to introduce it, I put the clicker behind my back so muffle the sound a little, and then clicked. I treated her immediately so that she would associate the sound of the clicker with something positive. After some success with that, training began. This video was the 3rd time I had her "place". She couldn't please me fast enough! I loved it! Clicker training made her come to life..her eyes danced and she was eager to learn. This is also helpful if you have an enthusiastic greeter with people coming to the door. :)