It was a decent-ish day for a change. The rain had almost stopped, so my son and I decided to take a walk near the beautiful market town of Richmond, North Yorkshire
Richmond Castle
The walk leads along the disused railway track from the former Richmond station (now a cafe and exhibition place) to Easby Abbey, a ruined Premonstratensian Abbey, on the banks of the River Swale. As you cross a bridge over the Swale, the path turns abruptly left and follows the edge of the river. There was plenty of water in it today, no doubt because of the seemingly incessant rain we have had over the last few weeks.
A short way along the bank, you get the first glimpse of the Abbey across the water:
It's quite amazing to have a dog we can let off lead, knowing she will not attack anything that moves and will return easily when called!
She loves being able to run about, exploring and I love being able to let her. Still getting used to the fact that I can!
Inside the Abbey grounds of course, she had to be kept on a lead, but I was still able to take a picture or two of the ruins. It was so peaceful - you can see why the monks wanted to make it their home.
With all that running about, she was thirsty, so she had a quick slurp of a nearby puddle. She doesn't often walk through puddles, prefering to be the little princess she is and walk round them - even if that means tripping someone up! But this time, she padded daintily through a few and so was also rather muddy - the coffee colour of the muddy water and the coffee colour of Sienna matched perfectly. My son dubbed this picture 'ground coffee' (double meaning of 'ground' in this instance, in case you missed the joke)
'Ground' coffee
The end of the trail:
Ah, there she is!
We are working hard on lead manners - she doesn't have a lot. 'Good girl' means 'run ahead'; 'cross the road' means 'run ahead'; putting the lead on means pull as hard as you can to get to the front door; opening a door or gate means barge through as fast as you can, dragging your hapless owner behind you, etc! So we went for a training walk.
But let me back up a bit. I needed some guidance about training her to walk nicely and have a few other manners and came across a guy who really seems to know what he's about. His name is Will Atherton and he trains rescue dogs, especially those on death row, or those with behavioural issues that mean the dog cannot be rehomed. Wish I'd found him years ago - maybe he could have saved us years of heartbreak with Storm, but that's in the past and we just need to get to grips with this lead pulling thing for Sienna. He has published several videos on various aspects of dog and puppy training. He doesn't start with a dog he has already trained - he shows the videos from the start. Too often, I see videos where the dog is already trained and so teaching them whatever it is you want them to learn is dead easy! But some of Will Atherton's videos show him with the dog dragging him down the road. There's even one (which I haven't actually watched yet) which shows him being pulled over on his face. So that impressed me from the start - or maybe I'm just easily impressed. Anyway, the video that I chose to study was one where he trains a non-rescue dog called Sandy. Sandy is a happy, loved and mostly well-behaved dog, as is Sienna, but he pulls hard when out for walks - also like Sienna. Will has a simple technique and actually managed to teach the dog within about half an hour. But he's a professional and has years of experience at doing this and he even says it will likely take those of us who are not professional dog trainers longer as we don't necessarily have that experience.
The video, should you want to see it, can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU1Kz7NWrWc
This video is actually the first of Will's videosI came across and thought his training methods seemed really good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4QywHGSZz0
So we went to Muker, through the meadows. There are no flowers yet as it's too early, but there are seven fields, separated by 'squeeze stiles'. If you don't know what a squeeze stile is, it's like two stone blocks placed upright and leaning slightly to create a V shape, with a flat space on the ground between them to walk through. Some of them have steps up or down to them and some (most in this area) have little wooden gates on very strong springs. Perfect for teaching gate/door manners. I have no pictures of this as I was concentrating on the training aspect.
We didn't actually go very far - just 2.2 miles altogether, but it still took us an hour and 20 minutes. I made Sienna sit at every gate. 'Wait' doesn't seem to work well with her (another thing to train), so I then told her to stay. If she got up, I went back and started again. If she failed to sit on the first command, we walked back a few yards than approached the gate again and I gave the sit command. It still needs quite a lot of work, but she was beginning to stay till I had gone through. We also use this training technique at the front door to the house and the door into the car - she sits and waits until she's given permission to enter.
The lead work was at first not too successful. She knows if I stop and 'make like a statue' that she needs to come back to my side. But as soon as she's in position, she moves forward again - even if I don't. So I stand there until she relaxes by my side. I also wait for her to 'check in' with me - ie, make eye contact, before praising her and setting off. The setting off is the reward. In addition, if she surges forward strongly, I turn around 180 degrees, or run backwards a few meters. Again, I wait for eye contact before turning back round and moving forwards. This was not totally unsuccessful, neither was it totally successful; she seems to think that if she has returned to my side, then that's enough.
So I tried something else. I took a piece of dog sausage. I only use dog specific treats as they do not have the salt content that human sausages might have, and also don't contain onion or herbs/spices that might upset Sienna's digestion. Onion, by the way, is a real no-no for dogs.
I lured her into position at my left side, then holding another piece of sausage in my left hand, I set off. If she pranced about or tried to 'force' me to give her the sausage, I just held it in my fist, close to my chest or waist. Once she stopped trying to get it, I stopped, praised her and gave her the sausage. This worked well all the way back to the car. Then we did the final sit-stay before I let her in the car, gave her lots of fuss and praise and the last few pieces of the sausage that I still had in my bag, as a 'jackpot'.
It still needs a lot of work, but I think we might have cracked it - at least method-wise. And the slip lead that Will Atherton recommends arrived in the post yesterday afternoon too, so we'll give it another go later today. I'll probably take her to the railway track near our home, because we can walk longer distances, do some training at the start, then let her off the lead to have a 'behave like a dog' time, before popping the lead back on as we get closer to the car. It's really difficult to walk her any distance in Yorkshire until we have the training completed, because she cannot be let off the lead (it's sheep country) and she cannot be constantly in training as that is mentally tiring. So if I were to walk her there without training, she might be pulling on the lead and thus undoing all the hard work we had just put in. Better to take her somewhere where she can run freely when not training and just do the training in short bursts. Once that is complete, we can then go to Yorkshire for longer hikes.
Note: If I wanted to walk her in sheep country, one trick is to use a different collar/harness and lead. If she is trained using the slip lead, then using a long line on a harness lets her know training time is over and she can behave like a dog for a while. The different equipment then doesn't undo the training. The only downside I can see with this is that she might think she only needs to walk closely on a loose lead when we are using the slip lead. I will be cautious if I choose to use this method.
