The Labraventures of Carbón, Spanish (ex-) foster dog extraordinaire

[Atemas]

Love his waggy tail

 

[Emily_Babbelhund]

Bless you Carbon , so blinkin good , you must teach silly Reuben some of your impressive moves xxx

Claro que sí, but of course...we can learn to cha cha cha together and all the girls will love us (even more)!

 

[Emily]

So impressive!!

Ella has a really strong "heel" on my left side as we did obedience training to start with. I tried mucking around with agility a few times but I really struggled to "unglue" her from my left heel to work on the other side. I didn't plan on continuing with agilt so I just didn't bother to fix it

 

[Emily_Babbelhund]

So impressive!!

Ella has a really strong "heel" on my left side as we did obedience training to start with. I tried mucking around with agility a few times but I really struggled to "unglue" her from my left heel to work on the other side. I didn't plan on continuing with agilt so I just didn't bother to fix it

My Brogan and I were the same way - I did a lot of traditional obedience and it was always on the left. If I asked him to go to the right he would do it and within seconds he'd be finding a way to sneak back to my left. He had very high moral opinions of what was right and what was wrong and the right side was WRONG. His left-handed devotion was admirable, but a liability in a service dog. I've been careful from the beginning to walk Carbon on lead on both sides. The "home base" still needs the right side worked on, but I think he'll get it.

Switch is very important as I always keep him on my side away from traffic or away from approaching dogs (or people carrying pizza boxes - argh!). I'd been just dragging him with the lead from side to side, which isn't terrible since he's been taught to move with very little lead pressure, but still I was very motivated to teach him a proper cue. It's something we'll use every day!

 

[Joy]

Well done! Carbon is such a star -so willing to do what you want him to do once he understands.

 

[Cath]

Great work Carbon and you too Emily

 

[Lab_adore]

Awesome work Carbon and Emily

 

[Lisa]

Well done!

 

[Emily_Babbelhund]

Well done! Carbon is such a star -so willing to do what you want him to do once he understands.

He is! I wish I was a more organised trainer who didn't flap about so much because that's where we run into trouble - he just doesn't know what I want, and who can blame him? Even though it's very slow going, we seem to do better now that I pick 1-2 behaviours per 3 week training cycle to work on. He could do much more with a proper trainer as he's a fast learner, but this is what I'm capable of...so better than nothing!

 

[Cath]

You are great Emily and Carbon is loving it. Don't knock yourself

 

[M.F.]

I love watching your training videos. Carbon is so enthusiastic!! And you are so sweet to him. Lovely!!

 

[Boogie]

That waggy, waggy tail!

 

[kateincornwall]

Dont put yourself down Emily , because what I see is a happy waggy dog and this is so lovely xxx

 

[Selina27]

Loved watching that @Emily_Babbelhund , Carbon looks so well after all he's been though. As ever, a real joy to see that wagging tail and how much he really enjoys it all.

I like the idea of different verbal cues for walking in that position, "Heel" just always has such dull connotations for me and I'm sure for Cassie too!! It's funny how using different words brightens it up no end Very impressed with the switch and I can see just how useful that will be to you.

 

[Joy]

@Emily_Babbelhund - you are great too, especially in the way you notice when you need to change what you're doing to help Carbon understand rather than just barrelling on.
@Selina27 When I went to puppy classes with Molly I learnt a lot from one of the other owners with a gorgeous GSD who said 'walking' (in a sing-song voice) as her 'heel' cue. She told me it was much harder to say 'walking' in a harsh way than it is 'heel'.

 

[Selina27]

When I went to puppy classes with Molly I learnt a lot from one of the other owners with a gorgeous GSD who said 'walking' (in a sing-song voice) as her 'heel' cue. She told me it was much harder to say 'walking' in a harsh way than it is 'heel'.

That's great!

 

[Emily_Babbelhund]

I like the idea of different verbal cues for walking in that position, "Heel" just always has such dull connotations for me and I'm sure for Cassie too!! It's funny how using different words brightens it up no end

Isn't it weird, I've never used "heel". For Brogan "let's go" was walk next to me and "tuck in" was walk basically stuck to my leg. Carbon is more of a sniffer than Brogan ever was, so "Let's go" is more "quit sniffing that corner and get a move on". "Let's walk" is his working walk cue. I want "home base" to be just come to my side whether we're walking or not.

I like to use two syllable cues with Carbon for most things. He had a disadvantage starting with human speech late, so does better with distinct sounds (Walk vs go, Monkey vs Flea, slow slow vs wait, allez up vs off). I guess it's the language nerd in me - I like thinking up sounds that will be really different for him. It totally tickles me that his vocabulary has grown so much and that he recognizes the difference between German and Spanish. Considering he only learned his own name after 9 months with me, he's done amazing.

you are great too, especially in the way you notice when you need to change what you're doing to help Carbon understand rather than just barrelling on.

Thanks Joy, my trainer has told me the same lately, which makes me feel really good as I'm very much a 'barreller' by nature!

 

[snowbunny]

so much and that he recognizes the difference between German and Spanish

I was reading something the other day which had looked at how dogs recognised speech. It may have been something someone linked on here? With humans, we're all about the consonants, but dogs focus more on the vowels to differentiate between different words. Spanish and German vowel sounds are very different, so on the back of that research, it makes sense to me that a dog would be able to tell them apart quite easily.

 

[Granca]

Considering he only learned his own name after 9 months with me, he's done amazing.

He certainly has - and so have you, Emily! Just a thought - do you think that initially your hesitancy in thinking that he was the right dog for you (when we were all holding our breath!) was a factor? You’ve got such a strong bond now.

 

[Emily_Babbelhund]

Just a thought - do you think that initially your hesitancy in thinking that he was the right dog for you (when we were all holding our breath!) was a factor?

No, I think that he just hadn't been exposed to human language. Even in the shelter (where he was only 2 weeks before I met him) just had one person there for 3 hours a day (and 80 dogs). My theory is like a human baby, it takes a while of a lot of hearing in order to start understanding patterns. I talked to him a ton from the beginning so I guess it just eventually kicked in. It was a surprise to me because I thought with his start he would have lost any window.

He still doesn't react to language like my past dogs have done (head tilts at certain words, for example) and I'm not entirely convinced that training cues help him more than 20% or so (the rest context). But he sure does know the names of his babies and we both get a kick out of that.

A lot of other things were likely affected by my hesitancy, I'm sure. I remember that whole first summer of him sleeping on the sofa. A far cry from his current position under the duvet which he seemed to take up at the same time I made my big (non) decision!