Your cart is currently empty!
Category: Training
-
Dog that helps find missing pets honored
Ruger is an all-American dog with a billboard to prove it.
The 5-year-old Belgian Malinois-pitbull mix from Bentonville is trained in search and rescue, specializing in finding missing pets. Recently, she was selected as one of 10 winners among about 16,000 applicants in the Early Times All-American Dogs social media campaign.
Early Times Kentucky Whiskey has honored Ruger and nine other “All-American” dogs from around the country with a photoshoot, a billboard and a whiskey barrel doghouse. Ruger’s billboard is in Stephens City near U.S. 11 and Va. 37.
“I was super surprised,” said Ruger’s owner, Lisa Jones, who submitted Ruger’s information in March.
Considering the thousands of submissions, she said, “I was just blown away.”
Jones, who operates the business Full Tilt Tracking LLC, got into search and rescue after she hired Dogs Finding Dogs out of Baltimore to track down her son’s missing dog in Front Royal.
“We didn’t eat, we didn’t sleep. We looked for that dog around the clock,” she recalled.
Afterward, she realized that she wanted to help others find their missing pets, too.
“That was a job I could really wrap my heart around,” said Jones.
Ruger helps find lost animals by sniffing their scent from a household item. She narrows down the area where the pet is hiding, and Jones might then either set out a trap for the animal or lure it using its owner’s scent.
“People want to be found, but animals don’t,” she said. “You’re trying to trigger that recognition in them.”
In one of her favorite memories, Ruger helped find a lost dog named Willie in the George Washington National Forest. She located the area where Willie was hiding, and his owners walked the trail before Jones directed them to return to their car and leave all the doors open — “so that their scent would blow out into the night.”
This left Willie “a scent trail to follow,” she said, and a few minutes later, he came bounding down the trail to the car.
“It’s a rewarding job, I love it,” said Jones.
The 2021 calendar is Early Times’ second All-American Dogs calendar, said Robert Trinkle, partner and senior vice president at PriceWeber.
“We have a great team that goes through all of the entries,” he said in a Tuesday phone call. “Really, what we’re looking for is dogs that are All-Americans.”
What that indicates, he said, is a dog that exemplifies the core values that have kept the Early Times brand alive since 1860 — hard word and dependability.
Other dogs featured in the calendar hail from Kentucky, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana and Nevada. They’re military dogs, rescue dogs, therapy dogs and companion dogs who help others, spread joy or simply have an inspiring “All-American” redemption story.
The idea for the yearly calendar grew from a partnership the company has with K9s for Warriors, a nonprofit that trains service dogs for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury, and other trauma resulting from post-9/11 military service, an Aug. 17 company release states.
“To date, Early Times has donated $200,000 to K9s For Warriors,” the release states.
Source: Winchesterstar
-
15 Tips for Training your Pet With a Q-Clicker
Clicker training is a terrific, science-based way to communicate with your pet. It’s easier to learn than standard command-based training. You can clicker train any kind of animal, of any age. Puppies love it. Old dogs learn new tricks. You can clicker-train cats, birds, and other pets as well. Here are some simple tips to get you started.
- Push and release the springy end of the clicker, making a two-toned click. Then treat. Keep the treats small. Use a delicious treat at first: for a dog or cat, little cubes of roast chicken, not a lump of kibble.
- Click DURING the desired behavior, not after it is completed. The timing of the click is crucial. Don’t be dismayed if your pet stops the behavior when it hears the click. The click ends the behavior. Give the treat after that; the timing of the treat is not important.
- Click when your dog or other pet does something you like. Begin with something easy that the pet is likely to do on its own. (Ideas: sit; come toward you; touch your hand with its nose; lift a foot; touch and follow a target object such as a pencil or a spoon.)
- Click once (in-out.) If you want to express special enthusiasm, increase the number of treats, not the number of clicks.
- Keep practice sessions short. Much more is learned in three sessions of five minutes each than in an hour of boring repetition. You can get dramatic results, and teach your pet many new things, by fitting a few clicks a day here and there in your normal routine.
- Fix bad behavior by clicking good behavior. Click the puppy for relieving itself in the proper spot. Click for paws on the ground, not on the visitors. Instead of scolding for making noise, click for silence. Cure leash-pulling by clicking and treating those moments when the leash happens to go slack.
- Click for voluntary (or accidental) movements toward your goal. You may coax or lure the animal into a movement or position, but don’t push, pull, or hold it. Let the animal discover how to do the behavior on its own. If you need a leash for safety’s sake, loop it over your shoulder or tie it to your belt.
- Don’t wait for the “whole picture” or the perfect behavior. Click and treat for small movements in the right direction. You want the dog to sit, and it starts to crouch in back: click. You want it to come when called, and it takes a few steps your way: click.
- Keep raising your goal. As soon as you have a good response-when a dog, for example, is voluntarily lying down, coming toward you, or sitting repeatedly-start asking for more. Wait a few beats, until the dog stays down a little longer, comes a little further, sits a little faster. Then click. This is called “shaping” a behavior.
- When your animal has learned to do something for clicks, it will begin showing you the behavior spontaneously, trying to get you to click. Now is the time to begin offering a cue, such as a word or a hand signal. Start clicking for that behavior if it happens during or after the cue. Start ignoring that behavior when the cue wasn’t given.
- Don’t order the animal around; clicker training is not command-based. If your pet does not respond to a cue, it is not disobeying; it just hasn’t learned the cue completely. Find more ways to cue it and click it for the desired behavior. Try working in a quieter, less distracting place for a while. If you have more than one pet, separate them for training, and let them take turns.
- Carry a clicker and “catch” cute behaviors like cocking the head, chasing the tail, or holding up one foot. You can click for many different behaviors, whenever you happen to notice them, without confusing your pet.
- If you get mad, put the clicker away. Don’t mix scoldings, leash-jerking, and correction training with clicker training; you will lose the animal’s confidence in the clicker and perhaps in you.
- If you are not making progress with a particular behavior, you are probably clicking too late. Accurate timing is important. Get someone else to watch you, and perhaps to click for you, a few times.
- Above all, have fun. Clicker training is a wonderful way to enrich your relationship with any learner.
For more tips, tricks, and videos, visit clickertraining by Karen Pryor.
To order your own Q-Clicker in One or Four Packs, visit our store below!
