Over the last month I have been getting Able used to sharing the spotlight with my older dog Rik while I trim his nails. Until this point I have been shutting her out of the room so that it’s easier for him to concentrate on holding still.
This will make my life easier, and it’s also the first time either of my dogs have had to “take turns” with another dog in the same room. Thus far in my dog-owning career, when I want to train one of my dogs, I’ve had to shut the other up in a bedroom. This is often noisy and can lead to damage to doors since of course my other dog would very much like to take part in training too!
So with Able, I really want to establish the idea of sharing my attention and taking turns at training. I’m not sure how far I’ll be able to get with Rik, who is very demanding when she’s not the centre of attention and also gets very wound up watching other dogs play. If I work through this challenge with Able, though, he will hopefully be more cooperative when he is the oldest dog in the house and I get a new puppy.
First Attempts at Turn Taking
I chose nail trimming for the first exercise my dogs would take turns on, because it doesn’t involve much movement, it’s fairly unexciting, and I don’t need to get very far away from the dog that is waiting for its turn.
I have designed my setup carefully to keep my dogs out of each other’s space, but both within arm’s length so I can feed them. I set up a pair of raised dog beds on either side of the couch to act as stations, and sit on the floor between them with a bowl of treats.
I start by getting both dogs on their stations and feeding them there several times, then I invite Rik off (obnoxious older dogs get to go first) and feed the puppy while she hops down. She gets into nail-trimming position between my legs and then I feed both dogs. I trim her feet one nail at a time, feeding both dogs between every nail, and then ask her to hop back up on the bed and feed both dogs again.
Then I repeat it all again with the puppy. This takes a bit longer because Rik’s motto in life is “when in doubt, do a 2-on/2-off” (except at the end of the dogwalk, sadly) so she keeps creeping partway off her station and barking in my face. I deal with this by taking her collar, moving her forward off the bed, then turning her around and pointing her at it.
I’m very careful to feed the waiting dog whenever I feed the “active” dog. This means the rate of reinforcement for staying on the bed is the same as for getting your nails trimmed – slightly higher, even, since sometimes I feed both dogs on the bed. If I was feeding more often for the nail trimming than for the waiting, then waiting on the bed would seem like a pretty raw deal to my dogs!
We are three weeks into this training, which will take a while since I’m only doing it once a week. Able is very good at staying quietly on his bed while I do Rik’s nails. Rik is still pretty bad at first, but once she’s had enough treats for staying on the bed she is able to settle down a bit. They are both very bad at staying when I release the other dog off the bed – once I work through this I should find it easier to manage them in everyday life too, an added bonus.
My eventual “one day” goal is to be able to have both my dogs out on their beds during my back yard agility training sessions, as in this video by Susan Garrett. I don’t know how realistic this is for Rik, but I’ll gradually increase the fun factor of the work I do with the active dog and see how far we get. I’m very keen to get Able up to this level, even if Rik can’t quite get there, so that things will be easier when I get my next agility puppy.