The Ruby Project Week 1: Birds on the Brain

It’s been 8 days since Ruby came to live with me and Able. This is my second time adopting an adult dog, and I think it takes a bit longer to build a relationship. My Christmas break has not been full of sunshine and strawberries, either in the literal sense or in terms of Ruby fitting into the household … but as the cheese ad says, good things take time!

Exploring the World

Ruby is much more confidnet than Rik was when she came off the farm. I was expecting that she would need careful introduction to the big wide world of being a townie dog, but she hasn’t been bothered by anything she’s seen or heard, from the dishwasher to supermarket trolleys, the fire siren to a screaming baby in a pram.

She has met four unfamiliar dogs – a huntaway, a border collie cross, and two mini schnauzers. She’s also seen a bulldog from the other side of the fence and she did not seem too bothered by that. Poor Rik had a complete meltdown the first time she saw an unfamiliar dog (a pug, something that looked quite unlike anything she would have seen on the farm) and jumped onto the roof of the car! I am trying to manage interactions with other dogs very carefully to prevent bad experiences in her first few weeks at home, but so far she seems to be quite the social butterfly.

Bird Brains

Ruby is very, very, very interested in birds.

She was staring at chickens through a fence when I picked her up off the farm. While I was aware that my neighbours had chickens, I also have a sturdy corrugated iron fence between us, so I did not anticipate that Ruby would become obsessed with standing and staring at the fence. On closer inspection (after I had to climb into a bush to remove her!) there is a very very small gap right in the corner where I can see daylight, but as that’s also right on the neighbours’ boundary I highly doubt she can actually see any chickens through it. The back yard is out of bounds until I figure out a way to fence off Ruby’s Chicken Corner.

She has also eyed up a bee, a cactus, a hedgehog, some cones stored in the corner of the living room, the same cactus after dark … She is interested in flies and moths and sandflies and spent 15 minutes this afternoon staring at the living room ceiling because there was an insect fluttering around up there!

This is not an insurmountable problem (I hope!) but it does mean that it’s a bit harder to keep her engaged during training sessions. It’s not easy to find a room of the house that doesn’t have any insects in it, and once we move outside that’s going to be even more challenging for us. I’m going to have to take my time over our foundation training and make sure she has lots of success so that it pays off for Ruby to stay engaged in our training rather than scanning the room for bugs she can stalk.

What We’re Working On

At the moment my main goal is to get that full engagement from Ruby so that training becomes much easier. The actual skills we are working on are less important, and are mostly intended to help her learn to love working with me.

• Food skills. Up until now, Ruby has been fed by having chunks of dead cow thrown at her. She’s been a little perplexed by the dehydrated and freeze-dried treats I have on offer, to say nothing of her first encounter with kibble! Basic skills like eating food from my hand, eye-tracking a treat I toss and eating it off the floor, and even eating from a bowl are brand new to her. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on these specifically, but we still have hiccups in our other training sessions, particularly with thrown treats.
• Recall. Ruby has been taught that her name is an attention cue, so if I say it when she’s busy staring at something, she’ll only briefly glance at me or maybe twitch an ear. I discovered a couple of days ago that she does also know “come” and that she will more reliably come towards me when she hears that – but still not necessarily all the way to me. I have spent a few training sessions on creating a happy response when I reach out to take her collar, and now I’m trying to apply that to the real world – “Ruby come” means that she should come all the way to me, and I’ll take her collar, and then I’ll feed her.
• Up & Down game. This comes from the Control Unleashed series of pattern games. I’ve not really done any CU stuff before, but I’m interested to experiment with it. The point of the pattern games is to learn them at home first, and then they make it easier for your dog to keep his emotions under control when he’s out in the real world. The Up & Down game teaches Ruby that when she looks at my face, I’ll drop a treat into a bowl for her and she can then look at me when she’s ready for the next treat. It’s fine for her to scan the environment a little between taking the treat and looking at me again, but if she can’t seem to disengage from the things around her to offer eye contact, that’s a clue to me that I’ve thrown her a bit too far into the environmental deep end.
• Shaping games. With Rik, it took two weeks for the light bulb to fully go off that she could cause me to feed her by offering behaviour. It hasn’t quite happened for Ruby yet in her first week, so I guess I haven’t improved that much in my training skills over the last decade! We have been playing around with hand targets (moderately successful) and with putting paws in and on various surfaces (I thought I was making progress but actually I’ve just trained her to gravitate to the spot right in front of me, oh well). Hopefully things “click” into place soon!
• Body handling. Partly to identify any problem areas where she doesn’t like being touched, partly to prepare her for nail trimming and vet visits, and partly to help us form a bond. Luckily Ruby has no issues with me handling her paws or ears or mouth or any other body parts, and she loves having her bum scratched. She’s quite an up-close-and-personal kinda gal and I suspect she would love to be a lap dog. Her favourite thing is when I sit on the beanbag outside, because our faces are at about the same level and she can come get nice and close for a cuddle.
• Toy play. This wasn’t going to be a major focus for me during our first week, but I think we are going to need it. She’s not enthusiastic enough about food for me to get reliable engagement and drive for it, but on the other hand she seems very interested in eyeing and chasing things. I’ve had a little success in getting her to chase, pick up and carry around a rabbit fur tug toy. I think she will really enjoy tugging once she understands that it is a thing, but it’s not something that comes naturally to her – she’s more about eyeing things up and darting in for a little nip, which is completely to be expected for her breed.
• Sit stay. Not a major focus, and in fact I probably wouldn’t be working on it at all if she didn’t already know what “sit” means. I haven’t spent any training time on this, but I do ask her to sit while I open the door of her crate, and feed her a couple of treats before I give her a release cue.
• Being a house dog! Having never been inside before, Ruby obviously has a lot to learn. On the bright side, we’ve had no toilet training accidents at all, and being a farm dog she immediately understood that crates are for snoozing and chillaxing in. On the not-so-rosy side, the chicken obsession has become a check-whether-the-back-door-is-open-so-I-can-look-at-chickens obsession. When she’s loose in the house she really struggles to settle down, and she makes frequent trips to check the back door, just in case it’s magically opened itself in the last 90 seconds… She does a little better if I shut the door to the room that we’re in so that she can see it without getting up, but it’s still a work in progress.