Pack Integration

Streak is slowly but surely getting integrated into our "pack". She's such a sweetheart and, like many Alaskan Huskies, an extremely hard worker. She pushes herself constantly to try to work outside her comfort zone and take chances, even when we're not asking her to do them. Sometimes we have to push her a little on something she is stubbornly worried about (such as spending more time outside of her crate), but once we push her a little in a controlled environment and praise and treat liberally she starts feeling comfortable rather quickly and tries seeking out "extra credit" work. One of our training philosophies is that we are always training, i.e., life is always a training/learning experience for the pups and, as such, when they offer extra credit work such as Streak voluntarily approaching Mack and offering mouth sniffs, or Streak volunteering to hang out on the cushy feather bed when she could be inside her "safe" crate instead, we offer praise and/or pets and/or treats as a reward.

Some of the work Streak is not good at initiating is pack development work. That said, I take it as my job to be constantly thinking up new ways to work on developing a sense of pack feeling amongst the three dogs. As I type this we are working on a new step...eating Kongs together in the same general area.

It took Streak a little while to pick up on and latch onto the idea of eating frozen food stuffed into a Kong, but once she figured it out she absolutely adored it (as I knew she would...she's too much of a food hog not to be excited about that concept!). For the past week+ she's been at the level of eating a fully frozen Kong which requires some serious work to destuff (i.e., a one hour mealtime process). We've been having her eat her Kong in her crate with Mack and Clara eating their Kong either in their own crates (about 20 feet away and not easily visible to her) or around the corner in the living room, a good 5 feet further away and not in her line of vision. At our breakfast and dinner meals we've slowly worked up to all the dogs eating near each other (Streak just outside her crate door, Mack and Clara in the kitchen....Clara about 8 feet away and Mack about 12 feet away). Today for our "Naptime meal" (translation: Kong "lunch" meal) I put Streak in her crate with her Kong and closed the door so she'd feel safer eating while lying down so near the other dogs and fed Mack and Clara their Kongs nearby, with Mack about 5 feet from Streak's crate and Clara about 7 feet away. All 3 dogs are eating happily, with Streak occasionally peeking up to watch what the other 2 are doing. The more she sees Mack and Clara doing "normal" things like she does, generally the more comfortable with them she becomes. It's a slow process full of baby steps, but we're definitely getting there.

Streak offered her first "belly" for a belly rub today (with Mack and Clara about 8 or 9 feet away) and is learning to "touch" on command. We tried "sit" first, but this is complicated by the fact that the human hand commands which typically cause a dog to sit--i.e., raising your hand up over the dog's head until it keeps looking up and sits automatically--doesn't work for her. She was abused as a youngster long before Zoya and John rescued her, so a raised hand strikes terror and fear of being hit in her (and she tries to flatten herself against the floor and looks like she's about to bolt). Thus, we're focusing first on easier, less likely to make her nervous commands and we'll work on an alternate way to teach sit later on. Nicole wants to put Streak through a beginner's obedience class with Laura, our excellent trainer who teaches classes in Belleville and has worked with both Mack and Clara Bow, but I think Streak needs more remedial work first (a few months worth) plus a little more bonding time with us before she'll feel comfortable enough in a class type situation to learn anything new.

When she's not comfortable she tends to freeze up and withdraw, and she's still at the point where everything here is so utterly alien to her that she freezes and withdraws quite regularly. At this point classes, with a handful of untrained dogs, in an alien sort of giant room with agility equipment around the edges of the room and a bunch of strangers would cause her to completely withdraw and freeze up. If I had more money I would love to get her into specialized, customized individual training classes with Michael Berkey (Clara's first trainer, before Laura) as he has the intuitive sense & experience working with harder to train or fearful dogs like Streak (he did wonders with Clara Bow, and could read her almost as well as I can, which is something very rare indeed), but it would be more costly than I could afford, so she'll have to be homeschooled for now. Since I am a pretty decent homeschool teacher (just ask Mack and Clara!), that's not really a hardship. Mostly it just means a lot more reading, a lot more thinking, and a lot more hard work to be done by me.