Dog Training

To try to help Max become a well behaved and good dog I have been training with Sue Kinney. Her business is called Goldenbookends. She gave me five routines to work on with Max whenever I had the time. Some of the problems she recognized were recall and over-excitement for treats. Recall is when he is running away (such as running into the road) and being able to call his name so he comes. For a trick, I would throw a treat five yards away and let him retrieve it. When he was getting it, I would call his name. If he came back to me I would give him a treat. If he didn't he wouldn't get a treat.  The trick we used for his over-excitement for treats was to show him a treat in my palm.  I would then close my hand and clench my fist.  If he went for the treat (which used to happen every time) he would bite and lick my hand. If he then decided to back off and wait patiently, I would open my hand and give him the treat.  Sometimes he wouldn't get it right away and I would have to say, "take it!"  "Take it" has become his code for, "you have passed and you may know have the treat." Over the month I've been working with him on these things he has shown huge improvement and is doing much better.

I highly recommend Sue as a trainer.  She can be reached at: http://www.goldenbookends.com/

Maxi Moto

My name is Azor and I am 12 years old.  I’m going into 8^th grade at Richmond Middle School in Hanover, NH.  I am very interested in dogs.  I decided to start working with North Star Dog Rescue to learn more about rescue dogs and volunteer my time. 

At first, we helped with a dog transfer.   A dog transfer is part of the system of bringing the dogs from the south, up the eastern seaboard and to various rescue organizations. North star is just one of many rescue oraganizations that receives these dogs. My job with the transfer was to walk the dogs between their rides. The dog I met during my first transfer is named Sweet Pea. She was a small spaniel and was on her way to her foster home after a long ride from Virginia.

My family decided that we wanted to try fostering a dog. Our biggest concern was Griffin, our ten year old shepherd who is not always nice to other dogs (but is great with people). An opportunity came up to foster a dog named Maxi Moto for a short time while his foster family was away. Maxi was one of the dogs we saw on the website that we wanted to meet so we jumped at the chance.

It was clear to us at the start that, although Max has many issues and challenges, he is a nice dog who loves to snuggle and give kisses! It turned out that his foster family didn’t have enough time to deal with all of his stuff so we decided to keep him. The biggest safety issue with Max was that he liked to bolt. He would take off out of the front door or the car and go sprinting down the road. We're really lucky we didn’t lose him in the first week. On top of this he was not house-trained.

Our first step was to install an electric fence and teach him to stay in the yard. This has helped with the bolting and is starting to help with the house-training.

Maxi also has no table manners. He was very grabby with food and would climb on tables to steal food. I started training with Sue Kenney and it’s made a huge difference. Max has learned several tricks that help him to not climb on tables and stay calm when being offered a treat. I hope to continue working with sue. Max is such a good learner that I might want to start training him to do obstacle courses.