Weekly Training Update (Oct 2)

I spoke too soon in last week’s Coping With Changes post. While working on the basement, Tom felt water dripping on his head. It turned out our dishwasher was leaking a LOT in its final death throes. So, in addition to changes upstairs and changes downstairs which Lilly seemed to handle well, my sensitive border collie girl had to deal with disruption in the kitchen too. And, it freaked her out.

We had fans and heaters going to dry the floor. We had a gaping hole in the bottom cabinets, where the old dishwasher once sat. We had tools and towels, wrenches and water, and a couple of grumpy people clomping around for a little over a week.

Perhaps the worst part came when I did the dishes by hand. Sure, that put me at the sink and near the SCARY kitchen window for extended times But, the sloshing around in the sink made Lilly the most nervous.

You see, she gets very worried, slinks away, and worms like she is the most fearful dog on the planet when I try to wash her face. (Tom lets her lick the bottom of his yogurt cups, and her nose gets crusty from the yogurt, if I don’t wash it off.)

So, any time she saw me near the sink with a wet rag, she thought she was in for. After a few days of no face washing, she got less worried. It helped that I kissed her and gave her treats for approaching me and even hanging out while I did the dishes.

I’m happy to report that Tom installed our new Bosch dishwasher this morning. This beauty is heavily encased in a rubber-ish shell that provides serious sound dampening. The only thing you can hear when it is running is a little swish-swish of the water. It’ll be interesting to see how Lilly copes with that.

 

Spontaneous Recovery
The other big training issue this week was the spontaneous recovery of attention-seeking behaviors. That’s when something you’ve trained “away” comes back with full force. Earlier this week, Lilly began fussing at me for attention, fussing at Ginko for attention, and being an all-around nervous girl. The whining, the whining nearly drove me nuts.

Two theories. One is that the winter winds began in earnest this week. Even with chimes now banned at our house, the gusts still make Lilly jumpy. The second theory is that she perhaps could hear new borzoi pal Thunder up the road as he too fussed as he gets used to his new digs.

Either way, it made for an interruption-packed day, as I got up and left the room for 30 seconds each time she fussed at me and as I grabbed Ginko and brought him into my office for 30 seconds each time she fussed at him.

That bought us 15 minutes (tops) of peace before the process began again and again and again. I got pretty frustrated, but I didn’t say anything. I just withdrew myself or Ginko so that it was clear being difficult did NOT result in anything good.

The relentless retraining must have helped because she hasn’t been as fussy since.