In the beginning...

When my human's first brought me home, they started training me on DAY ONE!  Luckily, I'm pretty smart, so I was able to keep up, but boy was I exhausted from all that learning!  I didn't even have time to chew up shoes and furniture!  They started by following a book by Victoria Stilwell called "It's Me or the Dog!"  She gave great advice for beginners on the basic commands like sit, down, stay, etc.  One thing that she teaches is to really "think like a dog" rather than a human.  I could tell my humans were struggling a little with this when they would use weird words and throw their fingers and hands around - I had NO IDEA what they were trying to say!

I did hear later, however, that mom didn't agree with Victoria's ideas on feeding...and boy am I happy about that!  She feeds me all real, raw meat and organic veggies from Feed This!  Sometimes they even throw special liver treats in there for me!

For those of you who don't have time to read the book, it pretty much told my humans to be patient and let me learn things on my own.  All dogs are different (so I hear) but this definitely worked great for me! For example, to teach me sit, she held a treat in my hand, but didn't give it to me.  I remember I was so frustrated that I couldn't chew that treat out of her hand!  Eventually, I got fed up and sat down...and viola!  I got the treat!  After a few times of the same result, I figured out exactly what she wanted - my butt on the ground!

Me practicing "sit" at a photo shoot when I was 5 months old

For down, she did almost the same thing, but held the treat on the ground.  I would bend down to try and take it, but she wouldn't give it up!  I could smell it ans taste it, but that was it!  Finally I got fed up, and just put my body down but kept my nose and paws near that treat...and again...I got the treat!

Me in a "down" when I was 5 months old

Now I'm learning all kinds of things like cleaning up my toys, closing the door, cleaning up dirty laundry, etc but I'll post a few more blogs on how I learned some more of the basics.