I found a new dog blog I like. It is called Dr. Jen’s Dog Blog. http://www.drjensdogblog.com/ I came upon this blog by way of social media. I’m always interested in learning more about how to train my dog.

I have a blue heeler dog that is three years old and still a pretty independent thinker. She is a lot better than when we got her as a pup, but I continue working with her and training her.

One thing I’ve done is to train her to run alongside my bicycle.

She’s pretty good when she’s on a leash, but it can be hit or miss to get her to listen when she is off-leash or in the house. That’s why I was interested in Dr. Jen’s post about training with food incentives. She says it is perfectly ok to keep treats around the house to use for training and keep some in your pockets too. I guess I’ve been thinking at three years old, my dog ought to be listening to me better. But according to Dr. Jen, it’s ok to reinforce with food and vary up the frequency of rewards, but always have the possibility that a reward might be in the mix.

We also have an issue with our dog barking at anyone who comes to the house or even walks by the house. My wife has a home-based business so having an excitable heeler greet everyone with enthusiastic barking isn’t the best thing. So I found another Dr. Jen post that discusses the barking-at-visitors issue, and it looks like some distraction training might be in order to see if we can improve that situation.

Here is a related PostScript – this is a sketch I made of our dog Daisy being sweet.