We're starting to settle into a routine here. Helper can be squeaky and sound like a little chimp when kenneled, but she quiets down shortly after everyone else does.
One comment on Helper's name, it is a reference to H.E.L.P.eR.: Helpful Electronic Lab Partner Robot, the robot on The Venture Brothers.
Helper very bright and wonderfully food and toy motivated. The past three morning she has earned her breakfast by practicing her name, 'sit', 'down', and 'here' on walks. She's a bit reactive when other dogs or people come by and she doesn't like traffic, but most of the time I can ask her to sit and just pop kibble in her mouth until the distraction is past.
Around the house where there are few distractions she's doing wonderfully. Her attention span in the house is great too. Much better than I was expecting for a young dog with little previous training. We already have distance on asking her to 'kennel', she'll go from all the way across the living room. Similarly we're starting to get distance and duration on 'sit'. Down is pretty good from sit, but not so great from standing. From standing, when lured she gives a fantastic fold-back drop. In general she's getting better at food luring and soon we'll be able to start teaching her little tricks like circling to the left and right and weaving between legs.
Ioda just ignores Helper for the most part. In the yard they've almost-sort of-kind of thought about playing together, but then they both went and barked at our little Budda statue. So in the yard, they're getting much better together. In her kennel, Helper has twice gotten a bit snarky at Ioda. Nothing bad really, but then Ioda can tell that I get a bit upset, and so he gets upset and stressed and goes and hides in his kennel. This is why I really need to get Helper to learn the clicker training game. Monday night I tried to start conditioning her to click = treat, but the noise of the clicker was stressing her so we stopped. Since then, I've been working with Ioda (using the clicker) within ear shot and finally last night in the same room. This doesn't seem to bother her so maybe tonight I can start working with her on click = treat.
With Ioda there are several things I'm doing to make Helper less stressful. First we've been avoiding stressors (I've been trying to pay more attention to what stresses him out in the first place too) and slowly reintroducing them and clicking for 'brave' responses. Since he also doesn't enjoy loud noise we've started playing clicker-games here he gets clicks for playing with objects (right now boxes) in such a way that he makes noise. This idea is from the book Agility Right From the Start which I learned about here: clickertraining.com.
Other random dog related things, Helper will start Beginning Home Obedience at Family Dog in Kent this Thursday. Tim and I also got tired of picking Ioda up to weigh him. So we taught him to get on the scale himself. I think we have video of the process, so this might be coming shortly. Photos will also be posted soon.
