Neptune | Great Dane | Los Angeles, CA | In Training
Updated: 11 hours ago
Meet Neptune! He's an 11 month old Great Dane from Los Angeles, CA, and he's here for our Three Week Old School Board and Train Program! Neptune is a lot of dog, but in his head, he's still a tiny little puppy. He wants to jump all over people, play bite, trip people up, and generally act like he's thirteen pounds instead of the hundred-thirty he actually is! He does know some commands, but he's selective about following through, and he grabs at the leash when he's getting frustrated. Over the next three weeks we'll make sure he understands that all four of his massive paws need to stay on the ground when he's saying hello, that he knows not to put his teeth on skin even while playing, and that he doesn't try to bite at the leash. We'll also teach him all his foundational commands, and how to follow them when told instead of doing them on his own time. Stay tuned for Neptune's three week transformation!
11/11/26
By the time I got Neptune out to the park, he was feeling more tired than frisky, so he wasn't doing all the jumping and mouthing he did during pickup at the house. Instead, he kind of just didn't feel like doing anything for me at all! He mostly just wanted to lay down in the shade, except of course for the one time I actually was trying to ask him for a Down, but he decided he was going to just try to lean against my legs instead. When he started getting annoyed with the whole process, he started grabbing at the leash and tugging on it, so a good chunk of the time was spent prying the lead out of his mouth. We definitely have our work cut out for us, but he's friendly and eager for those treats, so I know we'll get him to a good place in his training before he goes home! He was totally fine on the car ride, so I'm happy to report no issues there, and when I switched him to the smaller car for the ride to the park, he got right in. No lifting required this time! At home, some of the other dogs in the yard did balk a little at him at first, but once everyone got their sniffies out of the way, everything settled down peacefully. It was a little warm today, so he mostly just switched between sunbathing in the grass, then finding shady places to nap. I haven't seen any signs of anxiety at all, and he ate his meals just fine, which is great news. A lot of dogs are too nervous to eat their first day when in a new environment, so the fact that he settled in so fast means I won't have to battle with anxiety much when I take him out to all the different places I like to go for training sessions. He's fitting in very well so far, and I look forward to seeing what I can do with him over the next three weeks!
11/12/26
For Neptune's first session, I brought him out to one of our little neighborhood parks that's typically pretty low on the distractions scale. I had him on a slip lead instead of his prong collar, and he actually did pretty good on that (at least he did in a mostly fenced little park with nothing for him to chase!). Initially we worked a lot on teaching him his marker word ("Yes!") and his release word ("Break!"). A marker word is basically just a sound that's used to tell him when he's done the correct thing, so if I ask him for a Sit, I would give the command and then say, "Yes!" the moment his rear touches the ground. He gets the treat after the marker word so he starts listening for that sound to let him know that he's giving the correct response as opposed to relying on the treats for that. This will help wean him off of those as we move along. As for the release word, dogs need to have a cue that lets them know when they're finished performing the command. Otherwise they have no idea how long they're supposed to be holding a position for and they'll just get up and leave whenever they want. With a release word, they learn to just hang out in whatever position you put them in until you give that "Break!" signal, so it takes all the overthinking out of it. I started Neptune with only a few seconds of having to hold his Sit and Down commands before releasing him, and I'll gradually increase the amount of time, as well as adding distance I move away from him in the coming weeks. I also introduced Neptune to his Heel command, which means to come to my left side and remain in that position while we walk. I used a lot of treat luring to keep him there for today, but I'll fade those out as he starts catching on to what the command actually means. And then we also worked on his Recall, which of course is just coming when he's called. He actually did pretty good picking up on everything, and he didn't jump on me at all today, so we're making progress already! If he can keep up this willingness to learn when I start really adding those distractions, then he'll master his training in no time!
11/13/26
We timed ourselves to find a break in the rain today and went over to Pamela Park, which is a larger park in my neighborhood. It has plenty of covered areas, so we had places to duck into when the rain started up again (which of course it did almost as soon as we got there!). It at least gave me a good opportunity to practice with Neptune on holding his Sit, Down, and Place commands while I took photos. It took him a few tries at first to hold positions while I was moving away from him and getting myself into the best angles to take pics, but he caught on quickly enough. Then he was a total supermodel! It was like he started putting himself into poses to work that camera lol. He knows he looks good!
The Place command, by the way, is the one where he's laying on top of the picnic table. Place means to go to a designated spot (usually a bed, blanket, towel, etc, basically anywhere that has a solid outline so he knows where his boundaries are), and stay in that spot until released. Because it's meant to be a more long-term command than a basic Sit or Down, I do tend to encourage them to start off in the Down position so they know to get comfortable. Many people use it to send their dog to a bed or blanket while guests are over, while talking to someone at the door, or when they're trying to cook and want their dog to be in a place that's out of the way for the time being without having to shut them in a different room or a crate. It can also be used during outings so dogs know where to hang out while their people are trying to enjoy activities like eating at an outdoor cafe or reading on a park bench. Considering Neptune actually prefers to lay down and hang out once his initial excitement is out of his system, he caught onto this one right away. I think for him, getting him to leave his Place spot is going to be more difficult than putting him into to begin with! It's one of those good problems to have, especially considering his size. We want him to just lay down and be chill while we're free to move around him, so he's going to be really practiced with this one by the time he gets home. No more bull in a china shop mishaps for him!
11/14/26
There are different phases in the training process that are pretty similar between most dogs, and since Neptune went through his adjusting and initial learning phases pretty quickly, it seemed today was his testing me day. He knows the commands, but decided he was going to see if I would actually make him do them this time out; and while I often jokingly call this the "breaking the horse" phase, as someone who has also worked for years with horses, I have to say this was pretty darn on point! Trying to get a dog to lay down who is almost as tall as you is hard! Considering he normally enjoys laying down more than anything else, this was the last command I expected him to fight me on, but he's smart and seemed to know I'd struggle with this one most, so he tried to stand his ground hard on this one today. But I'm stubborn too, and between the collar corrections and the slip lead, he quickly realized I was not going to back down. One I got that through to him, the rest of the session was a breeze, and hopefully we'll only have this one day of breaking horses! Outside of that, he did do fairly well with the kids serving as my distractions. I chose Rotary Park today since it's tucked in the middle of a busier neighborhood, and there's a little playground and preschool inside the park's fenced grounds, so I expected there to be some kids. I hadn't known there would be so many scooters, but he didn't seem to be too bothered by those at all. Another guy with a dog also wandered in to walk the path at some point, but I hardly even noticed because Neptune didn't lock onto the other dog for long either. He was too busy arguing with me! I'll certainly take that over him trying to drag me over to check out a kid or another dog, though, so I'm definitely calling that a win today. Distractions are normally the most difficult to work around with training, so if all I really have to worry about is how stubborn he's going to be on any given day, then I think he's going to be relatively easy to work with once I get him locked in. They usually hit that phase around the one week mark, so from next week on, I anticipate smooth sailing with him!
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