Olivia | Doberman Pinscher | San Dimas, CA | In-Training

Feb 7, 2021
7 min read

Updated: Feb 28, 2021

Meet miss Olivia!! She is an eight month old Doberman Pinscher from San Dimas, CA. She is here for our 3 Week Board and Train program to gain some better manners! She is a jumper, likes to nip at hands and arms when walking, gets into scuffles with her brother, and gets a little over protective of her humans! Overall though she is just the sweetest girl and loves to give hugs and kisses! I can't wait to get started with this gorgeous girl so stay tuned for her three week transformation.

Pupdate 02/07/2021

Miss Olivia is doing awesome! She has a favorite toy, a little wobbly white ball. She got acquainted with her new digs for the next couple weeks and got to know me! She is doing great with the Kennel, ate all her dinner, and even conquered her fear of my scale. She is such a smart sweet girl and I can't wait to get started with her first day tomorrow!

Pupdate 02/08/2021

The big girl did so great today! We worked really hard on the fundamentals of her Recall, Heel, and Sit commands. By the end of the day she was dragging her leash and starting to get a really good understanding of the Heel command in particular. She is such a smart girl and is an absolute blast to work with! We are working on her jumping/nipping a little bit, but since it was only day 1, I wanted to give her the chance to get comfortable and come all of the way out of her shell while having fun with her training. As of right now I am just making sure to be very boring and not interact when she engages in the behavior. My guess is once she realizes that it doesn't get her what she wants she will stop trying! She did great in her first night here, she slept like a baby, ate all her breakfast, and is taking really well to the whole system/schedule in general!

02/09/2021

Miss Olivia had so much fun today! We did several sessions at the park and a few around the house and she did awesome. She is looking sharper and sharper each lesson. She is sleeping and eating well, having a blast with all the toys in the backyard, and is even offering up going into the kennel of her own volition when she gets tired.

Pupdate 02/10/2021

Olivia is so tuckered out after today! We worked on a bit of everything. She has now been introduced to all of her different commands besides under (she needs to really conquer Place before I confuse her with under, as it is basically the reverse). There was a very excited husky puppy barking up a storm at her almost her entire back bay lesson, which was the perfect distraction to work her through. She occasionally fixated on him and needed a little nudging to come back to focusing on me, but overall did really great filtering him out. One of our main focuses in the Heel portion of her lesson today was doing left turns. She likes me a little too much now that she's all the way out of her shell and is always wrapping around my leg or trying to sit in front of me to get pets while we are walking! Exaggerated left turns with "high knees" motions really helps for getting her to understand where I want her and cut her off from getting in front. She is such a sweet girl and is having an absolute blast!

Pupdate 02/11/2021

Miss Olivia's main lesson today was at Lowes! She was a bit nervous about all the strangers, new smells, and loud noises but she did awesome. We practiced a bit of everything and worked on getting her more comfortable in public. One of her biggest challenges today was to disengage from distractions and make eye contact with me, but by the end of the lesson a quick "olivia off" was all she needed!

Pupdate 02/12/2021

Miss Olivia was out and about with me in LA all day today! She is doing so well! She is getting used to defaulting into obedience when new things she is uncertain of pop up and is getting better and better about her eye contact. We worked quite a bit on auto side correcting today, which is her correcting to my left side when I start her off funky or encourage her to end up in the wrong place! She is also slowly but surely getting better about jumping/nipping when she gets excited and needs less and less leash help everyday! Today she spent most of her time with the slack dragging all the way behind us.

Pupdate 02/13/2020

Miss Olivia spent most of her day training at Irvine Spectrum the outdoor mall! She was pretty overwhelmed by all the new sights, sounds, and smells at first but the longer we worked the more comfortable she got! She got so many compliments on how well behaved she is and showed up just about every other dog there! Her weight, while not going down at any alarming rate by any means, is still on a downward trend (she's down about 1/2 a pound) so I've upped her food to 2 cups 2 times a day just to make up for all the work she's doing with me!

Pupdate 02/14/2021

Miss Olivia is doing so great! She is barely needing her leash ever these days and is getting more and more focused with each lesson. She is still really wary of doing her Down command in public (it is an incredibly submissive position so doing it in public is always difficult for dogs to do in places they don't feel secure). But we do a lot of little mini "Down" sessions in and around the house and we will get her comfortable with it in public in no time!

Pupdate 02/15/2021

Miss Olivia is having so much fun! We went to another outdoor mall today and really got to have fun expanding out all her commands. I am so proud of how much she has already learned in her first week!

Pupdate 02/16/2021

Miss Olivia did her long session at another outdoor mall this evening to get her used to working at night as well as during the day! She is having so much fun with her commands now that she is getting more comfortable.. We introduced an expansion of her Place command today, Place to Place! This is to go from one Place object to another with a gesture. She is also loving the kennel these days, when she is released into the house she sprints through the living room straight into it!

Pupdate 02/16/2021

We spent a bunch of time at the skatepark today! At first Miss Olivia was super nervous, jumpy, and couldn't focus. However, starting further away and making baby steps forward she worked through her fears and was turning heads with how good she is! She is such a sweet girl and she is so much fun to work with!

Pupdate 02/18/2021

Miss Olivia helped me make an instructional video about her Recall command! This video is intended to help you get some of the basics before she comes home next week. Let me know if you all have any questions at all!

Pupdate 02/19/2021

Miss Olivia did just amazing in her Home Depot session today! She conquered a difficult place object, she walked right past a 3 year old girl screaming DOGGGY!! while waving her hands and jumping up and down, and she stayed in a when a gentleman reached towards her making kissy noises. I am so proud of how well she is doing, it was so much fun getting to show her off! She is also really getting her duration Place down in the backyard!

Pupdate 02/20/2021

Miss Olivia did so great at the outdoor mall today! It was so busy and there were tons of dog distractions, a few even got nasty with her and she just kept to her obedience!

Pupdate 02/21/2020

Miss Olivia is doing so well! We went to the super distracting side of the Duck park today, there were squirrels, ducks, geese, other dogs, and children on scooters! She was pretty distracting right at first but quickly fell into all her commands and I was so proud! She even did some of her best Down's yet! Which has been fairly difficult for her to feel comfortable doing in public up until now. She helped me make an instructional video on her Heel command too!

Pupdate 02/22/2021

Miss Olivia did amazing in her outdoor mall session today! She is still a bit unsure of doing her down command in pubic but was really rocking it today! We worked on some new types of distractions (me walking out of sight briefly, loud noises, her leash dragging a little). She has come so far and is such an absolute joy to work with these days, I am going to be sad to be sending her home at the end of this week!

Pupdate 02/23/2021

Miss Olivia was working on getting some extreme distance today! She did awesome! I was getting pretty far from her for longer and longer periods of time and she did just stellar. She does get a bit over excited in her distance work. Once she has stayed in command for a long time and from a really far distance it gets really hard for her to contain herself! So while her jumping is significantly more under control in normal everyday circumstances (walking around the house/neighborhood, doing average commands in public) she did do quite a bit of it in her distance lesson today, however given that it was the first time she was accomplishing these levels I wanted her to get to celebrate it a little and didn't dissuade it a ton. Overall she is looking so sharp!

Pupdate 02/24/2021

She is just such a pretty girl! We are going to miss her absolute tons! We took it easy and just practiced all the basics around the house today since we are starting big momma's final video filming tomorrow. She is doing so well and is such a happy girl.

Pupdate 02/25/2021

Miss Olivia is so much fun to have out and about! She got so many compliments today. We had a couple stop and ask us all kinds of questions and when we turned a corner later in the session we walked right into them telling their friends about how well behaved she is! It's hard to tell in this video but we also had a gentleman with an over friendly retriever walk right up and stand only a few feet from miss Olivia while she was in a down and she maintained her command perfectly the whole minute he was talking to me!

Pupdate 02/26/2021

Miss Olivia is almost all ready to go home! We have just a couple last pieces of her final video to do and get her packed up to go home. She is going to be so missed but is going to be so excited to show off all her new skills to her parents!