A Canine Good Citizen
AKC Canine Good Citizen. What is it? Why you and your dog might want to take it.
Happy Sunday everyone! In general updates, we have the preliminary results from our first poll on Topics. Currently tied for the lead is animal training and recipes. I am going to keep the poll open as I rotate though the different topics to give everyone a chance to vote. Once Summer is officially started we will close the poll. So, if you haven’t voted now is your chance just check out this post and vote away. Here is the poll.
For everyone with pets, my question for today is what item do you struggle the most teaching your pet? If you don’t have a pet, what do you have to work at teaching yourself or others?
For me it is teaching Crokell that he cannot go play with everyone, especially when another dog is acting playful. Or when it is a young kid - ever since he met the kid down the street, he wants to play with all the little boys and girls!
Recently, I had a number of conversations with people interested in dog training, usually for service animals, but often for more general dog training. I am in many, many, ways just a beginner, but I have been fascinated by dog training, dog behavior, and dog genetics for decades.
In this regards, I want to share about a very specific dog award: the AKC Canine Good Citizen award (CGC). This award is basically a stepping stone for higher level dog skills and showcases training and socialization behavior. Some trainers even suggest people retest their dogs every 2 years to help maintain and verify the dog and trainer have not slipped into bad habits. I was a little surprised by that, but it sort of makes sense - maintenance matters. Use it or lose it applies to dog training too.
The award requires an AKC evaluator the test the dog and owner on the then aspects described below. I totally need to get Crokell evaluated but I know he is super dog friendly and super human friendly (especially very young and very old) so he has a hard time sitting calmly sometimes. We will see.
Canine Good Citizen (CGC)
Accepting a Friendly Stranger. The dog needs to allow someone to come up and speak with their handler. The humans should be able to shake hands at only a foot apart. The dog cannot jump up or lunge toward the stranger.
Sitting Politely for Petting. The dog needs to allow the evaluator (our generic friendly stranger) to touch or pat its head without negative reaction.
Appearance and Grooming. The dog should already be groomed and relatively clean, but at the test the evaluator will use comb or brush (provided by the trainer) and groom the dog lightly. This allows the evaluator to check that the dog is not a matted mess. I think the silly bed head Crokell has going most of the time is allowed, but no matted fur.
Out for a walk. The handler and the dog will walk around on a loose leash and dog should remain with the handler not pulling. They might ask you to walk faster or slower or turn left/right. Meep! I am really bad at left and right.
Walking through a crowd. It sounds worse than it is. The dog and handler need to walk past around 3 people. The dog shouldn’t strain at leash and should mostly ignore the strangers.
Sit, Down, Stay. I think they actually call it “Sit and Down on Cue/Staying in Place” but basically the point is that show that the dog has learned some basic hand-signals. Dog must sit on cue, down on cue and then stay in a sit or a down while the handler is around 20 feet away.
Come. Handler will call the dog from 10 feet away and the dog should go directly to handler on cue. (How fast does he need to move? Asking for a friend. -Tod)
Reaction to another dog. Two handlers walk up to each other, pretend to shake hands, and the dogs need to stay under control. The dog can show casual interest in the other dog but cannot strain on the leash. This one is really hard for both stand offish dogs and for overly friendly dogs like Crokell.
Random Distractions. The test shows that dog remains mellow during standard distractions like something being dropped on the floor, a door shutting, a jogger going by, etc. The dog can jump but should not freak out. One bark is allowed. Woof! They probably aren’t talking about the handler, oops.
Supervised Separation. The last part is that the handler leaves the dog with the evaluator and goes out of sight for 3 minutes.
You might have noticed this award is mostly about the dog being well behaved and that is more important than tricks any day. The AKC has full details check out the CGC handbook: https://images.akc.org/pdf/cgc/GK9GC9.pdf or search the AKC site for CGC.
As a plus for dogs that get the CGC, they only need 5 additional tricks for the Trick Dog Title. Yes, titling is basically gamified dog training, which is why it is so addicting. Titles track your leveling up!
Good luck, on doggedly leveling up you and your canine companion no matter what you current status is.
How does this relate to our writing?
Our stories almost always have some sort of pet animal. Sometimes, the animal is a person like in our Nano-Sapiens Universe stories. However, especially in our first novel which Tod is editing, we often make use of our training for fun or for plot points. In the CGC test, the dog is tested for responding to hand signals. Many dogs will then always respond to a command hand signal, whether you meant it or not. A common verbal one with dogs is the “okay” command. We’ve heard a lot of stories of people saying “okay” in conversation and their dog deciding it meant they could leave or lay down or something.
Writing update
Tod has been working away on editing the novel. He is doing a listen through and cutting a word here, a paragraph there, just over all tightening it up. We had gotten some feedback from our beta readers about a few places in the novel which were either slow or confusing, so he has been fixing that.
As for me… sadly this past week has been a little chaotic. Writing took a back seat to work. But I have big plans for the coming week I will be playing catch-up on all the wonderfully writing items that I let slide. I will be revising an outline for a second novel and pounding out a few chapters. This one has a little less cooking compared to our first novel and a bit more action and oddly for me, more romance. We will see how I do with making characters act like they like each other, at the moment my character banter is hit and miss. Unfortunately I cannot tell which it is… Thank goodness for good editors like Tod and the Alpha Mercs.
Tod here - I’m hoping she also works on the first two chapters of the novella I’m starting. We’re exploring a different method of writing novels, where I do a 1000-2000 word “Tod chapter” that Anna takes and turns into a 5000 word “real chapter”. It’s hilarious listening to her feedback on the small chapters I give her.
Anna and Tod
Heeling. Mine walk loose leash okay, most of the time, but not a true "heeling" which I need to work on. He is small enough, that I would have to bend over to try to keep him to my shin/knee. So, ideas on how to train that better.