Establishing Routines

First, a video from our backyard!


I think we've finally settled into something that resembles a routine. They're getting at least a short walk around the block 5-7 mornings a week. This is always a short leash and collar walk as it gives us time to work on the skill with very infrequent stimulus. I'm also planning for a longer walk (30-60 minutes) every work evening. So far this week, I've succeeded. A downside to this city walking business is that I have to plan ahead more because otherwise we only walk on sidewalks.

Walking only on sidewalks is a problem because Buzz has been dragging his rear feet more lately (or I just noticed it because we're walking on pavement and he made a rear nail bleed yesterday)! So... today I haphazardly trimmed the fur all four feet and he wore boots on both rear feet. I also made it a mission to walk on grass as much as possible! We scouted out a whole new area in our "neighborhood" even!

Bailey alerted to two dogs across the street and down. She's really been more reactive this week and I'm still not sure why. We did not play LAT, instead I asked for right side walking and fed while walking until the other dog was behind us. I think my new goal behavior is for her to recognize a dog is there and then ask to continue moving. I'll see if we can set up scenarios like that in class.

We also alternate leashes. Buzz always starts out on the Flexi because his leash behaviors are always better (unless we're in a pet supply store). Bailey always starts out on a 6 foot leash. They both wear harnesses and when we find open space I switch the leashes often.

A huge success today is that they both complied with my request to get rid of that NASTY thing in their mouths. Bailey is very good about spitting things out when I ask her to. I usually have to decide if it's worth it to wrestle Buzz for the object or just let him consume it. I can't honestly say I've worked on this behavior but he dropped a bone tonight when I cued it! Bailey also dropped a squirrel carcass she discovered at nearly the same time. I was shocked and they were both paid quite well for dropping the nasty things they'd found!

I still need to get into the Kong filling and teeth brushing habits for them but right now, walking seems to be the most important. And so we walk! I could do without the wet though, oh boy could I do without the wet!

Hopefully I'll have time to get to Battle Creek again this weekend. Both dogs seemed to love it there and I certainly love it there!

(Apparently our music isn't working right now... oh well!)

Sticky Nose Target

Bailey has a sticky chin target. It's a very strong behavior and I use it multiple times per week. It is incredibly useful and I'm so happy I taught it.

Buzz had a "lick-bop-slurp-bop-???" behavior from when I attempted to teach a sticky nose (yes-nose, not-chin) target. I took video of trying to "clean it up" without any kind of definitive marker. I am amazed at how people can train without a marker! I got some really nice solid nose touches but they were rarely repeated because of the lag time between behavior and reward. It was entertaining and ridiculous!


I did a session with him tonight using the light as a marker again. I got a lot of the same crazy not-desirable behaviors but I also got a lot of really nice nose touches with duration. He was clearly getting the point!

And this is the most recent session tonight (#3 overall).


A few more sessions and I'll have a real sticky nose target behavior!

Relaxation Protocol-Day 1 (kitchen)

This is what Bailey and I did tonight.

Sit for 5 seconds

Sit for 10 seconds

Sit while you take 1 step back and return

Sit while you take 2 steps back and return

Sit for 10 seconds

Sit while you take 1 step to the right and return

Sit while you take 1 step to the left and return

Sit for 10 seconds

Sit while you take 2 steps back and return

Sit while you take 2 steps to the right and return

Sit for 15 seconds

Sit while you take 2 steps to the left and return

Sit while you clap your hands softly once

Sit while you take 3 steps back and return

Sit while you count out loud to 10

Sit while you clap your hands softly once

Sit while you count out loud to 20

Sit while you take 3 steps to the right and return

Sit while you clap your hands softly twice

Sit for 3 seconds

Sit for 5 seconds

Sit while you take 1 step back and return

Sit for 3 seconds

Sit for 10 seconds

Sit for 5 seconds

Sit for 3 seconds

At least, I hope that's what we did... I'm still not sure if I'm doing it right!

We also worked on "It's your choice" with a few modifications.

Surprisingly, it wasn't too incredibly boring the first night. Motivation, I have it!

Contentment

content  (kənˈtɛnt)
— adj
1.	mentally or emotionally satisfied with things as they are

Tonight, the dogs are content. In fact, all dogs in the house appear to be content.

I took my dogs to the "park" near our house we've recently discovered. It's not a dog park, it's not completely fenced in, and we're probably breaking some law by having the dogs drag leashes, but it provided the dogs with an opportunity to stretch their legs! Bailey was SO happy to run around while we played recall games and she was incredibly responsive to her sticky target/recall cue nose touch. As soon as she saw my hand, she was on the move back toward me!

And Buzz was mighty responsive today as well. I was pretty proud of the elderly boy! We definitely need to find a real dog park and use it at the odd hours, but for now... this will work!

We're now all hanging out on the couch watching CSI waiting for dinner to be ready.

Content dogs make me content.

Reactive Dog Class/THE BIG MOVE

On January 2, 2012, the dogs and I moved to a house in Saint Paul, MN. Since that day, we've been doing our best to keep on going about life as it was before!

In an effort to help us all adjust better, I signed Bailey and I up for Reactive Dog Class. This is only the second type of class she's ever taken in her almost 12 years of life! (The reason for that is worth at least another blog post...)

I keep telling myself "I'm going to be a good student, that's the only way she'll get better and we'll make any progress, right?!" Truth be told, I've not been a very good student so far. I am still walking the dogs together in the morning and often-times in the afternoon as well. Before I can walk them separately, I need to work on each one being left in the bedroom while I take the other out without protest barking. I haven't found a way to safely feed out of a food toy yet (we live with another dog, Bailey guards ALL THE FOOD THINGS and things related to her crate) so they've only had a trachea one day and a frozen kong another. Kibble has been served in bowls like a bad owner! However, I AM carrying treats with me EVERYWHERE. I'm reinforcing our canine housemate for lots of appreciated behaviors, I'm reinforcing my dogs for good leash walking, responding to cues in a timely manner, and the three of them practice eating treats in an orderly fashion. A goal of mine and of the class is to be out working the dogs in public, under thresh-hold at least a couple times a week. Last night the dogs went for a car ride. I never took them out of the car so I suppose that outing doesn't count. However, tonight we went on a real outing!

Lauren and I took the dogs to Urbanimal to explore and walked around outside the store a bit. Bailey and I worked on loose leash walking, our "there's another dog" retreat (cue is a rear end tap), and sit/relax in new environments. The Saint Paul Urbanimal is TINY and there's a dog daycare attached so we didn't stay long as there were DOGS in close proximity and she still managed to keep her brain about her and work under thresh-hold. Chuck and Don's was the next stop on the list! While there she willingly worked on sit/relax in a corner of the store with very few distractions. My rate of reinforcement was high but we accomplished the task.

Tomorrow we will find a place to RUN as I know that physical exercise will help us out. My poor Bailey was used to running off leash 2-3 times a day for 10-30 minutes at a time before we moved. Now she gets some yard time, leash walk time, and sometimes we even go on a field trip. She's severely lacking in the physical activity department!

I even brushed their teeth tonight! We're getting back on track and establishing a new routine.

City Musings

Bailey wore her thundershirt at Crystal's last night. I set up her crate, put her blanket, dinner, and trachea-chew in there. She never made a peep. She was crated in an unfamiliar room behind a closed door, at the other end of the house from where the people were. The only outburst/reaction we had was while packing up to leave. I didn't close the door to the room completely and as Bailey was exiting her crate Maisy walked in. Bailey backed up into her crate, just so she could guard it, from the inside! It was some noise and lunging from within, then Maisy left the room and we carried on as if nothing had happened.

This morning, I asked her for left side loose leash walking (a behavior that's far from fluent I realized) and removed her thundershirt before going on said walk. She was hypervigilent for most of the walk until I put her on my right side. She calmed visibly and walked alongside me with variable reinforcement. When I asked for left side, my rate of reinforcement was every 2-3 steps (incredibly high, and I was still getting frequent hits to the end of the leash) but on the right side it was every 10-15 (with appropriate response to the infrequent tight leashes that occured). That's a huge difference! She also reorients more frequently while on my right side I noticed.

We saw other dogs and squirrels while out walking. She never lunged or vocalized but I saw her rise up on her tippy toes and she started taking food like a shark until we were passed them.

My dog is still reactive, and always will be.
I found areas of our training that need work.
I should probably time the putting on/taking off of her thundershirt better!
Higher value reinforcers will help me succeed faster (I had kibble).

When we got back to the house, I let her loose in the (fenced) backyard. She took the opportunity to explore and investigate but I didn't see any classical signs of "de-stressing" after a stressful event. I think that's a good thing, too!

Calling Dogs Off

I had a discussion with a friend the other day. His dogs are hunt-test trained (or in training) retrievers. Despite our differences regarding training methods and choice of dog sport, we have discussions about end-result-behaviors pretty successfully. Most recently, he gave me some wonderful advice on Bailey's directed retrieve problem using a common hunt-test drill. I applied it a bit differently than he'd advised, but the basis was the same.

One of our last discussions has still got me a bit confused though. The topic was calling dogs off a chase.

I said I can call Bailey off chasing live animals. She used to run the 80 acre farm at whim and thus had zero impulse control, because I'd never asked her for it. My friend looked at me like I had twelve eyes and said "of course you should be able to call your dogs off a chase." When I began working on the call off, I was new to clicker training and still had that knee-jerk collar correction habit. Bailey and I weren't communicating very effectively, but I'll be darned if I was going to give up and use any kind of physical pressure to get this end result!

I happened upon a post by someone on the original SitStay forum (the cause of my online dog community obsession) suggesting the use of a whistle as my recall cue, because it's not something the dog hears daily and can be loud enough to break through to the brain when a dog is focused on chasing. I don't remember all the details of my training plan (and I'm sure it changed almost daily) but in the end, I could call her off prey (with a whistle) when she gave chase. She also developed impulse control to the point where she was able to see a running animal and NOT give chase.

I never used an e-collar on her. I never attached a long line so she would hit the end and "learn her lesson." I never (intentionally) set her up to fail.

So why shouldn't I have been ecstatic I achieved this end result without inflicting pain? Apparently this is impossible without using force. I don't know about you, but I do know that at least one person has trained his dogs to do far more amazing things without the use of force and pain.