Snapshots and Wanderings

Well, Woozle and I have come to something like an understanding, but I'm still feeling pretty lost... He has toned down the defensive/frustrated/posturing snarkiness. I am being a better leader and not tolerating crap towards myself or Daisy. He has never exhibited even a hint of snark towards anyone else, though he definitely needs some work on manners. I think the next thing I am going to work on is "Not Jumping Up on People." He is doing much better around cars, though anything more than a quiet, residential street or a parking lot is too much for him and maintaining his focus in almost any situation requires a lot of effort from me. I am also coming to the conclusion that "high-drive" means "very easy to teach, but must be taught absolutely everything." I'm not saying that is a bad thing, just different... I hope I am capable of teaching him all that. I have also realized there is another thing he will ignore really distracting things for: a tug game. It's a good thing in some ways, but at the moment I am really wishing it was Fetch.

Yesterday I had to pick up some stuff at Lowe's. He has been there several times and I got the feeling he was rather bored. He had already had a nice long walk on a longline at the college, so his energy wasn't over the top. He said hi to a few people and then focused on me. I had some treats, but I also had to get the shopping done and that required a shopping cart. He is certainly aquainted with shopping carts; he's even ridden in them and really didn't care all that much. This time however, he was fixated on the wheels. He would stop biting them if I asked him to focus on me for treats, but then then only for a few seconds and I soon ran out. At that point there really wasn't much to be done except tell him to Leave It and ward him away from the cart. When he wouldn't, I put him back in the car and finished my shopping solo, feeling rather dejected.

Yesterday afternoon we took him to a family member's house. He hadn't been there in a while. I took him in the back yard and played some frisbee. His energy was really a bit much since he had been in his crate most of the day. He will fetch frisbees a few times, but unfortunately fetch in general and frisbees in particular aren't something he absolutely adores. He gets frustrated trying to pick them up. He burned a little energy, but as soon as he was tired enough to start exploring a little he discovered there was a dog he could see in a yard about 50 yards away that he really preferred barking at. I tried  to take him in the house, but he wouldn't stop barking, so back in the Blazer he went. I tried to get him out again, when the kids were playing in the front yard, but he still wouldn't stop barking, mouthing, jumping up and tying people in knots with his longline. He stayed in the car until we were almost ready to leave, late at night. I got him out once more for a potty break and a last ditch attempt to exercise him. When I tried to walk him, he was more interested in being a pest than exploring, which is worth pondering over I suppose, since he was in a very unfamiliar area. I didn't have any treats or toys, but we played some tug with the longline. It was actually quite successful. He does Out pretty reliably, even if it isn't instantly and he ignored a couple of barking dogs for the game. I also started combining it with obedience for possibly the first time. He was out cold for most of the hour-long drive home.

I think he's trying to tell me, he really, REALLY wants to do Schutzhund. But we've got a lot of shaping up to do or that will just be a really, REALLY bad idea.

A Bad day

Sunday was a Very Bad, but hopefully informative day...

I had Woozle out on a long line in the front yard yesterday afternoon, tied to the porch. I was watching the kids play and we were going to go on a short road trip later. I was standing next to him and he jumped up and bit me on the arm, apparently for no particular reason except frustration at being tied.  I don't think any cars/dogs were passing or anything like that. There was no way it was going to break the skin, but it definitely wasn't a playful mouthing. I immediately escorted him back to his crate. Once there, while I was trying to put him inside, he turned and put a small hole in one of my fingers (yes, it bled). I didn't react to that, but forced him in and he charged the door snarling at me.

I had been planning on taking him in the car, but in view of events, we went on the road trip without him.  I took him out 3 more times in the evening (after a banishment of several hours) for potty breaks and dinner (on a scent pad instead of his bowl). His reaction wasn't as extreme, but he did growl and lunge at the door the first two times. This has nothing to do with the bark collar; he hasn't worn the thing at all, in the crate or out, for the last 2-3 days. His barking hasn't been outrageously bad and I've totally forgotten about it. Maybe it never had anything to do with the collar at all.

All I can think of is A. hormones (he's still awfully young, but at 6 months, I'm willing to consider it). I am NOT a natural leader/alpha personality and often don't even notice a lot of probably really crappy behaviors. B. I've been giving him too much freedom around the house. I've been busy and haven't been able to exercise him enough this last week, so I've been giving him more time running loose in the house. He is mostly house trained and doesn't normally destroy stuff immediately, so I have time to take them away. Of course this leads to C. Not enough stimulation. Probably all 3 really... I guess it's NILIF from here on out...

Daisy is a slightly pushy and very forward dog, but with some structure, she has really relaxed over the course of this last year or so and now she's mostly just a joy to have around. I have zero experience with something like this.

A Small Miracle

Well I've had a lot to think about. At the dog trial on Saturday I took Woozle out first and walked around a bit near the main building. Ten  minutes later I was almost in tears. He wasn't responding to anything. Any dog even one 100 yards away was sending him into a barking frenzy. I tried luring with both toys and treats. He simply didn't care. He just wanted to bark and bark and bark.

I had been trying the bark collar on his walks and around the house, but it seemed to be making him snarky so I had decided it wasn't fair unless I was SURE he was just being a brat. That pretty much limits it to crate-use only. So I was really at my wits end. I couldn't stop the barking; couldn't socialize him effectively without stopping the barking. I couldn't even exercise him properly without stopping the barking, even around home.

That and I was freezing cold. It was quite windy and I had forgotten my outer coat. We had walked along a lawn one side of the building to try and find some workable distance away from other dogs.Then some dogs came around on the south and we had to move further. We didn't move far enough or fast enough and some dogs came around on the north and we were boxed in between the side of the building and the road. I tried to keep in the middle but there was no stopping Woozle's barking. Then some more dogs came out of a side door and then the quarters were even closer. There were 5 or 6 dogs about 20 yards away all minding their own business, but Woozle was going ballistic. I sat down really defeated and miserable, just trying to keep him from lunging out of my numb fingers, and waited for the dogs and their owners to drift off.

In the meantime I was having a running dialogue with myself. "What on earth am I supposed to do? He isn't viscous. Au-contraire, he is extremely friendly, but how can I work with this? These are doggy people so they are understanding but still... I can't take him anywhere without causing a major disruption. He seems to be getting worse, not better. He is also getting big enough that I really might have a hard time training this out.  Even Britte wasn't this bad in public and I was mostly powerless to help her." All these negative ugly voices and self-doubt were filling my head.

Then for whatever  reason there was a split second lull in the barks (he has to get a gasp of air occasionally) and for whatever crazy reason, or maybe it was just the last shred of hope I had left in me, I said "Yes".

Woozle's head whipped around. Ten seconds later, after maybe two more markers, he was sitting in my lap begging for more treats. The other dogs were still milling around. Who are you and what have you done with my puppy?!!! I was stunned he even heard me.

My treats were soon running low, so I took him back to the Blazer and switched dogs. We went in to the trial. Daisy's progress was ho-hum, but on the plus side, the stairs don't seem to bother her much anymore. We sat down, warmed up, relaxed and didn't accomplish much. Daisy had the audacity to steal someones pretzel. Grr... I should have been watching her more closely. Fortunately that person was understanding and wouldn't even let me buy her another one.

On his second rotation, I didn't have any treats left so I took Woozle to a large dog yard and let him off leash. There were dogs in the distance but for the most part none came closer to the fence than 50 yards. The kong-on-a-rope was  enticing enough to mostly hold his focus. We had an awesome game of fetch and I had one pooped puppy at the end. He still lit up quite a bit on the return trip to the car but now I have an effective tool for dealing with it as long as I have treats!

So... why did the shaping work, but the luring/bribing didn't? Is it possible that he really just wants to please me?

Woozle... you always seem to come through for me buddy. Of course you wait until I am pulling my hair out but as long as it works out in the end...

The Working Moment

There is a totally awesome moment when somehow you convey to the dog what you want and then for reasons of his own, the dog decides in his turn that he wants to work for you. Together you manage to acheive something totally new.

I remember the first time I taught a dog anything. It sounds silly now, but I taught Auburn to stand on our mini trampoline. Now Woozle and even Daisy wouldn't need to be taught this; I would just ask and they would just do it. Auburn was a little spooked however. By a dint of coaxing and bribery I managed to get her up there and then for some reason she stopped worrying about it and would do it whenever I asked. I think I was about 10 and I fancied myself some sort of circus trainer.

The next feat of skill came a year or two later. I managed to create a sort of travois for Fawn. To this day I don't remember how I did it, but somehow I got her to both accept it and to drag that thing all over the neighborhood for me. And I used it too. We would drag home all sorts of interesting junk. I also remember my brief foray with an actual cart. I built it with wheels salvaged off of a really old red wagon. It was actually quite sturdy and I used it for various stuff for a long time afterward, but for Fawn it failed miserably. It was either the noise or the shafts themselves, but she wanted nothing to do with it.

By the time Britte came around, I was determined to be a "real" dog trainer. I taught her the basics of sit, down, and stay which was thrilling. Come and heel however totally eluded me. I'd read plenty of books about it, but it wouldn't work for me. I also never got that sense of teamwork I had always been trying to find. So, I mostly gave up for a while. Then one day I decided to go exploring in those forbidden and dangerous paths that all of my books had warned me about...

Actually I think I was probably standing in the kitchen eating something. Britte came over and looked sooo hopeful. So I said, "Sit". She sat and I tossed her a piece. Yeah, I was teaching her that begging gets results, but her response was also FAST and there was a different kind of connection at that moment. For that one moment we both wanted almost the same thing and a form of teamwork was born. It was intoxicating. I discarded most of those doom and gloom prophecies of having a dog that "only works when she's hungry" on the spot. I didn't really care that she was doing it for the food and not merely because "she loved me." Britte was working with me and not against me.

 I never managed to successfully reenter the world of obedience with Britte. I was never able to mentally get past one yank and crank indoctrination. I had to be "serious" for training "serious commands." We did discover the trick world, though. It had no such bad associations for either of us, was really fun, and dramatically improved our relationship.

A few nights ago I was walking Woozle on a fenced playground. There is a relatively busy road that runs just on the other side of the fence. Even at about eleven o'clock at night there was a significant amount of traffic. Probably an average of one car would appear every 5 seconds...

Woozle gets very excited by cars. Walking on the normal sidewalk is really way too much for him to handle. If I don't notice the car in time, he will fixate on it and then lunge; of course at that point all I can do is hold him back and save him from himself.  Whenever I see one coming in the distance I will try to get him to sit and focus on me. This does often work, but as the car approaches his sit will get really bouncy and he will keep flipping his head around, just straddling that line of control and out-of-control. We didn't visit this playground specifically to deal with the car issue, (mostly just exercise and a quiet, new place to explore where we won't disturb anyone) but I quickly see that it will come up.

He was wearing a 20' long line and a flat collar, so I didn't have much "precision control" and we get too close and he lunged a couple of times. So we regrouped a little and stop about 20 yards from the fence/cars. He was still out at the end of the line watching them, not fixated just yet (I'm also a slow learner if you can't tell...), but alert. Then, for whatever reasons he pointedly turned his back on the cars, trotted back to me, sat squarely in front and looked at me.

"So... This is the drill, right? There are cars. I sit. I watch you... Where are the treats?"

What a good boy!! I was so pleased I could barely contain myself. I've never had a dog actively participate in exerting that kind of self-control before, especially one with impulses as strong as Woozle's.

What do I love about this dog? He may be crazy a lot of the time, but he makes it feel like a partnership.

Thoughts on Training Bridges

I've been thinking about the use of intermediate objects/motions or "bridges" used in training lately. Please be kind to me, you experienced trainers out there. I am for most intents and purposes very much a newbie.

I can remember the first time (probably well over a decade ago) I saw mention of a bridge behavior. It puzzled me. A lady somewhere on this wonderful worldwide internet mentioned that she taught her dog "Paws Up" (dog puts both front paws up on an object, from a sitting position). I don't remember exactly, but I think her end goal was "Say Your Prayers." Now it seems kind of obvious to me, but at the time I couldn't conceive why you would want to train and name a behavior that wasn't either inherently interesting or useful (okay well, maybe if she had named it something cute it would have seemed more interesting to me). Of course the answer is it is nice to have a set behavior you can always fall back on for either training one behavior chain, or even more importantly for branching out and creating multiple behavior chains.

I was also flummoxed with the use of bridge objects (probably not long after the former time), when I first saw them. The first one I remember was teaching your dog to touch an object with his nose as a precursor to teaching the Send Away. The theory goes that if you use something disposable like a piece of paper or a butter tub lid you can progressively cut it down until the dog can barely see it, so he has to take your direction on the faith that it is out there somewhere. I was puzzled because at that time I hadn't wrapped my head around how useful targeting could be in many different situations. It seemed like you were again putting an awful lot of effort into something that wasn't inherently interesting. Maybe if the article I read had used targeting with feet instead of the nose, it would have made more sense.

I have been attempting to teach Woozle to pivot on his front feet and eventually probably on his back feet as well. My end goal is to teach a nice neat finish to heel this way. Yeah, I could just lure him into position, and I have done that, but it really looks kind of sloppy. Dogs don't pivot a whole lot naturally. Without teaching him first to put his front feet on a target, this move would be pretty difficult for me to teach. It also teaches him a lot of coordination at the same time. It has really cemented the value of bridges for me. Marker training is a wonderful thing, but it isn't very good at teaching strange movements. Yes, you can refine and polish the behaviors the dog gives you quite a bit, but if the dog simply never offers the behavior, you can't mark it. They do complement each other fantastically though.

Doing bridge work probably doesn't seem very interesting to family, neighbors or even yourself. It is harder to see the value in it than approaching the problem in a more head-on fashion and harder to keep at it. This experimenting I've been doing makes me very curious what the real potential of using bridge objects really is... Is it just limited by the trainer's creativity?
 
Bridge behaviors, to me, seem to be mostly limited to being an exhaustive list of simple behavior that a dog can do. These behaviors can then be recombined into longer strings of more complex behaviors. I recently heard one man's interesting opinion. He liked to put on cue every single behavior his dogs did; later he could either enhance or extinguish it. I've tried to come up with such an exhaustive list and at the moment it's maxing out at around 40, though it really depends on how much of a purist you are at defining them. It certainly isn't set in stone, but yet considering all of the things we can teach dogs to do, it really is a surprisingly low number. Relatively short strings of behaviors might also be considered bridges to longer strings of behaviors (like the "Paws Up" example above: sit and target with the front feet), but there is no obvious limit to these, so I won't think about them too hard at the moment.

Using bridge objects seems to be mostly limited to targeting. I guess theoretically you could teach a dog to target with almost any part of its body. But realistically it is usually confined to the nose tip and different variations on the feet (all feet, one specific foot, front feet, back feet, etc.).  "Shake hands" of course is no more than a simple variation on targeting with a single foot. I suppose teaching to target with the top of the nose could also be useful, especially if you are trying to teach a pushing type of behavior, like rolling a ball. You also might consider teaching dogs to grab or carry things a form of targeting with the mouth. I guess any form of interacting with the world outside of the dog's own body could conceivably be targeting. Could teaching a dog to target with other parts of it's body create very useful results?

A Successful Socializaton Experience

I took the dogs to spectate at a dog trial on Saturday.  Well, I was spectating; it was a socialization experience for both dogs. I took Woozle out first since I didn't want him loading energy the whole time I was gone. His reaction to people isn't nearly as extreme as it used to be, though he usually still wants to run over for pets and may bark a bit.  He really still isn't used to strange dogs at all though, and will bark his fool head off if I let him and do his darnedest to go and say hi. We walked outside the building a little, but he was in his harness and he is becoming increasingly impossible to control in it.

He was also wearing a nylon slip collar as a backup (I've had more than one animal slip out of an incorrectly adjusted harness). Maybe it was inspiration, maybe it was moment of insanity, but I decided to unclip the leash from the harness and just use the slip collar. I've never even hooked him up to his flat collar before so he has never yet had any kind of a collar correction and rarely any collar pressure. I have never seen a dog react to a simple choker like he did (in my limited experience, most totally ignore them and try to strangle themselves anyway). He walked (didn't lunge) to the end of it, gagged slightly and then gave me this thoughtful look, "What is this thing? Oh... I guess it means I can't be a dink anymore." I never once even popped it and as soon as he stopped barking he noticed the treats and got his mind in gear. I got him to focus pretty well until I ran out and figured I had better cut the session off. I guess the harness work paid off! Now I just have to be careful not to abuse this new-found power... I put him back in the Blazer and I took Daisy out.

Daisy's main problem is other dogs. She doesn't hate them and she certainly isn't afraid of them, but she failed her CGC test because she took about two steps around me (while she was supposed to be sitting) to go say "Hi" to the other dog. Once she has worked around the dog for a while (even if they have never officially met) she is usually pretty good, but just the fact that it was a "new" dog flummoxed her. These events are a really good opportunity for her to be around a lot of very new dogs that are well-behaved and whose owners ignore her. So I took her inside and we sat down progressively closer and closer to the aisle and the action. I watched the trial and Daisy fell asleep. She was watchful whenever it looked like a strange dog might approach, but she never put a toe out of line. Just as we were heading out, the doorway was blocked by two talking handlers and their dogs. It was a good test. Daisy split the difference between the two dogs and ignored them beautifully! Bravo Daisy! I rotated the dogs once more.

I didn't have anymore treats, so I couldn't take Woozle very close the second time around, but we did have a very good game of fetch on the grass and I was successfully able to distract him from dogs in the distance. I also noticed for the first time that Woozle apparently has lost his last, straggling baby teeth, and with them went the snaggle-toothed "shark" look. We celebrated with a game of tug, which he clearly enjoyed.

Next on the agenda: Loose leash walking in a flat collar.

Simple Strokes for Simple Folks

Ironically clipping Woozle's toenails isn't so bad, but then I have worked with him on that. To date I have not had a dog that would calmly accept nail-care, so I was a bit paranoid about that from the get-go. But normally he is a bucking mouthy bronco for any sort of collaring/leashing/brushing. I decided that I was going to have to teach him to sit still while I put on/took off his collar.

Imagine that! It seems such a simple idea now, but then again I am used to dogs who automatically know how to sit still. Woozle just isn't that sort of dog, at least not yet. Simply having the idea was a breakthrough for me, personally. I have been thinking that I should probably acclimate him to a pinch collar sometime. I'm not going to use it yet and hopefully not much ever, but he should still get used to it for the sake of it being a weird feeling collar if nothing else. Putting these things on is a near impossibility with a flailing dog, ergo the need for a calm and patient sit.

So I broke out the treats asked him to Sit and then Steady (he has no clue what that means yet). I approached him with a simple slip collar. He backed away. One of the first things we free-shaped together was backing up. Sometimes I regret that because now it's his default behavior whenever he isn't quite sure what is going on. But I just said "nope" and backed away from him. He caught on pretty quickly that backing up wasn't going to get the treat. At every sign of backing, flailing, or mouthing I would just take my hands off of him. He picked up the sitting still thing very quickly. Then I got the pinch and did the same thing, starting with a few too many links and working down to approximately the right size.

In less than 12 hours I now have a dog that sits quite well for collaring. You mean it was that easy all along? What on earth was I freaking out about all of this time?