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.

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?

The Dog Car

So my husband totaled our Malibu a few weeks ago... Fortunately no one was seriously hurt, but it wasn't good timing at all. Is it possible to  time the total destruction of ones only (and mostly uninsured) vehicle well?  Goodbye "Midnight"... *sniff*.

Well the good news is that we  found an ancient Chevy Blazer with low miles. It has needed a lot of work and like the Malibu, unfortunately it only has 5 seats. BUT it also has the cargo space in the back for dog crates and a luggage rack on top.  So now we can take both dogs with us whenever we need to, even on vacation when space is at a premium. We've teased in the past that if we ever had to evacuate, Daisy would have to sit on my lap (she's 60 pounds), Woozle would be wedged in the back seat on the floorboards somewhere and we would have to stuff the cat and birds in the trunk. Hopefully we at least don't have to dread that necessity anymore. The seats also fold down for more hauling space (no more rolling down the windows to get those 8' lumber lengths home from Lowe's!). Our gas mileage almost got cut in half though, eek! Now we just have to name the beast.

Party Animal

We recently had a family birthday party for my daughter. It was a "flashlight dance party" in the living room. Woozle sure let everyone know that he was no wallflower. He wanted to be right in the middle of it the whole time, decked out with his blue/yellow glow stick collar. Too bad it really wouldn't show up on the camera. I thought it looked pretty snazzy. And he wasn't just underfoot, either. He was dancing around on his hind legs, bouncing up and down on our little trampoline, doing dips and twirls. Aside from occasionally mouthing my arms and sneaking away to give covetous glances at the birthday cake, he was a great dance partner. And tugs aren't such a bad addition to a dance routine anyway...lol.  I love this dog!

Daisy spent a quiet evening outside, protecting the house from stray cats. When she came in she took one look at Woozle's collar and seemed to say "Whew! Glad I escaped that indignity!"

Food Chase

I came up with a new game several days ago. Ironically it was for Woozle, who has plenty of toy drive. I just wanted to increase his intensity with food a bit. I have gotten lazy with him and lapsed into just handing the food to him after the mark instead of making him chase it a bit. It has some advantages because he can think clearer, but he was losing the "coiled-spring" look too.

I took him out in the yard with an old heel of bread and just started tossing bread pieces in random directions. I would throw a single piece, wait for him to find it and throw another one in a different direction. It soon became obvious that he sometimes needed help because he didn't always see where it landed. He has done lots of scent pads, so he would find it relatively soon with his nose, but it wasn't really what I wanted. I added pointing at the bread too. But now he's only looking at my hands, so I added the rule that he has to look at my face before I throw the bread. We have success! His drive is up and it's focused on me.

I played around with this for a few days before I even thought of adding Daisy. Sometimes it is really hard to leave one of them in the house, so a lot of times I just fall into the trap of training Woozle while having Daisy near me and doing something relatively simple and uninvolved (like a stay) and occasionally tossing food her way so she doesn't get jealous. But just as I was once again falling into this trap I had an epiphany. "Wait a second... Daisy can do this too! Duh." The beauty of it is it is just like fetch only with food and Daisy doesn't care for toys. It also doesn't have the "bring" or "give" parts so it really would work for almost any dog with a stomach.

So I alternated throwing for each dog so there wasn't any direct competition, but having them both participating seemed to up the energy too. Before long Daisy was dancing around like a doofus. Of course she isn't as fast as him, but she's a whole lot better at following the point. Yay! We found something constructive to burn off the old girl's energy!

Adventures in free-shaping: Be careful what you *click* for...

I've had a couple of epiphanies these last couple of days and since I've been meaning to create a training log anyway... Voila! And there was "blog".

Woozle was so cute yesterday. We've been working mostly on picking things up lately, but this time I was trying to get him to run around a chair in the kitchen. I've free-shaped this before and he was offering lots of behaviors (platz, back up, barking, mouthing objects, jumping on stuff), and I was marking just glancing at the chair, but for some reason this evaded him.

Enter Shadow. Shadow is an interesting cat. He loves water. He loves dogs (or at least my dogs anyway). He cuddles with Daisy and wrestles with Woozle. Shadow has supervised many training sessions so this isn't unusual. He likes being on the middle of things and is often very interested in the treats (or maybe he just likes watching the dogs make fools of themselves?).  He hops up on a chair (the one I am trying to get Woozle to run around) so he can get a better view of the proceedings and I am mostly oblivious to his presence..

Woozle looks at the chair. Click-treat. A few seconds later he looks at the chair again. Click-treat. And again. He sidles up to the chair. Click-treat. I of course am thrilled that we finally seem to be making progress. He kinda side steps around the chair. Click-treat. Then again, but this time as he is moving I *click* just as his nose touches Shadow's tail, which is gracefully draped over the edge of the chair. Of course I realized my mistake, but figured it was "just one click". Woozle sits down next to the chair and looks at me for a second or two as if he is pondering something then half glances at Shadow, which I ignore. Then he gives me a lovely sideways glance which clearly says, "Well if this is what you want... Who am I to argue?"  Then he nibbles Shadow's tail. This is way too fresh for Shadow who swats Woozle on the nose. At this point of course the situation totally disintegrates as cat and dog are careening all over the kitchen in a ball of flying fur. All hope for my training session is gone, but I am giggling too hard to care. All my fault and I should have seen it coming a mile away, lol.