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.