Flying in private = good

 

Flying in public = not good

She runs out an open door - I HATE that

 

I hunt her down and punish the escape - I hope

 

We try going for a walk off leash

All this week I've been shearing llamas. When I come in I'm too exhausted to train, and my arms are too sore for me to hold a clicker, regardless. I open the front door once and she dekes around me and takes off running. I'm too sore to run after her, and even though she's safe enough, I can't really just leave her to let her run because there's feral cat poop all over the place - extremely rewarding. As I'm trying to figure out what to do, hubby comes around the corner on the riding mower. I highjack the mower, turn off the blade, and hunt her down. It's not a fast mower, but she soon realizes that I'm following her everywhere she goes, and I don't sound too pleased. She gallops cheerfully in front of me pretending I'm not there, but from the set of her ears I can tell she isn't fooling herself. After about three minutes she heads purposefully for the front door. I get off the mower, let her in the house, and escort her unceremoniously to her crate. Ten minutes later (long enough for me to calm down) I let her out of it without a word, and ten minutes after that I invite her to go for a walk outside. I have a handful of treats and the keys to the mower. She stays with me. She stays totally with me. She watches the cats parading around but doesn't go after them - five treats in a row. She watches the llamas as they line up to watch us go by, but she doesn't go visit them - five treats in a row. She spots some cat poop she missed on her first pass, but doesn't go after it - five treats in a row. We share a lovely short walk and go back in the house.

Our second try with the long line

 

And another free run with recalls

I'm finally done shearing, and it's time for her next agility class. I'm tired and can't be bothered finding her harness, so I put a collar on her and attach the long line. She walks out onto the field alternating between finding out who's there already and watching me to see what I'm doing. Every time she watches me, she gets a treat. I stopped at 7-11 on the way to class and bought her a corn dog - this is going over BIG. Several times during the class she THINKS about taking flight, but it's a shallow thought and the corn dog wins easily. Several times during the class I actually unhook the leash while she does a set of obstacles. She solicits a Mini Schnauzer and a Mini Dachsie who come a bit too close, and I step on the lead to allow them to escape, but she comes right back to me when she hears her name. I can also call her off obstacles tonight, so we can walk NEAR the obstacles instead of her having to visit every one we walk by. A perfectly lovely class.

To finish off the evening, again we turn the dogs loose in a large fenced field, but this time I don't have to have anyone else call their dog in order to get Stitch back. When I call her, she comes - sometimes so fast I'm afraid she'll go right through my knees, but she doesn't. She gets half a handful of treats when she comes, and is then turned loose to run again. The sixth time I call her, she stands without fussing while I put the collar back on, and we come home.

Active agility behaviours

 

Concen-trating during less active behaviours

For breakfast we go out in the yard without a leash and do some agility. Some of it is fun for her - she loves to do the full-height teeter, running it, riding it down, and standing glued on the contact waiting for her treat, and we do the tire and three bar jumps with great leaps. It's easy for her to concentrate on me when she's doing these active obstacles. We run short courses of four obstacles while I get further and further from the obstacles.

Then we do six upright weave poles. Not so easy for her. I'm using kibble, not the corn dog we used last night, and I'm shaping "macaronis" - go around the second pole, click/treat, go around the 4th pole, c/t, go around the 6th pole, c/t. She wants to be bored with this. There's a ca-ca-CAT OVER... oh, right, weave poles. There's a TRUCK going down the... right, weave poles. Say, where's Scuba? Is she... uh huh, weave poles. I keep it very simple and click a lot. She's got the idea, and the rapidity of the clicks settles her down until she's really into the game and we're doing six in THIS direction, turning and doing six in THAT direction with no hesitation - no hesitation in offering to do the obstacle. This is her first introduction to straight up non-channelled weaves and she really only has a small clue about what to do with them.

We haven't done any free shaping in a very long time - probably because any tiny frustration produced whining and shaping is built on tiny frustrations. We tried it again and it went very well. She's obviously out of practise, but the whining was minimal, very quiet, and seemed more of a mutter while thinking. It took her nearly 100 clicks to get past turning her head and go all the way into a spin - not what I was aiming for, but a start. She didn't get stuck on the spin but went rapidly from there to the piece of furniture I was aiming for. I clicked her for touching the furniture ten times, then turned my back on it and waited to start her going in another direction. All that duration practise really payed off! She touched the furniture five or six times, lay down, crossed her paws, turned her head, finally did a very nice DownStay for 15 seconds. Finally she gave up and came around in front of me to find my face - click for that, and I started shaping her out toward the door.

In all I sent her to five different locations. She needs to work on shaping. She gets stuck on the previous behaviour and doesn't want to change it. Once she realizes we're on to something else, though, she leaves the old object behind. She defaults quite often to Down. My baby bumblebee has a default Down. Who would have imagined?

We go to the beach. It's 8 degrees, heavy winds, drizzling, but hey, we're going to the beach! Stitch is hysterical when we arrive. I put the harness on her with the trailing long line, but she rips it through my hand before I'm ready, and then she's running to the water and along the beach, flying free. Since I've blown it by not having a good grip on the line, I at least have the sense not to compound the error by calling her immediately, AND my pocket is full of treats. After a couple of laps, I call her. She comes! I shove the handful of treats in her face and let her go again. I call her three more times, feeding her each time and letting her go. The last time, I ask her to stay around, but she turns to leave again and I step on the line. She tries three different directions and eventually figures out she isn't going anywhere so she comes back to work with me. I ask for a Sit and reward it. I let her go again. She runs through the water until she's shivering so hard I can't see her outline.

I won't say I could have gotten her back at any time at all, but when I did call her, she came at a dead run, and sometimes she was running away from me when I called her, and with another dog. I'm very happy with this outing (aside from the temperature). We sit in the car with the heater running to dry off and warm up. Maybe next time there'll be sunshine and I can show her how to swim.

Another agility class. We start out with the long line on her harness. She's excited to be at class, but ready to concentrate on what I want to do. I'm not totally prepared as I push my walker and assorted junk across the field to the course, but she stays with me. When she gets a little too far ahead of me, I say her name quietly and she turns back to wait for me to catch up. When we get to the course I settle down and get out some wiener to reward her for her excellent walk over.

It isn't a relaxed class by any means. I'm at attention all the time, watching for other dogs to take flight. Several times I step on her long line, but she doesn't know I did because she either watches them take off and doesn't think about going herself or she doesn't notice them because she's watching me or focused on an obstacle.

Eventually I unsnap the line from her harness and she finishes the last 20 minutes of class without it. No mishaps at all. Lots of rewards for offering attention, for stays, for running obstacles, for calling easily off obstacles I hadn't asked her to take, and for not accepting invitations to run. Twice another dog comes into her face. She spends 2 seconds giggling with it, and then turns back to me when I say her name. Big rewards.

After class she sits in her crate in the car during Scuba's class without a word. After that, she gets to run again with Scuba and some Collies. She comes back when I call every time. Big rewards.

I think of the ongoing frustration of all the people with dogs who are constantly getting away and doing laps of the field and missing obstacles because they saw something more interesting. Two weeks ago (three classes) I saw myself in their company as Stitch accepted their dogs' invitations to fly. I'm not saying I'm relaxed yet or that training is complete, but here we are with the problem solved, and with zero frustration, no yelling, no hunting her down, and no help from the other members of the class. She comes away from dogs, obstacles, people, and treats in the grass without a second cue. When we get home, I let her out of the car without her leash. She jumps out, looks at the cats and the llamas, and trots cheerfully up to the front door. What a thrill!