STITCH

the weBlog of a Service Dog, competition dog, pet and friend In Training

Scuba's finding it very difficult to do her job. Every time she picks up something, Stitch is right there wanting to wrestle with it. I tell Scuba that if she keeps rolling her eyes, they'll grow that way...

Eye Contact and the Get Lost game

Go To Mat

Changing locations and distances

Half of breakfast we spend playing the Get Lost game. I've never before asked for eye contact with me standing up (though she's given it to me when I'm doing dish Zen), but that takes her about 2 seconds to figure out. We do Contact X 10, then Contact and I turn my back on her. Hmm, what to do, what to do? We do this in the kitchen. I've set it up so I can see her shadow. She looks left and right. She lies down, she sits up, she whimpers, looks left and right, whimpers, lies down. I get hysterical. STITCH! WHERE'S MY PUPPY? and she comes around to give me eye contact. Contact X 10 and I turn my back on her again. Again she can't think what to do so I have a fit again and she finds me. Contact X 10, I turn my back, and she comes around on her own to give me Contact again. Ee hah! Contact X 5, and then I turn and she comes around automatically 4 more times.

Now that she's getting OLD and her legs are stretching about an inch a day, I'm thinking about Training Level 2, so I take a dog bed out into the screen room. We've done Go To Mat in the living room, but nowhere else. I put the mat down 4' from my chair. It takes her 5 clicks to find it, 2 to get on it, 1 more to lie down on it. Then she's really into it. No matter where I toss the treat, she grabs it and runs right back to lie down on her mat, so I start using the cue Hit The Rack. Small problem at first (Oh, gosh, she's BROKE now!) - she's so responsive to my voice that when I give the cue as she's climbing on the mat, she stops to look at me. I do nothing more and she finishes the job. The third time I say it, she keeps going. By the 10th time, I think she's responding to the cue a bit.

Then I put the bed 8' away, in a corner between two chairs, and change where I'm sitting. That's another 10 clicks to find it and lie on it - she goes back to the first spot several times, and also tries lying down on the floor near the mat, but neither of those behaviours produces a click so she keeps thinking until she remembers the whole thing.

Then I drape the bed over the step up to the greenhouse and sit in a different chair. I think this'll be harder than putting it in the corner, but she's got the idea now. 3 clicks to find it, climb onto it, and lie down. No attempts to go back to either of the previous locations, and no attempt to lie on the floor. That finishes her breakfast. I'm glad she's needing more food now, but I wish her stomach was ten times bigger!

Loose Leash

Common sense

We spend lunch going for a walk. I click occasionally for a loose lead, but it isn't really necessary. She's walking with me wherever I go. If she meets the leash when she's ahead of me, she stops to wait for it to loosen before going on.

We walk by Rapid Fire again. I'm very pleased that THIS time when she's at the fence and he comes over and leans his head down to see what she is, she has the sense to back up a couple of steps. She's not afraid of the situation, more like "Wow, that's a big guy! Any sensible puppy would stay out from under HIM!" OTOH, maybe she's just getting farsighted...

Retrieving

Sit

Down

Alternating cues

For supper we have the BEST session ever! I've been working the dumbell with just my voice. While it's been going OK, she's not getting the quiet-mouth-on-the-bar as well as I expected. Tonight I use a clicker - harder to have the dumbell and food in one hand and the clicker in the other, but I have to be careful to keep the clicker away from her ears. She IMMEDIATELY figures out the quiet mouth and longer hold. When she makes a mistake and lets go of the bar, she startles and grabs it again. She's looking up into my eyes when she's gripping it well.

Then we do Park It (Sit). She's racing around the room to grab the flying treats and then rushing back to plant her little butt again. I use the cue X 30 with no errors. Then I signal for a Down twice, and she has that. I use the cue X 15. Then I work Park X 5 and Down X 5, using only the voice cue to tell her what I want. We run through them four times with maybe 3 mistakes in the whole bunch. Wow!

When the food's all gone, she wants to stay in the screen room and keep working. She doesn't come in until I turn out the light. She feels pretty good with her tummy full. She attacks her dog dish. When it's dead enough, she chases and catches her tail, but it was a bigger opponent than she'd planned on. Her tail rolls her upside down and dumps her in the dog dish.

No accidents in the house all day, and she runs into her crate for a cookie and goes to sleep without a whimper. What a great day!

Retrieving

Interfering trained behaviours

Eye Contact, Get Lost game, and frustration

An interesting morning. We start with the dumbell in hand. This goes very well, we have a pretty consistent 3-second hold and occasionally up to 6 seconds. She's much steadier with the clicker.

Then I put it on the floor. Arghh! The default Down is back, and brings his friend Go To Mat. She lies down on the dumbell. She sits near it. She sits ON it. She covers it with her paws. I start WAY back, with her looking at it, and click X 30 for approaching it, BEFORE she has a chance to do anything with it. Finally I let her approach it and she targets it with her nose. Three of those and we quit.

We move on to the Get Lost game. She finds my eyes with no trouble at all, even with me standing. Contact X 10, then I get contact and turn my back on her. She runs 270 degrees around me, plunks her butt down and stares at my ear. Huh? What's THAT about? I turn my back on her, and she runs 270 degrees in the other direction, Sits and stares at my back again. I try getting hysterical, and she's running joyfully to answer, but keeps overshooting. Finally she Downs behind me and puts her head down with a little sigh. OK, I'm slow, but I get there eventually. I sit down and do some easy stationary eye contact. She's very happy to do it.

I've never seen this problem before. Maybe I just need to remember that she's 11 weeks old and my eyes are 5' above hers. At any rate, we'll give this a week or so of sitting and standing Contact before I try turning around again.

We end the session with random Sit and Down by voice cue. 15 reps, 1 error. Holy cow, this is one smart puppy!

When we come back in the house, Ron's in the living room in his farmer clothes, with a pair of work gloves stuffed in his back pocket. She aims for them and with a mighty leap, she hits the back of his knee, falls on her back and bumps her head.

Confidence with strangers

Puppies Are Supposed To Be On Couches!

Not much more training today. I took my llama team out for a 3-hour drive around the farm - a very productive afternoon but about an hour past MY stamina limit. Stitch and I go for a walk to see the guys running the big truck, auger and tractor - lots of noise, and a person she's never seen before. The leash is loose all the way out. She doesn't mind the noise, but when she sees the stranger IN the noise, she Sits and watches the situation. I giggle at her and tell her what a good time we're having. Then she decides she can giggle at the stranger and jump up on him. Partly I wish I could get her out to meet a lot of people right now. Part of me thinks this is a good time for her to stay home and work on her confidence and trust in private.

The most common comment on her when anyone meets her is "Wow, her tail sure works!" It reminds me of a propeller with the tips painted - all you can see is the white blur on the end.

Tonight she figures out how to jump on the couch. She's been here before but it was by accident. Tonight she jumps up five times in a row - and gets put back down five times in a row, as she's jumping up because I'm eating. Nice try, small and persistent!

Breakfast Zen

Shaping go around a pole

Separation problems

Working two dogs at once, or Trainer Zen

300-Peck Go To Mat

Criteria

She jumps up twice this morning to look at my breakfast. I put her down twice, after which she resorts to Sit and Stare, which also gets her nothing but OTOH doesn't get her removed, either.

We go outside and spend half of breakfast going around a pole. I want to shape it, which goes well except for the grass (we have grass! First time in five years! Summer was rainy). She can't hear the kibble hitting the ground, and even if she sees it land, she has an awful time finding it and digging it out of the grass. Next time I'll put the pole on a mat, or use a toilet plunger in the house. Anyway, she gets clicked for turning her head, moving in the right direction, being behind the pole, and coming around the pole back toward me. I'm "cheating" by adding a bit of luring - I'm trying to toss the kibble to land slightly closer to where I want her than she was each time. By the end of the session, she still needs that lead-in to get her started, but once she's approaching the pole, she goes around it by herself. I'm being very careful not to mention the pole itself to her, or reward her for interacting with it in any way. I made that mistake with Scuba, and it took me months to get her to stop whapping the pole.

Thinking, alright, the little turnip has had half her breakfast, she should be slowing down a bit, I put her in the screen room and took Scuba out on the lawn to do some weaving. Oops, big mistake. Stitch yapped and tried repeatedly to come through the screen door. This is where people say "I can't even LOOK at my other dog without this dog getting hysterical!"

So we spend the second half of breakfast working both of them. Scuba lies down on my right, about 3' away from me, on the floor. I put Stitch's mat about 4' away on my left. First I work Stitch until she's running to the mat and lying down on it. Then every third bit of kibble I toss to Scuba. It takes Stitch 4 kibbles to realize what's happening, then she runs off the mat over to Scuba. At this point I give Scuba another five kibbles, one at a time, then just sit and do nothing. Stitch sniffs around, tries Sit, Down, Stare, and finally runs back to the mat. C/T. Two more and she's lying down on it again. I start doing 300-peck mat. I have to restart the count twice. When I get up to about 8 seconds, I start giving Scuba a kibble now and then. This is really hard on Stitch, she thinks about coming off the mat frequently, but holds her Down. We get up to 15 seconds, with me feeding Scuba about every 5 seconds, before we run out of breakfast.

Why isn't simplest thing ever simple? Does it count if she hangs her nose off the mat? Yes. Does it count if she's touching the floor with a paw? No. Does it count if she's jerking while thinking about getting off? Yes. Does it count if she's whining? No. Decisions, decisions.

Handling and cutting toenails

I can't put it off any longer. Lunch goes to cutting toenails. I start with being allowed to hold her head. This is a biggie for her. She yelps, tries to back out, wiggles, uses her teeth (but gently). I back up. Hold skull, C/T. Hold skull C/T. Hold skull fondle ears c/t. Hold muzzle c/t. Hold muzzle c/t. Hold muzzle c/t. Hmmm, this might be worth putting up with after all...  Hold muzzle c/t. Hold skull c/t. Hold head c/t. Hold head lift lips c/t. By now she's into it, and immediately I can lift her upper lip and pull down the lower one to look at her incisors, a show dog trick.

Then I lie her down in my lap. Hold front paw c/t. Hold front paw c/t. Hold front paw play with toenails c/t. Hold front paw put nail clipper on nail c/t. Hold front paw cut nail c/t. No big deal. Get all 4 nails done and move to the next paw. Woops, this one's a bit more sensitive. She wants to leave. Nope. Yes, I DO! Nope. But if you stay, you get kibble. Oh well, OK. Then she doesn't want me to hold her paw. Yes, I will. No, you WON'T. Yes, I will. But if you let me, you get kibble. Man, you're pushing your luck, but OK. Then she settles down. One treat for letting me tweak each nail, then another for letting me cut it.

She draws the line at her back feet. She's doing the dying-puppy yelp and definitely planning on leaving. I stop thinking about nails, turn her upside down in my arms and just hold her until she settles. Then we have a little hand-wrestle. Then I go back to the paws and cut the nails without any trouble, one treat per nail.

While we're at it, I clean her ears, which she puts up with without comment. This is going so well I'm inspired and, much to her dismay, I do Scuba's nails too.

Eye contact

Retrieving

Go To Mat

Get Lost game

Stitch and I go out to the screen room for supper. We start with Contact X 20. I'm obviously being a sloppy clicker, because she gets a 1-second eye lock, then looks at my food hand. I concentrate on waiting out the hand-glance and starting my count when she comes back to my eyes. We get up to 4 seconds.

Next, the dumbell. Again, I've been sloppy. She pushes the dumbell out of her mouth with the back of her tongue, which pushes the tip out between her teeth. Unfortunately, I notice tonight that I'm clicking her tongue tip, which means I'm clicking her for starting to spit out the db. Duh. She's so FAST! So I really, really pay attention to clicking a quiet mouth and NO tongue (sounds like interviewing your daughter's first boyfriend... ). Occasionally I had to wait through six bites before I got the quiet mouth.

Next I put her mat up TWO stairs into the greenhouse, and I sit 10' away at the far side of the screen room. Three clicks to get her to the mat. She BOUNDS up the stairs and PLUNKS herself dramatically down on the mat. Now, I can play two different games at the same time - she runs to the mat, I add the Hit The Rack cue, click and toss the kibble on the mat. Then we play the Come game. I call her name. She looks at me like, are you sure? I thought this was about the mat? but then she comes galloping over to me. I click and drop the treat on the floor at my feet. She eats it, then tries Sit and Down. What next? I cue Hit The Rack! She looks over at the mat, then gallops back and flings herself on it again. How fun! We play this double game X 30.

Now she's nearly full. I try playing Get Lost again. She's obviously been thinking about what went wrong overnight. She's still not good at it - overshooting or not coming far enough around, and swinging very wide - but she's a lot better than she was yesterday. We do that X 5, have a little wrestle, and come back in.

That was quite an amazing day. And her toenails are cut! Maybe tomorrow I'll have the nerve to start shaving her back legs... or maybe not.

Whene is an accident not an accident?

Dog dish Zen

Handling again

Going to bed when she FEELS like going to bed

Loose leash walking

I've got a cold, so we took the day off from training. Then I felt guilty, so I had to notice what was going on anyway. I went to the door with her when I noticed her waking up and after each meal, and managed to get through another day without an accident (interesting how we humans always label these "if I was paying attention this never would have happened, but I couldn't be bothered so it did" incidents "accidents", as if they were completely unpreventable!).

I noticed that she now sits glued to the floor while I put Scuba's dish down, and remains sitting while I put Stitch's dish down. Good. Everybody has their own living-with priorities, and two of mine are not running out the front door, and not leaping all over me when I'm trying to put a dish down.

I cleaned her ears again, let's just say she's not totally ready to allow this yet, but her ears had to be cleaned. By the time I was half done, she was lying quietly. It's more about being confined than about me poking in her ears.

Another she-goes-to-bed-better-when... she goes to bed better when she hasn't just finished a meal. She feels really GOOD after a meal and wants to rip, roar, and tear. I want to go to sleep after a meal, so this is not an intuitive situation for me.

She also walks better on lead when she hasn't just finished eating, but she CAN get the rips and still keep the leash loose. I think I mentioned that before. She's doing brilliantly with the loose leash thing.

Her first countersurfing incident. She has a big soft stuffed dog bigger than she is. Tonight she cases the joint, then carefully pulls it off the coffee table. My little girl is growing up! It falls right on top of her, so she kills it with a lot of noise.

She spends a good part of the day gagging. Crickets are apparently pretty bony on the outside.

Figuring out cues

Handler paying attention

Retrieving

Reality slaps me in the face this morning. I've been sloppy AGAIN, and she's had a whole day to think about it. If she offers me Sit and I click right away, great, it was a Sit. If she offers me Sit and I DON'T click right away, it was obviously a Down. I notice another little thing I've been missing. When she offers me a Sit, and I click right away, she stays sitting until I toss the treat. But I toss the treat fairly close to her (because she's still a baby and if I toss it far away, she can't usually find it). That means she can leave her butt on the ground and just squooge her front end over to get the treat. In some circles, a butt on the ground and a squooged front is called... um... oh yeah, a DOWN. Duh. So I've been rewarding her for a Down when she Downs, and rewarding her for a Sit AND a Down when she Sits. Duh. Grrr. Whap on the forehead.

There are now 200 kibbles in a meal. So we spend the first half JUST on Sit, and I'm careful to have her commit to an actual Sit before I click, and then I toss the treat as close as I can while still far enough away that she has to get up to get it. I have completely abandoned the Sit and Down cues. She's had a fair idea of what they mean, but she's confused about EXACTLY what they mean today, so they're out for now. Once she's getting seriously into Sit, we start 300-peck Sit Stays. We get up to 7 seconds fairly consistently. I start the count from the beginning for breaking the Sit and offering me a Down. She never breaks the Sit to get up. The difference between Sit and Down is something I never paid attention to with Scuba, and it's about the only thing keeping her out of the obedience ring, so I'm resolved to teach Stitch that Go To Mat means do what you want on the mat, but Sit and Down are separate and distinct events.

We spend the second half of the meal on holding the dumbell. At first I click only the mouth coming over the bar, not looking for duration, simply clicking the dumbell hitting the correct place in her mouth without the tongue showing. When we've got that I start asking for duration. Another little while and I think maybe I'm getting a chain of BITE off HOLD c/t. BITE off HOLD c/t. I go back to clicking the initial bite, which eliminates the "off" part and we start getting some decent actual holds with a good grip. Then she puts the bar too far back in her mouth and starts getting a couple of chews on it instead of a hold. Man, somebody said we're not driving Fords anymore, but this little squirt is a Harrier jet waiting to happen.

Go To Mat

Eye contact

Whining builds to barking

The next meal we start on Go To Mat, but this time I use a bath towel folded up instead of the dog bed. Isn't it cool to be working with operant conditioning? That means the dog is really REALLY trying to figure out what makes the click happen and get it done, so I can see that there is pretty much ZERO correlation in her mind between the dog bed and the towel. Granted I put it in a far corner of the room, but I'm prepared to shape the whole thing - and that's what I have to do. It takes 40 kibbles to get her standing on the towel. Then she tries sitting near the towel. Then she thinks maybe this DOES have something to do with the dog bed, so she goes back up the stairs where the dog bed was two days ago. Then she comes back and stares at the towel. Then she does Sit and Stare at me. And I start back at the beginning. Thank you for looking at the towel, for walking toward the towel, for being near the towel, for touching the towel, and this time she gets it. We do ten more successfully.

Then we go to eye Contact with me sitting. If I toss the treat to the floor off to the side, she's coming back to the centre, right off my knees, indicating that she's thinking about centring on my face, which is what she was missing a few days ago when we worked on the Get Lost game. This is nice.

We get up to 8 seconds of Contact very nicely, when "suddenly" she starts barking at me when the count gets to 4. Which makes me think back about what was actually happening between 4 and 8 before. Geez, she was whining. And the whining worked, so now she's barking. So I have to back up to the one count and restart the count if she whines. It takes 8 clicks to get rid of the barking and another 11 to get rid of the whining.

She can have her supper in peace. I think that's about all the humble I can take for today.

Puppies are wonderful

Fear period

Strange-situation stress

Putting on the collar

Good night ritual

Family is happy - good harvest coming in. I'm miserable - allergies, can't think, can't walk, can't stay awake. No actual training for several days.

This has, however, given me a chance to sit back and observe the puppy as a person, rather than a training subject. What a fascinating person! She rollicks through life. Oops, can't eat the pen? OK, I'll eat the stuffy monkey. Whee, free food! Whatcha got? Can I have it? Wait, wait, I gotta RUUUUUNNNN. Ooh, I found a piece of paper! It's crinkly! What? Go out? I'm sleepy, can you carry me? Are you watching me? I'm watching YOU! Look out, I'm a TIGER.

Exhausting just thinking about it, really. Hard to be depressed with that kind of life going on around you.

Remember the fear period I was looking for? Here it is. She loves people up close and in familiar settings, but people at a distance are a little scary (just for sec, until they resolve into People - oh! You're a People! Good!)

Strange places have become strange. I take both dogs up to the bathroom to hang while I have a bath. This is hard for her. At first I thinkt she might be just bored with no toys to play with, then I realize that the whining is because she's in a strange place. I talk to her and she finally settles down on my clothes and has a nap. Then when the water cools off some (I need a hot bath to ease the pain in my muscles) I hold her and lie back down in the water. A little more anxious whining, but her body language is fairly relaxed. More reaction to being in a strange situation than any opinion of the water. After a while I put her in the bath. It's deep enough to float her feet just off the bottom. I hold her chin to be sure she doesn't drop it into the water, which stabilizes her. To my surprise, she hangs motionless in the water as if I was holding her.

She smells better when she's dry.

When we go for a walk, I ask her to Park It and she plants her butt securely to the floor and jams her muzzle into the collar. Remember the bucking and kicking under the same circumstances last week?

This morning I drive around the yard to make sure the grain dryers are working, so I take her with me. Hmmm. Not the same, riding in a truck cab in a crate, and riding in a truck cab sitting on the seat. I end up holding her in my lap, wound up under my arm with her little puppy muzzle under my ear, whining a little. When I'm done, we sit in the car until she relaxes. So from now on the dogs get fed in a different room of the house, or a different vehicle, every meal.

I'm so grateful that I can see her fear as a step in her growth, rather than a misbehaving temper. What Scuba learned from being treated like this is that if she's frightened of something, she can come to me and I'll make it safe.

We've added to the night ritual. I get two dog cookies, and the girls run to the back door. When they've both peed outside, they run in, straight into their crates, spin and wait for their cookies. Goodnight, little princess.

A week of turning from a baby into a toddler. What an amazing person is growing inside this puppy suit!

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