STITCH

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

Success on the stairs

Got To Mat cue

Random cues

Targeting

Go around

Zen cue

Trust me

After being afraid to go down the basement stairs yesterday, Stitch gallops down them this morning, runs over and flings herself down on the blanket. Go To Mat. I can't help but think about all the years I wasted on traditional training, weeks and weeks of trying to get a puppy to go up and down the kerflushinner stairs. Weeks and weeks.

We work Go To Mat X20, me telling her the name. Then we do some Watch Me X20 (I have no voice cue for this yet. I want it to be a default behaviour - and Heaven knows, it is! - but I also want to be able to ask for it as we get to the point where I can ask her to look at something else and then at me. But I won't introduce the cue until she's got a good 10-second grip on my eyes.

Then random Sit, Down, Go To Mat. The Go To Mat cue still requires a moment of thought now and then, but Sit and Down are EXCELLENT. X30 with no errors.

We move on to one of those huge tennis balls. It's 8' away and it takes her 10 kibbles to find it, but once she's got it, she's hitting it with her nose, her paw, and even trying to pick it up, which is pretty funny because it's bigger than her head.

I move a pool-cue-stand out into the middle of the room. It takes 7 clicks for her to realize I'm paying for going around the stand. During those 7, she tries throwing that blasted paw at me, going to mat, retrieving a dryer sheet (I'm the world's best housekeeper), but none of them work. Once she's got going around, she's got it. I'm not asking for once direction, just go around from wherever she is. And I can control where she starts to go around by where I toss the previous kibble.

We work on Zen with cue. I show her a treat, say No, and start to put my hand down near her. She spins and goes to lie down on her mat. Drama queen! Then I put a few kibbles on the floor and cover them with my foot. That takes her a few tries, then she won't come near my hand OR the kibble on the floor until I click and move them toward her.

When we're done she stands at the bottom of the stairs demanding that I keep working. When it's obvious that I'm not coming back, she gallops up the stairs, tripping on her huge paws halfway up and falling back two steps. This doesn't bother her at all. Happy tail.

All the skills that she's learning are nothing without this most important default: trust me. If you're scared I'll explain it to you. If you're in trouble, I'll get you out of it. I'm very happy with her progress in this area.

How to test Level behaviours

She fails Crate

Sit and Down cues, SitStay, DownStay

Go around cues

Hard to think that a week ago Level Two looked REALLY hard. Tonight it looks totally do-able, we just need practise on THIS and THAT. So I resolve to start at the top of the list and run down the tests. The method of testing isn't to train today until I get a behaviour happening, then "test" for it and declare it done. The method of testing is to walk fairly cold into a situation, ask for the behaviour and get it.

So she's EXCELLENT at going in her crate, we'll start with that. We go to her crate, I ask her to get in, she Sits and Stares, Downs, whines, and throws her paws at me. Plan B. Obviously she knows to get in her crate when the circumstances are correct (get the cookie, dogs go outside, into crate, give cookie). I shape her to go into the crate. This takes 4 kibbles for her to figure out what I want, then it's tough to keep her out long enough to tell her to get in. Several times when she's out I ask for a Sit or Down.

We go to the kitchen, on the tile floor - we've only done Sit and Down cues on carpet so far. No problem at all, she's 100% on the cues. We work X30 each on SitStay and DownStay. SitStay is excellent, but in the middle of her Downstays she realizes she's 3' from the gate blocking the basement stairs and has to get up several times to try to get through the gate. Can you believe she was scared of the stairs yesterday? The distraction of the gate means we have to work at only about half the distance we've got on the SitStay.

Then I put out the basket the dog dishes stay in. She immediately goes around it. Holy cow. We spend the rest of supper going around the basket. She's doing so well that I start using cues - Away for counterclockwise circles, Get By for clockwise circles. A couple of times I give a cue just as she's thinking of wandering back to the gate, but she gives a little startle and goes back to her circle.

She passes the Crate

SitStay & DownStay

Zen and the Drama Queen

Dog dish Zen

Many textures

This morning we start at the top of the list again. She aces the crate, goes in on cue. I'm reminded of sheep penning - doesn't count if she goes halfway in and I whop her on the butt with the door! Then SitStay and DownStay - not good enough to pass the Level yet, but within 3 kibbles I can tell her, walk 20' away and come back. The problem on the SitStay is she thinks she'll follow me. The DownStay problem is she wants to sit up to meet me as I come back. We practise X20. Excellent.

Next, Zen. She's terrific at this. She Drama Queens the cue again, so we spend X20 working on getting her closer and quietly watching or ignoring the kibble rather than running to the other side of the room and dramatically pretending she isn't now nor ever has been on the same planet. Then (watch this, she's great at this!) I turn a dog dish over, give the cue, and put the treat on the dish.

And she runs over and tries to grab it. Argh.

So we work X20 on Dog Dish Zen. Why did I put it on the dog dish? The point of this exercise is to put the treat on something at eye level. Now, the upside-down dog dish is too low, but OTOH the coffee table and the couch are too high. As soon as she realizes we're Zenning the dog dish, she's over on the other side of the room again, but by the time we're done, she's doing a brilliant, calm 5 seconds off my hand and 10 seconds off the dog dish.

Which reminds me, we're using dog dish Zen in real life. When I feed the dogs (on the odd occasion when they both get a meal in an actual DISH instead of in training), I feed Scuba first: "This is for Scuba", and Stitch sits eagerly while I put Scuba's dish down. Then: "This is for Stitch" and she holds her sit while I put her dish down. Also she's figured out that Sit and Stare at daddy is a better bet than trying to grab stuff off his plate.

My living room looks like I run a day care. Right now she's playing with a plastic measuring cup and a metal measuring cup, carrying them around, tossing them, chasing them, wrestling with them. In the future I'll be needing her to pick up anything I point her at, so I'm trying to introduce her to a vast variety of tastes and textures. Also in the middle of all her junk is an unplugged electric cord, with which we're playing Electric Cord Zen. If she starts to put her mouth on it, I give her the Zen cue, then a cuddle if she asks for one. Usually she just veers off and aims for something else.

SitStay & DownSTay

Go around

Go To Mat

Hand Zen, Dish Zen, Table Zen

Loose Leash Walking

Come

Trick

Exams for lunch. My kids are in college, the dog should be doing exams as well. We start with SitStay and DownStay. One voice cue to stay, and my index finger in "admonish" position, and she does both stays brilliantly, feet still, waiting patiently for me to return.

I put the basket out in the middle of the floor, use a voice cue to go around it, and she pops right on around it. We go downstairs and she runs around the pool-cue stand before I get closer than 5' to it.

Back upstairs. I put her mat in a part of the kitchen where it's never been before, go get the puppy. I ask her to Sit, c/t, then tell her to Go To Mat. She runs right to it and lies down.

I try Hand Zen and Zen with the kibble on the upside down dog dish, no trouble at all, so I try it on the coffee table too. Pretty silly, she lies down when I give the cue, and then she can't see the food on the coffee table - but she could see it on the dog dish and she was certainly capable of seeing it there.

Two more for today. We go outside in the snow, and on out to the barn. Her one "mild distraction" for the one minute loose leash turns out to be one feral cat, two Muscovy ducks, three llamas, and tri-species delicious poop smells. She does great, although I could have done without her sucking the goose poop off the floor.

I haven't got anybody to help me with the Come, and I can't get her to stay in the barn while I walk 40' away outside. It might work if I tried to get her to stay outside, but it's bloody cold and windy and her poor little butt is shaved, so I dumped a handful of kibble on the floor just inside the door, ran outside and across the yard, and waited for her to finish the food, then called her. She galloped over to me across the yard. What a pretty sight!!

We had a little bit of lunch left, so we worked on a less enthusiastic paw-lift. I think we'll call it "Sore Paw" - oh, poor puppy, do you have a sore paw?

So only four Level 2 behaviours left - we have to get the trick on cue, teach her to Stand, and get the Eye Contact up to 10 seconds. She's 14 weeks old. What an amazing thing is clicker training. What an amazing person is my baby Stitch.

Stand as a duration behaviour

Another meal - 195X stand, 5X Sore Paw. With Scuba I frequently measure the difficulty of a behaviour in time or number of clicks. Getting the TV remote off the table near Ron's chair, for instance, was a 5-minute behaviour. Turning the pedals on an exercise bike was a 20-click behaviour. Notice, if you will, that Stand is now up near 600, and we don't have it well enough to add a cue yet. This isn't Stitch being "stupid" - Stand is a difficult thing for dogs to figure out. We have the same trouble with stand that we have with Eye Contact, it's a duration behaviour and she assumes if she doesn't get a click immediately, she should try something else. So by working on standing, I hope I'm teaching her to have a little more patience and trust her previous behaviour to make the click happen. At the end of the meal, we can usually get up to 3 seconds with 4 on the floor, head up, and no whining. In between spins, dancing - at one point she plants her back feet and waltzes her front feet back and forth, back and forth, swinging her head. That would make a great trick. But I stick with the Stand.

She's doing Sore Paw very well, but hasn't quite got it on cue yet. It takes her one click before she remembers what the words mean.

OH! STAND! I GET IT!

Supper - 5X Sore Paw, coming along nicely, she remembers it with a tiny lure off centre. Stand 195X, I WAS going to be bored with Stand, but tonight she gets it. OK, she wants something, I have to do something, look around, touch the table leg, go left, go right, left, right, le FREEZE! I GET IT! FREEZE! FREEZE!

Very exciting stuff (maybe I don't get out enough, but *I* am excited). We get to 5 second freezes in standing position (incidentally, with 5 second Eye Contact, better than we did when we were working on Eye Contact!). When she forgets and Sits, she stays sitting for 2 seconds, then jumps up and freezes. Sometimes she freezes in a very nice show stance, sometimes stretched out like a German Shepherd, and sometimes all scrunched up with her head just off the ground, peeking up from under her bangs. But she's Standing, and she's doing it deliberately. Tomorrow I'll start using a cue. Scuba's is Outstanding - out being her back-up cue, then standing to keep her on her feet. And because she never did hear the difference between Sit and Stand. And it constantly reminds me that I think it's outstanding that she stands on cue!

No, she doesn't

She whines. I'm depressed

Easy behaviours

Retrieving for fun

Put the clicker away and actually get somewhere

My name is Sue A. and I'm a traditional trainer.

Obviously *I* do better with moving exercises than with stationary ones as well. She isn't getting Stand. She understands the butt-in-the-air part, but I'm getting dancing and whining and head-swinging, sitting, downing, Sore Paw. She's fine if I click for the butt up, but the more I try for duration, the less Stand I'm getting.

I can HEAR her frustration building. I HATE whining. It makes me want to strangle her. I can FEEL my frustration building, I want to smack her and scream "NO, DAMMIT, STAND!" Useful thoughts - NOT.

Yesterday (not written down) all I did was putter with her and prove that she doesn't really understand this. I woke up this morning for the first time not being excited about what she'll learn today.

We start with Sit, Down, and Sore Paw. All on cue, very nice.

I dig up Scuba's old water-trial bag and looked for a puppy-size bumper. No luck - 7 adult-size bumpers. OK, what the heck. We spend X30 on the bumper. It has a short thick rope attached. This is new retrieving - where to hold it isn't obvious. She can't wrap her mouth around the bumper. Holding the rope isn't particularly satisfactory as after the first few targets, I'm only clicking the motion of the bumper, and moving the rope doesn't move the bumper. Finally she figures out that if she grabs the knot tying the rope to the bumper, or the end of the bumper with the rope tied to it, it will move and she'll get the click. She gradually moves it across the floor and gets a jackpot when I can get it, then I toss it out again. I should be thinking about next September at her first water trial, but I'm still crabby about the Stand.

I notice that she has a very nice, durable, quiet Stand while I'm fussing with the kibble, getting the next handful. The phone rings. When I come back I may be smarter than I was when I left. I put the clicker in my pocket, thinking, it's just making her frantic to offer me things, when what I want is her NOT offering me anything, just standing there (just bloody stand there, how hard IS it?!). So, I put the clicker away. As I do this, she stands quietly watching me (she's STANDING, ARRGGHH), so I say Yes and give her a kibble. She continues to stand there, so I say Yes and give her a kibble. Her body language gets subtly calmer. So does mine. She starts offering me Eye Contact as she's standing. We work through 150 quiet Stands. After the first 50, I notice I'm waiting for 2 seconds before saying Yes. After 100, I notice several times she twitches as though she were going to move a paw, but doesn't. She's starting to think about standing quietly.

For lunch we're going to spread kibbles all over the living room and have a Puppy Pickup Party with wrestling and tugging.

Examining Stand

Supper - now that I'm back to training and thinking rather than just pouting and reacting, we're doing better. I've been explaining the Stand to people today as something which requires the dog's centre of gravity to swing backwards - and this leads me to notice that when I'm handing her kibbles, I'm an inch or so short of her mouth, which forces her to jump forward to get them. Which swings her centre of gravity forward. Duh. I start handing her the kibbles half an inch further back than she expects them. Her weight settles back. Suddenly her feet are very calm. We work on this X100. Then I add the clicker, and lose the stability. She starts dancing, flicking her head, and whining again. I put the clicker away and go back to voice, X50.

With me sitting right in front of her, she can give me 3 solid seconds of Stand before she starts whining. On impulse, I signal a Stay as I did for Sit and Down, and walk 10' away and back. She stands solid, quiet and calm. We do this X20, results are perfect. Settle her weight back, lose the clicker, and get further away from her. OK, if that's what she needs to figure this out, that's what I'll give her. And a bath, and a cuddle.

Stand with some distance

Breakfast goes very well. We do 250X Stand, most from a distance of at least 3'. 25% of the time she's freezing in place as the thought hits her, which results in some pretty silly poses. 50% of the time she's deliberately stomping at least one foot - sometimes all four - into a position she likes and thinks will get her the kibble. From a show POV, it looks pretty good, but that's just a passing comment. I'm not paying any attention to HOW she's standing when I'm rewarding Stand, just if her butt's up, her feet are down, and she's not whining. 3' away we can get 5 seconds with no trouble at all. In anything approaching a front position, we can't do 3 seconds without whining and fidgeting. She offers Sit four times, always when she's in front position. Now I can lure her backwards into a stand. Not pretty, but it means her body is calming down - her back end is connecting to her front end. It certainly wasn't three days ago.

I need to understand in teaching future behaviours that learning one thing will blow other things temporarily out of her brain. From Sit she still remembers the Down cue, but from Stand she hasn't got a clue what Sit means. Either I'm spouting Latin, or it's a trick to get her out of Stand. That's OK, I'm working on Stand right now. Am I going to have to do the Eye Contact from 3' away as well? I better get new glasses.

More Stand (yawn)

Eye contact

Whining

Whining is boring. And it will NOT continue throughout her lifetime. I HATE whining. For lunch we do 100 Stands. I can lure her backward into a Stand, or have her offer them, tell her Stay, walk 20' out and back, stay gone for 10 seconds, and she remains Standing. Quietly. Calmly. BUT if I walk out, turn and face her and stand still myself, she starts whining again. I think she'll be an engineer when she grows up, not a philosopher - she needs to know the flow rate and diameter of the pipe, none of this "I Stand, Therefore I Am" nonsense for her. I use the cue about 90 times. I am so totally bored with whining. With Standing. With saying "OutSTANDing".

Then we switch to Eye Contact. She's forgotten Eye Contact. She stares at my left hand, stares at my right hand, lies down, stands, and doesn't think of making eye contact until she starts whining. I click eye contact with whining X20. She remembers Eye Contact. Now I need to get rid of the whining, and I'm no longer afraid she's going to give up or wander off, so I decide to let the whining extinguish. I sit with her in front of me, staring at me, whining. I put my hands out to either side (if she thinks she's doing Zen at the same time, she's got slightly less chance of whining). I close my eyes and sit there, inert. She whines. She whines harder. She prowls and whines. She barks at me. Finally she shuts up for a second. I open my eyes. She's looking at me. I say YES and shovel three kibbles into her mouth. She looks at me again, Yes, 3 kibbles. She starts to whine, I close my eyes, she carries on. And on. And on. Finally shuts up. I open my eyes. She's looking at my feet. I wait. She whines, I close my eyes. After awhile she shuts up again and when I open my eyes she's looking at me. Yes, kibble.

150 kibbles. Maybe 80 yesses. She's quieter at the end than at the beginning. I'm very glad I have a blog to write or I think I would watch TV instead of training the puppy. I CANNOT abide whining. We Will Live Through This.

Otherwise she's perfect.

Stand on a table

Random cues

Supper - I'm starting to think again. Again. I need to get her out from front position where SHE can think about what's happening. I put her on the grooming table. I get her looking at my right hand as she would in a show stack. I lure her into a stand. I hold her tail up with my left hand, and I give her the cue Outstanding... and then I count out loud.

All this does the job. She assumes the position and stays there. I work up to 12 seconds while she stands slowly wagging her tail. She doesn't whine, she doesn't stamp her feet, she doesn't swing her head, she just stands. As the time gets longer, the treats get bigger - at 12 seconds, she gets to eat 10 kibbles from out of my hand.

Then we start from 1 second again with me NOT holding her tail, and counting more quietly. No problem. Finally I put her on the floor, don't hold her tail, and count almost silently. It takes us a little longer to get past 5 seconds, but we get up to 10 before we stop.

Then we do a little Sit-Down-SorePaw-Stand. She mostly remembers the cues tonight.

To finish the evening, Stitch, Scuba and I play a little game where I cue Scuba to Sit and Down and Stand, and if Stitch happens to be in the right position, she gets a kibble too. She gets a lot of kibble.

It's a little scary. Scuba weights 42 lbs and gets 1 cup of food twice a day. Stitch weights 16 lbs and gets 1 cup 3 times a day.

A week where I got frustrated and stopped thinking. Fortunately I managed not to tell Stitch about this.

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