STITCH

the weBlog of a Service Dog In Training

Woo hoo, I'm getting excited about retrieving again. As if having her eventually get 438 objects to me isn't enough!

We start breakfast with X10 on her paw target. It's as high as I can get it on the couch. She's been dreaming about it - she whomps it the first five times with both front paws in a dive, then settles down to the one-paw swipe. One-paw is not as accurate as both, and I wait until she actually hits the target before clicking.

Then on to the hold. She's been dreaming about this, too. She begins by giving me good solid 3-second holds with no fussing at all. I have someone coming in half an hour, and her understanding is exciting, so I'm shoveling the food into her by the handful. This also seems to make an impression on her.

3 seconds X30, then I start letting her take the weight of it. This causes some indecision, but amazingly, she spits it out when she feels the weight but immediately grabs it again and holds while I let her have the weight. I'm not moving my hand away, an observer wouldn't be able to tell that I've released it, so when she drops it it doesn't fall. X5. Then she grasps the concept and holds it while I let her have all the weight. X10. She shows a little confusion by chin-bumping the initial take again, but the hold is solid. X20. We're well over 80% success, so I open my hand so an observer could tell I wasn't holding the dumbell. X30, and we're up to 70% on this as well. Wow.

And Wow again. At supper, we start with the leather dumbell again. She still has a few chin-bumps before biting it, but when she bites it, she's over 80% holding it. X10, then I start releasing the weight. X10 at 80%, and actually let go. She drops it the first few times, then holds it firmly. I start doing variations of an 8-second hold - we hold it together for 3 seconds, she holds it alone for 3, then together again for 2 seconds; or 1 second together, 4 alone, 3 together. She's GREAT.

Then I move the dumbell around, to my left, to my right, up high, down low, so she has to move to take it. This is harder for her, she goes back to the chin-bump. X20 and she's got it. Next I hand it to her when she's standing and ask her to sit while holding it. That's like walking and chewing gum at the same time, but X 20 and she's got that too.

We switch to the wooden dumbell. There's no apparent difference in her reaction to the wood than to the leather. X20. We switch to the metal dumbell. X5 to get used to it, then no difference with that either.

To finish the meal, we do the paw target X10. Wow.

What goes up, must come down.

We start breakfast with a very nice 8-second Eye Contact X5. Then the Paw Target X10. Then the leather dumbell. She starts right where we left off. She holds it for 10 seconds. I can take my hand off it, put my hand back on it, we both hold it. Excellent.

I hand it to her, take my hand off it, move my hand out of sight, back, and hold it with her again. Excellent. She's about 70% on this. 30% of the time she drops it before I get back to it. Excellent.

When we hit 80%, I decide not to pick it up when she drops it. She's really into this. She drops it, I sit and stare at it. She waits for me to pick it up, then grabs it. Drops it. Grabs it. Drops it. Grabs it. When she's holding it, 10% of the time I can actually move my hand slowly back to it and take it from her. Ee hah.

So we do this for a while, and then she tells me that working with a 10% success rate is not her idea of how to have breakfast. "Out of the blue", "suddenly", she quits. She goes to her paw target and whacks it five or six times. No response. She lies down. No response. She offers me Princess Paw. No response. She gives an absolutely FABulous 46-second Stare (I counted). No response. She walks to the door and looks back at me. No response. I offer her the dumbell and she stares at the door.

I can hear a phantom instructor yelling "Don't let her get away with that, she's blowing you off!" Fortunately the noise is drowned out by how clearly Stitch is saying that she tried and tried and what she was trying didn't work, she's frustrated and she doesn't know what to do about it. I wait for several minutes while she stares at the door. Then I flick the dumbell and she glances at it, so I start back at the very beginning. Click for a glance. Click for a glance. Click for a look. Click for a step toward it. Click for walking to it. Click for lowering her head. X20 and she's back in the game, but I keep the game simple, just clicking for picking it up.

We finish up with Sit, Down, Sore Paw and Princess Paw. Easy stuff to help her confidence. She's happy, I'm happy.

I don't get to train her the next meal. Two loud, jerky, squealing, energetic, normal kids - one 4, one 6 - land in our living room.

The kids start out excited and a bit scared. The puppy starts out excited and a bit scared. She pretends she's sitting and looking at me but she's reallly just sticking with me because the kids are so far from her idea of normal. She's not hiding behind me, but she's careful to keep me beside her so she can escape if she needs to.

I put Stitch's entire meal in a bucket where the kids can reach it. They're not familiar with dogs and can't bring themselves to feed Scuba, let alone the pup, but that also means the closest they're going to come to touching her is to jab at the air a foot over her head. I feed her a few kibbles for looking at the kids, or for looking at me, or for sitting, or anything else she does that's anywhere close to reasonable. Then, because the kids won't hand her any food, I start dropping the food on the floor, one piece at a time. The kids pick up on this and start doing it too. The kids are tossing it near me, and I'm judiciously tossing it closer and closer to the kids. Stitch is snatching the food off the floor. She dives into a Down with her face on top of each kibble, then looks for the next piece. If it takes too long getting there, she retreats to a safer place closer to me. The kids squeal each time she approaches them.

Soon Stitch is slowing down her snatching and leaping, and the kids' squealing is getting quieter. As they all become more comfortable with the idea of each other, I start hand-feeding her kibble, which turns her face away from the kids, and they get brave enough to start petting her.

When the meal is done, Stitch is standing normally between me and the kids, wagging her tail and plucking any stray kibbles off the rug, and the kids are talking quietly, petting her calmly, and letting her sniff their hands. Excellent session!

I don't want that quitting thing to happen again. I gave her the last meal free. She now has 3 puppy incisors left. Her gums are swollen and so red they look like a sunburn. I can feel the heat from them when I pet her face.

Since she's a moving kind of dog, we do some moving. I start on the Front Ray and Bullseye. Her Eye Contact is excellent, she gives me 10 seconds as a matter of course. I take two handfuls of kibble, and we work on the Front Ray diagram X 30. Very nice. She's stopping rarely off my shoulder and when I do nothing but continue to stare at the floor in front of me, she immediately pops forward so she can see my eyes. With the next two handfuls, we work on the Bullseye. Also excellent. X20 and she's within a foot of my toes. We alternate, one handful for the rays, one for the bullseye. When she's 95% hitting a half-point-off Front, I start tossing every third kibble between my legs. That straightens her out as well, and when we're done, we've had no frustration, no quitting, the odd grunt when something didn't work as she wanted it to but no whining. She's really in the game, and she hit 4 perfect fronts.

Back to chewing on everything.

I often say "The best thing about clicker training is... " and it's always something different. I'm having the same trouble with the puppy. "My favourite thing to train her is..."  A few days ago it was retrieving. Now we're working on the Eye Contact and positioning with the Get Lost game and the two diagrams. Her contact is lovely, solid - as always with my own dogs, I could sink into her eyes. Pity people who see only dominance in eye contact!

This morning she figured out how to walk and hold contact at the same time as I pivot. She's better counterclockwise than clockwise, where she occasionally forgets and runs around me. She's self-correcting, though, knows she's looking for my face, and loves to work the motion games.

Now we're going out - she's making her vet clinic debut. There'll be lots of cookies and cuddles and people who will back off if I tell them to.

Well, that's the theory, anyway. The trip goes very well except for one incident. She rides well in the crate in the car - one 30 second whine and one 5 second yap. We get out of the car and have some kibble, walk up the steps and have some kibble, go in the door and have some kibble. Meet people one at time with Stitch making the overtures. She's thrilled to meet people and have cuddles. She does Sit and Down and Sore Paw on the scale (22 pounds, all of it leg). She does Sit and Down on the examining table, and lies on her side with her head down. She's not thrilled to have the otoscope inserted in her ears, or the thermometer, but I hold her head still and it isn't a wrestle. Lots of kibble for the shot, and a good cuddle with the vet. Back out in the waiting room for more cuddles with staff and everybody asks her for Sit and Down and Sore Paw and Princess Paw and she gets about three meals' worth of treats. We're winding up, and some - excuse me - BOZO walks in with an adult dog, lets the leash go, and the dog rushes over to Stitch. The dog isn't aggressive but stands over her. Stitch can't decide whether she's more excited or more submissive, and winds up spinning and peeing with me frantically trying to snag her. Finally I get her and they hustle the bozo and her dog into an examining room. I stay long enough to calm Stitch down, ask for a few more behaviours, and let staff members feed her some more, but I really want to get out of there before the other dog comes out of the examining room.

Tomorrow night we have Stitch's first puppy class. I'm going to go early so I can take my time getting into the building and find a corner where I can keep her calm when the other dogs come in.

A very light breakfast and we go to class for the first time this evening. There are five adults and large puppies, and Stitch. They start with a play period, for which Stitch is quite comfortable to stand on me and watch. She looks like she's riding a roller coaster - she really really wants to visit//she really really wants everybody to stay over THERE//she really really wants to visit. She sniffs a couple of dogs from my lap, and I'm careful not to let them come any closer than her nose. Then the class begins and the other dogs go to their own places in the room. Stitch is more comfortable with the larger dogs over THERE and not moving around so much. I've brought a freeze-dried wiener (five years in a freezer'll do that), but she's happy working for her kibble.

Soon she's comfortable enough to get off me. I put her on the floor and let her look at the dogs. Every time she glances back at me, she gets a couple of kibbles. Otherwise I leave her alone to watch them. Periodically she loses her nerve and comes back to put paws up and get a cuddle. Then she goes back out to the end of the leash to watch. After a few minutes she comes in and starts working. I've never seen her ears pulled back before, and she's trying to pay attention to what I'm doing with the kibble and at the same time keep an ear on what's happening behind her. Again, periodically she can't stand it any more and has to turn and watch. She can give me the behaviours she's good at already - Sit, Down, Sore Paw, Princess Paw, Target, Watch - but she was reluctant to think hard enough to attempt to learn anything new. What bothered her most was the odd large bark. She's been listening to Scuba. When Scuba barks, it's a good idea for Stitch to listen and respond appropriately ("appropriately" generally meaning to get away from Scuba or something Scuba wants). When one of these dogs barks, she can't see anything she should get away from, which is worrying her a bit.

I take her outside to pee but she can't - every time she starts to assume the position, a car goes by on the dark street nearby and startles her.

In general, she handles the class very well, but I'm glad I was there to introduce her to a new situation and not expecting her to learn any new behaviours. That would have been asking for too much.

After the other dogs leave, the instructor and I sit and chat for another hour while I toss one handful of kibble after another out onto the floor. That soon gets her delving into odd corners! By the time the second hour is up, she's much more comfortable. There's a puppy class starting on Saturday. This one is a Click & Trick class. We could finish this class and accomplish what I want, but we're going to switch to the baby class where I think she'll be more comfortable.

I need an easy day so we work on some of her homework from her Tricks class. We start with trying to lure her to roll over. I can get her over on one hip without too much trouble, but any further and she's convinced I want her to leap into a stand. This rapidly exceeds "easy" so we move on to resting her head. I can't reach the floor, so I lure her to rest her muzzle in my cupped hand. ShaZAM. The 4th time I lure it, she knows what she's doing. X30 and she's got it on a voice cue or on presentation of my hand. Scuba's got this trick with the cue of "Are you precious?" so that's what I use for Stitch.

Next we try a bow. I've been avoiding this, thinking that Sit and Down and Stand are enough position behaviours for a baby. She's even faster this time. The third time I start to lure it, she assumes the position before I get there. "Take a bow". X30 and she's not ready to do it totally on a voice cue, but she easily responds to a hand cue and holds the position while I hand her 15 individual kibbles. Fun meal.

LIFE BEHAVIOURS :

Knowing, understanding, tolerating kids

Seeing other dogs.

Meeting new people.

Going to new places.

Loose leash.

Paws up, lie on table.

Grind nails.

SKILL BEHAVIOURS :

Retrieve.

Paw target.

Contact.

Diagrams.

Precious.

Take a bow.

18 Weeks Old

NEXT

16 Weeks Old

SKILLS THAT WERE USED:

We used all her tricks including Sit, Down, Princess and Sore Paws, Watch, Come, and her concentration and desire to work for food to help her learn to like children.

Riding in the car and loose leash into the vet's and training building. All her tricks to show off for new people to get treats, and to help her concentrate when there were other dogs around.

Paws Up and lying on her side on the grooming table to have her nails ground and her face shaved.

Zen to get her to stop licking my hands while I'm typing.