Blog21weeks

STITCH

the weBlog of a Service Dog In Training

21 WEEKS OLD

My husband's out of town this weekend, so I decide it's time for Stitch to learn to sleep in the bedroom like a real dog (who am I kidding - on the bed). So far she's been sleeping very nicely in her crate in the dog room off the kitchen, but in her life as a Service Dog, she won't always have a crate to sleep in. She's been making such a fuss about being on the bed, even for an hour, I'm not anticipating an excellent night.

But it IS an excellent night. Who is this puppy? I put her on the bed, she lies down and snuggles up. After half an hour, she decides she's too hot and moves to my knees. Half an hour after that, she's tummy-up and snoring softly. At 3 AM, I wake up with her tail whipping me in the face - she's wagging it in her sleep, but I won't hold that against her. When I'm ready to get up, she's still sleeping. What a good puppy!

There was definitely a breakthrough in the puppy brain yesterday. All day Stitch is cuddly and charming and more responsive than she's ever been. Another mark on the wall for Leading The Dance, even in its mildest form.

On a bit of a worrisome note, she's broken off one of her two remaining puppy canines just below the surface of her gum. I hope the new canine pushes it out, but in case it doesn't, we're not going to bother with her dewclaw until I find out whether she'll need an anaesthetic to get rid of this tooth. Might as well do both jobs at once. My pet surgeon doesn't want to do the dewclaw when she's still on meds for the eye infection anyway. Gosh, this is like a kid with a teething fever, a big bruise on his back, and four stitches in his chin. AKA "normal".

We start supper with some position reminders - Sit from standing and down, Stand from sit and down, Down from sit and standing. Then we do more retrieving. By golly, she may not have it tomorrow, but tonight she understands retrieving. She goes eagerly out to the dumbell no matter where I toss it (within 4' of me, anyway), picks it up, comes back to me, and holds it while I hold it until I click. She'll even come a little closer if I ask, or sit if I ask, still holding the dumbell. Totally exciting. And cool watching her pick it up in her lips, then toss it back into the correct position in her mouth without having to open her mouth to get it past her canines.

When we're done I feel guilty about doing retrieving with her broken tooth. While I'm tidying up, she goes in the pantry and drags a garbage bag full of used tin cans out into the kitchen. Guilt problem solved.

Another fantastic night. I put her on the bed and lie down. Stitch immediately goes to my knees, snuggles in, and goes to sleep. Sleeps until 9 AM.

On the way to her puppy class, she's better than she has been. I have a loaner car but she hops right in. I let her sit on the front seat for a few minutes, then sprinkle some kibble on the floor. She doesn't buy it. I push her off the seat onto the floor. She jumps up. I tell her No and push her off the seat. She decides to eat the kibble and stays on the floor. When she's done I wait until she lies down and then toss another handful on the floor. Lesson learned. In the front seat, dogs lie on the floor and get kibble. No whining all the way there.

She's excellent in puppy class for the first 40 minutes. I'm particularly pleased with the entrance. Loose leash from car to door, down hallway, and into the training room. A bit of enthusiasm, but after about 3 seconds, she remembers what she doing and goes across the room to our chair with a loose leash as well.

At about 45 minutes, she loses interest or gets full - she didn't pee on the way in and leaves quite a puddle outside when we leave, so maybe thatas it. At any rate, she just stops listening and responding. Finally she gives me a few more things and I take her leash off to go play with puppies. Periodically we call them out of the group to give them treats, and she comes halfway to me, then slaps her forehead and say "WHAT are you doing? You don't want to go over there!", turns and heads off in a new direction. What's THAT about? I dunno. Teacher lends me some venison sausage, then I can't get her to go play with anybody else. Obviously I need to upgrade her on-the-road kibble and dry cat food with some wieners or something better.

Stop at the Dairy Queen on the way home. They give her a couple of Milk-Bones and she can't chew them. Takes 20 minutes to gum them to death. I finish my Blizzard and sit reading a book for a few more minutes. She tries whining but nothing happens so she shuts up. Hmmm - this is something all my dogs practised a lot in my old soccer-mom days, but nowadays when we drive we're usually going somewhere. Have to stop at the DQ more often!

I give Scuba her supper, but before I can train Stitch, I get waylaid by something on TV. Stitch is extremely annoyed. She jumps on me. I put her on the floor. She jumps on me again, and I put her on the floor again. Then she gets serious. She barks, whines, and paws at me. Too bad I don't have the closed captioning on! In all she throws her tantrum for 2 minutes before she gives up and lies down at my feet. I let her lie there for another two minutes before I get up and go into the parlour to train.

We work on retrieving a bit. She's totally understanding the requirements, but tends to pick the dumbell off the floor with her tiny new incisors. This afternoon I found two broken puppy molars being pushed out of the way by her new ones, so I move the dumbell around in my hand and let her target it in motion a few times, then quit.

Scuba and I did agility tonight, which reminds me of paw targets, so I put out one of her pink lids and start kicking it around the room. No problem, she whaps it thoroughly with her paw no matter where I put it. I still haven't got a voice cue I'm happy with for this. I said "next time" I train a dog, there's going to be definite cues for both nose targets and paw targets, and now that I'm here, I can't think of anything I like for the cue.

Then we do position cues again. She's getting very good at Sit from Down. Still having a bit of trouble with Down from Stand.

Man, this is one tough little nut. Will she ever be allowed privileges? I'm doubting it. TWO nights in the bed, and she's got the bed down pat. Unfortunately for her, husband is now home and she's back in the crate in the dog room. Scuba's also back in the crate in the dog room with a "yeah, whatever" and a "where's my goodnight cookie?"

Last night and tonight, Stitch went into the crate just fine, got her cookie, and played possum until 3 hours after lights out. Then 10 minutes of whining, growing louder and louder, then half an hour of demand yapping while we lay in bed pretending she was going to stop. Finally I got up and let her outside. She rewarded this behaviour by grabbing a toy and asking if I'd like to play keepaway, so I stuffed her back in her crate and the rest of the night was quiet.

Tonight, she's doing it again, except this time, after 3 minutes of preliminary whining, I got up, scolded all the way down the stairs, and whapped on her crate with a magazine. Now I'm sitting silently in the living room in the dark while she gives me 20 minutes of silence, then starts the obnoxious whining again.

Too bad it decided to be winter yesterday. I can't even put her crate in the car.

OK, 3 crate-whaps and I get 45 minutes of quiet. I'm going to bed. If you were expecting better of me than crate-whapping at 3 AM, hey, sorry. I bet Stitch wasn't expecting it either. I tried the Just Say No thing, but she was making too much noise to hear me.

A great supper, twice over. We start with scent discrimination. A couple of days ago in puppy class, I got several of my fellow students to scent four metal dumbells for me. Tonight I put one down with my scent and Cheez Whiz on it. She runs right to it, she knows there's special goo on it. X5, then I add a second one, she finds the right one X10. I add two more, she finds the right one X20.

I'm not asking her to retrieve. Partly because of her ugly tooth situation, partly because the dumbells I'm using are Giant Schnauzer sized and she can barely hold the bar in her mouth. I AM asking her to put her mouth over the bar. So it goes like this: I do Go To Mat to the far side of the room. She trots over there and lies down (oooh, I LOVE that). I change the position of the three "neutral" articles, reCheez and rescent the right one, and put it near the rest. Call her. She runs over, sniffs all of them, then licks the CW off the right one. Then I click and reward X10 for putting her mouth on the right one. We run that set of events X10.

Then I stop reCheezing and just rescent my dumbell. This doesn't bother her, she comes back to the articles and puts her mouth on the right one. Click X10, and send her back to Mat to start again. X10.

100 clicks for putting her mouth on the right article, about 97% accuracy.

I put the articles away and we try 101 Things To Do With A Box. I've tried it once before with a cardboard box, with poor results. This time I use an old plastic milk-bottle carton. It's the same size as the cardboard box, but it has big and little holes in it, it's heavier, and I can see through it.

Since she's already tried it and didn't understand it at all, I'm going to put some effort into really getting her into this silly game. X20 for looking at it and nose targeting it. X20 for putting one paw on it or the other. I decide I'm not paying for paws any more when she sticks one leg in a hole right up to the elbow. OK, I paid for it. Now she's got the idea. X40 for playing 101. I get each paw in different holes, tipping the box, standing on the box, nose in different holes, mouth around different parts of the box. Clever little dude.

She's been invited to the hairdresser -mine, not hers. My car has been in the shop for over a week now, and I'm driving a loaner. We set out late morning with her breakfast in my pocket. She sits to have her collar put on. She walks on a loose lead out to the car, hops in, moves to the floor on the passenger's side, and lies down. Holy shamoly. Who's small person is this?

Miss No-Tolerance-For-Boredom rides politely most of the way into the city, when the heater fan starts squealing loudly. She sits up, pulls her ears back, looks around, and starts her stress whining, but doesn't leave the floor. It'll take me a few seconds to figure out how to turn the fan off, so instead I toss her a handful of kibble. "Oh," she says, "the heater fan squeals and I get kibble. Cool." And that's the end of that potential difficulty.

I have to get some money, so we drive through the ATM at the bank. ATM is out of order, but I've already rolled down the window. When I roll it back up, it pops out of its socket and hangs drunkenly on the side of the car. And I still need money. I park to go into the bank. I'm thinking about the window, and Stitch follows me out into the parking lot when I get out of the car. ARGH. Call puppy, she comes back, ask her to get back in the car, she does. Gently close the car door so as not to kill the window, go into bank and get money. Stitch sits politely looking through the large hole.

So now I have money to get my hair cut, but realize I can't drive there with this drunken window, so I call in and reschedule, then drive across the street to the car fixing place. Stitch walks politely in on a loose lead. It's time to teach her to greet people by sitting, but she doesn't know that yet, so she cheerfully greets everyone she can get to by jumping up and trying to slobber on their glasses. Comes off when I ask her to, and we sit down in the waiting room. She lies down when I ask her to. It would be a good opportunity to practise Lie-Down-And-Shut-Up, but we practise positions instead - Sit, Down, Stand.

Then she spots the TV. Our TV is way above her head. This one is at puppy level. She's taken aback by the talking heads, so we do a little watch-TV-get-kibble, and in a minute she's thinking about other things, so we do some Go To Mat on her leash. Then the loaner's ready and we walk out on a lovely loose lead, hop in the car, and drive home. When we walk in the door, she turns and sits to have her collar removed. WHAT a wonderful morning!

When we get home I've still got half her breakfast, so we work on 101 with her milk carton. I can't say she does anything totally inventive, but she's happy to see it and trying hard to think of new things. Once I leave her a bit too long between clicks and she lies down, sighs, and puts her head on her paws, but I just sit looking at the carton. 10 seconds later she gets up and turns toward it - click for reengaging, and she's back into the game. Another time I see her about to quit, but she startles and goes back to it, click for that, too.

She comes to me in the evening and fusses at me - whining, the odd yap, pawing. Obviously she's ready for supper. I ignore her. Eventually she gets up on the couch beside me and settles for a cuddle.

When *I* am ready to feed her, we work on 101 again - this time with a wooden stool. I decide that I was unkind to say she wasn't particularly inventive. Next to Scuba, she's not that inventive, but Scuba's been playing this game for 9 years. Stitch started this week. She immediately knows what the stool is doing on the floor in front of my chair. She targets it with nose and paw, both paws, mouths it, runs around it in both directions. She sticks her muzzle between various rungs. She stands up with her front paws on it. When I don't click the fifth time she offers a behaviour, she doesn't quit, but thinks of something else to offer. After a while I start clicking only if the stool moves. Pretty soon she pulls it over and has to deke out of the way. This might frighten her, but it doesn't, she goes right back to moving it. She can move it by pulling it, by pushing it, and by rolling it over.

I haven't counted out any kibbles this time, so I count each one as I give it to her. 240 in a meal. I decide I don't like counting them as I give them to her, it makes me think about counting and not about training or about how great this small person is. I like it better when I count them out ahead of time, or use handfuls - 8 handfuls in a meal, 30 kibbles per handful, 3 sets of ten per handful. THAT is useful information for me as a trainer which doesn't take my attention away from the dog and the training conversation.

LIFE BEHAVIOURS :

Sleeping politely in a bed.

Sleeping politely in her crate. Again.

101 Things To Do With An Object.

SKILL BEHAVIOURS :

Retrieving!

Positions.

Paw targets.

Scent discrimination.

Puppy class, sleeping in a people bed, and pup-around-town, she starts to act like a real dog.

22 Weeks Old

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20 Weeks Old

SKILLS THAT WERE USED:

Totally loose leash on the way into puppy class! Also into and out of the vet's office. Go To Mat and Stay while I'm arranging her scent articles. All the necessary skills for a lovely outing - sit to get collar on, LLW to car, jump in car, lie down, LLW into garage, greet people, Go To Mat, LLW to car, LLW into house, sit to have collar removed.