Playing and Training

Update:  The Puppy is now called The Monster.   Yes he’s an adolescent, and I love him to pieces!

I’ve been taking some online classes since I’m not particularly thrilled with the obedience classes offered locally.  The only competition classes are more force based than I want to be.  So…  I’ve audited several from Denise Fenzi and am currently auditing her “heeling games” class and trying to work The Monster with the many play-based moves that are presented.  One problem I’ve had is that sometimes he doesn’t seem to want to play.  He’ll engage with me for a little while, but then flop down on the floor (if we are in the basement) or retreat to a crate (if we are in the kitchen area) to chew on whatever toy we were using.  He did this several times the other day with his rope-and-ball combination toy.  It seems like I’m the one doing all the work.

But… this morning he came running into the bedroom with the rope-and-ball toy in his mouth and actually asked me to play!  (Of course this does means he counter-surfed to steal that toy…. but… I gleefully ignored that :-).  Perhaps we made progress?  I didn’t ask for any “formal” obedience, I just rolled around on the floor with him and played.

My goals:

1. Increase the value of playing with me
2. Work=Play
3. Specific “fun” moves are a reward for work/engagement

The Monster says: I might be confident, but I can still be over-faced!  Short and Fun should be your goal!

Wrong Course Happiness!

The other day at agility practice, The Princess took the weaves as a wrong course.  Yes, she opted to take the weaves.  To say I’m happy is an understatement.  I do believe her shoulder injury had bothered her for much longer than I knew, and finally, now that she’s healed, the reinforcement history is paying off and she *likes* the weaves!  WHOO HOOO!!!!!  We have three weekends of trials in January, maybe we will get some Qs 🙂

The Princess says: oh, and I can layer the weaves too.  Now you’ve got to catch up with your handling slow lady!

Walking the puppy part 2

I’ve been pretty good about taking the Puppy for a neighborhood walk at least twice a week.  One of the nice things about the neighborhood is there is a park quite close by.  We can leave the house, walk just a quarter of a mile or so to the park, and then have a nice loop around the park and back home.  All in the space of about a half an hour.   I try to spend the time bonding with the Puppy, occasionally asking for a behavior, often stopping to play tug for a minute and in general working on manners.  Its a good time.  Most of the time….

The other day my timing was off and we shared our route with three other folks and their dogs.  They provided great examples of typical “meeting other dogs” scenarios.

1. A man running with his two off leash dogs.  I’ll give this guy some credit – he was way off the path (in a field) and when he saw me, still probably 1/4 mile away, he stopped and downed his dogs and waited until I had passed him before starting up again. I  also watched and he did put his dogs on lead when he turned out of the fields into the neighborhood.  The Puppy noticed the dogs and I just kept rewarding him for following me.
2. A woman walking her dog on leash.  No issues, we were kind of going different directions and didn’t even meet.  The Puppy also noticed this dog in the distance and again, I just rewarded him for turning his focus back to me.
3. A man with an off leash dog over which he had no control.   “Here Fido,  Fido COME” he kept calling as his dog was barreling down to us.  The Puppy started barking and was quite distracted.  I had to resort to tossing kibble in the face of the oncoming dog a-la Patricia McConnell’s video.  This did seem to distract the dog.  But WHY?  WHY do people do this? Thankfully I was not walking The Palace Guard, who would have gone ballistic!

As the days get warmer and brighter at 7am, I think I’m going to face other folks more often.  I guess I’ll be happy when Daylight Savings Time starts and at least for a little bit it is darker again when we set off.

Cleared for takeoff!

The Princess, who has had a shoulder injury for almost an entire year, and has been on “rest” and “controlled exercise” for most of that, was finally cleared to slowly begin agility training again! She can do some low jumps in a straight line. All paws and fingers will be crossed that she stays sound.

First mistake I made after the injury was I didn’t rest her long enough. Two weeks after the injury I thought she seemed fine and let her get back to her normal routines. Hindsight, and the Physical Therapist tell me that I should have waited SIX WEEKS. Yes. Six. Weeks. of crate rest and leash only walking. Because we didn’t do that, it took almost a year to bring her back.

Walking the Puppy

We have all probably trained our dogs on Loose Lead Walking.  With varying degrees of success.  I know my success, or lack thereof,  is primarily due to how consistent or inconsistent I am with my criteria.   This morning, as I walked the new puppy (12 weeks old!  Yeahaw!), I thought about this a little more.  Puppy walks beautifully on lead.  He trots along at my side or just in front of me.  Well, sometimes he twirls about my feet and almost trips me.  You could even say he stays *too* close.  But mostly he’s what we all want when we walk a dog, a perfect loose lead connection.

So, if Puppy is so good now, why would that change?  I could think of several reasons…(and there are probably more!  suggestions welcome!)

• he gets more independent and less dependent on me for the “where are we going” aspect of the walk
• he gets a bit more environmentally aware and less human focused, so he’s scanning more for interesting things (and wants to go to them)
• he pulls a little, and because  he’s so small I just let him – the pulling is then rewarded.. and then….

I think I have never “trained” loose lead walking until I didn’t have it.  Hmm.  What if I just never let him get rewarded by pulling?  Right from the start?   Test from this morning – he did run out to the end of his leash a few times.  I stopped.  He immediately turned and came back to me.

We’ll see how this is in a few months 🙂

Weaves again!

The Princess and I started a "weaves" class and I’m kind of excited about it. First of all, she was GREAT in the first class. We did several exercises with sets of six poles. Now granted, I think she stresses more at 12 poles, BUT still, she did not miss a weave. Nailed all of her entrances, and was confident through to the end of the poles. And second of all, the instructor made the class fun. And THIRD of all, it will give me a goal which will result in actual practice!

The one idea I had had on my own was to not mark any error in the weaves and continue on no matter what she does. Then, if she did it wrong, just come back and try again (but do not pull her out). This is how we are doing it in the class! Well perhaps I did read this somewhere else and decided to try it, but at least I had started it on my own first <I’m so proud of myself – grin>. Anyway, the theory here is to convey to the dog that *weaving* is their job, not ours. No matter what we (the handler) does, the dog should keep weaving until there are no more poles. I like taking the handler out of the picture, and I’m glad we’ll be training through that.

In the next few weeks the class will be getting more difficult as we add distractions and add poles. But we are looking forward to it. Or at least I am…

The Princess says: Of course I can weave, I always could. I just don’t always want to. And its your job to make it motivational for me. Get the picture?

Attitude for training

I think I’ve said this before, but an UNstressed dog can be trained. A STRESSED dog, not so much. Today at club run throughs The Princess was ON! She barked in the ring. She bounced. She FORGED! She Crabbed! I’ll take all of that since she was happy and unstressed. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because I left her in an xpen when I first got there (while I helped in the ring), and then jumped right into the ring? Or some of the loud stressful (correcting) people were not there? Or there were fewer people there? Who knows, but with attitude like that, we can actually work on the training.

I didn’t even have food on me, or give her any in the ring, although we did break and play tug with her squeekyskunk between exercises.

Things to work on – going out on the first command for the retrieves, and quicker drops.

Days like this are rewarding to ME, which means we’ll keep trying.

Failure

A dog bit me a few weeks ago. Not one of my dogs. My mom had adopted a new dog from family members of the deceased previous owner. I made so many mistakes with this dog. I’m the one that is supposed to have a better understanding of dog behavior, and yet I’m the one that got bit. The dog had also bitten the groomer (to the tune of five stitches), so obviously there were issues. But I thought of all people that I would be able to read the dog and avoid any problems. Nope. I walked into the house (UNannounced – mistake#1) and the dog came at me with a furor. I didn’t leave (mistake#2) and he bit me on the leg. As a relatively small dog, the damage was not that much, but it did draw blood. Later in the day I tried to snap a leash to his harness and came over his back (mistake#3) and he snapped. No contact that time.

My poor mom. All she wanted was a dog that was good with people and other dogs and didn’t pull on the leash, and was housebroken. She only got the "housebroken" part. We had a long discussion about it, and the result is she turned the dog into the local humane society. And that was my recommendation. And I’m sure, with his bite history, that he was euthanized. Although I feel this was NOT the right dog for my mom, I still feel guilty. For the dog’s sake. I failed the dog.

Health and stress

The Princess has been much less stressed in training recently. She had her teeth cleaned a few weeks ago. Coincidence?

Training Rule:  ALWAYS start with as healthy a dog as possible!

New Posting

I’m trying posting by email, since I never seem to get to my blog to do it. I’m also going to post much shorter items.