Otto is 16 weeks old and we've been together for an official month! We had a really great week!
Socialization
It was a COLD week here in the frozen north. Not as cold as it's going to get, but colder than it's been. Too cold for bare-fingered treat dispensing for the most part. But we still put in work! On Saturday we went to a friend's hobby farm to look at big animals and birds-not-for-chasing (chickens) and other farm stuff. Otto thought it was great! He was pretty suspicious of the pigs, who were big and moved fast. He didn't mind the cows until they started moving. By the end, we walked past both of their pens without any issues.
Sunday we took out first indoor field trip to Home Depot! Otto was a champ at ignoring people and focusing on me! He tries SO hard! He sees a person and gets excited, but then whips his head back to me with a full-body wiggle! It's adorable! He also climbed on, around, over, and through a bunch of things laying in the aisles.
Monday was class night and we worked attention, loose-leash walking, recall, and tuck sits with human and canine distractions. He rocked it! He attempted to play with Koolie puppy Vivid, who was still a little bit scared of him, but got to play with big Koolie Pan instead!
Tuesday we didn't go anywhere, but he met Jun in the yard for the second time. She ignored him. Works for me.
Wednesday we went for a walk around the block. We haven't done much walking in our neighborhood yet, so it was very exciting! We walked past a dog that barked at him and he did great pulling himself together and walking past with focus! I like to use a "follow" cue for these situations ( follow me as I walk backwards) rather than having the dog walk beside me. Easier for them to stay focused. We also went to class and worked on quiet in a crate, which was not as successful as last week because now he has FRIENDS at class! At the end of class, we worked restrained recalls and then my so-called "obedience friends" encouraged all kinds of naughtiness and he just ran from person to person getting treats and loves. He had a great time!
Thursday we hosted a playdate with a lab puppy, Cedar, we tried to play with over the weekend. Cedar was too scared to play on Saturday, but we tried again and he brought his big sis Arrow along for confidence. Otto enjoyed playing with Arrow and even convinced Cedar to warm up to him after awhile!
Manners
We had a couple of really great days with excellent crate and pen manners. Others were harder. He's doing great with quiet during his daily crate time. He goes in his crate for 1-2 hours a day, either while I'm home or when I go out for a bit. This week we've had no barking, maybe because I left his crate covered like I do for bedtime. Pen time has been mixed. He is getting more active and wants to be out with everyone else, but when he's out he spends all his time being naughty, so loose time is only under strict supervision.
We are working on quiet while I do things with the other dogs. This week he's been much better about quiet in his pen while I take the other dogs out to play frisbee. Just a little barking before he stops. Going to the basement is still tough. Training the dogs upstairs in front of his pen started to be tough this week. Especially his "best friend" Ira. He just can't stand that Ira is having fun and he's not!
He learned about staying on the deck, while I go in and out the gate to the back yard. In general, he's so polite with thresholds and waiting for release. He needs reminders in his car crate, but otherwise waits for the ok to leave any confinement. I hate door bolting more than anything, so we're putting in the work up front on this!
He is mostly a good, good puppy, doing a good job learning patience and waiting!
Training
His focus and stamina for work amazes me! He's like the energizer bunny, he just keeps going and going! "Wearing him out" with mental exercise just doesn't happen.
This week we focused on:
- Attention and focus. Always.
- Marking - this will be a crucial skill for his future sports of obedience and hunting and for some reason it makes me super nervous to teach, even though it is simple. Put a reinforcer out, send while they're looking at it. Gah! But Ira is a terrible marker and so I'm worried I'll screw it up. However, Otto is not a herding dog and has completely different tendencies. It's going much better this time. He's finding his target on the word "mark" and running to get his cookies!
- Wrapping a cone. We added a cue "loop" and he is really gaining confidence with this behavior and gaining speed as he does! He seems to be having fun with it!
- We played around more with luring a tuck sit and that's coming along nicely. I broke down and decided to teach "sit" (put your butt on the ground) and not worry too much about how he gets into a sit. I will continue to work on building good sit mechanics and hopefully they will transfer over. And eventually his tuck sit will be on a different cue if needed. I first tried to capture/shape a sit but was getting too much extraneous behavior, so I went to luring it, and faded the lure to an empty hand, and then just the verbal. We've only had a couple of sessions, so this is nowhere near fluent, but coming along. This is another cue I get overwhelmed with because in theory it's so simple (every dog knows how to sit, right?) but in practice I need a dog who sits instantly on the first cue regardless of his position in relation to me. So much to mess up! Also another cue that past dogs have had trouble with (I'm looking at you, Lok). But Lok was a very "sticky" border collie and I'm a much better trainer now. So....I need to just get over it.
- Ball pick-up. I successfully shaped a pick-up from the floor with a tennis ball. We had been having a pretty tough time getting mouth-related behaviors. Part of this is, he tends to lie down a lot and then when he's lying down he doesn't necessarily re-offer what I want. So I got him out of that by tossing treats for each rep (kudos to Jo Laurens' method in Force-Free Gundog Training) and then we worked a HIGH ROR and high number of reps to fluence at each step on looking, nose-touching, mouth-open touch, partial bite, full-mouth bite, and finally the lift. I revisited this behavior because he's supposed to be doing ball therapy for a maloccluded canine and he's just not into balls at this point, as a play object. But I don't think I'm going to continue. A) Per google research, ball therapy doesn't work on baby teeth, it should be done while the adult canine is erupting, B) the divot in his mouth is so deep I worry I'll do more damage if the tooth shifts a tiny bit but not fully to where it needs to be, C) he needs to carry the ball for 15 minutes 3x/day to have an effect and there's no way I'm going to get that kind of duration in such a short period of time without building all sorts of undesirable behaviors into his shaped retrieve. I will leave this here until we move to bumper and dumbbell retrieves
- Superdog! His first trick! Sat down for a free-shaping session and that's just what he offered me.
- Its Yer Choice with odor. Step 1: tin in one hand, cookies in the other. Step 2: tin on the ground. His first scent work! He's learning that the odor pays! I love teaching nosework as a foundational step to obedience scent discrimination and also as a fun activity to burn energy in the winter months.
- He's starting to like the hand touch more! I've been just asking for a few reps here and there and not pushing it. I really started to notice a difference in his enthusiasm when I added a level of difficulty by adding hand touches into his impulse control work. He has to leave the food on the floor to do a hand touch. So, as always, making the behavior harder is making it stronger.
No comments:
Post a Comment