Otto at 20 Weeks

 The most exciting happening of the week....the dogs are fully integrated! No more sheets over the ex pen! Of course, Jun is still her bitchy, guardy self and takes every opportunity to throw her chin over his back and growl if he gets within 3' of her. And Ira is still his weird self and chooses to spend most of his time in his crate. But I can now do things like let two dogs walk from the car to the house together! We'll see if they ever develop any more relationship that mere (mostly) peaceful co-existence, but I am fine with what we have.

The first picture of Otto with either of his siblings!

It's been a really cool training week! I've introduced a lot of big boy concepts, like stimulus control, cue discrimination and intervals/chaining! 

Cue discrimination: He has several behaviors somewhat on a verbal (sit, settle, touch, peek, superdog) so we started working on mixing up those cues and learning that you have to listen to the word I am saying. Touch and peek are easy, because there is body language associated with them. Sit and settle get mixed up a lot, which is completely expected at this stage. All I want is for him to start to learn that all of his tricks can be mixed up together and he has to listen to know which one will pay.

Intervals/chaining: The concept of having to do more than one behavior before getting a reward and that if you don't get a reward after one behavior it doesn't mean you were wrong. Within the cue discrimination game, sometimes I will ask for more than one trick before I pay, simple as that.   

Stimulus control: Doing the behavior only when I ask for it and only on the cue for that behavior. So this has two parts. First, I have introduced nonsense words. In his sit-out-of-motion exercise, I will also say random words that he hasn't been taught, and he should only sit when he hears "sit." At first he would sit when I would say anything, but he caught onto this really quickly! 

Cute story: I was saying random words and had moved onto colors. I said "blue" and he kept following me, I said "yellow" and he stopped dead in his tracks and gave me the funniest look. I couldn't figure out why he had such a reaction to the word "yellow" and later I realized that "yellow" was one of his sisters! So it was definitely a word he had heard before.

The other part of stimulus control is "do the behavior ONLY when cued" and I hate teaching this because it inevitable results in some confusion at first and I don't like to confuse my dogs. Maybe there is a better way to teach it without confusion, I should think about that. I am using my foot target, called "step." So, once Otto is consistently offering the foot target, I name it, and after a bunch of repetitions, once he is consistently "responding" to the cue, I wait and don't give the cue. Of course, he goes to the target because that is the behavior we are working on. If I did nothing, he would probably offer other behaviors on the target, come back to me and go to the target multiple times, before getting frustrated and just laying down or something. I like to help my dogs a bit more than that though while they are learning this concept. When he goes to the target uncued, I will talk him through it "ope, I didn't ask for that! come'on bud," call him back to me, reward near me and when he offers eye contact I will give him his cue. Once the dog gets this, they really, really get the idea of performing behaviors on cue and it makes their behaviors so much stronger! 

Otto started puppy class this week, finally! He was.....a challenge. He's gotten really good at ignoring (pretending to ignore) people and dogs in public and focusing on me, but four other puppies in a small room was just way too big a jump for him. We worked outside the ring for half the class and were able to move into the ring by the end, but it was literally constant work to maintain his focus. The class includes playtime, but all the other puppies were younger and smaller than he was, so they weren't really feeling his vibe. I emailed the instructor and next week we're going to the later class, with puppies that are closer to his size: a golden, lab, boxer, and doodle. We have 5 weeks left of puppy class and then I am hoping we'll get off the waiting list for Sports Foundation.

First attempt at puppy horns

 We worked on SO MUCH this week:

• Back-up: up to 8 continuous steps and I have put it away while I decide what to do with it. I don't really use it for anything, so I'm not sure what my cue or criteria should be.

• Cooperative Care: We worked on this a LOT. We worked "flat" on both sides and moved it to the grooming table, which he doesn't really care for and I don't blame him. It's small, and I'd certainly be worried about falling off. But we're getting there. We worked on "pillow" which is resting his head on a pillow while I mess with his topknot and ears. He got the basic behavior, including duration, in about 10 seconds. Adding in my using both hands to comb his hair and such has taken a little more work, but as you can see above, he actually let me put ponytails in and I was so impressed! His hair is hanging in his eyes terribly these days, so this is an important skill. We also worked on using his chin rest for a practical purpose, which is resting his chin one one hand while I use the other hand to mess with his head.

• Foot target: Cue "step." Worked on a lot of stuff with this. Adding distance to the send, stimulus control as described above, and working on marking a target that doesn't have food on it and distinguishing between eye contact, mark, and send. We just started this, so I will get video next week, but my hope is he will have a far better mark than Ira does and will give me a sustained look at a target on cue. Once we have this down with one foot target, I'll add multiple and that will be the beginning of a directed retrieve.

• Sit on a platform: All I wanted was to teach him to tuck sit on a platform and he ended up basically giving me left finishes on his own, so....ok!! We also started working on his sit-stay this week, and worked up to a walk-around-to-heel.

•  Nose touch to a stanchion: for go-outs