The House of Misfit Dogs

Targets are not Cues

2012-01-12T16:18:00.001-06:00

Or at least, that is the conclusion I have come to. Elo's cross paws trick is . . . sigh. This is why I never use targets. He is brilliant with the target there. I first tried to fade it by imagining the target was a cue and using cue-switching protocol, i.e., cue "cross" wait a couple seconds, then present the target. This was a decided failure. Elo now thinks the cue "cross" means "your target will be presented in a couple seconds" and does nothing but wait, or stomp his paw randomly if I make him wait too long. So I went to the "gradually make the target smaller" strategy with duct tape. We can get down to a 1cm target, and the behavior falls apart after that. I don't think Elo gets the "crossing" part of the behavior at all. If he slides over too far so the target is not in position anymore, he will just hit it with any old paw. So then I thought, well, he's done so many hundreds of repetitions of this behavior, the muscle memory has got to be there by now. I'll just wait for him to offer it. He has never once offered it. And the fact that I couldn't shape it was how we ended up in this targeting mess to begin with. I've tried clicking right before he hits the target, instead of when he hits the target, hoping he would start to understand that it was the crossing movement I was looking for. No dice. Training a simple behavior should NOT be this difficult. So . . . I am open to suggestions. Otherwise I think I'll keep working on the "making the target smaller" strategy. Maybe if I can get him working on a target that is a tiny speck I'll be able to take it away and still get the behavior.

Jun's goals are going ok. Her balance trick is coming along now that I finally decided what my criteria are. Scent articles and directed retrieves, not so much. I've decided I hate working on these skills. It's the resetting/sit in heel between. Jun hates it so I hate it. So we dispensed with the resetting and we're just working the skills informally. It's better, but I still have a negative CER to the whole exercise. She's actually improved quite a bit on the directed retrieve after I put a new cue on it. I hope it's allowed in competition. I'm sending her with a touch cue on her flank. The hand signal I was using was very confusing to her, since she had to look back at me for it after she had marked the article I wanted and often that resulted in her trying to take a different article. And I'd stop her, and she would get confused and shut down. So instead, we started practicing just marking and driving to the article, using a toy straight in front of her. We used some opposition-reflex, holding her back, to get some speed and enthusiasm. I put my hand to the side of her head to encourage her to focus straight in front and send her with a tap when she is looking in the right direction. It's been working out fabulously! And now I am bored with it. I need to practice in a bigger space. Maybe I will practice in the basement with frisbees tonight, since the yard is too icy to play outside.

Quick Professor Update
Such a great puppy! I just love him! Too bad the dogs don't feel the same. I feel bad that he has to be in the bathroom or crated basically 23 hours a day. But luckily he sleeps a lot so I don't think he minds too much. I've never had a dog who likes to sleep in before. I get up at 5 to work out and have been late, cause I have to cheerlead Prof out of his crate. He would sleep until 11 if I let him! Training is going ok. I have figured out that if I am doing an actual training session with food he knows I have, I have to keep it super short, especially if I am asking for control behaviors. He just gets so crazy around food. With the food bowl out, we have gotten a 4-second sit, barely. But I can spring a random sit on him with no food and we have gotten to 7 seconds! I have started working on his vibrating collar, just trying to associate the vibration with food. So far no indication that he is catching on despite about 50 reps last night, but he takes awhile to catch on to things, so I'm not worried. I am thinking about experimenting with using it as a marker. See if he can understand that concept. Training possibilities would explode!

Meet the Professor!

2012-01-05T09:57:00.000-06:00

Say hello to my new foster/training project! This is The Professor! Terrible name, but I refuse to change it--dogs whose name I change seem to end up staying for good, and besides, he can't hear it anyway! He's deaf and partially blind. At least, that's what I was told. In reality, I think his vision and hearing are just fine, but his brain doesn't process things right. He has some pretty clear brain damage--the effects are similar to Helen (a short-term foster from this summer) but MUCH more mild!

He's been here for almost a week now. Training him has been interesting to say the least! It is a work in patience, for sure. I feel this is much like training an invertebrate would be. He learns, that's for sure--but I'm not sure how! He doesn't seem to think much during training. He caught on to a hand touch within 5 seconds, but I think that is just instinctual. The hand might have food in it! I planned to teach him a sit, but we have some MAJOR impulse control issues around food and it wasn't happening. So I taught him a spin instead. He learned this pretty well, but it's still lured--just an extension of his hand target behavior. Which is fine. He won't respond to a verbal cue (see: the deaf/brain damaged thing). As long as he can DO the spin, that is all he needs. He compulsively circles and spins to the left, so if his new home works on spin right most days that should help balance out his muscle development.

Ah, impulse control. Not only is he insane about food, but he compulsively paces, circles, and spins. He knows (I think he hears) when I open the food container and starts throwing a fit--from a different room, behind closed doors!! Our first real training session I had to keep him moving with touches and spins, or else he was barking. Sit has been out of the question. We've been slowing working on it. He is slowly improving. We actually have a sit now! For a few days I had to lure his nose with food while pressing on his butt so he couldn't jump up or back up. Then a light touch on his butt with the food in front of his nose. Now sometimes he will sit with just the light touch and no food lure. I still have to shovel the food in his mouth FAST or he gets up. I still am not convinced he knows what he's doing or is making any conscious effort to learn, but he's clearly learning, so . . . . Of course any time he offers a sit (I use "offer" loosely, really he just happens to sit) or standing nicely and quietly he gets rewarded.

We are also working on yielding to collar pressure, walking nicely on a leash, hanging out nicely while tethered to me. Oh, and potty training (ugh).

Other than that, he's a fabulous puppy! Mellow, happy, playful (too playful--my dogs hate him). Here is his blog! Please share it and lets find this little guy a home of his own!

January Goals

2012-01-03T17:12:00.000-06:00

I am feeling a little bit uninspired again lately, and I am thinking it might be a good idea to do monthly goals. So Here are January's:

At the end of the month Elo will have the opportunity to test for his C.L.A.S.S. BA, so we should probably brush up on some of the necessary skills. Elo's boundary cue is good, but we have never worked on threshold manners outside the house, so waiting at the door will be one we need to work on. (Actually, the out-of-the-house part is going to be the biggest challenge for all of it, since being highly reactive Elo rarely gets the chance to work in public!) The recall will be no problem, but we have not worked on sitting for leashing up, so we will need to work that skill. The meet and greet will be another one we need to practice. Elo has never learned to sit for greeting. I don't expect it to be a problem, just something I will need to teach him. The rest of the items we should have down pretty well, but we will practice them just to be sure. Jun is not ready for the "stranger" part of the test yet, but I may practice some of these things with her anyway.

My other goals for Elo this month will be: 1) get his back up on cue and work it in front, heel and side. 2) finish his cross paws trick, and 3) work on his nails 5 days a week.

Jun will work on her scent articles and directed retrieves. And a trick. I just have to decide which one.

For both dogs, I want to work on body handling. Neither is particularly uncomfortable with body handling, but I'd like to get them both to where they can lie quietly on their side or stand still and accept all types of handling. I got a clipper for Christmas for the mats that Jun's fur tends to get, and I'd like her to be able to stand or lie nicely while I clip them out. We'll see how that goes!

2011 Wrap-up and 2012 Goals

2011-12-21T10:51:00.000-06:00

Well, I didn't set too many goals for 2011 at the beginning of the year. My disc-related goals were to add distance to my long throw and get better at "just playing" in freestyle. And I actually accomplished both--though neither ended up doing me much good. Lok got sick in July and spent all my money, so I did not get to travel to many Quads this year and I didn't even get to play in our local long distance competition.

Jun and I had the best freestyle we have ever had this season. I decided to get rid of vaults since she had so much trouble with them. I focused on keeping sessions very short, not drilling, not getting frustrated, going onto the field to just "jam" as often as I went out with a training plan and focusing on smooth sequences and highlighting our strengths vs. trying to throw everything we could "sort of" do into the routine. And it worked! She was drivier than ever this year, played happier, jumped higher, flipped better, and we were more connected. However, I retired her from disc at the State Champs in September. She ran off the field and went after a person during our last freestyle round and I now know I just can't trust her in that situation. I don't think I blogged that at the time. I was pretty upset, since I have now retired 2 out of 2 disc dogs at the age of 3. She may come out of retirement if I can get a handle on her issues, but I am not currently counting on it. For her sake I need to think of her as retired, rather than taking a break, since if I think of her as taking a break (like I did for most of the summer) I am sure I will try to play her again before she is ready. She may get to play in smaller, local, well-controlled comps. But we will not be playing out of state anymore. I've made peace with it now. There are lots of other things I can do with my dogs (that I am better at anyway).

My other 2011 goal was for Elo to get his CGC. That didn't happen. But we did get closer to functionality!

Which brings me to the rest of 2011, "The Year of Behavior Modification." In January I decided Jun's fear issues had gotten so bad that I needed to actively try to fix them. We met with a trainer who put us on a behavior modification plan. We focused a lot on calming and relaxing and Jun started to do pretty well. And then Spring hit and all of our progress seemed to disappear. So in May we decided to go to the UofM and start working with a behaviorist and get on meds. Seven months later, we are still trying to find the right med combo for her. Currently she is on 75mg of Trazodone twice a day, off Sertaline entirely, and just started on 25mg of Clomipramine twice a day. Overall, her pacing and clinginess have drastically decreased, making her much easier to live with in the house. We have gone through several behavior-modification plans to try to work through her fear of people and hypervigilance, but have not made much progress. Currently we are taking it very, very slowly, introducing her to new people every weekend through disc play but not requiring (or even asking for) any interaction, and taking her to a couple of classes a week to keep people in her life so she doesn't get even more sensitive to them over the winter. Hopefully between meds and b-mod we will find some solutions for this issue in the new year. I'm not asking for much, really. I'd like to be able to take her for an on-leash walk around other people and have her relaxed and happy.

Elo took a reactive dog class and worked on looking at other dogs in public and has improved greatly! At the beginning of the year, Elo could not tolerate tag sounds, barking, dog smells, or the sight of a dog no matter how far away it was. He can now handle dog sounds and smells most of the time and is doing SO MUCH BETTER with being in the presence of dogs! I am so proud of how far he has come! Surprise dogs are still a big issue, but I can get him very close to stationary or slowly moving dogs and he can even do parallel walking at about 10 yards! So maybe a CGC is in the forecast for this year!

We did a lot of work on obedience and really improved both dogs' heeling in hopes that someday they might be able to actually compete!

Lok made it through 2011, and that is saying something! Managing his health issues is an ongoing challenge, but he remains reasonably happy and content, for the most part. He never got past the first steps of IYC that I posted about a couple weeks ago. We started over at the beginning every day for 5 days, and he re-picked it up every day, but never seemed to remember the next day. And then he had another round of seizures and his mental capacities regressed. I still should do training with him, cause I think he likes it, even though some days he doesn't understand sit. So I think that will be my goal for 2012. Train Lok three days a week and take him for a walk (if he wants to) once a week.

As for 2012 goals for the other two, I am not sure. I'd obviously like to continue to improve Jun and Elo's functionality, though I am much more certain of making progress with Elo than with Jun. Fingers crossed that we'll hit upon the magic drug combo for her. I'd still like Elo to get his CGC--but not only that, I want him to get it in a location where he's never worked before with other dogs he's never met before (yes, I am an overachiever). We will keep working towards that.

I plan to continue to work on obedience skills in case the dogs can ever compete. Other than that, I don't have any major goals for the year. The dogs are in several classes right now and I hope to keep that up, since it gives me things to work on with them.

Jun Goes to Reactive Dog Class

2011-12-14T10:02:00.003-06:00

Last night Jun and I started a reactive dog class. She has done really well in Nosework for the past two weeks--very relaxed and happy--and this week even walked by two standing people on our way out without so much as a sideways glance. I was a little nervous about starting this new class, but turns out I had nothing to worry about. It is perfect for her and she did so well!

While there are only a few people in Jun's new class it is different from nosework in that they don't necessarily sit still all the time. But I went in with a plan to treat it very much like nosework. Mainly, I was not going to do any overt behavior modification. No LAT. No auto-watches. I think she has a negative CER to these techniques since we have never really been able to work them sub-threshold. She would be free to look at people at much as she needed to, but I would only reward when she was engaged with me and calm. We would start with crate relaxation, just like nosework and then see where it went from there.

She relaxed very nicely in her crate. While there are other people around,our spot in the building is shaped in such a way that we are able to keep them completely out of view if we want to. When she was relaxed I brought her out into our little private corner and we worked on a Nina Ottoson puzzle. In typical Jun fashion, she approached it with brute force, but thought it was pretty fun! It kept her occupied and took her focus off the other people who she knew were there even though she could not see them. After that we did some walking around in our area. There was some agility equipment and other things to sniff and explore. I didn't ask anything of her, just kept the leash loose and rewarded when she was calmly looking at me. We were out where we could see a person and she showed some slight nervousness and offered a few autowatches, but I just backed her up a little and then rewarded calm attention. After a few minutes it was back in the crate for some more relaxation before she got too overwhelmed. The next time I brought her out we worked Its Yer Choice, which was also very effective in keeping her mind occupied. We also took another little walk around our area and this time she was very calm. I did not ask for any obedience behaviors but just rewarded what she offered.

This is the first time since starting to work on her issues that Jun has been completely calm working in the proximity of people! Granted we are taking it VERY slow, but we are not doing any overt b-mod so she is basically just learning on her own that people around can be an ok thing and that nobody will ever touch her.

Jun Update

2011-12-07T12:29:00.001-06:00

Last time I posted about Jun's progress we had decided to wean of Clonidine. After doing so, I am 100% confident it was the right decision. Jun is much happier and more herself off of it and also much more "even." She is able to relax without being sedated.

After a week of doing behavior logs on just Trazodone and the small amount of Sertaline she gets (so small that it probably isn't doing anything for her), we increased her Sertaline by 50%. I only made it through 6 days of behavior logs on this new dose before I made the decision to reduce it! She was having the same agitation response she had to it the first time we tried to increase it. I emailed Dr. Duxbury the logs and my notes and she agreed that it is time to get Jun off Sertraline altogether and try something else. It's been 3 days off and Jun is still unable to relax (and annoying the hell out of me) but she should be fine by the end of the weekend.

So I will be weaning Jun off Sertraline for the next two weeks and then we will be trying Clomipramine (brand name Clomicalm for animals, commonly known as Anafranil for humans). Interestingly, this is a drug commonly used to treat OCD. I am really interested to see what effect it has, if any, on Jun's sterotypical behaviors, such as tail-chasing and pattern running, and whether it affects her crate barking at all.

Dr. Duxbury is very happy with the results so far of our new behavior mod program, and Jun is doing really well in nosework! At our last class she was a lot more confident and paid less attention to the other people in the room (who have been really great about not watching her while she takes her turns)! I think she is starting to figure out the structure of the class and to understand that while she is working, nobody is going to bother her. At least, I hope that is the case. One of my biggest goals for Jun is building her trust that I won't let anybody touch her if she doesn't want them to. I think/hope nosework class is helping her start to understand that.

Lok Can Learn!

2011-12-07T12:09:00.001-06:00

Lok has been doing amazing lately! I've seen so many changes in just the past couple of weeks! He seems less depressed and more engaged in life, and I am wondering if it is the result of increasing his fluoxetine? We increased it probably about 6 weeks ago in an attempt to get rid of some lingering anxiety-related behaviors, so this would be about the time it would be kicking in.

For example, instead of hitting his nose on the step of the deck when I am bringing him in, he's been responding to the cue "upstairs" and lifts his head and feels for the step with his foot. The other day he actually jumped right up onto the deck without even being cued, like he used to do! He has been trotting along when on leash instead of having to be practically dragged at a snail's pace. He has jumped onto my bed three times in the past week, which he has not done since before his surgery last summer. He has been spending more time out in the main portion of the house "with the family" instead of spending all his time holed up in a bedroom by himself. He has been spending slightly less time sleeping. He has been soliciting attention from me. He has picked up bones to chew on. He has solicited play from Elo. And this morning I only had to ask him once to get him up from where he was laying!! These things might not seem like much, but they are signs of LIFE from a dog who has been little more than a shell since coming home from the hospital last summer.

The day he jumped up onto the deck was the day I started working on some exercises from an online class with my other dogs. And that simple act caused me to think--hey, maybe I will give this a try with Lok too! Lok no longer responds to the large majority of what I say to him and seems not to remember most of his commands. I haven't been able to successfully teach him anything since I can't remember when. But two nights ago, Lok LEARNED! And last night, I got it on video!

One of the biggest obstacles to training for Lok since going blind (other than a complete lack of confidence) has been not knowing where the treats are or where they are going to come from. He spends more time sniffing around for the treats than thinking or listening for what he is supposed to do. This game is teaching him that if he ignores the treats they will come directly to his mouth! If he can get this skill down, maybe I can start from scratch and gradually build his other behaviors back up! I am not sure what he is still capable of, but the past two nights have encouraged me to start working with him again and see what he can do!

Classes!

2011-11-22T10:15:00.001-06:00

I am so excited to have the dogs in lots of classes this winter! Sundays we have an informal training group that I put together (with the ulterior motive of having people and dogs to work my reactive dogs around during the winter). Last weekend was our first session and it went pretty well for both Jun and Elo. Elo made it into the entry way of the building, which was more than I expected from him! He had a small outburst when a dog popped out from behind a wall closer than I expected, but recovered nicely and we did some LAT with a dog all the way across the building. The really cool part was, last winter we were in this same building and didn't even SEE any other dogs and Elo could not handle himself. Just the smell and sound of dogs were too much for him. On Sunday, even though there were at least 10 other dogs in the building that he could hear and smell, he was able to keep himself pretty well under control! We did about 5 minutes of work and then left.

Jun did some obedience work off leash with two decoy people sitting in the room. We started working with a toy and she was WILD. I wasn't being too strict on criteria. I just wanted her to have a good time and realize that when she's working, nobody's gonna come get her. We switched to food and she had a little more self control, though she was doing a bit more scanning--looking around before following cues. We didn't accomplish much obedience-wise, but that was not really the goal.

Last night Jun started nosework class. I was pretty nervous at first (I wish I could calm myself better when I'm taking her into situations that I think she will be nervous in). Turned out, she did great! Jun has been doing nosework since I took the class with Lok a year ago, so she knows the drill, but I wanted to keep it really easy for her and make her successful. The class is set up to be great for reactive dogs, as each dog and owner has their own space behind a barrier, the dogs come and go one at a time and take turns hunting. There were 4 other people in the room. Jun noticed them and gave a couple of sidelong glances, but didn't fixate and quickly turned back to me to continue the hunting game. I had her hunting for a toy, rather than food, so when she found it she would bring it to me and we would play a few seconds of tug. She is used to hunting for both, but she tends to relax more with play and I also liked that when she found the toy she immediately sought me out so she didn't have to think about what to do next. There was a lot of downtime while the other dogs were hunting and we worked on relaxing in her crate. She did a great job! She chilled in her crate with the door open while I sat in a chair next to her. At first she was near the door, pseudo-relaxing, but for the last half of class she was towards the back, truly relaxing vs. soliciting treats.

We also learned about a reactive dog class taught by the same instructor that would be great for Jun, so I'm going to get her into that in a few weeks. And I need to find a reactive dog class for Elo too.

Another Day, Another B-mod Strategy

2011-11-10T11:38:00.001-06:00

Jun had another follow-up with Dr. Duxbury today.

After spending nearly a year working straight counter-conditioning, modified LAT, auto-watches, BAT and pretty much every combination thereof that you could come up with, Jun still has not made much if any progress in her comfort level with people. So, I started to think . . . maybe I am going about this the wrong way. Normally, in behavior modification work, "threshold" is thought in terms of distance from the trigger--usually the farther away the trigger, the more comfortable the dog will be. The more I thought about why my training wasn't working though, the more I started to think that Jun's threshold is backwards!! She is very uncomfortable with people at a distance and MUCH more comfortable with people right up close (in certain situations). It makes perfect sense when you consider how her reactivity progressed. She started out reacting only to people who were far away, and only recently started reacting to certain people up close.

I think that by always working with people far away and keeping Jun otherwise pretty isolated from people, she never became comfortable with the people because they were always an unknown--as long as they were at a distance she can't really check them out and figure out whether or not they are ok, and she has no idea what they might do. In addition, she has become sensitized to the whole counter-conditioning routine and basically comes out of the car primed to react.

So I asked Dr. Duxbury about trying a different strategy, and then before she could respond, I went ahead and tried it and got video. Dr. Duxbury agrees, we may FINALLY be on the right track!

Here's what we're doing now.

Starting with the people up close and gradually working to distance
Having Jun interact with the decoy through play with a ball or frisbee--short sessions that end with a game with me
Not doing anything repeatedly--Jun catches on to patterns too easily

Here is one of our first sessions, and it's not all that polished because I was largely experimenting. The woman on the left as Jun comes out of the truck is a brand new decoy--they had never met before.

We started off with the decoy as close as possible, waited for Jun to orient to her and then had her throw the disc a few times. We also worked in some hand-touches. Later on we worked on approaches from a distance. Jun was not as comfortable with some of the distance approaches, yet she was still FAR more comfortable than she ever was working from a distance to up close. She is offering me her LAT and this is the first time I have felt like there is actually a positive CER being conditioned "Oh good!! A person! I can look and get a tug game!!" vs. "Uh oh, scary person, but at least I know what to do, look at mom." We switched directions that the decoy was coming from and she was not as comfortable, giving longer looks before re-orienting, so we will need to move a little slower in the future.

Jun will also be going to Nosework class! Dr. Duxbury agreed it was probably not a good idea to isolate her all winter long. With nosework, she will be in proximity of people, but it will be a very controlled environment and she will not be expected to interact at all. I think that will be good for her.

As for drugs, we are scrapping Clonidine. She was all over the place. She was up, down, falling asleep, and bouncing off the walls. The only time it seemed to make any difference for her reactivity was during the first few hours of the dose, when she was really sedated. I got the feeling Dr. Duxbury didn't think the sedation was necessarily a bad thing (she is not really a border collie person), but she totally respected that I didn't like it. We are going to wean off of Clonidine for the next couple weeks, then try increasing her Sertraline again. If she has another agitation response to the Sertaline, we will probably try Clomipramine as our next step.

What We're Working On

2011-11-04T14:36:00.002-05:00

So, working on Elo's nails has been a huge success so far! We've done maybe 10 sessions, probably an hour of work at the most. I can now clip one nail and he won't even flinch! The first time I actually clipped one, rather than just holding the clippers on it, he was not too happy and I was afraid I had ruined all my work. Unfortunately, if there is a step between almost clipping a nail and clipping one, I couldn't think of it, so it was a bit of a leap. But I did a few easy reps, ended the session and he seemed to have forgiven me in the next session. It's amazing how much easier this is, just by giving him a choice and reinforcing when he made the right one!

Jun is working on paw crossing. I switched her left-to-right paw cross from a hand signal to a foot signal (crossing my legs while standing in the same direction). That was surprisingly easy! Then I wanted to get a paw cross in the other direction. The first one was very easy to free shape, since this is a behavior she does naturally. The second one I was getting nowhere with free shaping, so I am using my foot as a target instead. This came a lot faster and now I'm starting to fade the target. It should work pretty well, because I will have a built in cue for the behavior.

Jun has a follow-up with Dr. Duxbury next week and I am excited to discuss some new behavior mod strategies I have been mulling over/testing. Clonidine has been a complete bust, and I am ready to throw in the towel with counter-conditioning.

Elo is also working on paw crossing. I've free shaped almost everything with him, but after two weeks I hadn't gotten anywhere with this behavior. Paw crossing is not a behavior that he offers naturally and my clicks were constantly late or I was clicking the wrong thing. I wasn't sure how to break it down small enough and he was offering me big behaviors. All I was getting was a reach forwards with his paw. He is such a good sport--he just keeps trying even though I'm not being at all clear. Finally out of fairness to him I decided to use a target and that took all of 30 seconds to have him crossing his paws. Last night I started working on fading the target, but this has never been a strong point of mine.

I'm also adding a hand signal to Elo's lie down cue. None of my dogs lie down well, (and two don't sit well either). They ignore this cue a lot. I'm not sure why this is, but considering it's an issue with all three I'm assuming that I am screwing it up somehow. My best guess is that I poisoned the cue in the early stages of teaching them--seeing a down as a "command" that my dogs MUST do, I over-faced them too quickly, asked them for these behaviors in too difficult of situations with too few rewards, and I was inconsistent in consequences. Depending on my patience level, I might punish, re-cue, "help," or stand there and do nothing, because, how do you "make" a dog do something it is refusing?? I wasn't too worried about it when it was Lok (he never did like training much) or Jun (she has her "special" issues). But then I noticed that it was a problem with Elo as well, and he is really focused, driven, and biddable with pretty much everything else, and that's when I decided that it must be me. When I cue a lie down, especially in high-distraction or high-stress situations. He will either stand looking at me and do nothing or stand and look away from me and do nothing. I am hoping that re-teaching it on a hand signal and then gradually increasing difficulty level and making it FUN will solve the issue. I am open to any other suggestions about what I may have screwed up here!

Obedience Videos

2011-10-26T13:09:00.000-05:00

Fun with obedience in our "middle of nowhere" training spot! Jun is working on heeling with a toy reward. We have not worked with a toy much because she gets very amped up and very forgy, but I love the enthusiasm I get when I work with a toy so I've been trying to do it more often. I thought she did pretty well, especially towards the end!

With Elo I am playing "choose to heel." As you can see, he chooses to heel most of the time. He likes heeling! I've been very informal about his heeling training and haven't even added a verbal cue. His position is pretty good most of the time, but he tends to forge and wrap around me or swing his butt out and walk in a diagonal, so I am capturing and rewarding when he positions himself correctly here. (P.S., Sorry about the inability to stay on camera.)

Inspiration . . . I Haz It

2011-10-26T12:59:00.000-05:00

Well that didn't take long. I got a new book. "Reaching the Animal Mind" by Karen Pryor. Mind-blowing. I want to get a fish, or a hamster, and clicker train it! But I don't have time for another pet, so I will have to settle for my dogs. ;-)

I am working with Elo on learning to let me clip his nails without having to hold him down. I figure, if they can teach elephants to present their feet calmly for maintenance, surely my little biddable cattle dog can do it! (If only his nails didn't grow so fast--the book doesn't say how they take care of these animals in the mean time before they are trained.) I started with straight counter-conditioning. Touch a foot; get a treat, hold a foot; get a treat. It was working, but slow going. A verbal marker helped speed things up a bit more and a clicker was even more effective! Criterion--let me touch your foot without pulling away.

Then I tried something from the book. The book described an experiment in which several dogs were asked to cross novel/scary obstacles (e.g., a pile of rope on the ground). Luring with food had the dogs going around the obstacles, shaping with a clicker and food reward produced faster results, but the fastest results came when the behavior of interacting with the obstacle was marked with a cue for the dog's favorite trick! So you were harnessing the value of not only a single food reinforcement, but also the value of a behavior that has a long history of paying off. I tried it with Elo, reinforcing for not pulling his foot away with a "touch" cue (nose target). After just a couple repetitions of this he immediately seemed more comfortable with the entire exercise and progress has been faster since then. And to keep "touch" from getting boring or predictable for him, I've been interspersing other cues as the reward, and occasionally rewarding only with food.

This concept of reinforcing a behavior with a cue is mind-boggling, and the idea that a cue with a long reinforcement history could be even more reinforcing than a "primary reinforcer" even more so. I'm not totally sure why it works or how it works. But I have now seen it for myself, so apparently it does work.

I don't really have any more solid plans for training than I did last week, but I sure have a lot of new ideas to think about!

Inspiration Needed

2011-10-14T09:49:00.000-05:00

I am totally uninspired lately when it comes to training. I haven't been doing much, cause I just have no motivation to do it. I am sick of dog training. I need a plan. I need a goal.

Jun has been a total airhead lately. I mean, that's not unusual for her, but I think she may be slightly worse since she's been on Clonidine. So hard to tell since its effects vary throughout the day. And since she can be an airhead in general. I do not seem to be capable of shaping with this dog. Part of that, I know, is that her marker is visual, and that's distracting for her. She spends a lot of time looking for the "click" and not a lot of time trying to earn it. But that can't possibly be the whole problem. I'm sure I'm screwing it up somehow.

Take for instance the newest "trick" I decided to teach both Jun and Elo. I live by myself and occasionally have a need to use a tape measure, but without anybody to hold the other end it can be a struggle. Enter, dogs! I knew I had them for a reason!! So I decided to teach Jun and Elo to hold the end of a tape measure. We've done probably 4 or 5 sessions on it. Elo has it down perfectly, because Elo thinks about what he is doing. Jun, OTOH is still working on stepping ON the actual tape measure. She will step near it, then when she doesn't get clicked she will immediately get frustrated and start pawing at it or nosing it. Of course, sometimes she manages to step on it and will get clicked for that, but for whatever reason the fact that she's done it right 5 times in a row doesn't mean she will get it the 6th time. Then there was one session where she was brilliant and we worked up to stepping and holding for up to 5 seconds. Of course, the next day she is back to not being able to step on it. WTF? I don't know what I'm doing wrong with her, but lately I cannot seem to teach her anything new. In fact, I can't even remember the last time she learned something new. I think her "bow" is the newest trick she has and for whatever reason she will NOT do it without being lured. A couple sessions, she was brilliant at it. Now, nope.Every new thing I've tried to teach her lately I give up on because she just doesn't get it and I get frustrated. The weird part is, things she already knows she does brilliantly and even improves on. All her obedience is awesome! It's just learning new things that she doesn't seem to be capable of lately. And I am half hoping that (contrary girl that she is) now that this is down in writing she will go and make me eat my words, like she likes to do so much. I wouldn't mind in this situation.

As I mentioned, I am completely uninspired. I am sick of drilling obedience, and my house is really too small for it. I'd like to train tricks, but working with Jun on anything new is just frustrating lately. Last night I decided to teach Jun and Elo to walk on leash together, both on my left side, and ended up with a dog fight (although they did pretty well up until that point). Thankfully since they were both leashed it was easy to break up quick.

I need a book or a video or a seminar or a class. I need an idea of something new I can do with Jun, start to finish, no giving up! Motivate me . . . ready . . go!

Stress

2011-09-26T09:27:00.001-05:00

The overall stress level in my house lately is just ridiculous. The fighting, the barking, it's just insane. Friday night Jun and Elo got into a fight over nothing. It's not unusual for them to get into fights, but most of the time they break it up fairly quickly and nobody gets hurt. When they don't, Jun ends up with a hole in her face, and the one she ended up with on Friday was the worst she's ever had. Bad enough that I took her to the emergency vet. They recommended antibiotics but said stitches weren't necessary unless I wanted them for cosmetic reasons. I did, but I didn't want to pay what it would have cost, so we left with our antibiotics.

This morning Lok wandered near Jun and she proceeded to bite him in the face 3-4 times. Thankfully she has great bite inhibition, so he wasn't injured. But I hate when Lok gets picked on. He never deserves it. Of course Jun's "fight" with Lok drew Elo's attention and he decided to join in. Thankfully I managed to separate them before they got to each other.

And the barking. OMG. The second I step out of sight to leave for work Jun starts in. As soon as the door clicks shut, Lok starts in. And as soon as Lok starts barking, Elo starts howling. It is ridiculous. Insane. I feel bad that Lok and Jun are upset and that they all have to listen to each other. And I'm sure the collective stress level is just adding to the individual stress levels. It's a vicious circle and I can't seem to keep ahead of it.

And I am not sure what Elo's deal is. He is just wild lately. I think I've been spoiling him, so it is back to boot camp until he remembers how to act like a trained dog.

Jun is on the second attempt at Clonidine. The first time she seemed to be having an agitation response so we lowered the dose (I was out of town for a weekend) and now are building it back up. She is at the same dose where we left off last time and so far seems ok. Yesterday she was very sleepy. We did some CC yesterday and got extremely lucky to find a lone soccer player in an empty park. This scenario (one person, lots of upredictable movement) would have been a HUGE issue for her in the past, but she was only mildly concerned, then unconcerned. In the past we would not have been able to get far enough to calm her and would not have been able to move closer. Yesterday we closed the distance by half. In addition, two people walked by on the walking path at the edge of the park (another huge trigger) and barely got half a glance. It was a pretty big deal, but I'm not getting my hopes up. As I mentioned, she was very sleepy and not really herself. That is not the long-term effect I am looking from from a drug. If the sleepiness went away and the increased threshold stayed, that would be amazing, but we will see.

Follow-up with the behaviorist - Part 3

2011-09-01T09:39:00.001-05:00

Jun is weird. She has always been a big barker, but there was a period of several months after I got her when she stopped. Previous to that, her barking was for attention. It was loud, annoying, and persistent, but it wasn't crazy. I distinctly remember when the behavior in the video started. In fact, I blogged about it here when it started happening, and have blogged at length about the things I've tried to get her to stop since. (Search "barking" if you care. It's half my blog content, I think!) All my strategies have worked temporarily, then stopped working.

The last thing I tried was keeping her in the bathroom when she needs to be confined, instead of in the crate. It also worked. Then stopped working. She started out just great and was totally quiet in the bathroom. It was awesome to be able to get a break from her and not have to put on her bark collar or listen to her barking, pacing, whining or spinning. I could sit down and watch a movie!! I actually started using this strategy intermittently before our first behaviorist appointment. Afterwards, Dr. Reichl wanted me to use the bathroom full time and not use the crate at all. I was hesitant but agreed, and the main reason I was hesistant was because I was pretty sure that after awhile the bathroom wouldn't cut it anymore and then my new-found peace and quiet would be ruined. Sure enough.

So what to do now? She barks in her crate, she barks in the bathroom, and she barks in the car when it's moving. Both Dr. Reichl and Dr. Duxbury believe it's related to separation anxiety and confinement anxiety, and it seems weird to me that it the behavior would be isolated to such specific situations, but I have no better explanation so, ok. Since Jun will chill (she usually sleeps by the door) if I just leave her loose in the house for a few hours, Dr. Duxbury thought maybe we should dispense with confinement altogether. And here is where I decided I really liked Dr. Duxbury---I agreed that may work, but expressed my concern that since every other strategy has worked and then failed I was worried that eventually she'd start to get nervous left alone loose in the house. And then I wouldn't be able to leave her ANYWHERE at all. And Dr. Duxbury listened to my concern, took it seriously and agreed!!!!! So we are keeping that possibility in mind for the future, but right now we are looking to the drugs to provide some relief from the anxiety, and then hopefully the barking as a result.

So I am to do "crate games" with Jun and Relaxation Protocol in the crate and the bathroom and do things to associate those two places of confinement with good things and not always with me leaving.

The other comment Dr. Duxbury had was that she wonders if Jun is having limbic focal seizures brought on by stress--cause apparently the "staring at the wall" routine is not normal dog behavior. She wants more video to compare the episodes and wants to run it by a neurologist! Not sure if anything will come of that, but I thought it was an interesting idea.

Follow-up with the behaviorist - Part 2

2011-09-01T09:21:00.002-05:00

I've been doing BAT (Behavior Adjustment Training) with Jun, usually once aweek, for three months now. In that time I've made some adjustments, so thatwhat I'm doing is really not BAT at all, but more of a hybrid of a lot ofdifferent methods for working with fearful dogs. A typical BAT session is donewithout treats and involves approaching and retreating from a "decoy"many times in a single session. So, if the decoy was a person standing still at50 yards, the dog and handler would walk towards the decoy until the dog issomewhat uncomfortable, but not over threshold. The handler then waits for thedog to offer a calming signal (generally a look-away, or sniffing the ground),marks, and rewards the dog by turning and walking away. The reward for behavingappropriately in the presence of the scary thing is that the dog gets what theyreally want--increased distance.

Jun was LOVING the increased distance part, but never really wanted toapproach. And though she was "doing" everything right, she was notfeeling any better about it no matter how much we worked. So I've made severalmodifications that seem to work a little better for us.

First, I'm using treats. BAT says it’s ok to use treats sometimes, but togive them AFTER the retreat. For Jun, this just made her even more happy to getthe heck out of dodge and she started offering her calming signals earlier andearlier (when she was well within her comfort zone) because she knew that whenshe did, not only would she get to leave, but she would get a treat as well. SoI broke the rules, and I now give the treat at the end of the approach aftershe offers her calming signal and she gets nothing for the retreat.

The second thing I’m doing differently is using mild tug games. Jun was nothaving any fun with BAT and our trainer suggested using some type of play toget her to loosen up a bit and not be so serious about the whole thing. At thesame time, it’s important to be careful with this because play increases arousaland arousal can turn into reactivity. So I had to make sure not to get her toorevved up. I played around with this for awhile and figured out that it works bestto use intermittent play during a BAT session where she is well underthreshold. If she is feeling nervous about a situation, it is harder to get herto play and when I do get her playing it is more likely to be an aggressivetype of play punctuated by hard stares at the decoy vs. a soft, relaxed play. I’vefound that the best game to use is a combination of “tag and run” (I touch herlightly and then run off) with a tug on her leash.

Dr. Duxbury agreed that these were good modifications to the BAT protocolfor Jun’s situation and said that I should continue doing what I'm doing. We looked at two videos that highlighted the differencebetween the two approaches.

In this video, I am using my modified BAT. You can see how much more looseand happy Jun gets after a little play. She is pretty relaxed and focused on meduring this session. I am walking forwards until she starts feeling slightlynervous about the decoys, rewarding a look-away with food and then retreating.Here, our decoy is two people, standing still and facing here. This is alow-difficulty situation for her.

Contrast with this next video in which I am using traditional BAT in ahigh-difficulty situation. The decoy here is a single person over 200 yardsaway, but he was moving a lot, running, and doing weird things like high kicks(we just used some random guy who happened to be at the park). You can see howJun is not engaging with me at all and is giving more hard stares at the decoy.She is really nervous here.

I told Dr. Duxbury that if I had it to do over again, I would not have eventried to do any BAT in this situation, and would have just done straightclassical counter-conditioning. Feed, feed, feed, then put her away. Movementis much more important to Jun than distance is and when a person is movingaround a lot there is really no way to keep her well under threshold (thoughshe’s not barking/lunging, she is very nervous). Dr. Duxbury is hopeful thatthe meds will help raise Jun’s threshold, so I can do BAT with her in moredifficult situations.

Follow-up with the Behaviorist - Part 1

2011-09-01T09:16:00.000-05:00

Jun had a follow-up appointment yesterday, though we switched to a different behaviorist. She has been on sertaline and trazodone for about three months now, and it's time to make some changes. The Sertraline does not seem to be doing anything for her, though the Trazodone has gotten us some peace and quiet in the house. She is not pacing nearly as much and is not as clingy. She will go lie down on her own at a distance from me on a regular basis. However, she is still barking in her crate all the time and outside the house the drugs don't seem to have made much of a difference in decreasing her anxiety around people.

We talked about three things: changes to her meds, the BAT protocol I've been working on, and what to do about the barking. And since this would be a really, really long post, I will break it down into three. First, the meds, and this will be really short.

Dr. Duxbury though paroxetine may be a better fit for Jun than sertraline, so we may try that in the future. But first Duxbury wanted to try adding clonidine to what she is already taking. We are going to Chicago for a disc dog competition over the weekend, so we will start that next week when we get back. Dr. Duxbury explained the reasoning and it made sense at the time, but I can't remember all the terms she used so I won't try. She did say she was pretty optimistic that it would be a good fit for Jun. Since we only want to change one thing at a time, after she has been on clonidine for awhile, we will probably try to eliminate the sertraline, and then potentially the trazodone.

Awhile back I bought two pill boxes for both Lok and Jun (one each for AM and PM). Lok was on about 7 different meds at the time and it was beyond what I could keep straight when I was doling out meds at 5am. Now Lok is on only two (zonisamide for seizures and fluoxetine for anxiety) as well as an herbal supplement--milk thistle--for his liver. Jun is on four--proin (urinary incontinence), and sertraline, trazodone, and clonidine for anxiety.I just get their doses ready for the whole week at one time and it makes it a lot easier. And can I just say how happy I am that Elo is healthy and sound, mind and body, and is not on ANY meds!! (Please stay that way, buddy!)

No Excuse

2011-08-24T14:47:00.000-05:00

I have no real excuse for posting this video other than, A) I have a video camera now, and B) I actually figured out how to get the video off my camera and onto youtube, and C) my dog is freaking adorable.

This is just Elo and I playing some tug, doing some impulse control and working on his "loop" cue, which he's not totally getting yet. He is super cute! And has the world's best "drop" cue!!

Back to "Normal"

2011-08-01T12:27:00.000-05:00

Well, life is back to "normal" (as normal as it can be with my crew) after Lok's near-death experience (which I never mentioned on the blog, since I don't think anybody reads the blog who isn't my facebook friend). Today he has ANOTHER infection--one of the wounds from one of his many catheter sites is not healing up properly. So more money and more antibiotics. This dog really sucks at fighting off infection. But other than that he is doing really, really well!! He is completely off phenobarbital now and is just on zonisamide for his epilepsy and hasn't had any seizures since June 8th, the first day he was in the hospital! So three weeks!! He was going about a month apart before his hospitalization, so I am interested to see how well the zonisamide works for him. And now that I've said anything he will probably have a seizure tonight, so excuse me while I find some wood to knock on . . .

Jun has been on drugs for over two months now with inconclusive results. She is up and down, calm and wild, barking and quiet. I have not seen anything that I would label as a clear improvement, and it's tough to know what is due to meds and what is due to the behavior mod work I have continued to do with her. While her general behavior seems to have improved some days, the BIG issue--her hyper-vigilance and fear of people--doesn't seem to have improved at all. I would have expected to see a decrease in her "scanning" behavior when there is nothing around, and haven't. I would also have hoped that her threshold would have decreased and I don't think it has. Or not much. I feel like the BAT work we've been doing, along with CC/DS has been helping her. However, rather than helping her feel more comfortable around people, I feel like it's helping her "operantly" to make better choices in situations that make her uncomfortable (turning to me or walking away vs. starting and reacting). This is a good start, but I would really rather she FEELS better in these situations instead of just being able to suppress her reactions to fearful situations.

Being so busy with Lok and Jun lately, I have not really had time to work with Elo much, which sucks because he is the dog that my work pays off with the most! We haven't gotten out around other dogs much lately, but we've been shaping a lot of obedience foundation stuff! He heels really nicely on both sides! We've been doing a lot of work with pivots lately, in front and heel position. He has an easier time with counter-clockwise pivots, due to missing a leg on the left side, but both are coming along! I've been working on a drop on recall and having kind of a hard time with it. He will down at a distance from a sit-stay or stand-stay, but gets really confused when asked to lie down in the middle of a recall. He finished his recall and then lays down in front of me. It makes perfect sense, but Jun and Elo pretty much did this automatically, so I never had to think about how to teach it. Right now, we are working moving downs in heel position and also working on a "wait" command. I am having him follow me in "front" position, I cue a wait, and he (hopefully) pauses while I continue moving. So far, I am still having to pause with him before continuing to back up, but I think he's starting to get it. Any other ideas?

Fun New Naughtiness and Other Things

2011-06-28T10:42:00.000-05:00

Well, apparently, Jun's drugs are making her hungry. She has never been a counter-surfer, but over the past few weeks she has eaten a TON of stuff that I thought was left WELL out of her reach. Apparently she is more determined than I thought, and now every time I turn my back she is up on the counters. No more leaving food out, I suppose. She has also gained a little weight from all the food she managed to steal, so now she's on a diet as well. I'm sure she is thrilled about that.

I am not really sure how much the meds are helping her. It's been four weeks now, and so hard to be patient. She is still a lot calmer in the house. Other than that, nothing seems to have improved. She is barking again. Last night she spent half the night barking and also ripped up a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom.She hasn't barked at night since we lowered her Sertraline dose, so I'm not sure what her deal was. She has also never in the past month touched anything in there that wasn't hers. I know she was feeling panicky, but there is nothing I can do about it. If I leave her loose she will just pace and not sleep. Poor girl must be tired.

She's doing great with Relaxation Protocol. Doing ok with walks. Windy days suck, for both her and Elo, I have found. The wind must bring so many more smells than they usually have to deal with. Jun gets all anxious again and has trouble focusing. Elo just gets a little crazy and is all over the place. Gotta love his enthuisiasm for life though!

I have gotten kind of bored with training. Without a solid goal to work towards, I become a terrible trainer. I wish I could have the dogs in some type of class, so I would have some structure. Since I am sick of all the other stuff I was working on, I decided to start training Jun and Elo together. We do this every once in awhile, but I'd like to really ramp up the difficulty level, e.g., heeling one dog around the other while they are in a stay, etc. They did really well! I put them on separate mats across the room and worked one at a time on just basic stuff. It works out great, since Jun only knows hand signals and Elo only knows verbals. As long as I'm not gesturing to Elo to try to get him to do what I want, there is no confusion! I tried to train Elo and and Lok together once and it was chaos. Neither understood the concept of following only commands that were specifically addressed to them. And Lok gets frustrated so easily that I never really followed up. I think not being able to see me makes it harder for him too.

We have also not been getting to the park much this summer, due to Jun's issues, so I haven't been able to work her toss and catch much or distance at all. And if the dogs don't go to the park, I don't usually go by myself, so I haven't been throwing as much as I should be. We work freestyle in the yard maybe once a week. Short TC in the yard once a week. Next competition is in 16 days in Missouri---Quad and AWI qualifier. This was our best competition of the year last year! Our best FS round ever, and our first time making the finals in the Quad. I don't know what I can expect this year since we haven't been working much, but we will have fun for sure, at least.

Three weeks on drugs

2011-06-20T12:16:00.000-05:00

This is a super boring post so here is the summary: Week one, good! Increased meds. Week two, bad. Decreased meds. Week three good! Don't know if she's just sleepy or actually feeling less anxious, but either way, I like it!!

Jun is on 12mg of Sertraline once a day and 50mg of Trazodone twice a day. The first day she was extremely sleepy. She cuddled on the couch with me for a quarter of a movie---and she has NEVER cuddled on the couch for any length of time. She slept most of the day. She was pretty sleepy the second day. She'd be looking at me and her eyes would start closing and her head would start getting lower, then she'd force herself awake. She got gradually less sleepy over the first week. Other than the sleepiness, she was a dream. She was pretty much immediately back to her pre-spring-thaw ability to chill out in the house. She has not been in her crate since our appointment and is confined in the bathroom when I am not home or at night. The first week she didn't wear her bark collar at all and there was NO barking.

The second week her Sertraline was increased by 50%. The pills are TINY, so 8mg is pretty much about the size of a medium-sized crumb. Hard to imagine it having any effect. But in week two, Jun went crazy. It was a downhill slide all week with more and more barking, pacing, spinning. I think she was worse and more anxious the second week than she has ever been in her life. She was definitely worse in the car. There was absolutely nothing I could do to keep her from barking except put her bark collar on and then she just sat there looking silently panicked and I felt terrible. I had no connected the deterioration in her behavior with the increase in drugs and emailed Dr. Reichl in a panick. She nicely pointed out that we had increased her dose and had me back off to the first week dose.

Since decreasing her dose again, she has gotten better and better. I was running a disc dog competition all weekend and had to leave Jun home for 10-11 hours. On Saturday, when I got home, I had no time to anything with her. I didn't run her or train her or anything, yet she was able to be calm and chilled out. She even laid down at my feet calmly when I sat down to eat dinner. Her usual MO is that me sitting down is a cue to start pacing, spinning, or bugging me for attention. It was pretty cool that she was able to self-entertain and chill for a night when I was too busy to do anything with her.

I don't know if her behavior changes are a result of being sedated or if they are a reduction in anxiety. I am not sure how to tell the difference. She seems to mostly have the same energy/drive for playing and training, especially when I train right before giving her her evening trazodone dose. A few hours after the trazodone I notice slight decreases in her energy and enthusiasm for "doing things." She is still hypervigilant outside and scanning for monsters buy maybe with a little less intensity. She has also been really nice and relaxed on our short walks and able to be very attentive to me while moving. When we stand still she scans, but we are working attention and getting her to focus on me and think.

We are also working BAT. I love the concept, but I'm not entirely sure I'm applying it right, and I think it's too early to tell if it's making a difference. I'll do another post on that later.

Walk Around the Block!

2011-06-16T08:36:00.000-05:00

Elo and I took a walk last night, and we made it around a whole block! That is the farthest we've ever gone! A year and a half of training and my dog can finally go for a short walk! Huge progress and I am really proud of him!

He kept the leash loose pretty much the whole time. About halfway through there were a couple off-leash dogs across the street, standing and staring at him. Thankfully, their owner was with them and they didn't move. Elo noticed them before I did, but didn't lose control. We did some quick LAT, then a dog catch and carried him past. When I thought they were out of sight I put him down and we kept walking, but they came around the edge of the house and kept staring at Elo. Again, he noticed before I did, but was calm and stayed focused on me. This is the dog who, just months ago, would erupt anytime he saw a dog anywhere. Now he is encountering them out in the real world and keeping his cool!

Shortly after the dogs, Elo was a little ramped up and we had to walk on a narrow sidewalk we've never been on before with lots of distractions. He lost his focus a bit and I realized it was a little too much for me to ask for perfection in that situation, so I relaxed my criteria, kept calm, and just marked and rewarded whatever attention he gave me. He actually ended up doing really well and giving me a lot more than I thought he would! As we finished up the walk there was an on-leash dachshund walking towards us with it's people, we did a couple sessions of LAT with little breaks in between as it approached. Elo is getting really good about being able to break focus and walk away in the other direction, so when we do LAT now we will do a few looks and before he gets over threshold we will break by walking away a little ways. When the dog got too close we ducked behind a truck parked on the street until it passed, then walked home.

In other Elo news, he has mastered the "wave" command and now has six commands on cue! For a dog that I thought would never understand any words, he is getting really good about picking up new verbal cues! We are working on "back up" and just started putting that on cue. And still working on his handstand, but haven't made any progress on that lately.

Jun on Drugs Week 1

2011-06-06T11:06:00.000-05:00

. . . on second thought, every time I post something about how well Jun is doing, I seem to end up taking it back a week later. The week had its ups and downs, but it had a whole lot more ups than I expected so soon. So I'm just gonna go knock on a ton of wood right now.

Our big challenge for the week--I've run out of ways to keep Jun from barking in her car crate. There has always been something that worked. Even if it only worked for a little while and then stopped working, there would be something else that worked. Well, at the moment, she can have the crate totally covered, a bark collar on, a thundershirt on, and a Kong with peanut butter, all at the same time, and still be unable to suppress her reaction to what I am now really starting to believe is claustrophobia. Though riding "loose" (tied to the door) did not help either, so that might negate that idea. And there is NO WAY this dog is going to get to ride completely loose. She is a disaster loose in the car and we'd all surely die. Since I DO need to get her from point A to point B every once in awhile, I think earplugs may have to be the solution until I find another one.

Oooh! One thing I CAN safely brag on . . . Elo, AKA, "the dog that I train who actually STAYS trained" did SO well hanging out in the Petsmart parking lot and looking at dogs! I feel like I haven't worked with him enough lately and expected some regression. I could not believe how well he held it together with the 5 dogs that showed up while we were there! He'll be a good dog yet, I just know it!

All the Cool Dogs are on Drugs

2011-05-26T10:56:00.000-05:00

(Thanks for that line, Laura!)

Jun and I met with Dr. Reichl at the UofM yesterday and Jun officially has Generalized Anxiety Disorder and is going to put on Sertraline (Zoloft). So that makes 2/3 of my dogs on psychotropic drugs. The number of pill bottles on my counter just keeps going up.

Dr. Reichl didn't have too much else to say. She said what we've been doing as far as behavior mod sounds good, but recommended taking more of a BAT-like approach vs. a LAT approach. Interestingly, this is what I had been doing for the past couple of weeks. Straight DS/CC has not seemed to have any effect for Jun, probably because it's impossible to keep her under threshold, which is what DS requires. So now on our walks when we see people, I wait for her to turn to me, then she gets a treat and we turn around and walk away. Too soon to tell if this is having any effect.

Dr. Reichl recommended a calming cap and a muzzle for stressful situations. Sara had recommended these as well, but I had not followed through yet. So we got a muzzle and so far Jun loves stuffing her nose into it for treats. I haven't buckled it on yet.

Some of what she had to say I really didn't agree with. She had no solution for me for the barking, yet obviously didn't want me to use the bark collar. She didn't say I couldn't use it. Just didn't really have that much to say about it. She seemed to think Jun may have separation anxiety. This doesn't make any sense to me. Jun barks in her crate in very specific situations. She spent all weekend in Indiana in a covered crate in the car and chilled the whole time (without the bark collar on). She stayed loose in the hotel when I went out for dinner and was fine. She chills when confined in the bathroom or when left alone loose in the house. When I put her in her crate with her bark collar on and leave for work she lays down quietly and she is almost always sleeping calmly when I get home. I explained this to Dr. Reichl, but all she had to say was that it could be "situational" or it could be "barrier frustration" or "claustropobia" instead of separation anxiety. It sounds like a lot of speculation and I don't think any of these labels gives me a constructive solution.

I asked what to do about her being the back yard to play or potty and freaking out when she sees people. Dr. Reichl seemed to think I should cover my entire fence in tarps so she can't see anything. Ok, I have a LOT of fence, and that would look totally ghetto. It is impossible for me to keep her away from all people all the time and I don't even think that is the best thing to do. Yes, she gets better when she is away from people (like she was most of the winter), but when she is re-exposed she just gets worse. So I am just going to keep trying to limit and control her exposure and make her experiences positive, as I have been doing.

Dr. Reichl also said that I should keep her out of competition for awhile. This one I'm not sure of either. I agreed to keep her out until the middle of July (when Hot Jam is), but I'm not sure I'm willing to miss the Quad, particularly when I don't think keeping her away is going to help anything. The only way I can make sure she never feels uncomfortable around a person is to keep her home the rest of her life and only take her outside after dark. It's not going to happen. I can keep her out of competition in June, but she still has to come to Rochester with me for June Jam. She can stay at the hotel and chill there all day, if need be, but she has no choice but to come. And she will see people at some point. So I'm failing to see how this is any different than if I were to bring her to the comp and have her stay in her covered crate in the car all day except to get her out immediately before our runs. She seemed great with this arrangement in Kokomo, and I'm guessing I will do that for Hot Jam. I'd keep her out of competition as long as necessary if I thought it would help, but I'm not seeing how it would.

Dr. Reichl and the student who helped were very nice. Jun even played fetch with the student. I did get the meds which is good. I have mixed feelings about the behavior mod advice I was given. I don't think any of it is necessarily bad. It just seemed kind of generic, other than the BAT recommendation. But I think that is ok for now, since the main plan is to get her on the drugs and see what that does for her.

Kokomo Comp

2011-05-24T10:30:00.000-05:00

I am very proud of my dogs' behavior over the long disc dog weekend! They ride so well in the car, so no issues there. The first night in the hotel was a little rough. Someone woke me up pretty much once an hour. Elo didn't sleep much and kept barking sharply. Jun was awake and pacing in her crate, thanks to Elo. Lok was pretty much out cold but was the last one to wake me up barking shortly before the alarm went off at 5am. After the first night, the next two were MUCH better. We all slept all night.

Elo greatly impressed me all weekend. Again, it was a little rough at first. The hotel we stayed at was the hotel pretty much everyone else and their dogs stayed at, so it was kind of difficult to go out to potty dogs without seeing another dog somewhere. Elo started the weekend lunging and choking himself at the end of his leash, and ended it basically ignoring dogs at my command to "leave it." Saturday and Sunday at the comp I made sure to get him out for awhile twice each day. We practiced some loose-leash walking, some LAT with dogs, and some chilling out and just watching stuff. This was NOT a controlled situation at all and there were dogs EVERYWHERE not to mention smells of dogs and sounds of dogs at all times. He did incredibly well!! I kept him at a pretty good distance and when I didn't push too hard we didn't have any barking. He wasn't relaxed, but that was more because of the environment in general than the other dogs. Of course in my excitement over how well he was doing, I pushed him harder than I should have. It wasn't terrible, but we need to work on just sitting and chilling more. Walking around is still too hard for him in that type of environment. He was wonderful in his (covered) crate, especially the second day! I think will continued exposure over the summer he will just get better and better!

Jun did great both days! My throwing in the quad left a bit to be desired. We started out with a 50 yard catch on our first throw and made it to the final round of our heat, but I just couldn't seem to throw anything good after that. All we needed was over 51 to take the heat, but I couldn't even get 40. Oh well. First comp of the year, and I am fine with how we did. Sunday's UFO local was awesome!! I was MUCH less nervous, not really having any plan or goal. In TC we got 4 throws and three catches. I threw well and Jun dropped the disc perfectly, rather than doing her usual circling and chomping routine from last year!! I guess all our work over the winter has paid off there! I don't know what our score was, but I am guessing about 10.5.

I went out for our freestyle round with no plan but to have fun playing with my dog! We had no routine. I just wanted her to have a good time, stay with me, and chase every disc I threw. She did AWESOME! I forgot some of the sequences we could have done, but she had fun and I was calm enough to even throw a fidget in before a toss, which is saying a ton! Normally my hands are shaking so bad I don't dare try something like that. I have no idea what our score was, but she did so well I think I might try to throw together some kind of routine for our next comp. It is so much fun to play with her when she is having fun too! Hopefully I can just keep the "fun" mindset for the rest of the year and not try to get competitive.

Lok was great too, other than ripping up my brand new jeans when I left him in the car. He spent a ton of time out with me, but was in the car for a bit as well. Lesson learned. Crate Lok when I leave him unattended.

Random

2011-05-10T10:23:00.000-05:00

I don't feel like working yet, so I am going to write about my dogs instead, even though I don't have much of interest to say . . .

Jun remains insane with less insane moments on occasion. Her back yard OCD running (to the back corner, slide to a stop, bark 3 times, to the gate, to the fence, to the back corner, repeat), after almost disappearing over the winter, has gotten worse and worse. It is almost always triggered by seeing a person somewhere, even very far away. I am beginning to think it is pure insanity and not fear-based at all. I remain perplexed by this phenomenon and have not found any effective way to deal with it.

We've been doing a lot of training outside and walks in the neighborhood (ok, the block at least). After spending all fall/winter/spring working on it, all 3 of my dogs now walk on a loose leash pretty well. Not perfectly, but definitely a lot better. Newsflash: Loose leash walking is a whole lot more about attention than about the state of the leash or the walking. If the dog is not attentive while you are stopped, you have no business taking an actual step. Once I figured that out (and realized that it was not cruel and unusual punishment to ask my dog to be attentive to me at all times when on leash) we were money. (And, ok, Lok only walks on a loose leash because he can't see where he's going and is too fat to want to go very fast, but I'm gonna take credit for him anyway.)

And since I never post about disc . . . we've been getting out 2-3 times a week for disc work. I have scrapped Jun's whole freestyle routine. For freestyle, we're just jamming and she is doing SO well! She's drivey, she's jumping high, she's not blowing off discs. It's awesome. We've been focusing more on distance and T&C. This is more my issue than hers, since I get so nervous and can't throw a disc, but (knock on wood) we've been doing decently so far. Elo is hit or miss. I'm not pressuring him. We are working dismissal and sometimes he plays, sometimes he doesn't (usually in direct correllation to the amount of goose poop on the field). Last night he engaged with me three times for three 10-second tug sessions and one short roller! Such a good boy!

We have our first disc dog road trip coming up in less than two weeks. Our first Quad of the year. Very excited/nervous! The dog management will be at least as, um, exciting (?) as the disc play. For Jun and Elo, I got an ex-pen to hang out in at the field and I will be covering the sides with a tarp and putting a shade screen over the top. Hopefully that will block their view of all their many triggers and allow them to semi-relax and hopefully they won't fight. Last year, Elo could not even be at the field at all, so I'm hoping he can deal with it this way. We have a local comp this weekend, so I will be giving it a test run. In the mean time, I hope to work some RP in the ex-pen a few times and work on going in and out and getting lots of great treats in the pen.

And for tricks: Elo's got his wave down and we're putting it on cue! He has gotten a TON better at picking up cues and he's already doing pretty well at discriminating the wave from his other cues! That will make 6 behaviors on cue for him! Elo's handstand is coming along great! Last night I started clicking him for lifting his foot off his bracing surface and he's holding 1-2 seconds! Still working on Jun's limp every so often. Making very slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

Great Weekend!

2011-04-25T10:36:00.000-05:00

I had an awesome weekend with the dogs! Several amazing things happened. First we had a playdate with the MNDDC. I parked at the wrong end of the field at first, but decided to use that opportunity to work with Elo a bit. There were a bunch of guys playing ultimate frisbee off to our left and a dog playing frisbee WAAAAY off in the distance. I was armed with hot dogs and let Elo run on a long line a bit at first. He seems to do better in a new environment if he can check it out "off leash" a bit first and blow off a little steam. First of all, the ultimate guys were NO problem! He didn't pay them one bit of attention! A couple glances at the dog down the field, but not even a little over threshold. We didn't even bother to do LAT. We worked some LLW and obedience and then I decided to see how close we could get to the dog. At the point the dog was lying down with its owner and some of the club members were working throwing. Elo walked nicely most of the way down the field. When he started to get a little over-aroused we'd just turn around and walk the other way for a minute until he settled. Ultimately, we got within 30 yards of the dog who was even standing up and walking a little bit. There were other dogs not visible but barking and whining. Elo said hi to everyone! And the best part--he was genuinely relaxed and comfortable the whole time. I was not in crisis-management mode at all! I could not believe how well he did with ALL of it. Thinking back to this dog when I first brought him home--he barked at everything!! I could not take him out to potty near a lightly-trafficked road because he'd be constantly watching for cars and lunging at them when he saw them. Birds/planes flying overhead, people walking, little critters, dogs that were just specks in the distance. Everything was a trigger for him. He has come SO far and I am so proud of him!!

Jun is playing REALLY well so far this season. We have no routine to speak of. I scrapped everything at the end of last season and we are just kinda jamming right now. But she is into it, and that's cool! I should probably put together a routine soon, since we have our first comp coming up in the middle of May. But I am really enjoying not pressuring her and just jamming. I'd rather focus on our distance game, since that's what we're both good at, and let freestyle fall where it may. Her toss and fetch has been better. We spent a lot of the winter working on dropping the disc and she is dropping better now. Not perfect, but a lot faster.

Behavior-wise, Jun was a wreck this weekend, for the most part. Spring has been a bit much for her. There are people outside all the time and every time we step out the door she is on hyper-alert, whipping her head back and forth looking for the scary people. She could barely see my neighbor, across the alley, through the slats of our privacy fence, but it was too much for her. The people two blocks down who were just specs in the distance were too much for her. Since it was finally nice out yesterday, we started doing RP outside. She stayed on her mat the whole time, flopped a hip, and somewhat relaxed here and there, but was still looking around anxiously. I've decided we need to start doing her counter-conditioning work in our own yard, and took her out front on leash to hang out for a bit and people-watch. On a whim I took her mat with, had her lie down, and sat down next to her. I was not prepared for what happened next. My dog RELAXED!! Like, truly relaxed. For a whole 15 minutes! Granted, we only saw two people. She was a little concerned about the first one, the second one was no big deal. The rest of the time she just chilled on her mat, looking around calmly, just taking in the sights and smells of the day, enjoying the sunshine. I was floored. I don't think she has ever been that relaxed in her life, and certainly not in our front yard with me sitting down next to her. I had hot dogs, but she wasn't bugging me for them. She wasn't offering behaviors. She was just . . .chilling. I have no idea what got into her, but I hope it gets into her more often!!

Meet Helen

2011-04-15T16:08:00.001-05:00

And no, she's not staying. And yes, I know that's what I said the last time, but it's true this time. She is a foster for Border Collie Rescue of MN, but her foster home went out of town for the week so she's staying with me.

They told me she was blind, so I was all like "Cool, she can stay with me for the week! We can do blind!" They did not tell me she was severely mentally handicapped. She is extremely fearful. She does not like to be touched. She especially despises being carried, and flails and scratches the whole time. Which is unfortunate, because she currently lives in my basement and since she doesn't know how to walk up stairs her options are being carried or dragged. I feel like the former is more humane.

She doesn't know how to walk on a leash, or even, really in a straight line, so a bit of dragging is inevitable here. Her MO is tweaking out as soon as you set her down somewhere, just kind of walking in circles aimlessly, not even circles, really, just kind of pin-balling around in a small area in complete confusion. She doesn't respond to my voice, though she is supposedly not deaf. After tweaking out for awhile she will lay down. If I try to come near her or touch her she starts tweaking out again.

She doesn't really know how to eat. I tried to give her a piece of cheese last night. She was clearly interested in it. She sniffed around for it, sort of, and eventually found it, but then didn't know what to do with it. She kind of mashed it with her lips, but wouldn't open her mouth. She likes her food, but I imagine tries to eat it in the same way, without opening her mouth, because she spills most of it out of her bowl. Apparently she is quite persistent, as I guess she does usually finish eating it. This morning, most of it had been scattered about her crate, so we'll see how much she actually got into her stomach. She drinks water the same way. She doesn't use her tongue--just kind of gums at it.

And she's not really housetrained, of course, most of the time not knowing where she is. And since she doesn't seem to understand even praise I don't know how you'd ever housetrain her.

Poor girl was dumped in a shelter. Not sure what the rest of her life will hold, but at the least, warmth, good food, clean water, a soft bed, and love.

Shaping Struggles

2011-03-31T10:27:00.000-05:00

I was a bad trainer last night. Impatient. Demanding. My dogs are SO smart that sometimes I just expect them to GET IT ALREADY!!!

I have given up on Jun's limp (for now). She's not getting it. I'm getting frustrated. I'm sick of working on the same damn thing over and over. I'm going to let latent learning work it's magic and in a few months we will try it again and she will magically get it! Jun is extremely smart, but she has a mind of her own. She likes to do things her own way and when shaping it seems she'd rather do what SHE thinks would be cool than what she thinks I might want. I think I might need to get over myself a bit and start being more accommodating to what she wants. She also gets stuck in offering the same thing and I have a really hard time raising criteria for her. I've tried experimenting with raising criteria faster and slower and haven't really had much success no matter what.

Since I ditched the limp I decided to try another trick--rolling herself up in a blanket. It's cute, and how hard could it be? Right? Well, apparently, I am incapable of teaching Jun complex tricks that require her to do more than one thing at a time. She knows a roll over and she has a hold, so day one was just holding a cloth in a down. She wanted to stand up as soon as she grabbed the cloth, but we finally got the hold in a down and started building a little duration. Day two, I wanted to add the roll over with the hold. Fail! She would roll over without the cloth, she would stand up and do a spin while holding the cloth, she would hold the cloth for a few seconds in the down, but after she had the cloth in her mouth it was like the roll disappeared from her repertoire. (She actually DID give me ONE perfect roll over while holding the cloth, which I jackpotted her for, and then never did it again). Then I got demanding, and greedy, and crabby, and continued the session WAY to long, because dammit she SHOULD be able to do it. And Jun got goofy and stopped thinking and started throwing the cloth at me to play fetch and licking my face. Ugh.

I am thinking maybe my problem with teaching Jun complex tricks is being too demanding and working too long. Maybe I should have quit after she did it once. Maybe I need to stop jackpotting her as she seems to completely forget what she's been jackpotted for and never do it again. Maybe I need to move in smaller increments. Keep the session to a minute or so and quit as soon as I get a tiny bit of progress. I don't know, but something has to change, because this dog is plenty smart enough to learn anything I want to teach her and more.

Then Elo. Poor Elo. He is much more compatible with my drill sergeant clicker training style, and it unfortunately encourages me to take it too far. He's been doing SO great with cue discrimination. He has 5 cues down with probably over 90% accuracy, so I wanted to add another. Way back when I shaped a "wave" but never put it on cue, so I went back and reshaped this. Only it didn't look quite right. I wanted his paw higher vs. stretched out in front. So I kept going, and going, and going. Poor dog. But he is plenty food motivated, so he will keep trying and trying and trying despite being frustrated. It's really not fair to him though. I need to knock it off.

And Lok. My only "good trainer" moment for the night. I do next to nothing with Lok anymore. He stresses so much and really is perfectly happy to just chill and be his own dog. He tests my patience much more than the other two, so I have to make sure I am in the perfect happy mood to train him and have a concrete plan. Awhile back I had started working on "roll up in a blanket" with him, so we started working on this again. He did great! Got a good hold and did a couple rolls while holding onto the cloth most of the way! We kept it really short and ended while he was still happy.

Trick Fail(s)

2011-03-28T10:17:00.000-05:00

I suck at teaching limp. I was ready to hang it up yesterday. After switching methods, as I mentioned a couple posts back, it seemed to be going pretty well with getting Jun to jump UP for the target while holding up her paw. Last night she wasn't doing it at all. She was touching her paw to the ground for a split second before jumping and it made me wonder whether she had done it right at all before. It is really hard to see while standing up and pretty much looking straight down on her back since she likes to stand as close as possible to me. In one last-ditch attempt, I decided to try one more thing. Sitting in front of her, she lifts her paw and I hold it up and lure her one step. I am trying to hold it as lightly as I can and have the top of her paw touching my hand (rather than the bottom of her paw or her arm) so that it's not comfortable for her to lean on my hand. She caught onto that. So we'll see if I can wean her off the assist and then get a couple more steps. I never got farther than 2 steps with Lok, so apparently this is one trick I just really suck at teaching.

I am also about ready to quit on Elo's limp. He does really well with a target. His target is a board leaning against the wall. He's fine as long as it is there, even if it is flush with the wall. But I have no idea how to fade the target. When I try to take it away cold turkey I just get really spastic hopping around! I try to mark for his back foot hopping higher and higher, but he's moving so fast it's crazy hard to get the timing right.I'm gonna have to go watch some videos.

Reactive Rovers Night Seven

2011-03-24T10:59:00.000-05:00

Last night of RR.

I walked in with Elo and didn't really feel like working with him. I started off pretty much expecting him to be good and normal, mostly ignoring him and expecting him to just hang out quietly. Of course, he decided it was much more fun to bark at smells and sounds. After whining to the instructor about the fact that he should be able to be a good dog and I shouldn't have to keep him engaged constantly, she acknowledged that yes, maybe he should, but regardless, we have to go at the DOG'S pace. Oh yeah. That.

So I got my act together and started actually working him and he was much better for the rest of the night. There were only two dogs in class, due to the fact that winter is BACK (again, ugh). Luckily the other dog that came was the calmest one that Elo has been doing well looking at. We did a bunch of dog work. The instructor had us walk briskly in circles around a barrier and part of the circle passed an opening where Elo could see other dogs. He did well with this and for the most part stayed focused on walking with me. He does best when he has something to do. On one round, I clicked and threw some food on the ground when he glanced at the other dog and then back at me. Instead of eating it, he started sniffing at a spot nearby. Weird . . . he NEVER ignores food. After a second of this, I started thinking he was up to something and just called him to move on. I suspected he was buying himself some time to keep looking at the dog, and apparently his eyes were darting that way. Naughty, sneaky boy.

So our class is over and hopefully we will be able to find some good situations to keep exposing him to dogs at his pace. One interesting thing that came out of the class is that I've been sensitized to tag jingling. I have never noticed jingling tags before, but they drive Elo insane and because of that, they now drive ME insane too! I guess conditioning works at both ends of the leash.

Jun Update!

2011-03-17T10:13:00.000-05:00

My truly fearful dog has been doing SO MUCH BETTER lately!!! OMG, I don't even think I can really call her insane anymore! She CHILLS! On her own! Without being tethered! She no longer has to be constantly touching me! We only rarely have the pacing and spinning, and when we do, she goes on her tether and chills there. Usually she gets restless if she hasn't gotten any mental stimulation for a day or two. But as long as she gets her physical and mental exercise for the day, she is really, really good! We have fallen off the wagon a bit with the RP and need to get back on it, but we are still doing other relaxation work.

We're still working on counter-conditioning her to me sitting down. I'm guessing the reason she is reactive to this is because I sit down so rarely that it doesn't fit into her "rule structure" and she doesn't know how to deal with it. So I am working on teaching her how she should behave when I sit down. We are working on having her lie down automatically when I sit at the table or on the couch. We're doing this in a variety of ways, but as she understands what she's supposed to do she is becoming more calm about me sitting down. (Ok, maybe I can still call her insane--reactive to sitting?! Weirdo.)

We're working counter-conditioning gradually, still in the Petsmart parking lot. Now that it's warmed up a bit and we have an extra hour of daylight at night, I think we will be able to work this more often. She's made the connection between people and chicken and will look at the people, then back at me for her food, so now we just need to work on slowly approaching. When we're able to get a bit closer, I plan to do another session with our trainer to figure out what the next step is and what our ultimate goal should be.

Jun is still working on her limp. She is really good at holding her paw up while targeting my hand now. After we got that down, I started moving the target farther away so she needed to stretch her nose out for it. Then I started marking for back paw movement. She got her back paws ridiculously close to her front paw, but would NOT move her front paw. We got a hop in place with her front foot off the ground once, which I jackpotted, but it hasn't happened again since. I briefly tried helping her by holding her paw up for her, but got no farther that way, plus I don't really have enough hands to do that. So the new plan . . . I had been sitting on the floor and putting the target in front of her at nose height. I have now switched to standing up and putting the target above her head. If I can get her to jump up to touch the target, maybe she will realize that it's her front paw that has to move.

Reactive Rovers Night Six

2011-03-17T09:57:00.000-05:00

Elo continues to improve! This is the first night he has been able to look at other dogs without teetering on the edge of threshold. He was calmer than he has ever been. And we did quite a bit of dog work. Lots more than last week. I kept the exposures super short and brought him back behind our barrier before he lost control. He was even able to look at other dogs while standing and moving which is a pretty huge deal for him!! In addition, his recovery time after reacting was VERY much improved! After getting back behind our barrier he was able to compose and refocus himself almost immediately.

He wasn't as focused as last week. Outside of the barrier we weren't able to do as much nice loose-leash walking and attention. But it makes sense--increasing the difficulty of one task is going to decrease performance of others. He had a lot of work to do, staying calm around other dogs, and I was really happy with how well he did that.

We did the CU exercise "there's a dog in your face" for the first time last night. What that involved was having the stuffed dog walking towards the reactive dog while continually feeding, and then not feeding while the dog walks away. I was pretty sure Elo wasn't ready for the length of exposure this would involve, but thought we'd give it a try anyway. This was the worst he was all night, back to right on the edge of reacting as the dog walked towards him and then he did react as the dog walked away and he wasn't getting fed anymore. Thanks to his new-found recovery skills though, it didn't ruin him for the rest of the night and we were able to do some more nice (shorter) dog work afterward.

After failing at dog in your face, I had a discussion with the instructor about Elo's "fear" issues. She tried to convince me that his "fear" of dogs leads him to react as they walk away. I don't know, I could be wrong, but I still don't think he is fearful. I don't see any fear body language from him. I really just think he was poorly socialized and doesn't know what to do with other dogs he sees. She said that if it was not fear I might as well just treat it operantly, not bother with counter-conditioning, and just be like "oh, you're not going to do that." Interestingly . . . that's exactly what I've been doing for the past two weeks, during which I've seen the most improvement. E.g., now when he starts swiveling his ears around at dog sounds, I ignore it, rather than giving him treats. And when he starts air scenting for other dogs to bark at, I tell him no and redirect him, rather than giving him treats. He only gets rewarded for good behavior.

She also said that if it were not fear it wouldn't take so long to fix. Personally, I think Elo has improved a huge amount in just 5 sessions of work--I don't think that's a long time. And the quick improvements I've seen with previous behavior mod work I have done with him on cars, people, etc. tells me that all he really needs is to learn how to respond properly to these stimuli. The only way I could see him improving faster is if I were to use positive punishment, which I know she's not advocating and I'm not going to do--even though I think it's possible that Elo's behavior would improve very quickly with positive punishment. I don't want to just suppress his current behavior, I want to teach him a new one--looking calmly at dogs and focusing on me around them. Teaching new behaviors takes time, especially when you are trying to replace a self-rewarding behavior. What we are doing right now seems to be working well, so I'm going to keep doing it this way for now.

Reactive Rovers Night Five

2011-03-10T11:06:00.000-06:00

We had a really good class last night! We made a few changes this week that seemed to be the right decisions for Elo.

First, I had some discussion with the trainer over the past week and she pointed out to me that I need to stop managing Elo as much and let him learn to manage himself. This is completely true. I think due to the fact that Elo is reactive to EVERYTHING I was treating him pretty constantly for the first few weeks in the name of counter-conditioning, but really all I was achieving was distracting him and not letting him check out and learn to deal with his environment.

I also read an article a few days ago and one quote stood out to me: "Third, it’s not uncommon for owners to inadvertently reinforce barky, reactive behavior. A dog who’s hysterically upset is not going to act more hysterical because he happens to get a treat while he’s screaming; he’s too panicky to learn from consequences like a small treat. But a dog who’s feeling worried, but not hysterical, may experience a cookie that interrupts the barking as a reward for barking… and bark more next time."

I really think this could be part of the problem with Elo. Elo is NOT a fearful dog. He is hypervigilant, over-concerned about everything going on around him, and has a need to control his environment. He doesn't know how to conduct himself around other dogs or in an unfamiliar environment. He is anxious. But he is not fearful! And I really think that if he barks at something and I give him a treat I've just rewarded him and told him that his response was correct! I've seen this happen with him before when he first came home and I inadvertently taught him to go bark at the fence then come back to me for a treat! I've been feeding in the presence of triggers regardless of his response, as I have been told to do (since treats don't reinforce fear), but I am starting to think that is not the right strategy to take with Elo. I think he needs to learn that correct behavior around other dogs is what is going to get rewarded and out of control pot-stirring behavior is not going to get rewarded. I need to stop managing him so heavily so the has the opportunity to think about the situation, make the correct decisions and be rewarded for them.

To those ends, last night I walked confidently into class with Elo under my arm (yes, I carry him in--he's under threshold when he's being carried) set him down behind our barrier, and ignored him while I got our stuff set up. He checked out our spot, but didn't bark. I got his attention back on me and rewarded him by giving him the treat from my hand rather than putting it on the floor. He took it nicely!!! That is as good a sign as any that he is under threshold!! There's another mistake I've been making--assuming my dog is over threshold, when maybe he is really not. He can be alert and enthusiastic without being on the edge of a reactive outburst. He really is a very nice working dog--drivey and motivated, alert and attentive. Those are good things that I can harness and work with. I don't need him to be half asleep in class.

Rather than moving to mat work immediately and pez-dispensering him with treats, we went to the opening of our barrier and worked there for awhile with him chilling and me basically ignoring him. He got treats intermittently, but not every two seconds and only when he actually DID something for it (e.g., eye contact). After chilling for a bit, we did some movement work. We did a lot of LLW/heeling outside of our barrier and chilling outside of our barrier. This week, the instructor decided to use the entire training room so we had a lot more room to move around without getting close to other dogs (behind barriers).

We only did 3 sessions of dog work. I decided these need to be fewer and shorter and if at all possible done without Elo barking. We did all of them with real dogs, as I was starting to think that the "weird" stuffed dog was more of a trigger for E than real dogs are. Elo did not bark, but he wasn't as relaxed as I would like him to be. We kept each session extremely short with just a couple of passes of another dog in front of a small opening in the barrier. Still, I would have preferred he be even more under threshold than he was, but it is extremely difficult to find under threshold situations with Elo and other dogs.

The times Elo did react last night were when new dogs walked into the training room. He could not see them but he could smell them and he would start barking. Toward the end of class, Elo started going out of his way to find trouble. He would start sniffing the air in the direction of another dog (that he couldn't see) who he hadn't reacted to all class long and then start barking. Seriously, Elo? Is that really necessary? I didn't reward him or try to DS/CC him. I just took him away from the situation and tried to engage him in something else. That is not reactivity. That is just being an asshole. But an hour is exhausting for me, so I can only imagine how it is for him.

So that's where we are. Progress little by little. Daylight saving time starts next week and it is starting to warm up a little, so I am hoping to get both Elo and Jun outside more for behavior mod work. Even just taking Elo to a new place 2-3 times a week and doing attention work and LLW will help I think, whether there are dogs around or not. He needs to learn to focus in new environments and not be overly concerned about every little sound and smell.

Fun with a Blind Dog

2011-03-07T16:14:00.000-06:00

No border collies were harmed in the making of these photos. Humiliated possibly, but that's what our dogs are for, right?

Reactive Rovers Night Four

2011-03-03T10:47:00.000-06:00

Last night was pretty much the same as last week. Elo still reacts to stuffed dogs and now to invisible dogs as well (jingling tags walking around without a dog attached to them)! (He did NOT react to the real live dog he was allowed to look at, interestingly enough. I wonder if the fact that the stuffed dog doesn't behave like a real dog is part of the reason Elo is so concerned about it?) I think next week I need to focus on letting him see the dog for a short time and getting him away before he reacts. In class, he is never completely under threshold. He is holding it together for the most part, but very concerned about everything that is going on, whether it involves a dog or not. The first piece of dog work we did, he did really nicely and I made the decision to take him back behind the barrier before he got too upset. The rest of the times ended with him reacting, which is probably not a good thing. In real life, I try to make his exposure brief and end it WELL before it becomes too much. In class I think I feel like I have to sit there with him and let him look at the dog as long as the instructor keeps the dog in his view, and I realized after class that I don't actually have to do that and I need to be more active about controlling his exposure. So I will keep that in mind for next week.

We worked on relaxing on his mat, but also on relaxing in different places around our corner. I realized I need to work on desensitizing him to being at the opening of our corner--the only time we've been sitting there is when we're doing dog work and he's now getting really keyed up just standing in the opening with nothing there, looking around for the "dog." We did a bit of LLW and he did ok with that. He had a hard time walking by my side when we were venturing out into the ring space, so we did LLW with him following me in front position a few steps at a time. This seemed to keep him more focused on me.

So, overall, still going pretty well. Lots of work left to do with my high-strung boy.

On another note, Elo's handstand is coming along fantastically! And his disc doggin is coming along great too! He's up to 3-disc sequences. He will drop a disc anywhere! He weaves and spins both ways for a disc, goes around, flips both ways (I have to be careful with disc placement for his flips--he has no concern for his body and will throw himself on his back to get to the disc). He will now go get a disc that is "dead" across the room to earn a tug or a toss (We struggled with lack of interest in dead discs for awhile, but he's now learned that they come back to life if he brings them ot me!). We've started working on tiny overs too! And I've picked him out a freestyle song. Not that he will get on the field this year--maybe if we're really lucky, but hopefully next year!

And Jun's got the hang of lifting her paw and targeting my hand with her nose at the same time! We're working on the next step of getting her to lean forward to touch my hand without putting her paw down, then gradually increase the distance until she has to take a step.

Reactive Rovers Night Three

2011-02-24T10:45:00.000-06:00

Improvement! Definite improvement!

Got there and got Elo settled on his mat in his little corner area. I was still doling out treats like a Pez dispenser the entire night, but towards the end I was able to slow down my rate of reinforcement a little bit. Elo spent most of the time "chilling" on a mat. He wasn't relaxed, but he wasn't quite as on edge as last week.

He did better with dog sounds this week. At first I was clicking and treating for every dog sound. Admittedly the dogs were quieter this week, but by the end of class he was basically ignoring the occasional bark or whine! We also had fewer reactive outbursts this week. Only 3 or 4, and most of them were towards the stuffed dog when it got too close. However, the dog was closer this week than last week and Elo was slightly more relaxed while looking at it. Maybe. I'll choose to think that he was. He was fine to look at the dog for a second while he was on his mat. Interestingly, he has a harder time when the dog is walking away from him. He wasn't able to get up off his mat with the dog present without reacting. Movement is hard for Elo, whether it's another dog's or his own.

We also had each dog come out of their hide-away for a quick walk to the center of the ring and back. Elo didn't react to the dogs that he could hear walking and was able to walk semi-nicely and sort of focus on me on his turn.

At the end of class, the last 10 minutes or so, Elo was awesome!! We were able to do some mini relaxation protocol work--just moving a step back or to the side, and by the end of class he was nearly as relaxed as he is at home while doing RP! Last week, I wasn't even really able to stand up without him having a fit, let alone take any steps! We also were able to do some LLW with moving attention within our space which he also could not handle AT ALL last week! So a couple small victories!

Multi-tasking

2011-02-21T09:49:00.000-06:00

It is pretty rare that I ask my dogs to do two things at once, and I've realized that it is really difficult for them! Even combining two behaviors that they know is hard. Some of our first multi-tasking experiences involved asking my dogs to hold a dumbbell or other object while performing another task--teaching Lok to grab an object out of the fridge, then turn around to close the door was interesting! Both Lok and Jun would tend to drop the dumbbell before using their paw to shut a door. Jun had a really hard time with sitting from a stand while holding a dumbbell! I pretty much had to trick her into it the first few times until she realized that she actually could sit with something in her mouth!

Jun is currently learning two multi-tasking behaviors. The first one we've been working on for a couple months--jumping over my leg with a disc in her mouth. That is part one of a two-part trick we're hoping to put into our disc routine this year, and she's finally getting it down! The second part involves releasing the disc into my hand at the top of the jump, and that might take awhile! It would be a lot easier if I could give her a verbal drop cue! We are probably going to do a vault-less freestyle routine this year, so we need to build up some more complex tricks and sequences that do not involve vaulting. I have no idea if this will ever be ready, but it will be cool if it works!

The second multi-tasking behavior is holding up her left paw while targeting my hand with her nose. We've just started working on this the past couple days, and so far she's still putting her paw down to do the nose target most of the time. It's especially hard because my accuracy with the clicker is sucking. I'll think she's gonna hold her foot up, but then she'll put it down right as I click! The idea is that if she learns to hold her foot up while targeting my hand, I can just move my hand further and further away and she will have an automatic limp! I never was successful in teaching Lok to limp more than a couple steps, so we'll see how far I get with Jun. Currently, I am annoyed that no matter what I'm trying to work on I get a paw raise--the downside of being in the middle of shaping behaviors that haven't been put on cue yet.

Reactive Rovers Night Two

2011-02-16T20:42:00.000-06:00

An hour class is a LONG time with a reactive dog!! About 45 minutes in I found myself praying for it to end! I dont think Elo went more than 5 seconds the entire night without a treat.

Most of the night involved settling on a mat, isolated in a corner behand barriers, and even that was really tough for E, though he did start to settle a bit more toward the end of class. Just knowing there were other dogs "out there" was hard. We did a couple short sessions of LAT work with a STUFFED dog!! The instructor had it on leash and was "walking" it back and forth at a distance. Crazy that all of the dogs thought it was real! Elo was able to quietly offer glances at it except for once when it got too close.

Overall, I dont really feel like we accomplished anything, but I know it is a process and I need to be patient. Hoping that latent learning will kick in over the next week!

And the instructor was just fine this week! No issues and she liked Elo which earned her a few points. I like people that like my dogs!

In Which Jun is a Happy Dog

2011-02-14T10:34:00.001-06:00

This is Jun.

This is Jun off stress hormones.

Actually that is an old picture. That is the very first time I ever saw her sleep--and it was NOT the day she came home. (No, she spent the first day running and running and running and I spent the first day wondering WTF kind of dog did I just bring home and WTF was I going to do with her?) Or the next day, or the next day, or the next day . . . You get the idea. It was probably a couple months later. The occasion was momentous enough for me to take a picture, and I'm not really a picture-taker, if you can't tell by the lack of multimedia on my blog.

I am fairly certain that that was not the first time she EVER slept, since I have THIS picture:

Of course, it's possible that is ANOTHER white puppy with a black ear and not Jun at all. But I am told it was Jun.

Something I am doing appears to be working . . . whether it is the DAP, the intermittent use of the thundershirt, the almost daily Relaxation Protocol work, the fact that Jun's days are now 100% structured, or the fact that *I* have calmed down a TON in the way I deal with my dogs (and I feel like I was a pretty calm handler before, definitely way calmer than I was when I started this dog adventure a few years ago). Probably a combination of all of the above, but she is acting like a normal dog lately. We have no pacing circles, no tail chasing, and no pattern running in the yard. This is partly because I haven't allowed any of it--she's goes out to potty on leash (and to play off leash, but she is totally focused on her toy), when inside if she's not inclined to relax on her own, she is tethered. She is either playing, training, chewing, or relaxing (on her own or forced) at all times, and she just seems . . . happier.

As odd as it might sound, I felt kinda bad about taking away her her pacing and spinning. Like I was taking away a part of her. But lately I've started to see that underneath the crazy is a really sweet, happy dog!

The relaxation protocol is going well. She is active-relaxed (which I think of as different from operant-relaxed) but definitely calm, and the other day she even put her head on her paws for a few seconds on an out-of-sight stay.

We discontinued the counter-conditioning work for awhile. First of all, temps have been below zero here for what seems like forever. Second, she stopped taking treats on walks. She seemed very nervous the whole time, whether there were any people around or not. It was next to impossible to get her attention and she wouldn't tug or lick peanut butter, or canned salmon dog food from a food tube--both of these she loves in the house! This weekend it warmed up a bit and we had some success! I broke out the roasted chicken--one of her favorites--and we ditched the GL, which seemed to be a source of a lot of her anxiety on walks. We walked about 1/4 of the way down the block and back again a few times. Worked on loose leash walking, which she did GREAT with! And we saw two people at a distance (one walking a dog). As soon as she saw the people I threw a big handful of chicken on the ground right in front of her face, then as soon as she was done eating we turned and walked the other direction. She was calm enough to take her eyes off the people to eat and got right back to her happy LLW when we turned around! So I think we will continue with this strategy for now--occasional short walks, plain buckle collar, lots of chicken!

Disclaimer: Despite what it might seem from my last two posts, I am NOT anti-GL (in fact, I'm not anti-ANY tool that is used correctly). For my particular dogs I have found it to cause a lot of stress and cause them to disconnect from me, which is pretty much the opposite of what I'm going for.

Reactive Rovers Night One

2011-02-10T10:21:00.000-06:00

And I'm already in trouble . . . why can't I just "go with the flow?"

I don't want to use a gentle leader with Elo and our instructor is not happy. She wants everybody to use a gentle leader, and she does not like people that disagree with her. About anything. Night one was a people-only lecture and it was liberally sprinkled with groans and eye rolls for people who believe in "leadership" concepts of training and people who use no-reward markers, etc. Well, I believe in being a leader to my dogs and I use no-reward markers in certain situations--topics for another day and I wasn't gonna get into it. But I don't want to use a GL for Elo, and I did get into that.

For one thing, Elo doesn't NEED a GL. Elo is a trained dog, unlike some of the other dogs in the class who really haven't had much if any obedience training. He's perfectly under control on a buckle collar. It's what we've always used. I have nothing against GLs. I've used one with Jun, but I am currently regretting my dependence on it with her, and with Elo I wanted a dog who knew how to behave on leash on a plain buckle collar. We are well on our way to achieving this. I see no need to introduce a tool (particularly an aversive tool) where one is not needed.

Second, Elo HATES the GL. I put one on him once and he flopped on the ground like a fish WHILE reacting to the nearby dog. Sure, I could desensitize him to it. But why would I want to if I don't need to use it? And you can't tell me that all dogs learn to tolerate the GL. Jun's been wearing hers for 2 years and it's always predicted fun things, yet she STILL doesn't like it and tries to rub it off any chance she gets. It's a distraction when we're training (and it interferes with HER behavior mod work) and I don't want that with Elo. Lok did not learn to tolerate it either, completely shut down and ignored me with it on, and pulled just as hard. Ok positive trainers . . . can we stop pretending that the GL is a positive alternative to the prong collar? At least on a prong, the dog only gets punished when pulling. On the GL a dog who doesn't like it is being punished constantly.

But the REAL reason I was extra resistant to try it with Elo is the stated justification for using the GL for a reactive dog . . . . Supposedly, if your dog is staring at his trigger, about to react, and you need him to stop doing that, all you have to do is gently use the GL to turn his nose away. I am calling BULLSHIT on that!!!!!!!!! Oh, that is SO complete BS! Jun is reactive and good luck turning her nose away from anything she is intent on staring at! Sure, I might be able to turn her head, but it won't be gentle--she is going to resist and keep trying to look at whatever is scaring her! And if I DO succeed in turning her head, she is just gonna swivel her body around so her head is pointed the way she wants it again!

If Elo is so under control while looking at his trigger that I will be able to turn his head gently, then I would also be able to just say his name and break his focus and get him to look at me. In fact, if I did try to use the leash to control him, it would probably be MORE likely to cause a reaction (tight leashes anyone??). If he is already over threshold, there is NO controlling him and I might as well just get him out of that situation however I can.

I am also extremely put off by the fact that my safety concerns were completely ignored. Elo is a cattle dog. He may be small, but he is STRONG. And when he hits the end of the leash, he hits it HARD, regardless of the amount of slack there is. To me, that creates an extreme risk of injury to his neck on a GL. He's not thinking at that point and is not going to self-preseve--the GL works to stop pulling because dogs are thinking about it and choose not to pull to avoid the pressure on their nose. A reactive dog is no longer a thinking dog and he has suddenly lost the ability to moderate the corrections he receives from the device. This is dangerous for him, period. But my safety concerns were brushed off (more groans and eye rolls).

A gentle leader is supposedly the best option for ALL dogs. I hate inflexible trainers. I hate trainers that assume their students don't think about things and make reasoned decisions in the best interest of their OWN dog. I hate trainers who assume their students know nothing about dog training and should listen to the instructor unquestioningly. In the end, she agreed that we could "see how it goes" without the GL. This is going to be fun.

/rant

What We're Working On

2011-02-08T10:47:00.002-06:00

Ok, so I HAVE been taking Jun out on leash. I decided it was worth it to me. Just like doing the RP every night and tethering her when she starts pacing or spinning. It's part of her OCD (for lack of a better term) behavior and it needs to get under control. Not to mention the fact that I want my grass to grow back this summer!! So I am committed.

Jun
Jun has been working on right and left finishes. I'm tightening up my criteria, trying to get rid of forgy finishes (It's not her fault--I didn't realize they were forgy until recently), and leaning on me. She's getting better. Next step, cleaning up my hand signals. We're also working on kick-back stands. She does them well in heel position on both sides, but tends to step forward when she's in front of me, so I'm working on fixing that.

Tricks-wise, Jun is learning to flop on both sides from a down position. I free shaped this and she caught onto the behavior right away, but putting it on cue has been slow going. I am using a "head signal"--tilting my head to either side. The hard part is, she is not used to taking cues from anything other than my hands. I have to put my clicker and treat hand behind my back or cue eye contact before I give her the "head signal." For the past couple weeks we've gotten inconsistent results, but last night we worked it very briefly and she got 4/4 right! I

Elo
Elo is working on kick-back stands. They're physically harder for him, because he only has one back leg. When we stopped working on cue discrimination daily a couple weeks ago he was probably about 90% accurate in discriminating between 4 commands in a variety of locations and body positions. I think that's fallen a bit since adding a 5th command and not working as often, but I'm encouraged by our success rate! I never thought he'd get it! Tricks-wise, Elo is working a handstand. We're working with a board propped against a wall and he's doing REALLY well! We don't do too many reps, since part of it is building skill and part of it is building the strength to pull up his hind end and to balance all his weight on his front end. But I am guessing we'll have this down within the next few months. He seems to really like working on it--usually he is pretty intense about working, but when we're doing the handstand he'll wag his tail when he gets it right!

Elo is also working on his set-up moves for freestyle--throughs, spins, squibs, scoots. He's got the spins and throughs down. I've recently started fading the lure for his scoot and he's doing really well with that--he sometimes loses his balance, but so far that hasn't seemed to be too aversive for him. I'm not sure if we'll do them in a disc routine because they are kind of hard for him physically, but we'll see. I've also been continuing with drive-building and working on multi-disc play. Using dismissal has worked out REALLY well for us! He hasn't disengaged to go sniff stuff in the past several weeks. When I dismiss him he lays down and stares at me, waiting for more. Still keeping it very short, mostly tug and rollers, with a few throws. He is doing mini two-disc sequences! He is drivey enough now that I sometimes have to ask him for a wait to keep him from snatching discs out of my hands and I'm able to ask him for behaviors and reward with a disc! Now if only we can get his reactivity under control, we might be able to get on the field someday!

Lok
I feel kinda bad, but I haven't really been doing anything with Lok. We're working on "active" sits (I don't know if this is a "real" thing, I kinda made it up, but when he sits his hind legs aren't doing any work--they're not really under him, and his core is saggy, he slouches--so I'm trying to build a stronger sit position), duration in a sit, and side-lying sit-ups to build up his core strength which is abysmal. But ever since he's been blind I've had trouble shaping new behaviors with him. I will sometimes review his old tricks and he seems to like that. He is diggin the RP--he doesn't have to do a thing and gets all kinds of treats! But I need to come up with with something to do with Lok.

Incorrigible

2011-01-28T15:23:00.001-06:00

Sometime in the past year Jun started a new OCD habit (you know, in addition to the barking, pacing, and tail chasing). She runs diagonally across the yard from one corner to another, slides to a stop at the fence and barks 2-3 times. Rinse and repeat. I don't know when it started. I didn't even know it was happening until my neighbor mentioned how "funny" it was to watch her run her little pattern every morning.

I used to put Jun outside to potty and go inside and not worry about her. She used to just stand or lay by the door when she was done and was ready to come in. In fact, sometimes I'd put her outside when I just needed a break from her, because she'd just lay there so nicely. When did that stop? I have no idea. But now we have this new OCD habit, that is sometimes triggered by people walking by or cars driving by, but often happens just because I opened the door and let her out.

Before it started snowing the grass in the back corner of my yard was gone due to her sliding to a stop there. I was hoping the snow would deter her. It did not. Then she started wearing through the snow down to the dirt. Not cool.

So two months ago (maybe three, I'm not exactly sure) I drew a line in the sand and set out to stop her. I started going outside WITH her to potty, every. single. time. In the middle of winter, which requires getting on boots and jacket every time, and slogging through the snow. This has been going on for two months now and it WAS going great! For two months she stopped running her pattern. She did her business and ran to me happily and we went inside. I had planned on continuing going outside with her every time for at least a year to make sure the habit was completely erased. And I've been following through with 100% consistency.

Well . . . the habit is back. I cannot even stop her--she runs right past me. If I grab her, she breaks free and finishes her pattern. I can't yell to get her attention. I can't do a damn thing. This is the fun of Jun . . . just when you think you've solved a problem, it comes back with a vengeance. Either that or a new one crops up to take it's place.

And what's more, Elo's started doing the same damn thing.

So what now? I have only one option left . . . take Jun out on leash every. single. time. Strike that--take ALL my dogs out, individually, on leash, one at a time, for the rest of their lives (since I already take Lok out on leash and I may as well fix Elo while I'm at it). I do not know if I have the resolve for this. I own a house with a fenced yard for a reason.

I am just waiting for all our success from the past week to fall apart. And it's started happening already. Jun has discovered that she CAN chase her tail on leash. She's also now guarding me from the other dogs when she is leashed to me, since I can't do what I usually do and just move away from her when I see her lip raise or her body tense or her eyes harden. So instead of leashing her to me, I've been just tethering her to furniture. This is also working. For now. But probably not for long. She's already started chewing on her leash in these situations.

In Which We've All Learned to Chill Out . . .

2011-01-24T13:56:00.000-06:00

. . . well, started to at least.

Jun and I have a lot in common. I've been described as having no off switch. Sometimes I run just for the hell of it (ok, short sprints with a purpose like from the car to the park--I'm NOT a runner). And if people are "doing something," I'm in! If I don't get something right away, sometimes I get frustrated. And I appreciate structure and rules---I like to know how my world works and where I stand in it. I don't do well with down-time--I get restless and am not good at not doing anything (though I have gotten better in the past couple years thanks to some coaching from a friend).

All of the above applies to Jun. So realizing all of that really helped in figuring out the answers to my two questions from last week.

What is relaxation? I have a border collie. She's young, fit, energetic, and a little bit crazy. All of that is good! Relaxation does not mean semi-comatose. My dog can be both active and alert as well as relaxed. For example this video from relaxation guru Leslie McDevitt, depicts a "relaxed" dog, or so she claims. I would have though of this more as having good impulse control--more of an "operant relaxed." The dog is clearly poised for action, jumps up quickly when released, but is also able to think through arousal and demonstrate good impulse control. Jun doesn't have impulse control issues. So I guess, by this definition she is pretty good at relaxing.

The more important definition of relaxation, for our situation, is that it is the opposite of anxiousness. Anxiety (as I'm using the word) is a state of being uncertain, and also uncomfortable with that uncertainty. I have realized that Jun is anxious when she doesn't know what she's supposed to be doing. She is also anxious when she's not sure how to respond to a stimuli (thus the fear issues we're working on). I think Jun is, in general, a happy and relaxed dog, but she has a rule set that she operates by and when something happens that doesn't mesh with her rules, this causes anxiety. So in the past week I have set about trying to provide a bit more structure for Jun.

One such situation (the primary one at home) is when I'm sitting down--at the table, on the couch, on the floor. For whatever reason, this is the time she is most likely to pace and spin. My friend Sarah suggested last week that I try leashing Jun to me in the house. The difference has been dramatic!! Since she's leashed to me, she has little choice but to lie down and chill. And it creates a situation different enough from "training" that I am actually able to shape calm without her going into operant mode! For example, I sat down on the couch to read a book and tethered her to the couch leg. At first she was just trying to get on the couch and struggling--not afraid of being tied, just being a brat. When she stopped and stood nicely I gave her a treat. When she sat I gave her a treat. Then when she laid down, then when she put her head down, then when she flopped on her side. By the end of half an hour she was almost asleep! I have never in 2 1/2 years been able to sit down on the couch and relax with Jun out of her crate! A couple nights ago we did the same while I watched a movie. It took a lot less time for her to settle and she slept almost the whole time--got up maybe 5 or 6 times, but quickly settled back down when she saw nothing was going on. Wow! I think in 2 1/2 years this is the most *I've* been able to relax with her around! I don't know why this never occurred to me! We've had less spinning the past week than we've ever had since she was 8 months old. I am hoping that with several months of this she will come to see me sitting down and ignoring her as a cue to chill and this will just become part of her routine/rule set.

I've also been managing the crate barking better. When I'm home and need to confine her, I've been putting her in the bathroom instead of her crate. This seems to have changed the picture for her enough that even without her collar it doesn't trigger her barking habit. She just lays down and chills. Crazy! For whatever reason she also has not been barking in her crate when I get home from work for the past few days. I'm not sure if it's the general atmosphere of relaxation I've been fostering with her or that I've been keeping her bark collar tighter, but either way, it's less nerve-wracking for ME when I don't come home to barking and sets a better tone for the rest of the night.

Finally, the Relaxation Protocol. We started it. We've done it every day for the past 5 days. I have no idea if it's doing anything other than building some great stays on my dogs, but even if that's all it does, I'm cool with it. It at least gives ME some structure for our training sessions! Interestingly, the skill they all have the hardest time with is laying still for anything over 5 seconds with me just standing there. I guess when we work stays I've always stood back a few steps or been walking around doing something to distract them. When I'm just standing there, they are usually supposed to be offering behaviors--so it took us a few days to move up from level one, but now they are all doing really well. Especially Lok. It's very low-pressure for him and he's loving it!

In Which I Ramble Like an Idiot . . .

2011-01-19T10:37:00.000-06:00

. . . because that is how I feel regarding this relaxation stuff. I think my frustration is primarily due to two questions I have, the answers to which seem fundamental to my understanding of this concept:

1. What is relaxation?

2. When should my dog be doing it?

I have been thinking a lot about Jun's behavior as it pertains to relaxation in the past few days. What is she doing and when is she doing it? When we are playing fetch, she is very much "on" and very intense, but happy I think, mouth open in a smile and tongue hanging out, but eyes wide and body tense and ready. When we are training she goes back and forth between the same "intense/happy" mood I see while playing outside and a more stressed mode. When she gets it and is having fun with the game, her face is relaxed but intense. When she is not sure what I want she displays stress behavior--lip licking, yawning, licking my face, pacing in circles, scratching herself.

When I'm not directly interacting with her, her behavior varies. She is clingy a lot of the time. She likes to be touching me in some way. The time she is most likely to lie down on her side and just sit there doing nothing, maybe close her eyes (and this is what I think of when I think relaxation) is when I'm standing up and/or walking around the house doing something. Cooking, cleaning, getting ready for work or ready for bed etc. Sometimes she will be glued to me but other times she will lie down nearby and do what I think of as relaxing. My guess is her behavior at these times will depend on how much exercise and mental stimulation she has gotten that day--the more stimulation, the more likely she is to chill.

When I am sitting down--at the table, on the couch, on the floor, etc--she is almost always what I would consider the opposite of relaxed. These are the times she will be trotting in circles around the living room, chasing her tail, jumping up on me, running back and forth from me to the door. Are these stress behaviors in and of themselves (I have not been watching for lip-licking and things like that)? Or are they just naughty/attention-seeking? Are they bad? Is part of the goal to get rid of this behavior? Obviously it is annoying to me and I would rather she do something else., but I have learned to ignore it for the most part. The only time she doesn't act like this while I'm sitting down is if I put her in a long down-stay. I can sit down and ignore her and she will stay (usually, though I might have to reset her a couple times) and eventually flop on a hip and put her head down on her paws, though she will watch me constantly. Is she relaxed? Or does the fact that she is watching me and will jump up immediately upon being released mean she is not relaxed?

When I am behind closed doors, she does not do her pacing routine. She lays by the door and waits for me. Or else finds her own mischief to get into, e.g., standing on the table, barking out the window.

When she has a bone to chew on, she will lay down and chew on it, but I would not call her behavior relaxed, particularly when Elo is around, because both of them are constantly watching the other to make sure their bone doesn't get stolen. Even without another dog around, I don't think she is relaxed with a bone. I contrast Lok's behavior with a bone--he will chew on it in a leisurely manner, not get up and move until he is done (maybe just to switch to a more comfortable position), and when he done he will breathe a big sigh of contentment and maybe roll on the floor for a minute or two, then probably curl up somewhere and go to sleep. Jun's behavior is more intense, like it is with anything. She is very intent on her chewing, will get up and move to a different spot often, and when she is done, she will get up and start pacing or chasing her tail again. It's almost as if chewing is just another outlet for her . . . frustration? Anxiety? Endless energy? Enthusiam?

Let's see, what else . . . in her crate. Without her bark collar on, both at home and in the car, she almost immediately starts staring up into a random corner of her crate, at a wall or the ceiling, barking sharply and rapidly, crouching and bouncing into her barks, sometimes growling and pulling on the bars of her crate. This alternates with pacing in circles and whining. She will do these things until she is panting hard and will not stop until I put her bark collar on or let her out of her crate. With her bark collar on her behavior can be strikingly different--though if she knows it is loose enough that she won't get shocked, she will sometimes behave the same as above. I put her in her crate with the collar on right before I go to work. Regardless of the tightness of the collar, she usually lays down pretty quickly with her head on her paws, watching me until I leave. When I get home, she is usually barking as described above, unless the collar is very tight. At bedtime, I put the collar on too loose to be effective and she will usually stand up in her crate for awhile, maybe pace and whine for a couple minutes, but she goes to sleep within a few minutes. While at home, I will put her in her crate while I work with the other dogs and she will pace, whine, and bark--UNLESS I leave the crate door open. If the door is open, she will stay in of her own accord, lay down, and watch me (it's a trained behavior we have been working on lately).

When I am petting her, she will lie down, her eyes partly closed, face soft, mouth open. As soon as I stop petting her, she jumps up immediately. She has never sat or layed down next to me while I am sitting down and just been calm--if she is sitting calmly next to me I am either actively petting her or she is in a stay and working.

This morning we went for a walk, per our homework from Sara. We don't usually walk--I started NOT walking my dogs after I got Lok and was unable to break him of pulling on the leash. Walks were frustrating for both of us, and besides that he still needed to run in the yard afterwards to burn off energy. Jun came along and our non-walking continued, despite her walking nicely on a GL. But this morning we went for a 15-minute walk, and Jun behaved exactly as I remember on the few walks she has been on. Hyper-alert. Her head was on a swivel. Looking all around her. She was aware of me, didn't pull, and looked back at me occasionally, but she also seemed to need to see everything around her. She spooked a little at a couple fire hydrants. We only saw two people on our walk and she became very alert, standing up tall and freezing in place (I couldn't see her face it was turned away from me)--I brought a tug so we could play tug every time a person was in sight (our attempt at the first steps of counter-conditioning--I'm getting a food tube this weekend so we can use that too).

Ok . . . ready, set, go! Psychoanalyze my dog!

Until the past three days, I saw her as a high-drive, intense, crazy, working dog. Now I'm supposed to be working on getting her to relax, but . . . relax when? And what does that mean? I can see her behavior on walks being possibly anxious and fearful, but is her boundless energy at home a problem?

Tonight we are going to start on the RP and just see what happens. I don't really understand how the RP is any different from proofing a stay, but I guess I will not understand it unless I give it a try. For the past three days we've been trying to just shape relaxation. She lays in her crate with the door open, I sit next to her with treats, and treat her for blinking, shifting her weight to a more comfortable position, deep breaths, head on paws, etc. Um . . . I clearly have no idea what I'm doing, because they only result I'm getting is MORE stress. She has no idea what I want and is offering all sorts of behaviors, contorting herself into the weirdest positions, holding her head at all different angles, looking at me, looking away from me, looking all over the room. We tried it out of the crate too, just on the floor, and it was even worse. And when we were done, she spent the rest of the night spinning, spinning, spinning.

Physical Therapy

2011-01-18T08:45:00.000-06:00

Last night I took Elo to an appointment with a physical therapist. I know that three-legged dogs can have physical issues, due to the way their bodies have to compensate for their missing leg, and I wanted to find out what I can expect with Elo in the future and what I can do to prolong his mobility.

Turns out, Elo is perfect! He is very strong overall and is only slightly weaker in his core strength on his left side (the one with the missing leg) than his right side. His back is straight--she said that sometimes dogs missing a leg will get a curve in their spine, and he doesn't have one at all! His right rear leg is strong and his hip measured 170 degrees. She said normal is 162-165 and that if I were to have it x-rayed it would probably be rated excellent. So essentially what that mean is there is very little chance of him becoming displastic later in life!!

We have a short exercise program to do with him and all the dogs. The first exercise is a sit-to-stand, in which the dogs are to get into a standing position from a sit without stepping forward or moving his front feet. This requires him to bear more weight on his rear leg to stand up. So we are to do 5-10 reps every other day.

He is also supposed to do side-lying sit-ups to maintain core strength. To do these, you begin with the dog laying on flat on either side. You hold the front leg that is on the ground lightly so that it is not touching the ground and they can't use it to help push themselves up, then you lure the dog with a treat so that he curves up to the side and ends with his nose near his tail. Back down to the ground and repeat for 10 reps on each side every other day.

We are also supposed to do heeling, 5 minutes on the right side and 5 minutes on the left with circles and serpentines and figure 8's. This will require teaching him to heel first, so we will be working up to it. In the mean time, she said that just walking will be good for him, as it is more structured than playing in the back yard. And since I can't take him for a walk due to his reactivity . . . we will be working up to that as well.

Fixing My Dogs

2011-01-17T11:11:00.000-06:00

Last night, Jun and I had a behavior consult with Sara Reusche of Paws Abilities in Rochester. Jun has some fear-aggression issues with strange people and they have only seemed to get worse over the past couple of years, progressing from reacting only to kids to reacting to almost any strange person when she is off leash and anyone who gets up close and personal with her when she is on leash. It is bad enough that I thought it was time to be proactive and step in to fix her before she hurts someone or gets to the point where I am uncomfortable taking her out in public at all.

Sara pointed out how stressed and nervous Jun was in general. She did not really relax at all the entire hour and a half of our appointment. I consider myself fairly well educated in canine body language--more than most "pet people" at least--but I had not been picking up on a lot of stress signals she was giving off. She's always been a crazy hyperactive dog and I have accepted it as who she is--an extremely drivey working dog. And she is that, but she is also stressed much of the time and doesn't really know how to relax ever. So our first order of business is teaching relaxation with the Relaxation Protocol. I am also going to start using DAP and a thundershirt--we put a thundershirt on her last night and she sat by my side without moving for, well, maybe a few minutes? I'm not sure how long it was but it was longer than she's ever sat motionless before (without being in a stay or being entertained somehow) in her life. We are also going to start taking two walks a week and doing basic counter-conditioning to people we see--that is, dispensing food while people are in sight, no food when there are no people--to try to change her emotional reaction to encountering strangers.

Then there is Elo. Elo is starting a reactive dog class next month. He's gotten a ton better with several of his triggers by working LAT, but have not had many opportunities to work around dogs in under threshold situations. So class should be great for that! I have high hopes for Elo--he's not fearful and he really loves dogs and people. He just doesn't know how to respond appropriate to certain stimuli, and has really benefited from being taught an alternate behavior. He will also benefit from relaxation work, I think, so he's going to do the RP as well.

And finally, Lok. He has been doing SO much better with his anxiety since being back on Prozac. He has been back on it for almost 2 months now, I think. He barely licks his paws anymore--they are mostly white again! He still barks in his crate some, but doesn't completely freak out anymore, doesn't dig frantically or chew on the crate pan and bars. It will be thunderstorm season again in a few months, and I'm not looking forward to that, but I am hoping that the Prozac, DAP, thundershirt, and working the relaxation protocol will help him as well.

So, I have my work cut out for me, but if it pays off in happy, relaxed dogs it will be well worth it.

Heeling Work

2011-01-11T12:39:00.000-06:00

We've been doing obedience work lately, specifically, heeling. I've been taking my dogs to my office building on the weekends (twice now, but planning on weekly), because there is a TON of completely empty space and nobody stopping me from using it! It's great for working heeling! There are pretty much zero distractions, since it's mostly empty hallways, but it's a different place so that in itself is a bit of a distraction.
With Lok, I'm really just doing a tiny bit of heeling interspersed with other things and trying to make it super fun for him! I ruined him for obedience by entering him in a Rally trial two years ago. He got his novice title and never wanted to do obedience again, especially heeling. And now that his sight is completely gone he has that to contend with as well. But I'd really love to get him in the ring again someday--only if he wants to of course--and show the world what a blind dog can do! He can still do all his obedience behaviors with some auditory position markers. For his swing finish, I snap my fingers behind my leg, so he knows how far back to go. For heeling, I pat my leg the whole time so he knows where I am. And for front, I snap my fingers in front of me. I will also cue turns--"turn" for right and "pivot" for left. That's really all the modification he needs and he's been doing great and having fun with it!

Jun has always been good at heeling--a bit forgy, but enthusiastic and she has fun with it! We've been working on left circles. She does not seem to bend well to the left (she has spent most of her insane little life spinning in circles to the right, so not surprising) and while her right circles are beautiful and her left pivots are awesome, she can't keep a bend to the left and when heeling a left circle she is constantly crashing into my legs.

I've gotten a ton of great suggestions to help work on this. Next Monday she is going to see a canine physical therapist who can tell me whether she has any physical issues preventing her from bending left and give us some exercises to strengthen and balance her left side. In the mean time, I've done a couple of things that have worked out really well. First, working large circles and cuing a left spin every few steps. This has really helped to keep her in position and bending left. I've also been treating to the inside and slightly behind her head so she has to bend to reach the treat.

Another thing that has helped is paying more attention to my shoulders. In order to circle properly, she should react to the position of my shoulder and adjust her position accordingly. So when my shoulder moves back for a left turn, she ought to swing her butt back to stay in position. She's known pivots forever, but I wasn't sure if she cued off my shoulder or not. I tested it by sitting her in a heel position and rotating my shoulder forward and back---and she changed her position to stay in alignment! So since she already knew that, I paid a little more attention to my handling and keeping my shoulders square on straight lines while cuing turns with my shoulders. We worked on this last night at the pet supply store--heeling left around a square display shelf as an inside barrier, and I could not believe how well she did! She stayed in position perfectly, no forging, took her cues to turn from my shoulders, and the inside barrier seemed to help her understand to bend around the corners! I am really excited to keep working on this!

We are also still working on Jun's go-out. It's been somewhat slow progress, but progress nonetheless, and as of last night she went to stand with all 4 feet on her mat across my entire house!!! My house is TINY. The farthest away from her I can get is about 10 steps, but this 10 steps took us weeks, so I am excited!! We'll have to start taking this one on the road and working it in the hallways at work.

Jun's new trick: I am free shaping a limp (or trying at least)! Jun hasn't done much pure free shaping so this is an experiment. Step one: hold up your left paw in a sit position. Check! Step two: hold up your left paw in a stand--started to get this last night! Step one and two are the easy part, but she's already doing better than Lok ever did.

Elo is just learning loose leash walking. I am determined to have one dog that knows this skill!! He is doing great, as usual! We're still working on cue discrimination--I've found he regresses if we skip a week or so. :( Oh well. And we've starting building the foundation for a handstand (just working rear-foot targeting right now)! He may never be able to do any tricks on cue, but that's not gonna stop me from teaching them anyway!

Living with a Tri-Pawed Dog

2011-01-05T08:38:00.000-06:00

I have written a bit about some of the "challenges" of living with a blind dog and a deaf dog, but I haven't really written about my experiences with a 3-legged dog. So here are a few points of note:

1. You only have 3 feet worth of nails to clip. This saves time and also results in 25% less drama with a dog who is not fond of nail clipping.

2. Do not expect a similar reduction in running speed or leaping ability. You will be disappointed.

3. If your dog is missing a rear leg, you may need to help them scratch the ear on the side of the missing leg. They will try, but that little stump just wont reach!!

4. In the winter, when your dog's paws are cold, they may spontaneously start walking on two legs. Inevitably, you will not have your clicker handy when this happens.

5. Three-legged dogs lend themselves well to jokes--like telling people how long it took to wash off 11 paws when the dogs came inside the other day. It's fun to watch how long it takes them to figure that out.

6. If your 3-legged dog is small-ish and is are missing a rear leg, it is extra easy to carry them on your hip.

7. You can threaten 3-legged dogs very handily-- one leg for naughty behavior, two legs for very naughty behavior. I think 3 legs might be just a bit too mean!

8. You can teach 3-legged dogs fun tricks: "Pogo" would be a good one (hop on their single back leg), "let me count your legs" (flip on their back with legs in the air) is also fun, and someday I hope to have that clicker with me for the occasions he starts dragging his back leg. That would be a very handy cue to have for eliciting sympathy and donations if we ever became homeless!

So, as you can see, living with a severely disabled dog like this is quite challenging!

Pic by Anna Belikova. He looks like such a puppy to me here!Love this dog!

2010 Wrap-up and 2011 Goals

2011-01-01T11:54:00.000-06:00

I wasn't going to do a 2010 wrap-up post, because I didn't really feel like we had accomplished much, but then I though of one thing . . . I didn't get any new dogs in 2010!! Considering I got Lok in 2007, Jun in 2008 and Elo in 2009, that's a pretty big accomplishment!!

Seriously though, most of my 2010 training was disc related, which I dont talk about much on this blog, probably because it's a dog training blog and disc training feels more like ME training. We didnt accomplish as much as i was hoping to accomplish disc-wise, but we did pretty well in a couple quads and had one great freestyle round. Actually, we accomplished quite a lot now that I am thinking about where we were in 2009. Jun is a much stronger freestyle dog. Her TC fell apart, but I think we're making progress on those issues. For 2011 I'd like to add a few more yards to my long throw, become more consistent in my throwing in a comp environment in both distance and TC and get better at just "playing" in freestyle.

My biggest training accomplishments this year were with Elo. Lok pretty much took a break from all training and Jun didnt do much besides disc training. Elo has come a really long way since September 09 when he came home with me. I am super proud of this dog. For 2011, I'd like Elo to get his CGC. That would be such a huge accomplishment for him! It may not happen this year, but that is what I plan to work towards.

Lok started nosework in 2010 and I plan to continue to work nosework with all the dogs once a week. I've also been working less on tricks and more on manners, and incorporating manners work into our daily routines, e.g., stay out of the bathroom while I'm getting ready in the morning (practical boundary work), down stay before being allowed to get on the bed, etc. My dogs have decent manners, but since we're not training for any sport competitions right now, I figure we may as well work on useful behaviors that increase the peace in our household and help save my sanity.

Here's to an accomplished and fulfilling 2011!

Verbal Discrimination and Differential Reinforcement

2010-12-30T10:33:00.001-06:00

Cue Discrimination Work with Elo

Since THIS post, I've been working really hard on Elo's verbal cue discrimination. In the past couple of days it actually seems like we're making some progress!! The discussion came up on Crystal's blog, so I thought I would post an update on how we've been working this.

I started with just three commands: sit, down, and stand. I tried to work just a few repetitions of each command a few times a day--maybe counting out ten kibbles and just working until I ran out, with a treat for each successful response. I picked a different location to work each time--the living room in different corners, the kitchen, a bedroom. I also rotated between sitting and standing. I tried to just mix up the commands randomly so that he would be doing sits from downs, down from stand, stand from down, and all the possible variations. This actually went really well and I didn't have too many problems. He seemed to know "stand" better than I thought he did.

So I added in a fourth command, everything went to hell, and I gave up.

But only for a little while. We've been back at it after doing some significant work with taking treats nicely. It's a lot easier to be patient when your fingers aren't bleeding! I basically just fed him the majority of his dinner by hand for awhile and required him to take each kibble nicely without being told. Once he started doing well with this, I started adding in commands, since every time I gave a command he got a little bit amped up and started snapping again. We worked through this as well and it kind of progressed back into verbal discrimination exercises.

I've increased the number of repetitions. I try to stop before he gets confused, but if he's doing well I don't arbitrarily limit the number of reps I will do. We are working just four commands--sit, down, stand and bummer (the first trick he learned--head on paws)--and varying location and position as above. I've found that he does best when he is very calm, so I usually wait for and reward eye contact a few times between each command and make sure he is paying attention before I give a command. Instead of cycling through all commands randomly, I am working just a couple per session. For example, for the past few nights we've been working sit and bummer primarily. I also add in a few stands and lie downs randomly so it doesn't get to be too much of a pattern.

I am consciously physically cuing in some ways. For bummer I will lower my head slightly and look at the ground. I will also empty-hand lure a response if he fails to respond to a verbal (e.g., for stand or sit from down). So this probably isn't pure verbal discrimination work, but I am honestly more concerned about correct responses to cues than what he is cuing off of. I am also trying to pay attention to the pitch of commands and keeping them consistent.

And a Couple Thoughts on Differential Reinforcement

Differential reinforcement is another thing I've been thinking about lately--having been brought to my consciousness by a couple of other blogs I read. Differential reinforcement, as I understand it, means essentially reinforcing some instances of a behavior and not others, specifically, only reinforcing increasingly better instances of that behavior.

I am terrible at fading treats. And I have previously had this idea that once a behavior is learned you fade treats by simply reinforcing every other, then every third, and just increasingly spacing out rewards. That's not to say I still treat my dogs for every correct response to every cue, and I don't generally carry around a treat bag unless I'm training something new. But I can't say I've ever really understood the concept of differential reinforcement or ever applied it successfully. But for the past couple nights I've been experimenting with it for Jun's response to a down from a stand--she's been turning it into a "bow" first, since that's a trick we've been working on. I c/t the first bow-down after her butt hit the ground. She offered me the same thing for the next rep. No treat. The next rep was a bit better, so I c/t. The following rep was the same. No treat. The next rep was slightly better but I wanted a bit more, so no c/t. The next rep was nearly perfect, c/t. I don't know if this worked because I applied (or tried to apply) differential reinforcement, or because she realized that we were working down and not bow, but the behavior seemed to improve faster than I would normally expect it to. This is really interesting and I plan to keep playing with it. It sure seems like a more purposeful way to treat than just random reinforcement.

ETA: If I'm totally off track with this, please let me know. It's a concept I'd really like to understand and learn to use.

Lok Update

2010-12-29T10:02:00.000-06:00

Lok's seizures continue. He had his fifth last night. It's been about a month since the last one. For anyone who hasn't experienced a seizing dog, this description is pretty spot-on:

A typical seizure unfolds like this: At 3:30 am you hear a loud bump as your dog falls off the bed. His whole body is rigid, with his neck pulled backward so strongly that his head nearly touches his back. His eyes are rolled back in his head, and his mouth is wide open - champing frantically at nothing, saliva spewing forth. His legs gallop nowhere. He empties his bladder, his anal glands, and often his bowels. This continues for up to several minutes, during which time he does not breath. Lack of oxygen to the brain means death for brain cells. As the seizure declines, he is unconscious. Suddenly he snaps into a semblance of awareness, but is totally uncoordinated and often blind. He pulls himself up and staggers into a wall or a piece of furniture. Not having an understanding of why he isn't moving forward, he continues to shove blindly against the barrier until it moves or someone pulls him away from it. Over the next 20 minutes to several hours he gradually comes back to his senses.
Then the pacing begins. He doesn't know why, but he must pace - back and forth, back and forth - without end. This can go on for hours. Finally he goes into an exhausted sleep. With some luck, he doesn't "cluster" (having anywhere from 2 to over 50 seizures over the next 2-3 days) or go into status epilepticus (continual seizing that often means death). You try to go back to sleep for a few hours, praying that the seizures are over for now, and thanking God that he lived through this one.
http://www.canine-epilepsy.com/Whats.html

The "post-ictal" phase is the worst. That's after the convulsions stop when he suddenly jumps up and needs to move continually with no idea where he is going. He will walk into walls, and like a video game character will just keep trying to go forward, or will stand there confused about why he can't keep going. He will fall down stairs. I can't hold him still or comfort him (and he doesn't really seem to be un-comfortable--his tail will be wagging like crazy while he's pacing) because he just keeps struggling against me to keep moving, so I put him in his crate where he will pace in circles but he is less likely to hurt himself. I keep him there and sit with him and talk to him until he calms down and then bring him onto the bed with me when he is able to lie still and sleep. It's not nearly as traumatic for me as the first couple were--I kind of have the routine down now--but I still hate to see him going through it.

We went to the UofM several weeks ago. The neurologist decided that it was most likely "idiopathic epilepsy" which is a fancy way of saying "your dog is having seizures and we have no idea why." The other options--some kind of poison or toxin, or a brain tumor--he said were unlikely, and that it wasn't worth doing a CT or MRI at this point. A blood test showed Lok's phenobarbital was not at a therapeutic level, so they decided to increase his dose of phenobarbital to double what it was. He has been getting 60mg twice a day and is now at a therapeutic level. I realized this morning that I missed his dose last night. That may or may not have contributed to the seizure he had last night. He missed a dose last week due to having run out and he didn't seize at that time.

So right now, I will try to do better at remembering to give him his Pb. I am also switching him back from Taste of the Wild kibble to Orijen kibble. I can't remember when exactly I started mixing in TOTW to save money (it's still a pretty high quality grain-free food, but much cheaper), but I think it was around the time he started seizing. So just in case that could be a factor, I put him back on Orijen starting today. I will give that a couple months and if he's still seizing I will look into other supplement options or consider feeding raw. It seems many Epi dogs have improved when started on a raw diet. I also plan to start supplementing with Milk Thistle, which does nothing to help the seizures, but is supposed to prevent liver damage from the Pb.

The UofM also gave me the go-ahead to put him back on Prozac, so he's been getting that again for a few weeks and is doing better again with his anxiety. I'm expecting it to be several more weeks before he's back to where he was. His paw-licking is getting better, he's relaxing in the house when I'm home at night instead of standing around or pacing and obsessively bothering Elo. He's been better in his crate and isn't chewing his crate pan anymore.

So, that's what's up with Lok. He's not doing too bad, but I do hope I can take him off both of these drugs at some point. If anyone has any experience with epi or anxiety and has any input I'd be happy to hear it!

Lok's Tongue

2010-12-23T09:58:00.000-06:00

Haha, I figured out how to put videos from my camera phone on YouTube! How tech-savvy am I?!

Does anyone else's dog do THIS??

He does his tongue thing EVERY time he drops a toy!!

Exhibit B:

Spoiled

2010-12-22T09:33:00.000-06:00

My dogs are not allowed on the couch.

They also do not sleep on the bed.

They wouldn't dream of getting up on the other furniture.

They have their own beds to use, and they are perfectly content to do so.

Boundary Training Take 3

2010-12-17T14:16:00.000-06:00

I started writing about training a boundary cue Here and Here. After the second post, I kind of gave up on it. Jun wasn't getting it and I was out of ideas. Awhile after giving up on it I had an epiphany and realized that I already had a boundary cue on all of my dogs. They all stay in a car or crate with the door open until told to exit. They all auto-stop at the gate to the front yard and don't cross the threshold until told (mostly). And I tested it and found that they will all wait in a doorway if told to do so with the command "stay here" (And yes, I can use "stay" in this context because I don't use a stay command for a formal stay. My dogs just hold a position until released.)

So how did I train this boundary cue? When the dog tries to leave the area I'd like them to stay in, I calmly body block them (or block them with the door) until they stop trying to leave. Then I mark (yes) and reward them with a release. I think the reason I didn't think of this as a boundary cue was because I had never worked it for duration. I had previously used it mostly as a pause at a threshold, but usually released the dog fairly quickly. But I decided to try working duration with it and I got the exact result I was trying to achieve with the work I wrote about in the other two posts. The dogs will usually stand there for a bit, then lie down and stare at me for awhile, but when they realize they're not going to get released right away they decide to go and do other things. Either behavior, I am fine with! If they come back to the boundary and forget they're not supposed to cross it, I just remind them by body blocking. No treats are needed, since their reward is the release to cross the boundary!

Sometimes dog training is simple!!

P.S. Speaking of epiphanies, I realized the other day that Jun doesn't have a default "sit." You know--the one thing EVERY pet dog knows--sit when you want something. I'm not sure how this particular training bit got overlooked (or maybe I just let it lapse at some point), but it suddenly explained why she is always jumping up to try to grab things out of my hands (which I'd been trying--fairly unsuccessfully--to correct by ignoring, but ignoring doesn't do much if the dog doesn't have an alternate behavior to offer). So Jun--my highly trained sport dog--is now learning something that every pet dog in the world knows.

Gravity (and Cue Switching)

2010-12-13T14:31:00.000-06:00

Jun has a gravity issue. There is a gravitational force that attracts her shoulder to my knee and makes it very difficult to work on anything that requires her being AWAY from me. Her back up is the place where this is most evident--we've worked on it in a variety of ways and every time, just as I think I'm making progress, gravity rears its sticky head again.

We made some good progress on the "accuracy" and "duration" elements of Jun's go-out. She was fine from 2-3 feet away. An inch more and the "accuracy" completely fell apart--it was as if she completely forgot that she was supposed to touch the piece of tape with her foot (or possible that she never knew in the first place and she was doing it accidentally before, but she was so consistent up close that I doubt that's the issue) or was so nervous about being AWAY that despite her best efforts, she just couldn't do it.

So we are now working on another "sending" exercise for the distance piece--going to a mat. We've worked on staying on a mat before, but never really worked the send piece much (see aforementioned gravity issues). I started working little by little on adding distance to the send with the criteria of "elbows on the mat," but was still running into trouble. I'm not sure if she didn't understand the criteria or if she was still just hesitant to get too far away from me, but the further I got from the mat, the more of her body was off of it. When she didn't get a click right away she would back up until her elbows were on the mat. I had hoped she might realize this was what I wanted and give it to me to begin with, but no luck. So I changed my criteria to one I thought would be easier for her to understand--standing up with all 4 feet on the mat. I worked that up close to make sure she understood the new criteria, and then gradually started adding distance. And . . . . she's getting it!! She was even offering back ups and staying back from me further than usual during the rest of our session last night. This could very well be another "Oh, she's got it!! . . . Aw, nope, she doesn't" moments, but I hope it isn't. She's never been so willing to be so far from me, so I think I've finally found something that makes sense to her.

Elo, on the other hand, does awesome at sending to a mat--he's not a cheater like Jun is! I was sending him around a corner with the mat out of sight last night and he was rocking it!

And a note-to-self on cue switching--you may need to keep using the old cue longer than you think. I could not figure out why Jun was responding so poorly to her new "bow" cue when clearly she "knew" it. After all, she had done it for me on cue multiple times!! She seemed confused, so I don't know why I couldn't accept that she was, in fact, confused, rather than avoiding or being stubborn. I went back to using the old cue immediately followed by the new cue for awhile. Then one rep with just the new cue, and right back to using both for several reps etc. She is now much more confident and happy taking the new cue! I plan to still use the old and new cues together for awhile occasionally until she is confidently and happily doing the behavior every time I give her the new cue only.

Setting Criteria

2010-12-01T09:04:00.000-06:00

Confession: I rush my dogs. I am not a patient trainer. I'm a lot better than I used to be, but I still rush. I still sometimes expect Jun the genius to jump from step one to finished products in minutes. But I'm learning.

So, I haven't had many clear goals for the dogs lately, since none of them are in any sports right now and we have no competitions to work for. Which creates an even worse situation for my rushing problems because I don't know what I'm specifically training for and have no clear goals for myself. I bounce back and forth from one thing to another and don't finish things. But in the last couple days I've been setting some more concrete goals and breaking some things down for my dogs in smaller baby steps.

I am teaching Jun a "go-out", obedience style (just for the hell of it, since I doubt we'll ever compete in real obedience). Now, I've done a ton of targeting with Jun, but I've never taught an obedience go-out and I really have no idea what I'm doing, so as usual, I'm making it up as I go along.

At first, I started with targeting a duct-tape square on the floor. Then I jumped straight to going to the duct tape square, targeting it, sitting and waiting. Haha! Yes, the mocking is well deserved. Jun was sort of getting it, but was pretty confused, obviously.

So I sat down (figuratively) and thought about my criteria and the individual components that went into the overall behavior I wanted. To do the behavior properly, I want Jun to (1) go to the target, (2) have a good level of accuracy in hitting the target with a paw, (3) remain on the target for a period of time, (4) sit on command, and (5) do all of this at a distance. Lots of steps I skipped in there. Step 1 is no problem, but 2 and 3 are really tough for Jun, so we've just been working those for the past few days. Jun was not sure how I wanted her to interact with the target--just be somewhere near it? Put a front paw on it? Put all 4 paws on it (that one was pretty comical)? Circle it? Bow on it? Her confusion is understandable, since I hadn't properly conveyed to her what I wanted. We've taken a big step back and are working very closely on hitting the target with one front paw, and standing there until released. And suddenly, with better defined criteria and clear steps to follow, we're making progress.

And oh yeah, at some point we'll have to fade the target. That one will be interesting, and I'll probably have to hit up my obedience peeps for suggestions when that time comes.

Another criteria problem I had last night that I've started working through is the way Elo takes treats. He is a shark and I will not have any fingers left very soon if things continue the way they have been!! Of course I have worked taking treats nicely and he does understand "gentle." But unless I remind him, he tends to snap for it. And even when he's trying to be gentle, he is so concerned about getting the treat into his mouth that he often adds a little snap at the end, just as I'm praising him for taking it so nicely. So last night, we worked on a different method of taking treats, wherein my fingers actually go INTO his mouth slightly. This might seem counterintuitive (and it's not the way either of my other dogs take treats), but it completely avoids the very worrisome (to Elo) possibility that he might not grab the treat firmly enough and it might fall on the floor instead of going into his mouth, thus leading to the little snap at the end that gets inadvertently rewarded too often. This has been working out swimmingly in the two days we've been at it!!

Clearly defined criteria + Clearly defined steps to the finished product = Progress! Imagine that!

Exercise in a Minnesota Winter

2010-11-22T12:15:00.000-06:00

My blog is sorely lacking in pictures, I realize. So, this is what it looks like to play outside with the dogs in a Minnesota Winter:

I only assume there are dogs in the picture, since something kept bringing the glowing balls back to me. Metorlite balls are our best friend in the winter. They are soft rubber, and the exact size of chuck-it balls. Their extremely bright glow is turned on/off with a button that is flush with the ball so the dogs don't (usually) turn it off. The battery lasts a long time and can be changed when it wears out (though it's kind of difficult to do). Plus, they can be seen under quite a bit of snow!!

Currently my yard is covered in a sheet of ice, so it's indoor play only until we get some snow. Disc play in the basement and shaping games to put bored dog brains to work.

Speaking of dog brains, Lok's seizures continue despite phenobarbital. He was in pretty rough shape last night, and it's so hard to see him suffering. The age he is (almost 5, and I understand epilepsy shows up usually from 1-3), at the onset of seizures and the other behaviors (paw licking, and other OCD/anxious behaviors) have me worried about a brain tumor. My vet agrees its a concern. I'll be consulting with a UofM neurologist in the next day or two, and possibly setting up a CT scan. Please send my boy some good vibes!!

Jun 1, Trainer 0

2010-11-12T09:58:00.000-06:00

How does she get me to do these things?

So, Jun has been really "spooky" lately, which is weird for her. I am used to her spooking at people, but lately she's been spooking at objects A LOT. Especially outside in the dark, branches will move or something will brush up against her and she will jump back. She recovers quickly, but still. We've been working nosework in the basement utility room (which she is rarely in) and she walks around part of the room half-crouched, leaning backwards with her nose stretched out. She will touch something with her nose and jump back. The other day she barked at a paper bag on the kitchen counter. And if I make a sudden move, especially if I have something in my hand, she will jump and cower. This is really weird and is starting to worry me. I swear I don't beat the dog!!

I'm trying to just ignore it for the most part, as well as trying not to startle her myself, making sure she sees me before I touch her, etc. But it's starting to worry me. It's been awhile since Jun has "tried on" a "new" behavior problem. She seems to have settled into her favorites--excessive pointless barking, leash reactivity/aggression, and biting people--which I've given up on solving. I manage the barking with a bark collar, and I manage the reactivity and aggression by just keeping her out of bad situations. But I really don't need a dog who is going to be afraid of THINGS. More specifically, I don't need THIS dog to be afraid of things. She is enough work as it is.

But to get to the point of this post, Jun has been known to be . . . manipulative, and last night I began to suspect she is just doing this to see what she can get out of me or get away with. Last night I was cooking some bacon and Jun spooked at something on the kitchen counter--the contents of the counter hadn't changed all night, nor were they any more or less cluttered than usual. So what do I do? Thinking it may be time to step in and do some counter-conditioning. I grab a piece of bacon, encourage her to put her paws up on the counter and feed it to her there. WTF, Tania?! Counter-conditioning all right--conditioning counter-surfing that is. Smarter than the dog, Tania, it's, like, the first rule!!

And P.S., if any of the like 3 people who read this blog have any ideas on the sudden spookiness, please let me know.

Highlights of the Weekend--Edit

2010-11-06T21:09:00.003-05:00

Re: the lack of capitals and punctuation in the first draft--wrote this on my phone and for some reason it won't let me do capitals. Also, it cut me off, so finishing this now . . .

On Saturday, Jun remembered how to do a back vault. she forgot in July, so that's a pretty momentous occasion. She also remembered how to flip, which she forgot in the past month or so. No guarantees she will remember either next week. Jun has been a pretty challenging dog to run freestyle with, and I've finally gotten to the place of accepting that we may never accomplish much in disc dogging. You never know, taking that pressure off may be the key to her greatness, but I think Jun will always be Jun. My focus now is trying to play within her Jun-ness. We are working on patterns and also on NOT being so focused on patterns. Jun is a "rules dog" and and she gets her sequences down pretty well, but if I ever need to change plans in the middle of a routine, due to her positioning, wind or anything else, it all goes to hell because Jun does NOT change plans. "WTF is that disc going in that direction for, mom? This is wrong." And then the whole thing is screwed up. So we're doing sequence work, but also just THROWING so she learns that her job is to chase the disc in the sky and not worry about WHY it is there!!

Elo retrieved about ten rollers at the park!! he has come so far since last year when he had zero interest in the disc. He's catching, retrieving, and tugging! Not getting my hopes up, but I would love to get him on the field next year. First we have to conquer his dog issues, and distractibility, but being able to play at the park was such a huge step for him!

Also worked some loose leash walking with Elo and he did well! I am determined to have at least one dog that can do this skill. After that, we went to a slightly busier park to work some LAT. Elo is pretty much fine around cars and people now! Even if they "surprise" him. His level of focus on me isn't great around distractions, but he no longer flips out! Dogs are still another story. At this park, people walk dogs pretty frequently so i thought we might be able to work that a bit.

It was pretty dead, and Elo saw the first one before I did and started flipping out. I calmly walked backwards until I was able to catch his attention for half a second. Clicked for that, then I did some rapid fire LAT with tons of treats. He was teetering on the edge of threshold, but he was calm enough to eat, which was at least something. I've discovered the putting the treats on the ground, even behind him, is better than having him take them from my hands. When he gets all fired up, his "gentle" goes bye-bye, so putting the treats on the ground not only saves my fingers, but breaks his focus on the target for an extra second while he finds and eats them. It was kinda funny, the lady walking the first dog we saw must know dog training because she yelled out to me "excellent work" when she saw what we were doing. We worked one more dog. Then Sunday we got to work another dog in the parking lot of the pet store. I am hoping that once he recognizes dogs as LAT objects, just like people and cars and moving things and things that make noise, that it will be pretty quick work.

The Power of Cheese!!

2010-11-02T08:52:00.004-05:00

Ok, updates . . .

Nosework 1 ended last night. Lok was really enjoying the sniffing and had kind of gotten out of "searching" mode and into "random sniffing" mode for a couple weeks, but he brought it back last night with some really nice, organized searches! I credit the cheese he was searching for. Sharp Cheddar! Not many updates on the training process. More of the same. Getting more creative with hiding the food, new locations, putting the food out without a box, etc. Nosework 2 starts next week and it sounds like we'll be introducing scent in a few weeks!

Jun might get to go to nosework class too! The instructor was ok with me switching out dogs from week to week, since I'm working all of them at home. Not sure if I want to bring her, cause it's kind of Lok's special thing, but Jun is brilliant at searching, so I'd like to have her do it too. Jun has been working on tricks. She's learning to balance a treat on her nose (VERY impressive that she can sit so still for even a second or two) and learning a bow. We're working on distance with the bow. Last night she held the treat on her nose for 3 seconds and bowed all the way across the room from me! I credit the cheese!

Elo . . . dog who doesn't know any words . . . suddenly was able to discriminate between sit, down, stand, come, bummer, and flat (lie down on side) all in one training session last night!! I had planned to work on his response to "flat" and we ended up doing all sorts of verbal discrimination work! He wasn't right every time, but he was right a surprising amount, and he was really listening and trying, not just guessing! I credit the cheese!

Cheese is apparently a very powerful thing, which can turn on areas of a dog's brain that were previously set to "off"!! I will have to remember this.

Nosework Class 3

2010-10-12T09:44:00.002-05:00

More of the same. Grrr. The boxes were supposedly spread out more, but they really weren't, besides which, Lok has to search the whole room anyway because he can't see the boxes. We didn't introduce elevation, like she said we were going to. And she didn't even know what week of class we were on. Time to send an email.

In other news, Jun was SO good this morning!! It happens so rarely, I just had to record it, for posterity.

I should have known . . .

2010-10-06T10:10:00.002-05:00

. . . I was making it too easy for Jun and she was bored. Jun has a fine line between too easy (and thus boring) and too hard (thus giving up). Crazy dog. Nosework ranking in the house right now: #1: Jun, #2: Lok, #3: Elo.

Jun is doing multi-room searches, elevation, covered boxes, all while running around like a lunatic not looking at all like she's working or even sniffing.

Elo wasn't doing so well last night, but I think it may be because we had a clicker session in between the last two search sessions. He was too focused on me and offering me behaviors--like that's anything to complain about!

Nosework Training Week 1 and Class 2

2010-10-04T13:29:00.003-05:00

This week I decided to try all the dogs with our beginning nosework exercises. The object of the game is teaching the dogs to search independently by using several cardboard boxes, one of which has treats hidden in it. Once the dog finds the box with the treats, you're supposed to feed additional treats with their head in the box for several seconds--I think this has something to do with linking a new scent to the treats later, or something.

This week, I played with gradually spreading the boxes out to cover more space in the room, as well as partially covering the treat box. We practiced three days this week.

After week 1, Elo is the best searcher! He is methodical and meticulous and loves the game! It was hard to stump him, and he got farther than the others. Last night I was completely covering the treat box with another box and did two successful hides that way!

Lok is the second-best searcher, impeded ironically by his lack of sight. The boxes are not helping him at all. He trips over them and gets frustrated. But over the past week he has gotten better at working slowly and methodically and feeling his way around the room. Two of his hides last night took longer than usual and he didn't lose patience. I spread the boxes out pretty far, but did not cover the treat box for Lok.

Jun is very enthusiastic, of course, but lacks patience, as with everything. If she doesn't find the treats within 5 seconds, she just picks up boxes and throws them around. However, she IS great at sniffing and finding in general--the boxes just slow her down and get in her way.

Class 2!!
Not too much different from class one. Still just teaching them to search independently, which is the most important part--not looking to us for hints or direction or confirmation. We spread out the boxes more, and it's a pretty big room. Lok is kind of disadvantaged, but also kind of ahead of the other dogs out of necessity. The other dogs only have to go to each box and check it. Lok has to FIND the boxes first, and then check them! He was doing great--I was so proud! He was checking out the perimeter of the room, checking corners, even thoroughly checked out the bathroom that is attached to the training room! He didn't give up and after a couple minutes he found what he was looking for. And most importantly--he didn't look to me for a hint even once! His third search he found the treats quicker and it was cool because you could tell he had the scent when he was about 5 feet away from the box the treats were in and was really following his nose! I was proud!

So this week, we work on spreading the boxes out more, and covering boxes so the scent is not so easy to find. Next week we start adding some elevation, and more obstacles in the search area.

Nosework

2010-09-28T09:23:00.002-05:00

Lok started Nosework class last night! He LOVED it!! Lok has not been in class for over a year, and when we left classes he was still pretty stressed about obedience. He has also had trouble listening, even at home, for the past year or so. But this was a great re-introduction to classes for him. It was stress-free, obedience, free, and ALL he had to do was find the treats and eat them!

Nosework is, a brand new sport wherein dogs learn to search rooms, outdoor areas, and vehicles for a tiny amount of an essential oil. Any dog can participate. Obedience is not required. They make it (even the trials) accessible to reactive dogs too (so maybe Elo will get to play next time!) by requiring all dogs to be crated when not working and not getting out the next dog until the last one is in its crate. All the dog has to do is follow his nose to get a reward! There are even trials and titles and all that stuff! In the first level trial, the dog does an indoor search, an outdoor search, and a vehicle search. For the indoor search, there is a line of boxes, one containing the scent they are looking for. When you think your dog has found it, you tell the judge "alert." If the dog was right, it gets rewarded! If not, the judge helps the dog to find the scent and then they get rewarded! I love that the dog always gets to be right and always gets a reward! No failure, and no stress for the dog!

The training process is apparently very similar to the training used for drug/bomb/SAR dogs. I'm not quite sure where it's going yet, but I'm excited to find out. The first step is to have the dog search 7-9ish boxes for the one that has the food. All my dogs are well versed in the "find-it" game. They love it and it's great for a mind-stimulating activity on days when it's really cold and I don't want to play outside for long. So Lok was already a pro at this. Other than tripping over and stepping in boxes, he did an awesome job searching for the food! We practice this step this week. I think I'll do it with all the dogs. Can't wait to see what's next!

Shaping Fun!

2010-09-16T08:13:00.002-05:00

I decided to do at least something with each of the dogs before going to bed last night. It turned out to be a pretty productive night! I ended up doing some free shaping with Lok. He's never been very good at free shaping, but he was actually giving me a lot last night. We ended up with a side-step/shuffle back and forth with him crossing one front paw over another. Could be a cute trick, maybe. But I at least got him using his brain again. I haven't done any training with Lok in forever.

Elo is always fun to shape! He is the most creative dog I've ever worked with, possibly due to the fact that his training is 100% shaped--no luring. He learned right away to offer behaviors and loves it. Last night I worked on backing up, which I've worked on a little bit once or twice before. I got him backing up all the way across the living room, which at least twice as far as Jun has ever gotten in two years of training! I also really want to have a trick on cue called "count your legs" where he lays on his back with his legs straight up in the air. I shaped the first step for this tonight--lying down flat on his right side. Elo "gets" clicker training way better than the other dogs. He notices exactly what is being clicked, even the most subtle weight shifts. In fact, I think he might offer them to me on purpose. I wasn't sure whether he would offer me a lie down on his side, and just started clicking anything that seemed like a precursor to pulling his front leg under him, as well as placing treats in a position that might encourage that. Finally he leaned slightly further to his right than he had before and I clicked that a couple times. Then he went straight to a lie down on his side!! I love it! He may never have any of his tricks on cue, but he will have a ton of cute tricks! He loves shaping games! He is much more patient and persistent than Jun and much more confident than Lok, so we rarely get "stuck."

I don't currently have a (flashlight) clicker for Jun, since I lost hers and the one I bought to replace it doesn't work very well. So Jun just got to work on things she knows that force her to USE her devious little mind. We worked on stimulus control for shutting doors (only performing the behavior on cue). We worked on performing other behaviors (sit, stand, spins, sit pretty) while holding a dumbbell. And we worked on some distance stuff--getting her to bring an object to a target (specifically, taking her dumbbell and putting it in the dish washer--we're slowly working on a "loading the dish washer" trick, and I finally figured out an easy way to teach her to push in the tray, so we are getting closer and closer!).

Jun does NOT like to get very far away from me. I've finally figured this out. It's like there is some type of gravitational pull attracting her face to my thigh. That is the reason I can't get her to back up very far. That is the reason she has trouble with bringing an object to a target that is further than a few feet away from me. In disc--I used to think she was an "O-dog" just because of the amount of circling she does around me. Well, I've finally figured out she's ACTUALLY more of an X dog, if she gets more than 2 feet away. I've tried an around the world with her a few times--what I get does not even slightly resemble a circle. She will run out straight for a disc and bring it straight back to me, or even curve a little bit on the outrun or return. But getting her to stay a consistent distance away from me while running a circle--it's like fighting gravity.

So, the weird thing I've discovered . . . when I started working on asking her to bring the dumbbell to the target from a slight distance, I was initially going TO her to reward, thinking that if she got her reward at the target it would reinforce that that was where I wanted her to be. It was going ok, but not great. But for whatever reason, the past couple sessions I've started having her drop the object at the target and come BACK to me for her reward, and she's gotten much better. Why is this? Because she knows that once she does what is asked she gets to come back to me? Did I inadvertently Premack this?

Elo doesn't know any words.

2010-09-10T09:13:00.004-05:00

It's true. I tested him last night. He STILL doesn't know any words. "Lie down" maybe. But everything else is complete guesses. He knows that when I say something he's supposed to do something but what he gives me is directly correlated to the last thing he did that earned him a click and treat.

Its something I've noticed about him for awhile (and blogged about before) and apparently it hasn't gotten any better. He is acutely tuned in to context. He SEES everything. And smells everything. He HEARS everything for that matter--but I guess words are just sound to him. He pays attention to the way I'm standing while I teach him a behavior, where he is in the room, what else is around him--to the FACT that words are coming out of my mouth--but NOT apparently to the specific words coming out of my mouth. Thus, if I plant him on a rug next to the kitchen and lean against the wall with my clicker hand near my chest and the other at my side, he is guaranteed to offer me a wave. And if I happen to say "wave" right before he does it, it looks like he's performing on cue. But he's really not.

Last night I asked for a "bummer" (lie down with chin on floor) from a sit. No luck. I waited him out and clicked when he got it right. Then I asked for the same thing a few more times. Sit-bummer-sit-bummer (he's getting it!)-sit-bummer-sit-WAVE . . . . uh, you can probably guess what happened next. He wasn't listening to the word at all. Just the fact that I was saying something and he had the pattern down. And he wasn't anticipating the pattern either . . . he was waiting for the cue!

He SEEMS to know a few words, especially the ones that get used ALL THE TIME in his daily life, but I am now wondering if at least some of that is only because there are consistent contextual clues. He knows his name, he knows a recall, he SEEMS to know "lie down" and "sit" though if I am attempting to cycle through his tricks, like last night and add them in he forgets what they mean. He knows "stay here" (boundary cue) and "ok" (release). He knows "kennel." I'm not sure why he knows these things, but still can't tell the difference between lie down, bummer, crawl, roll over, stand, place, and wave. As I've posted about before, he also knew "touch" (nose target) and "step" (foot target) but could never reliably give me the right one if the target object was the same.

It's very strange. My border collies TOTALLY "get" the concept that actions and things have names, and it has always been super easy to name their behaviors--once I have the behavior, all I have to do is pair it up with the command a few times and it's done! Not so with Elo. Facebook tells me it's a cattle dog thing. I'm not sure what to do about it. Not that it's a big deal--he doesn't NEED to know any words. He does the things I need him to do. Maybe I should switch to hand signals only. I haven't done much with him lately--maybe this winter I will try to teach him some formal obedience and see how that goes. I still think he would be a super fun Rally dog, if I can get him past his dog issues.

Our new exit strategy

2010-08-29T23:09:00.002-05:00

i think i posted awhile back about our issues with calm exits from the house. or at least Loks. well, we seems to finally have that sorted out. my initial vision for entryways was that my dogs would not bolt out of doors without permission and they would exit calmly upon receiving permission. well, we've had the not bolting down for ages. my dogs very rarely go out the door without permission. but we were having major issues with calm exits. it seemed that at least Lok had put far too much value on leaving the house and his release word "ok"had taken on the character of his flyball "go"command.

so, i decided that rather than my dogs assuming they were to stay inside until released, they may assume they can come outside with me unless told to stay in. this has totally transformed our doorway behavior. a simple "stay in" and all the dogs know theyre not coming with me. we even have it down to the point where i can tell one dog to stay and have the other two come with me. its very slick. Lok is not totally calm about exits yet, but he is a lot better than he used to be, and Jun and elo are perfect.

Elo and LAT

2010-08-20T11:59:00.002-05:00

I can't believe how far Elo has come since I started seriously working with him on his behavior in public a couple months ago. He blew me away last night! I have to say, LAT is miraculous! Elo, as far as I can tell, freaks out at stuff simply because he doesn't know any other way to respond. LAT has given him a different way and it's so much fun to watch the wheels turning!

We went to the park last night to work on his "asshole training." There were quite a few cars there (mostly parked), lots of kids running around the playground, and even a dog WAY off in the distance. I didn't know if it would be too much for him, but we were quite a long distance away from the action, so I figured I'd give it a try. As soon as I got him out of his crate, he knew the game we were playing and his eyes were glued to mine. He didn't even bother to look around for things he might want to bark at. He was totally fine, so we moved a little closer, then a little closer. Giving me attention while walking (especially with any distractions) is way too much for him at this point, and motion gets him worked up, so we just took a few steps forward and kept working while stationary. He did awesome the whole time! Alternating between offering me little over the shoulder LAT glances, and giving me eye contact. Relaxing in a sit or a down. I thought we might have some trouble when a couple people came walking quickly towards us, but I broke his focus on them before he could react by calling his name and running backwards. He responded immediately and came to me, so he got a jackpot for that and we called it a day.

My other Elo brag--I took him to the park to run on a long line. Brag number 1: He was calm enough in the park to play fetch with a ball!! Last time we were there, he was WAY too distracted to play. Brag number 2: There is never ANYBODY in this park and nobody ever walks by, but of course some lady walked by with a dog and Elo saw it and took off before I could grab his long line (if he's this fast on 3 legs, I can't imagine how fast he would be with 4!). However . . . . when I called (ok, SCREAMED) his name, he STOPPED, turned around, and came to me!!!! Having no treats or toys for him at the exact moment, I rewarded him with a dog catch (his favorite trick) and some love.

It's been almost a year that he's been with me and I can't believe how far he's come! He really wants to be a good boy and I know we'll get there!

traveling with three dogs

2010-08-10T15:55:00.002-05:00

We got back from our trip to CO last night. Traveling with three dogs was interesting, and definitely a learning experience. I am VERY glad I bought a second car-sized crate before we went. Jun always rides crated. Lok and Elo are both great loose, but it was a huge sanity-saver to only have to deal with one of them loose at a time. Two crates fit perfectly in the back of my truck and Lok and Elo switched off during the drive.

Elo impressed me greatly on this trip! Not once did he react to a moving car, no matter how close to him they were!!! He only barked at motorcycles when they drove by us on the road. He did react to people in the hotel parking lot a couple times, but stopped that fairly quickly. During the competition days, he mostly stayed at the hotel, but near the end of one day I went and picked him up and brought him to the field. I carried him around on my shoulder for awhile, since he is not reactive when he's being carried, and just let him take in the sights. Then I finally set him down and let him hang out on the ground for a few minutes. We didn't try to walk around at all. We just worked on eye contact and LAT. Another dog walked towards him and he reacted, but recovered quickly, and after that was able to do LAT with other dogs sitting nearby without reacting. He was attentive to me when I called his name and sat or laid down calmly the whole time. I only gave him a few minutes, then picked him up and carried him back to the car, as I wanted to quit while he was successful.

Lok nearly got us kicked out of the hotel due to his barking, which caused Elo to howl. Pretty sure they woke up everyone in the hotel on Sunday morning at 7:30 and I learned that I cannot leave Lok loose while Elo is crated. I knew that, but haven't had them in that situation for so long that I forgot. Lok came with me wherever I went for most of the trip.

Other than that, they were pretty good dogs. It was a lot to handle, but we managed pretty well. It's good to be home though.

Stuff and Nonsense

2010-07-27T13:17:00.002-05:00

This is the most boring blog entry ever. If anybody is bothering to read this (and I don't know why anybody would), let me just sum it up: Elo: working on not being an asshole in public, doing a little better, also learning frisbee (sort of). Jun: working on a bunch of stupid random stuff. Lok: maybe better on prozac, maybe not. All 3: Road trip soon, outlook grim. Damn, even the summary is boring. I should just delete the rest, but since I already typed it out, I guess I'll go ahead and post it.

Well, I've been keeping up with my training plans pretty well lately. I've been working with Elo regularly on desensitizing him to everything, which I've found basically translates to working on calm and focus in a variety of different places, as well as desensitizing specifically to different triggers. We've probably been out five or six times since my last post, working on quiet neighborhood streets or empty parks. Even empty parks are a big challenge for Elo. Planes flying overhead are enough to set him off, but he is getting better little by little about focusing on me and not being a little spaz. As long as I am clicking and treating regularly. We are also working on loose leash walking, which he is doing nicely with. He's doing better about cars from a long distance. We're working LAT and the other night were probably within 50 yards of cars going by on a road and his eyes were glued to mine, just giving little LAT glances at the cars. Dogs are still a BIG problem. I can't get him under threshhold, no matter how far away we are he reacts. And even out of sight of the other dog, barking will set him off. Elo is also working on drive building with frisbee and that is looking kind of promising!

Jun has been working on random retrieving fun and useful tricks, like loading the dishwasher and fetching things from the fridge. I've also started trying to work a handstand with her. I think she's too much of a clutz to do it, but we're trying. Just random stuff to keep her brain occupied. Frisbee is her main job right now.

Lok's prozac seems to be working. Sort of. Sometimes. The main difference I've seen is that he is calmer when I am home, usually chilling in a back bedroom v. obsessing over Elo, which is nice. Storm phobia doesn't seem to have gotten any better. Separation anxiety seems to be a little better. And he is walking out the door better and responding to recall away from toys better. At least sometimes. Last night/this morning we had all of these issues. It's so hard to tell whether it's better or I'm imagining it.

In 8 days all three dogs will be coming with me to Colorado for a competition. Lok and Jun are good at traveling. Elo has traveled with me once and is a bit harder to manage. It should be interesting!

What we're working on

2010-07-08T13:19:00.002-05:00

I have been SUCH a bad dog trainer since we stopped doing obedience classes! With three dogs, sometimes I just get so overwhelmed and we end up doing nothing even when I DO have time to train. If I don't feel like training all of them, I don't train any of them, and I need to realize that training doesn't have to be a marathon. It can just be a few minutes here and there and working with one is better than working with none. I've been a bit better lately, but it's hard when I don't have any specific goals. So here's my plan for the next bit:

Lok
Not really doing anything, just trying to get more one-on-one time with him and hoping his Prozac kicks in soon. He's been on it for about 6 days now and so far it hasn't seemed to do anything, but I guess it takes a few weeks to kick in. I'm hoping to see improvements in the following behaviors: storm phobia, anxiety in his crate (barking, digging, chewing, drooling, paw licking), anxiety in strange places, obsessiveness over Elo, obsessiveness over toys and being outside, not responding to commands and pretending I don't exist most of the time, barking, digging, and chewing for stress and frustration relief. All of this stuff happened so gradually I didn't really notice it until one day I looked at this black and white dog living with me and started to wonder who he was and what happened to my Lok? He is so sad and frustrated. I just want him to get better.

Elo
I decided to take Elo out in public last night. Bad idea. We went to the lake, and I brought Lok with too. He was obviously very stimulated from the start, but other than pulling on the leash, seemed to be doing fine, leaving people alone. I had him on a long line and he was recalling ok, and checking in with me. Then these ladies walked into the lake and Elo apparently decided that was NOT ok. They were way out in the lake and he was standing knee-deep just barking and growling at them. Then he started barking and growling at EVERYONE and EVERYTHING. I decided to leave and the whole way back to the car he is barking, growling, lunging, practically twisting out of his collar to the point where he was scaring people.

Elo was never supposed to stay. He was supposed to be a foster. Here for a good time, not a long time, and then on to a new home after a couple months. But of course, none of my fosters are ever good, normal dogs. It's been almost a year and he doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So I guess I need a plan to work on this. But where do you start when you have a dog that is reactive to EVERYTHING?!

Jun
Jun, my good girl, my princess, my easy dog. . . . . . . never in a million years did I think I'd be saying THAT!! Jun (and all the dogs, but mostly Jun) has been working long stays and doing WONDERFULLY! Its crazy how starting an evening with a 20-minute down-stay has a calming effect on the rest of the night. I started working on a handstand with Jun last night. She is the world's clutziest dog, so we'll see if she has the coordination to do it, but she was having fun getting to use her brain for something new for once. And I realized last night that she has completely forgotten how to SIT. So we did a refresher on that. Still working on our new "back-up" method. We were stalled out for awhile, since Jun in seemingly incapable of backing up in a straight line, so she was missing the target a lot, thus not getting rewarded and getting frustrated. But I realized that if I turn my body 90 degrees to the left, she backs up straight. So, that was working for us better last night. The only behavior issue I need to work on with Jun right now is barking in the yard. That will be easy to fix. I just have to commit to inconveniencing myself to taking her out on leash long enough to break the habit. One of these days . . .

Elo fun!

2010-06-09T12:38:00.002-05:00

Elo is so much fun to free shape! Lok and Jun generally only "get" free shaping if there is an object around they are supposed to interact with. "101 things to do with a box" . . . no problem! "Show me something new" . . . both of them generally just sit and stare. As. Motionless. As. Possible. I've tried to play the "click anything and everything" game with them to encourage more offering of behaviors. But I run into a few problems. First, they get stuck in a rut of offering the same behavior over and over again. Second, the motionless staring, with the only movements made being unconscious things, like ear flicks, which they don't seem to associate with the clicks they get for them. Luckily I've found ways other than free shaping to teach them all their non-prop behaviors. But with Elo, I free shaped pretty much everything right from the beginning. Sit, down, stay, pick up objects, touch objects, all his tricks. Because of that, I think, Elo is awesome at offering behaviors and it's so much fun to do shaping with him! I'm working on shaping a "wave." In his first couple sessions, I concentrated on moving his front paws, since we've never done any front paw work. Then I focused on moving just his right paw. Then I worked on lifting that paw. Last night he was offering me a right paw lift to chest height, so we're halfway there! Fun!

Teach around the skill

2010-06-01T14:13:00.003-05:00

We spent last weekend at a disc dog training camp with Pawsitive Vybe. Learned a few things and had a great time!

Jun
Jun did her very first flip this weekend. In two years of disc dogging she has never done a real flip, and suddenly she's decided to do it! (Kinda like what happened with her vaults--she wouldn't do them, then one day she just decided to.) I also asked Ron Watson to help me with Jun's backing up. I've been working on it lately and have not been able to get her to back up more than five or six feet. She stops and lays down and won't go any further. Ron had me work on backing up to a rear-foot target. Jun is loving this "new" game so far. I don't know why I never thought of that. Ron said something that really stuck in my mind : "When a skill is hard, don't teach the skill, teach around the skill." That's exactly what's going on with the back up. Rather than continuing to try to get a back up, I'm teaching around it. Jun's not backing up anymore--she's rear-foot targeting and the back up is just incidental. Very interesting stuff.

Elo
Elo had a big break-through this weekend! We've been working on the windshield wiper reactivity kind of sporadically, just here and there when I get a chance. On the way home from the seminar it started raining REALLY hard. I didn't have any treats. I didn't really have a way to restrain Elo. I held out as long as I could, but eventually HAD to use the wipers. I worked single-wipes for a little while, marking with a "yes" and rewarding with praise, which was all I had. Elo barely batted an eye. Then I finally had to turn them on high in order to see at all. I knew Elo wasn't ready for this. I grabbed his collar and just held him back. He was fine for a couple seconds, then started reacting, as I figured he would. He wasn't nearly as bad as he used to be though, and didn't redirect on me at all, and then . . . he stopped!! He chilled, laid back down, and was FINE!! Totally fine. So I guess my work there has paid off! One trigger down, six gazillion to go. We worked some reactive dog stuff at the seminar that I am going to continue to try to implement.

Lok
What am I going to do with Lok? His newest thing: turning and walking in the other direction when I call him. (His recall used to be PERFECT.) Refusing to lie down. Basically, just generally tuning me out anytime I'm not throwing a toy for him. I get frustrated and correct him, even though I know it's not helping any. No idea what to do with this one.

Stay is Boring . . .

2010-04-23T12:00:00.005-05:00

. . . for me and for the dogs, I suspect. But at least they get treats periodically while I just kind of wander aimlessly or stand and do nothing while they're staying. So last night I did a long group down-stay while I made and ate a root beer float. It was much more enjoyable for all of us. Well, ok, for me at least, except for all the times naughty Jun got up and I had to put down my root beer float and put her back in position. But Lok and Elo didn't move. I was walking around, I ducked out of sight for periods. It was cool!

I think a dog that will stay in place when told is the coolest thing ever, even if it is boring to teach! I'm trying to work on it more often, in more places, with more distractions.

What we've been working on?

2010-04-21T11:20:00.003-05:00

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Well, that's not totally true. Most of my focus has been on Jun's disc work lately. We had our first comp of the season last weekend and sucked it up big time. Jun was off. Really off. But, this is life with Jun as I know it. When she's good, she's very, very good and when she's bad . . . well, you know the rest.

But the next day we went to play at the park and she redeemed herself. Looking forward to the next comp a week from Saturday, then our first big comp of the year in Kokomo, IN, which is a UFO local and a Quad! I've been throwing pretty well this year, but was really off myself last weekend at the the park, so hopefully I can reel that back in.

Oh! I DID work the other day on some impulse control. I first had Lok and Elo down-stay on mats while Jun and I played the "find-it" game. Then I put Elo in a crate and had Jun down-stay on a mat while Lok played find-it. Then I alternated Jun and Lok with mat work for one while the other played tug. This was quite a challenge for them, but they did well for our first time! Elo is not quite there yet. He sat in a crate and watched and worked on being calm in the crate while watching other dogs play.

I have learned that I can't work my two hearing dogs at one time, especially when I'm also trying to work my deaf dog! Lok and Elo both assume the verbal commands are for them and get really confused, so I try to help them out with gestures, which Jun thinks are for her and it's a whole big mess.

Elo is doing well with windshield wipers still. I can run them on high for several seconds and am increasing the time between treats, sometimes running them briefly without treating at all. He will react if they are on for a long time--it seems to take a lot of effort for him to control himself if they've been running for awhile. I am hoping that with more work on this, the wipers will eventually be completely irrelevant to him.

And finally, the other day I decided to try loose-leash walking with Lok again. Why I continue to torture myself with this I have no idea, but I had borrowed an easy-walk harness to try and so, I wanted to try it (FAIL). I need to give up on this idea of Lok walking nicely next to me. It will never happen and I just get frustrated and upset with him. I also worked it a little with Jun and Elo and they both did a decent job. Now if only I could find more time to train . . .

My first real counter-conditioning success

2010-03-29T10:25:00.002-05:00

Elo freaks out at windshield wipers. Actually, let me put that in the past tense--Elo USED TO freak out at windshield wipers. As soon as you would turn them on, he would bark, growl, lunge, be all over the dashboard biting at the windshield and would take awhile to calm down and stop growling after they were turned off. Ok, a little funny, but not so funny when you forget your wiper-reactive dog is sitting next to you in the car, go to clean your windshield out of habit, and nearly have a heart attack when he explodes next to you. Not so funny when you have the choice of not bringing that dog along when it's raining, or bringing him along and hoping you don't crash for lack of ability to see out your windshield.

So, I set out to fix it. My first issue was how to get Elo under threshhold. In the car there was no way to keep him from reacting, and I didn't think he would react outside of the car. I was wrong about that, I found out--he reacted from like 10 away from the car (he was in the backyard, the car was in the driveway), but got over it much faster.

I grabbed a bucket of yummy treats, a clicker, and sat in the driver's seat with Elo outside the car on the ground next to me. He could hear the wipers, but couldn't see them very well from where he was. I swished them once and immediately clicked and treated before he even had a chance to think about reacting. That was most of our first session. Towards the end, I sped up the tempo a little. It actually went really well! After the first ten reps or so, he started to view the wipers almost as if they WERE the clicker and looked for his treat each time. We ended there.

In the next session, we started where we ended the first session for a little review. Then I had him get in the car. He was a little concerned, but we backed up a bit and he quickly realized we were playing the same game. Within a few minutes, I had him sitting calmly with the wipers on full speed!! We took a short break and then went for a drive, during which I ran the wipers intermittently, still clicking and treating for calm. It was a complete success! I know we will need to practice more to solidify the change in behavior, but I'm calling it a win!

On Reinforcement

2010-03-23T10:09:00.002-05:00

First, the definition of reinforcement: "In operant conditioning, a consequence to a behavior in which something is added to or removed from the situation to make the behavior more likely to occur in the future."

Reinforcement is defined as ANYTHING that makes a behavior more likely to occur in the future. I think I've mentioned this concept before, but we do not get to pick what is reinforcing for our dogs (or for other humans or any creature or being). Reinforcement is unique to the individual.

I have such a hard time when I hear people say things like "I don't use treats, because praise and petting should be enough for my dog." That is like saying "I don't pay my employees with money, because they should work just for the satisfaction of a job well done." And indeed, for some people, a "good job" from the boss may very well be reinforcing enough to ensure continued good performance or even increase the level of performance. The opposite is also true, while most people work "for money" simply because it is necessary to living, for some people, a paycheck every two weeks is not enough to ensure good performance or motivate a boost in performance.

Dogs are the same way. For some dogs, praise/petting very well MAY be reinforcing for the dog. But each dog is an individual, reinforced and motivated by different things. Food, toys, play, a chance to go outside, an opportunity to chase a squirrel. In some cases when we say "a dog SHOULD work for praise" it is a case of imposing our morality on the dog--we are higher than the dog, we are the dogs master/leader, the dog should recognize that fact and obey (a major pet peeve of mine, but a topic for another day). But in other cases, we are simply making fault assumptions about what motives "all" dogs--after all, dogs like to be petted, it's rewarding for them, right?

In other cases (in, ahem, MY case) we make fault assumptions about what is NOT reinforcing for the dog. Case in point, an owner who pushes the dog off of themselves every time the dog jumps up--potentially an aversive for some dogs, but a wonderfully fun game for many that actually reinforces the behavior the owner is trying to prevent. Or in Jun's case, by me putting on her bark collar.

Jun is a terrible barker. For a long time after she first came to live with me, she wore a bark collar nearly all the time. We would do trial periods without the collar, but the second she started barking, I put on the collar. She knew what it was and would not bark with it on. This "positive punishment" method largely cured her barking problem and I was eventually able to leave the bark collar off most of the time for several months.

Fast forward to laying in bed one random morning after Jun had had the privilege of sleeping without the collar for quite some time . . . I heard the worst screams I have ever heard, unlike any sound I'd ever heard from Jun before (and that's saying something--the dog has a bark a thousand times worse than nails on a chalkboard). I was convinced she was being murdered and ran out to the living room to check on her. I found her staring at the wall in apparent terror with huge round eyes, crouching, body inclined backwards. I had no idea what she saw or thought she saw that set her off, but I immediately comforted her, opening her crate, letting her out, petting her. When she seemed to calm down, I put her in her crate and went back to bed. A few minutes later, the same thing happened, and I responded the same way. I can't remember how many times this happened, and it may have been over a period of days, but at some point I realized, that when I went out to "check on" her, she would go from looking terrified (as I understood the body language she was displaying), to instantly composing herself and looking self-satisfied as soon as she saw me walk into the room. It was a huge "oh crap" moment for me. My dog had trained me yet again and I'd been reinforcing the barking all along--for days even, I think. (Whether a dog can "fake" fear or whether petting reinforces fear is also a topic for another day. My take on it, in a nutshell, is that Jun learned that particular body language and a particular bark got her attention. I think she may have truly been afraid of something the first time, but after that I really think it was a learned behavior reinforced by the attention she got.)

I started using the bark collar again--just like the last time, putting it on anytime she started barking (and here's the real eye-rolling moment--usually with a scratch or a pat as I did it, cause I felt bad about using it again). This went on for months. Probably nearly a year now, and the barking just got worse and worse. She also learned to bark around her collar--very high-pitched barks would not set it off--so even with the collar on, the barking did not stop completely.

Suddenly, one day not too long ago, as I walked towards her with her bark collar I noticed a sparkle in her eye and a slight wag of her tail. It was a total light-bulb moment. I was reinforcing her barking by putting on her bark collar!!!!! The former aversive had actually become a reinforcer for the very behavior I was trying to use it to stop!!!! It was mind boggling to me, but suddenly everything made perfect sense.

I decided to stop using the collar altogether. Jun has not worn it in five days. If we're at home and Jun is barking in her crate, I leave the room or turn away, careful not to make any eye contact or acknowledge her in any way. When she is calm and quiet, I occasionally give eye contact and even a treat now and then or let her out of her crate. The first night, she barked (actually, "screamed" is probably more apt) off and on for at least an hour. The next night a bit less, and then less. Last night, I think she barked once before going to sleep for the night. Car rides, I hesitate to say so as not to jinx it, have been quiet. The barking is still there, but getting less and less every day, in just FIVE DAYS as compared to the nearly a year that I spent using other methods to try to fix the barking.

It's classic positive reinforcement theory at it's most basic: ignore the bad, reinforce the good. But first I had to accept the fact that I don't get to choose what is reinforcing for Jun. She chooses. I adapt.

My cats

2010-03-02T09:14:00.003-06:00

Haha! Kidding. I don't have any. I was going to title the post "My dogs and stuff" but then I thought, ok, really, what else do I write about here? So I thought I'd go for the joke.

Well, Dexter got adopted a couple weekends ago and life is back to normal. I've been very happy with all three dogs lately, except for Lok's "destroying stuff" streak that lasted a week, but seems to have subsided for now. He gets frustrated once in awhile. I don't blame him. I probably would too if I used to be able to see and now couldn't. I've been largely NOT training him lately. Trying to figure out who he is, what he wants in life. He's actually been pretty happy lately. Lots of tail wagging . . . well, lots for Lok. He's not much of a wagger.

Jun has been doing mostly disc work. Set-up moves, still working the RLV, which is coming along VERY nicely. Happy with that. We'll see how it translates to a field. I'm not sure if I'm gonna try it at Pet Expo. I'm not sure if I'm gonna try any vaults at Pet Expo. We shall see. Excited for this nice weather to melt all the snow so we can get out and really play! Last night I taught Jun to close the dish washer by pushing it up with her nose. She caught on really quickly and loved it. I think I'm going to get some plastic dishes for her so I can teach her to "load" the dish washer too. That would be a cute trick and she has all the foundation for it. Oh . . . just had a thought . . . I should probably start with cups and bowls. Plates are probably a little too frisbee-like.

Elo has been a good boy lately. I was just thinking last night about how far he's come since he came to live with me. Playing with all three in the yard used to be frustrating because Elo would spend the entire time alternately stealing the other dogs' toys and barking at EVERYTHING. Well, he no longer steals the other dogs' toys. Instead, he spends his time outside playing fetch or chewing on his OWN toy. He also has gotten SOOOO much better with the barking. If he's involved in a game he generally ignores everything else around him. But now, even when he's tired of playing fetch and is just doing his own thing, I can call him off of almost anything he decides to bark at, even cars driving by the yard--previously an exercise in futility.

I'm not quite sure what happened, and I don't think I can credit my excellent dog training skills for the improvement, cause I didn't really "work on it" at all. There was a point when I decided I wasn't going to tolerate barking anymore and as soon as he went off barking I called him. If he didn't come, I walked him down and then I put him inside in his crate. I only remember doing that a few times though. Maybe that was all it took? Or maybe our relationship has developed to a point where I've become more important than barking at things. When people tell me they're having recall problems with their dog (especially border collies, since I know other breeds aren't as easy), one of the first things I wonder about is what is their relationship with their dog like? Does the dog find being around them to be a good thing? More importantly is the owner seen by the dog as "the source of all good things." I know it's not the only necessary component for a solid recall, but I do think it IS one of the more important ones. Often I hear "practice, practice, practice" as a remedy for a shaky recall. But no matter how much practice you do with a recall, when it counts, your dog is only going to come to you if they have a good reason.

I don't know, but either way, I'm glad he's stopped. Now I don't have to threaten to cut off his other leg with a saw anymore!

Lok wants to play

2010-02-24T09:37:00.002-06:00

Last night, Lok wanted to play with Elo. He walked towards Elo, who ran away and growled. Not being able to see what was going on, Lok interpreted the fast movement as play and kept chasing him. Actually, Elo was chewing on a rawhide and wanted Lok to get away from him and leave him alone. But I could not convince Lok of this. He was thrilled that someone was playing with him from once. So I had to put him in a crate.

When the other dogs play, Lok barks at them. I'm not sure why. Partially, I think, because he wants to play. Partially out of frustration that he doesn't know what's going on around him and can't control it. So I have to put him in a crate. Cause he won't stop barking.

Sad.

A reminder

2010-02-15T11:27:00.002-06:00

Reading PMcC's blog, I saw this in the comments and thought it was stated so perfectly:

"Dogs are not capable of being disobedient because they cannot understand a 'duty to obey.' Likewise, dogs don't understand a 'command' as a 'command.'

Since the day I figured that out, I have not given my dog a single command, and he has never disobeyed me. Instead, he is just more or less reliable for a given 'cue,' and needs more training--and that's my problem, not the dog's."

Even more impressive, I think, because this comes from a person training their dog for field work and that person specifies with pride that he uses no e-collars or force fetch.

When, if ever, corrections are needed and when, if ever, they are appropriate or useful is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. I was recently told that I needed to cause my puppy pain and make him afraid in order to housetrain him, that it should only take once, and that he should never have an accident in the house after that. While I found this advice ridiculous and objectionable on so many levels, I actually considered it. Not that I think it's the best way to housetrain. I would always prefer to train without correction. But maybe it is the fastest and most effective, and if so, why would I not use it? After all, I've never tried it, so how can I know? And the giver of the advice swears it has worked perfectly multiple times over.

Thankfully, I have not tried it out, as I haven't needed to. Puppy has been with me for a little over two weeks and I think his housetraining is going well. We've had a couple frustrating days, but since then I've stepped up my vigilance and the frequency of potty breaks and we've had very few accidents. I've also been keeping him in his crate longer and longer and he's learning to hold it better. Dex is great about pottying as soon as I take him out. In the past two days, the only accident we've had was totally my fault. I took him out to pee, which he did, then I called him back inside. He ignored me and started walking the other way, so I went and grabbed him. (He knows his name and recalls well, and I didn't want him to think he could get away with ignoring me.) I brought him back inside and he immediately pooped on the carpet, which I assume was the reason he walked away from me when I called him. He wasn't finished. How unfair would it have been to punish him for ignoring the recall or to punish him for the accident when all along he was just trying to do the right thing and it was me that screwed up? Since then, he has showed me how well he understands housetraining. I brought all the dogs out for one last potty before I left for work this morning. Dex got caught up playing and forgot to pee right away. As I was calling the dogs in, he stopped on his way and peed, clearly understanding that was supposed to be done outside and making sure it got done before he came in. Good puppy!

Pushing Boundaries

2010-02-11T09:22:00.003-06:00

Nobody's actually pushing boundaries. Well, not in any specific way. I guess my dogs are always kind of pushing boundaries. But it seemed like a catchy title for a follow-up boundary training post.

Tried the free-shaping "broom on the floor" method with Jun again last night. No luck. So I worked on my height barrier idea. I brought her into a bedroom where I could completely block the boundary and set up two yardsticks in an X across the doorway. Not a solid barrier, by any means, but a pretty obvious one. This seemed to work a bit better, but I guess she was kind of pushing the boundary as she had a tendency to want to LEAN on the barrier. I had to make sure my criteria was "not touching the barrier at all" but even so, she got as close as she possibly could without touching. I'm not sure if this was the right thing to do, but when I released her to cross the barrier, I didn't take it down first, I asked her to jump over it. I want her to realize that she is physically capable of crossing the boundary, but choose not to. So, I guess it went okay, but she still wants to get as close as she possibly can to crossing the line, just like when we were working it without a physical barrier, she always had to have her front foot JUST across the line.

Her stays have been so good lately, I'm not sure what her hang-up is here, but she's really just not getting the concept. I always know with Jun that if she's taking longer than a couple sessions to at least start to catch on to something, that I need to find a new way to communicate the idea to her. Once she "gets" it, she always wants to do it right and very rarely tries to half-ass anything.

In Dexter news, on the advice of a friend, I left him in his crate all night last night. I expected to wake up and have some major cleaning to do, but he slept all night, no whining, and no accidents! Since he had been peeing at least twice a night and usually pooping once, I had figured he wasn't capable of holding it that long, but I guess he is.

And in other Jun news, Andrew you will be so proud of me. With Jun's RLV, I didn't even give her the chance to screw it up again. I backed up, started from the very beginning and worked the whole process again. And I will do that every time until I KNOW she'll get it right on the first try. I'm betting we'll have a RLV by pet expo!!

Thinking Outside the Box

2010-02-09T14:30:00.003-06:00

Jun has been challenging me lately. Forcing me to think outside the box. Luckily I'm up to the challenge.

First of all, with her vaulting. I've been trying to get a reverse chest vault and a reverse leg vault for ages, but she will never bring her back feet up and use them to push off of me. So, I started trying to train it with treats, just like I've trained all of her other vaults initially. She got to the point where she would do her RCV and RLV properly for treats, so I got out a disc, and it immediately fell apart again. Hmmm . . . what to do? Well, after some testing, I realized that it's not just asking her to vault for the disc that causes her to lose her mind and lose all track of her feet. It's just having the disc out, anywhere near her. So we went back to vaulting for treats again. Once that was solid, I got out a disc, put it on a table across the room, and asked her to vault for a treat. Her vault totally fell apart, so we worked on it until she calmed down and started thinking again and doing it properly. Then we moved to me holding the disc in my opposite hand, behind my back, still vaulting for a treat. Same issues, and worked through them again. Finally last night, we moved to vaulting for the disc, and she DID IT!!! Her very first real reverse leg vault WITH a disc, pushing off with her back feet like she is supposed to! I was pyched!

Also, I've been working on boundary training with all three dogs, thanks to some inspiration and instruction from Laura. Since I've used and abused "wait" and "stay," I finally came up with the command "fence," since essentially I wanted it to be like there was an invisible fence along the boundary. Elo is doing great! It's so cool to see how well he really understands the concept. If his feet are right at the edge of the boundary and he wants to lay down, instead of sliding his front feet forwards, like he usually does, he will scoot his butt back so his feet don't cross the border. Too cool! Lok is doing well too. Jun on the other hand, does not get it AT ALL! And she is usually my quickest study, so somehow I'm not communicating to her very well what I want. I tried laying a broomstick on the floor along the boundary line, but it didn't help at all. So now what I'm trying is just free shaping the idea of being on the opposite side of a line from me with a broomstick in the middle of the living room. She might have started to catch on a little bit . . . I'm not really sure. If that doesn't work, I think my next step is to go to a higher boundary--something that she actually has to put some effort into stepping over--and gradually lower it. Unless any of you have any other ideas for me.

Finally, I still have Dex. Housetraining is going well. Regular training is going okay. I am amazed at these people on the border collie forums who supposedly have their puppies trained in ALL the basic obedience commands by ten weeks old. Seriously? Dex has the attention span of a gnat. He "knows" sit (I hesistate to use the word "knows" since he only knows it when he wants something from me, and even then, it's iffy. He is getting better at offering eye contact. He is getting better at responding to his name, but if he's distracted--no way! We are working on "lie down." He wouldn't offer it to me. He just kept sitting and starting at me, since that was what I had rewarded in the past. So I'm luring it, even though I hate to. One thing he has gotten really good it is the dinnertime routine. He is expected to sit and wait, with his food bowl in front of him, giving me eye contact, until I release him to eat. We have just recently gotten the eye contact part, but the first day I added that as a criteria, it was so funny . . . he sat and stared HARD at his food for several minutes, clearly exercising every bit of puppy willpower he had not to start eating! Funny! Now he quickly gives me eye contact and gets released to eat.

Puppy!!

2010-02-01T09:37:00.004-06:00

This little guy has been living with me since Thursday. He is a 10 week old border collie mix. Possibly mixed with springer, based on the look of the other pups in the litter. He is available for adoption through Border Collie Rescue of Minnesota. His litter name is Freeze, but I accidentally called him Dexter once, I think because he reminds me of Food Lady's pup, (not sure why, he doesn't really look anything like FL's Dex) and it kinda stuck.

He is incredibly calm and laid back. Hasn't been much trouble at all. He's technically my first puppy, so I'm learning all about housetraining. Took awhile to get into the swing of things, but I think I'm getting it down pretty well. The other dogs love him and are great with him. He's ridiculously cute, especially the way he thinks he needs to take a giant leap off the deck, even though the snow comes up level with it and he could walk off. Giant puppy leap, every time. When he's not sleeping or sitting and staring at me (border collie much?) he likes to zoom around the house. He loves food and treats and is already learning to sit and wait for his food bowl to be put down.

Training in Real Life

2010-01-20T10:50:00.002-06:00

It is always SO much fun to see your training pay off in real life! Last night, about 1:00am I was still up, busy working on some stuff, ignoring the dogs. Elo had to go out and I was ignoring him. Finally I finished what I was doing and went to let the dogs out one last time before bed. We got the entry way and I saw a puddle where Elo had peed. Totally my fault, but I didn't want any of the dogs to step in it and track it all over as I was cleaning it up.

We had previously worked a couple times on an "out of the kitchen" command, basically boundary work, teaching the dogs to stay in the living room and not cross the threshhold to the kitchen, which borders the entry way. Rather than fend the dogs off while I cleaned up, I decided to give the command a try, and it was a success!! The dogs stayed in the living room (with periodic treats), I cleaned up, nobody tried to cross the threshhold, and it was a happy night!

Ah, little victories!

Nose v. Paw Target - Part Three

2010-01-19T12:36:00.002-06:00

Last time, when I left off, I had observed that, when switching back and forth between nose and paw touches in a single session, Elo generally offered the behavior that was previously being rewarded, regardless of the command given. I had noticed though, that he seemed to always get the very first one right, and had decided to move to single-rep sessions. Well, my initial observations seemed to be a fluke. When we moved to single-rep sessions, Elo generally remembered what command I had asked for the last time we worked the target and just gave me the same one. At this point, I was ready to call it quits, for a couple reasons.

First, I was getting bored with the whole thing. Second, I've noticed that Elo does not seem to be a very verbally-inclined dog in general. He is HIGHLY sensitive to context, changes in my body position, tone of voice, position the room, etc. Numerous factors seem to affect his ability to respond to verbal commands in general, such that even after almost four months with me, he still sometimes has a hard time with "sit" and "lie down," and he often mixes up other commands that result in similar behavior (for example, rolling over v. putting his chin down on the floor). By contrast, the border collies (well, the hearing border collie anyway, though the deaf one does the same with hand signals) easily pick up verbal commands and associate them with behaviors, most of the time filtering out other contextual information, and are much better at generalizing of the signal and context are not exactly the same each time. How much more difficult, then must the nose/paw distinction be for Elo, when the target is not always in exactly the same place relative to my body or his body. When sometimes I ask for a target behavior when he is sitting, sometimes when he lying down, and sometimes when he is standing. When he sometimes looking and me and sometimes at the target when I give the command. When my tone varies. And on top of all of that, the occasional mis-timed or erroneous click when I think he's going for it with his paw, but ends up using his nose instead. Poor confused little dog!

I decided to keep working it, at least now and then. Laura posted some great tips on teaching distinguishing behaviors that I'm going to try to take into account. I've gone back to multi-command sessions, switching back and forth. Could have been luck, but last night I asked for step/touch/step touch and Elo scored 100%. In the mean time, I've learned something really important about Elo's method of processing information and his learning style that will hopefully help me improve his training and the training of future dogs.

Manners and Object Discrimination

2010-01-12T08:45:00.002-06:00

In the spirit of teaching manners, I've been working with all three dogs on taking treats GENTLY rather than alligatoring my fingers off. They all KNOW how to do this. But when we're working on something other than taking treats nicely, the behavior goes away, and I end up with sore fingers. It's my fault, cause I don't demand it, cause I really don't care that much. The giving the treat part is boring, I want it to be quick and on to the next training thing. That is, until somebody chomps my fingers particularly hard, or until Elo manages to wedge one of his needle-sharp canines under a fingernail, which he does often. So my criteria has changed (for now, we'll see how long this lasts) and the dogs are now required to take treats gently, every time.

In FUN training news, I've started some object discrimination work with Jun. Having never done this before, I'm making it up as I go along, as usual. Two things I would like her to be able to pick out by name, for starters, are my keys and her leash. I started by putting two objects on the ground (keys and another random object) and clicked for a nose touch on the keys. Then I switched to keys and a different random object, then I added more random objects, varied the location of the keys, put other objects on top of keys, put all the objects in a pile, spread the objects out, etc. Right now, she is pretty reliable at picking the keys out of any set of objects, and retreiving them. I would like to be able to send her on a hunt for the keys, thus setting her up to be able to find my keys when they are lost, but that's a way's off. I started the process for the leash last night. The hard part, I think, will be having the leash AND the keys out together and having her reliably retrieve the correct object. I'm hoping it will be a little easier than the nose/paw touch distinctions which I am still working on with Elo.

Picture This . . .

2010-01-06T10:37:00.004-06:00

. . . since it was too dark to take an actual picture in my house and, really, to get the full picture it would have to be more of a video. But then, it would be an awfully boring video . . .

Three dogs, Mr. I Stress Out on Stays, Ms. Perpetual Motion, and The New Guy. Ten minute down-stay, all three lined up in a row. Rewards for each dog every 30 seconds to a minute. Not a single bicker over treats. Not A SINGLE Break!!!!!! Not even a close call!!!! How did that happen? I have no idea, since I really don't think any of them have ever done a ten minute stay in their lives. But I was very happy with them. Good Dogs!!

Once again, Laura has inspired me! I've really been lacking on the motivation/inspiration lately, especially when it comes to Lok (whose combintation of vision loss and personality have been making it extremely difficult to teach him anything new) so this is good.

One thing I have largely failed at as a dog trainer is teaching my dogs practical skills and manners. Sure, they know tons of tricks. Sure, they behave at home and can show off at obedience class. Yet, not a single one of them can walk nicely on a leash and Lok is the only one I would even remotely trust to down-stay in public, and not for very long. (All the dogs recall perfectly (well, probably not Elo in public, yet, though he does pretty well) but, let's be real, they're border collies, big deal.) So we've been working on these things, with Jun in particular. Lok stresses in public and tends to tune me out, then I get frustrated and he tunes me out even more. We need to work on that first. But I really want to work more with the dogs on manners and practical skills. I won't say it's a "goal" exactly, because it's not concrete and I'm not sure exactly where I want to go with it. I want Jun to walk nicely on a gentle leader. I want to try a front-clip harness with Lok and see if I can get him to walk nicely on that. The tuning out problem is a big part of why I've never been able to teach LLW to Lok. I'd like both of them to be able to sit/down and stay in public wherever we are, and have that solid enough that I can trust them completely for a minute or two, at first.

And one other totally unrelated, random thing . . . forever I've wanted to teach a dog to "put their toys away" or put things into a box or other container. It's completely unreasonable for me to ask Lok to do it (though this amazing video tells me I may just have an attitude problem--p.s., the lady in this vid is hilarious! obnoxious, but hilarious!), but the other night I finally taught Jun! We were getting nowhere with teaching her to blow bubbles in a bowl of water, but is great at retreiving and she was solid at putting her head in the bowl. It took no time at all for her to combine the two skills and have the idea down of retreiving an object and putting into a container!! Sweet!! My little genius!

Nose v. Paw Target - Part Two

2010-01-05T13:42:00.002-06:00

I'm still working with Elo on learning to discriminate between a command for targeting an object with his nose (touch) and targeting an object with his foot (step). When I last posted, I was working one command at a time, asking for several repetitions of that behavior, taking a break to work something else, then working several repetitions of the other command. Each time I switched from one command to the other, Elo would start offering the behavior we had worked on previously, before figuring out I wanted the other one. So, for example, if we had started working on "step," when we switched to working on "touch," he would offer "step" the first couple times.

I've since gone on to asking for both behaviors within one session. I'll ask for a few paw touches, then a few nose touches. Occasionally E gets it right, but usually when I switch commands, E still offers the previous behavior before realizing we've switched. I have found though, that he usually gets the very first command of the session right! So for the past couple days, I've been working only on single-rep touches and steps. I start out my training session, put Elo in a sit, put the target down a couple feet away from him, get his attention, ask him for either a step or touch. If he gets it right, that's it, we are done with targeting for the day! If not, "oops" (NRM), no reward, back in a sit, try again. As soon as he gets it right, we're done. So far, I think I'm getting better results this way, but it's only been a couple days, so we'll see.

What did we accomplish in 2009?

2009-12-31T13:12:00.002-06:00

What a great year 2009 has been! In December 2008, I found out that Lok was going blind from PRA. In 2009, we trained in Rally and Obedience and Lok got his RL1 title. Then, due to stress, his obedience fell apart and we gave it a break and worked on tricks for awhile. We took up skijoring and got out on skis once at the beginning of the year, and have been out a couple times so far this winter. I'm really hoping this can become something fun and freeing for him to do even when his sight is completely gone. During the winter, we worked on disc in the basement and put together a nice little freestyle routine for a blind dog. Lok competed all summer and even took fourth place (and was very close to third) at a local competition with a pretty competetive field! Lok's eyes got worse and worse all summer, but even so, he ran in a UFO major in Colorado in August, making probably 3/30 catches in the whole routine. He had a blast though, and I was proud of him! He also ran in the Ashley Whippet Invitational World Championships in Naperville in September. Another poor round, but he had a blast again and even got a newspaper article written about him! http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6623893322121422964

Jun officially joined the family in March! Jun, who already excelled in toss and catch, came a very long way in her freestyle disc training. At the beginning of the year, she would not play with multiple discs. After an entire spring and summer of work on this issue, Jun can now do an entire two-minute freestyle round without sticking on a single disc! This has enabled us to start building up a repetoire of freestyle moves so we can do a lot better in competitions next year. Jun learned a crazy amount of tricks, took obedience classes and got two legs of her RL1. Jun also started skiing!

Elo came to live with us in September. He has been doing amazing, learning obedience and tricks, and I'm starting to think he may actually have some drive after all. He will now voluntarily play fetch the whole time we're outside (or until his feet get cold), will tug and chase rollers with the disc, and has officialy made two catches out of the air!

I'm so proud of what my dogs have accomplished in 2009 and can't wait to see what 2010 holds for us!

Paw v. Nose Targeting

2009-12-22T11:38:00.002-06:00

Laura recently posted about teaching dogs to distinguish between a nose and a paw target. Lok know both "touch" (nose target) and "step" (paw target), but I'm not sure how well he can distinguish between the two, as I've never really worked on both in one session or with the same target object. Jun knows the two, but doesn't know them as well and I know she can't distinguish between them. Elo, however, was a blank slate, not knowing either command at the time I read Laura's post, so I decided it would be a fun thing to experiment with. In our first session, working with a round plastic lid as a target, I started with a paw target. Elo picked this up right away and we ended up putting it on cue in the first session. In session two, we continued to practice the "step" cue. In session three, we worked on a nose target. It took awhile for E to stop offering the paw target, or the paw and nose together, but we got as far as putting that on cue in one session as well. In the fourth session we worked on both, but separated them by short periods of working on other commands. That's as far as we've gotten right now. So far so good! I'll update after the next few sessions.

In other news, Jun skied last weekend!!!! After a brief period of craziness before we started down the trail, tangling herself up nicely, she calmed down and sat next to me, looking down the trail. At that point I gave her the "go" signal and she did great!! We had to reinforce "no stopping and sniffing every tree" a few times, but once she figured out the object of the game she was a rockstar! There were a few other skiers out on the trails and we pulled over to the side and stopped while they passed. Passing was not something I wanted to work on with a deaf dog in our first attempt. Lok also did wonderful, you would never know he can't see the trail with how confidently and joyfully he runs full speed ahead. Skiing is a great outlet for him, I think!

Jun's New Tricks

2009-12-16T16:30:00.002-06:00

Jun has been an absolute MAD WOMAN lately!! She is a learning machine, soaking up as much as I can teach her almost faster than I can come up with things to teach her. Lately she's learned to cross her front paws, to stand with all four paws on a small overturned bowl. She learned a silent bark in about 2 minutes, on cue and everything. Her "bow" has finally really clicked--so cute, she tucks one paw under and leans to the side (now I need a cue for that). We've been doing tons of retreiving and she's learning to put objects in my hand. She will pick up things I drop and hand them to me without even being asked. Just this morning I dropped the cap for the orange juice bottle (accidentally, not as a training exercise) and Jun got it and gave it to me! She's learning to shut doors. She's learning all sorts of jumping and vaulting tricks. We've been trying to work on leash walking and public behavior a bit, and the other night she did a 10 second out of sight down-stay in the dog food aisle at Chuck and Don's as well as numerous other long sit and down stays, even with distractions like employees walking by! The girl's a genius and so much fun to train! This is the problem with having a dog like Jun and a dog like Lok. Some nights, I just want to skip training Lok (see post below) and spend more time with Jun. I feel bad for my boy. I need to find some things that work for him. He seems to enjoy his obedience lately, maybe we will get back into that.

Lok Frustration

2009-12-16T16:07:00.003-06:00

Training Lok has been a challenge lately. Thankfully, we haven't been dealing with shutting-down issues on his part. Lok has been unusually happy and cooperative during training sessions lately, tail wagging and such. But he's also been kind of dense. We were working on "limp" for awhile and once again got stuck. I've been working on a "hold" a TON lately and can't seem to get past 10 seconds without Lok spitting out the object. I've also discovered that "rear end awareness" does not translate to "rear foot awareness." That's right, my dog know where his butt is, but doesn't realize there are feet underneath it. I've been trying to get him to stand on a box, but all I've been able to get is a sit on the box. And if the object is too small to sit on, I can't get his back feet on it at all. I'm at a loss for what to work on with him, as it seems one of these issues is holding up every trick I want to teach him. I can't teach him to roll up in a blanket if he won't hold onto it. I can't teach him a multitude of other retreive tricks if he won't hold an object. And his retreive from the fridge trick is decidedly less impressive when he spits the object out in disgust before I have a chance to take it from him.

As his sight diminishes, I'm also having issues with him being overly distracted by the possibility that there might be treats on the floor. He can't see a treat on the floor, but he can hear it if I drop one and he will spend a good bit of time looking for it, even I pick it up or tell him to leave it. I also don't want him sniffing about for treats in my hand. It seems to be a very consuming distraction for him. So I no longer give him treats on the floor. All treats always come from my hand, and I'm hoping he'll figure that out at some point. Additionally, I'm working on teaching him that when he hears a click, the treats will come to his mouth and he doesn't have to sniff around for them.

As a side note, it is unfair of me to ask a blind dog for eye contact? Eye contact is one of my most important default/foundation behaviors. Since Lok can't really make eye contact, I'm trying to reward for other signs of being attentive to me, but sometimes I can't quite tell if he understands what he's being rewarded for.

The only thing that's been going well is Lok's "line out" training that I mentioned I was dragging my feet on a few posts back. I'm using a duct tape target on the wall. I plan to start fading the target soon. Tonight in fact (I WILL do it tonight, I WILL do it tonight . . . ). We had our first ski of the season last weekend and it went well. Lok needs to work on staying on the trail. In his defense, the trail was not all that clear, so I let it slide. Lok also needs to work on listening for direction while he's running. But he did a good job running and staying more or less in front of me. He even started to pull a bit more than last season and really helped me out up the hills. He used to stop when he felt much pressure on the harness. This time it clicked for him that he was supposed to pull hard and he seemed to love it! I need to work on not letting him roll in the snow in harness when we stop. Until his line out is solid, I should really establish a sit at heel as his stopping behavior. Must remember to bring treats. He's just so CUTE though!!

Elo Caught a Disc!!

2009-12-16T16:01:00.002-06:00

Ok, ok, so I basically just spun it right in front of his face, but still . . . I'm counting it!!

I don't know why I didn't think of this before. Last night it was really cold so the dogs and I didn't play outside very long. They were still full of energy, so I got out a tug rope to do some tugging with them one by one. Elo was in a crate and was freaking out while I tugged with Lok, and when I let Elo out to put Lok in the crate, he attacked the tug rope! I've never seen him that interested in a game before. (On a side note, what a good boy, he dropped the rope immediately every time I gave him a drop cue. I didn't realize he knew this command so well!) Then I decided, why not try a frisbee again. I got out a hard plastic disc and Elo was not interested at all. But then I thought, maybe he will play with a soft disc?! So I grabbed a softer plastic disc and he was all over it!!! Tugging, chasing rollers, catching tiny little tosses. Oh yeah, and his favorite, laying on his back with his feet in the air while chomping the disc. And in my excitement of course I played WAY to long, but at least I had the presence of mind to quit before he did. So maybe there is hope for Elo to be a disc dog yet. If only he could get the eye-mouth coordination down!

Jackpots

2009-12-02T10:52:00.003-06:00

I used to be skeptical about the value of jackpots (an extra large or extra high value surprise reward) in positive dog training, mainly because I didn't think that the dog would really know the difference between a couple pieces of kibble and a handful of kibble, or maybe that the dog would understand the difference in the value of the rewards, but wouldn't understand that it got a bigger reward for a reason. But they DO!! However, over the past few months I have come to be a believer in the value of jackpots for several different reasons.

Jackpots can help build a REALLY strong behavior. If a dog thinks it's possible that they will get an extra special reward for a particular behavior, they will be more enthusiastic about doing that behavior. When I started working with Lok on going to a mat, I wanted this to be a really strong behavior that he LOVED doing. I free shaped the initial behavior and the first time he got the completed behavior (walking to a mat and laying down on it) I jackpotted him. Then I jackpotted him frequently for the behavior after that. A down on a mat became a behavior that Lok was very enthusiastic about doing, and Lok being enthusiastic about anything in training is a pretty huge deal.

Jackpots can help overcome a dog's fear of or aversion to a behavior. Very difficult behaviors that a dog is hesistant to do can be accomplished through jackpots. Basically, you are making the value of the reward outweigh the negative associations with the behavior. Jackpots have helped me immensely in teaching Jun a back stall and a dog catch. I jackpot for both of these behaviors nearly every time. Not only did it help in overcoming Jun's fear of balancing on my back and her dislike of being caught, but it also produced a very strong behavior that she actually LOVES to do now.

In the past couple days I've discovered the coolest use yet for jackpots in free shaping. I wanted to shape Jun to stand on a small, overturned food bowl. The bottom is rubber, so she doesn't slip, but she has to balance with all four feet within a 5 inch diameter circle. Two front feet on the bowl was pretty easy, but three feet and four feet was more difficult.

Once she was offering me two feet on the bowl consistently, I stopped clicking her for that and waited for her to offer me the next step, which I had defined as three feet on the bowl. I didn't get it. I got her back feet closer to the bowl (c/t), I got two feet on the bowl with one back foot raised (c/t) but I couldn't get that consistently, and I got a bunch of other stuff I didn't want. And pretty soon she got totally confused and just started being silly and licking my face and even stopped offering the behavior of two feet on the bowl, since that wasn't getting clicked anymore.

So I took a step back, quickly re-shaped two feet on the bowl. Thinking about what to do next, not clicking every time, but clicking enough to keep the behavior going as well as clicking for back foot movement. But I still wasn't getting what I wanted. I was rewarding her for effort and for thinking, so I was getting continual variation, but still no consistency. Then suddenly she brushed the bowl with a back foot. CLICK/JACKPOT!!! Handful of kibble thrown on the ground, big party! THAT really got her attention and made her think about what she did that earned that huge reward. It wasn't long before she was consistently offering three feet on the bowl. Four was hard again, but I did the same thing. Continued to click and reward for three, but not clicking every time, so she was thinking and trying things, clicking and treating for getting close. Then once, accidentally, as a product of losing her balance, the other back foot came off the ground and moved toward the bowl. CLICK/JACKPOT again!!! And within a couple minutes I had all four feet on the bowl.

I don't think I would have gotten the same results had I just clicked and given a normal treat for the two instances where she accidentally gave me just what I wanted. Why? Jun understands shaping, she understands that when I stop clicking I want something else, but (a) despite valiant effort she might not guess correctly and then she doesn't get clicked at all, gets frustrated, and things fall apart, or (b) she is guessing correctly but not noticing it or there is enough natural variation in the behavior she's offering that she doesn't understand exactly what is being clicked and so I continue to get imprecise attempts that are not exactly what I'm looking for. The click and treat says she's doing it right, but I think she really understands the jackpot as "YES!! That was perfect and exactly what I wanted." Kinda cool!

I am thankful for my dogs

2009-11-25T15:54:00.002-06:00

I am thankful for the laughter they bring me daily, the purpose they bring to my life, the endless lessons they teach me, the fun and friends they have brought me, and the love they give me.

I am thankful for my dogs.

Jun's New "Trick"

2009-11-03T12:56:00.002-06:00

Jun, my little baby girl, joy of my life . . . why, oh WHY do you insist on standing on my DVD player? This behavior has become more and more frequent and I must inform you that it is UNACCEPTABLE.

What's that, you ask? How else are you supposed to get my attention? Well you could try any one of your other, potentially less destructive methods. Let's list them. Stepping on my toes. Jumping on me. Scratching me. Biting me. Chasing your tail. Running in circles. Barking in your crate. Jumping on the couch. Barking outside. Stealing things. Chewing things. Chewing on Lok. Fighting with Elo. Pacing back and forth between me and the door until I let you out 20 times a night. Peeing on the floor. Peeing in your crate. All of these and more have proven effective. Please, leave my electronics alone.

What We're Working On

2009-10-30T10:26:00.002-05:00

Haven't done a "what we're working on post" in awhile. Probably because it is way too disorganized--it's terrible. This will be a long one . . .

We are working on ZERO obedience and my dogs no longer have any obedience or manners whatsoever. Except recalls. I require a recall. But the lack of manners is getting out of hand, so I'm making more of an effort to work on that. Except with Elo. He will never have any manners, since every time he does something naughty I just laugh. He cracks me up! Last night, I just watched and laughed as he pulled his crate cover into his crate and proceeded to shred it! The only thing he gets yelled at for is when he tries to control the action around him, growling at Jun cause he doesn't like how she's chewing her rawhide. Barking at Lok and Jun if they are playing. That's not cool.

But anyway, we'll start with the easiest first:

Elo:
He finally has a "lie down" on cue!! We're working on proofing. With Elo, I'm trying something I really wish I would have done with the other dogs, that is, eliminating a stay cue and just teaching duration until released on a down cue. I've recently been exposed to some interesting theory about oppositional behaviors, so I'm doing some experimenting with teaching a release. I've never really "taught" a release before, my dogs have just kind of picked up on it on their own. However, I've realized that my dogs don't really understand a "stay" until they understand a "release" so I've been mulling over the benefits and drawbacks of actually teaching a release as a command. Not sure what I think about that yet. We're also working on proofing a down, that is, teaching "down means lay down wherever you are when I give the cue." That's going well.

Elo is also working on a back stall. He jumps up on cue "up-up" and can balance for a few seconds! We started doing some mat work last night--he picked up on that VERY quickly and it's actually helping him understand a down-stay. Don't know why I didn't start working on it sooner.

Elo knows his name, recalls VERY well (in the house and yard at least), gives up objects in his mouth willingly, and other than that, he is just a little punk. He's my pet dog. He's good at that.

Lok:
I'm kinda just dabbling with Lok right now. We had been going back to working on a limp for awhile, but ran into some road blocks, so giving that a break. He's got his fetch from the fridge down! Working on proofing a "hold." I should have done a better job with this to begin with--he will hold objects, but he doesn't seem to like to, and he will mouth them. Working on a steady hold for duration. Also working on putting objects INTO my hand on a retreive with a nose target to my hand. I should be working on his "line out." I have the foundation behavior, I just have some kind of mental aversion to training that command. I'm not sure why. Probably because I've had such a hard time with it for a year. I also haven't work ski training at all. It's been raining ALL. MONTH. LONG. so we haven't had much time to go work on the trails. Hmm, what else? That's about it. Doing some proofing on other things. One thing I've noticed lately with Lok, with all the free shaping we've been doing, his frustration tolerance level has gone WAY up!! He will work with me for far longer than before and keep trying, keep offering behavior, whereas before he was more inclined to shut down and give up after a very short time. So, that's been pretty cool!

Jun:
I've been working on way too much with Jun! We've recently conquered a back stall and a dog catch! We've been working a lot of freestyle and are beginning to get some of the foundational elements that will really benefit us in freestyle next year. We're working on vaults and got our very first back vault the other day! Her flips are starting to look great and just last night she did her very first flip with a throw instead of a take! Her understanding of switching targets is increasing! Our learning in this area has just been exponential lately, which is always really fun!

Jun has no obedience left at all right now, which I guess is bound to happen to when you spend so much time encouraging your dog to jump onto your back!! We free shaped a new trick: crossing her paws, and are working on putting that on cue. I've had the hardest time putting free shaped tricks on cue with her. If she knows we're working on that trick, she will just continually offer it. The usual method of ignoring the behavior if offered spontaneously doesn't seem to work well with her (but it could just be me not knowing what I'm doing). What I've been doing to combat the issue is first, asking for a single instance of the behavior randomly, then going on to other tricks before she has a chance to get into the cycle of repeatedly offering the behavior. And second, have sessions of working on the behavior where I actually mark and reward her for NOT offering the behavior, i.e., for just standing still and giving me eye contact, interspersed with the cued behavior here and there. We're also working on mat work. I'd like to be able to work with each dog individually while the other dogs chill on mats. We started working on a "service dog retreive" the other night too, and I got her picking up objects and holding them near my hand until I took them. That was pretty cool.

So, I guess that's about it. Good times!

Lightbulb moment

2009-10-05T08:49:00.002-05:00

I've been trying to teach Lok a "line out" (walk to the end of the skijor line, pull it tight, and stand-stay) for ages. I've tried shaping, I've tried luring. Nothing has worked. So finally I decided to try targeting. I put a square of duct tape on the wall and planned to teach Lok to walk to the target and put his nose on it. So, everything was going fine, except that due to other training we've done, Lok kept wanting to target the wall with a paw before targeting it with his nose. I worked on eliminating the paw touch for like three days. I tried clicking only when he touched it with his nose, but he would still occasionally use a paw. And sometimes, he used a paw and then a couple seconds later he used his nose--so do I click that or don't I? In any case, it wasn't working. My timing was off, it was too hard to isolate the behavior I wanted.

Then, it dawned on me! I stopped worrying about the nose touch and started clicking him just for standing in front of the wall with all four feet on the ground. After just a few clicks for that, he got it! And it was one of those "OH! You want me to keep my feet on the ground! Why didn't you just say that in the first place?" moments that are so fun. Then we added the nose touch back in and it's been perfect ever since! I love lightbulb moments!

My Disabled Dog

2009-10-02T15:13:00.002-05:00

Though Lok is blind, Jun is deaf and Elo is missing a leg, Lok is the only one of the three I would consider "disabled." And despite the oft-repeated claims on the blind dog sites that a dog's sense of sight is third most important after smell and hearing, Jun has a far easier time making her way through the world and I highly doubt that a pet dog's sense of smell plays an essential role in his or her day to day life (I guess I can't say for sure, since I've never known a dog without a sense of smell). Maybe in the wild a dog without smell or hearing would be at more of a disadvantage, but in the visual world we human's have created, Lok's lack of sight, even though incomplete, affects him profoundly on a daily basis.

Of the three dogs, Lok takes the most patience to deal with. In training obedience, he now has a hard time positioning himself relative to me, it is difficult for him to find heel and front. I need to remember that even though he could easily do these things just a few months ago, it's not his fault that he has a hard time now. Lok has trouble coming in the house, getting into the car, walking in unfamiliar places. He slows me down, and it's frustrating. And sometimes hard to remember that it's not his fault. I'm sure I'm not the only who gets frustrated--it can't be pleasant to run into walls, fences and other stationary objects on a regular basis.

Sometimes I have to give special consideration to the things I do with Lok. I regularly feel my dogs' ribs at meal times, to make sure they are maintaining a healthy weight, and today he jumped when he felt my hands on him--he didn't see me coming. I'll have to remember to talk to him before I touch him. If things are out of place and in the path he knows, I have to remember he can't see them and move them so he doesn't run into them. Once I accidentally hit him in the butt when I was closing a door and he was afraid to go into that room for the next week!

Lok can't play frisbee, flyball or agility, but the things he CAN do are pretty incredible. At the dog park, he can run through a forest of trees and not hit a single one. How he does that, I really have no idea! Lok can get to the river from any other place in the dog park. I know this because I've lost him more than once and he's been at the river soliciting people to throw things for him each time. Lok can chase rollers by sound and catch them clean. Lok can chase a ball by sound--he hears where it lands and runs right to it every single time. Lok can target a square of duct tape on the wall by smell. Lok never runs into anything in the yard and flies up onto the deck with no hesistation. Lok never runs into anything in the house, unless I move something. Lok loves to learn and can do tons of tricks. And by the looks of things, Lok will still be able to ski with me this winter--he has no problem following a trail in the woods!

Anyway, I don't know what the point of all of this is. Except that people sometimes seem to think I have three disabled dogs, and I disagree. I have one disabled dog. The others are just fine. For that matter, Lok is just fine, but he is the only one really impacted by his "disability."

Oh, and P.S., despite the fact that Elo is "mine" in this post, he is still only mine temporarily.