Lok Can Learn!

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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!