I am thankful for my dogs

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"

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

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

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

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.

A good training day!

I love having good training days; the days when everything just comes together exactly the way you want it to! It's nice to keep them tucked away to think about on the days when nothing is going right.

Last night, I played disc with Elo. At the beginning of the week, Elo would chase a roller, then run around the yard self-rewarding and lay down and chew on the disc. He had no retreive, little tug drive. Last night, Elo was chasing rollers, bringing them back voluntarily and dropping them for a tug on the next disc! And when I let him win, he would drop that disc to tug the other! He's making progress!! His eye-mouth coordination is not great yet though (he can't even catch a ball) and his tug is still pretty weak, but I'm encouraged! In other disc news, I played with Jun and she jammed, and I threw my first backhand over 45 yards!! That is huge progress, considering at the beginning of the year I struggled to throw 30 yards!

Also, last night, Elo did his first back stall, Jun is to the point with her back stall where she will jump right up without a lure and she is getting better at balancing on her feet instead of just laying on my back. And Lok was in one of the most relaxed and happy training moods he's ever been in, having fun with it. That is really my main goal with Lok, that he has fun with training, because of how easily he shuts down with just the slightest pressure.

And on another note, thanks to Andrew, exits from the house have been peaceful lately, even for Lok. Man, all the work I put into it a couple months back and the solution turns out to be simple. First, I realized I was not dealing with the behavior from the very beginning. I was addressing relaxation at the door without requiring Lok to walk to the door nicely. So now, if he bolts, I give a NRM and walk the other way. It usually only takes once. The second piece was changing my expectations. I realized that by expecting Lok to wait at the door until given a release, I was the one increasing the value of the threshhold, if that makes any sense. It was like a flyball situation, where energy is ramped up so that the dog explodes from the start line. That was what I was doing with the doorway. So now, the dogs don't have to wait until released. They just have to walk nicely out the door. And the only time I ask them to stay is if they actually don't get to come and I expect them to stay inside. My evenings are so much more peaceful without this battle!

P.S. Is there a limit on the number of exclamation points you can put in a single post?

Elo

Meet Elo. The newest (temporary) member of the misfit gang and canine love of my life. He is an 11 months old cattle dog/shepherd mix. And he only has 3 legs. Not that that slows him down in the least!

Elo is a little punk, and a pain in the ass, which only makes me love him all the more. He whines and barks in his crate, keeping me up half the night. He picks fights with Jun which have resulted in me getting bit three times while breaking it up. He locked Jun and Lok in the car, buying himself half an hour of my undivided attention and squeeze cheeze rewards while we waited for AAA to come rescue us. Yet he is super smart, catches onto things really fast, already has a pretty good recall in low-distraction situations, snaps to attention when I say his name, has learned a bit of patience and self-control. Not only that, he is super cuddly, small and portable, loves to be held and loves to ride shotgun in the car. And he has black eyeliner. <> So far he is not all that into frisbee, but we're working on it and he's getting better.

Did I mention he's adorable?