cuttin’ bait

After I wrote the title to this post I thought the word cuttin’ looked a bit funny, so I did what I do so many times a day when I am at my computer, I googled cuttin bait, not cutting bait. I got to read about a cool guy named Rodney who was a fisherman that died, and for some reason google led me to him. I may donate to his charity even though I haven’t a clue who he is.  He seemed like a really great guy, and he fished and lots of people loved him. The charity is Take A Kid Fishing Foundation and since I have so many great memories of fishing with my Dad, maybe that is what I am supposed to do today. Sometimes I hate the internet, today I like it, and I always love google.

I really just wanted to write about the time it takes to cut up training cookies for Scoop. I never cut up more than I need for a short session. I like to cut some treats from leftover meat, or  some chicken I cooked just for him , or I chop my little meatball bites in thirds. I use Deli Fresh Pet bites really often when I train. They are a healthy alternative to doggie junk food and if I don’t feed anything other than training treats all day, I know that my dog is getting a very healthy diet. http://www.delifreshpet.com/products/bites.htm

I like to train for a few minutes, maybe longer, then take a break, think about what we did, ask myself Bob Bailey’s famous post training question, Am I better off now than when I started? while I am cuttin’ bait. Then I go back to train again and hopefully the thought process was as productive as the treat cutting. Today I thought the answer was yes, so I proceeded to train some more. Somtimes I don’t feel like cuttin bait at all, and we just train with toys. After the treat session I played with Scoop till my back hurt tugging with him. Three steps heelwork, release to tug, 10 steps then tug, then down the hallway, with a left about turn at each doorway, and more tugging after we made it through to the living room in perfect heel position with eyes on me. Whew!

Long live resolutions! I did eveything today that I wanted to with Scoop during training. We had a really nice groundwork session running circles and straight lines and he was right there with me till he wasn’t:) He went a bit wide on the right side, (I am a left side obedience girl and I know I favor the left) so I did little side passes that I learned when I used to ride dressage with my horses. He tightened right up when I reminded him where he was supposd to be by marking him almost crashing into my right leg with his enthusiasm.

Over the top

Scoop got a bit o.t.t. when we were doing groundwork today. The mouth was open,  (his not mine) and I know if I hadn’t shoved something in it (toy) when he was screaming  that the moment would have deteriorated as I cried uncle don’t you dare bite me in your enthusiasm to do this heelwork I am the boss of you mister came out of my mouth, then the brain (mine not his) took over and I switched to treats and calmed down myself a bit while playing and as  the play level dropped down a notch we were back on track to having fun but not so much fun that Scoop ate my leg.

This is the last day of my Christmas holiday, then it is back to work and travel. I don’t want to leave my dogs but someone has to pay for that expensive bait, and the internet connection, and the donation to the fishing kids organization.

Hope you had a great holiday and lots of fun training sessions with your pup, I know I did with mine!

NJG

training resolutions

It’s the second day of the new year and the new decade. I like the sound of twenty ten. Other than some global worries in 2009 along with the rest of the human population on earth, it was a good year. Scoop is almost 10 months old, and I am starting to get itchy to train real agility with him. I am only a couple months away from starting to teach weaves and contacts and I can’t wait to see what he looks like jumping big jumps.  I think I have heard that it is out of fashion to make new years resolutions, but IF I was going to, I would resolve the following:

• Decide how I am going to teach Scoop’s aframe and then get busy finishing up the training of any aids I need so that in a couple months I can get down to really putting it all together.
• Proof my handling and motion drills on the flat so I am ready to apply the skills to real jumps. Do my motion drills every day that I am home, and put all my energy into them.
• Teach a nose touch in 2020 position. Scoop already has a 2o2o behavior and I taught him to nose touch a plexiglass target. Now I am ready to teach him to nose touch the target while he is on a short board. I am going to work on this skill every day I am home, so that by the time he is a year old I will be ready to backchain it at the bottom of the dogwalk and teeter.
• Work Scoop on stays and positions and playing around dogs and handlers when classes are going on here at power paws every day that we have clients here on the property. He still really wants to visit with everyone, and I am happy he is friendly and outgoing, but when he is at the end of the leash working with me, I would like his undivided attention.

This is what Scoop and I worked on today…. prior to the non-new years resolutions:)

Distance stands and sits.

I placed Scoop in a stand, moved away from him a variety of distances in the living room, then asked him to sit. I want him to sit (or down or stand) wherever he hears the command, and not move forward out of the position he is in. I got some really good fast sits and he did not step forward. I tossed the treat or toy to him as soon as he sat and said break at the same time so that he could jump out of position to get the reward. I also worked down to sit from a distance which I find much harder. I placed Scoop in a down, moved  3 to 10 feet away, a different distance each attempt, and then gave Scoop the cue to sit from the down position. It all worked well until I had a bit too much distance from him, then Scoop wanted to move towards me before he sat, and in a couple instances he did not take the sit cue at all. I will work on both of those this week with lots of reward. I think the ability to change positions, or take cues in place at a distance from me is important. It is the beginning of distance work, albeit stationary.

We did a refresher course this morning on sit, down, left,right, stand, close and side. All cues that  are verbal only, no body language information. I cue a position, then reward, then cue another randomly, and then move on. It might go like this sit-c/t, down-c/t, stand-no c/t, close-c/t, down-c/t, left-no c/t, right-c/t, down- no c/t, sit, c/t etc, etc. Sometimes I reward each position, sometimes I skip a reinforcement or skip a few reinforcements. I do a session maybe a minute long, then play and start over or pick a position to add duration (sit, down or stand stay) or go into a heelwork routine up and down the hallway and around the living room.

Scoop occasionally has a glitch in remembering his left command and will offera totally different behavior or he slightly turns his head but does not move. I know I have pretty much ingnored the left and right cues the last couple months, use it or lose it is one answer for the issue. With a young dog that is learing lots of new skills, this is pretty normal, just a reminder to me to not forget to use all our skills at least once in a while.

My family

My dog and human family is mostly pretty healthy and I am happy that I have been home the last couple weeks of this holiday season to spend time with my husband and all our dogs. I thought I would share some updates and a photo of each of them at the begining of this new year.

Jim and I take a Christmas photo each year with our dogs. This year I decided that only our oldest dogs got to be in the photo. Riot and Swift, littermates, turned 14 in August and here we are with them in a photo taken in December 2009.

Marcy took this picture of Riot holding her namesake toy a couple years ago. It is my mostest favorite. My friend Nancy Louise Jones printed it for me in a 3 foot square image and it hangs centermost in my living room where I can stare at it daily. I had to have a small one too for my office so I can see her pretty much every minute I am in my house:) Riot is in her second year now of living with renal failure.  She is on a special home cooked diet and gets sub-Q fluids, and has no visible effects of the disease. She still hikes the fields with me daily and while seeming to be mostly deaf as a doorknob, every once in a while she surprises me and turns around and comes to her sign song nickname of riribabydog. I decided there is one good reason to teach your dog that your smiling face and clapping hands means you are very happy with something your dog did for you. You can use it when they are old and must rely on your body language, hand signals, and reading your lips for cues to what you are feeling. Ever tried seeing if your dog reads lip? Mine do. I can mouth their commands without any vocalization and if I have direct eye contact they usually take the cue.

My second oldest border collie Wicked, will be 13 in February. She is a bit gimpy now and then but still playful and active and would knock you over if she thought she could get to the gate first to get to the field for her hike. She and Riot retired just a couple years ago after they received the Platinum USDAA award for 500 lifetime legs. That is Wicky catching air over the A frame. 

Panic, my oldest boy dog, was 9 in November. He is sadly retired from agility because he started having epileptic seizures a few years ago. He has only had 8 seizures in his life because he is on some pretty potent medicine; but since he had 5 of those seizures while doing agility, I decided I could not risk his life and my sanity with the possibility of it ever happening again. He does a few tunnels here and there (his favorite obstacle) and demos a few low obstacles for a student once in a while, and he leads the pack on our walks.  I cry sometimes thinking of the fun we had over the years competing together, and really really miss that aspect of our life together. It is all about the memories now and he and I enjoying his health and freedom from seizures; he has not had one for over a year.

 Ace is 6 now and had a really nice competition year. We finished third at the European Open and third in  the usdaa steeplechase finals and 4th in the Grand Prix and took home a handful of ribbons trophies and plaques from the event. He is fun to run, easy to train, and my only competition partner at the moment. This is a photo of Ace and I at the EO just after the awards ceremony. The event was great fun and getting to be on the podium was even better. Ace is a great training and traveling partner and I appreciate him more every day!

Happy New Year one and all, I hope you have set some training goals with your puppy and that you are looking forward to starting your competition career with your youngster, as much as I am with mine.

NJG

Rainy weekends

Scoop and I spent much of this past weekend indoors. It was wet and cold, not your average California weather, but pretty typical Northern California winter weather. We don’t get real winters as those who live in the colder climes may claim, but since we don’t have indoor facilities in which to train , I think we have learned to rough it pretty well. Last week during some of our evening classes the thermometer did not reach 35 degrees! Throw in a light breeze and it feels like a real winter to ME!

So Scoop and I worked on  tricks. We trained standing on his hind legs, lying flat on his side, and putting toys into a container.The photos here were taken today, outside of course, by our marvelous photographer Marcy Mantell, it was cold but luckily no rain.

Lie flat on your side

Scoop already knows to drop his head to the ground and hold it there on a drop command, so I decided to take the skill and turn it into having him lie flat on his side, legs straight out, with his head on the ground. It went pretty quick. I gave him the cue for drop, then started to reinforce him turning his head  just slightly to the side. He figured out pretty quickly to offer to lie down and drop his head, so I stopped using the drop command to get it started. I don’t want to lose that separate skill.  I went on to shape his head turning to the side while he was lying down, and then waited for his hips to follow while he rolled to his side. The roll of the hips was the turning point in getting the full behavior to happen. I did make a mistake in starting to reward duration too quickly before I got him throwing himself on the ground to lie flat.  I stopped rewarding any duration in position flat on his side, and just clicked and reinforced him for getting into the position fast. As soon as he was fully on his side I used his release word of break, and then started over getting him to move from a standing position all the way into flat on his side. I didn’t want him to lie down…then drop his head…then roll to a side position. I wanted it all in one piece.

I muddied the waters a bit by being slow to click a couple times when he was fully flat, and he turned the behavior into a full roll over, which I haven’t taught yet. But now that I he will lie prone with his head down (drop), lie on his side  (flat), I can easily move to a full roll over, or just a half roll over (show me your belly) which is a great skill to have for body exams and grooming.

Put your toys away

In between sessions of flatwork, I trained Scoop to put a toy in a box. I sat on the ground with a box that was about a foot square, but only a few inches high. The box was on the floor, but right in my lap where Scoop would normally bring the retrieve toy. I threw Scoops’ toy a couple feet from me, and when he brought it back I held my hand out over the box and then clicked as he was getting ready to put it in my hand. He dropped the toy to get the cookie and the toy ended up in the box as I did not catch it but let it fall inside the box.

The only thing that slowed the progress of this training was that the little rubber retrieve toy kept getting juice from his treats on it, and Scoop would occasionally mouth the toy rather than picking it up quickly and returning it. As he dropped the toy in the box, I would click and treat, and the juicy treats from both his mouth and my hand got on the toy, and that was interfering with fast retrieves. I switched to hard treats which made his mouth drier, but took a second or two longer for him to swallow. Oh well, it can’t all be perfect.

 I was trying to get lots of short retrieves to the box very fast, basically just placing the toy on the ground within a couple feet of us and having him retrieve from there.  Then I started to move the box away from my lap. I placed myself to the right or left of the box so it was on my side, so Scoop started to understand it is all about putting the toy in the box, not just about bringing it to my front and dropping in a timely fashion. In one of the sessions Scoop really got that it was about placing the toy in a receptacle. He focused on looking for the box, and then looked at the toy after dropping it in. I think he said… wow, that was cool:) I have now traded out the low box for the one in the photo and was able to move to a standing position next to the box. Hopefully in a couple days we will be able to play put away your toys and move on to multiples.

Scoop and I are headed out to train some more before I teach a class. I hope you are having as much fun as I am teaching tricks to your puppy.

NJG

New post notification

Hi everyone,

Since I write so sporadically I added a widget so that you can sign up to get an email notification when I put up a new post and you won’t have to come back time and again to see if I have a new post. It is on the right side of the blog and is called EMAIL subscription.

Hope it helps, let me know if it works.

NJG

The exorcist

This past week I have helped a few students with recall problems with their puppies. The pups ranged in age from 4 to 8 months.  Without naming dogs and handlers I will describe the problems:)

pup 1- Won’t come to the owner when she wants it to come in the house, even if she is entering the house with the dog or she is calling the pup from outside to inside. The pups’ recall HAD been good until bad weather hit the area and she needed to clean the pups’ feet off when it came in the house. The pup quickly learned that any recall headed toward the house was negative. A simple solution was chosen, keep the pup on leash more, do lots of recalls outside so that she didn’t have to recall it in to her, and solve the wet feet issue by blocking off some portion of the area as the dog entered the house, so that she did not have to punish the dog with feet cleaning for a while. Dogs are so smart, a couple of negative consequences after a recall is enough to ruin your recall until you stop what happens after the pup comes to you.

pup 2- Comes slowly and not every time. Handler is using dog’s name and command come and the pup gets a reward given between the handlers’ legs with the handler reaching between her legs from behind. Long drawn out recall cue, no verbal praise after dog responds, paired with rewarding the pups’ slow responses and a reward that is slow to be delivered using a signal of hand between legs. Solution, hundreds of quick recalls on leash, dog’s name only, quick reward for fast responses given right at the handlers knee.

pup 3- Does not really respond to it’s name. Paired with a drawn out come command and then come on ,come on, come on, right over here in a not too exciting way and you have a pup that doesn’t care if you are on the same planet. Solution is getting help from a friend to hold the puppy away from the handler for a moment until the pup looks away, handler calls pups’ name sharply, and reward only the recalls where the pup turns his head so fast back to the handler that it looks like Linda Blair in the exorcist. Exciting praise like the priest has driven away the devil as soon as the pup turns it’s head, YAHOO!!!!, and quick delivery of really high value food at the knee. As soon as the pup is fed, the helper pulls the pup away and as soon as the pup is looking away from the handler, he calls again. If the pup does not respond like the scene from exorcist,  show the puppy the  cookie he missed (don’t give it to him) then have the helper pull the pup away a couple steps and try again. You should be able to get in hundreds of reps this way.

I want to teach my pup to twist his head to me IMMEDIATELY when I say his name. Then I start immediate praise and if the pup wants a treat he races in and is given one or two or three at my knee. I do lots of restrained recalls and try to make the food high value and the play and praise even more so. I use toys as well as food to reward my puppy. Scoop isn’t always perfect. Today he was BAD! He saw a students’ dog racing in the field and totally ignored me a few times when I called. Oh dear. Back on leash quick, lots of toy play, and work our way back to some level of success. Sometimes that means I need to leave the distracting environment with him, sometimes it just takes showing him the cookies he missed.

I hope your puppy’s recalls were good today and they are better tomorrow after you start playing the name game and getting your pup to respond like the devil is in em’

 NJG

That’ll do Scoop

Scoop is eight and a half months old now. I think his legs have finally stopped growing but I am afraid to measure him! Maybe next week:) Scoop and I have been busy with lots of little training things and no one skill in particular. He is just sort of growing up and we are doing lots of playtime and spending short sessions here and there in the training yard. We do a bit of flat board work and he is learning to straighten himself out to approach the board and then just run through on the flat to his toy. I used a hoop for him to run through to begin with, and now have cut off fence posts on either side of the board to help designate the straight board approach. I use a 12 foot board on the ground now, I started with just a 4 foot training plank. I stand still  in the middle, but turn towards the end he should approach and tell him to climb. He runs around the little posts, loads on tidy and fast and then runs straight through for his toy toss.

I am pretty happy with Scoops recalls and stays and tugging. What I think we most need to obsess on now is his circle work. As his enthusiasm has grown, he wants to arc a bit wide around me, and this morning I just about ended up on my head when he cut into me when I ran inside circles with him! It is great exercise for me too. Run a bit with him, then tug, then run a bit more and more play. I am exhausted after a short session of flat work. I will get some photos tomorrow of the work and you can see what we do.

That’ll do Scoop

We have 7 sheep and two llamas here on our property. Until earlier this year we had over 30 sheep, but decided we really did not need that many and we sold 25 of them to a couple local herding instructors. I kept the nicest ewes, and maybe next year we will build our herd back up a bit. I like to play with the sheep and I always get enthused about herding this time of year when the green grass starts to fill our beautiful California hills. I say play because I am not serious, and I don’t train, and I probably don’t really know what I am doing.  It is also not easy to separate the sheep from the llamas that guard them from the local mountain lions and coyotes. I can’t herd when the llamas are in the field, they don’t move like stock, and will chase dogs out of the field.  That is their job. So the effort becomes great, but this week I got the sheep on one side of the hill and the llamas on the other. Scoop met sheep face to face without a fence separating them for the first time.

He was pretty good, and I was happy and now I am excited to keep going with him. He was very interested, and it did not take any encouragement for him to get out around them and do an imitation of a beginning herding dog. I thought of the effort and the reward of herding as I started that day…..chasing sheep at just the right moment when the lllamas were on one side of a gate and the sheep on the other= time consuming and exhausting. Getting to say for the first time, that’ll do Scoop=priceless:)

I was going to write about some of my students dog’s recalls tonight, but hopefully I can do that before I leave town again. I am teaching a seminar at the Clean Run facility this weekend for Leap Agility which should be lots of fun! Maybe if I get my Clean Run magazine homework done before I go I can spend some time here again.

Scoop and I hope you are having as much fun as is possibly with your puppy, and if it’s a herding dog….let it meet some sheep so you can say that’ll do too!

NJG

Eight months young

Scoop has been a busy traveling dog, and we hit the road again today to go to a Greg Derrett seminar in Southern California.  We will have been away from home 17 out of 27 days when I return to San Jose on Tuesday.

We spent Halloween weekend at an AKC trial. It was an untypically small California trial, with only one judge/2 rings. We stayed in the RV and had plenty of time to socialize and train.  Scoop helped me judge the annual Halloween costume contest which they held at the trial on Saturday after the show.  We got up close and personal with some pretty scary looking people and dogs.

Before I left the RV with Scoop I filled my pockets with lots of tasty high level meat treats, and of course had his favorite toy. I was a bit concerned about how he would react to all the funny looking costume contestants. As we arrived at the scene he saw Teresa Robinson and Belle in all their pirate attire and his hackles went up, and his mouth went open with some “danger,danger mister robinson” kinds of vocalizations. I got him to sit and started shoving in the cookies and in a few seconds it was all over. We played and walked through all the commotion and used lots of rewards. He ignored the rest of the teams in their silly get-ups.  This was a great training opportunity and I liked his response to all of it. 

I worked all weekend to teach him he really does need to keep his front feet on the ground when meeting folks. My friends all helped, and he got nary a pet or comment when acting impolite, and he got lots of praise and treats when he said hi but didn’t try to maul the strangers. I don’t get to work around a lot of children and when we met some willing victims, Scoop got to spend time with them playing and taking treats and just hanging out watching and being in close quarters around them. Thanks to the Robinsons for these two cute photos of Scoop.

Training

We are really working on running flatwork on both my right and left sides. Scoop has nice eye contact and attention during the heelwork.  I actually have not taught any of my dogs a cue for keeping their eyes on me, but how I reward them certainly does reinforce eye contact. When heeling I only mark eyes on me performance. I keep sustained eye contact with Scoop while moving as I only reinforce after some level of duration like a few steps or few seconds of heelwork while he has his eyes on me. If he looks away, the count starts over so that I don’t reinforce the look away-look back.

Here are most of the behaviors Scoop is familiar with now.

• Name- means run to me immediately
• Kennel- get in your crate
• Close (left side swing to heel and remain their when stationary or moving)
• Side (right side heel, same as left)
• sit, down, stand, break,
• left & right (turn left or right, verbal cue only),
• drop (head lowered to ground)
• feet (put your front feet on anything I indicate,  including my hand when held in front of me)
• hop on (2o2o position on step, box etc)
• touch (nose touch hand or target)
• climb (run over a flat plank on the ground)
• walk (walk backwards),
• go (go towards anything I indicate, like through the standards of a jump with no bar,                          or around a chair)
• feet targeting with no cue other than go to whatever large “target” is lying on the ground. I use a 2 foot by 2 foot square board, or a carpet mat. Scoop hits his front feet first on the board.
• I can use some of these behaviors now in combination. Like having Scoop say your prayers is just a combination of these three simple behaviors: sit, feet up and drop your head. Combining skills makes it fun and easy to teach tricks. Scoop can swing his rear end, move it backwards, or keep it on something. He can put his front feet on something when stationary or moving, and can do it from a sit or stand. He can drop his head to a surface, or turn it left or right. It is lots of fun once you have all the core body behaviors under cue and can use them independently and together.

Scoop went with me last week to the USDAA Nationals. After all the great progress we had made at the little AKC trial I had high expectations of showing off all his perfect manners. HA! He was pretty excited at all the commotion and I can’t say I was always successful at keeping him focused. If I have his undivided attention while playing or training and I move into a distracting area it is fine. If I let him watch dogs or people moving into his area it takes me a moment to get him focused back on me. When playing or training he was great, walking on leash around all the people was more difficult, as he still really wants to greet everyone, especially his favorite ones. He is just 8 months old now, so I am not worried. He continues to improve daily and weekly, and he is easy and fun to train. He is attentive when the level of distraction is not 900 people and 5 rings of agility. Scoop did all his behaviors, and tugged and retrieved and had great off leash recalls in surroundings that most pups would have found extremely distracting. I am pleased with where we are now in his training. The two photos below were taken from our perfect RV site at ringside  in Scottsdale from my new iphone which I LOVE. Now if I could just figure out how to post to wordpress from the road on my iphone…..

Scoop, Ace and I are packing it up now and leaving rainy windy San Jose for hopefully some nice weather and fun training with the Derrett’s this weekend, I hope you have a great training weekend with yours.

NJG

House guests/training opportunity

Recalls, recalls, recalls. Thousands of recalls! Sit when greeting. That is what we are obsessing on these days.

My friend Ingrid Manzione was here visiting from Hawaii this week. She and lots of her agility friends attended power paws camp last week, and then she came to stay with us for a few days. Scoop loves guests. HE thinks it is an opportunity to have a  party each time they walk through the house. *I* think it is a training opportunity to work on what I want him to do when he meets new people or sees the ones he loves. Ingrid helped by being a post or turning her back on him when he put his feet on her, I came dashing in with cookies when he sat. Since I didn’t want to wait until she wandered through the door, and be caught without rewards or busy on the phone, we set up the scenarios a bunch of times so I could train it when it was convenient for ME. She would talk to him in a high pitched tone of voice or clap her hands and I was right there to shove treats in his mouth when he sat or kept all four on the floor instead of jumped up. I really don’t like it when dog traininig friends say “it’s ok, I don’t mind your dog jumping on me”. Or worse, they see you struggling to keep your dogs brain attached to his body, and they sabotage you by continuing their excited greeting while you try to reel in your excited pup.

If we all helped our friends by behaving properly around their dogs we would certainly look and act like better dog trainers.

Life in the hood

Scoop and his boys get to spend time together in the yard now where our adults hang out when they are outside, and I don’t monitor every single minute of their interactions. That backfired a few weeks ago when Scoop and Ace were obviously having a mouthy mauling session of play. I heard screaming and went running. It looked like Scoop was killing Ace, or vice versa. Jim ran in from the field where he was teaching. the noise was easily heard 200 feet away. Once I got to the dogs I realized that Ace had his mouth wrapped aruond Scoop’s collar, and then Scoop rolled and thorougly tied Ace’s mouth to his collar. I held the dogs while Jim unsnapped the collar, but not until we were all thoroughly scared to death. Ace was only a little worse for the wear.  Scoop settled after a while and stopped acting frightened from the scary situation. Big mistake on my part. The collar Scoop wore was a bit loose, and really he should not have a collar on at all when he is out hanging in the  hood with his mates. Lesson learned, and thank goodness we were close by to get them untangled.

Scoop had his very first run with my border collie pack in the big field yesterday. Riot-14 years, Wicked-13, Panic-9,  Ace- 5 and Scoop. He has been on lots of field runs on his own, or gone along on leash with all of us, but till now I did not totally trust his recall or his self control. The run went fairly well, he came back every time I called. Yahoo, recall training works! However he does not 100% understand that he is never allowed to run into another dog, or duck in for a play bite while they are all exercising. My dogs hate bullies, and I work hard to make sure that the youngsters do not intimidate the adults on an exercise walk/run, or worse, crash into them and cause injury. I had to use a low growly voice with Scoops nickname a few times when he started to cut off the other dogs while they were running. I will work on this every day, if I do not see daily improvement he will go back on leash with us for a while.  I can’t yell at him, my other dogs get worried if they think someone is in trouble. So my quiet verbal  ”checks” to Scoop are minimal and he needs to figure out that a one time lowered tone of voice is all the chance he is going to get to behave himself, or he is back on leash.

Scoop, Ace and I are headed off to a trial this weekend. I am looking forward to hanging with my boys in the RV, and training away from home.

I hope you have a great  weekend of training planned for your pup too!

NJG

Recalls to side

Figured I would shock everyone and write two days in a row! Scoop, Ace and I are home from the trial. We had fun, but yesterday Ace and I were perfect, and today I pulled him off a weave entry:(   Don’t you just hate it when your dog is obedient?

Scoop was a bit better today, we hung at ring side for at least an hour and he was quiet while dogs were running. I worked a class jump bar setting and was able to leave him in a down while tied to an immovable object while I went in and set jump bars. There was always someone with him, don’t worry….. I did not leave my puppy tied at ringside!   I was happy that he let me get up go in the ring and waited calmly with them while I was gone for a minute. And he didn’t  mob too many folks today, however we went through 4 sticks of string cheese making sure he happily sat when I asked. Scoop seems to love everybody which is good and bad news when I am trying to keep his feet on the ground and his attention on me. We did lots of heelwork and playing and overall had some nice training moments.

Back at home yesterday I practiced doing recalls to side from a sit stay. I trust now that Scoop will sit and stay without scooching around even if I am 30 or 40 feet from him. Granted, this is in home field without lots of distractions. I always used to return to his side to release him, I have not done that many recalls from a sit stay with a lot of distance. I have done lots of sit stay and release to tug with me while I am reasonably close by, maybe  no more than 10 feet. I have been building this slowly so that we don’t have errors, and still let him drive with enthusiasm to me. If ever he moves a foot after I leave him I return to release him, he will not get to move towards me at a distance after an error on the sit stay.

So yesterday I lined him up, dropped the toy at my side, stepped away, called him to my side, rewarded, then spun with him and said get it, to let him have his toy. No problem on multiple attempts from a short distance with treats as a reward, and a Riot stick as the toy. Then I got out the soccer ball and the results were a teensy bit different.  Like this…Scoop lines up nicley, he is staying, I drop soccer ball, I step away, I release him  and he goes direct to the soccer ball. Whoops. So we built this slowly. More recalls to side with cookies, low level toy again, then very casual placement of soccer ball at my side, and we had success.  I am going out to train and see if I can add another level of  progression to the game today. I will let you know how it goes and show you the next step, next time. I hope you have as much fun training this game with your pup as I had with mine!

NJG

The game went like this:

Time Flies

Time flies! Can’t believe it has been 6 weeks since I wrote about Scoop. I was away from home 30 out of the last 50 days. On a handful of those days Scoop was with me at agility trials. The big adventure was the trip to Europe and the World Championships for two weeks, which was immediately followed by a trip to Colorado for a week and then Portland  for three days. I am glad to be home, and have been enjoying every training moment with Scoop.

Luckily even though my blog has been suspended in time, Scoop’s training has not suffered the same fate. He looks and acts sort of grown up! He was 7 months old yesterday. He weighs 35 pounds and is over 20 inches tall. And really, really good news, no more tape and glue on his ears:)

Scoop seems quite mature now until I take him into a way too stimulating environment .  At home he is silly and playful, but will train attentively for a very long time. He has a lot of control… unless I am trying to demonstrate a specific agility move with someone else’s dog during a very serious dog agility lesson. Then he might be naughty enough to warrant being taken back to the house rather than get to hang with me in the field while I teach. At agility trials like one I went to today, as long as he is on his toy or I am actively reinforcing him with food for behaviors he is really great and attentive. His biggest distraction right now is greeting people. He wants to visit with everyone, and truthfully that also means jump on them. Short leashes, lots of rewards helps, but the issue is ongoing. I think I will ask for some help from friends tomorrow, to see if I can get in some reinforcements for sitting before he gets a chance to jump up to greet everyone.

We play and train as often as possible. That means we spend individual time together at minimum a few times a day when we are together. He hangs with me in my office when I am working indoors, and if I have a break that doesn’t include training him, he likes to cuddle on my lap. Well, sort of on my lap; those legs dangle off to the side cuz they are so long. I really like his willingness to settle down and cuddle. Mostly my dogs aren’t that fond of cuddling. Well Jack and Panic would sleep under the covers and crawl under my skin so to speak, but Wicked , Riot and Ace count the dog minutes on their toes, hoping I will let them off the couch, out of my arms, and onto their dog bed on the floor where they can act very non cuddly. Riot at 14 still wants to be right next to me all day, but cuddling is out of the question. She is too cool for that.

New stuff for Scoop

Scoop will drop his head flat to the ground and hold it there on the drop command. Since he also knows feet means to put your front feet in my hand, or up on a table or chair, I can now combine those two cues to make some fun tricks. Feet on the chair from the sit position, and then head down can be say your prayers. Feet in my hand, and head dropped low between his legs is sort of exaggerated praying while stretching. His body looks sort of weird on that one, so we don’t do it too much. He will also walk with me on his hind legs while his front feet are in my hand. That is another trick we do only once in a while since he is standing on his hind legs while doing it. I think the moral of the story is that anything that is much of an athletic feat is trained but practiced minimally while he is still all legs and growing like a weed.

 

Walk backwards.

Scoop now takes some steps backwards on cue. I use the command walk. I shaped it like this. I sat in a chair and waited for him to move one foot, then I clicked and gave him the treat. I watched his feet and waited for the movement again, then clicked. As soon as he started to understand that he was reinforced for taking a step backwards, I upped the ante and only clicked after he moved one foot and then the other, so I went from marking one step back, to marking two steps back. I decided to reinforce the beginning steps of walk by him returning to me for his reinforcement cookie. That way he was already reset to move away from me again. There are different ways to reinforce walking backwards and to pinpoint where the dog should move backwards to, like the dog walkign backwards and placing his rear feet on something like a rolled up carpet, towel, or a board. Sometimes I have used gates to help a dog walk backwards in a straight line, or I have trained while using a wall on one side to help in getting the dog straight while going back. At times I have reinforced all motion away from me and at the point of the last step I wanted to reinforce, I did not let the dog come forward, but moved quickly to the dog to hand him the treat. Anyway, this time I just decided to mark only straight steps back and reinforce from my hand with Scoop coming to me for the cookie. I counted steps before I clicked, continuing to build till I got up to 5 or 6 steps. At that point I switched to throwing my reinforcement toy or cookie to him. I had to be careful on delivering the reward to him or I got a head turn away from me when he caught the reward. Since I would really like him to go straight back and not curl or turn, I want to reward him while he is in straight line directly in front of me.

This is still a work in progress. Sometimes he sort of hops backwards on the first few steps. I want him to go quickly but take steps not jump backwards. I like to teach this behavior as it uses the dog’s rear end rather well and is a good athletic endeavor. I am not trying to strengthen his rear, or build muscle, I won’t do enough of it to do that yet. But as he grows older I will use it for strengthening, and it will probably be part of my warm up drill before I go into the ring.

I have lots more stuff to write about with Scoops’ training, and I hope I will have time to do it in a much more timely fashion rather than waiting 6 weeks to tell you how he’s doing. On my list: toy control games, recalls, using high value toys that put my dog over the top, and lots more.

I have three more days of agility coming up this weekend and Scoop will be with me . I hope my show report on Monday is that his greeting manners have made a remarkable improvement! I hope you have as great a weekend with your puppy as I am planning on having with mine.

Nancy