Wordless Wednesday

Sequence Sunday: My first sequence

I set up a short sequence for Lotte: Tire, Tunnel, Jump. This is the first time I've set up/tried to run a sequence on my own; the only other short sequences we've done have been in class. I found that running it in that order worked out fine, but trying to do it in reverse (Jump, Tunnel, Tire) resulted in a consistently bypassed jump (to the point that I gave up on trying that, and just got in a couple of really good runs starting with the Tire, since she was doing good with that). I'm not sure if maybe my jump was too close to the tunnel entrance, so I'm going to revisit this setup in a couple of days (after some rest and video-review) with the jump re-positioned further back from the tunnel/possibly slightly offset.  A series of bloopers and head-scratching moments later, and I came up with a few other observations:

Exhibit A: And the bar goes flying!

1 - I need to back up and work more on jump-work by itself.
2 - "Let's try it one more time to get it right" is a bad way to go about things.
3 - My command-giving-timing needs work (see exhibit A)
4 - Tossing food in grass = lost food and distracted dog. Tossing easter egg filled with food = genius.

Baby steps to Confidence

Lotte has A-frame issues. It all started with one (somewhat comical) episode involving her running up the a-frame, and finding herself stuck running in place about a foot or so from the apex. Literally. Think Wile E. Coyote running in place before getting hit with the realization that he isn't going anywhere (except for down).

Ok, so it wasn't quite that dramatic. Still, Lotte had trouble getting up-and-over the top of the A-frame, and though (through the power of banana... the ultimate reward for my monkey) I know that she CAN do it, that one sucky experience has left her hesitant to even run towards an A-frame. Dogwalk? Teeter? No problem! Just no A-frames. 

Like all of the other agility equipment I've been slowly accumulating, I decided it was time to add an A-frame (of some sort) to my collection. I wound up putting together a very-mini-sized A-frame out of two small panels of 1/2" plywood and some basic hardware. 

It's smaller than I had wanted, at just shy of 3' long per panel, but the nice thing is that I can use it indoors and transport it easily. Plus, it's perfect for my purposes... which are right now, to build Lotte's confidence up and to teach her how to push herself up and over the apex. 

Ta-da! Indoor A-frame! :)  I might paint contacts on later.

When I first introduced Lotte to her new A-frame (with the chain set at the lowest setting), she balked and refused to touch it. So, we started slower. I took the chains off, grabbed a piece of 2" PVC pipe, and laid it underneath the hinge-joint (this made the "high" point only about 3" off the ground). It took a little bit of coaxing, and some cheese trails dropped along the length to get Lotte comfortable going across. We have since graduated to placing a piece of 4" pipe under the hinges (so it is still set up lower than what my chains will allow).

Tonight marked a confidence-breakthrough, in that Lotte was practically flying across the A-frame on it's 4" support, and without prompting. To the point that I had to put her in a stay to be able to put the A-frame up and move us on to working on our 2x2 weaves. I think I'll keep her at the same height for a couple of days, and then try to find something to bump it up to 5 or 6" - just want to keep it going gradual... lest she remember what it is that she's running across! 

Some downtime, and getting back in the game

Her entire neck is bandaged up. :(

Lotte and I have had some downtime the past week and a half. We were just gearing up a couple of weeks ago to start a couch-to-5k program together, and on what should have been our second night of running, we were attacked by a pit bull as we were walking down the street. Yes, walking - we were still within the 5 minute "walk to warm up" period, and yes, it was actually a pit - I know how to identify breeds. The other dog blindsided us. It slipped under a fence and came running from the yards on our side. By the time I saw it coming, out of my peripheral vision, it was practically on top of us. I tried to get Lotte behind me first, and shoo the dog away, like I do with any other dog (like the annoying chihuahua that runs around barking at everything that moves). 

It wasn't coming at me, it was coming at Lotte, and that fast, it got her by the neck. I hit the ground and grabbed the dog - put it into a choke hold - to keep it from shaking her, and to get it to let go. Somehow, I managed to get Lotte in my arms, and a guy coming down the street stopped to help us. All told, we weren't hurt too badly (thank God!). I got bit (minor - only because I got in the way of the teeth protecting Lotte), and Lotte has stitches in her neck. Fortunately, she had her thick leather collar on, and if the teethmarks in it are any indication, it protected her neck from more serious damage. 

So, we've had a bit of downtime. Lotte's been checked, rechecked, and OK'd to go back to agility class (I thought we might have to drop the rest of this session), so we're just going to get back into the game and move on with ourselves. 

Lotte's ready to dive head-first back into the game. 

She was testing out our new tunnel. It's just a cheapy practice tunnel I snagged off Amazon. Certainly not great quality, but it does what it's supposed to, and for a 12 lb dog, I'm pretty sure it'll hold up just fine. Lotte was so excited to run through it that she didn't even wait for me to finish setting it up (it has to be staked into the ground). When I was about halfway down my set up, Lotte ran through, and pushed her way through the collapsed end like it was a chute. 

Now, I just need to work on getting her to run all the way through the tunnel and out. She likes to stop right at the end, and just watch me keep running past her. Guess that means we'll be doing some target practice later!

Look at what dog?

There was a little dog, off-lead and unattended, sitting on the front lawn of what I will assume was it's home. This dog didn't venture off of it's property, didn't come anywhere near the sidewalk, in fact. He only came as far as halfway down the lawn, but boy did he bark. Perfect Look At That! practice for Lotte and me. 

Lotte was well aware that there was another dog not more than twenty feet (if that!) away from us, and... nothing. She looked and was rewarded a few times going past, but that was it. She didn't react, didn't bark back, didn't try to speed up to get past me, nothing. She looked at that dog, and more or less shrugged it off. Dog? What dog? 

That was well over 12 hours ago, and I'm still amazed. I have never walked her past another dog without some sort of a reaction out of her. I usually at least get the quick speed up or some noise. This time, it was nothing, and that's just wonderful. :)

Third time's the charm

Lotte's been getting a dental treat every night when we go upstairs for bed. As a result, she's learned to run straight to my room as soon as I move the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs - without any detours - to get her treat.

Now, I've decided to change the game. Since I want to work on her recall, I am now asking her to hold a stay at the bottom of the stairs, and then calling her to me in my room.

The scene from tonight:

Attempt #1 - Halfway up the stairs, Lotte breaks her stay and starts following. Body block a now-confused dog back down the stairs, reset the stay, and ...

Attempt #2 - Get up to room, open door, just about ready to call Lotte, and she breaks her stay and comes barreling up the stairs before I can. Body block again, and start corralling her back down the stairs. Now, she's frustrated. She's kicking up a fuss verbally, but after all that grumbling, settles back into her stay, and ...

Attempt #3 - Third time's the charm. She holds her stay, responds to her recall, and finally gets her treat.

Look at that cat!

I was flipping through my copy of Control Unleashed recently, and decided to give the Look at That! game another try with Lotte (now that we've been using the clicker more lately, and she's gotten more savvy to it). I've been playing with it on walks, mostly with people across the street and barking dogs behind fences so far.

Where I've seen the most impact, however, has been at home. One of my biggest issues with Lotte has been her chasing Doc (the older kitty) and pestering him. Now, while Doc does know how to tell Lotte to back off, he doesn't appreciate being chased or barked at, and generally spends most of his time upstairs - where Lotte isn't - if she's out.

On a spur one morning, I threw a handful of treats on the kitchen table while Lotte was outside, and set my clicker next to my coffee. Gave the cats their food, let Lotte in, and immediately started clicking her every time she looked at the cats. Amazingly enough, I am to the point of being able to feed the cats right in front of her with no complains from either party. For even more fun, I was giving both Lotte and Doc treats for sitting next to each other (the finicky old cat who turns his nose up at most everything under the sun is rather fond of Lotte's soft training tidbits... go figure).

It'll take more mornings like this and some time before anything changes permanently (point in case, someone chased Doc about this morning), but I have been told already that Lotte has been relatively mellow with the cats all week. That, right there, is enough for me to keep going.

Ready for the next steps

The effort we've been putting into leash walking has been paying off greatly with Lotte. Now, we're moving on to the next steps:

1- narrowing up how much leeway she has in leash-slack
2- keeping her head up off of the ground
3 - moving on to higher distractions

#2 is a bit of a big one right now, as her sniffing has become a huge problem in class. I'm taking a multi-pronged approach to solving it, but my basic premise is to teach her when it's ok for her to sniff, and when her nose needs to stay off of the ground. I'm keeping a very clear black-and-white distinction between the two, and am only allowing the sniffing following a release cue to do so (which on walks, I am giving ample breaks to do so; these will lessen over time). If she's under another command, the nose needs to stay up. Release = sniff all you want to. Working = no sniff. Simple, right? I just started working on it last night, and it went well for the most part. I plan to tackle this in class tonight by attempting to use sniffing as a reward for working. We'll see how well that works out for me.

#1 is a simple matter of just shortening my leash up, and for #3, I'm giving Look at That! from Control Unleashed a try. I'll also be starting this week to take her out to places outside of the neighborhood to do short "yes, the rules apply here too" walks. One of my goals is to be able to get up to the door of a petstore (from the back of the parking lot) by the end of the month. We'll probably make it there sooner than that, but since stores have always been a huge distraction problem for Lotte, I want to be as thorough as I can in showing her that the only way she's going in is if she walks calmly.

The good news is that this is all progressing more smoothly than I had anticipated. I don't plan on rushing things, but I imagine we can really buckle down into formal heeling soon. The flatwork exercises from agility class will really help with that, since the ones we've been taught so far involve bringing the dog into a relative heel position! As she gets better at those, I imagine I can easily extend that experience into crafting a nice heel.

Progress!

To work on improving loose leash walking, we've been taking short walks of 10-30 minutes at a time, for just over a week now. Tonight, I saw the first huge mark of progress in Lotte: I was able to get her from the car, onto the agility field for class, with no pulling! Was she as focused on me and as close to me as I'd like? No, but she kept a loose lead, didn't try to dart ahead, and did so with other dogs and horses around. I'm especially proud, because I didn't expect her to keep her cool around so much distraction, so soon. This is just huge for us. :)

It helps to walk nicely first...

In our agility class, I noted that Lotte is far from the least well-trained on leash, which gives me a little bit of hope. I mean, at least I can hold on to my dog! Ask me about the Irish setter who was up in my face at my car window yesterday.

Anyway, I'm taking a step back from heeling with Lotte. I've been complaining a lot lately about her getting excited on leash, and acting like a fool (codephrase for pulling), and the dogs in class have spurred me into finally dedicating myself to changing that.

The biggest problem is that when I take her for a walk, I tend to slip into "I just want to walk" mode, especially if we're somewhere like out on the urban trails. So, I let her get away with it. Lotte, being a typical dog, takes a mile with that little inch of leeway I give her, and we're back to square one again.

With how quickly she's advanced on the tippy board (I think I'm going to upgrade the height of my board today), I have no doubts that she'll catch on quickly. I'll begin working on a formal heel after I get her to the point of nice, relaxed, loose walking in all sorts of distractions. It helps to know how to walk before you start running, after all.

Targeting the Possibilities

I recently taught Lotte to hand target, and even more recently, have begun playing with using the target as a training tool.

Point in case, the tippy board. I had Lotte stepping up on it from the side, but could not convince her to come straight up onto it from the end. Finally, it occurred to me to use the hand target - success! I am now getting her to walk across the board (tipping it each time) without problem. This was only after a few days of working with the board. As an aside, I'm glad that we've been working on it, because if we hadn't, I bet she would probably still just be pawing at the board in class tomorrow. As it is, I think we may be ready to up the size of our tippy board soon (but I'm going to wait until we move up to the next size board in class).

I'm using the hand target to teach her to "beg", and it occurred to me that I can finally teach her to come to front, by using my hand target to draw her in straight! I'm also starting to work on the formal heel using the hand target, which was actually my original intention when I began teaching it. I picked that idea up here: http://loridrouin.webs.com/twelvestepheeling.htm   (great resource).

I'm super-excited about the possibilities we have now. I've never been a fan of guessing games with Lotte, or just waiting for her to get it right... having such a simple tool to be able to tell her what I want to do/where I want to be is great. Really, why didn't I think of this sooner?

Tipping the Board

Now that Lotte's agility classes are underway, I've already identified something to work on at home: the teeter. We're only working on tippy boards right now, but since Lotte was so less-than-enthused with that in class (the tunnels, on the other hand, she loved), I decided it's something we should work on at home.

So, I built a tippy board. I got the idea for the construction here: Agility Adventures: Making a Teeter Board

Our board, because Lotte is just starting out, is on a 2" diameter piece of PVC. I'm focusing right now on just getting her used to the board shifting underneath her. In just a couple of days, we've progressed from one paw pushing the end down, to crabbing across with just her two front feet, to actually getting all four feet on the board. Tonight, I got her to walk across the board (it's 4' long) a couple of times. Yay!

Lotte, by the way, had decided in class that the tippy board was something to be jumped over, rather than walked on. 

Schnauzerism #1: Because food in a ball is better than food in a bowl

Schnauzerisms: noun - Lotte's funny little quirks that make me smile

My dog is weird. I offer her kibble to her in a bowl, and she turns her nose up at it. Stick it in her atomic treat ball, and it's gone in 5 minutes.

I guess someone just likes to play with their food.

You got yourself under there...

... you can get yourself out again!

She'd rather play with me

At the dog park, Lotte's not so interested in the other dogs any more. She'll go sniff/greet, but for the most part, she's choosing to just hang out with me. Both times we've gone within the past week, she has engaged in play with me directly, but not with the other dogs.

I don't care why - whether it's her finally reaching mental maturity, our relationship, our training, or whatever. It's pretty cool regardless.

What size dog are harnesses made for anyway?

Seriously. Lotte's bike harness (a doggles v-neck mesh harness) is very nice on all counts. The only downside is that it's a bit loose - not enough to impede her movement, or for her to be able to slip out of even. So, I decided to look into getting a new one with a better fit. In theory, that's grand. In reality, not so much.

I got her a doggle's mutt gear harness in an extra small to try... and it's going back first thing tomorrow. I don't like the material, don't like the fit, and even though it's "fitted" correctly, I can't help but feel that the chest strap is way too close to her armpits. It also sits up really weird/high on her neck (and pushes up to her ears if she lays down). This is all after I spent hours scouring the internet looking at sizing info, by the way.

I did consider an ezydog harness, and then decided against it when I was looking at the sizing info, because the neck/chest proportions are weird. Or maybe it's just my dog. Either way, she would need one size to fit her neck, and another (larger) size to fit her chest. What the heck?

Just relax.

When I woke up this morning, Lotte was snuggled against my pillow with her head on my shoulder. Her cheek against mine. I could hear her breathing, feel her warmth. We laid there for a good hour, just relaxing. There were no thoughts running through my head. It was just us. It was the connection I've been trying to feel when we're training.

No, I didn't just have a two-day miracle (imagine how quickly all of my training problems would resolve if it were that simple!). As I mentioned in my attention post, I've been thinking about this topic for quite a while now, though I've only recently come to understand exactly what it was I was looking for. And it isn't that it has been totally lacking. The connection has been there all along; I just haven't been looking in the right places. It's the same feeling I get when we're really engaged in playing tug, or on the occasions we've spent just meandering around the grass on a sunny day. It's watching her sleep, watching her run, watching her gnaw away at a bone. It's laughing at the silly dog flying and twisting through the air trying to catch the toy on the end of the flirt pole.

Maybe part of my problem is that I'm hoping to see concrete results in training too soon. Maybe I'm focusing too much on details and losing sight of the big picture (something that, from my experience in painting, tends to make things take a lot longer).  Maybe the secret is to "just relax!"

Uh-oh...

We broke our raccoon tail tug. It's now in two parts... on the bright side, now I have a small, hand-sized tail tuft that I can toss to Lotte as a reward without having to break her position.

I need to remember to use a clear command to separate heeling work from casual walks. Consistency and whatnot. I also think it's time to start working on introducing the heel position and command. Lotte can heel for several paces during Find Heel, but now we're starting to get sloppy.

So, a couple of goals:
1) Introduce heel position/command (stationary) - before starting straight line heeling.
2) Slow down on Find Heel. Go out to a field/parking lot/whatever, and reward just for hitting position before resetting behavior. Stop trying to push for maintained heeling.

Reading a dog is like working a book

I had an epiphany today, in regards to attention in dog training. Inspired by the trend of mistakes I've been making, and doubly inspired by Willard Bailey's recent blog posts on attention that I stumbled across.

Ideally, when I'm working with Lotte, I want the experience to be a lot like reading a book. 

See, I love to read. I love getting pulled into a good book so deeply that all of my focus is in the pages, my subconscious painting the written world in my mind, and time easily gets lost. It's with those books that I have a hard time putting down that my awareness of the "outside" world is nil. It's a connection. With the book, the words, the characters, the author. 

That level of connection is what's missing. It's not her that's lacking focus, but me. Of course, I pay attention to her. The problem comes with distractions - I'm too aware of them, to the point of pulling my attention off of us and onto knowing that there's a tempting distraction coming our way. To use my book analogy, I'm not reading, just skimming. I'm connecting with her on the surface of what we're doing, but I'm not connecting with her while we're doing it. I'm connecting with the book but not the author, if that makes more sense.

Lotte, on the other hand, is reading... me. It's almost like I'm giving her a very passive permission to get distracted. Not my intention at all, of course. I can see it happening though every time it does. The more aware of it I make myself, the more I realize that I'm changing my own body language when we face a distraction. This happens even if it's something as simple as a spot in the grass that I know she likes to sniff.

Workworkwork, I see distraction, subconscious body language change, Lotte gets distracted.... I'm cuing it! Hello. Have I really trained my dog to get distracted? Maybe I'm imagining it, or maybe I really did. The possibility certainly exists, and it makes sense. Really makes sense. 

With that in mind, I think the first thing I need to do is to spend some time practicing staying aware of my body language. I need to break the habit of tipping Lotte off when I see a distraction, and I really need to focus more on her than on worrying about what she'll do when we walk past a pole that may have been peed on. It won't be easy, but I do think I owe it to both of us to try. 

Correlating Flavors

If Strawberry + Swiss = Yum

And Swiss + Chicken = Yum

Then Strawberry + Swiss + Chicken = Yum

I made strawberry glazed chicken stuffed with swiss for dinner. The glaze was made from strawberry jam and balsamic vinegar, and tasted kind of like a fruity BBQ sauce. The only thing I would change is to put more strawberry... maybe fresh slices stuffed inside of the chicken with the cheese. Other than that, yum. :-)

A brief moment...

Today's training session was full of quite a few handler mistakes. I got a bit overenthusiastic to keep going, since I had a great source of distraction (in the form of multiple playing children) very close at hand. "One more time" syndrome abounded. I also called Lotte's name a couple of times before giving her the "oops!" cue that I added for lost-attention turns. Among a couple of other things.

My fumbling aside, Lotte did great all in all. I did lose her attention a few times, and quite frankly, I'm still trying to figure out how to be the most interesting thing in the world to her.

There was one moment in the session, where Lotte was standing in the grass with her leash just out of my reach, starring at the kids. I started walking away from her (and consequently, away from the kids too), watching her out of my peripheral vision. She looked at me, back at the kids, and then focused on me and ran up to my left side. It makes me happy.

I dropped my leash

We worked Find Heel again after dinner, to take advantage of the kids who play out in the street for a distraction. Because I'm using treats & toys for this exercise, I had been working with the leash clipped to my belt loop with a carabiner. Today I tried moving the leash to my hand, only to find it difficult to juggle (since I use my left hand to give treats). Not to mention, all of the slack hanging down was tripping Lotte up when she was in heel position, and causing her to divert her attention to her feet, so that she wouldn't, you know, trip. This won't be a problem in the future, as I plan to switch over exclusively to toy rewards (which I can easily pull from pockets with my right hand as needed) when we get to the point of putting things together and starting straight-line heeling. That'll leave my left hand free to hold my leash and it's slack. 

I digress. Back to today... So, I dropped it. Just tossed my end of the leash down and continued with the exercise like nothing had changed. This is the first time I've done this with her 6' lead (long lines are a different story). To my delight, Lotte's actually paying attention to me, and not leash cues, because a smooth about-turn with no verbal warning, and she stuck with me. We continued working like that for the rest of the session.

My A-HA! moment...

Two, actually. After neglecting to work with Lotte on heeling for a couple of weeks, I finally spurred myself back into it, so we aren't progressed as far as we ought to be. That's of no matter, however. We're working on again, and a couple of A-HA! moments from the past couple of days have me feeling optimistic that we've successfully taken our "first steps" towards heeling.

Yesterday: When we stepped outside to start working, I noticed that our neighbor's dog was out (off-lead). Lotte's focus went out that fast, and I beat a hasty retreat back into the house intending to quit. Then, it occurred to me that maybe if I can keep her focused as we go through the door, I can keep her focused long enough to move far enough away on the other side of our driveway, where Lotte is less likely to react. Since I've been using treats/toys for the Find Heel exercise, I popped a couple in my left hand, and lured her at heel down the walk. From there, I took my hand back up - no more luring - and continued the exercise as usual. We worked where she could see the other dog, with a combination of about-turning when she started to forge ahead towards him and rewarding when she found heel (as well as for staying in position while moving closer to the other dog, though that's not really the goal of this particular exercise for us). She did wonderfully.

Lesson of the day: There's no need to postpone a training session every time an unexpected distraction pops up. Take advantage of the opportunity!   Also, focus is easier to maintain if you have it before it's lost. 

Today: A sort-of repeat. Find Heel again with treats and a couple of playing kids as a distraction. After I used up the small handful I had set aside, we dashed back inside to grab a toy. Here's the cool thing: Lotte caught on quickly that finding heel and keeping up with me for several paces produced the toy (which I alternated between tossing directly to her and tossing ahead with a "go get it!"). It definitely felt, for the first time, like she's really really caught on to my find-heel game. I probably should have been using toys in the first place - I know she's more toy motivated than anything else. 

Anyway, the coolest thing of the night... after a toss of the toy and Lotte grabbing it up, I about-turned and started to move away, and Lotte came trotting right up along my left side, in heel position, carrying her toy. 

Looking forward, I need to figure a couple of things out about the next steps I take (like: do we learn heel-starts, or do we introduce the command via find-heel first and let the heel starts form naturally once she understands that? Or, better yet, are we even ready for that step yet?). In the meantime, I have plans to take our Find Heel game on the road this week. Should be fun. 

If my book addiction wasn't bad enough...

... I have an e-reader now! And it has taken me all of five minutes to zero in on some sources of dog training e-books.

I haven't passed judgement on how much I like it yet though. There's just something about the feel and smell of a real book (bonus if it's an old book) that pixels on a screen can't fully replicate.

Off to a great start...

I'm off to such a great start with keeping up with blogging! LOL

Find Heel has been a successful exercise with Lotte so far. Well, at least for what we've worked on it. I got super-busy again, so I really need to work on that resolution of dedicating time each day to training.  I'm also pondering a few theory points on heelwork, so that's holding me back a little too. Mhmm...