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...