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.