Monday, Monday

Bungee through the iPhone lens.


The weekend flew by and another week has already rolled around. We continue to spend a good part of every day dodging severe thunderstorms and complete deluges of rain. All still great for our field, still not complaining & still no sign of the weather pattern changing any day soon.

I spent a lot of my training time this weekend working on obedience. Evenings I spent catching up with some dog-related reading and working through a small stack of borrowed books. It's nice to see what some of the latest titles are about, and to catch up on older ones that escaped you when they were new.

While every piece of information may not be useful, or even agreed with, it is delightful when an idea or solution sparks in your mind, even if it is about something other than the one you are reading about at the moment. That's most often what happens to me.

Meanwhile, with Bungee's obedience training I am backing up a bit on a few exercises. I am re-examining which exercises are still being shaped and which are rightfully on cue. Also, what I'm expecting of Bungee in class, which typical in our area, obedience is not a clicker-based class. Nevertheless I gave my word I would not put Bungee into lure-based training situations, and I continue to work to my own standards on that point, with the full cooperation of the instructor.

For those behaviors on cue I am reminding myself to insist on rewarding only excellent behaviors. This is called Differential Reinforcement of Excellent Behavior's, DRE's.

After beginning actual record-keeping again (tracking # of rewarded & unrewarded responses and rate of success), I also increased my RR (rate of reinforcement) by a lot. It was quite obvious I was not rewarding enough as soon as I started tracking on paper. In fact, we are just about back to hand-feeding one full meal a day so that we can work our obedience. The improved results in our sessions are like night & day.

Lastly I'm going to try some new little tips regarding focus & attention in class, via a couple of exercises Dr. Deb Jones & Angelica Steinker write about. One thing about such tips is you know right away if they work or not. My interpretation of them is sort of an "It's Yer Choice" situation where I'm the hot item, at least that's how I'm going to use them.


Obedience
Distractions - looking for simple basics in the presence of distractions, does she look to me when I say her name, does she change her gaze to me and come immediately when I ask? Very meaningful rewards when the answer is "yes". If the answer is "no", she does not respond to me, she does not turn her head to me and come instantly when called, we relocate and try again. Keep in mind - she always comes, but she may take what I call her sweet time in doing so, depending on the distraction. At one point last week I was changing her nickname from "Sweet" to "Sweet-Time"! Back to those DRE's, with the one catch being the recall is not optional.

Stand - good improvement here at home and also while out & about this weekend on routine errands. Bungee is offering a nice kick-back stand and nicely planting those front feet and cooperating about doing so in the spot I've put her in. She is almost always doing so with a toy on the ground that given her own devices she would probably choose to stalk. However, she is managing to work through all of that nicely, as she needs to. Success comes back to motivation - what's in it for her? I've apparently succeeded in making it more worthwhile for her.

Sit & Down - working for dynamic behaviors in both.

Sit, Down, Stand - also working for changes of position.

Heeling - DRE's all the way, rewarding much earlier for position, w/ attention ahead or on me and will continue to keep this a very short exercise for a high RR for a while. Her heeling went from excellent to easily distracted and I know it was due to "lumping" and low RR. Right now I'm carrying 2 and sometime 3 toys, (one being a small soft ball) along with food, so able to really up the ante on reward surprises.

Making regular batches of Salmon Brownies for heeling and contacts as they are the only food I can give her that she can get, process in her mouth, (she is a very careful eater), swallow, and almost immediately take a toy without the problem of spitting out or dropping food out of her mouth.

Front - very nice work here from 3' - 6', but it tends to fall apart from 20', where I get her bouncing a foot off me on occasion. So we will just incrementally add distance as we can maintain the behavior we want and keep it varied.

With all - I'm making more effort to ask for the exercises where ever I am. As an example, I have never thought twice about weighing my dogs in the vet's waiting room and asking for a nose touch before they leave the scale, when we're in the heat of training contacts. Or likewise on the curb next to the car when the DH is in a store on an errand. Now I'm making more effort to ask for obedience exercises where ever we are. We'll call it "obedience immersion" :-))

Agility
All the basics continue. Have taken a week off from any jumping since last week's class due to a combination of things, weather, time, other interests to work on.

Contacts - DRE's all the way here too. I had her getting up on her travel plank in 2o2o position for nose touches (NT), or I had her get on her travel plank (or stairs) and on "ok" going into 2o2o position for NT's. Now I'm asking her to get on to her travel plank and go directly into 2o2oNT. We've done a lot more work on the indoor travel plank than the outdoor stairs due to the weather.

Teeter - anxious to put some of the good stuff from "Sizzling See-Saws" back to work. So came home and ordered a 2nd table - finally, should be ready to pick-up Thursday. Going on my 3rd dog that has needed a 2nd table so finally broke down and bought one. Bungee really didn't like my make-shift version of a square board on a recycled steel frame from an old set of army surplus drawers. We'll ought to have some great photo ops when we get back to work on it.

Miscellaneous
I discovered that Bungee cannot sit, take and hold her food bowl for me outside of her crate. She has no problem going into a sit in her crate, picking up her bowl and waiting for me to take it. She also has no problem carrying it to me all over the house. But asking her to stop & sit with it in her mouth, after she's carried it to me across a room, was not in her skill set. That's when I learned even just asking her to sit, giving the bowl to her, (which she will take in her mouth) and then hold it for me was also not in her skill set. Of course, this is on the top of the "must learn" tricks list at the moment!

So, to Pirjo & Fun, it is going to be a little while longer until I can snap that picture and show Bungee & Fun, side-by-side, holding their bowls like twins!
But we're working on it!!!

Happy training,
Hug your dogs & remember, It's About Love!