Thu Mar 11
So these past few weeks, i've been working with Yoshi on his down on
recall and I can mostly get it in the yard, but around sheep it's
difficult. Around the slower goats it works (with goats it's a
stop). Trouble is that all of his other training has to do with a
good recall and being close to me. It's pretty inherit in him to
come back to me and to have him not do that is a tough one but if I
want him to continue herding it's pretty imperative.
Did some work in the yard with him on remote down. He can't help
but take three steps to me and then down, but he does usually
down. It's funny he doesn't seem to hear on the first time or his
response is slow (always has been some). Trek of course does it
right away though there was one exception. I had them both in a
down and told them to sit and it was Yoshi who sat. Then I was
able to tell him to down again.
Yoshi walk. One dog but an important one. A dog so teeny
that I wasn't sure it was a dog for a bit. They were coming right
towards us on Central so we just crossed the street. Central is a
relatively wide street for Alameda so we didn't retreat further.
I had him sit and stay with me hoovering right over him with a short
leash. the dog is so small he's engaging with me at first so we
play sit and treat a few times. Then while he's on a sit he sees
the dog. I repeat stay and I'm right over him. He rumbles a
growl but doesn't move and then looks up at me. Good dog have a
goody. I have him sit again as the dog is still just across the
street and Yoshi does with some hesitation (I helped put him
there.) This time he just reengaged with out even worrying about
the dog. Cool. Phew.
He also walked right past a squirrel stationary on the ground. If
they're not in the trees or running he doesn't seem to care.
Yoshi has a herding lesson from another instructor who doesn't want to
be mentioned. This is on sheep and I am concerned but determined
to take it very slow. She has a round pen and I anticipate
spending most of our time there.
Tue Mar 9
I am reeling. It's amazing to me that one person can completely screw
one's plans up.
One of the managers at Willowside Ranch has decided that Yoshi and 4
Cattledogs are too rough on the stock and doesn't want them to come
back. One of the Cattledogs bit a sheep and so they all got banned
which seems unfair to them.
During a session, we had a lighter, recalcitrant sheep that we
removed after she hit the fence at low speed Remove that sheep
helped. I don't think the manager likes how revved up Yoshi gets
and how I have to argue with him (Yoshi) to make him stop. And of
course it is the manager's job to protect the stock, but this is a
training facility and all is not going to go smoothly.
It totally smacks of breed prejudice which I don't normally see, but hear
about, and I'm really not sure what to do. Whether to keep training or
just stop and teach him how to track. I'm so bummed as I really wanted
to make him a goat dog and ironically the regular school sheep will be
back next week. It makes me wonder if I hadn't done anything until the
regular school sheep were back if we'd have been better off.
If the money wasn't such an issue I'd take him down to S. Calif for the
trial anyway and just practice there. But I don't think I want the
stress and the $100/night hotel costs. And he probably doesn't want the
stress of unfamiliar sheep either.
I just don't know what to do. I could beg Joyce to let him come back to
her place or do a long trip out to Nola Jones in Pleasant Grove or there's Bob Euwing in Hollister, or just
go back to Obedience and Rally training which is so much easier. When
they become available I can put him in a Nosework class and see how he
does with that and then if I want to spend as much time as herding takes
I can sign him up to learn tracking if Debbie Best is still teaching it
- I'm sure the rains have really messed with their schedule. They can
only do it until the foxtails come out and then they have to move to a park.
I'm just trying to figure out what makes him happy. Having and
maintaining order in his life seems to be paramont but herding is pretty
stressful for him even though it's what he is wired to do.
I think we'll wait a little while and them ask again if he can work with
the goats. He's never hurt a goat.
Trek Agility Class
Hard as it was to concentrate, I took Trek to Power Paws for a
class. It was good to have something else to focus on besides
Yoshi's situation.
It's light enough now for the first part of class that we did courses
with contacts. It was cold and the wind was blowing so Trek was
revved and didn't have any contact issues for the first run and then
started doing her avoidance behavior on the second run and didn't even
leave the line on the 3rd, so grass is not the magic answer though it
helps.
The rest of the class was on front and rear cross drills mostly with
jumps and tunnels with occasional weavepoles tossed in. Her
enthusiasm would vary but given that she was most enthusiastic at the
start line I clearly need to play or treat her more on course.
Post to frapfest and coltsrunkids
I am reeling. One of the managers at the place Yoshi trains decided
that Yoshi (and all 4 of the Cattledogs) were too rough on the stock
and that he can't train there anymore - he was being too rough on one
sheep but seemed ok when we took that sheep out. My trainer tried to
negotiate with the manager (what if she did the handling? what if we
only worked on goats?) but he wasn't having any part of it. Apparently
this guy is a sheep guy and not really a dog person though he has
dogs. The people who are really shafted are the Cattledog people.
Apparently one of them bit a sheep, so they all got banned. I haven't
run into such intense breed prejudice before.
I am bummed as I was hoping to turn him into a goat dog since he seems
to do so well with them, and no one else around here has goats. I'm
going to wait a little while and then ask again.
I think I'm going to pass on the Southern Calif Corgi trial which I am sad about, but not going saves me a whole bunch of money.
The other bummer is that the heavier sheep he is used to have weaned
their babies and will be back instead of the recalcitrant sheep we have
now. I do wonder what would have happened if we'd just waited for the
steadier sheep to come back.
I haven't decided whether to beg Joyce Shephard to take him back or not.
Mon Mar 8
Did a lot of relaxation protocol exercises with them in crates (lots of
knocking on and unlocking of doors) before Cathy came over. When
she came they hardly reacted at all but were happy to see her.
Sun Mar 7
Yoshi walk. It's the afternoon and lots of dogs are out
walking.at least 5 dog sightings one of them repeated. Every
sinble time he was asked to do a sit-stay and over time his compliance
improved. Not surprisingly the first time (and second) was him
sitting for a second and then leaping up to try to charge the dog and
me repositioning him (polite term). But over time he started to
sort of get what was expected and at least to some extent go over the
"oh you can't possibly mean that now - especially when there's a DOG
across the street." But he actually did kinda sort of start to
get it. Type of dog was all over the place, and he actually
started to get it when a LWFD was across the street which is usually
when he's at his worst.
Trek walk. Went fine except that turn for home on Gibbons where she
starts to try to drag me. I think I'm going to have to vary the
route for her. Yoshi likes the routine but I'm tiried of the last
of my walk with Trek being a don't drag me conversation. Not to
mention I do want it to be good exercise for her without my arm coming
off.
I was actually annoyed at Trek as I went to walk her first but she went
and hid in her crate and wouldn't come out so I took Yoshi instead
which turned out to be great. I could have bribed her out but
decided that my point was better made taking Yoshi first. Terri
though that she thought it was close to dinner time, but funny that she
was willing to come with me after Yoshi got back and still before
dinner.
Trying to decide how much I regret deciding not to take Yoshi to S.
Calif. It's a bummer but I don't think it makes him happy.
He's passionate about herding, but he's fearful about it and he really
don't know how to handle himself just yet, and skittish sheep really
stress him. If I were guaranteed mellow sheep then maybe but
there never are guarantees in herding. Besides it means I save a
few hundred dollars in travel costs.
Sat Mar 6
Yoshi herding
Our usual sheep have been on Mom duty and haven't been available so we
now have medium sheep and things didn't go well. He actually
crashed one into a fence (relatively low speed but still not
good.) And he's just not working very well and not listening and
seems stressed out. My plan was to have Marian work with him but
he didn't want to so I had to be out there also. His anxiety
level seems to match the sheep's. So for his second run we put
him on goats and he was fine. Kinda pooped out at the end but
before that wore behind them (running back and forth at the back to
move them along), he stopped when asked. We worked on his outrun
and when I tried to push him out he would stop, but I must have been pushing
on his head too much.
His anxiety seems to match the stock's. So I'm thinking that we
should bail on the Corgi trial and just do goats for a while (could
even compete in AHBA on goats) and then maybe intro him to geese or
ducks. He's been afraid of geese in the past so I may push for
the ducks that we had Trek on as I think they would be perfect even if
they don't herd as well as the ranch geese apparently.
Those on corgiherders say that if he's on goats too much he'll learn
some bad habits about crowding but he does that already. I'm
thinking I'd like him to learn some confidence first. Cindy T. says
that sometimes they use goats for tests in Az as their sheep are too
light. Given that he's kind of a stress puppy I'm not sure if
he'll ever be able to work lighter sheep and that is starting to sound
fine to me - I just want him to be happy and maybe just being a goat
dog is fine. Till one takes a good whack at him. Then he
may not like it so much. One gave him a glancing blow but he
appears to have recovered about that. They are at least more his
size.
Marian doesn't want him to roll in the pasture anymore. She wants
him to think that he's only here to work. I think he does that
only from stress but ok.
Fri Mar 5
The weather gods appear to be granting us a reprieve. Trek's class and Yoshi's lesson might not be rained out this time.
I am concerned that Yoshi is not getting enough sheep time before his
PT. Good thing we've already done the JHD so I know we can do it
when I don't forget what I'm doing. i have to remember to only go
part of the way to te sheep, then I can help him with staying further
out which keeps them from splitting up.
Yoshi Walk. Working entirely on sit and stay when there's a dog
passing. Saw one dog but it went much better than I
expected. On Court approaching Santa Clara and we were withint
1/2 of a house length of the corner when I saw the dog about to cross
in front of us but across the street. i told Yoshi to sit and
stay and then he say the dog crossing in front of him (small to med
sized thin black dog moving at average speed.) He grumbled but
that was it and didn't move. Good boy. Have a goodie.
We did sit and stay semi randomly during the rest of the walk so it
doesn't become a predictor of a dog. Also sit and stayed for a
woman to pass with a large package and that was fine.
I'm hoping Trek has class tonight. Holding steady so far.
Trek class.
The weather held. I got Trek out on the upper field and did a
couple of dog walks and an A-Frame and some weaves and a few
tunnels. Then back on the lower field she did a teeter. For
all of them I made it plainly obvious that if she did them she'd get
the treat I was holding. She seemed happy to do them all.
Then in class she hesitated at the teeter and I stood there holding the
treat. She thought about it and then did it and earned her treat.
It's funny, by herself she's fine, but when others show up and the
comotion increases, she starts to stress. When the very animated
Steve and Charlie show up she starts to shake (this is on the lower
field). I picked her up and let her hide in my lap behind
Rachelle over on the side, and she started to relax. When we move
up to the upper field she does ok but tries to poop out on the last run
and wants to look for treats. I pinch her but and that actually
wakes her up and she finishes the course. It's possible that she
gets more distracted at Sharon's because there are more things on the
ground than at Power Paw's grass field. Don't know.
Thu Mar 4
Yoshi Walk. Beautiful break in the weather and no dogs! Hmphf. Hardly any people
either.
Various places put him on a stay while I walked around him. He's
volunteering down even though I mostly ask for sit.
Finally say someone carry a package and another with an umbrella and he
sat and stayed while they went by (across the street.)
Took both dogs in the yard and had them both do down stays while I
walked and jogged back and forth. Trek broke when i waved my arms and
also gets restless over 30 seconds, but otherwise they did well but the
squirrels weren't around either. sigh.
So without triggers they both have pretty good stays. I guess that's a
start. I'm encouraged that Yoshi's stays are actually better than
Trek's but her response time is better to a cue. He has so very much
the A.D.D. "Oh you were talking to me?" thing going. When he focuses
he's great, but anything that moves captures his attention. He's
actually more OCD really as he will chase shadows if I let him.
As an alternative to a Thundershirt Debbie suggested a pack. It's
kinda hilarious to think of Yoshi with a pack but they do make his size
so it's possible and it might give him the feeling that he is working.
i also have Cali's screaming pink life vest that I could put on him to
see how he does with the sensation, but there's no way I'm walking
around the neighborhood with him wearing it unless it's at night.
I worry about what people would think of a Corgi carrying a pack
especially since my dogs are really small. Maybe I should make
him carry his poop.
Trek walk.
Ok that was not the right approach. I took her down to Santa
Clara and Broadway which is a relatively busy intersection for Alameda
while still being two lane roads. My thought was not even to go
down Broadway like we did before (and she thought we'd be going down it
as she started down it), but instead to go there and eat yummy
treats. She was happy to eat the treats(and chomp on my fingers),
but it did nothing to reduce her anxiety and she dragged me all the way
back home to the point that I deliberately overshot and went home a
different way. Near the end she wash[t draging me quite so much
but it took forever as I was constantly calling her back. On the
block going back to the house she was able to work on some heeling but
you could tell she was still stressed.
When we got back home i put their T-shirt on her and took her out just
for a bit. It may help a little but I really can't be sure.
Measured both dogs chest for a Thundershirt and they're both 19".
Both a small and a medium are listed as in their range so I wrote them
asking what they thought best for a Corgi. I'm thinking medium.
Wed Mar 3
I was asking CU_Dogs_SF about the Thundershirt that you can get from Karen Pryor's site which helps dogs feel more comfortable
And another poster asked if I'd tried a snug shirt and I realized I
haven't used on for a while except to keep Trek warm at agility.
So for Yoshi's walk I put the shirt on him and off we went. We
saw one dog and his behavior was about the same. Engaged with me
until the dogs motion triggered a response from him to want to charge
the dog. I wound up correcting him for it (leash pops), but I'm
not sure if it does any good.
I think I need to work pretty exclusively on Stay. I have tried
watch and leave it with mixed results but i need him to stay when I
tell him to and he knows it but just not under stress except for
sheep. With sheep he's gotten to the point where I can put him in
a stay and walk around to the sheep and he'll stay there. But
when the sheep are moving is where things don't work so well.
Wonder if I'll get a stay with dogs or sheep first.
Tue Mar 2
Yoshi walk
Frustrating day.
Early in the walk we were surprised by a sudden sighting of a GSD
(whose owner turned around and went the other way when Y started
objecting.
Then we didn't have quite enough time to set up for a dog running at
us. When I saw that they were running right at us, we were able
to turn around and walk away from them and got around a corner but i
only went a house length and that's not really enough space for a
running dog, so we argue about that too.
Then after all that frustration, we saw two large dogs crossing his
path at a distance is fine. The distance was about a street width
and over two house widths.
Trek walk. Took her down 1 block of Broadway and she was very
unhappy about that. Think her level is High St. Both
streets should be about the same but Broadway is more frenetic for some
reason.
Mon Mar 1
Yoshi walk
Went over to the school but only saw one dog. Let him see the dog
from 1/2 a block no problem. That dog stops and we approach and
hid behind a parked car. while the dog is still stopped I try
passing the dog but then that dog starts moving (not at us) and Yoshi
starts barking, not horribly but enough to where I've giving him leash
pops and saying leave it to keep moving.
This was frustrating. So we go on a normal walk and practice
downing at the corners instead of sitting. I'm not sure if it's
too much to ask for a down to something he wants to charge but it's
worth practicing.
Also worked on down at a distance in the yard and he really wants to
come closer first. Probably should do sits at a distance also as
i don't think he gets that either. Trek does and when she's out
there too she's always the first one to do it - just to annoy me I'm
sure.
Trek walk. Took her over to High St. with not that much dragging
though she certainly wanted to turn off sooner rather than go on the
slightly busy street. I should probably start walking her down
Broadway too, and routinely take her over to Park St. Maybe even
over to Dog Bone Alley to get treats and attention. She's been to
Park St Faires before and thought they were a little much but coped
(she got carried for a lot of it.)
Cathy came over for our DVD gathering
I had Yoshi on a leash and I insisted he sit while she came in.
He was a bit incredulous, but he knows Cathy so I knew he could
cope. I had to reposition him 2-3 times (yes, really you have to sit),
but he was able to hold it while she came closer and I then released
him to go say hi to her. I really liked that as it's a relatively
non-stressful way he can practice self control.
Sun Feb 28
[Monday's entry over wrote this one. Drat]
Sat Feb 27
Herding was rained out today. I have never taken a phone call on the
San Mateo bridge before. Especially a relevant one. I'm
just lucky the phone was on and charged and I was over water so had
great reception.
Instead of herding we went to Central Park in San Mateo off El Camino
(North of 92). Central Park is an older style city park with some
grassy area, some trees, a Japanese Garden, and people gathering to do
Tai Chi (perfect for dogs with issues with people moving funny and no
issue for Yoshi Because it was early there wasn't a lot of
activity except for the Tai Chi and some dog walking. Yoshi was
really wanting to charge two different sets of small dogs and wouldn't
settle down until I grabbed his scruff and held on to him pretty hard
(even collar corrrections weren't working), then the instant the dog(s)
had gone by he regained his composure and reconnected (nice try - no
reward for you - twit.). But later he was able to look at the
same dogs from a distance and was able to have two large black dogs go
by. He did so well at this we followed them and when they
stopped, after some consideration, were able to walk pass them and they
were only about 25' away.
He was pretty stressed for the entire time but was able to cope past
the first 15 minutes. There was one time where I had to pick him
up to let two small-medium sized dogs go by. Dooing a lot of
pulling on the leash but generally keeping his cool except for walking
along and finding that a huge dog (statue) was standing right beside
him.
Then we got to an open area which you can see here:
and that seemed to help a lot but there were many ways that people
could come in so he was somthing of a swivel head. We started out
on Laurel Ave and that distance in that area was enough around 50' but
more just barely.
But that path is too narrow for Yoshi. Debbie says it's about
twice the width of a sidewalk, but that's not wide enough for Yoshi who
needs more like 50-75' of lateral distance.
[question to CU_Dogs_SF]
I've been trying to come up with a list of places that are good to
practice CU. I'm thinking about the low over head type where you
go by yourself with pooch and watch activity as opposed to CU specific
gatherings where we gather to practice CU group exercises.
I was wondering what places folks found useful. Obviously it
depends on your dog's issues, but I think good features are long sight
lines, without places that pinch down into a narrow walkway/trail, good
lateral distance to retreat into, and a place where people walk their
dogs (Alameda Navy Base is good except for that point.)
Today because of herding being rained out (and learning about it when
we were halfway there), we went to Central Park in San Mateo off El
Camino which was ok retreat wise (though had a lot of places you could
get trapped), but had some entertaining features including a lot of
people doing Tai Chi, a beautiful Japanese Garden, some leashed dogs
walking, and best of all a giant dog sculpture that it took a long time
for Yoshi to figure out wasn't real.
My favorites are places so far are
Washington Park in Alameda
and
Morgan Territory, in the East Bay
The shoreline park near Jump N Java that we've had privates at does ok. What else?
But both of these are or have off leash areas and dogs running loose
then to drive my dog a bit nuts (Fort Funston makes him a little crazy,
but we have been able to make it work before). I'm hoping to find
more large parks that are on leash. Does this mean that I have to
go to the slightly dog-hostile Peninsula as opposed to the East Bay?
I'm trying to figure out what the fastest way to Yoshi's brain is when
he's upset. Saying/yelling his name or leave it or other similar
things eventually gets through (he'll start crying his frustrated cry
which is how I can tell I've gotten through). Physically
restraining him will work but he fights it and that may delay his
settling down. I have replaced the battery in the beeping collar
that he hates as that's been the fastest and scares him right out of
his false bravado. I'm not thrilled about it but it's worth
working on. There's no longer any citronella in it so I can take
it along with us on a walk without endangering myself to being totally
sprayed with citronella. It's loud enough that he doesn't have to
wear it (probably shouldn't) I could just have it on me. One more
thing to carry though.
Trek walk. Walked her in the afternoon which she wasn't happy
about at all. Wish I could walk her in the afternoon more often
as Q's in the afternoon are rare for us (it's her power nap
time). She also really didn't want to not take the usual walk and
wasn't happy about being taken closer to the noisier busy street.
Same thing later in the walk where she didn't want to be taken on the
longer part of that section either, and while she didn't freak about
walking past the school with kids, some bouncing balls and chains
hittting metal poles she did drag me some but after crossing the street
and going 3 houses down was willing to stop and eat treats.
i have to decide what April should look like for her. It could be
very busy, but I will have just gotten back from Southern Calif and
will be rather poor, so I think we'll do just the Bayteam trial and
probably just one day of that since two days isn't working well
yet. Suppose I could also work in one day of the TRACS trial but
haven't decided yet.
Fri Feb 26
Trek's first obedience class with Lori
More out of curiosity than anything I took Trek to Lori's monthly ob
class. I also wanted to see if it's something she would like
though I admit that I dread her loving it as I'm really wanting at
least one of my dogs to like agility.
The answer is mixed. She loves the treats and the parts that she
knows really well (stays and recalls) she excels at. Heeling not
so much but ok. In the past we worked on her stand for exam and
she surprised me and did great. Not only standing there but
allowing two strangers (Lori and Scout's mom Cathy) to go over her
without much wiggling at all. With a little more work she might
actually be able to get a CD though then we've be stuck in Open.
She found the figure 8 heeling around a dog which she's only done a
couple of times, to be strange. She mostly really hated that the
wind rattled the roll up door but Hazel stuffed a jacket into it which
helped. She did ok on heeling exercises though not great and
rocked the recalls and the stays. Lori was rattling a treat bag
near her and she started to drool so I told Lori that she was evil and
Lori said that it's her job. Trek didn't like that Harriet had
her dog on a flexi and the flexi was making noises, so after the long
sit I moved her but she wound up right beside Callie who was in a very
wiggly mode and Tasha had to insist that she stop buggy Trek. So
Trek's down stay wasn't perfect, but she tried. I also really
like that on the second recall she uncertainly stood up thinking I had
called her, but when I didn't respond she stopped and when I asked her
to sit again she did without me having to move at all which means she
knows the word by itself without any other surrounding context, and
then her recall was still great.
So I don't know. It's something she could easily do but I'm pretty attached to agility so I'm not giving up just yet.
Wed Feb 24
Yoshi walk
He actually wound up going out twice, once at noon and once right after work.
Noon. No dogs but gardener's bustling all over the place though
what caught his attention the most wasn't the mower/trrimmer weilding
gardeners but the person standing right behind them with a large gym
size bag over his shoulder. Though he decided that was ok
too. Coming back Annie across the street started barking at us so
we stopped and he ate treats until she settled down.
Evening. Coming back from work I notice a lot of dogs out so I
apologize to Trek and grab Yoshi to go out sightseeing. 4 dog
encounters. 2 of them I just hid him behind a parked car, one was
just ok and the other one was excellent. The two times we hid
were all bouncy medium size black dogs. One was actively barking
at us and everyone else. The we saw a slow moving smaller but
stocky LWFD and Yoshi didn't react to the dog at all which totally
surprised me. Then two black labs appeared moving fast which got
him amped up and we turned around and wenr back to a parked car we
could hide behind. It might have been fine if there was just one
of them, but it just wasn't happening. Then we hung out on the
corner catty corner to the school (the place where a lot of people walk
their dogs and a LWFD was approaching slowly, but Yoshi was still kind
jacked up about the labs so we backed off about 1/2 a house width and
watched the other dog round the corner still following the school's
perimeter. Yoshi had settled so I decided to try shadowing the
dog. That was great until we got considerably closer and the
other dog took exception (barkbarkbarkbark) so we turned around and
cleared out. Yoshi wanted to bark back but was happy to come
along. Fortunately another dog hadn't snuck up on us them.
I've decided that I love parked cars. they give me so many more
options. We no longer have to retreat nearly so much and even
though I could swear that Yoshi should be able to see underneath them
he doesn't appear to be doing so - probably because we're a curb height
higher than the car is. I can control just when and how much I
let him see the other dog, and I can watch him better if we're not
moving away quickly.
Trek walk. Dragged her down busy High St which she didn't like but did ok.
Mon Feb 22
Both dogs. Worked on down in the yard.
Not surprisingly Trek is a lot better at it than Yoshi is (the one who needs the skill).
Story of my life.
The most physically talented dog is the least responsive.
The more responsive dog is the least driven to work.
I need to remember to have the down signal closer to my face as this
works a lot better for Yoshi. My face is where he looks. Reaching for
the sky doesn't necessarily help. Though reaching up with both hands
works some too, but more for Out.
I think I'm going to do more of this when there's a squirrel in the
backyard. That's the only really hard thing I can come up with
besides a dog walking by. Yoshi needs to be able to run get a
sheep and then when the sheep is coming back he needs to stop or down
and not chase the sheep in. I'm having a hard time coming up with
anything at all similar.
No dogs on Yoshi's walk, well ones that I let him see. I passed on the
two small dogs riding in a couple of milk crates on a bicycle with
their person - I lost count of the number of things that could go wrong
and that wasn't including the small child riding along on another bike
beside them (Why do people take these kind of chances?). For the rest
of the walk we saw lots of kids and other activity which is always good
for him to be around.
During the down work Trek again underscored that she would be a great
obedience dog. I'm not completely convinced that she wouldn't just
find something else to stress about there. People get stressed at
obedience trials which is nothing like agility. I guess I should at
least give her a chance.
I really want to help her work through her fear of contact equipment.
I can't decide whether switching to the teeter free NADAC would help or
not (and NADAC is further away from me.) Certainly fun matches will
and she's actually not entered in any trial right now though I will
likely put her in the Bayteam one.
Sun Feb 21
Raining and none of us want to do much.
Trek's no entered in any competitions right now while I think about
what to do. I think she needs to be in some fun matches for a
while.
I'm often wondering why she's doing so well at Power Paws and not
elsewhere. It occurs to me that the PP class doesn't have a lot
of contacts in it since the contacts are no in the lighted area of the
course. This will change as it gets lighter and it will be
interesting to see if that changes anything.
I'm debating whether Trek would like obedience better but agility is my
sport and I'm not very interested into completely giving it up
especially since she has her brilliant moments.
Sat Feb 20
Yoshi herding
Over the sessions he went from you are so not going, to well maybe with a handler, to well ok it might work. He's
still mostly an idiot but it's of course my fault as Marian can
handle him and he's ok. Part of the problem is that I had gone
back to going all the way to the sheep and I should have stayed just
halfway out and helped push him out. Unfortunately I wasn't clued
in about this until later in the sessions but finally got it together
but not until alot of struggle had resulted. Marian remarked to
Yoshi about how much better about other dogs he was being. I noticed
that he was surrounded by 3 dogs he knew. Just as soon as a new
dog came in I had to cover his eyes while he quietly voiced his
disapproval
Next time I'm going to have Marian handle him from the start and then
maybe I can jump in there later. Unfortunately we might get
rained out next Sat, but I've cleared every Saturday for this endeavor
so we'll likely get some of the days to work.
Fri Feb 19
Trek Agility class at SharonF's.
The surface was very nice tonight so I'm glad that's not an issue she
can make. This time I set her crate up which she was very happy
about and we got there early so I could get her on a dog walk and some
other obstacles. After thinking about it a second she went up the
dog walk without issue which I was happy about. Later one she
went up the A-Frame without a problem. The teeter was in the
lower field and we only did one course on it but it included it.
At first she didn't want to do it and I wasn't about to beg her, but I
had her food reward in my hands and make a motion to put it away ("you
don't want to do it, well ok"). Then she suddenly decided that it
was well worth the risk and earned her reward. This is sort of
the reverse of hiding the reward. It's bribery and with certain
dogs it does work.
I notice that while we were on the upper field that as soon as Steve
and Charlie (a mini Aussie) appeared that she stalked off into her
crate, and wouldn't come out until Rachelle called her. Rachelle
used a higher voice and so I'm experimenting with a higher voice but
it's not very natural for me and it turned out she did fine with a
normal tone of voice from me.
Thu Feb 18
Yoshi Walk.
Interesting. People talking to themselves animatedly (probably a
cell phone but who can really tell?) get his attention. He
doesn't react but he certainly tenses up looking at them. 2 other
people talking normally on a cell phone do not get his attention.
One dog. One I was familiar with. Santa Clara and Court and
Ruby is coming right at us head and tail up (she is occasionally
reactive), but across the street. Yoshi tenses and growls but we
retreat down Santa Clara a little as i know she lives on Court and she
does turn that way so it was a good experience as he got to see that
retreating works as I then brought him back to the same spot.
He was up and alert but ok. Though then he say the hyper cell phone conversation and he thought that was weird.
Wed Feb 17
Yoshi Walk. No dogs. Tons of kids wandering around and he did great.
Trek Walk. Evening. I went to gym class and it's now full
dark but still early evening (7ish). We start to walk and I hear
some rustling in my neighbor's shrubbery. I look around as we've
had raccoons around before though they've never been aggressive, just
stubborn about not wanting to move along. Just as we're passing,
something the exact size and greyish color of a raccoon bounds right up
to Trek. I retreat yelling NO! but then I finally clue in that
that's no raccoon but a dog. My neighbor's dog, who really wants
to say hello to Trek (boy dogs love her and she really wishes they'd
mostly just go away). I catch Guido and fortunately he lets me
lead him back to his house. Trek is most unthrilled about being
towed along in this operation but I don't want to let go of her right
now (I should carry a second leash.) Fortunately Frank does
eventually answer the dog and Guido is safely delivered home with Frank
wondering how he got out.
The rest of the walk had Trek a little on alert but she was ok.
We'll have to see how she is tomorrow but it won't be full dark then
either.
Tue Feb 16
I'm on my own this week and I'm forgetting just how much work it is to keep up with all of the dog details.
Someone I know is taking care of her 4 dogs by herself, but she's not working full time either.
The Scion is eating cables (a gps cable and and ipod charger) and now
Trek's leash. Both dogs are a little confused that I'm using
Yoshi's leash but they're coping.
Trek walk
This time we did the usual route but I took her down High Street.
Again I had treats with me but the only time I used the was around the
noisy kids at the montesori school. High pitched voices which was
ok until a ball bounced a little then she wanted to hurry on by.
I let her continue until just past it and then called her back to feed
her. Same thing after we rounded the corner on Central which she
always wants to charge.
Then we moved along at a good clip even jogging a little here and there. She seemed happy to be out and moving about.
Yoshi's walk will be this evening.
Yoshi Walk.
At dusk, but it was light out when we started. We only saw one
dog and this should be dog walking primetime. What is wrong with
you people? I need to train my dog and you're busy doing
something else. Hmphf. The one we saw was good. We
were crossing the street and I felt the leash tighten (one reason I
don't leave a lot of slack in the leash him is that get earlier warning
about something he sees. Fortunately I thought to repeatedly say
Leave It as I finally saw the approaching dog on the other side of
Central. When we go to the other side of the cross street we were
able to sit and watch the dog go by. Sitting was harder this time
instead of moving which is the reverse of what it usually is, but both
worked. This was a GSD moving at average speed with his head
down, and not looking at us at all.
I'm less than thrilled with the dusk walks. I think he'll learn
more when he can see better but I have to remember that he likely can
see just fine.
Trek squeaky toy fetch. About 10 or so maybe a little less. She just loves it.
Did a little exercise in front of the TV and the dogs thought I was nuts (I usually go to the gym.)
Mon Feb 15
Last week Trek got in the mail a couple of titles that she's earned
many months ago. It's now occurring to me that no one is going to
notice for quite a while if Trek gets a 3rd gambler's leg and she
doesn't move up. So I think we'll just continue to enter it and if I'm
worried about bumping someone's placement I can just arrange to not get
enough points in the opening. As long as contacts appear in gambles we're safe from that title. :)
[noon]
So for a little while I'm going to switch the routine and walk Trek at
noon and Yoshi after work. The days are getting longer, so I'll
still be able to see in the evening, so I won't be such at a
disadvantage of Yoshi seeing the dog first since I depend on seeing the
dog first. (Ok, so I forget to end sentances sometimes.)
Trek walk. Yoshi was all set to go, but when I said Trek's name
and explained to him that he would get his walk later he seemed to
understand something and strolled off.
While I brought treats, the point of this and future walks like it are
to move quickly and that is something she actually enjoys all by
itself. I kept the same walk, but at corners we only paused with
"stop." I didn't make her sit, and then as soon as it was clear, I
just said "walk." If she trotted, I did too, and after about 1/2
a mile which is part of the way down Central (the short version I do at
noon is just under a mile) she started to get winded, but was happy to
just keep walking fairly briskly. If I had a lot of time the
thing to do is to repeat this walk later, but I need to walk Yoshi. At
noon if I don't have to do anything else, I do have time to make the walk a little longer which will help,
but for now the best thing will be to exercise and get out in the
middle of the day when it's sunny.
What's going to be tough for me is that I have to do the reverse for
Yoshi. He is fit (even though he gets the same amount of exercise
as Trek - go figure - just a higher stress-puppy metabolism I think) and his walks are more about getting out into the
scary doggy world and not freaking out about or trying to control the
other dogs, but to just leave them be and watch them.
Yoshi walk
On the drive home I noticed dogs out walking near the school so we
headed there instead of our usual route. My plan was to walk
around the outside perimeter, so there was a street width in between us
and the school, which is not a fool proof plan, but it's pretty easy to
go from corner to corner where there are escape routes.
So much for best laid plans. No dogs at the school and Yoshi
knows there are often dogs around so he was up and over alert and did
the somewhat disturbing thing of lunging at a UPS truck because well it
does sound vaguely dog-like (this is a dog with no car, bike,
skateboard, or even (recently inadvertently tested) unicycle issues).
I guess if I want to get the most out of training one thing I should
stop changing too many variables. I should keep to either the
usual route or the dog park unless I want to commit to making the other
route a normal route as opposed to one that we occasion visit with dogs
often appearing in a whole bunch of places.
Things improved when we left the school and did the reverse of our
usual route. Approaching Santa Clara, I see a dog approaching and
going to be crossing our path, but across the street. I stop 1/2
a house length away from the corner and have him sit and he watches the
medium-size black dog moving at average speed cross without even a
grumble, but it more than happy to be rewarded for it. This is
definitely an improvement. Santa Clara is not a small street, but
not as wide as Central. Then when on Central I see a tallish
Cattle DogX approaching on a cross street. We stop to watch what
they're going to do (they are 1/2 a block away and they start coming at
us so we turn around and go the other way. I look back and I see
that they have crossed the street, but still coming at us.
Perfect. We do the exact same thing as we did before, the only
difference is that we are directly across the street (not some distance
back), but the street is wider. He sees the dog and watches them
go by and because he's doing well I reposition him on the other end of
the parked car so he can watch them some more. He's
great! Jackpot. The dog is again moving at average speed
and completely neutral, relaxed and not paying us any attention.
We get back and there's still some daylight and Trek is up and
interested in doing something. Earlier she also carried a toy out
into the yard which is usually Yoshi's thing. I threw the toy
around some and she enjoyed that (a clue that maybe she wants to do
more of this). So after Yoshi's walk, she and I go out for some
chipmunk fetch and she's thrilled (she love small squeaky toys that she
can run with and squeak at the same time - the chipmunks are from a
couple of hide a [alleged] squirrel toys so there are 6 around the
house - I found 4 and that's plenty). We do about 7 fetches and
stop while she's still having fun. Terri would always play fetch
with Cali, so I tell her about the new game so this may have a definite
future.
Sun afternoon (the drive back) still Feb 14
So let's psychoanalyze Ms Trek the wannabee princess.
Princess dog's life for the first 2 years was go out, run around with
her brother and go back in her crate, and maybe some indoor fetch
(appears to be a passion of hers), and maybe some more running around
and sniffing. That was her life and she liked it except for all the
barking dogs, gunfire in duck season, and not enough human attention.
She loves charging around, but she doesn't have much endurance. Her
mile walks may not be enough to make a difference here (even though
they really should.) I have some choices here. Walk her twice a day.
Walk her in places where we don't stop. Run. Go when it's hot or
other adverse conditions. Take her on more trail walks that are just
past what she's used to. Do a lot of out and backs. Her enthusiasm
goes way up when she's going back so it's possible to trick her into
going longer distances than she would ordinarily want to do because she
can smell our tracks so she knows we're going back. She's very
talented, but very pouty when she's tired or sore, so it's time to get
her into better shape than she needs to be for agility.
I need to play squeaky toy fetch with her more and I used to insist she
put it back in my hand, but that's really demotivating to her so she's
now allowed to throw it back at me.
I think we'll just do fun matches for a bit and get her ok with
contacts - again. Or I can continue to set piles of money on fire. We
usually get a Q or two. But I think I want her to get used to being
awake and active through out the day with naps in between. That's what
an agility dog does. She's more the sleep all day except for a break
in the day type.
There is a Rally Course coming up and he can enroll in it if I get it
together enough to call Sue and sign up. I did let Hazel know I
was interested. I can still back out but it would likely be good
for him. The structure of Rally is good for him. It's right
before the regular obedience drop in and that's a tough tradition for
him so i have to think about if I want to deal with that.
Sat/Sun Feb 13-14
We went to Turlock for a weekend of agility.
The first class with nice cool weather, she got an Advanced/PII gamble
- her 2nd one
It consisted of jumps and a send out to a tunnel which is her favorite.
It occurs to me that she's now in danger of getting her Advanced
gamblers title and she is SO not ready for Master's anything.
The second class was Starters/PI Standard - a class that we are doomed
to stay in because of the 4 paw rule which means I can't put her back
on the teeter if she hops on it and bails off. This time after passing
it once (but not getting on it - that's good) I got her to do it and we
actually Q'd, just barely timewise.
The weekend kinda went downhill from there.
By now the temperature has gotten up to a blazing 74 degrees (I checked
the cars temp gauge just to see.) and I'm losing her. I can't remember
the first Snooker course at all right now, but I was peeved enough that
I scratched her from Jumpers, which was actually probably a mistake as
she likes jumpers and it had gotten cooler by them.
Instead we went and watched the Master's Snooker class and enjoyed the
relative chaos there. This is also effective as she realizes that all
these people pay attention to her, because she's so good at looking so
dern cute since she cuddles in my lap. One funny moment is that Trek
was standing in from of Holly B. who was seated beside me and Holly
looked at her and said something like "You look like you want to hop in
my lap." and of course at the mention of magic word lap Trek did
exactly that, which of course cracked everyone up.
The next day the morning was cold and foggy and I let her out to play
and stretch her legs and she ran after a dog playing fetch for a little
while. I'm hoping that just warmed her up and didn't tire her out.
First class was Standard and she bailed on the teeter, and then she
didn't want to get on the Table which I first thought was odd but after
I got her on the table, I heard the train approaching that she had
already been hearing. Trains go right beside the field on a regular
basis and I knew that if that happened that we should just leave the
ring since she finds giant noisy things scary when they're close by and
we never train around them, so we left the ring after I told Scott the
judge what was going on. I considered us lucky that it only happened
that one time.
Gamblers was next and it had a teeter in it so getting it was pretty
unlikely. After working out a course that would work I realized that I
was doing a whole course without contacts and since the odds of getting
the gamble were poor and see above about me not wanting her to have to
move to Master's Gambler's just yet so I decided that I should instead
work on getting her on the dogwalk (not even the teeter). So we did a
chute and 2 tunnels and I spent the rest of the 30 second opening
convincing her that it was ok to go on the dogwalk which she did. This
is a pretty rare training in the ring opportunity and I have to
remember that. That by itself made the day worth it. Mostly.
Actually what makes it worth it is hanging out with like minded folks.
And for sanity started helping build courses which was very nice. Good
to do something physical which helps with the frustration.
Back to princess dog. I had found the hose and pool and had gotten her
went and she hopped right in to a pool full of appalling water. We
also played chase the hose which entertains anyone watching -
unfortunately it didn't seem to make much difference. No contacts are
in the ring at all for the rest
of the day, and I nagged and begged her through a Snooker course
(through closing obstacle 5 - 33 points, not a Q, but at least I got
her
moving, and through a jumpers course that had to be so way over time
that I
didn't bother looking.
I put her back in the car (where she was crated for the weekend since
she's more comfortable there in her really expensive crate (that being
the one that's in HER car.) and we drove home (more next entry on
this). She then came back and immediately started chewing on Yoshi in
the backyard and tearing around (it was nice and cool) but she was
completely crashed for the evening.
Also got to spend some time petting Mary's Corgi Gardener who is just a
love bug and also has motivation issues. I let her know that Denise
Fenzi is good with dog's with motivation issues and that i was
considering taking princess dog to her after I work some on her fitness.
Thu Feb 11
Yoshi Walk
No dogs. Lots of people who he all watched carefully. Since he was
being such a swivel head I started stopping him at the corners just to
let him look around and decompress which seemed to help a little -
feeding him there helped too. Now if a dog had appeared then he would
have wound right back up.
Trek Walk
uneventful and not really favoring her foot though I had to almost drag
her out of her snuggler which had me a little concerned. She's
used to getting walked at night and only in the past couple of days
have i squeezed both dog walks in at noon. (Not sure if it's
something i can comfortably maintain.)
Wed Feb 10
Yoshi Walk
Rounded the corner of Court and saw a dog approaching. Perfect.
Mostly. We were already 1/2 way down the block and I didn't feel like
retreating, so we tried hiding behind a parked car which worked
excellently. I could have had him not see the dog (large black pug I
think) at all but this is training so I decided to let him see the dog
just as the dog was headed away. The dog was across the street and
about 6' further than directly across the street. Pretty close but
definitely retreating and not paying any attention to us at all.
He barked and tried to start to charge. I tried a basic fairly low key
correction (pull back on the leash and release) to see what would
happen, I also said a completely neutral and pretty quiet "No." I
didn't move and wasn't offering food. He stopped. Stared at the dog,
Boffed, and then happily focused back to me. Good dog. I wanted to
see if his stress level would increase and it did not at least visibly
and he's not very subtle.
I'm of two minds as to whether this is helpful. Letting him work with
retreating dogs is a way for him to see dogs much closer than if they
were approaching. However, the work he needs is on dogs approaching.
Not sure. Guess it's just as easy to work on both.
Trek Walk
Pretty straightforward
Did a nail trim on both dogs. We'll have to see if Trek favors her foot.
Yoshi really doesn't like the plugged in dremel - need to locate the battery one which is in a bag somewheres.
Tue Feb 9
Yoshi walk uneventful
Trek Power Paws Agility Class
Rock 'em sock 'em agility doggie is back! So it must have been
her foot that was bothering her. though we worked on front
crosses and serpentine strategies I'm not going to detail them this
time as her enthusiasm was the more important thing for me.
Second was that she was listening and was doing all of her weavepoles
and negotiated the courses smoothly.
This brings up a dilemma. I should do her nails before Turlock
but I don't want to aggravate her foot. I'm thinking if I do them
a little on Wed then there's enough time for any irritation to go away.
Mon Feb 8
Nothing terribly exciting dog wise. Basic walks and
toothbrushing. Trek is now soliciting getting her
teethbrushed. Foot seems ok and her tummy doesn't seem upset by
the pumpkin so it's likely ok to continue giving her a heaping spoonful
in the morning.
Sun Feb 7
I went skiing in the morning, but was back by late afternoon. (Yes, really.).
I'm dead sure her paw favoring is because her nails are too long.
It's her middle two toes of her right front paw. So we spent time
doing her nails again (last time was 2 days ago) and will need to
revisit it again. Of course this amount of attention to the foot
makes the soreness all the worse and she's restless for much of the
night which makes me completely convinced that something else is wrong,
but this morning and at lunch she's tearing around the yard with Yoshi,
so we're going to call it even and I'm going to call it even for how
and keep an eye on it.
Even with getting the same food and amount as Yoshi, she's still
ravenous in the morning and was chewing on the wood step that we built
recently. (Hmphf.) So this morning I opened up the pumpkin
can and gave her two spoonfuls (which she chomped right down) and we'll
see what her system does with it.
Yoshi Walk
One repeated dog sighting.
This dog was an older Aussie walking very slowly with his/her human mom
or caretaker and human 2 year old (who is walking and is the speed
control here) and stroller. If there was someone completely
ill-equipped to deal with a reactive dog I think we've just seen it, so
we keep our distance and let them walk by. We continue on our
walk and I realize that at the pace we walk we're likely to seem them
again as we near the end of our walk. Sure enough there they
are. We stop again and let them turn on our path, but walking
away. We let them get 1/2 a block ahead and cross to the same
block. I'm thinking this is going to be the world's slowest walk
home (I don't want to go across the street because I really don't want
Yoshi barking at them) so I decide that following them is good for Y
anyway. Luck was with us and they turn on on Johnson so we are
able to wander on by with them only 3 houses away and not even a growl
from Yoshi which is very nice to see and hear.
Sat Feb 6
Trek walk. I was hoping to get her out in the rain but it stopped
before we had a chance to get out there. However there were
puddles and debris aplenty which she's fine with. She's
definitely favoring her right foot some. I'll have to keep an eye
on her to see if I should try to take her to Power Paws. She's
never favored a foot there (grass field) and has done so twice on the
dirt surface at Sharon's.
We were nearly home (On Gibbons at Johnson) when she started to drag
me. When she does that I usually stop her long enough to see/hear
what odd thing is going on. 3 houses down Johnson, some kids are
playing basketball (sort of). Ball bouncing sounds tend to make
her very tense, because the bouncing is not continuous (these are young
kids), we stay stopped and I just start feeding Trek. She'll eat
and start to walk away. I do nothing. After she hits the
end of the leash and nothing happens, she'll come back and eat more and
walk away again. I do nothing. Repeat a few more times and
she stops trying to leave. Then we moved a bit further down
Gibbons and she relaxes. The sound is still there but much less.
Yoshi - Dog Park TV
It's been a long time since we were at the dog park and given that it
was just raining the odds of finding dogs in the neighborhood are poor
and I want to get an idea of what he's like in/around the dog park
environment.
We pull up to the small dog park, but there a 4 small dogs running
around like frenzied prey, so I change my mind and move us to a more
central location in the parking lot and then I carry him to the other
side of the park outside the fence. There are not a lot of dogs
at the park and I'm noticing that because of the mucky ground dogs
aren't running around a whole lot. So feeling brave I actually
take him into the park (on leash)
Can you say stressed swivel-head? The one good thing is that he's
not losing his mind. He barks and lunges at a couple of dogs
running by, but was surprisingly fine about three different dogs that
walked right up to him. We walked away in each case and the dogs
went away (with owner encouragement.) One very interesting thing
is that he barked and lunged at a Sheltie on the other side of the
fence (where he usually is). I'm not quite sure how to interpret
that one. The dog was moving and not paying attention to him and
Yoshi was way stressed.
After one circuit around I took him out of the park and we walked a
circuit around the outside and his stress level went way down. He
was even able to watch a couple of dogs walk along the fence without
reacting. We were 15 of my paces away which is only around 50
feet so that tolerance has shrunk. I let him greet a couple of
small dogs through the fence which he did well at (probably wouldn't of
done as well before the walking.) Though as soon as the dogs
started to run he wanted to chase them.
It all comes down to motion. Everything is about motion and
wanting to control it. At least he doesn't feel this applies to
bikes, and cars as some Border Collies do (and what gets many of them
killed). Fortunately with his herding training he is learning how
to channel and cope the drive better. And with the herding
training I don't feel as bad about depriving him of chasing dogs.
He needs to learn that dogs are not stock, so more dog park work would
be good.
The we retreated to the car and I moved the car closer so we could see
the park easily, and we just watched the activity for about 20-30
minutes while I listened to an audiobook. He could relax with the
door shut. When the door was open he was very watchful,
occasional guttural growling, but not reactive. If a dog he was
likely to react to came near, I shut the door and the less noise and
wind made a very real difference. Sometimes I experiment with the
amount that a window is open but I didn't this time (this is one bummer
about electric windows - you have to have the ignition on for them to
work.
Fri Feb 5
Trek is getting good enough at tolerating having her teeth brushed with
the Winnie the Pooh electric toothbrush that I think we should make a
You Tube movie of it but it's not something I can do myself given the
changing angles of the dog's head and that I need both hands anyway to
do the toothbrushing. It's so much easier with an electric one as
you just have to get the brush to the right spot and the brushing
happens.
Yoshi is less thrilled with the process and prefers the brush off still, but he can sort of cope.
The Perpetual Dog-Stalking Yoshi Walk
3 dog sightings. All of these were on Central Ave. First
one was a medium sized Golden going at medium speed coming towards us
on our side of the street. Perfect. the dog is one block down so
we walk up to the side street and go down it, but this time only about
1/2 of a house length down. The dog appears and Y does a guttural
growl so we retreat to 3/4 and I see him relax. But I don't know
if it was the distance that made him relax as the other dog crossed the
street (Central) and is moving away.
Back to Central. We see two small poodles (?) moving slowly
across the street. The small one is barking at us and Yoshi
returned a bark as they passed and then he stopped. I put a hand
on him and in a calm voice said "You have to stop" not sure if it
made a difference as once again his stress level dropped after they
passed.
We walk further down Central and turn around to go back down it (since
we see the most dogs on Central), and we come to a screeching halt as
the owner of the two small poodle-like doggies has crossed Central to
talk to someone and they are only 4 houses away. No reaction from
any of the dogs. Everyone is stopped. I inch us to 3 houses
away. Still no reaction. We play LAT for a while as I'm
finding this fascinating The dogs all see each other and no one
is reacting at all. Small barky one sees us but doesn't really
stiffen or anything. Yoshi is watchful but not horribly
stiff. I debate going closer but the owner is not in good control
and not paying attention and the dogs would react if we got closer so
we opt to turn around again where we see the third dog right behind
us. We would have been penned but the dog (a Springer)
crosses Central and moves on and Yoshi never reacted but I could have
sworn that he saw the dog about a house width and a half away.
But the dog never approached just crossed our path.
Trek Agility Class
Well Princess Dog is back. Sigh. She's just not that
interested in working beyond a few minutes. Last time she was
favoring her right front foot and that may again be an issue. One
thing is that I probably should get her in better shape than she needs
to be for agility. That would help he body tolerate the stresses
better. While it wasn't a factor today, she quits very easily and
I might take her out into the heat more and hike longer distances - her
life has always been go out in the yard and run around with her brother
(either real brother or Yoshi) and then go laze around. It could
be as simple as her nails are too long and I had just done her nails
before class, but they're really not short enough so she may have
jammed a toenail. Maybe after some rest, I should start taking
her running. She might really like that for a little distance.
Probably should have Ziji take a look at her next time Ziji is at Sharon's.
Of course this all happens right before she's entered at Turlock next weekend, so we'll just have to see how it's goes.
I've been thinking of a new CU practice session that we could do:
Evasive Action: The Art of the Retreat
We can practice
- U turns
- 90 turns down side streets
- driveway retreats
- combinations
The one playing the other dog can be
- directly approaching
- obliquely approaching
- following
- appear suddenly
SU_Dogs_SF post
Yoshi is calming down enough that I have the space to notice details I never did before.
I used to think it was the breed of the dog. Now I'm not so
sure. What seems to matter the most is the body position and
speed of the dog.
Fast dog - often a reaction
Slow dog - much less
Stopped dog - just about none unless something about the nonverbal communication is a factor
Body position
Head down and relaxed - not much reaction
Head and tail up and body tense - much more likely to get a reaction from him
Dog is slinking with "Please don't hurt me" on his forehead almost always gets a reaction.
But the number one factor remains dog approaching. But today I
had a dog approaching slow and he was ok and dog approaching barking
and he was less than thrilled.
Thu Feb 4
With impending dread I see that Yoshi got into the Southern Calif Corgi herding trial for April 10-11.
Yoshi Walk. No dogs but a some interesting things. He
barked at a slow moving, larger than average size older man who was
pacing and smoking outside a house. There's a man of similar size
(and even wears a hat) who he often walks past and doesn't react to
though he keeps an eye on him. At first glace I couldn't tell if
Cigarette Smoking Man had a dog with him and that may have prompted the
reaction.
He did not react to
- a woman walking with a shopping bag. He looked very
carefully at her though and I let him because I wanted to watch his
reaction.
- a darker woman walking directly at him though in this case I moved him over as don't like him to react to people.
And the most amazing one that Trek would have freaked about.
- a working cherry picker doing tree trimming along with loud
limb grinder. We had to wait for a safe moment to pass and
negotiate around some trimmed limbs. He did great, even if he
didn't like picking his way through limbs
Trek Walk. While sprinkling. She was a good sport about
this but wanted to hurry so we hustled. Earlier did some work on
left and right with my throwing a toy that she likes to retrieve.
Pretty basic approach. Walk in a straight line, turn my body in
the direction I wanted her to go it and toss the toy while saying the
direction and extending my arm (the one that's throwing the toy.
I used either arm as I'd like either hand to work. She would
retrieve the toy and earned a treat when she handed it to me.
Jennifer wrote up a nice summary of Grisha Stewart's BAT (Behavioral Adjustment Training)
approach and seminar that she had at Marin Human Society. BAT is
a less stressful alternative to CAT that also uses distance as a reward,
but the difference is that the reactive dog is the one that gets to
retreat and increase the distance, and she works at or below threshold,
but tries not to cross it. Jennifer was noticing that her dog
didn't want to turn his back on a trigger.
I wrote:
Thanks for the summary Jennifer,
You say that your dog worries about retreating, but that lateral movement seems to do better.
I've been experimenting with retreat options in Yoshi's Training Diary
and I have found that Yoshi had to learn to trust that a retreat was
going to involve the trigger going away or lessening. Yoshi is
less fearful of dogs than Murphy is and he (Yoshi) is more of a herding
dog control freak too.
Turning around and going the other direction gets the quite funny
"There's a monster chasing me!" slightly whale eyed over the shoulder
look, but over time he's learning that this means that the trigger is
going away, and he's learning to trust that this is going to work.
But the most powerful for him is the lateral retreat as he can watch
his trigger carefully and that's important to him. This means I
use a lot of driveways and side streets.
Or we actually do a lot of combinations of the two. We see a dog
approaching and we do a U turn and walk away ("Monster!") and go back
to the closest side street and retreat down that. What's cool
about the lateral retreat is that I can measure the distance pretty
easily by house widths which are pretty standard where I live, or I can
pace it off after the trigger has go on. the cool thing is that
you can see gradual improvement and most recently I've discovered I can
see more detail in my dog's reactions when we're standing at his/her
threshold (sounds more profound than it really is. :)
I do use food but these days not so much as as a treat in front of the
face and more back to the reward for not reacting. That changes
depending on how penned in we are.
Ellen
Also:
Cummings School of Vet Medicine's publication of Your Dog (I don't see a
web reference unfortunately) has an article on dogs that suffered from
partial seizures that resulted in a gamut of completely crazy behavior:
eating a wine glass, and attacking the owner who tried to take it away
(some call this "rage" and many a Springer's life was lost to this) or
gulping air and trying to eat just about everything (rocks, dirt, ...).
Other cases are extreme tail chasing.
They were diagnosed with an EEG and it showed the electrical storms
going on in the dogs' brains.
I must admit to being a bit jealous that as soon as they put the dogs on
phenobarbital their symptoms improved.
Ellen
and the mostly sane Yoshi
Wed Feb 3
Dog walk blissfully dull.
That night
Yoshi when on a continuous alarm barking tear. I couldn't get him
to settle at all and just crated him where he continued to bark.
In between barks we could sort of hear a dog barking in the distance,
but that didn't seem to cover it. Finally he paused long enough
for me to hear. (and the sound had gotten closer so deaf human
(who hears well for a human, but is still human) could hear.
Racoons - and the really really weird high pitched eerie sounds they
make. No wonder he's freaking. Probably several of
them. This is technically an island, so you have to wonder how
they got here, but it wouldn't surprise me to hear of them crossing
bridges. They finally continued on and the excitement subsided
and I again am relieved that I don't have a dog door as the vet bill
and the experience if he had charged out to them would have been just
awful. They usually run, but not always and are fully capable of
exacting damage to a dog. They more than anything are why I make
the dogs wait at the back door when I open it (Ok, there are skunks
here too, but not as common.)
Tue Feb 2
Yoshi Walk. We pretty much nearly walked into neighbor dog Cisco
(medium size and a touch reactive) who was on a walk. I took
evasive action just a little late and Yoshi started barking and lunging
even as we crossed the street. Judy kept him walking but since I
had a hold of Yoshi (by the scruff) I had a moment to watch
Cisco. He had barked some but it seemed to be mostly his body
position that was such a trigger. His body position was stuff and
his head was held high. Non reactive dogs never look like this as
far as I know so I'm going to have to add that to my observation
list. Body position may very well be a huge predictor of your
dog's reaction. Yoshi's triggers are stuff upright dogs and
mincing, don't hurt me slinking. Confident, average, slow moving
dogs are the least likely to trigger him. In this case Cisco was
coming at us fairly fast, and upright, stiff, and clearly looking for
something to react to and even us moving out of the way didn't help
much as we were still too close - Yoshi tells me his reaction was
justified, but I'm not buying it. I might have considered
continuing to move on, but I wanted to make a point that I didn't like
what he was doing and we just stood on the opposite corner with me
holding him by the scruff with two hands.
His stress level didn't seem to run off the edge either as it has in the past, but no further triggers appeared either.
Trek walk. Walked by some wood smoke which she wasn't thrilled
about but coped. Did well negotiating some moving van
paraphernalia all over the place and some noisy cars. Later we
worked on left and right at the school yard. Left is great.
Right not as good yet.
Mon Feb 1
Yoshi walk.
Nothing until we nearly got home then things got interesting.
Coming down Lincoln there's a Foxhound across the street and he saw it
first we went down a neighbor's driveway and as he retreated he barked
at the dog but not freaking out, but while not struggling (remember the
fish on a line struggles of yesteryear?) he spoke his mind and would
have charged if he had not been on leash.
As the hound continues on we head back to the house and as we approach
I see behind us a GSD. I can't pass this one up, so we cross the
street and find a place to set up. I choose one of my neighbor's who
had some retreat distance (around 20') and we stopped.. Our routine
used to be just feed him continuously when a dog passes by, but I want
him to advance to the next level (whatever that may be.)
I've been talking more to him of late and that seems to help along with
the treats at a measured pace. I was concerned how he would be about
seeming the GSD right after the Foxhound but he seems GSD's more often
than hounds. Not sure if that's a factor.
I let him see the dog and he looks and looks back at me, good boy have
a goodie. While he's chewing is usually a flash point so I keep
talking to him and he chooses to look back at me (!!). I really
wish I
had it on camera as it's hard to see and remember the array of subtle
things happening. Suffice to say the GSD passes by without
incident
even with only getting earned treats instead of continuous, but he's
right at the edge of his tolerance. Being off the sidewalk
but with good sightlines seemed to help. The fact that the dog
wasn't
reactive and was moving slow was a huge help (the Foxhound was much
faster.) I need to work that into my snap assessment. How
fast is the
dog moving? Will Yoshi think they need to be controlled.
Think about the goats where he was excited (bark bark bark), but
controllable (he would stop) and the sheep where he was excited, but
not listening and stopping only under duress. When is he most
likely
to stop? When the sheep stop? On the PT course we need to
have a
stop. I think we'll do it in a corner when the sheep naturally
stop - that's actually a little optimistic with a mad Corgi at their
heels.
I paced off the distance. 23 of my paces which around around 2.5' so
around 50+ feet. Cool that's way better than he's been in the past and
also smaller that a street + house width that he's been able to do. On
the other hand his tolerance of the Foxhound after he'd barked at the
dog, was more along the lines of one residental street width (~30') and
3 house widths (around 40-50' each), though we are talking about the
distance from us to the dog being more along a hypotenuse so it's
actually a bit shorter.
. Sun Jan 31
Maniacal house cleaning for a book club that we're hosting
monday. The dogs are being kind and are staying out of the
way. Fortunately they just leave the room when the vacuum is
on. Other Corgi's attack the vac and their owners actually have
to crate their dogs in the car (!!)
Trek walk - uneventful say for meeting Mady's new dog Sky who is part
Spitz and thinks Trek is a toy. Trek doesn't want anything to do
with her as long as she thinks this.
Sat Jan 30
Yoshi Herding
He did well with the goats. He stops when I asked him to and
stayed under control. I did ok too though the footing was iffy
and it's tricky to stay on your feet when you have a small herd of
little goats swarming around your feet. (But oh how endearing -
they're carefully chosen - the snotty ones get left behind.)
The sheep were another matter. He wouldn't stop when asked which
was supremely irritating. He did stay at the beginning mostly
which was nice but the not stopping was very disappointing after doing
so well with the slower goats.
This makes me worry about the L.A. corgi trial which in an AKC PT run on sheep.
It's tempting to wait a bit to see if the trial fills, but that seems
like wussing out. It's really an ideal trial as it's corgi only and a
lot of well known corgi people will be there to help out and there's a
two day practice beforehand which is invaluable. I spoke to
Marian about whether I should just make him a goat dog and she said
that since the upcoming trial in on sheep that we should continue
alternating between goats and sheep. I will send in the entry
tomorrow or Monday. I said I'd go and I should at least
try. This is my dog's chosen sport. Nevermind that he
doesn't care under what circumstances, but I selfishly want the credit
for all this hassle. :)
Though "hassle" is a hilarious word in this concept. Oh poor me I
have to go to the beach to do herding on a completely gorgeous day in
Pescadero. We walked further out into the field allegedly to
check out what the Advanced goat course entails (there's a bridge that
you all have to cross), but it was so lovely that we totally forgot to
stop and climbed up on the hill where we could look down on the ranch
and the surrounding area. My, my this would do. Wonder how
many million dollars this place costs?
We then found a place in a sheep pen to just sit down and get used to
simply being around sheep without having to do anything since he tends
to lose his mind around sheep. We had a lovely time though he
tells me that he now wants to be a Guardian Dog (He had started
alerting to people/dogs approaching HIS pen). Poor guy.
Herding is one thing but guarding against predators is a whole 'nuther
thing. I need to have a sign that I can point to that says: you
have to be at least as tall as this sheep (or more) to be a Guardian
Dog. So he can spend time calmly (on leash) with sheep in the
pen. I think the trigger is when they run, and his enthusiasm
makes them run. Catch-22.
Fri Jan 29
Yoshi walk. Saw one medium sized reddish fur dog. He did
very well. The dog went by on the other side of the street
(actually we cross ed the street - it was our street and we were nearly
done with our walk. I walked a very short distance down my
neighbors walk up side way and feel him a big treat (the kind I hang on
to). He did great as the dog passed by. We crossed back to
my house and two houses down the dog stopped so I let Yoshi get a
little bit closer to within two house widths and let the dogs make eye
contact. No reaction beyond just looking. I think we were
at the edge of a reaction so I told him he was a very good boy and
retreated by to the house.
Trek's agility class was rained out, so we just went on a walk.
She's similar to Cali in that she will go through puddles but unlike
Cali she doesn't appear to seek them out.
Yoshi has herding tomorrow for the first time in weeks. So we did
nails tonight. Wonder how it's going to go, I don't have the
greatest confidence right now and I hope it doesn't show or interfere.
I printed out Yoshi's entry form and need to fill it out. He's
going in PT. I almost hope it will fill so we can chicken out but
that would be the wuss approach. I do have till March to get it
in so there's no rush hopefully. We're going down regardless so I
should stop being a chicken and just go ahead and send it in.
Thu Jan 28
Yoshi walk. Mostly uneventful. Couple of times we stopped
to eat treats while ignoring a barking dog. Usually when I do
this the barking dog stops. Worked with Cisco, didn't work with
Annie across the street. I keep thinking I should spend more time
with Annie, but haven't done so. I don't like that she's kept
outside, but she does get attention and walks and she was a rescued
stray.
Trek walk pretty average.
Wed Jan 27
Yoshi walk. Two fairly stationary squirrels were on the ground
(digging up burried food I think) and I talked to him (Yoshi) and asked
him to heel and he walked right by them with out much of a glace -
though he did see them. Wow. I guess squirrels on the
ground don't look anything like those things that face around in the
trees.
Saw one dog that we were slightly beind. We mostly caught up to
them, but I kept us behind a little and while he watched carefully he
didn't react and was happy to eat treats.
Trek walk - uneventful
[off at avalanche class]
Dog's did well with Terri while I was gone.
While I was gone Terri had arranged with a coworker to feed them one
evening while she was out auditioning for the Ethnic Dance
Festival. This coworker while a dog person, had never met the
dogs and I was worried how Yoshi might be with a stranger. I was
describing the dog bite avoidance technique they teach kids when they
encounter strange dogs (Yoshi has never, ever bitten a person, but I
still worry about a stranger coming over to HIS house). If you
want to crack up an entire carful of people while you're talking on a
cell phone, say the words "Be a tree."
Turns out Terri wound up having Jan go over who they know. I
asked her if the dogs were nice to her and they said they invited her
in and over for dinner and were very happy to see her.
Thu Jan 21
Leaving for Tahoe for a 4 day avalanche class. Dogs are stressing
because I am. I have to drive up in a storm. I'm well
prepared but the rushing around is making Trek very
uncomfortable. Fortunately Terri will be here.
Other trainers are making money by teaching running contacts in special
seminars. Since I've been avocating them long before they were
ever doing them I don't quite know what to think. I mean, after
all, they teach it to other dogs. I just teach it to my
dogs. But still. There's nothing that stops me from doing
it too but I'm choosing not to. What if it doesn't work?
And I really can't be making money off of dog training tempting as it
is.
Yoshi just barked at the LR window and came back all on his own. Maybe we're making progress...
Wed Jan 20
Yoshi Walk uneventful.
Trek walk. Got to see a parked idling firetruck which was great
but as we were leaving the paramedics came (shudda known that was going
to happen). Let her chomp on a large treat to get through it and
she did surprisingly well and didn't drag me away (ok a little).
Tue Jan 19
Yoshi Walk. Break between rain storms. Starting to get
something that's resembling a methodology and that's really
encouraging. Having such a structure helps me think and reduces
my tension (and thus his)
2 dog sightings.
We saw a stocky, kinda low slung medium size dark dog across Court St.
that a neighbor dog was nice enough to point out to us before we saw
them. That dog was moving slow so we had a long time to ponder
what to do. We sort of did this systematic slow retreating.
I let the dog get until Yoshi was uncomfortable and then we'd back up
about a house distance and then eat while the other dog got
closer. Did a couple of these and then I decided to stop
tortuuring him and retreat one house width down a side street and eat
while the other dog came back into view (chomp chomp, look, blow out
cheeks, chomp - I kept the treat in front of him. Just as the dog
retreated, I put a hand on his side and let him look at the dog without
the treat. He watched intently but did not react. Since
he's watching he's not noticing the treat unless it's under his
nose. If he did notice, that would mean he was willing to take
his eyes off the dog and I would likely jackpot him.
The second dog was right after we turned the corner on Central.
Boxer in the distance across the street 3 houses down. I again
debate what to do and this time since Central is a wide street, we just
hijack someone's driveway and I hold a treat for him to munch on.
This boxer is right on the edge of reacting so I just keep letting him
munch on the treat. It's sort of the opposite of agility where
you want fast easy to eat treats. Here you want slow and hanging
on to it really slows things down, and gives you a lot of control and
it's simpler that having to carry a squeeze tube of peanut butter or
cream cheese.
So the methodology is basically find a way to maintain a distance
you're dog is comfortable with and use food and maybe touch and talking
to shrink that distance. Someone watching must have been a little
puzzled or fascinated as I was telling Yoshi the steps. I guess a
way to generalize it for Yoshi for the moment is one street width and
one or two house widths. and the house widths can be either
perpendicular to you or parallel.
(This needs a diagram.)
Mon Jan 18
Squeezed in a walk at noon when it wasn't raining much.
Saw two different dogs, a yellow lab and a medium size black dog.
Both times I let them "chase" us.
The yellow lab was about 4-5 houses away, we then stopped and let them
get closer while he ate a treat that I hung on to. He kept
chomping on the treat (and my fingers) as the dog got closer.
Went they got 3 houses or so we then turned around and walked away and
they turned off the street. Then we turned around and saw the
black dog coming at us, we turned around and we walked for a while with
me debating when to let him see the dog. i decided to go down a
side street but only went 1/2 a house length (like a house width) and
let the dog pass while he ate a treat. He did it! Some
gutteral chewing sounds, but was ok - except for my fingers - need to
get larger treats. Somehow wound up chasing the lab a little bit,
but never got that close but Yoshi is getting to the point where he can
routinely see dogs at a distance and be ok.
He does seem to be trusting me more about keeping him a distance from
other dogs. Distance may be the more powerful reward but treats
shrink that distance esp relatively continuous ones. I would like
him to have more space between treats to make a decision to choose the
treat but it's nice to be able to show him he can be closer.
Decisions decisions.
Hope Trek doesn't get rained out tonight for her walk.
She got her walk and did fine - even stopped to munch treats right at
the spot where scary skateboard was yesterday. She thought it was
weird that one of the cars stopped to talk to me for a second (It was
Cathy), but she coped fine though it chomping on me more than I care
for when eating treats while a little stressed.
Sun Jan 17
Dogs were tragically ignored so we could build a step for them to make
it easier for them to get up and (probably more importantly) off of the
new bed. They sulked, but eventually approved, and had little to
no trouble adjusting to the new step.
Sat Jan 16
Yoshi walk.
Two changes in tactics - for the better I think.
One is to have a larger dry treat and have him nibble on it when he's
in an edge of threshold situation. The other is to maximize our
use of Central Ave. by going up and then turning around and back
down. Central is a wide street and now that just turning around
and walking away works I don't feel penned in even if there are
serveral cars on it and can't race across the street. If we get
penned by dogs coming from each side on the same block (rare) I can
always pick him up and walk into the street on the other side of parked
cars, but still not in traffic (there's a bike lane to give me some
space.) Eventually I'm hoping I can just use a driveway but
that's still pretty close, and we are masters at turning around and
going down a side street far enough away to let the dog pass (usually
2+ house widths).
So today we rounded the corner of Court and Central and saw two dogs
getting out of their car. They were just over 2 houses
away. We stopped first at the corner and then worked a little
closer to 2 house widths away. Yoshi is keep an eye on things but
holding it together as I offer a larger treat for him to munch on and
other other dogs (one small one medium) are just standing there
watching back. They then go into their house/yard and then
they start barking (dogs are so funny sometimes). Yoshi is happy
to keep eating his treat and after things calm down we continue down
the Central - of course the dogs bark when we pass by but no worries.
Then when we turned around on Central and headed back and pretty much
on the block with the two dogs another dog and his people came out of
his house on a walk. They're not going that fast so we
turned around again. We're about 4 houses ahead and while Yoshi
is doing a mild "it's a monster" over the shoulder swivel head he's
doing ok, so we slow down to get them closer. They follow at a
2-3 house distance before turning. Yoshi did great and I'm very
happy about that.
I'm still experimenting with whether touch helps calm Yoshi - current
answer is "some." I have two competing different bits of data on
this. One is Patricia McConnell's photos in For the Love of a Dog
that shows a slightly horrified, whale eyed, lab being hugged by a
deliriously happy young girl, and there's Temple Grandon's data that
shows that cattle being squeezed in a wooden contraption designed to
hold them while getting medical attention do settle down. A hand
firmly on Yoshi's side does seem to make a difference but when he's
freaking out he's struggling to get free so it's probably more
effective at keeping him from hitting the panic button same with
picking him up which, unlike a lot of dogs, he does like.
Trek walk.
Went down High Street (the busier one) and she was doing ok, but there
was a teenager and a scary skateboard near the small store at High and
Santa Clara. She coped and didn't freak, but really wanted to get
away so I let us go down Santa Clara instead of going further down High
street like we usually do. She recovered in a block or so. She
gets much calmer as soon as 1/4 block away as the noise drops off
considerably.
Fri Jan 15
Trek Agility class
Well I was going to be talking with Rachelle about getting Trek into a
more advanced class but she wasn't running well at all and now I don't
know. She's leary of the table since last week she tried to jump
up on a 20" table and wacked herself in the gut when she was too
low. Now she doesn't want to go on it even when it's set low.
Then she hurt her front left foot after one very nice run and wouldn't
run anymore. The surface at Sharon's is dirt and when it rains it
can get really so-so. It's either that or jumping down off our
new bed - there is a step and the dogs don't always think to use it
going down. So I crated her in the car to let her rest and just
watched the rest of class - ran Missle once, which is always fun.
So we'll keep Trek at this level for the moment (one class cycle
probably) and then I'll decide. Rachelle tells me that we are
running Sharon's courses already and that this is her most advanced
class for now. I think we'll keep going to the PP class as much
as we can. Can't do it next week (that's the BiFriendly meeting
day), but can the week after. Looks like they're going to get
rained out next week anyway. One possibility is to switch Trek to
being a Friday drop-in or ask if when Trek comes could I pay for two
classes in a row and get more mileage that way.
Mon Jan 13
Yoshi Walk.- using a clicker. I need to find the louder box
clicker (I usually use the easier to use iClick). If something
gets
his attention (no dogs this time but there was a woman walking fast
right behind him which was making him a bit of a swivel head) one click
doesn't always work, two usually does, but sometimes it will even take
3. Clicking more than once is usually considered a mistake, but
this is
my experiment and I want to see if multiple clicks make a difference or
if he just tunes them out (he's not tuning them out right now.)
I'm wondering if the louder clicker will make a difference.
Certainly
the clicker gets a faster response than a "yes" when he's under
stress.
I also want to have a clicker and a treat dispenser combined into one
unit. Have to think about that.
Tue Jan 12
Finally separated out the past few months of this diary into their
separate pages. Despite working out a pretty safe methadology,
it's still pretty risky as it's easy to overwrite something and wipe
out a month or more of writing. I need to start doing ftp
downloads which is a bit ironic since I backup to the web site also.
Noon Yoshi Walk. No dogs, but all sorts of people including a man
with a rake right beside him - he all took it in stride, even in the
first 1/2 mile where he's often a little strange. The only thing
he reacted to was a man moving the garbage carts right beisde him -
can't say I blame him.
Trek's Power Paws agility class was cancelled due to weather.
Bummer, I was looking forward to it.
Instead she and I went on a longer walk and I deliberately went down an
extra block of High Street. I was going to do another block but
there some kids piling out of cars down the block (with no bouncing
balls) and I wanted to see how she'd do. While this wasn't her
preferred activity, she wasn't trying to drag me down the street to get
away and would instead sit and eat treats which is a marked
change. She's come so far in the 3 years we've had her after
spending 2 years in her own Private Idaho (Yes, it's even more fun to
say that when it's actually true).
The real test came when we were near the school. In the far
corner of the playground were people, a dog barking and A Bouncing Ball
- fortunatley not constant. fortunately we were nearly a block
away from them since we were on the other side of the playground so we
stopped and ate treats and started back towards the house but seeing
that she seemed pretty relaxed I turned around and went a little
closer. She wasn't happy about it but would eat treats without
chomping on me and after a minute of so we turned around and then she
wanted to run home. I stopped her every so often to eat and she
obliged. Such a Corgi.
the Turlock trial premium for Feb is out and I probably shouldn't delay
in getting it in. Turlock is in the Central Valley and can get
quite cold in the winter (for Calif - and esp for sleeping in a van
like vehicle) so instead of camping I'm thinking hotel - how luxurious.
Just got email that Grisha Stewart is coming to the Bay Area (or course
when I'm gone - ah well - someone else will go) This is just me
passing the word to CU_Dogs_SF. Greetings Bay Area Control
Unleashed folks,
This just in - short notice.
Grisha Stewart is a dog trainer in Seattle who has come up with a
methodology that she calls BAT (Behavioral Adjustment Training) which
is
a less stressful variation of Jesus Rosales-Ruiz's CAT (Constructive
Aggression Treatment).
The page where she demonstrates it is here:
http://ahimsadogtraining.com/blog/bat/
and it looks very intriguing. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing it on
the
Marin Humane Society web site so maybe someone from there can fill us
in.
It would be interesting for us all to work out a way to effectively
combine CU and BAT principles. I'm hoping to hear more about this
as I
will be out of town learning how to evaluate [snow] avalanches (no dogs
along).
Ellen
and CU Corgi Yoshi
Training Diary: http://frap.org/Yoshi/yoshi_training_diary.html
(which someone tells me they're working on how to get it on their
Kindle - eek)
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [functionalrewards] Bay Area seminar
Correct date: Jan 23
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:37:16 -0000
From: ahimsadog <grisha@doggiezen.com>
Reply-To: functionalrewards@yahoogroups.com
Bay area folks -
I just scheduled a 90-minute seminar for next week on BAT for fear and
aggression with the Marin Humane Society. It will fit (time-wise) with
another seminar that weekend in Novato, CA with Trish King and Veronica
Boutelle. It's the same topic as the seminar I just finished in
Seattle. The description of that is at
http://ahimsadogtraining.com/class/bat.php (But that's NOT the
registration. More info on that later).
Exact address for the seminar:
Marin Humane Society
171 Bel Marin Keys Blvd.
Novato, California 94949
I'll have registration details soon, but I wanted to let you know about
this so you could save the date. It's a week from Saturday, on January
23rd, 6-7:30.
Only good things,
Grisha
________________________________
Grisha Stewart, M.A., CPDT, CTP
Ahimsa Dog Training
902 NW 49th Street, Seattle, WA 98107
Phone: 206-364-4072 Fax: 206-524-6039
http://DoggieZen.com
Follow us on Twitter: @doggiezen
Mon Jan 11
I was totally set on Yoshi going as far as he could in herding, but the
levels beyond Started seem so much harder and you don't get to
participate in the process nearly so much as the handler is more and
more required to stay stationary, and I'm growing fond of the Let's go
on a Journey / Over the River and Through the Woods aspect of beginner
herding. Maybe this will change as we get
more involved, but right now I'm not really in a hurry to get out of
the
test level - even if I find PT maddening with all of the fence
work.
We'll keep working on Started, but I think now that the premium is
already out for the S. Calif Corgi herding trial that we'll definitely
do PT.
There's also going to be an AHBA trial at Pescadero and there will be
an Herding Ranch Dog (HRD) Goats which looks fun (and HRD is totally
Let's Go on a Tour of the Ranch) but it's above our skill level
right now.
He's only been on goats once and would need a lot more practice.
It really kinda doesn't matter beyond keeping us motivated to work and
keep training.
He's happy that he gets to work stock. I'm happy that he's
learning
more self control (Like Stop and Stay - which is actually pretty
miraculous to watch.)
Yoshi walk
During which he demonstrated a really bad lack of
control. Two pedestrians, who he's seen a couple of days before,
were
walking down the opposite side of Santa Clara and he was sitting on the
corner. I had just fed him a treat and was thinking about feeding
him
another one when something about them talking excitedly or something
that looked wrong to him, (no pith helmets however) made him break and
start to charge across the street. I yanked him
back and gave him a pretty hard scruff shake and a lecture.
Then we crossed the street and he was fine. Didn't seem stressed
at
all which is totally different that when he's seen a dog and I get on
his case. So does what I do simply not matter? Is he going
to feel
the way he does regardless of reprimand? Reprimand (or retreat)
ends
the behavior, but i don't know if it has any effect on his
attitude.
What would have happened if a properly timed click had sounded?
That
might have interrupted the behavior as well. And clicks seem to
get
through his brain faster that words which i can totally see fall into
"I can't hear you." sometimes.
I may have to try the louder clicker as the iClick may no be loud
enough. But I don't know as in my clicker video showing how we
play
Look At That, I have a point where he's not responding to the click and
backing up is the solution as he was over threshold (past the point to
where he could respond appropriately.) Personally I think two
people
walking down the opposite side of a wide street should be ok, but
something may have hit him weird, but it's still not ok and he needs to
know that.
Sat/Sun
Dogs didn't get much of a weekend beside harrassing Terri when i was
out hiking and then sulking while we built a new IKEA bed.
Fri Jan 8
Bummer, Joyce is booked for herding on Sunday.
Yoshi Walk.
A couple of years back I had posted on the main CU_Dogs list about
doing a slow walk and how it seemed to help some with Yoshi's stress
level. Because I use walks for exercise I really don't do this
much,
but this time I took a cell phone call from Terri. We had stopped
1/2
a block from Central and while I was talking 2 dogs went by plus a
group of walking people. Yoshi watched carefully, but didn't
react
beyond boofing (the sound dog's make when exhaling sharply enough to
inflate their cheeks - a loud sigh.)
Now I set out on this walk with treats and with the idea that the
strongest reinforcer I have is the ability to create distance.
It's
not always easy to do that on Alameda streets, but it's often possible
and in a pinch I can create artificial distance by covering his eyes or
picking him up. For whatever reason, knowing that distance is so
effective, really helps me to relax and not worry about dogs
appearing. It's possible that the only operative thing was the
good
distance from the other dogs, but as we walked if he started to get
jacked up (about nothing in particular) then just stopping and not
doing anything seemed to relax him and them he started to look to me
for a treat. So having the occasional meditative walk, might be
helpful.
One funny exchange was that three women were walking behind us and
since we were going slower this time they were catching up. We
stopped
in a driveway to let them pass and I didn't ask Yoshi to do anything
but rewarded him for attention and sit. Right as they were
passing he
jumped up on my leg for a treat which I gave him as this is a behavior
that I really do want him to do. The women were amused at his
interest
in the treats and I said "My best friend." (because he was my best
friend as long as I had treats.). They laughed and one of them
said
"Sometimes that's the best thing there is."
As we got back to the house, there was a Tibetian Terrier sized dog
across the street. Yoshi hadn't seen the dog and I debated what
to do
while we hid behind my rosemary shrub (that dog was pausing too
poop).
I wanted to end the walk on a good note but didn't want to pass up a
training opportunity. So after some internal debate I carried
Yoshi
back down the driveway further away from the dog. He saw the dog
and
vibrated a little but he relaxed the further away we moved. I
then
turned around and let him see the dog at that distance. Again
some
very low level growling and muttering but no outburst. As the dog
started to move on, I walked him a bit closer to the sidewalk and then
turned back around and went inside. Just a little dancing on the
threshold edge. Good thing he likes to be picked up. The
nice thing
about holding him is that I instantly know his stress level.
Trek has agility class tonight at our usual place (Freilance Dog
Sports). Should be fun and interesting to see how she does on
dirt
after a couple of times on grass.
[Later] It went fine with the big exception that we ran a course with a
20" table and she jumped too low and kinda centerpunched herself
(corner hit her tummy) and knocked the wind out some. She's a bit
worried about that table.
Thu Jan 7
Yoshi walk. One dog and it was perfect once we finally caught up
to them. Slower moving dog w/senior person (they were way ahead
of us). When we caught up we stayed across the street and ambled
along (they never really saw us I think). Yoshi kept a careful
eye on the dog but never reacted, while not calm, he wasn't a basket
case either. It helps that we stayed across the street and a
house width down. We haven't been doing much of follow that dog
recently as that's when he's at his best but he's not really relaxed
when we're following - he's just not being an idiot. I want him
to relax more in the presence of other dogs and sheep.
Asking Joyce if we can come say hello on Sunday to work on outruns and
walk up. I'm also hoping we can just walk in a field with sheep
without working them - just to commune with the sheep.
Trek walk. A fire truck went down Johnson (one block away as we
were leaving.) Not a major emergency so we went on our
walk. I later asked if she wanted to walk down Johnson. Got
about 1/2 a house before getting stressed by the noise, so we called it
a victory and turned around. The truck was about 5 houses down.
The worked on right turns with throwing a toy. Then worked in
throwing a toy over a jump.
Pulled out a different rabbit fur toy and played a brief fun game of
tug with Yoshi. Key for him is to not tug hard and keep the toy
in the game.
I
want to have a big agillity goal for my dog Trek, but I fear pushing
her too much
(though she doesn't exactly know this she just knows if I'm
stressed).
A reasonable goal is to be in Master's by the end of the year.
I'd
also like to be in AKC Excellent, but I have to actually enter a trial
for that. She can do it without blowing through a ton of money so
I
should plan on starting that - after ski season. first order of
business is to actually get a PI title - she lacks 2 standard
legs. Be nice to do that before we wind up in Master's Gamblers
(The Wastonian Curse).
Need to enter the VAST USDAA trial in Turlock for Feb 13-14 - not under
a cover - hooray. The premium isn't on their website
(http://govast.org) yet. It's only 5 weeks away, so that's
worrisome.
Wed Jan 6
Corrected several typos from last entry - hazards of posting late at
night.
Yoshi walk. Right out the door he's stressing about people
walking by and the mail carrier coming on HIS property. Pulling
on the leash and way up on his toes. Pulling back on the leash
was getting no where are he was just absent so out of frustration I
gave him a leash pop. Now doing that gives me compliance but does
not relax him. Sometimes it does function as a reset button but
not usually. Trek was barking at something (she was in the house)
so I took the opportunity to turn around and go see (there was a
squirrel in the tree that she could see from the house.)
Walking back out to the side walk he's still stressed and amped and I
wanted to see if there was a different way to calm him down. I
just kneeled down and fed him and petted him which took the edge off,
but actually the most effective thing was to actually do the walk and
get some exercise, Usually after about 1/4 to a 1/2 mile he
settles down. I'm reading about Corgi's that get 2 45 min walks a
day. Yeesh that's over 4 miles. My dogs walk 1 mile a day
briskly. I suppose I could try to walk him again but time is short as
it is since I walk them separately.
Yoshi actually didn't see any dogs. On the contrary Trek who was
walked right after, saw 3 dogs including one sitting on his driveway
carefully (but nicely) watching us walk by. Yoshi and I would
have had to cross the street.
I need to go back to a place with good lateral retreat distance where
we can watch dogs walking on leash. Watching dogs at the dog park
running and having fun seems like it's asking a lot though I guess I
can take him by the small dog park where they're not usually running
much. Though the big dog park is right there. The problem
is that inside the park the lateral retreat distance isn't that great,
but he can then feel more a part of the action - don't know if that's
good or back. Wonder if there's a way to run with him in the park
so he gets exercise and also has to work on his focus. It may be
asking too much but he has surprised me before.
Still pondering what our Agility goals should be. Yoshi's herding
goals shifted right when I heard the premium was out. Eek, PT
sounds lovely this time of year. We'll keep working on Started
but we haven't done any work with lighter sheep and we're going to need
to do a lot of that.
I have another idea for a CU
gathering. A Relaxation Party, but one with planned SECs.
Have a small number of dogs relaxing on mats with their people.
Then have another dog/handler appear moving very slowly pausing
occasionally with the goal of them joining the party with their
mat. Then after a bit a different d/h leaves and a bit later a
completely different d/h comes in, and just keep cycling through.
The one that leaves can go get a refill on their drink or
munchies. I'm envisioning this happening in a backyard that is
somewhat sheltered, but allows for comings and goings. Ideal
group size maybe 5-6? 3-4 relaxing and 1 or 2 up.
Tue Jan 5
I may be the last one to know this but Cleanrun Course Designer is now
available on the Mac! I'm playing with a demo version and it's
dead easy to use and I'm definitely going to buy it.
Trek. Power Paws class.
I was 10 minutes late due to work distractions, but still got a fair
bit out of it.
Here's a portion of the course obstacle arrangement (completely vague,
half-hearted recall - no accuracy is intended) that I'd like to talk
about as it shows some things she does well and other she doesn't.
I didn't number things as we did several courses with this
arrangement.
The first issue is that she like several dogs has trouble weaving into
a wall which in this case was a hedge. She stops or pops pretty
much
in the position that I've indicated - sometimes on the other
side. I
think this is a mileage issue as I'm pretty good about keeping my
shoulders turned in and not anticipating the next obstacle (which is
really hard to do.
One thing she did very well right at the beginning is that we needed to
do the jumps on the left side of the diagram in a serpentine right past
that tunnel opening and she aced it. Jim empasized that being
ahead of
your dog will ensure that they won't take the tunnel. Debbie and
I
both said "Don't look at the tunnel" (instead look at the next
obstacle) and I think that's important too. Pay no attention to
the
Giant Elephant - it's not there - just yet.
Much comedy ensued attempting this and I had a dog zooming through the
tunnel in every which way, which earned me the "Use the dog's name" to
position the dog before telling them the obstacle lecture (aim before
firing.)
I'm still kinda dazzled by being back at Power Paws that I tend to lose
concentration at critical points, or Jim makes some horrible pun which
reminds me how much I miss him. I hope I don't have to choose
between Trek's classes anytime soon as I like both settings a lot, but
this class is able to cover a lot more material in the same amount of
time, because the skill level is higher.
This diagram shows what should have happened. Everything else
happened instead, first entered the tunnel on the right side then back
through the other way which nicely reset us to do it correctly.
Idealy the handler hangs back and sends the dog over the jump and moves
to the end of the right hand side of the tunnel while calling the dog
into the tunnel. It looked very smooth - for other dogs.
They also worked on a semi-hard gamble which we don't have the skills
for though I like that I can send her out 20 feet and stay reasonably
lateral, but we haven't working on right and left on a large scale yet
and this gamble required this. Actually no one got that gamble
but they came much closer.
I have to plan out the agility year for Trek. It's hard because
USDAA nationals are going to be on the East Coast this year, so that
may not happen. Perhaps AKC or CPE. but my heart is with USDAA
really. Right now we need mileage and that's more easily attained
with USDAA or CPE (especially CPE).
Mon Jan 4
Uneventful dog walks, but I had time during them to ponder whether food
or distance is the more primary reinforcer. The operate in such
different ways. But food is much shorter term as it only take a
second to eat a treat unless we're talking peanut butter or cream
cheese. Distance lasts much longer and the trigger lessens.
Don't know.
Sun Jan 3
Still a bit under the weather so a pretty low key day, but very
instructive dog-wise.
Yoshi walk in the evening (they both were). I always assume he
can see better than me but I nearly walked us into a pair of dogs on a
walk and I saw them first They were in the shadows and had
just crossed Gibbons moving along Central. We were within a house
width, when I saw then and turned around and headed back. Yoshi
realizing what is going on is doing some of his "Monster!" over the
shoulder look, but he's not really stressing much - just keeping an eye
on things which is way different than he used to be. We round the
corner and we go down a house length and wait for the dogs to
appear. I am armed with a penny jar though I do have a treat too
but worry about dropping the glass jar. He sees the dogs,
exhales, and looks back at me! I give him a treat and we head
off. A nice surprise and he's much less stressed if I work to
maintain distance and he realizes that's what I'm doing. this is
similar to BAT (mostly by accident.)
Trek walk. Ordinary, until we get up to the house across from the
school that has the incredible bouncing dog whose head appears over a
6' fence. The dog wasn't around but their kids were having a
party. Lots of kids voices and metal on metal sounds. We're
across the street and I stop to feed Trek, she's wary but eating
and essentially ok. Then suddenly she tries to leave the
scene. I try to feed her and she chomps on me I say "ouch" and
she then stares off into the distance not even trying for the treat
anymore. I try to get her to take it nicely but I have a piranha
who then stares off far away. I stop to note what's
changed. A basketball is bouncing. Time to punt (sorry for
the mixed metaphor). I pick her up and she's shaking though gets
better as I hold her and walk away from the sound. Across the
street and 1/4 of the way down the block she's ok and can walk without
dragging me.
So it appears that ball bouncing is much more stressful than children's
voices or metal on metal. It's the percussiveness, but for
whatever reasons fireworks or thunder (our milder and rare thunder)
don't bother her. The cool thing is that a ball bounce is easy to
recreate, but it's going to take some time to come up with a distance
and I'm going to need Terri's help.
Sat Jan 2
Thread on Perf Corgis about what contacts to use that I contributed to:
Running Contacts!
People probably get tired of me saying this, but 2 on 2 off is a
hack.
A necessary one for many big dogs, but still a hack.
I'm with Roger Coor (Moso the Pap's Dad), who says few (he says "no," I
say "few") small dogs should stop on a contact (save for the teeter) as
it's too much time to give up. I have video of Cali beating a
faster
Corgi when I switched her to running contacts.
Both Trek and Yoshi have been taught running contacts from the
beginning.
Some people use hoops and stride regulators. I use a clicker or a
marker word (yes!) for when they hit the contact (and I can take the
marker word into the ring). Bonnie (who I hope chimes in) figured
out
that if you keep the A-Frame low for an extended period of time then
the
muscle memory of not leaping off early sets in. This must have
happened
inadvertently for Trek as she's missed only one contact in her life.
Found a small jar and made a penny shaker out of it. It's small
enough that maybe it won't clatter on walks.
Fri Jan 1
Happy New Year.
Uneventual dog walks.
Thu Dec 31
Back to walking them regularly. I'm going a bit slow but they're
tolerating it. Not seeing many dogs. Wound up walking them
in the evening but before any new year's celebrations got going.
I usually don't walk Yoshi at night since he sees better than I do and
that sometimes erases my advantage of seeing the dog first (because I
know where to look). This time I saw the dog first and it was
nice because that dog was moving slowly across the street. they
were at a corner that we were approaching on the other side. I stopped
about a house width away as I didn't know which way they were going
first. When we stop, then Yoshi sees the dog (his vision must be
a bit less too as he's not reacting and it took him a moment to see the
dog.)
Yoshi is just watching the dog but a bit on edge considering. The
dog and his people turn the corner and start moving slowly away.
I walk us a few steps closer and that motion seems to trigger Yoshi as
he wants to charge up. I leash pop him. He engages back
with me and then goes right back to wanting to charge (he's not barking
interestingly enough just growling. Curious to see what happens I
pop him back. when he stops trying to charge, we then cross the
street (dog has moved some distance away but still kinda close).
For the rest of the walk (not far) he's up on his toes on alert and
stressed, but not quite out of his mind but if he had seen another dog
he no doubt would have reacted possibly stronger.
What I wish I could do is repeat the situation then using Click to
Calm, or CU, or CAT or Classical Conditioning techniques, or "leave it"
and "watch" just restraint techniques. They all work, but I don't
know what is going to help with that first impulse issue. I get a
reaction and then a "oh yeah this is what I'm supposed to do." I
haven't been able to replace that first response which is why I can't
take him off leash outside of a sheep pen. The first response
should be to turn to me for a reward. What I'm getting is a
reaction, then a correction or a reminder, then a turn to me for a
reward. The CU approach is to teach sub-threshold and avoid the
reaction entirely and do Relaxation Protocol calming exercises that
help a dog get used to ignoring stimuli and create a safe space on a
matt that can travel. the idea is: it's a dog, can I have a
cookie?
For Yoshi a more formal CAT technique where the reward is the dog
disappears is intriguing. I've been doing something similar to
another trainer's variation where you take your dog away as a reward
(she calls this BAT), early on we were doing some work like this with
Toni who went through the SF-SPCA academy.
But none of these things really address what to do when the dog is off
leash. Remote training tools are like the time honored shaker can
(which might work for us when I grow another hand or get my technique
down, or various collars that beep, spray or shock. The problem
with the collars is that they always fail at the wrong time (I've only
used citronella or beeping ones) and you have to hit the correct button
at the right time. This is an argument for the lo tek shaker can
if I can figure out how to carry it quietly. It's like there has
to be something that keeps the shaker item (pennies or pebbles) quiet
unless you hold it in a certain way that retracts whatever is holding
the shaker down. Similar things exist I'll have to took to see
what's out there that can be adapted.
Mon-Wed
Been sick and only sort of walking the dogs and not doing much
else. They've been entertaining them selves with a lot of
wrestling and tearing around the yard.
Sun Dec 27
Yoshi in the LR window. Two dogs (on leash) walked right in front
of HIS house and he objected mightily. I was right there and let
him start to react but called his name and shook a penny jar. He
would pause then start barking again and I'd call his name and shake
the jar. It was really hard for him but after 3 repetitions he
fully disengaged and I told him he was a good boy. He was still
revved but seemed able to focus.
What was really interesting is that Trek was with me on the sofa and
while she didn't particularly like the jar she didn't run screaming
from the room either but stayed beside me. She knew she wasn't in
trouble.
Sat Dec 26
Back from visiting Terri's brother's family. Dogs came along and
were terrific, save for some barking at the cat. I was very happy
to see that I could call Yoshi away from fence barking with the Lab
next door. And he had just started to work him self into a nice
tizzy too so he's able to thing while "in drive" now.
Tue Dec 22
So I did take her to the PP class.
We
started with a rear cross drill.
Dog goes into the tunnel and the handler is standing right at the end
(forgot to draw that part). Then both handler and dog run at the
inside jump Dog goes over jump and handler crosses behind
and brings doggy over the outside jump and in the tunnel and then do
the same thing on the other side. And repeat.
Trek drove over the jump ok but was a bit of a scatterbrain once past
the jump and started to race off to parts unknown. This is
exactly what she does at a trial and doesn't do in her regular class so
I
was thrilled that we finally could work on it. Jim thinks the
classic: lots of on-course rewards should help and it no doubt will but
that's what we do at her usual class and I get her good behavior at
class and not at trials. This could mean lots of environment
changing which is not surprising given that changing locations is one
of the last things you add in a dog's training. In fact, in Susan
Garrerr's training methodology it's the H of DASH (Desire, Accuracy,
Speed, Habitat).
Then the drill became a front cross drill by just going to the outside
jump first. Then he angled the outer most jump which turned it
into a 270 turn. Trek was having a hard time carrying out on
this. Jim's not thrilled that I use Out to mean move a little
laterally - he wants it to mean larger amounts. Given that what
she's doing is exactly what I've taught her, I am not inclined to
change it but add another word ("Big Out"?? or just keep adding "outs")
Then after the tunnel did a serpentine down the jumps.
Then we moved on to longer courses Trek did a great send out to
the weaves, but still sometimes pops when weaving on my right.
Jim said to stay completely committed to her staying in the poles, and
don't pull away.
Half the fun of being in a class w/ long time peers and experienced
competitors is the additional free advice. The primary one being
"Don't bend over." There is a claim that I'm bending over in a
video so I need to go see it.
Actually in places bending over isn't that bad and I do it
deliberately in the weaves but they tell me that as Trek speeds up that
it will be an issue which is true and a probably that would be cool to
have. Already going down the dogwalk, I have to beat feet to keep
up which I love.
I'll have to see where else I'm being over. Likely in the front
and rear cross drills.
One thing specifically to work in is the turn away esp at a
distance. You can teach that as a "turn" but I prefer left and
right since Trek knows the basics and just needs to add distance to it.
This is relevant to a gamble we were working on
You need to treat this gamble as a rear cross. Send the dog over
(2) and use your left had crossing the front of you body as you pivot
right. Before fully pivoting, support the dog's carry out to (3)
with that arm extended.
On another course, tried the faster lead out
that we discussed in her private lesson and she broke. Reset her
and did a slightly slower lead out and she held it and did a great run
complete with a nice send out to the weaves.
Now I need to decide how often to come. I'm thinking 2-3
times a month. No class next week so this would be for next year.
Sun Dec 20
Trek Private lesson with Jim.
The purpose of the lesson today was to let Jim have a look at her and
tell me what I still need to work on. It went very well, and
while I'm going to list what we have to work on I am very honored that
he offered her a class spot if she wants it. The obvious class
for her would be the small dog class on Tues at 6pm. The class is
listed as an Advanced class, but all the dogs he listed off are
Master's level dogs (and I knew them all). Trek currently is the
best in her class besides the instructor's dog so she really needs to
be challenged more even though course-wise she is challenged. But
the real driving thing beside my missing Cali's connection to Power
Paws is that they have a lovely grass field and Sharon's is dirt.
Given that both are really good opportunities I'm going to keep both
for a while and then decide. I also need to negotiate with my
work so see if I can get off early on Tues so I can make it down.
The only bummer is that I have a schedule conflict on the 3rd Tues so I
either eat that or just always pay the drop-in rate.
The obvious advantages of the class are
- small dog class
- grassy field
- she would not be the best dog in the class - dogs are pretty
accomplished so would get more runs in
- and of course Jim
- my agility small dog friends
- could we recreate the PP Corgi Dynasty? :)
Things that look good are
- the fact that she was able to work in a new environment without
having to run off to sniff
- contacts - all of them even the teeter - yahoo!
- jump style
- toy drive
- likes that the natural balance treats don't crumble
- she's driving well for rear crosses as long as I'm not running
her over or into her path
Things that need more work
- right hand side weaves (popping at 10th pole)
- lateral lead outs (discussed this at length) and tightening the
standing front crosses
- keep her engaged at the start line - develop a start line
routine
do the side positioning thing I do and then have her touch
my hand one last time (and try to keep her from moving to do it.)
- do faster leadouts. Jog out or walk fast. No "green
mile" walk
- when she commits then run to new position
- when a change of direction is coming up tell her right as she's
committed to the current obstacle
- he thinks her focus would be better if I didn't let her wander
Sat Dec 19
Yoshi herding
Our first time on goats. The ranch has new management and doesn't
want sheep run all over the place so Marian was putting the greener or
pushier dogs (that would be Yoshi on down) on goats as they're not as
picky about the goats. I had one brief experience where Yoshi
chased a small goat so I was a bit concerned, but I knew that wasn't
their reputation and that was correct. I shouldn't of worried
except for one of the snottier goats taking a head butt swing at Yoshi
so we just left that one to sulk.
The fun thing was that the goats wouldn't move off they hay they were
standing on and classic Border Collie "eye" doesn't really work.
BC lays down and stares at the goats and they happily stare right
back. The BCs have to learn to work in a more standing position
and the "upright" breeds actually do better according to Marian when it
comes to goats (and cows). So we brought Yoshi in and let him
charge right in there are they moved.
Everything is slower with the goats almost like we're moving through
mud. This means it's much easier on the handler as you have more
time to think and react. We ran the AKC A course twice until the
goats went on strike and started listening to their more recalcitrant
members. His Stop actually worked reasonably often. I can
see we're going to need to do a lot more of this.
I'd like to, off stock, teach Yoshi how to take one step. Right
now we have Stop Walk Stop... which works mostly, but it would be cool
to have more precision though if I can fine tune his reaction time that
actually might be enough. Using the standing stop that we already
have is actually best and you should use a stand or a sit instead of a
lie down.
The ranch has AHBA courses with goats (Ranch Dog and also HTAD), so
that might be a fun thing to work towards while we're in the process of
our AKC trial training.
Once concern is that the goats are slow enough (and also happily
flocked around me which was totally fun compared to being mobbed by
sheep - which I'm used to now, but can be a bit daunting), I fear
learning bad timing as I could see multiple times where I would have
lost lighter sheep but the goats were quite happy to stay with
me. It totally felt like "over the hills and through the woods to
grandmother's house we go" or "we're off to see the wizard..."
Yoshi did pick on the littlest goat and I had to every so often deflect
his zeroing in (usually by getting the stock stick in between him and
the little goat.
But regardless of the bad timing fears it's a great way to fine tune
control. Hopefully getting butted didn't dissuade him too much -
I
don't think it did.
He's so much better about dogs though he was saying hello to a female
BC who was acting inviting and he was making a motion like he wanted to
mount her (not really but sort of) and she snarked at him and he
snarked back and I whisked him (nay, carried him off by the ruff) off
to
cool down a moment, but then we had them able to stand near each other
again and they were fine and he wasn't stressed which was very nice.
Fri Dec 18
Yoshi walk. Click to calm mostly works but he'll still lunge if
he gets the chance. I corrected him pretty hard for a lunge and
he seemed to get the idea that I was pretty peeved. Not sure what
the best answer is as the calmer he is the better behaved he is.
Trek agility.
Running with intention is working well and I can now get her to drive
ahead and take jumps. It seems to work better to stay back a bit
and not get into her path. The only problem with this is that I'm
more out of position and she drives ahead to the next obstacle
regardless whether it's the next one. Given how she took quite a
while to get the idea of obstacle sequencing it's nice to have the
opposite problem. I just have to keep my voice calm as the more
hyper I get the worse she gets.
One issue is that she's terrible about lead outs that are more than one
obstacle. Esp if it's the tire as the first obstacle. She
will just sit and stare at me. The problem is that if she doesn't
react they I call harder and the less she moves (maybe I've been
working too hard on the obedience stays.) Nancy G drilled into me
that the release should always be verbal but I'm wondering if it should
be different for Trek. Right now I'll leave it as it is.
Wed Dec 16
Yoshi walk (I had a work commitment so no time for a Trek walk)
I saw a person across the street whose body language clearly said "I
have a slow dog
attached to me" and sure enough a Beagle appeared. I had a
clicker
with me and was prepared but Yoshi so wanted to lunge that while I was
clicking I really wasn't waiting for him to disengage, but kept
the treat in front of him to munch on till his attention shifted
to me and then we could do Click to Calm stuff. (The Beagle was
still ambling along which was good.)
I asked CU_dogs_SF about something closely related:
Not long ago, I saw "Click to Calm
Unleashed" listed as a Clicker Expo
presentation topic and I'm wondering if Emma Parsons and Leslie
McDevitt are collaborating. Can anyone confirm? Now that
Yoshi is
doing better I find I am having more luck with Click to Calm (before he
was too stressed to pay attention to a click - unless I was a good
distance away from the trigger.)
These days I can also use more portable, less appalling dry treats
(like the Natural Balance ones). They also take him longer to eat
which puts a dent in the gulp and lunge method. Today he was fussing
about a Beagle across the street until I clicked and put a large treat
in his mouth. Crunch crunch crunch. And then he was more than
willing
to get clicked and treated and completely ignore the Beagle. If he's
really stressed I, can just hold the dry treat in front of his nose and
hang on to it so he has to nibble on it which takes up more of his
brain. It does take a certain amount of bravery and I'd be a
little
hesitant to use it on a dog who could really do me some damage, but it
works for him.
Tue Dec 15
Noon dog walks
Yoshi - brought both a clicker and a shake can with me. We only
say the mail carrier so I used the clicker and it worked great.
Should be interesting to see what happens when there's something he's
concerned about it. I wasn't using the clicker much for a while
as it's a lot to manage but now that things are a little more
predictable I can manage it and the click is a sharper more precise
tone than a "yes" even though I am faster with "yes." I also have
my clicker on a retracting wire clip which helps a lot. So we'll
continue with this as it's a routine he likes and we might be able to
push things further this way.
Trek - much the same but steadily improving. Wasn't dragging me
today which is nice.
Mon Dec 14
Noon dog walks
Yoshi - he's still barking at triggers and he's only partially
listening to me.
I need to make my presence more known though he connects well with me
but his default is to still worry and not focus back on me.
I have at least 2 choices. carry an adversive (either a beeper or
a
shake can), or go back to clicking to calm. Since he gives me one
second warning I have a lot of choices. Giving him the occasional
leash pop doesn't really help that much if there's something he's
concerned about (this time it was a Lab on his way with his person to
the elementary school.)
Trek - still worried about High St, but coping.
Sun Dec 13 Trek Bayteam Trial
Mission accomplished! She was entered in just Advanced/PII
Gambliers and Snooker. My goal was simple. See if she could
do a course under the noisy covered horse arena without freaking
out. She did it! And nearly qualified too. She did
more obstacles than we usually do in the Gamblers opening and I had to
improvise a little, but she whizzed through the Gamble though skipped
the 5th pole (unusual) - I don't care she was focused and listening to
me and she's never seen a set of poles in a gamble though we do poles
at a distance anyway. And in Snooker I didn't rehearse the
transition from the opening to the closing enough and wound up
repeating a red instead of doing the closing - the course was pretty
ridiculous and I don't know if we would have gotten through closing
obstacle 5 (what you need to get through if you do 3 7's - otherwise
you have to get through 6.
Being super low key work fabulously. Just a speaking tone of
voice, no tension as the more stressed I get the worse she gets.
Doing the weave poles facing her seemed to work, but I don't know if it
had any effect on her, but it's something worth continuing for now.
Here's the video (click on the video to get a better full sized
version):
But should I enter her at the same place in Jan? After thinking
about it I realized that while she coped she didn't enjoy it and if she
hates it there's no point. So I instead am going skiing on Sunday
Jan 24.
Sat Dec 12
Worked on obedience with Trek (dumbbell) and Yoshi's moving stop
Since Trek doesn't like the dumbbell hitting the wood floor we worked
on
the bed which worked great. At first I was just holding her mouth
gently with the dumbbell in it to give her the idea of holding it -
something she has limited patience with. Then we moved on to her
picking it up by herself and when she got bored of that I had her do
little baby retrieves. She would hold it for a count of 5 or so which
is an improvement.
Yoshi's stop got better when I stopped leaning over to intimidate him
into stopping, but instead said stop, signaled and dropped a treat on
the floor. I'm missing a step so I added a brief pause in to the
mix and he's getting it and that should be hopefully easy to fade.
Fri Dec 11 class canceled - it's pouring
Wed Dec 8 Yoshi's dental was today. I always worry about his since
he had a brother die from anesthesia - why do I end up with dogs with
this kind of history? Cali's had a grandmother pass away under
circumstances where they concluded it was anesthesia - Fortunately Cali
was fine but I always worried. Yoshi been under multiple times
(teeth cleaning and the incident of trying to inhale a cat on the other
side of the fence and ending up with a souvenir plant stamen up his
nose) but I still worry about him.
But they tell me he's waking up and he has all the teeth he started out
with today and they're clean.
Now we get to save for the cancer screening ultrasound that I want him
to have.
I started my own local cancer screening campaign and people are sending
me thank yous that they had their dog's done already, so I really
(really!) need to follow through on this. (My vet said do the
dental first.)
Trek walk at noon. She still really dislikes the corner of High
Street and Santa Clara esp when it's noisy which it sort of was today,
so she got to eat lots of treats. I may have to cut her food a
little more as she's 24.5 pounds and should lose 1/2 a pound.
problem is she's such a pain when she'd hungry and won't
concentrate. I could add veggies to her food but carrots pass
right through her undigested so I either have to teach her how to chew
her food (good luck with that0 or cut them up or find something
else. I did buy some canned pumpkin so we can try that and I just
need to get over my pumpkin aversion.
Thinking of taking Trek to obedience class tonight. I just
noticed her class certs have expired - bummer.
When picking up Yoshi, I spoke briefly to Dr. Applegate to find out
what anesthesia drugs they used as obviously they work for him.
She said he did great. There's a small swelling on the upper
right side above the [look up the tooth name] that they are going to
keep an eye on. It's likely cased by gingivitis, but there's a
teeny tiny risk of it being a tumor.
He's eaten and seems fine. Treks beating up on him some an he's
not quite up for it but is recovering.
I forgot to check with BAVS about what anesthesia they used for the
plant stamen incident, but that was different.
[various dog walks nothing special]
Sat Dec 5 Yoshi herding. Baby's first outrun lessons. It went
better than I expected. I do need to get a longer version of my
riding crop so I can wack the ground with it and not have to bend way
over. Doing a lot of running parallel with him around the sheep
me on the inside him on the outside - keeping pressure on his shoulder
to hip area while saying Out. If he tries to dive in I'm supposed
to wack the ground in front of him to keep him out. It's very
empowering being able to keep up with him (I get to cut corners).
He appears to be getting it but we have a long road.
Fri Dec 4 Yoshi walk and nails uneventful. Trek agility. After not
doing it for some time she did great. Turning my body sideways as
she weaves is working very well. No popping and when she tried to
I could right away indicate the correct direction. Driving ahead
still needs work as she worries when we are about to cross paths, but
I'm thinking that if I slow down and empasize "GO" to drive
ahead. Of course at a trial she's all about way ahead of me so
this may not be quite so relevant.
Thu Dec 3
Bummer. The ranch is worried about animal rights people showing
up at trials so I had to mark Yoshi's herding videos as private.
However I've made a special You Tube Account and shared the videos with
just that login and I then just give the login out to whoever I want to
see it.
With it dark in the evenings now, it didn't seem fair to always walk
Trek at night, and neither dogs' training is as effective at night as I
don't see what they see (they see much better than I do at night), so i
can't anticipate problems. So I've resolved to walk both dogs at
noon which means eating at work and doing some serious hustle to get it
done, but it's doable if i can plan ahead and always have food at work.
Yoshi walk. At the corner of Court and Santa Clara he turned
around and suddenly started barking back at the house on the
corner. i look over my shoulder looking for a dog near the front
door. Nope. I look for a dog anywhere. Nope. A
cat? A squirrel? A mail carrier in a pith helmet? No no and no.
He's looking right at a filled pink plastic bag left out for pickup by
a charitable organization. But Yoshi you can't even see pink.
Bark bark bark. Whatever, what a cool, safe training
opportunity. Sit. He doesn't. Sit. He doesn't.
I make him sit. He's alternating glowering and barking at the
evil bag (two actually). We spend the next few minutes with me
making him sit and him holding it for a bit and then popping up (and
repeat). We sort of get somewhere and i finally let him go sniff
the bag thus ending the controversy. After walking on some blocks
i decide that I want to revisit the bag but it's already been picked
up. Bummer. But cool that I now have another way to train
though. Evil filled plastic bags. Wonder if they have to be pink
(wonder what color pink looks like if you only have 2 color cones in
your eyes - there are some guesses, but I don't think we know of a way
to be correct.)
He also grumbled a bit about the mail carrier carrying that big bag
(even sans pith helmet).
Trek walk. Our standard walk for her now includes High Street and
she's getting better about not dragging me down it.
Wed Dec 2
Yoshi walk - mercifully uneventful as I'm still under the weather.
I've been pondering is it better to teach a dog how to think while
excited or teach them to stay relaxed under varying circumstances?
Things like CU and the Relaxation Protocol take the latter approach,
herding and shaker/noisemaker cans take the former. Both have
been useful, but I think where Yoshi needs more work is the
former. How to control himself in situations where he would
normally press the panic button. Certainly more herding is one
solution and we'll be doing that this month the 5th and the 19th.
Certainly one of the world's easiest training is to let him hang out in
the window and me with the shaker bottle and treats for desisting so
I'll probably do more of that this afternoon.
[later]
Didn't get a chance to do that, but inside the house he went into a
barking frenzy at another dog barking outside and was racing up and
down beside me so I was able to tell him to down, which he did after
some "are you serious?" hesitation. He held it too for 30 seconds
or more (however long I asked for). He did bark while laying down
(the other dog was still barking) and that's totally fine as it's not
something he's very good at so he gave up pretty soon. Good
boy. I like that as it means that I can get compliance when he's
in a frenzy in his house. Having another dog magicall appear
close by is another story entirely and I'm hoping that all this other
work can influence that as that situation is hard to set up.
Especially the surprise factor.
We
started with a rear cross drill.
Dog goes into the tunnel and the handler is standing right at the end
(forgot to draw that part). Then both handler and dog run at the
inside jump Dog goes over jump and handler crosses behind
and brings doggy over the outside jump and in the tunnel and then do
the same thing on the other side. And repeat.