... And a promise

I have to make a promise to Luna.

For more than 6 years now, I have been teaching Luna that when we are in the company of other people and/or dogs, I stop training and start reacting. I’ve taught her that when I ask for a behavior in these circumstances and she performs, I will not pay her. I’ve taught her that when she DOESN’T perform, I will intimidate and manhandle her into position. This needs to stop.

WHY is it perfectly OK for people to punish their dogs in public (for things that aren't even the dog's fault), but rewarding them for a job well done is seen as bribery, spoiling the dog, weakness, and a sign of an untrained dog?

I do NOT want to boss my dog around because I am afraid of other people’s opinions when I do what I know is right. I want to PROUDLY give my dog a treat, or a toy, or something else she likes in that moment, to reward her for doing what I ask.

So, this is my promise;

Dear Luna, from now on, I will do my absolute best to TRAIN you, to be your TEACHER rather than a bully, I will PAY you for a job well done, and I will TEACH you what to do if you don’t know it, no matter who might be watching us.

Whenever I catch myself being a bully, whenever I catch myself being reactive, I will immediately stop, re-teach what I want you to do, and then I will ASK you to do it and PAY you for doing it!

There. And it's public now, too. :D

Goals for 2012

I’ve agreed to follow Stacey Braslau-Schneck’s idea to train our dogs for 12 minutes each day for the entire month of January.

As a way of finding out WHAT I will be training during those 12 minutes a day, here’s a list of my goals for this year.

STIMULUS CONTROL OVER THE FOLLOWING CUES:
1) “Zitten!”
2) Whistle Sit; ‘Piew!’
3) “Lie Down!”
4) Down on Hand Signal (From Left shoulder to Right hip & from Right shoulder to Left hip)
Default behavior (in a training session, when not asked to do something) should be STAND.

BEHAVIORS WORKED TO FLUENCY THIS YEAR:
1 & 2) A solid RECALL to whistle ‘tu-tu-tu-tu!’ on the Acme 211,5 and voice cue; “meisje kom!”
3) RELAX on cue
4 & 5) Solid SIT STAY, able to stop her anywhere on voice cue “Zitten!” & whistle ‘piew!’
6) Solid DOWN STAY, an immediate drop, able to stop her anywhere on voice cue “Lie Down!” & hand signal (can then be combined with Sit whistle)
7) DEFAULT ZEN; food in hands Zen, food on tables Zen, food falling Zen, food on the floor Zen, open door Zen, CAT ZEN(? we need it, but I'm not sure I want to commit to it...), tossed balls Zen, food-lady Zen
8) CUED ZEN; verbal cue for Zen is “No.” I will train this behavior up to L4 before I start asking for it in daily life.
8) DEFAULT LOOSE LEASH; if she ever starts to think of pulling, I will back up at least 3 steps, have her Sit at my side, wait for calmness, then continue on. If she spots someone or something she wants to go to, I will make note of where we are at that moment, and if at any time toward that focal point she thinks of pulling, I will walk all the way back to our starting point and ask for a Sit at my side. Then we try again. NO EXCUSES!
9) NAME RESPONSE; any time I say her name, I will pay her. Any time I say her name, I want her to Look at me.
10) COLLAR GRAB; conditioned to the point of happy response (smiling face, bright eyes, pricked ears, tail wag) whenever I reach for her collar

WHAT I WILL DO:
1) If I need her to stop doing something; I will EITHER say her Name (and then offer an alternative behavior) cue Zen or ask for a Recall ONCE. If she responds by MOVING HER FACE AWAY from the thing she was engaged with, I will click and pay handsomely. If she doesn’t respond to ONE request, I will walk up to her and remove her with a Collar Grab, then give her another chance to do what I asked. If she needs my help twice, I will put her on leash and pay her for a Sit Stay at my side. I might then later give her another chance.

2) Train in Real Life; In the company of other people and/or dogs, instead of ignoring Luna and allowing her to practice reinforcement stealing and making her comply, I will take that opportunity to TEACH DEFAULT ZEN, NAME RESPONSE, LOOSE LEASH, SIT STAY, DOWN STAY, RECALLS.

3) I will always have a handful of other treats mixed in with her kibble, to offer a random surprise. I will use these treats whenever I happen to grab one, and not to specifically reinforce special responses. They should be a surprise, not a planned event. If any are left by dinnertime, I will take them out and use them the next day. She will not get the special treats for dinner.

4) Train by the handful, no longer than 3 – 5 minutes per session, 4 sessions a day.

5) I will TEACH a behavior ‘in the lab’, get it fluent & under stimulus control, then start integrating it in daily life.

6) After teaching a behavior, I will pay for EACH AND EVERY correct response for at least 30 days before I start asking for a little faith.

Not much blogging for a while!

Hi all,

Since I'm currently following Susan Garrett's Recallers Course, I probably won't be writing much here, for the next five weeks. Thought I'd let you know before you assumed this blog is dead. ;-)

Have a great time everyone!

Duh.

Luna's favourite treat; cheese.

NOT a good idea to take cheese with me on the last walk before bed; MY goal is that Luna pees several times and hopefully poops as well, in a 15 minute walk. LUNA'S goal; GET THE CHEESE! So, she peed once, and spent the rest of the walk trying to entice me into asking her to do something which would lead to cheese. I'd tell her 'go pee!' she'd take 10 steps and go; 'hi ma, would you like me to do something for you?!' YES, I would like you to PEE. 'But ma, you have cheese, are you SURE you don't want me to do a trick or something?!' *Sigh*

The consequence; I went to bed feeling guilty, hoping she wouldn't REALLY have to go in the morning, and Luna just said; 'cheese!'

This morning I take her out, she sniffs and trots around and asks me questions for 10 minutes before she decides to pee. Not a huge stream, no, just a tiny 'I was here' drizzle. Thank heavens! It probably helps that she's nearly 6 years old now, but when she was a puppy, she didn't warn me at all when she had to pee, so I found a wet spot in her crate nearly every morning. Oops, sorry pup. I think I still feel uncomfortable about that now, which is why I HATE it when she only pees once before bed. ;-)

So, new rule; NO cheese on the last walk!

Still overfeeding.

Oh! Aha!

I just weighed Luna again, and once again the scale said 70,5 pounds. Huh?!

So, today I did another calculation of how much food she's supposed to get, and I come up with 246 grams. In other words, she's still getting too much food (I was giving her 300 grams). Also, I'm thinking maybe this food is too rich for her. I don't want to feed her a tiny bit of food just so she won't gain weight.

Also, to give myself more room for treats other than her 'boring' - for which she works way too well - kibble, I think that when this bag of food runs out (I'm guessing another week or so) I'll put her back on the pre-ground raw meat mix I had her on before the kibble. Then I can use cheese, ground beef and chicken as treats (the raw mix is way too gross and stinky to use as treats, takes all day to get the stench off my hands!). AND she can eat a larger volume of food. AND she did fine on the pre-ground mix (that's what she was on in April).

Why did I change to kibble? Because I couldn't figure out how to have handy treats AND feed her the raw mix, without overfeeding. Now I've figured it out! So, in about two weeks she'll be back on the 'good-old' raw mix, and I'm really curious to see how she'll do!

Thanks for reading my food rambles. ;-)

Just a thought.

Hmmm, I thought this morning that it was actually a good thing, Luna being used as a boxing ball by the black dog last Sunday. I have seen NOTHING indicating that her knee was affected by the event, and that means her knee has healed really well! Yay!

Also, Luna's weight is 69 pounds today. Cool! She's beginning to look like the sleek racing machine she was up to last spring.

Reactivity success and failure on the same day.

Luna, 12 months old, showing her 'eek! a dog!' pose. This was before I woke up and realized I should help her cope with these things. These days, she rarely looks like this.

Investigating the scary dog with 10-year-old 'brother' Cedric. She looks like she's about to bolt if that dog makes a sudden move.

Yesterday started out well; on our morning walk, which included taking 15-year-old Westie Cedric with us, we met a lady with a blonde and a black Lab. Both are females, and Luna has met them before. Still, I know she is weary of the black one, so I took a moment to think about what best to do before lady and dogs reached us.

If we hadn't had Cedric with us, I might have just let Luna Sit and play 'Look At That', but I knew that wouldn't feel safe enough for her in this situation. So, I crouched down with her, put my arm around her and we watched together as the lady and her dogs approached. I talked nicely to Luna, and she appeared quite soft; ears down, a slightly smiley face, and she was wagging her tail in a happy fashion. The dogs reached us and I made sure to keep on touching and talking to Luna as both dogs came to say 'hi'. She continued to be soft and wiggly, frequently turning back to me to say 'thanks for helping me'. At some point she got a little bit far away from me to investigate the black Lab and she had a moment of snarky face ('I think you're scary and I might bark in your face'), but she made no sound and came back to me quickly when I called her name. Yay, Luna!

The lady said I should also cuddle 'the little one' (Cedric), and I said; 'yeah, but he doesn't think this is scary' (not to mention that he hardly noticed the dogs due to blindness and deafness). The lady asked me what made Luna think this was scary, and I said, 'the black dog'. Then, the lady said 'ah, a preference'. I didn't respond to that, as this was the moment where Luna had a snarky face, and after solving that I got up and we said goodbye.

So, why DOES Luna think black dogs are scary? I think she has good reason to; almost all dogs that have been rude or unfriendly to her were black, and a Giant Schnauzer chased after her once and collided with her back end, which ended in a bruised backside for my girl. She'd alternately limp on one of her hind legs, and she kept her tail very stiffly when I tried to manipulate it. Thankfully she recovered from this very well (never got to speak to the owner about this, sadly) and it hasn't bothered her since. Like I said though, black dogs to her mean 'rude, nasty and pain'.

Then, yesterday on our walk before dinner, again with Cedric, we met two off-leash, boisterous, rude black Labs and two (one of which off-leash) Parson Russel sized mixes. We've met all four of these dogs before, and Luna doesn't feel comfortable with any of them. We couldn't evade them (well, I realize now we could have gone back the way we came, although with a slow 15-year-old in tow they probably would've caught up with us) and for some reason I did not feel like having Luna Sit and do 'Look At That'. So, I just kind of marched through these dogs as quickly as we could, which resulted in Luna lunging at one of the Labs, barking at one of the mixes and coming out the other end with her hackles raised as high as they could go and her tail up. Oops. I'm sorry, little girl...

Ghaaa! I hate when I do things like that. I KNOW she can't cope with that and yet I put her through it anyway.

Also, I'm thinking of buying a front-clip harness for these walks with Cedric. That way I won't be pulling on her neck when I decide to be a bad mommy and let her 'fix' things on her own.

Again, sorry pup...

Beginning to catch the Agility Bug?

I am getting more and more enthusiastic about DOING Agility versus just LOOKING at in on Youtube and such.

I would want my own training set. A jump, an A-frame, a Seesaw, a Tunnel, a Chute, a Tire, a Broad Jump, a Catwalk(?) and... Which would require a backyard big enough to house the training set in such a way that I can run courses.

I would get my dog really good on all the fundamentals using Susan Garrett’s 2X2 Weave Pole DVD, Susan Salo’s Success With One Jump DVD, and also Greg Derrett’s DVD’s on handling.

Then, when I felt we were ready to at least do a fast, largely faultless course, I might sign up for an actual Agility competition and see how my dog fares - and me, of course.

AAAHHHH!!!

This is another picture I took this morning of my Fat Dog. It’ll be interesting to see if she’s actually lost any weight next Wednesday, when I will be weighing her. Fingers crossed! At least now I am sure she looks WAY better when she’s on the skinny side!

AND I’ve learned that for this walk, it’s better to take my smaller camera. Easier to carry and gives me, under the circumstances, more opportunities to take photos.

A longer walk, great training inspiration & white socks!

Another great day with a longer walk!

I decided this time, because I’m not sure the harness is really comfortable & because I find it hard to walk with a dog on a tight leash, to allow Luna to be off-leash. As soon as I saw another dog though, I’d put her on leash and have her walk by my side or Sit. Why? Because I realized that the problem isn’t that Luna is rowdy when she’s off leash. The problem is playing with other dogs and me throwing stuff for her. If those things don’t happen, she’s a perfectly behaved, calmly trotting dog. Nothing gained there by putting her on leash. I was very glad I made that choice, and as such it was a much more comfortable walk!

Also, I found absolutely GREAT training stuff, ideas & inspiration on the training blog of a Training Levels follower. She’s ‘green_gargoyle’ on the TL List and she has 2 Golden Retriever boys, Zachary & baby Henry. I’m making my own plans modeled off of hers now! Yay! Thanks, Kathleen!

I went shopping today to get my new agenda for 2011 (fuchsia), and I also got 50 business cards, 100 index cards, a fuchsia 2-ring binder (all of which I plan to use for dog training), a really cute 2011 dog calendar AND I remembered, standing at the check-out desk and happening to see them, to buy WHITE SOCKS to put the dummy’s in for our Gundog training! Whoohoo!

About the picture: That's Luna last spring, having a HUGE blast digging for her ball in a big pile of sand. Two police officers on bikes came by, and one of them said, when he saw Luna digging around, "Easter's over, you know! No more digging for eggs!" Haha!

Another longer walk & ideas for Gundog Training.

 Whooo, 71 degrees again! Today we took the longer walk at 1.30 PM, as I also have our old dog Cedric to walk today. So this morning I took them out together for a 15-minute trip.

Her harness is still too small, I think. The belly band is right behind her elbows and ideally, I should be able to fit my flat hand between her elbow and the belly band. Hmm. Not sure what I’m gonna do about that yet. I could buy a new harness, one size up for the neck-part and then the same size as the belly band is now, or a different one altogether. Anyways...

I also had an aha! moment while drying the dishes; I don’t need to teach Luna about difficult retrieves, I need to teach her that she can TRUST me that when I say, there’s a bumper out there, it’s really there. I can do that by making sure she can ALWAYS SEE the bumper from where I send her to go get it. So I either work on totally flat land/concrete, or I put a white sock around the bumper.

This way, I CAN add distance, but I most importantly make sure that Luna learns she can really go out when I tell her to. She needs to BELIEVE that when I say Go, she’ll find a bumper.

Success criteria will be; as long as she finds the bumper without needing my help, that’s a pass. The faster the better, but if she doesn’t need me, that’s a pass. IF she AT ANY POINT FAILS to get the bumper ON THE FIRST SEND, that means she needs MORE practice with bumpers she CAN find immediately.

There. Yay me!

The picture is of last winter, during a Gundog Training Week on one of the Dutch islands, Ameland. It was freezing cold, but SO much fun! This was the first time Luna happily retrieved anything other than a ball. Look how proud she is! By the way, we're going again next January, only this time we'll be prepared!

More plans for a lasting recovery.

 I just thought of another Levels behaviour we can work on while Luna is recovering from her knee injury. Scenting!

So now, we have the following items to work on while Luna has to take it easy; Zen, Down & Down Stay, Sit & Sit Stay, Handling, Watch, & Scenting.

Also, I will be taking Luna for longer walks on her flexi-lead and harness as of - weather permitting - tonight. We’ll then be doing 45 minutes, which is about 2,4 miles. Hopefully this will help keep her muscles in good condition and rush along her weight loss a little faster than it is going right now.

Hello & a plan.

OK, my first blog post here. Luna and I will not be working the entire Levels program for another two weeks due to an injury to Luna’s knee. I want her to make a full recovery, so we will be starting the Levels as of Friday, October 15th.

For two weeks following October 15th, we will be working mostly on Zen, Down & Down Stay, Sit & Sit Stay, Handling, & Watch.

After that, we will be working the full Levels and we will also be doing regular, daily roadwork. I intend to take her cycling for 2 miles on leash one week, 2,5 miles on leash the next week, 3 miles off leash the week after that. Once we’re there I will up the distance to 5 miles off leash, and after a week of that I think she’ll be ready for 6 to 9 mile rides at least three times a week, weather permitting.

She does not get to play with other dogs until October 21/22, when we will be visiting Willemien and her black Lab Tibor for the weekend. I will be monitoring their play to make sure it does not get too rough.

I will also focus specifically on strengthening her hind legs, to keep her knee safe. For that, we will be doing hind leg awareness exercises, hand-stands, standing on her hind legs, sitting up etc.

Also, I will not let her play with other dogs on leash OR throw a ball while she is running after it. I will only throw a ball or any other toy while she is in a Stay, and release her when the ball or other toy has stopped moving OR when I am sure she cannot catch up with it BEFORE it stops.

So, that’s our plan!

At this moment we go for ±1 mile walks four times a day. I have her Sit or do a non-formal Heel when we run into other dogs. I leash her when I am not sure she’s able to do that.

Oh, and another important thing; I changed her food and the amount of training and thus treating I did in a day a few months ago, and due to my being lackadaisical with how much food she was getting in a day, Luna is now also 7 pounds overweight. She WAS 9 pounds over. Yesterday she weighed in at 69 pounds. Goal is to get her back down to 61-62 pounds. Maybe 60.

At this moment she gets 300-350 grams of kibble a day, and this is also what I use as treats. At the end of the day she gets whatever amount is left. She used to get 385 grams PLUS lots of treats during the day as well. Oops. And - after reading the label again - more oops because 385 grams is for a 77 pound dog! HA!