Daily Shoot #3.

Today's assignment:

"Make a photograph of something that captures a small bit the flavor of where you live or your culture."

Okay... I knew what I wanted, but the weather here is less than ideal for the shot I had in mind... It's cold, gray, colorless and muddy.

Either way, here's the 2 shots I thought were acceptable:

I've upped the saturation quite a bit to add some color. This is the view upon exiting our street, across the water is basically where our off-leash romping area starts. In the summer we have to share it with rather obnoxious cows, I'm always hoping they won't show up until late in the season. Especially since they've added a BULL to the herd two years ago! Yikes!

Steps to Success L2 & L3 Distance.

Since making my Steps to Success progress chart I got sidetracked and have been working exclusively on L2 and, unknowingly, L3 Distance. I've learned some interesting things.

1) I get stuck in the Teaching phase for too long. I keep thinking Luna doesn't get it, but when I do 80% right tests Luna usually hits between 75 and 95%. Also, when I take her out of the Teaching setup and start using the new behaviour in life, she's great at it. She makes a mistake maybe once, and then she gets it!

2) The sooner I start mixing the new behaviour with known behaviours (start as soon as the cue is attached), the faster, better and more reliable Luna responds. I did this for the first time when I taught her to Stand. I C/T'd for standing, once she got that I started telling her what it's called, and then I started adding in Sits and Downs and asking her to Stand. She was over 80% right, and she learned and generalized the behaviour in ONE 30-minute session. Stand is, besides putting her head through her collar, the most reliable behaviour she has. If she makes a mistake, I can reset her by asking for a Stand, then re-cueing the missed behaviour. It is also the only behaviour that's reliably under Stimulus Control.

3) Luna learns better when I start mixing stuff up and use the behaviour in daily life as soon as she knows the cue!

Now, if I can remember this next time I teach her something new...

It's funny really. Tuesday I thought she had NO clue what I wanted. Wednesday I thought she had NO clue what I wanted. Thursday I got fed up with trying to explain, so I started asking for the behaviour before she'd get a piece of my banana, or a piece of egg at breakfast, or a piece of my cheese for lunch. Just little things like that. She got better. Then yesterday I decided just to see what she would do if I asked her to go around lamp posts outside. After two 'what do you mean exactly?' replies, she nailed them. Then on our last walk for the night, I asked her to go around a stone pillar. Easy. I asked her to go around a framed tree. Easy. I asked her to go around a 15 foot wide fence. Easy. I decided to take a chance and ask her to go around a car. Again, easy!

So, what have I learned? I'm the one getting stuck, Luna is just waiting for me to USE the behaviour. She says, 'OK, I know what it's called, now what do you want me to DO with it?!' And if I fail to answer that question, she just starts mixing in other behaviours because she is bored, wants to speed things up or whatever. In any case, HER learning is not the problem.

I'll video her Distance behaviour sometime between now and next week. ;-)

Here's our updated Steps to Success Progress Chart:

Luna Passed L2 Distance Steps 1-4 & L3 Distance Steps 1-5.

I will be adding our Daily Shoot assignment today, but it will have to wait until our next walk, as it requires an outdoor shot.

Wordless Wednesday.

This always makes me laugh. When I vacuum downstairs, Luna goes up to my room. But if she hears an outside door, and I've left the door to my room open, she will often come running down to see who dares to come in, or worse, leave without telling her! And then this is the picture I see; sitting behind the door to upstairs, hoping someone will open it so she can check things out. This time I told her to go right back upstairs, I wasn't done vacuuming yet! ;-)

Steps to Success Progress Chart.

Something I really missed with the new Steps to Success is the current lack of a way to track things. I'm sure that'll come when the book comes out, but what to do in the meantime? So I decided to see if I could make something that would give me a nice overview of where we are in training.

This is what I came up with:

Luna's Steps to Success Progress Chart.

Ain't that nice?! I really like it. Feel free to copy this one for your own use. Click on the pic for a larger version. The grayed out areas are non-applicable behaviors to that level, I haven't yet added this to all levels.

Also, we did more training! Yay me! As you can see in the chart, we worked on - hmmm, something to add, a time stamp! - Handling and Distance for L2. For Handling I was pretty confident she could pass Steps 1 to 4 without trouble, and as you can see, I was right! We've been working, outside of the Steps, on Handling Step 5 but I haven't really taken the time to sit down and explain it to her properly, so it is marked as Teaching Stage.

After Handling, I chose one of the things she can sorta do but I haven't taken her through the entire process yet. We worked on Distance Step 1. She was going around the pole (a stool) counterclockwise from six feet away, but I might have lumped so next time I will put the stool right in front of me. I have also begun adding a cue; 'Go 'Round!' and mixing that in with Sits, Downs and Stands. I think she did pretty good, but I really do not want to rush things, so we'll see what she remembers next time. Take the time it takes!

Why I think I've lumped; Luna was very vocal, threw a lot of other behaviors at me (we hadn't heard of Stimulus Control until a year ago and I have yet - again - to take the time to explain it!) and she generally just seemed a bit too frustrated to be fair. When I started adding in Sits and Downs with the cue for going around the stool, she calmed down to the point of no longer vocalizing. Obviously the Rate of Reinforcement had gone up here. I really need to think about that next time!

And before I mark them off, I want to do the Homework assignments officially. I will post those here.

Weekly Worksheet for Week 7.

These are the things I plan to do this week... but I'm a star at procrastination so... fingers crossed. I've made this in hopes of actually doing something other than taking Luna for runs with the bike.

Layout somewhat stolen from Katleen over at BZ Training. Thanks for the idea, Kat!

And thanks to this sheet I've actually tested Luna on Steps 1-4 of the Steps to Success L2 and she passed with flying colors! Way to go, puppy! Hopefully I will test or teach or train something else before this day is over...

Haha! Daily Shoot Coincidence.

Today's Daily Shoot assignment reads:

"Make a photograph of something old. Be sure to show us the character that age can give a subject."

Before reading this assignment I'd taken some shots of our West Highland White terrier mix, Cedric. He'll be 16 in March. That qualifies as old! Yay!

Here's why I love the shot: I had just fluffed up his pillow after Luna (yes, the shepherd fits in this bed, too!) had dumped all her sand from the morning run in it, and Cedric LOVES a freshly made bed. You can see he could hardly get in (1 - 2 - jump!), and the fluffiness of the pillow forces him into the corner, and he just lays down and sleeps. I was vacuuming around him, bumping into the bed, and he never moved. So, character of age; completely unflappable by whatever goes on around him, because he KNOWS, if we need him, we'll let him know.

And a little closer:

He stinks like a skunk, he has no teeth, he's virtually deaf and blind, but boy is he cute!

Daily Shoot #1.

The assignment for today:

"Sometimes what’s out of focus can make the shot. Create a photograph today where some/all of your subject isn't in focus."

Okay, that's not too hard... except that... when is the focus on depth and when is it 'just' not in focus? Ah well...

Luna was trying to sleep on her fluffy newish bed, she made it clear to me that she preferred not to have that lens in her face. I didn't give up, and so she decided to pretend being asleep. And that made her shift into a position that I thought was perfect for this Daily Shoot assignment!

I like this last one best. You can see how Luna had given up at this point and pretended to be asleep. ;-)
Awwww.... that's not very nice of me... well, then I guess I'll go make it up to her now!