|
October, 2003, Week Two October 8, 2003 Today is Pax's second birthday! Where has the time gone? The puppy who used to sleep like a baby in my arms is now a solid 80+ pounds and 27 inches at the shoulder.
This week is the "get organized and work out the technical glitches" week in the CyberAgility. Our first assignment is to get comfortable keeping records of our sessions. I'm a big proponent of recordkeeping, so this isn't hard for me. Most of today was spent working on one behavior ("Touch This!") because I needed three training periods of one behavior for my assignment. I also did one session of "Get Lost!" and some random recalls. I'm finding that he works better for new or rarely-used toys than he does for food, especially in distractions. What I did today was show the dog that the toy was present, do reps with food, and then use the toy on the final rep. He likes to be chased, so I would toss the toy, and then chase him for about 30 seconds. This is the kind of thing I'm conditioning the motivational toy for. I want those specially conditioned "super toys" to be reinforcing enough for situations like PetSmart, dog classes, and matches. I actually think it will work for him. He's much more toy-driven than food-driven, even though he's not even remotely picky about his food. Speaking of food, I've got to cut back on both dogs' daily rations. Rain had a vet appointment today, and he's about six pounds over where I like him to be. That's not much for a Newf, and it doesn't even make him "overweight." But I prefer my boys to be a bit underweight -- good and lean. I want them at working weights, not at weight suitable for the conformation ring. Pax wasn't there to be weighed, but I can tell by looking at him that he has gained a few pounds as well. I'll cut back their rations a bit and try to pick up their exercise. (Hmph. It's probably all the apples Pax has been eating. You think the pile in the yard is big? You ought to see all the cores I have to pick up in the house!) We didn't get out for an "away from home" session today. It was raining. Of course, that's a bad excuse in Seattle, but hey. Deal. October 9, 2003 We had our first CyberAgility chat today. This was just a "make sure you can get connected and ask questions" chat. I found out that my friend Tmara Goode is also taking the class. Yay! Tmara and I have been friends for a couple of years and chat frequently. I think it's funny that neither of us mentioned to the other that we were taking the class. Today was a good training day. Pax seemed more tuned in overall. He was downright cuddly tonight, which isn't especially a curly trait. This morning we took a road trip to the Home Depot parking lot. I found that he is most attentive in that type of situation if he has to be -- if, for example, we do some rapid loose leash walking with lots of circles into him and lots of turns. He doesn't want to get stepped on, and he doesn't want to hit the end of the leash, so he pays as much attention as he has to. No more than that though, at least not at this point. In addition to the rapid walking, I did some sits and drops for the squeaky frog. I think I need to use a tug toy instead. He kept dropping the frog in puddles, and eventually it was wet enough that he didn't' want it anymore. Short and exciting are the key words for working on the road. Short, exciting, and FAST. High rate of repetition, high rate of reinforcement. At home we did a fair number of sits and drops today. He's actually beginning to differentiate the two. <Grin> Miraculous what a little consistency can accomplish. Again, I'm using a mix of food and toys as reinforcers. The toys -- which they don't have free access to now -- are really big motivators for them. Oh, speaking of motivating toys, Pax keeps going into the kitchen and sniffing the drawer where the "super toy" is kept. I've let him and Rain get their mouths on it a time or two. Had a darn difficult time getting it back. Now that's what I like to see! Last thing I did today was run Pax through a PVC ladder. The ladder is a tool for teaching back-end awareness. I made this one several years ago when Rain was a puppy. Before I led Pax through, I wrapped his back end with an ACE bandage to help make him more cognizant that he *had* a back end. He did really well with the ladder -- never did touch the rungs with his back feet, even when I sped up the pace. Next I'm going to skip the leading and shape him to go through on his own. I will probably leave the wrap on for this process. I noticed after I took it off that he tripped over the rungs when he was just randomly exploring it.
October 11, 2003 Pax really seems to want to work more! He isn't walking away from me when I ask him to do something. We haven't, however, gotten out on the road much. Hmmm. I really need to make it a priority to do that! We did a couple of ladder sessions yesterday and today. I started simply shaping Pax to enter at the end and begin moving through. Rain was in the room (interfering) today, though, so I switched to walking alongside the ladder and clicking Pax for walking or trotting the entire length. He did marvelously. He didn't touch the rungs with front or back feet, even when I increased his speed. I think he's ready to move on to the Buja board. We also did tunnel sessions yesterday and today. I started with the tunnel in a doorway, but eventually moved it into the middle of the living room (where the ladder is in the picture above). I threw a toy as his reinforcer for going through the tunnel -- he loved it, and repeatedly ran through at high speed. I began adding the cue. Oh, he did the cutest behavior. He started through the tunnel. Stopped. Turned around and came back to the end where he started and peeked out at me. I told him to go through. He play bowed and, without getting up from the bow OR turning around, backed through the tunnel. It was hysterical! I did a session of "Get Lost!," an eye contact behavior, today. We've worked on this off and on for quite a while. It's not his favorite behavior, but he's much better at it than he was a year ago. I can get several seconds of truly active, committed eye contact now. Last year I couldn't get him to try to reestablish eye contact if I turned away. So it occurred to me that I could teach him the concept by moving around *him* and "magnetically" drawing his eyes and body around. He got it, so I clicked when he turned to reestablish After a few reps, I tried turning 180 degrees away from him, and he came around to reestablish with me. Jackpot!! That's pretty much all the training we've done in the last couple of days, except for a few random sits, drops, and recalls. Jay and I are going to Home Depot tonight to buy materials for the jumps and weave poles I want to build this weekend. October 12, 2003 Well, we didn't get as far on the agility equipment as I had hoped. Home Depot didn't have a few of the PVC fittings, so Jay decided to wait to make the weave poles and the jumps with wings. I found an online supplier of the missing parts, so we should be able to finish those pieces next weekend. It's kind of a bummer, because I was hoping to start the jump chute training this week. The jumps are kind of ugly right now too. The PVC primer that we had to apply before the cement is purple. Plus, we used the cheap PVC, so there's black writing on it. Jay is going to get me some acetone to clean them up some. I got some colored electrical tape to wrap the bars with too. That will provide some contrast so Pax can see the jump, and it will make it a little more pretty. :-) I did a session of "Get It!" today. This exercise teaches the dog to focus and move ahead of you on the cue "get it." We did it a year ago, but I haven't done it since. Pax and I both did great! I find that this exercise improves his loose leash walking, because he gets rewarded (at a pretty high rate of reinforcement) when he's in heel position and looking forward. It was a windy fall day, and there were a fair number of small things blowing across our path. At first this caused him to go nuts -- after all, the treats were small pieces of food rolling on the street. I realized, though, that the pieces of flotsam and jetsam were good things, because he was learning that the only edible ones were the ones that followed the cue. He actually stopped chasing the flying stuff after a couple of minutes. I got the tunnel out again today. It's a fun game for Pax -- he adores the tunnel. I can be at either end, or at a short distance, or I can run alongside. One nice thing is that he does the tunnel at a dead run every time. Speed is a good thing! The only other thing we did today was a few sessions of "Touch This!" I progressed to standing next to the target on the floor. The goal is 5 touches in 20 seconds. We tend to achieve just over that -- like 23 seconds. What I have to decide is if that's good enough, or if I stick at my criteria until I've honestly achieved the goal. October 13, 2003 We began the first official "work" week of CyberAgility today, and that's pretty much what I concentrated on today. I did sessions of each of the three behaviors we're supposed to concentrate on during these first three weeks. First, we worked on "Touch This!" I did a couple of sessions inside, and then took the target outside. I tried the same criteria I had in the kitchen -- standing next to the target -- but it was too much with the competing distraction of a beagle puppy barking at the fence. I might have been able to pull it off if I had used a toy as a reinforcer after every rep, but I was trying to time the session and use the toy only at the end. Bad choice. Tomorrow I'll drop my criteria, and I'll make sure he's focused enough to work for a toy only at the end before I break out the timer. Next, we did a couple of sessions of "Get Lost!" I started by reinforcing him for active eye contact. Then I did one rep where I established eye contact, and then walked around to his rear. He spun around to reestablish eye contact, so I jumped to the next criterion, doing a 180 degree turn away from him. He was successful, but I don't think he was consistent about coming around the same direction I turned, and I think he was chasing the toy, not my eye contact. So in my next training period, I decided to drop back and concentrate solely on getting him to follow me around as I walk around him. When I think we're really ready to progress, I'm going to turn just 90 degrees, so I can be sure he follows me in the right direction. Finally, we did another terrific session of "Get It!" tonight. On the cue, he strides forward, expecting his reinforcer to appear. I need to take this on the road, which, speaking of, I didn't do again today. Bad me. October 14, 2003 Good day. I think most, if not all, of our training was outside today. That's good, because I tend to train in the house way too much. We started with "Touch This!" in the back yard. This time I sat on the ground (easier criteria), and in the beginning I reinforced with a tug toy after each touch. This kept him really focused on the game. After a couple of minutes, I started doing two touches -- one reinforced with food and the second with tug. Ultimately I was able to do three touches for food before bringing out the tug toy. I'm going to stay at this criterion until he's really plugged into the game and giving me a good, strong rate of response with food. Later we took a trip to PetSmart. My plan was to do some training outside, and then move in and do some training while I bought some treats. That plan didn't last long though. At first he was either too stressed or too excited to eat. Whoa! That's bad. His stomach was a little upset too, which certainly didn't make him anxious to eat. I guessed that the upset stomach was due to excitement/stress, so I took him to a spot sort of near the door and settled there. In the beginning he spit out treats and focused entirely on the people and dogs going in and out. But as time passed (since I wouldn't let him go visit), he began to settle. I knew I was making progress when he lay down on his own and began to nibble the treats. We stayed outside for twenty minutes or so. A few people came up and petted him and chatted with me. He got excited, but calmed quickly. I was glad no one brought any dogs up though -- he wouldn't have settled so quickly. He reached the point where he could stay down and do simple hand targeting while people and carts went by. Good boy! At that point we went in the store. We stayed away from other people and dogs as much as we could. He was pretty distracted, so I tried to refocus him with some heeling and a few basic obedience behaviors. We stayed five or ten minutes. He was still fairly distracted at that point, so I quit on an up note and took him back to the car before popping back in by myself to buy the treats. Later this afternoon we did a session of "Get It!" in a different spot further up the road. He was more excited -- forging more and interested in things going on around us -- but he still responded excellently to the cue. I'll probably repeat the session in the same place on more time before going to another new place. Tonight I had a CyberAgility chat. They're so much fun! We discussed recordkeeping and anything else that we wanted to talk about. I'm not sure what night I'll settle on for my chats. I'll probably try to sync up with Tmara after next week. Next week will be different because of my work schedule. | Next page | Diary Home | List and Site Owner: Melissa Alexander, melissa @ clickersolutions.com |
