Making Progress

We've been busy, as usual. Gimme is going to class 4 nights a week. And we go "hiking" for one to two hours, three days a week. Its more walking than real hiking, but its on rougher terrain, so its not like walking in the neighborhood. I had some wonderful pictures from our walk today, but blogger is being uncooperative about uploading pictures and/or formatting around them - so no pictures today.

We are making progress on so many fronts, that Gimme seems to be growing up a bit more every day.

Gimme has suddenly gotten over her anxiety about horses. One day she was barking the moment she saw them and the next she just looks at them and then looks back at me to see what I'm doing. During our two hour walk today, we had three horse experiences. First, there was someone off-loading their trailer near where we parked and Gimme was about to trot over and introduce herself, tail a-wagging. I was headed out though, so she came with me instead. Then twice during our walk we came upon riders and their dogs. Gimme literally paid no attention to the horses whatsoever, being intent on playing with the dogs instead.

Sometime soon I hope to arrange a session to start her working obedience and such near horses. Of course, first I need to read the road trial information on the DCA website, to see what is required to get a title. Obviously, she's only ten months old, so I'm in no hurry. I don't plan to do any conditioning before her second birthday, but I can still work on some of the behaviors now.

One of our three big walks each week is on a developed trail near the house. There are a lot of cyclists that use this path - which I've talked about before. Gimme never chased the bikes or the occasional kids on skateboards. Cyclist are very watchful when they see a loose dog. Even if the dog doesn't chase, there is still a risk the dog will get in the way and cause them to crash. I've always called Gimme to me when I see them and somewhere in recent weeks she started coming to me automatically when she sees a cyclist. I get lots of compliments on how well-behaved she is.

Its time for another confession. In all my years of dogs, I've never had a dog that I couldn't get to refrain from jumping on people. Gimme has proved to be the exception to my skills as a dog trainer. She learns everything else so quickly that it just seemed so very strange that she couldn't get this simple skill, despite all the lessons and all the helpful friends that patiently worked with us. She runs up to people all skooting low ready to sit and then at the last second goes straight up, usually with a friendly nose bump.

This very behavior was the reason for a private behavior lesson several months ago. Our trainer said that Gimme is so social and loves people so much that any interaction with them simply pushes her beyond her thinking brain. She wants to do what she has been trained to do, but the closer she gets the less mental/emotional ability she has to follow through. So we embarked on a counter-conditioning program to use food to calm her around people. We got some results and her jumping was less exuberant - which is good since she is now full size and people are generally less enthused about jumping big dogs than they are about jumping small puppies.

One of the things I've done while working to get this under control was to avoid having her around kids that weren't experienced with exuberant and/or large dogs. And yet, in the end it turns out an unplanned swarm of children of all sizes proved to be the key to solidifying the right greeting behavior in her brain.

Last weekend my niece held a family picnic to BBQ the last salmon that she and Josh caught together. It was wonderful fun. After I stuffed myself, Gimme took me for a nice long walk in the park and when we were well away from the food, I let her off leash. We'd gone quite a distance when suddenly we were surrounded by children. Gimme spent much time with these children without jumping on them - she seemed to instinctively know that she couldn't jump on them. She had a lot of fun teaching them how to give a dog treats properly (meaning she got copious quantities of treats for sitting well-behaved while surrounded). And she even showed them how you can get a dog to do things based on hand signals alone.

Her behavior playing with them was also very interesting. When they were running around, she would romp around following them from about 5 feet behind. She could easily have caught up to them, so this was a self-controlled decision that she made. I saw her air-biting from well behind them and was about to call her back to me. But before I could, I noticed that when she got closer she clamped her mouth shut and then when she did catch up to them, she'd use her nose to goose them on the leg. It was amazing to me to see her instinctual behavior, especially given her limited exposure to children.

Then the very next day in class, we did a long session focused on greeting behaviors. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Since then, her understanding of how to greet people has improved by leaps and bounds. Its still not 100% of what I want, but we are well on our way.

Meanwhile in our classes, most of the behaviors that are being taught are things Gimme has known for a long time. All along Ursula has been modifying the class exercises so that Gimme and I would get the most out of our time. Gimme has really been keeping her on her toes thinking up new ways to try to distract her... since once or twice with any one thing and then Gimme knows the drill and won't fall for it. She is getting to the point where she knows that Ursula is going to play the distraction game and sometimes she won't even fall for it the very first time - even on things that I think could be an issue elsewhere.

In class on Thursday while everyone else was teaching their dogs to lay down on cue and some were working on down-stay, Gimme and I were in the middle of the class, where she could see everyone, practicing her stays. Her big distraction was for Ursula to walk around her closer and closer until she was finally stepping over Gimme. It took less than two minutes for Gimme to get from Ursula walking around her from 4 feet away to stepping over her... she very quickly figured out that this is just another weird-Ursula-thing. In fact, she only condescended to look at Ursula at the very beginning.

Two other behaviors we are working on is "get-in" (counter-clockwise forehand pivot) and stand stay. While I started teaching the pivots as obedience maneuvers, I will also want them for freestyle. So, my goal is to have two separate directions for her forehand pivots - "get-in" for a counter-clockwise forehand pivot and "close" for a clockwise forehand pivot. I would like her to be able to do a full 360° on cue for freestyle. Now that I think about it, I'll probably want a rear pivot as well, but that will come later.

Since we are using short (sit) platforms and long (stand) platforms for other things, I wanted our get-in platform to be a bit different. So I cut a 7.5 inch wide octagonal "brick". On our first session I got my clicker and counted out thirty treats. The minute I showed her the brick she was interested. The instant the it hit the ground I got one foot on - 1st click. Two feet on - 2nd click. Spent about ten clicks reinforcing the idea of keeping both feet on.

Then I started clicking whenever she moved her back feet. If I moved around it, she pivoted nicely on her front feet to keep facing me, so I was able to get in a lot of clicks for back feet moving. After about ten of those, she decided I was being boring and tried offering other clever ideas. Sadly, having a goal I had to ignore them all. When she got back to moving her back feet, I then tried standing still to see if she really understood that it was movement of her back feet that I wanted. She did and there were some nice 10-15 degree pivots.

I was about to quit, thinking it might be time to let her percolate on what we'd done. She was standing directly in front of me, with her brick about 12 inches from my toes. Then in ONE smooth move, she pivoted all the way around and slid right into perfect heel position, with her usual, "so whadya think of that?" look. (in just 30 clicks, doncha know)

I think she is smarter than I am - that's what I think of that. Thank God I have so many resources to help me at least TRY to stay one step ahead of her or I'd be toast.

Her sit-stay and down-stay ("wait) are both great. But that understanding has not generalized to stand-stay and she has very fidgety feet (front and back). Any attempt to work on the halt-stand-walk-around for rally results in a lovely forehand pivot, naturally. A friend suggested that I shape two feet on a board to help her understand stand-wait. She seemed to get it, provided I didn't try to do the walk-around bit. So I had the brilliant idea of teaching her to do front feet on one board and back feet on another (a take-off from the way some people teach a free stack for the breed ring).

In the course of shaping her to put her back feet on the board, she kept giving me front feet and even a lovely 90° pivot. It broke my heart not to c/t that. Fortunately if SHE thinks an idea is a good one, she'll always come back to it - so I'm sure we'll see it again.

Right now we are taking a few days break. I noticed that her rear feet were slipping on the board, so I want to paint it and add some sand for traction. I can hardly wait to get back to it.

Gimme is so much fun to train -- if I had a tail, I'd wag my whole butt with it!