I'm So Psyched

I just got back from class and I am totally psyched...

First Gimme is really getting back to her pre-hormonal state. For the first time since the week before "the whelping" she was able to go out on the main floor (outside our cubicle) and do a bit of an obedience routine. Not perfect, but real close and certainly good enough to qualify in rally, provided she holds it together for a whole course.

I also tried something I saw at the Denise Fenzi seminar -- where people have an armband lookalike that they wear and stash a treat in it. In my case I used half a hotdog and when Gimme did something well, I got it out and she got to nibble on it, before I put it back. I learned at the match that nibbling her own bits from a big chunk of hotdog is a high value reward for her, higher than getting several pieces handed to her.

Gimme very quickly figured out that I have many different places I can stash food on my person – I think it is good for her to believe I am never without resources. This will be valuable for our debut a week from Friday when we go in the ring with a real armband and no treats. I'm sure I can find someone to palm off our hotdog chunk to and to palm it back to me the instant we leave the ring.

We repeated "the hardest thing" with Ursula and really stepped it up a notch.

One of the things we were getting yesterday was that every time Robin’s hand came toward her to touch her cheek, Gimme would nose target or lick it. Basically I ignored that and planned to let it extinguish itself over time. Then today I thought it over and decided differently. We've been teaching Gimme to target any hand held out to her by strangers as part of a greeting pattern I want her to learn (nose target hand, then sit).

Originally we thought a touch to her cheek might be less threatening, but since Gimme has a valid reason to think she should target a hand and since that is really not how a judge would do an exam in a stand-for-exam, I decided to just go more for an authentic touch. She was slightly surprised by Ursula's first touch on the top of her head, but she was okay with it. After several repetitions of that we took a break.

The next time around we started with touches to the top of her head and then upped the ante to a touch on the shoulders. Gimme's reaction was hysterically funny. Her eyes got HUGE in surprise and her skin all down her back did that squirmy crawly thing. Her skin couldn't have moved more without crawling off her body and slithering across the floor. The look on her face was PRICELESS -- obviously it had never occurred to her that Ursula might do that. We got a few more twitches after that, but she quickly adapted.

After that, we let her move about and then do sit-down-sit to a hand signal before revisiting the issue. She was doing so well that I wanted to try a couple mock exams (head-shoulders-rump touches) and I didn’t want to add pressure on her by having Ursula bending over her … so I didn't ask her to sit or wait. I just stood beside her treating her while Ursula did it. She fidgeted, but didn't move her feet, even though I hadn't asked for a wait. You gotta love working with a canine genius.

Then for our third run through, instead of working Gimme I asked Ursula the question I had left over from last night - how to get Gimme to work longer on a free-shaped behavior, so I can get more refinement. Ursula had an immediate and sensible answer. She said Gimme knows a lot of things, but they aren't on solid verbal cues. (now where have I heard that before) She even reminded me that I've admitted to her that isn't my favorite part of training and that I like creating new behaviors best of all (dammmmn she never forgets a thing). She also explained that from Gimme's point of view, she has a strong reinforcement history for being creative, so learning new behaviors is the most fun part for her too.

Ursula's solution was to give me the task of teaching 5 unimportant trick behaviors and work them all the way through the 6 Stages of Learning. She said that once I've done that with Gimme - two things will happen. First, Gimme will understand that there is more to learning than just new behaviors... she will see the pattern. Ursula said that most dogs pick up the "stages of learning" pattern by the time they have learned 7 or 8 behaviors; naturally, she thinks Gimme will be faster. Second, once you have those 5 behaviors, you can really play interesting training games where you randomly cue between the behaviors in rapid fire - a game she says dogs love. We've done this a little bit with a couple of Gimme's behaviors and she did like it - Ursula thinks Gimme will find it a total turn on when she has more to work with.

Now I know you are wondering - what are the 6 Stages of Learning? From memory (because my notebook is in the car) they are:

1. Create the behavior
2. Name the behavior (add the verbal cue)
3. Wait for the cue (true obedience)
4. Add distraction
5. Add duration
6. Add distance

So I have selected 5 silly trick behaviors - things I don’t think I’d ever use in obedience, rally, agility, freestyle, tracking or any other performance venue I might one day want to get into. When I started whining about thinking up names for them Ursula, suggested naming them all fruits. So the fruit-tricks will be:

Apple - back into a box, back feet only
Orange - get onto a small perch with all four feet
Grape - dead bug (on back, feet in the air)
Peach - head under a chair
Melon - push cube with nose

I had some other ideas, but since I'm on a time crunch (only five more classes), wanted to pick behaviors I was sure I could shape quickly. I promise to keep you all posted on our progress. Note how I say that as if you could stop me -- you know how much I love blathering on about my girl...

Speaking of whom - If I don't get out of this chair and play with her right now, she might refuse to cooperate on our new goal. She's been looking over my shoulder and you just know she can read!