The Project - Day 8

I'm busy getting ready for the weekend and Gimme's debut in rally.  Friday we have the Puget Sound Dalmatian Club specialty.  Gimme has been doing so well, so I remain hopeful.  Our judge is Allan Immerman, someone I know from years ago.  He was the judge for Patti's second novice obedience leg and I hope we will show him some improvement in my obedience Dalmatians.  After that I'd like to spend some time with my sister Rhonda and Ann (if she can join us) -- if time doesn't allow, we always have Saturday.  Saturday is a wide open day and I will probably spend most of the day doing home repair and maintenance for my parents.  Sunday we have our second show day at the Sammamish Kennel Club show. 

CROSS YOUR FINGERS AND WISH US LUCK

Since I've been so busy getting ready for the weekend, I haven't trained outside of class.  Thursday night is our last class with Ursula for awhile.  She is talking about expanding her program and possibly bringing in someone to teach nosework.

Apple - back into a box, back feet only

We worked at this a short while.  I've modified our box to give it a base that prevents it from tipping.  The modification also has the advantage of being able to hold the box out from the wall.

Gimme seemed to get really stuck with walking through the box, thus putting her front feet in before the back feet.  By the end of our short session, she was getting it right again (back feet only) and on one particularly nice iteration, she got a jackpot and we ended the session.  Gimme had been doing it correctly about 80% of the time, so this seemed strange. 

Ursula suggested that with my known props that its time to stop giving her a "freebie" sooner (a click for any interaction to let her know what we're doing).  She thinks Gimme will understand what we are doing just by the appearance of the prop.  So I'll try it tomorrow without the freebie at the beginning of the session.

Orange - get onto a small perch with all four feet

Woohoo - its on cue! 

You'll remember the steps that Ursula gives for putting things on cue takes 5 to 30 repetitions each and that dogs need less reps as they have more and more cues learned.  It took us about 15 reps for step one, 10 reps for step 2 and 5 reps for step 3.  Because this is a behavior that takes a little while to do, we actually added a fourth step in there - 5 reps. 

After that we tested.  The process is that I ask her for two other behaviors she knows very well, clicking and treating each behavior and then mix in the new behavior.  The two other behaviors are "sit" and "touch" (hand target).  So it went:  touch, touch, sit, touch, orange.  The first time around she was a little slow to do it, turning and cocking her head looking at me as if to say, "are you sure, its this thing again?"  After getting it right in the mix that first time, she was much faster the other times and seemed to be very impressed with herself.

Next step is that she only gets click/treat when I cue "orange".

Grape - dead bug (on back, feet in the air)

Not trained today.

Peach - head under a chair

We did a short session with this.  Ursula found a chair in another room that wasn't a folding chair and so is without rungs and such.  I started clicking for any interaction as if we'd never done this behavior before to help Gimme to realize that she could do the same behavior with this very different chair.  It was a good experience that will help her with generalization in the future.  We left the chair out so I'll be able to work with it again.

Melon - push cube with nose
Not trained today.

This project is proving to be a lot of fun and instructional.  Gimme seems already to be getting more into the process of learning and refining her behaviors. 

BTW Gimme didn't tell you about her other birthday gift.  I bought her a seatbelt harness so she can be more comfortable when we travel.  It is taking awhile to get it adjusted just right on her, but I think it will work well for us. 

Again CROSS YOUR FINGERS AND WISH US LUCK this weekend.