The Project - Day 14

Today we walked around Capitol Lake much earlier and found there were actually less people there. It was just before 6pm and I imagine a lot of people were heading home for supper. Gimme continues to do well with the peanut butter tube and is not as excited when she sees other dogs. She looks at them with interest, but no tension in her posture, and then turns to me for the peanut butter.

We only answered two questions and lo and behold, my wish came true. Not the exact words, but a lady did recognize her as a Dalmatian and said she thought the brown spotting was "lovely". Clearly an astute grasp of the obvious. Our walk only took 45 minutes tonight. It would be quicker, but as long as Gimme isn't pulling, I let her read all the pee-mail. She's a slow reader, though I'm sure it will speed up as she becomes more used to it.

By the way, the Go Toob has a little rubber "thing" in the opening that is supposed to prevent it from sucking contaminated food back inside when you stop squeezing. I found last night that Gimme got her teeth into it and had it half torn out. It probably wouldn't hurt her to swallow it, but just the same I cut it out when I got home.

Another thing I did differently tonight, that worked well, was to connect two leashes together by slipping the handles through each other (makes a single 10 ft leash with a clip at each end) and use them TTouch style. I clipped one end to her EasyWalk harness and the other to her collar. It takes a little getting used to, but it is very effective. The biggest advantage is that it keeps her from pivoting the wrong way and ending up with the leash on the wrong side of her. Its a lot like reins on a horse and gives the dog a lot more information. Gimme was a lot better about walking without pulling.

I find I have trouble with the time on my training sessions. I'm often surprised to look at the videos and discover what I thought was 3 minutes, was 5 or 6 minutes. Partly that is because the Adult ADD skews my time perception. So today I bought a little digital timer. I've set it for 2:45, so that it gives me warning when I'm getting close on time and I can have a better idea of when to stop. I am also setting it off from time to time so Gimme doesn't connect the beeping with the end of a session. I clearly need to clip it to my waistband where I can push the button to silence the beeping after it goes off.

Apple - back into a box, back feet only
Using the leash really helped her to not walk her front feet through the box. We’ll do that one more time and then try fading it. I’ll let her drag it a time or two, then try it without.

Another thing I started doing was to make a distinction in how I rewarded the way she put her feet in the box. If she side-steps in, she gets clicked and a thrown treat. If she backs in, she gets a click, then jackpot of two or three treats, followed by a thrown treat. It seems to me that she really caught the distinction I was trying to make.

 

Orange - get onto a small perch with all four feet

This is the other behavior that we are working on phase 3, wait for the cue. Again, you see the frustration returning, especially compared to apple that we just worked on. One thing I will do before working on this or peach, is a session or two practicing and sharpening her responses to "sit", "touch" and "down". It may be because we are working on phase 3, but it also occurred to me that those are the behaviors I was using in our distraction training, so perhaps that is also part of the apparent deterioration. I haven’t really trained them, focusing on the 6 phases of learning, so it wouldn’t hurt to address that.

At 1:10 when she kicks the box, she actually stepped on a phalange that sticks out and is I’m sure a bit of a rough edge. You can see her turn around and check it out and then she seems uncertain, checking it out for 10 seconds before getting on it again. I’m going to see if there is a way to cut off and smooth away the point there, so it doesn’t happen again.

Grape - dead bug (on back, feet in the air)
Peach - head under a chair
Melon - push cube with nose
Not trained today.