Walking for Distraction

Today we walked the Capitol Lake area again - took just over an hour. 

I handled Gimme's leash differently.  I noticed that sometimes when she pulls I stop immediately when the leash gets tight (straight), other times my concentration slips and I allow my hand/arm to get pulled forward and only realize what is happening and then stop when its fully forward.  Realistically that means she is on a variable schedule of reward for pulling.  So about a third of the way through our walk, I put the loop through my belt and only used my hands to keep the leash up off the ground and from getting tangled/wrapped around her leg(s).  That seemed to work, because when I felt the tug on my belt it really caught my attention and so I was more consistent.  I think we did better that way. 

Gimme is much better about the other dogs.  I noticed that when we were walking the path that has a green between it and a parallel path 40-60 feet away, that Gimme only really paid attention to the dogs that were coming toward us on the path we are on.   Before she paid attention to all of them.  She also pays little to no attention to dogs that come from behind and pass us, going away.  Of course, I pay attention to them no matter where they are coming from, so she isn't getting any surprises. 

The most interesting thing I realized today is that she shows some concern about big black dogs.  She's never had a bad experience with any, so I'm not sure where that comes from, but its pretty noticeable, especially now that she's responding less in general to the presence of other dogs.  Statistics show that more people are afraid of large black dogs, so I wonder if that same bias is true for dogs.  Curious.  I'll make sure that when we do our dog group with Ursula, that I mention the need for her to interact with a solidly sweet large black dog if possible.

Toward the end of our walk we finally saw the dog walking group I've been hearing about.  No one who mentioned it seemed to know what it was about.  Today they were meeting near where we parked, so I got a chance to talk to someone from the group.  A local veterinarian (local means 45 minute drive to his clinic) meets here with some of his clients on Wednesdays and gives a short "good thing you can do for your dog" talk.  Then the walkers each get to say something about their dog, based on a selected topic.  After that they all go walk around the lake.  The lady I spoke with was very nice and invited us along, but we'd already finished our walk and I thought it might be too much for Gimme to go again, even following from a distance. 

I think it would be a great experience for her to follow them some time, unfortunately this was their last scheduled walk for the summer.  On a positive note, Gimme was able to observe the group relatively calmly from, first 50 feet and gradually as close as 25 feet.  There were probably 30 people with their dogs, all types and sizes.  So I was very proud of how she did with that.

We did another session on the sits and downs tonight.  I continue to use touch now and then to break it up.  One of the problems I've noticed is her tendency to drop from a sit to a down if it isn't clicked soon enough (and vice versa).  She used to have a really good limited hold for her sits and downs, so I'm guessing I have failed to continue rewarding that aspect.  Also, its a common problem for clicker trained dogs, that many of them view lack of a click as a failure, so will throw another behavior at the trainer.  While initiative is great, in this particular instance its a problem.  I think this is a result of the dog not having that sophisticated understanding of the phases of learning that Ursula mentioned as being at the root of some of the problems we've had.  (see my August 17, post called I'm So Psyched).  I suspect I'm not the only clicker trainer out there that enjoys creating behaviors more than naming and getting stimulus control over them. 

Another thought I had was that since she is so responsive to down by a hand signal, that perhaps she is anticipating a down based on random hand movement.  I know there have been instances of her dropping when I've moved my hand for some other reason. 

So in tonight's session I focused on two things.  First, absolute stillness in my hands.  I should do that anyway and it is one of the things Ursula always nagged me for.  So I will strive to be much more aware of my hands.  For the time being I won't use any hand signals with either cue, until we've worked this out for verbal cues.  Second, I used my keep going signal to encourage Gimme to hold a position and wait for the click even when delayed.  I use an elongated "yessss" as our KGS.

It started out slow, but really went well once we got going.  I wasn't sure what to do when she fails.  A lot of people use no reward markers and supposedly they are okay to use for confident dogs.  But, Ursula was saying that studies on the topic have shown no significant value to them and all dogs, even really confident ones show some calming signals when NRMs are being used.  So for now I am simply giving her 2 seconds to respond and then turn and move away.  After which I turn back and give her the same or another cue, in random order. 

The sits were the best and the KGS helped to get her to hold them.  By the end she was pretty close to 95%.  The downs are not as strong - keep in mind that she has been most responsive to hand signals for downs, so it should be expected that it will take a few sessions to build it up on verbal alone. 

We are effectively working on duration with the KGS.  Before long we'll incorporate them back into the distraction training when its low distraction and she can be correct more often.  I'll have to figure out how to teach her to sit or down where she is instead of moving toward me before doing it (distance).  If anyone has any ways you've taught this, please share.

So that's it for today... I'm off to do some paperwork while watching John Wayne movies.  Gimme will enjoy it since we are watching True Grit tonight and that has lots of horses... she will watch with great anticipation in hopes of spying a cow.  BTW the other night we saw another movie with lots of Indians.  Gimme found the whooping noises very intriguing, but decided she didn't like the Indians when she saw them being mean to John Wayne.  Some day I really must get a video going of her watching TV... it really is funny.