"Woo-hoo" moment

I haven't really talked about what I'm doing with Relaxation Protocol (ala Karen Overall).  Its one of the basics behind Control Unleashed work.  I confess its very boring. In any case, I've been rewarding any laying on her mat, a LOT.  We've done it in many different places and she definitely plants herself the moment she sees her Dal-spotted mat.  If I don't have it, I can also throw down a towel or jacket, or anything really.

Working on RP has been a study in challenging.  This little girl is part pop-up toaster.  If I gave her a "down" and "wait", I'm sure she'd do it, but that's not the point.  The idea behind RP is for her to learn/understand that when she is chilling, that she is safe there and doesn't interact with her environment.  It needs to be a choice she makes, where she decides on her own to chill.

The goal is also for them to be really relaxed in that context, what Leslie McDevitt calls a "rule structure".  Many people strive for their dog to look really zoned out.  I think relaxation is a relative concept.  What would be another dog's "on alert" look is Gimme's "chill".  I think as time goes on she will be more relaxed than she is now, but I doubt this girl will ever get a sleepy-eyed relaxed look.

Anyway, our "Woo-hoo moment" is because today for the very first time, Gimme made it all the way through Day 1 on the first try.  That is HUGE for her.  To be clear, I did it at the end of a training session, so she was not as keyed up as usual.  Still - that's a big break through for us.  Definitely the hardest task for her was me counting out loud.  She was gripping the mat with her feet, but stayed.  Hard work for that girlie brain and she's sound asleep now.

BTW I recently mentioned our training journal.  I used to have it in spiral notebooks, but recently reorganized it and put it in a three ring binder.  I investigated what other people do for training records.  Some are pretty involved, but I knew I'd be unlikely to keep it up if I was too detailed, so I wanted mine to cover just essential information.    I divided the different things we are working on into different categories:

• Basics
• Control Unleashed
• Obedience-Rally
• Freestyle-RallyFrEe-Tricks,
• Nosework-Tracking
• Agility
• Treibball

Each behavior has its own page.  At the top of the page is the verbal cue in large capital letters and a description underneath of what I want the final behavior to look like.  Each time I work on a behavior, I date the entry and describe what I did, what went well, what to try next, etc.  I make note of anything that seems useful.  If the location or conditions were significant, then I put a word or two about that under the date.  Typical entries look like this:

10/23/12 --  Intro ANTI-TARGET
in season    took a bit to get her to
                   understand - used food lure
                   to keep her nose off it & touch
                   various body parts - toward end
                   would pick-up/move for pawing
               -- offered stick w/both ends exposed
                   c/t for touch to bulb only, varied pos.
10/29/12 -- anti-target - much less trying to
in season   target the stick - except at end
                  as Rt/reward dropped


When I'm ready to train, sometimes I flip through the notebook and pick out the things I want to train and plan the whole session in advance, putting a sticky note on each page where I'll need to record what we did.  Other times, I flip through as I go.  For each behavior, I read the last couple of entries before starting, thus I know where we left off and can see what I wanted to do next.  When I finish the session, I leave a sticky note as a tab where I left off for the next time around when I start picking behaviors to train.

This is working for me and I'm pleased with it.  I've never kept a training journal for any length of time, so I'm just pleased to have found a system that I can keep up with.  Given that we have over 60 cues on our list -- its good to be organized.