The weather cooperated, so we were able to meet Mary and Grafton out at the training area for a nice long walk. The two of them thoroughly enjoyed themselves. They were clearly thrilled to get to really play with each other.
An intriguing thing I noticed and Mary commented on was how much more actively playful Gimme was. As she has gotten older, she has tended to stick closer to me and be less interested in boisterous play with her Grafton. So it was interesting to see that. I don't know if its because its been so long since they got to play free like that or if it relates to the homeopathic remedies we are using. It'll be interesting to see if it lasts.
After that I had a couple of errands and then Public Dog class. Gimme did much better, pretty much just like she did at the first couple of classes. She was eagerly working me for treats. It clearly wasn't easy for her, but she was not over emotional and she was acting like herself again. I guess we can unequivocally say the homeopathy is a success.
BTW I worked on her loose leash walking using 300 Pecks and was able to get consistently up to 8 steps, several times to 10 and once to 15. It occurs to me that it was one of the things we'd really just been starting to get solid before the false pregnancy - so that may explain why it was the one thing that suddenly disappeared. Gimme had the best recalls of the class and Elizabeth praised us on them. And we also did a mock of the greet a friendly stranger and Gimme was able to keep her footies on terra firma.
Then we had about a 2 hour break before we met Susan and Mary for roving nosework practice. Susan and Tucker are trialing on Saturday and we didn't want to do any nosework in the couple days before the trial, so we decided to do it tonight - one search on each element. Then class on Wednesday will be his last before the trial.
For roving nosework... we went to three different locations. We did one two room interior search at the quilt shop. Both Gimme and Tucker did well with 2 inaccessible hides.
Then we drove a few blocks to the park and did an exterior with 1 inaccessible and 1 accessible. That inaccessible was really a hard one and both dogs had to work quite awhile to find it. If they'd done that at a trial it wouldn't have been as difficult, since it would have had much more time to cook. Plus the breeze was very light and variable direction. Gimme was repeatedly distracted by a lot of barking neighbor dogs nearby. Grafton joined us here and was also very distracted, but he's always been environmentally sensitive - we basically had to help him find both paired hides, so he could end on success.
From there we went to Home Depot and set up two hides on their rental equipment (1 truck, 2 trailers and 1 chipper). All the dogs were very interested in the strip of grass right behind them - though none of them tried to mark there. We had to restart Tucker, but then he got down to business - so the lesson for Susan is that he needs time to acclimate. Gimme found one hide right away and then totally ignored where I knew I'd put the other one. Instead she went to the other trainer and indicated near the hitch... and I called her a "liar". Then Mary 'fessed that she'd moved it while I was giving Gimme a chance to potty. I believe that falls under the category of TRUST YOUR DOG. Grafton did a nice job of finding both the hides and the big chunks of chicken I paired them with -- this location was much quieter.
After that we set up a container element - two odors, two distractions and twelve bags. Tucker didn't do as well at this... he was slower to settle, so Susan called two false alerts. Gimme did very well... tried to sell me on the box with the peanut butter in it, but really only alerted on the right containers. We removed the distractions and paired odor for Grafton and he did a nice job.
So now Miss Gimme is pretty well spent. Its been a really full day for us both.
Showing posts with label 300 Pecks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 300 Pecks. Show all posts
Monday, June 24, 2013
Monday, June 3, 2013
Public Dog (5)
Today was out and about Public Dog class. It was in a small park and we used a rather narrow trail through the woods.
I knew right away that this was not going to be our most stellar class - Gimme just had no focus or attention at all. The co-instructor kept giving me suggestions/advice for how to teach her LLW. She kept ignoring my replies saying it wasn't a LLW issue, but rather a focus issue, so I basically ignored her. Our best 300 Pecks sequence was 5 steps, but for the most part we couldn't get more than 2! When it came time for everyone to be playing leap-frog to come back up the trail -- I just used the PB GoToob to lure her past them so we were in the back again and then we declined to play.
It was about that time that I suddenly had a duhhh-uhhhh moment. All weekend Gimme has been Little Miss Clingy. I spent the weekend getting my yard more or less caught up, so we didn't do any training and thus I didn't immediately trip to where her brain is. Anyway, while walking it occurred to me and I did the math - she's having her false preggers. So we'll have a week to ten days of less focus and then she'll be back to normal. I find it interesting that I lose 7-10 days for the false pregnancy and 1 day during her season.
In any case, once I realized that - I simplified things greatly and finished the walk dawdling along and click/treating auto check-ins. By the time we got to the trail head where everyone was taking a break, I had much more of her brain.
After the break we all got together and played Doggie Tic Tac Toe. They made a big grid on the ground and broke us into two teams of 3. There was the "down" team and the "sit" team. We started in the "down" team (which goes first because its supposed to be harder) and all three of our team got our pieces (one at a time) into their squares, doing the behavior with two cues or less. Technically we won, but the co-instructor gave the other team another move and called it a draw.
The next round we were in the "sit" team, starting second. Susan and Tucker were first up and he just wouldn't sit. So that had the other two up on us, but Gimme and I were able to cut them off. Since it was a sit, I got us close to the board and then just heeled the last few steps into our square and stopped, so she sat. Of course, then I had to get her up so I could prove that she knew how to sit on cue. Anyway, our team was vindicated when we won this round.
I'm happy to say, despite her earlier lack of focus, Gimme was the only dog of the six that was able to do her sits and downs on the first cue each time. Not that I'm competitive or anything like that...
She's been being a lap dog ever since we got home...
I knew right away that this was not going to be our most stellar class - Gimme just had no focus or attention at all. The co-instructor kept giving me suggestions/advice for how to teach her LLW. She kept ignoring my replies saying it wasn't a LLW issue, but rather a focus issue, so I basically ignored her. Our best 300 Pecks sequence was 5 steps, but for the most part we couldn't get more than 2! When it came time for everyone to be playing leap-frog to come back up the trail -- I just used the PB GoToob to lure her past them so we were in the back again and then we declined to play.
It was about that time that I suddenly had a duhhh-uhhhh moment. All weekend Gimme has been Little Miss Clingy. I spent the weekend getting my yard more or less caught up, so we didn't do any training and thus I didn't immediately trip to where her brain is. Anyway, while walking it occurred to me and I did the math - she's having her false preggers. So we'll have a week to ten days of less focus and then she'll be back to normal. I find it interesting that I lose 7-10 days for the false pregnancy and 1 day during her season.
In any case, once I realized that - I simplified things greatly and finished the walk dawdling along and click/treating auto check-ins. By the time we got to the trail head where everyone was taking a break, I had much more of her brain.
After the break we all got together and played Doggie Tic Tac Toe. They made a big grid on the ground and broke us into two teams of 3. There was the "down" team and the "sit" team. We started in the "down" team (which goes first because its supposed to be harder) and all three of our team got our pieces (one at a time) into their squares, doing the behavior with two cues or less. Technically we won, but the co-instructor gave the other team another move and called it a draw.
The next round we were in the "sit" team, starting second. Susan and Tucker were first up and he just wouldn't sit. So that had the other two up on us, but Gimme and I were able to cut them off. Since it was a sit, I got us close to the board and then just heeled the last few steps into our square and stopped, so she sat. Of course, then I had to get her up so I could prove that she knew how to sit on cue. Anyway, our team was vindicated when we won this round.
I'm happy to say, despite her earlier lack of focus, Gimme was the only dog of the six that was able to do her sits and downs on the first cue each time. Not that I'm competitive or anything like that...
She's been being a lap dog ever since we got home...
Friday, May 31, 2013
Nosework (4/13) & Public Dog (3&4)
Since I last wrote we've had nosework class, two Public Dog classes, and nosework practice this evening. Gimme continues to do fabulously all around.
Tuesday was Public Dog class - we met at the local county fairgrounds outdoors. I started by working on focus, lots of "whazzat" and auto-check-ins. She did well until all the dogs started moving around and then we had to almost start over. By the time they were ready to do the group exercises, so was Gimme.
We used a large quadrangle to practice LLW. To start with we walked with 15 feet separating us from the dogs in front and behind. I used the 300 Pecks format so I knew how she was doing. The best we got to was 14 steps, which I think is great given the level of distraction. Then they added having the person in the back speed up to pass everyone on the left (about 10 feet away), taking up the lead position. That didn't seem to bother Gimme.
Our next exercise was with the dogs on a down stay in front of us, while another dog and handler walked in a serpentine through the line-up. The first dog that went by Gimme popped up, but then she quickly figured out that the way to win lots of treats was to ignore them. I'm into making hard stuff worth her while and she's into letting me.
The last group exercise was to split us into twos and do parallel walking. We were paired with Tor on our right, which worked well, since Frank walks him on the right, so that added additional space. She did about half of that and then got really distracted and I thought she needed to pee - so peeled off to the grass. When I did that, it became clear the co-instructor didn't really understand my goals for the class, so I stayed after to clarify.
Wednesday was nosework class and we met at the county's fireman training facility. We had three different searches, one inside the climbing tower and two in an outdoor area that is set up to resemble indoors. While a couple other dogs were intimidated by the noisy metal steps in the climbing tower, I don't think Gimme even noticed them. She did stellar in all her searches.
The last search was a single blind hide. Gimme had difficulty finding this one, but it was really hard. There was a full size plastic barrel full of loose wood scraps and the hide was about 5 inches down into the scraps. Add to that the reality that it had only had about 2 minutes to "cook"... which made it really challenging. I knew pretty quickly what the general area was where it was, but I really had to wait for Gimme to source it. If we ran into that same challenge at a trial, it would be much easier because there's a minimum of an hour between when they set the hides and when the first dog runs them - so there would be a lot more odor drifting out.
I stayed after class to help one of the students with her line work. She doesn't use a very long line (about 9 ft), but still its always getting tangled around her dog. Also, since its loose most of the time, whenever the dog gets odor and dashes toward it, on such a short line she is getting an unintended correction. Minutes after I made the offer to her, Joyce talked to the class about one of the issues this person was having in her line handling. Either great-minds-think-alike or someone was eaves-dropping.
Thursday Public Dog class was at the main training building, with six dogs in that small space. They had set up the class in a "stations" format, where the dogs were learning tasks that are from the Therapy Dog class. Joyce had set aside a space for me to set up Gimme's crate (which we only went back to one time). None of the tasks were hard... just done in a different way than I would do them or have done them. So it took more for me to get into their way of doing it than it did for Gimme.
One task was quite interesting, they call it "wall". The idea is to teach the dogs to move into a sit, leaning against a wall, so the handler can be right there leaning against the wall too. You might need it in a hospital setting if they needed to move a gurney down the hall.
Gimme actually already knows this behavior - its something I've been clicker training her to do in the front seat of the car. She's gotten really good about staying quiet in the car... except when we are headed out to the fort or down to the lake - in which case she does a LOT of anticipatory whining. So I put her in her seat-belt harness in the front seat. Then I use the clicker and reward her for laying down or leaning back into the seat. It keeps her quiet and I can do it without taking my eyes off the road.
So when I moved Gimme close to the wall and cued a sit and then waited for the slightest shift of her body, it took just 2 clicks for her to figure it out and then she was leaning against the wall over and over again. We are supposed to gradually rotate our body position so that we'd be standing in front of the dogs with our back against the wall. Of course, I was able to rotate really quickly.
What I didn't realize was how much that changed my visual for what Gimme was doing. She was repeatedly leaning her ribs against the wall, but I was watching for her shoulders - thus she wasn't getting clicked. Naturally that was very frustrating to her and she started whining and fussing. I saw the co-instructor was approaching with her itchy trigger-finger and the evil spray bottle... so I moved between her and Gimme to make sure I could stop her if need be. In doing so I looked down from a different angle and saw that Gimme was indeed leaning against the wall - clicked her and we were off and training again, with no more whining.
So add to all that two long walks on the fort and nosework practice tonight -- suffice it to say, Miss Gimme has been one busy little girl. She is sound asleep as we speak.
Tuesday was Public Dog class - we met at the local county fairgrounds outdoors. I started by working on focus, lots of "whazzat" and auto-check-ins. She did well until all the dogs started moving around and then we had to almost start over. By the time they were ready to do the group exercises, so was Gimme.
We used a large quadrangle to practice LLW. To start with we walked with 15 feet separating us from the dogs in front and behind. I used the 300 Pecks format so I knew how she was doing. The best we got to was 14 steps, which I think is great given the level of distraction. Then they added having the person in the back speed up to pass everyone on the left (about 10 feet away), taking up the lead position. That didn't seem to bother Gimme.
Our next exercise was with the dogs on a down stay in front of us, while another dog and handler walked in a serpentine through the line-up. The first dog that went by Gimme popped up, but then she quickly figured out that the way to win lots of treats was to ignore them. I'm into making hard stuff worth her while and she's into letting me.
The last group exercise was to split us into twos and do parallel walking. We were paired with Tor on our right, which worked well, since Frank walks him on the right, so that added additional space. She did about half of that and then got really distracted and I thought she needed to pee - so peeled off to the grass. When I did that, it became clear the co-instructor didn't really understand my goals for the class, so I stayed after to clarify.
Wednesday was nosework class and we met at the county's fireman training facility. We had three different searches, one inside the climbing tower and two in an outdoor area that is set up to resemble indoors. While a couple other dogs were intimidated by the noisy metal steps in the climbing tower, I don't think Gimme even noticed them. She did stellar in all her searches.
The last search was a single blind hide. Gimme had difficulty finding this one, but it was really hard. There was a full size plastic barrel full of loose wood scraps and the hide was about 5 inches down into the scraps. Add to that the reality that it had only had about 2 minutes to "cook"... which made it really challenging. I knew pretty quickly what the general area was where it was, but I really had to wait for Gimme to source it. If we ran into that same challenge at a trial, it would be much easier because there's a minimum of an hour between when they set the hides and when the first dog runs them - so there would be a lot more odor drifting out.
I stayed after class to help one of the students with her line work. She doesn't use a very long line (about 9 ft), but still its always getting tangled around her dog. Also, since its loose most of the time, whenever the dog gets odor and dashes toward it, on such a short line she is getting an unintended correction. Minutes after I made the offer to her, Joyce talked to the class about one of the issues this person was having in her line handling. Either great-minds-think-alike or someone was eaves-dropping.
Thursday Public Dog class was at the main training building, with six dogs in that small space. They had set up the class in a "stations" format, where the dogs were learning tasks that are from the Therapy Dog class. Joyce had set aside a space for me to set up Gimme's crate (which we only went back to one time). None of the tasks were hard... just done in a different way than I would do them or have done them. So it took more for me to get into their way of doing it than it did for Gimme.
One task was quite interesting, they call it "wall". The idea is to teach the dogs to move into a sit, leaning against a wall, so the handler can be right there leaning against the wall too. You might need it in a hospital setting if they needed to move a gurney down the hall.
Gimme actually already knows this behavior - its something I've been clicker training her to do in the front seat of the car. She's gotten really good about staying quiet in the car... except when we are headed out to the fort or down to the lake - in which case she does a LOT of anticipatory whining. So I put her in her seat-belt harness in the front seat. Then I use the clicker and reward her for laying down or leaning back into the seat. It keeps her quiet and I can do it without taking my eyes off the road.
So when I moved Gimme close to the wall and cued a sit and then waited for the slightest shift of her body, it took just 2 clicks for her to figure it out and then she was leaning against the wall over and over again. We are supposed to gradually rotate our body position so that we'd be standing in front of the dogs with our back against the wall. Of course, I was able to rotate really quickly.
What I didn't realize was how much that changed my visual for what Gimme was doing. She was repeatedly leaning her ribs against the wall, but I was watching for her shoulders - thus she wasn't getting clicked. Naturally that was very frustrating to her and she started whining and fussing. I saw the co-instructor was approaching with her itchy trigger-finger and the evil spray bottle... so I moved between her and Gimme to make sure I could stop her if need be. In doing so I looked down from a different angle and saw that Gimme was indeed leaning against the wall - clicked her and we were off and training again, with no more whining.
So add to all that two long walks on the fort and nosework practice tonight -- suffice it to say, Miss Gimme has been one busy little girl. She is sound asleep as we speak.
BTW I made it clear to the co-instructor at the very first class that I am not interested in her "generous offer" to squirt Gimme in the face, should she ever whine or bark during class. I believe I said that any attempt on her part to do so would result in her having a bloody stump where her hand used to be. However, it seems her eagerness to dish out this particular punishment overrides her sense of self preservation.
I am not surprised to know she is happy to use punishment - since I'd heard things before about her. I hoped what I'd heard was wrong, that Ursula knew better and that's why she was okay partnering with her for these classes. What I've been most sad to learn is that Ursula is completely okay with this being done in her classes and even chatting it up about how many squirts it takes to shut the dog up. I'll have more to say about this in another blog entry...
Friday, May 17, 2013
NW & LLW
Last night Mary and I met at a Home Depot to do a nosework practice. She and Susan couldn't meet on the same day this week, so Susan and I will get together Sunday afternoon.
Grafton did well, but he's so soft and needs more confidence. Mary and I have talked a lot about ways to boost his confidence and make rewards more meaningful. He likes food, but it doesn't completely excite him. He likes touch and "good boy" and playing, but won't tug much. We discovered he really likes the paper bag treat delivery method... and that really got his tail wagging. I've downloaded his video's to a different blog, so if you have a burning desire to see them, the link is: Grafton 051613 There's also other entries there for Grafton and Tucker at our last practice.
These are Gimme's videos:
Exterior 2: The breeze was coming from our left, blowing odor toward us. Yes, that blur was Gimme blasting by - there's a reason I don't want too short of a line. This bright green line is 12 foot and she almost ripped it out of my hand. There was a gust just as I told her "wherezit" and she just took off for the furthest hide and nailed it in eleven seconds. She had all three hides in 47 seconds, including the time it took to reward the first two. Personally, I think she's pretty darn efficient.
Exterior 3: This was a series of open sheds, only three of which had odor in them. The thing I was looking for was how Gimme would react to the sheds that were blanks. As we get to NW3, for interiors we could have a blank room and I need to know what she does. I have to admit, even though I set those hides and the sheds are all different colors, at the time I couldn't remember which had odor and which didn't. (Dark Tan, Lt Tan, and Green had odor) You'll note she totally ignored the red and light grey blank sheds. The tan shed she went by twice - the odor was waaaay at the back of the shed and had only had a few minutes to "cook" - whereas at a trial it would have an hour minimum and the first time she was moving pretty fast. I thought it was interesting that the second time she passed it, she went into the shed next to it and then came out and turned right to it. Who knows what they smell. I did note that after she's found a couple hides, if the search continues, she is more inclined to check out blank sheds...
Exterior 4: This starts with Gimme going to the grass intending to pee, but I saw it in time to interrupt her. Our routine is a pee-break before each search and we came from the sheds right to this one - so it was my bad. I was pleased that she was ready and able to get back to work The hide is tucked in the sod and Mary set it, so I didn't know exactly where it was. At 1:46 she paws right where the hide is, but in the course of moving in, I edged her out of the way and she ends up pawing on the next one over. When I asked her to "show me" at 2:04 she put her nose right on it. She's that good...
BTW that sound when I bumped into the shed was me catching my face on the edge of the corrugated roof - to which I have a shallow 1" cut right in front of my ear. Its the price I pay for keeping my eyes on my dog, eh.
Today we went to the lake and practiced loose leash walking again. I'm working on duration using a modified version of the 300 Peck method. The method is: take one step and click/stop/treat if she's in LLW position. Each trial you add one step (or one second if you are working on a timed behavior). Any time the dog fails, you stop and then start over back at one.
What I found is that Gimme found 1 thru 5 the hardest. I think it takes her that long to figure out what my pace is going to be and I'm just notoriously inconsistent in my walking speed. Once we got past that, she progressed to 10 steps very quickly and from there fairly quickly to 15 steps. However, any time we had to go back to 1, it was just so frustrating for us both. So once I saw the pattern, I only went back to 5 and worked forward from there. About halfway through the walk I moved the restart point up to 10. She stayed between 10 and 15 for a long time.
At one point we stopped and talked to a lady for awhile and Gimme got to veg out. After that she progressed again and by the end of the walk we were consistently up at 20, so clearly she had needed a break. The other modification I made to the 300 Peck method was to repeat certain iterations as much as I felt she needed to get solid on them. So we did a lot of repeats at 8, 10, 12, 15, 18, and 20. We ended with eleven 20's in a row, which I was happy with.
This is a substantial improvement in LLW duration from what we had been doing.
Grafton did well, but he's so soft and needs more confidence. Mary and I have talked a lot about ways to boost his confidence and make rewards more meaningful. He likes food, but it doesn't completely excite him. He likes touch and "good boy" and playing, but won't tug much. We discovered he really likes the paper bag treat delivery method... and that really got his tail wagging. I've downloaded his video's to a different blog, so if you have a burning desire to see them, the link is: Grafton 051613 There's also other entries there for Grafton and Tucker at our last practice.
These are Gimme's videos:
Exterior 1: The breeze was coming from our right as we entered the search area. Gimme did a great job finding the first hide in 30 seconds. (ignor the blips - camera person Mary is "trigger happy") The second hide she found was very hard. The dogs could only smell it low to the ground unless they were right on top of it and it was hard to source. Gimme did a nice job there. There was a nice change of behavior at 2:40 for the third hide and she sourced it in five seconds.
Exterior 3: This was a series of open sheds, only three of which had odor in them. The thing I was looking for was how Gimme would react to the sheds that were blanks. As we get to NW3, for interiors we could have a blank room and I need to know what she does. I have to admit, even though I set those hides and the sheds are all different colors, at the time I couldn't remember which had odor and which didn't. (Dark Tan, Lt Tan, and Green had odor) You'll note she totally ignored the red and light grey blank sheds. The tan shed she went by twice - the odor was waaaay at the back of the shed and had only had a few minutes to "cook" - whereas at a trial it would have an hour minimum and the first time she was moving pretty fast. I thought it was interesting that the second time she passed it, she went into the shed next to it and then came out and turned right to it. Who knows what they smell. I did note that after she's found a couple hides, if the search continues, she is more inclined to check out blank sheds...
Exterior 4: This starts with Gimme going to the grass intending to pee, but I saw it in time to interrupt her. Our routine is a pee-break before each search and we came from the sheds right to this one - so it was my bad. I was pleased that she was ready and able to get back to work The hide is tucked in the sod and Mary set it, so I didn't know exactly where it was. At 1:46 she paws right where the hide is, but in the course of moving in, I edged her out of the way and she ends up pawing on the next one over. When I asked her to "show me" at 2:04 she put her nose right on it. She's that good...
BTW that sound when I bumped into the shed was me catching my face on the edge of the corrugated roof - to which I have a shallow 1" cut right in front of my ear. Its the price I pay for keeping my eyes on my dog, eh.
Today we went to the lake and practiced loose leash walking again. I'm working on duration using a modified version of the 300 Peck method. The method is: take one step and click/stop/treat if she's in LLW position. Each trial you add one step (or one second if you are working on a timed behavior). Any time the dog fails, you stop and then start over back at one.
What I found is that Gimme found 1 thru 5 the hardest. I think it takes her that long to figure out what my pace is going to be and I'm just notoriously inconsistent in my walking speed. Once we got past that, she progressed to 10 steps very quickly and from there fairly quickly to 15 steps. However, any time we had to go back to 1, it was just so frustrating for us both. So once I saw the pattern, I only went back to 5 and worked forward from there. About halfway through the walk I moved the restart point up to 10. She stayed between 10 and 15 for a long time.
At one point we stopped and talked to a lady for awhile and Gimme got to veg out. After that she progressed again and by the end of the walk we were consistently up at 20, so clearly she had needed a break. The other modification I made to the 300 Peck method was to repeat certain iterations as much as I felt she needed to get solid on them. So we did a lot of repeats at 8, 10, 12, 15, 18, and 20. We ended with eleven 20's in a row, which I was happy with.
This is a substantial improvement in LLW duration from what we had been doing.
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