Public Dog (19 & 20)

We have been quite busy all week and I want to post about these two classes before the details slip completely out of my head.

In last week's Public Dog class, I was told by both instructors not to use peanut butter to reward Gimme for an especially good effort.  Their reasoning was that they saw tension,   thought it got her too amped up and she needs to be calm to work.  That is not consistent with my observation of Gimme and I've always given her PB for her best efforts.  Yet, during that class, between our turns I rewarded her with peanut butter for being calm on her matt and she did not get aroused from it.  I have worked with Gimme from time to time about still having a working brain even in the face of her Kong ball filled with peanut butter.

I think they saw the body tense in excitement and both just assumed she would go over the top.  Possibly they are remembering the couple of weeks when she couldn't calm down in class and are blaming it on the go toob. Given how fast it resolved when I stopped reinforcing the overwrought behavior - I think it was more an unintentionally rewarded behavior.  I never really talked that much with Ursula about what I was doing/thinking, so she may not know all the other things that played into the issue.  Of course she tenses up in excitement when she sees her favorite PB coming - that doesn't mean she will get over the top.

So I decided to do a little test and modified my treat bag with 2 strips of elastic to hold a open film canister (filled with peanut butter, what else) upright and in the right hand corner.  During the first class I got kind of mixed-bag results.

Gimme learned that if she is really subtle, Mom won't notice when she gets her nose in there and helps herself.  She has a long-standing habit of nose-bumping the side pouch that holds the go toob and I mostly ignor her bumps.  So when I wasn't fully paying attention to what she was bumping, she just eased her nose in the edge of the bag and quietly licked up some PB.  Since she could get the PB without getting her whole snout in the bag and just using her tongue, she was able to help herself for who knows how long.  Sneaky little girl.

Our exercises included a couple of tiny Rally courses.  Gimme was the only one who could do all the exercises as they are intended.  I did discover her heeling has deteriorated a lot and I think I know why - so have some work to do resolve that.  Using the PB in that way was fine for when we were working exercises.  She was eager to work and putting forth a ton of effort.  She even got through a potentially troublesome spot when another class dog "swore" at her (lunged and barked at her) - she was inclined to respond, but readily turned back to me and working.  And she didn't hold onto it either... she sensibly kept an eye on that dog when we were near it, but wasn't on high-alert and readily working.

However, when I wanted her to chill on her matt while we waited our turn, the PB in the bag worked against us.  Since she never knew when it would be cheese or PB, she was more alert than I want her to be for chilling.  In that context, she ended up being a bit whiny.

One time Gimme gave me some decent chill and I gave her a glob of PB from the go toob... then she was calm for awhile.  So perhaps in that case, more IS more.  My thinking is that when she gets a bunch of PB, she is satisfied for awhile and it has a calming affect.  She always spends a bit of time licking her leg (I think to get the PB all down and not remaining stuck to the inside of her mouth).  However, when she only gets a little bit, it leaves her wanting more and she tries to figure out ways to get it.  So, I need to effectively use that difference for what attitude I want in a particular moment.  At the second class I found I could consciously use the difference to my advantage and it worked quite well.  One thing I had to make clear to her is that when she is in chill position - she has to stay there to keep the go toob coming toward her.

In that class we focused on Secondary Reinforcers and I overheard Urs telling a student that you could condition anything the dog likes to do as a reinforcement. Gimme is a very kissy face girl... so after hearing that, I decided her newest SR is "love me".  I hold my arm in butler position and she puts her paws up and gives me a kiss.  Took me 3 seconds to get her up there and then all I had to do was get my face in range.  To condition this SR, we were to cue it and then reward with a treat, ten times in a row.  I thought Gimme was going to split a seam - being invited in, getting to kiss her Mom and then getting a treat!  Well that's almost more than a little girl can take, doncha know.  By halfway through she was getting so excited, that she'd give a little hop and I was getting a vigorous bump with my kiss.  Not enough to hurt, but noticeable.

So now I already have three SRs... and they want us to bring a toy next time so we can condition that as an SR too.  I just have to decide which toy to bring.

Gimme and I are taking off to Vancouver in a couple of hours for a nosework seminar on Inaccessible Hides.  So, gotta git packing...  but first let me close this with some pictures.  

Gimme and I got out to the fort for a walk and got caught in a rain squall, which didn't last too long. One of her favorite activities when we walk there alone is hunting for mouse holes and then digging in them.  She'll be cruising along and all the sudden her head whips around and she darts off for a hole which subsequently gets the treatment.  She hasn't caught a mouse this way, but is nonetheless determined.  Naturally she gets very dirty doing so.  I'm sure this is an indication of what a fabulous Barn Hunt dog she will be when we are able to get to a workshop.

Confession...

I have screwed up how I’ve handled Gimme’s issues in class.  Its hard when you have to make all the mistakes yourself so you can learn from them.  <sigh>

In Thurs classes, Gimme starts out fine, but then she gets into a frantic feeding frenzy, with dilated pupils!  I've been trying to use metronome feeding when that happens, but she continues and gets worse.  Thursday night was the worst. I had noticed 4 months ago that our Relaxation Protocol work was deteriorating, so the beginnings predate her season and false pregnancy.

Urs thinks I'm contributing to Gimme's frantic behavior and even the way I give her treats is a factor.  She suggested placing the treats, one at a time with two fingers, into her mouth - instead of letting her nibble them out of my fingers.  I did that and it helped; I think it makes it clearer how many treats she is getting for a reward. I spent the last half of class just sitting on the floor with Gimme, giving her one treat on her matt for shutting her mouth or taking a breath (without clicker) and using petting whenever she was relatively calm.  That also helped. 

I was so frustrated that I could have cried when I got home.  I tried to schedule a private lesson with Ursula to get her insights into what I’m doing wrong, but the timing couldn’t be worse coming into the 4th of July week.  So I’ve been talking over the situation with Kathy and Candy; they’ve helped me to analyze what was happening.

I had noticed that I could train her tricks non-stop during class and she'd do them or try, but she just can't get herself calm.  Still even during tricks training she is more distracted and not herself.  After thinking about and discussing the history, I’ve concluded some things are combining to create this problem.   Here’s my thoughts:

• When I was trying to use RP outside agility class this year, I made too big of a jump from where we’d been the year before to where we started this year, so I undid the matt’s association with calm and safe.
• When she was in her false pregnancy, I may have fed into it by trying to use food to calm her down during classes and not using distance enough.
• Possibly I’ve been misjudging her state of mind - thinking she was too close to threshold, so I switched to classical conditioning when she was still operant.  As a result, I unintentionally taught her to "act overwrought" for all the rewards it gets her.  Of course, how you act quickly becomes how you feel - hence the dilated pupils.

Since then I have taken her for two rest-and-walks around Capitol Lake.  The first time I started on the Capitol Campus with 15 minutes of hanging out.  She did well, though it took awhile to get the idea that nothing was going to happen.  It occurs to me that we often meet Mary and Grafton there, so she was expecting them.  We left after she was consistently relaxing, which means calmly watching all the different things going on.  I gave her about ten treats during that time, when I saw especially nice stuff, like rolling on one hip or taking a deeper breath.

Then we moved down to the lake where we'd walk about 100 yards and then stop and sit for five minutes.  After we got halfway around the lake, then we just walked the rest without stopping.  She quickly figured out that when Mom sits, Gimme might as well chill, cuz ain't nothing gonna happen.

I did notice her look-at-that behavior ("whazzat") was broken.  Almost every dog she saw she couldn't look away from.  So I had to add a lot more distance and refresh her brain on how we do that.  Clearly I let her get re-sensitized from not managing space better during the intensity of classes.  Bad me!

Today we walked around the lake again and she did even better, relaxing quickly each time.  When I stopped to talk to people, she laid down and stretched out.  I can't remember her ever voluntarily laying down while I was still standing up - huge progress.  She even laid down while I was talking to a lady with a very small dog about 10 feet away.

Much of the time I'm petting her as the reward for relaxing and only giving her the occasional treat for the best signs of relaxation.  I think that makes a difference.  While she enjoys the "freebies", she isn't getting into work mode.  I'm pondering doing Relaxation Protocol without treats, using petting instead.  Gimme is very tactile, so perhaps that will work better and keep her from going into work mode.

I got smarter and used peanut butter today, so got better "whazzat", but she's still more inclined to get stuck looking than she has in the past.  The cheese just wasn't enough reward for her to work through it, which tells me her threshold has grown greatly.  Before 8 feet was pretty common, and now its 20.  If it is dog types that she especially dislikes (ones that look intently at her, pull toward her or bark) then she needs 35-40 feet.  Yikes!  That's a big loss and one we'll have to do a lot of work to recover ground.  I'm sure we'll get it back, but it will take time.

Her LLW was good both days, especially today.  It takes reminders, but then she gets into the rhythm and is going really long distances.  I started counting, but stopped when we hit 60 steps.  She was also adjusting her pace on her own after lightly bumping into the end of the leash.

Yesterday and today I only occasionally used treats for the LLW, instead relying mostly on the functional reward of moving forward.  If she was hovering at the end of the leash, I just slowed down and that was enough to remind her.  If she actually pulled then I'd stop and only continue when she was back beside me.  If she didn’t come back beside me, I'd back-pedal 5-10 steps. I consider this a step forward.  I think its better to get more and more behaviors on life rewards.

Kathy suggested I train Gimme through Susan Garrett’s crate games because she’s seen it to have a calming affect on dogs.  Fortunately my friend Chris has that DVD so I can borrow it.  It also occurs to me I need to watch my Control Unleashed DVD set... it has some rev-up-settle-down games that might be helpful for Gimme.

The trick will be transferring this to classes and will very much depend on managing space much better than I've done.  I need to set up so she can deal with the chaos successfully and feel good about the experience.  There are two cubicles that will give us more flexibility and options, so I’ll talk to Ursula about making sure we get one or the other.  One has an outside door so we can always go outside to take a break.  The other is at the foot of the stairs and we could go up to the landing for more space.

Kathy also suggested creating a calming association with the smell of lavender where she sleeps, which I can then spritz on her matt.  Initially I thought of both the bed and the couch, but with it being warmer, the door is open to outside.  Last night I noticed she alerted a couple of times to noises outside and alarm barked once, so I will stick with bed only since she snoozes through the night there.  I love lavender so have a lot of it and can make sachets for the bed and have a perfume that I can use on her bed.

I still feel very bad that I failed my precious darling.  But at least I now have a plan and am optimistic that we can recover lost ground and get over this hump. 

Nosework (2/14)

Tonight we had class in a back office off the bottom of a split-level local veterinary hospital.  A couple of the dogs spent a lot of time crittering, but not Gimme.  I think it helped that we've done searches at the quilt shop where Susan works and where her dogs stay with her most days, so the dog/animal smells were not as distracting for her.

It was a long distance from the parking lot to where the room was, so we basically only got to watch one other dog.  Joyce kept moving the hides so we were always getting blind hides for each search.  Unfortunately that meant the dogs were dealing with a lot of lingering odor from a place where odor had been just a few minutes before and Joyce would tell us when the dog was sniffing, "that's lingering odor" so we'd know.  That makes it a harder challenge for the dogs and its not one the dogs would face at a trial.  However, the dogs have been dealing with lingering odor all along in classes, as hides are moved between rounds of searches.

What was frustrating to me was that for Gimme's second search, when she was sniffing around the base of an exercise bike - Joyce said it was lingering odor, so I urged Gimme away from it.  She went back there a couple of times and I kept ignoring her behavior and not really supporting it.  Finally she went back and was really insistent that it was on the bike and lo and behold, it was under the seat.  Joyce said, "I didn't say it wasn't anywhere on the bike".  Seriously!  Odor falls to the ground, so Gimme was probably in odor when she was at the base of the bike and I was urging her away.  Had I left her alone, she would no doubt have followed the odor up to where it was.  To her credit, Gimme knew it was there somewhere and kept going back despite my idiot handling.

Then Gimme found a place on the bottom of some cages and insisted odor was there.  Joyce said it was lingering, so I urged her away.  The fourth time she went back and indicated, Joyce said, "I wonder if I picked up that odor" and when she checked, indeed it was there.  Again, to her credit, Gimme knew she was right and persisted.  Honestly, that just shouldn't happen.  I was just thankful that it didn't happen to Susan and Tucker, since they are trialing this Saturday and don't need to confuse the dog right before a trial.

Gimme let me know that class wasn't enough to meet her needs (because she finds odor too fast... so she only gets about five minutes of searching).  She let me know by killing one of her toys - which she had dissected last week - today she dismembered it.  So I decided to do a little tricks training.

One of her tricks "pretty" is to sit up and beg and she's really good about doing it, but I've always been disappointed that I couldn't get better duration on that trick.  Those paws just come up and go down really quickly and yet I see other dogs that are able and willing to hold the pose for awhile.  I was thinking about this earlier today and it occurred to me that she gets paid when those feeties are back on the ground... so I am actually rewarding that part of the sequence as well.

So I decided tonight to practice it and concentrate on feeding in position.  So even if the paws went down, the treat was delivered as if they were up.  This is the same solution we had to do on her "take-a" bow... even if she popped up from the bow, the treat was delivered down on the ground and she had to resume the position.  Quickly she learned to hold her bows.  Likewise tonight, after the third time, she was holding the "pretty" a little longer.

Basically I am following the rule - "Whenever possible, feed in position."  I tell my students this and that's how I set up their exercises and training.  But - smack my forehead - I forget to apply it to my own training.

Of course, then I had to sort out two other issues.  Gimme has a tendency to want to stand up rather than sit.  The other thing is that she wants to use her paws to hold onto my hand.  For both of these the hand gets pulled away.  I see both as symptoms of the same issue.  As muscular and strong as Gimme is, I don't think she has a strong enough core to hold this position - its just not something she does.  So as we practice this... keeping her up getting 5 or 6 treats in succession, we'll be building her core.

The other thing we worked on is "chin" a behavior which will be used to build a better hold on her dumbbell.  Gimme was only really pressing into my hand if the treating hand was basically luring her to do so.  Tonight I decided to try doing it more like a Doggie Zen exercise.  First I did luring a couple of times to get her started.  Then I started holding the treating hand out to the side and she had to leave it, moving her head to press into the other hand to get the treats.  If she mugged my treat hand she got nothing so that triggered her Doggie Zen mindset and she quickly started giving me nice pressure into my hand.

She's a smart cookie... its just a matter of discovering what works best for any given exercise.

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 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 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.

Nosework (2/9)

Class was all about vehicles.  We did seven searches on vehicles, one hide at a time.  Gimme did well.  She still sometimes gets distracted by things nearby, but nothing like what we were dealing with before.  Now I can call her away from them and she responds pretty quickly.  As much as she uses a vigorous paw whack as her indicator on many of her hides, when she is doing vehicles - its a gentle paw touch, which is nice to see.  We can get a fault assessed if its vigorous on a vehicle.

 I was feeling nervous about containers - since that is what we failed last time and so asked Joyce to run me & Gimme and Susan & Tucker through a quick container search.  Good thing too, since little Miss, went straight to goof-off mode.  She did a quick indication on a couple boxes that weren't it, but fortunately I knew what to look for.  When she got to the right one, there was nothing quick about it - she went straight into box destruction mode.  She hadn't been doing that as much lately and I admit I like seeing it.  Its just so Gimme...   BTW in her defense, she had just done seven separate searches, so she was probably a bit tired. 

Joyce also showed us a training trick for teaching the dogs to eat the treats from our cupped hand - so there is less risk of dropping treats at a trial.  Dropping even a tiny crumb in the search area will get a fault assessed against you, so its to be avoided.

Basically you just feed the dog many treats, one after the other, from a cupped hand and the other hand places treats in that hand.  If the dog pays any attention to the hand holding the treats - they get nothing.  When they focus on the cupped hand - treats magically appear there.  Its really easy to teach and dogs pick it up quickly.  Gimme thought that was just about the most fun she's had all week.  Tomorrow while I'm at my parents', I'm going to practice doing it with her harness and line, since you aren't supposed to drop the line either. 

Today I was reading an article about children and self-control, based on the "marshmallow test".  Just thinking of marshmallows got me curious about how Gimme would react to them,  bought a bag today.

The first one I gave her, she kept dropping - not knowing quite how to eat it, but then decided it was wonderful.  I turned the next one into four pieces and she gobbled them down like they were food of the gods.  Later I gave her another whole one and she devoured it immediately.  I think I could buy the small ones and use them now and then as nosework treats. I realize they aren't healthy like the other stuff I feed her, but she was very excited and clearly that is very high value.  That seems to be the norm across species for junk food. 

Well cross your fingers... the weekend is almost upon us.  Gimme is still in season, so we'll wait all day and then do all our searches one after the other at the end of the day, while wearing her patriotic red, white and blue striped britches.  I'm packing up tonight so I can leave right after I teach class in the morning.  I'll thank you to cross any body part you can spare for us...

BTW that article is: "Marshmallow Study Revisited: Delaying Gratification Depends as Much On Nurture as On Nature", has some fascinating applications to dog training.  It is available at:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121011090655.htm