RFE practice (106)

Gimme was still deep in her false pregnancy during this practice, so most of what I did centered around having fun and rewarding focus. The signs were set up for a course J'Anna and Ginger were entered under.

Heeling warm-up video - This started out well and when she did a nice bit, I threw a toy for her, unfortunately as I tried to grab it for tugging, I managed to poke her eye. I was able to get her to play briefly, but then she got really uncertain about it. It took a couple different rounds with different toys to get her to play enthusiastically. Then we did a couple quick warm-up sequences and ended.

Join-up video - My thought with this was to remove any pressure and reward her for choosing to come to/with me. It takes her 35 seconds to make the first choice. The next time was 9 seconds. In 1:30 she was choosing to stay with me.

Set-up and play video - While she understands "set-up", she's gotten fuzzy on the part about getting her heiney fully into a sit; she's hovering in a half-sit. I want to practice this at home. We just did 3 reps and then went to play some more with Terry Pterodactyl. She loves it when I make growly noises and come after her with monster hands. We also did a few click/treats for "release" of the toy. Mostly she gets the toy, but sometimes I want her to let me have it too.

Miscellaneous video - We did just over a minute of miscellaneous behaviors and heeling, then played for almost 2 minutes. Then back to work for a minute, followed by more play. Right now, while deep in a false pregnancy, play creates more energy and focus than food does. It probably always does, but we need more energy during the false pregnancy.

Session 3 warm-up video - Here's a 1½ minute warm-up. Gimme starts pretty loose, but then gets better.

We ended with some more play-work-play and then I let Gimme "win" the toy and take it to the car. I was really pleased to get this amount of play after the unfortunate eye-poke as we started training.

Since then she's pretty much gone out of her false pregnancy, so I expect her to be closer to normal at the next practice. It might take a couple practices before she becomes her usual self.

Nosework class (6/40 & 1/41)

On October 29th we did all our nosework searches in the dark. We've done this every year just before Halloween. We dress up the dogs in glow-in-the-dark necklaces and bracelets and there are some glow sticks around the area. I've had videos turn out in a minimal way before, but this year the camera wouldn't even focus. Actually there was more light this time because they had two strings of lighted jack-o-lanterns and skeletons. I think they provided enough light to "confuse" the camera, so we didn't get anything usable.

In any case, Gimme did fine, as she always has. She just motors around and finds the hides, then tries to get my attention. As we repeated the searches, I learned to "read" her necklaces, so I could sorta tell what she was doing.

On November 5th we had a fun series of interior searches. We had to break up all our treats into tiny pieces, so we'd have enough. The idea was to continue rewarding our dog for 30 seconds and we were being timed. Naturally Gimme thought this was a great idea.

Interior 1 search video - This first search of just one hide was in the foyer. Gimme went right to the tub, but it took her a bit to decide exactly where the hide was. Most of the time for this search was spent rewarding Gimme.

Interior 2 search video - This search was in the front of the room, separated from the back two-thirds by ex-pens. Gimme found the hide in less than 10 seconds. Again she enjoyed the prolonged reward strategy.

Container 1 search video - This search was on leash with one hide. Gimme noticed the thing on the cable, which will later be part of a high hide search. She was the only one to notice it without the hide actually being there. She found the container hide soon after.

Interior 3 search video - There is just one high hide in the front part of the room. Gimme immediately runs to the other end to check the boxes where she last found a hide. She finds the hide in 55 seconds. We were still supposed to prolong the rewarding as much as we could and as close to the hide as possible, so I had her put her feet on me.

Interior 4 search video - Again just one high hide, but in the back part of the room. Gimme found it very quickly, 20 second faster than the prior high hide search. This is the one she saw during the container search. The only dog in class with comparable skill level is August and his nose is already a foot closer to the high hides.

I was glad to see Gimme doing so well in class despite motherhood.  She usually does well despite her condition, but sometimes I see a little less focus.  I love to see her having fun.

RFE practice (105)

This is our second practice at WinStar. One thing we've discovered is the main door doesn't close well, even if you slam it. Gimme pushed it and got out, but was good and came back when I called her (and was rewarded with some toy play). There's a very busy street out front, not to mention potential issues with other dogs on the premises. For safety, we'll place a chair in front of the door from now on.

Gimme is intensely into her false pregnancy, so she didn't do as well this time as last. I brought in toys and it helped a little, but then not so much. At times she really enjoyed the play and at other times, not.

Join-up video - To begin with we did some join-up work. It's basically voluntary connection. If she disconnects, then I increase the disconnection by moving in another direction. It's not really supposed to be heeling, but I see I had a tendency to wait for her to get into heel before I rewarded.

Miscellaneous video - This was just some miscellaneous behaviors to reward. I thought they'd all be easy ones I could reward, but some were challenging for her. I had to help her get started with "otto" and it's her favorite behavior.

Toy play video - She wasn't excited by the first toy because its squeaker was broken. I encouraged her to pick a different one. Usually Gimme is all in for toys, but this time I had to improve my game to get her to join me in it. Competing to steal her toy makes her want to join in. Even so, her play is short-lived.

Simultaneous "spins" & "turn" video - It takes a little to get this started, but then she does it nicely. I ended the session after a really nice repetition.

Miscellaneous 2 video - Gimme had a really hard time focusing during the second session. Out of 9½-minutes of video, she was able to work just under 2 minutes. I did several different things to get and keep her attention, with varying success. Next time this happens, I think I'll put her on leash, to limit her options. I'm hoping we can get more working attention over a shorter and more concentrated time next time we meet there. We did have two nice play sessions - see next.

Toy Play 2 video - At first she wasn't interested, but when I got more playful and engaged, then she wanted to play. From watching these videos, she is most into the game when she has the toy and I try to get it from her. Trying to tug it away is a fave, but she also looked like she thought it was fun when I stalked her with scary hands. Who knew...

Because this had been mostly unsatisfactory work, I wanted to end on a good note. So I brought Gimme in for one last, short session - focused on "setup" which has a really positive association.

"Setup" video - We hadn't done this in awhile. All she has to do is get into heel position and sit with attention. Gimme did really well in the heel position. She seemed confused in side position - she'd get in position and crouch, but not sit. Then she did a few where she didn't even try to sit. I had her do setup in heel, then spun around and did it in side. She was very slow to sit, but once she got rewarded for it, she was better. I don't know what was going on in her head between side and heel position, but we ended on a couple of nice ones.

I'm looking forward to the end of this false pregnancy and getting my brainy girl back.

RFE practice (95)

For some reason Gimme had a very difficult time getting into a working mindset. She just couldn't pay attention and I had to go get her and lead her back to work, by the collar, a couple of times. Then during the second session she was all for it. She is basically out of her false pregnancy, so I don't think it's the cause. The only idea I have is she could be tired from the weekend, three trial days. I haven't seen it before, but it's possible.

Freeshaping backward weaves video - She did better last time we did this. This time she seemed a bit antsy about it. She was getting it toward the end, but I think we've lost a little ground.

"Spin" for SkillsVid video - I've decided to revisit doing videos to put together an entry for a Skills title. Before I tried to video too many at once and her performance degraded. She was still doing them, but I wasn't getting the kind of precision I know she is capable of. I need scores of 8 or better (out of 10) to qualify for a Skills title. This time I just worked on these two spins and her work was much nicer. Only the last two of these are eligible to be used since I had treats in my pocket for the others.

"Turn" for SkillsVid video - I don't know what was going on here... it was like she'd forgotten what "turn" means. It came back, but it was weird. She really wanted to do "izzy" instead (the string of 3 was impressive, just not what I wanted). A couple of times she turns her head right to look way far out to where her special bowl was sitting. After she started to self-release herself to the special bowl, I decided having it on the same side as she was working was too much of a distraction and when I moved it, she did do better. One thing I don't like is the way she steps forward before starting her turn compared to the tight way she spins on the other side.

Since Gimme started the prior session without focus, I decided this time to start her on leash - as a reminder. When she is focused on working with me, then I took the leash off.

"Pivot" video - I'm amazed she did this at all, since I was using the wrong cue. Dumb me. Gimme deserves better. I do notice when she's already on the brick and I give the wrong cue, she does "pivot" anyway. But when I send her to the brick with the wrong cue, then she is much less certain and starts giving me a fishtail of both directions. "Pivot" is CCW and "tivo" is CW.

"Bucket" video - This is coming along so well. The real test of her understanding is she knows to get on the prop when she hears the cue. I'm almost ready to try it with other props. I just need to find props which are sturdy enough to hold up. She is a bit distracted by some squeaking going on in the puppy class, but manages to work through it.

Platform work for "away" video - It occurs to me watching this, she might do better about keeping both rear feet on the platform if I was just a little further to the side. Toward the end I am using the target stick to turn her "away". She's still turning too far, but at least is now self-correcting. She even turns a couple of times to the target stick without having to follow it like a lure - HUGE! I think we're gonna get this...

It's nice having her brain coming back. I'm so spoiled to have my smarty girl and when she's distracted by pseudo Mommy issues, I think we are both frustrated.

Private Lesson w/Sil Sanders

On Saturday, June 8th, Gimme and I drove 2½ hours up to Birch Bay, just north of Bellingham. We went up to do a private lesson with Sil Sanders. I won the lesson at a seminar with him and was sure I'd gone past the expiration, but Sil said there wasn't one.

My hope was for him to see Gimme's new tendency to do a walkabout when she can't find the track. I don't know why she does it and thought he'd be likely to see something I was missing. She also does it if she can find the track and I obtusely refuse to believe her. Envision her getting in a huff and saying, "Well fine! I'll do it your stupid way, but there's no track over here."

The parameters were TD-ish length (it ended up being 595 yards) and one-hour-ish age, no food on the track, but an article on every leg. It was also supposed to be a blind track, but the cover was so deep, I could see the track part of the time. Of course Gimme was going so fast I didn't have a lot of time to look for a path in the grass. It was warm, low 70's with a light breeze.

My first mistake involved the start. Sil pointed me to go to the start flag at a 45-degree angle. I let Gimme use much of her line to investigate and pee before the start, so she arced out and our approach to the start was more of a 90-degree angle. Gimme had no difficulty with this, but Sil said I should be sure we approach the flag as directed by the judge.

Gimme quickly found the first article (and all articles for that matter). She then proceeded to overrun the first corner quite a bit. We worked a search pattern in both directions. At one point Gimme started to go off at an angle and I queried her, "Is that the good track?" and she curled off it. Yay for her... We worked our way back toward where she'd been solid on the track and she found the next leg. She was quickly rewarded by another article.

She also overran the second corner, but not as much this time. We again had to employ a search pattern to get her back to the track. And again right after she found the next leg she was rewarded with another article. This leg took Gimme right into a little patch of woods. She spent a bit of time snooping off to one side and I let her use most of the line, keeping myself out of the woods. Then she pulled harder and took me down the dirt path through the woods and out the other side.

She made the next turn pretty quickly and had a moment where she sniffed to the left, but then continued down the leg. Later Sil told me, when he laid the track there was a mom and baby deer bedded down to the right of where the track went through. When they saw him, they moved off, crossing our track (red line). Gimme got past this so well and was rewarded with another article.

When Gimme got to the fourth corner, she made it so fast, I really didn't believe her. Her head was up a bit, as it tends to be when she is off on a walkabout.  In this case her head was probably up because the cover was so tall it didn't need to be down to follow the track.  I queried her and she wasn't as decisive in her response - possibly because she sensed my Doubting Thomasina. In fact she dithered around a bit to the left. I came perilously close to bringing her back to search for the corner. Thank God I didn't. Gimme was right and soon showed me the final glove.

This is kind of a milestone for us. It was pretty clear that I doubted her last corner, but she didn't let me throw her off. I came really close to bringing her back, but at some level she must've been giving me enough so could follow her. I hope it's enough so she feels more confident to be more insistent in the future. Sil said we did a solid job and could be ready for a TDX test before long.

My plan is to get up there later this summer and do a TDU lesson with him. I'd like him to evaluate where we are in our skills. Sometimes I feel really confident and other times not so much. There are fall/winter TDU tests coming up, so I want to see whether he thinks we should enter. If not, we wait until next year, since I want to get our tests done away from pollen season.

This was very exciting...

Nosework class (1/38)

Exterior 1 video - I didn't really "start" Gimme. We were coming from across the street and she seemed to be on a mission, so I let her go for it. She found the first hide in 13 seconds. Only one dog found the near hide first, but she came from a different direction than everyone else. Gimme wasn't as direct for the second hide, but there was no dawdling either.

For the interior hides 1 through 3, we were to predict how long it would take our dogs to solve the search. Here are our results.

	predicted	actual
area 1	0:45	0:09.22
area 2	1:15	1:21.56
area 3	1:45	0.51.22

Interior 1 (no video) - The hide was in the handle where it attached to the dust mop. Gimme was dang fast and I was waaaaay off in my prediction.

Interior 2 video - Gimme goes right to the hide as she comes in, but doesn't stick, continuing instead to scan the area. She quickly starts checking high surfaces, since the hide was just high enough to fall on those surfaces and either it was curling over the edges OR she was going with expectations.

Interior 3 video - If you wonder why I waited so long to call it when she was all over the stack of chairs - I was waiting for her to tell me this was it. If you watch her with this in mind, she never does give me "the look" to say this is as close as I can get. In fact she never did give me the look until after I said, "alert".

Interior 4 video - All three hides are moved into the same room. Gimme is nicely efficient and gets them all in under a minute.

When Gimme was younger I had to be careful about how much we did on nosework class days, so she was fresh enough to perform well. It's nice to see how much she's matured. Even with RFE practice in the morning and her Lenny-baby concerns, she is still able to do well in class.

Gimme is starting to wean Lenny-baby, just in time for two days of AKC nosework trialing this Friday and Saturday. Wish us luck.

RFE practice (94)

Because Gimme is still in her false pregnancy, I tried to keep things short, light and easy. Even still after a little bit she ran to the door to tell me she needed to check on Lenny-baby. Being a Mom is such hard work.

Freeshaping "bucket" video - This is the first time we've worked on this in over a month and Gimme still knew just what to do and got to the finished behavior very quickly. It took her only 28 seconds to offer the first full pivot in the bucket. Her fastest time is 16 seconds, but we haven't worked on this in so long, I'm still really pleased with it. Since she was clearly sure of what to do, I started adding the cue for the behavior. We only did five repetitions.

"Pivot" video - We hadn't done this for a bit, so just did three repetitions as a refresh.

J'Anna's sequence video - J'Anna is practicing these short sequences, so I thought we'd try one. It took a few tries for Gimme to engage her listening ears. Just about the time I thought she was ready to engage, she decided she needed to go check on Lenny-baby instead. I'm sensitive to her need, but I also expect her to work with me just a bit after she expresses her need. She really wanted to do "otto" and "izzy" (her faves), so I included them in the sequence to reward working.

Heeling warm-up video - We did just a little bit of heeling. Not particularly good, but I was just looking for an opportunity to reward attention. I included "out" around the bucket, then ended, taking her out to be with Lenny-baby.

Platform work video - I forgot to bring in the target stick, so I made it a very short session, just rewarding her for letting me stand back by her hips, as well as staying while I walked out in front and then back and around behind her.

Freeshape back-weave macaroni video - She starts out well, but then she scares herself, which I'm sure goes back to when she hurt herself on a tall cone. I back up to a simpler version and slowly help her work through it. I was moving the bottle just one-inch at a time. We worked on this longer than I planned.

I had other things I wanted work on, but I figured this was plenty given her state of mind. I'm sure we didn't make any great headway on anything, but every time we work on these things, as long as we finish even a little bit forward of where we started, it's all to the good.