"Outside Help" -- December 8, 2005
The other night, I met up with two trainers from Reading, PA; Tami Hilberg and Linda Strabaugh. We spent a fun (and overwhelming) 1 ½ hours training our dogs together. This was the first time we did this, and it will not be the last! I took Acacia and Bing with me (both Belgian Sheepdogs, ages 7 years and 7 months), Tami brought Chief, her Aussie, and Linda brought Minnie, a Lab. Together, we worked on the following: for Chief, straight sits on heeling, retrieve over the jump and glove retrieve (both obedience skills) and working near Acacia (Chief is reactive toward dogs); for Minnie, directed jumping for Rally3; for Acacia, remote downs and sits and directed jumping (for Rally3); for Bing, counterconditioning to people/hands coming toward him, quiet in the crate, and loose leash walking. I was quickly reminded of how messy my training is! It was really hard for me to be able to pay attention to each of my dogs and have clear training goals. So Tami and Linda are helping me tease out specifics of what I need to be doing. It is SO nice to have knowledgeable outsiders help me with the process.
Tonight, as I hide inside while the freezing rain makes a mess outside, I worked with both dogs, then I emailed Tami and Linda to update them. I thought I’d share the email:
"hi guys,
ok. in the past 5 minutes, here's what i did.
i went into the bedroom with fairly hungry dogs (they were pissed cuz montana got waay more dinner than they did!) in order to work on bing's hissy fits about being in the crate while i'm around, i put him in his crate and treated him, and started asking acacia for downs (verbal only). she was FAST!
i pretty much fed bing as continuously as i could. i asked acacia for downs for about 20 reps. in those, she only was slow once. i fed bing that time instead of her. bing was absolutley quiet the whole time. it was great!
that was too simple, so i changed gears. i intended on working only with bing, but acacia heard the clicker, so i added her to the mix.
i sat outside the crate and played the 'let's freeshape the dog to love the crate' game.
i waited for him to look at the crate, clicked and treated for that. at first he was confused, and thought i wanted the most recent things we did ('relax' and 'shout') so i got some of that. but as soon as he went toward the crate and got C/Td for it, it was all over....
he RAN in and laid down. C/T, toss the treat out. at the same time, i continued to ask acacia for downs. they continued to be immediate, with either front end down first or front and back down at the same time.
we did another 25 reps or so of that, adding a few seconds duration, up to about 5 seconds. bing has done this crate work before, in his car crate, so it wasn't completely new, but we haven't actually worked on it lately.
i know that acacia has a fairly strong verbal for down in certain contexts; it's part of her 'chase the ball with the Chuck-It' routine. we also have used it quite a bit in herding.
i suppose that the next time i do the crate thing, i will be several feet farther away. this time we were about 3-5 feet away (my house is tiny, so distance is always going to be a factor here). i don't think i want to work on duration at this time; i think distance would be more appropriate for the crate work.
as for the 'down' work, i need to get some distance from acacia for that, too.
my next session will be to review jean donaldson's handling protocol, which i haven't done in a long time, and i never completed with him. i'm sure it will go well, but i'm also sure i will find an unexpected glitch.
by the way, i had 3 friends over this afternoon, and bing was a perfect gentleman. one of them was Sue, my puppy instructor, who has done quite a bit of work with him. the other two he's only met 3 times or so. at one point, he was sitting while Lynne was standing in front of him, petting him, and Pauline was sitting next to him, petting him on the other side...and you could tell he was just in heaven! if he thinks you're there just to be social, he's fine. of course, we are all doggy people, so we know about not getting into dogs' faces etc. it was just beautiful to watch, though. i was so proud!"
I gave them a break and about an hour later I pulled out Jean Donaldson’s “Mine!” book and started doing the “Head Restraint and Mouth Exam Sample Hierarchy” that I had begun weeks and weeks ago but hadn’t consistently worked on. I had gotten a bit distracted with having others work with me on reaching toward his head that I had neglected this part of his training. Of the 60 steps, Bing was flawless until we got to Step 37, hand under dog’s chin for 10 seconds. At this point, he was starting to get irritated with staying still for so long! Again, I found the need to break the durations down to smaller increments. He wasn’t able to do 30 seconds initially, but by breaking it down to 10 seconds, then 15, then 20, he was able finally to do 30 seconds. He has learned the ‘I’m waiting for the click!’ behavior, which is wonderful. He’s completely ‘operant’ about it all (I know this is a technically incorrect term but it really does describe him!)
We proceeded to Step 45, hand on top of muzzle for 10 seconds, at which point he started doing his frustrated whining, pawing behavior that told me clearly that his patience for this game was running out! Considering the amount of time this program takes, I thought he did beautifully! What a champ! I did add a bit of a twist to the program; when he fidgeted, I turned to Acacia and did that part of the program with her, rewarded her (this was difficult for her, too!) and then went back to Bing. This seemed to help him to be able to tolerate it a bit better.
I think this is enough for tonight; perhaps tomorrow we’ll work with Bing on a bit of ‘heel’!
Ali
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