"The Shoemaker's Children" -- January 24, 2006
There’s a saying, “The shoemaker’s children have no shoes.” The same often goes for the trainer’s dogs. I often feel very guilty for not putting the time into training my dogs that I should. I HAVE put a lot of time into training Acacia, who is now 7 ½ years old and has accomplished quite a lot, not the least of which is that most people wouldn’t believe that she is the reactive dog on which I based, “Scaredy Dog!”
But very often when I get home, my feet hurt and I’m exhausted and the last thing I feel like doing is training my dogs. I used to pour myself a glass of wine and take Acacia to the basement and there we’d play at freeshaping (more on this in another blog). I sometimes do this with Bing, but I’m not really training extremely valuable skills like LLW (loose leash walking) and heeling, which he’ll need if he’s ever going to be out in public or compete in rally.
Enter Tammy Hilberg and Linda Strauch. We have met twice now to play at training our dogs, and while I’m ever thankful that they have invited me to play with them, and I value their input and suggestions and feedback, they also cause me to feel even MORE like a shoemaker because there is SO MUCH I should be teaching my dogs that I am not doing! SHAME on me!
As I mentioned in my last blog, we met last Wednesday to train together. I took Acacia and Bing. I really shouldn’t; I should take one dog and focus on that one dog, and help the others with their dogs, but we do this so rarely and I need help with both dogs! So I did my best, which is all anyone can do. Here are the skills on which I worked with Acacia:
1. Fast response to a remote (from a distance) verbal cue for ‘down’…to be used in Rally3 competition. We had discussed this at length via email, and I had done quite a bit of this at home beforehand. Previously I had been confusing her with a hand signal (arm straight up in the air), so we eliminated the hand signal completely and just worked on the verbal. I started with her directly in front of me, and expected more and more immediate responses. Slow responses resulted in me feeding another dog. Acacia’s response went from a slow, thoughtful down to a lickety-split down, with her either lowering her whole body at the same time or lowering her front end first! After about 10 repetitions of this, she does slow down (age and weight issues, I’m sure), so I keep the reps short.
2. Retraining the entire dumbbell sequence. I have played with this off and on since she was about a year old. I have made many mistakes. Pam Dennison helped me with this at one time, and we made great progress, but then I stopped. So we are picking up on this more or less where we left off. I hold the dumbbell between my knees while I sit and wait for her to take it with her mouth. We click for more intense grabs (with me holding it down with one finger), and go for a second or two of duration. Then I hold the dumbbell in one hand and click her for grabbing it, regardless of where I hold it. Eventually I will hold it very near the ground.
3. Find heel position. I run away from her, stop, and ask her to heel. She has to find the perfect sit-at-heel position to be clicked. Less than perfect position results in either me running away or me feeding another dog.
And
4. Heel for varying lengths of sequences without lagging. Tammy brilliantly found that I have been pushing the food into Acacia’s mouth, forcing her to put herself slightly behind me. Since dogs migrate to the spot of reinforcement, I’ve been rewarding her for lagging! Who the heck knows HOW long I’ve been doing this…I’m sure it originated when I tried to feed her far back in her mouth so she wouldn’t grab food. So now I place my hand way out in front of her mouth so she actually has to reach to get it….i actually want her to forge a bit!
Tonight I worked on all of these things in short bursts, about 3 minutes at a time. I’m limited by a tiny house and the lack of space it affords but I think we are making progress. She particularly likes the ‘find heel’ game!
As for Mr. Bing, here are the skills that we addressed last week:
1. Quiet in the crate! I crated him and turned my back, clicked and treated for quiet. I worked my way up to ten seconds. Then I took a step away, and clicked and treated for quiet. I worked my way up to ten seconds of quiet. I did this in two sessions, once by himself and once with Acacia being crated next to him. It was easier for him with her next to him.
2. Going over a jump. Both Bing and Acacia will be taking agility classes in a few weeks, and he needs to know how to jump. I wanted Tammy’s input on this because she’s an agility instructor. She just set up one bar jump and a few poles on the ground, and I held him while she put my treat bag on the ground on the other side of the poles. He had to run over the poles and get his feet used to not hitting the poles on the ground to get to the treat bag. It was easy for him; I think he has a rather good sense of where his back legs are. Smart boy!
3. Sit at heel. We need to have him next to a wall for this, as his butt swings WAY wide. He’s the sort of dog with space sensitivities…he doesn’t like me to be too close to him when he’s working. We’ve actually been doing quite a bit of this, and he’s getting much more comfortable with it. He’s getting used to WHERE heel is. However, I tested him tonight without a wall, and he still swung out way wide, so we still have much work to do.
4. The whole ‘quiet when the car door is closed’ concept as discussed in the last blog. Now that our trip is over and Montana rarely rides with us, he’s much calmer and more able to be quiet in the car. We had backslid on the trip but we are now back to where we were before, and hopefully making progress. I must keep a good supply of chewables (more than just a small treat) in the car for each time we get in. If he is not completely quiet when I close the door, he also barks when I open the driver side door and get in. Ear shattering!
So I have selected four things to work on with each dog, and I do bits and pieces of them when I can. Which is not enough.
I have also started feeding Bing in his crate (he shredded his mat in the crate in the house for the first time in about 5 months today…grrr). He must sitstay until his bowl is put down. He must sit before I open the car door. He must sit before I let him out of the crate. We need to work more on door dashing; he has backslid on this. Tons of real-life skills to practice!
Ali
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