Distractions

Once again, I spent a few minutes with Bethena and then with Iggy in the office lobby before working yesterday morning (writing up charts often happens on the weekend).

Bethena does great dropping instantly from a distance if she's not moving, and got better as we practiced. When she's already moving, she thinks she needs to keep coming forward for a few steps, so we're working on not doing that.

She's also started to "wait" before going after the dumbbell, which is fantastic.

Iggy needs more warming-up, because it's so new to him. He needs to be reminded of what we're doing! Practicing in the lobby actually worked very well, as the clock began chiming the hour and he stopped, looked around, and watched the clock to see what was happening. I was able to get him re-focused, but not until the end of the chime.

We did not practice for a whole hour to see what he would do the second time.

He is getting better and better at finishing and going down, to the point where he will do what Bethena does: if he doesn't quite know what I want, he'll go down because he knows he gets lots of praise for doing that.

We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

New Tricks

Bethena and Iggy learned some new things today even before we went to class. We spent part of the morning playing outside with the frisbee in the melting snow. We had fun and both Bethena and Iggy wore themselves out.

After lunch, they were in the backyard when the UPS driver pulled up the driveway. (How he made it down the muddy road, I don't know.) They both know the UPS driver at work; he makes deliveries every day and they get a biscuit every time they are out in the play pen when he arrives. I was talking on the phone and looked out the window to all of a sudden see both dogs leaping off the mound of avalanched snow in between the house and garage (the mound is higher than the 5 foot tall gate) into the front yard to greet the driver....

Luckily, the driver was unfazed by two Labradors who were pretty certain that he must have a biscuit for them somewhere.

Iggy and I worked out a little bit before class, I tried to get him to focus on me even when there were distractions (Martha was there, too, working with Gemmy). Even though he is still very much a pup and therefore easily distracted, he did fine. At the end of class, I brought him back in for a run-through and he was awesome. He wasn't into the groove of heeling, but he paid attention (mostly) and showed he understood what was going on (mostly).

Bethena did well, too, and is starting to understand the drop-on-recall well enough that she's anticipating the drop now. I practiced a little targeting with her at the beginning of class using a target stick. She thought that the point of the exercise was to touch something sticking out from another thing, so tried to shortcut going the whole 6 feet to the target stick by touching a piece of PVC pipe that was 3 feet closer and was sticking out from another piece of equipment. Bethena never fails to amaze me.

A New Place

I decided this afternoon that I should treat myself to five minutes with my kids during the day. In between surgeries and a euthanasia, I went down to the kennel and spent about 2 minutes each with Bethena and Iggy. The idea was to get them to do some work in the corridor along the runs to provide both distractions and a new place to be obedient in. I am thinking if I practice, Ig might be able to have fun at the Pioneer Valley specialty in May and the Greater Boston specialty in June.

Each one did just a little bit of work/play. The biggest problem was that I had the really good treats out so they were paying more attention to the treats than to me. Of course, they deserved the treats, they always do, they have me well trained that way.

Apparently I'm pretty tired, tho, and that didn't help the attempt at "training." When I read Tom's blog last night, I thought a comment by "your baby sister" was from MY baby sister instead of HIS baby sister and it confused me greatly. Until Kris told me that she hadn't, in fact, posted to Tom's blog last night, I didn't figure it out. Even then, it took awhile.

Class tomorrow, Iggy and I will go early to see what happens; then it will be time for the Bethena Variety Hour -- always entertaining.

As for now, I will have a glass of wine, heat up a calzone, hang out a bit on-line to see if Tom is feeling up to posting tonight.... then go read some more of "The Omnivore's Dilemma." So far, it's very good, but then, I liked "The Botany of Desire" a lot, too.

Digressing again, a sure sign that I need to rest up before class tomorrow.

Clicker madness

Having been at work most of the weekend and doing exciting things like laundry and dishes at home instead of playing with Bethena and Iggy, I tried to appease my conscience by doing a little practicing today before they had to go into the kennel run at work....

Bethena and I started; we did a little targeting first, no great shakes there. Then a little retrieving and she managed to retrieve, sit, and hold tho she is clearly showing signs of being impatient that anyone could do that and it is so boring and why should she have to a) actually go all the way to the dumbbell before bringing it back, b) sit, and c) hold the dumbbell for any length of time at all after she returns to me when d) EVERYONE should be able to see that she knows how to do it, so why does she have to keep proving it????

Adding the clicker to the finished exercise helped, tho I didn't think of that til pretty late in the process. It REALLY helped with drop-on-down tho, and she started to get the idea of a fast drop fairly quickly (she used to seem to understand that, but then she lost it).

It probably sounds like she and I spent hours doing things but it was really only about 5 minutes.

Iggy then had a turn, also fairly short session, and he did AWESOME. We tried off-lead heeling for the first time and after one or two mis-steps, he got it perfectly. He is so smart! He's also SO different than Bethena. Instead of always trying to find something new to do, it makes him happy to get rewards and praise for the things he can do, whereas Bethena lives for the reaction she evokes in her audience.

Iggy is starting to understand "finish" so maybe we'll end up doing some Novice B work this summer after all. Bethena isn't ready for open, but she can tag along just like Iggy did when she was doing her novice trials.

Class today

We went early and Iggy and I played first. He did great! This morning, he had started to understand "down" and to be able to do it without me having to point to the floor and he kept getting better at it. He did pretty well at heeling and (in general) paying attention to me. We haven't tried to fine tune things, but I think once he gets the overall concepts, helping him to understand that he needs to be a little closer (for example) won't be too hard. His reward is play as much as it is food and breaking things up with some puppy play is something he loves.

Bethena was a clown in class, as always. I need to go back to basics with her on the drop on recall, she gets it for awhile, then gets careless about it as she focuses more on guessing what's going to come next or what's most likely to get her a treat. She started to learn the moving stand, tho, and did well for a first attempt. As much as it's probably not (ok, I'm sure it's not) good practice to let her see how much she entertains me and how much I enjoy the entertainment, I have come to think that if her reward is seeing me laugh and smile, that's not a bad thing -- even if it means we never get any more competition qualifications. Green ribbons aren't the point, fun is. Lord knows, she is (and has) fun!

She and I did some targeting in the living room. It's lots harder when Iggy is there too! We did a little practice with the broad jump in class, throwing a treat to her as she jumps really helped to keep her from trying to cut corners. This spring, it's going to have to be a priority to try to make our own jumps to practice with in the yard. She loves to jump and I bet Iggy will too, once he knows what they are.

A Retrieving Breakthrough!

Bethena and I had a BIG celebration this afternoon when she retrieved the dumbell in the living room, brang in back to me, sat in front holding it, and then gave it to me on command! She even did it several times in a row. Yippee!

Of course, she probably won't do it again for several months now. She's been there, done that, and will be bored by it already.

We also worked on targeting, and she started to get that a bit better after trying Martha's "toss the treat" technique. When we stopped working on that, the target stick had dog spit and drool all over it. Anyone who has seen the drool spots she leaves on the training mats as she anticipates rewards or has seen the gazillion pictures of her where there are drool drops on her chest fur as she focuses on the treat that I am holding to get her attention will understand the spit issue.

Later on, I will have to try working on a little heeling and "down" with Iggy... He knows "stay" so well (tho he looks tortured because he has absolutely no idea WHY he is supposed to be staying) and "come" but down seems to be more difficult, as it was for Bethena.