Saw this on spotted dog farm, and thought it was interesting.

Yesterday was…strange. Caspian impressed me, and in very good ways. Kaia and I had an up and down day yesterday, but I do have to say that there were more ups than downs.

First, the good: Kaia and I graduated Canine High School yesterday, tied for 1st place with 4 of our 5 classmates. I love the graduation games we play there: we’re given a task (can your dog crawl 5 feet forward, will your dog maintain a stand stay while you hop on one foot 5 times, can your dog stand on his hind legs for at least 1 second) and we have a limited amount of time to achieve it. Each dog/handler pair who achieves the goal gets a point, and we move onto the next goal.

If the behavior is on cue, then it’s easy peasy. If it’s not, you can get creative with ways to elicit the behavior. Any form of gentle (or non-gentle) physical manipulation is out, but anything else is allowed. Lots of us lured our dogs to weave through our legs, for example. To be perfectly fair, Kaia and I had an advantage: with so much more experience in training classes, many of the tricks given as challenges were things she already has on cue. I’m also completely thrilled with the reliability of her ’stays’ and ‘freezes,’ she aced those challenges completely.

All right…now that I’ve had a nice brag, trouble with Kaia (and bizarreness with Caspian) will follow the jump. » Read The Rest

They’re still victories, and I still plan to celebrate them. We’ve been spending time by the front door, watching life pass by through our screen door. (It’s a very sturdy storm door that’s locked while we’re doing this, and Caspian is leashed as well as an extra precaution. Me? Paranoid? Never.)

I love that he doesn’t react to even the strangest of human-generated noises. We’re sitting here now with the neighbor’s gardeners banging around and running heavy machinery, and he’s interested but not remotely bothered. He’s showed that same fearless interest in motorcycles, herds of bicyclists, and dog-less pedestrians. This isn’t a surprise, since he’s never been bothered by any of those things. But it’s still a nice reminder that he really is an amazingly stable dog in many ways, for a dog with his history.

The big problem with this method is my total inability to predict when dogs are coming. This is great from a training standpoint, because it perfectly mimics real life experiences. It’s hard from a repetition standpoint, because in all the 4 or 5 times we’ve done this we’ve seen 2 people walking dogs. Still, those two have been more successful than I would have guessed. » Read The Rest

I got a training session in this week! Caspian and I worked on some self-control exercises (leave-its, both cued and un-cued) and Kaia and I worked (rather ineptly) on a new targeting exercise.

Things I learned: Caspian’s uncued leave-its are quite good in the house. They’re halfway decent in the back yard. They’re…a little interesting in the front yard. We worked in the back yard yesterday, I’d like to get him a little more reliable with moderate distractions before we try the front yard. It’ll be a while more before we go for practicing them further from home.

So, I wanted to do a new targeting exercise with Kaia. I know, I thought, I’ll do back paws up on a phone book! It’s a fun way to teach rear-paw awareness, and you can raise the height of the target as the dog improves, until some people have convinced their dogs to do hand-stands up against the wall. I’m not sure Kaia and I will get that creative, but it sounded like fun. » Read The Rest

Kaia’s finally gotten her brain back during training classes! We went to week two of our Canine High School class yesterday, and she was incredible. Her focus came back, and she started to look like my Canine Good Citizen certified dog who’s been through years of training classes.

We worked on some behaviors that we’ve worked on a lot in the past, and yesterday she really looked like a dog who knew those behaviors perfectly. We also worked on a few behaviors that aren’t as familiar to her, and she did really well with those too. I was especially thrilled about that, because she managed a really tricky new-ish behavior like it was a piece of cake. » Read The Rest

I’m a paranoid mother. Our second opinion trainer came by today and told me a lot of things I already knew. That’s a good thing, though, I needed to hear them from another source.

She told me that Caspian’s frantic stuff during training is a product of my own clicking and treating. I got so wrapped up in needing to maintain a high rate of reinforcement that I’ve taken a lot of frantic, silly behaviors from him rather than waiting for a calmer permutation of the behavior I wanted. That means it’s taught, not innate, and that means I can teach the reverse if I want to. Which I do. So I will. So…yay. » Read The Rest

Kaia and I graduated Canine Middle School on Saturday, and I’m very pleased with both of us. We still need to work on her focus, but it’s been improving steadily each week we’ve been to class. I assume it will continue to improve - we start high school next week, so we’ll get to keep up this pattern of classes on a regular basis.

I need to improve my consistency in working with both dogs on a regular basis. I just bought Kay Laurence’s Learning Games, which I’m hoping will inspire me to try some new things. It may also improve next week, since the high school curriculum isn’t just review for Kaia and I. There are a few completely new behaviors, and several that we’ve only worked on a little. We’ll need to do more training than just the weekly class in order to keep up with the exercises.

Even more exciting, a dog in our class got loose and headed straight for Kaia during graduation. I can’t say I was a huge fan of her body language (very forward and a little stiff), but they sniffed noses quietly until the other dog’s owner came up and got her back. Definitely reassuring, though it really shouldn’t surprise me.

This has happened in classes before. It always scares me when other dogs approach Kaia, and I vastly prefer to prevent those meetings if I can. Still, she’s never done more than appropriately tell off a dog who jumped up on her instead of just sniffing noses. I’m not sure I’ll ever be truly relaxed during those interactions, but it’s nice to know that most of my worries are unnecessary.

I’m still not sure what to do with Caspian. Right now, we’re taking it easy. He’s thrilled to have Brint back in town, as are Kaia and I. I have a trainer coming out for a consultation next week, and I guess we’ll just go from there. I’ll be curious to see what she recommends, and it will be good to get another opinion.

Kaia kicked butt today! Okay, she’s not quite to where we were at All Breed, but that’s not a surprise. After three and a half years of working with the same people, we’re now at a new facility with new instructors and new class structure. But today was hugely better than previous weeks in class. I got a lot of really good attention from her, and her response to cues was much better this week than it has been in the past few weeks of class.

She started to fade on me during the last 10 minutes or so of class, but that’s fairly typical. Before that, she responded really well to my voice, even off the walls, which she sniffed endlessly for our first few weeks there - our training room is also a daycare room, and I have no doubt the walls and floor smell fascinating. Today, she was only briefly distracted, and a few times when I released her to sniff she gave me a clear request to keep working instead. Yay!

Next week is graduation, which should be fun. I’m looking forward to moving onto the next level of classes - we’ll be introducing some unfamiliar behaviors, which will make things more interesting. I wanted our first class to be nice and easy, so we could work on adjusting to the new training environment.

I’ve gotten a referral for a local trainer who specializes in dog aggression. I’ve sent her an e-mail, we’ll see what she says and then I’ll figure out what to do with the problem child. In the meantime, I’m trying to decide what to do with him. Should I keep going with the occasional outings and training sessions, or take it easy? I think I’ll keep working, and see what happens.

Well, I worked with my dogs a little this week. We went out on Wednesday evening, and did some training in the house on Friday. This is a long post, because it’s both a write-up of this week’s work and a long internal debate about what to do with my problem child, Caspian.

On Wednesday, I decided to see if the amazing silent dog-sighting was truly a fluke. So after work, the dogs and I hopped into the car just before dusk and headed to a local dog park. I parked the car where the view was obscured by trees and proceeded to play look at that (LAT) with both dogs, with the window cracked a little. (LAT is a game described in Leslie McDevitt’s book ‘Control, Unleashed,’ and basically involves clicking and treating the dog for brief looks in the direction of the trigger.) » Read The Rest

…and yes, I know it’s been forever since I’ve updated this. And no, I haven’t been consistently walking the dogs. But moving along to today:

Kaia and I had a remarkably lackluster performance at class today, it was a little embarrassing. She wasn’t eating treats really reliably, and was therefore not terribly motivated to work. Note to self: don’t feed that dog before training classes. I don’t usually, but it slipped my mind this morning. Sigh, poor me. I need to work with her more often, and I think we’ll have more fun once we’re in a class with some new behaviors, instead of all review.

Caspian, on the other hand, had an amazing, incredible, totally incomprehensible success today. I’m thrilled, but also preparing myself for this having been a tremendous fluke. After the jump, read a entirely over-detailed description of not one, but two! dog sightings that did not result in barking! » Read The Rest