The End Of An Era

warning: this post does not contain useful information about dog training. Unless you count the down-stay Maizey did on the hood of the Jeep. Hmmm. . .that may be stretching a bit though.LOL

I try to avoid clichés, and "they says" and I realize this is both, I apologize in advance. But, 'they say' "All good things must come to an end." I suppose that is true tonight.

Once upon a time in a land not so distant from here, in my younger and more adventurous days I bought a Jeep Wrangler. It had all of  7 miles on the odometer when I drove it off the lot. Then I met mehusbandy and were were married. Not long after the big event he undertook to build my "Little Jeep" into a rock crawling machine. Needless to say I was overjoyed. For many years growing the jeep was our hobby, it got bigger tires, stronger axles, better gears, more even bigger tires, lift kits, short shaft kits, K&N filters, Borla exhaust manifold with catback exhaust. . .ahh but I could go on and on and this is a dog training blog not a rock crawling one. And as we grew the Little Jeep we climbed bigger rocks, and harder trails and generally "a good time was had by all." (sorry another cliché-two in one story what is the matter w/ me?)

Sadly we must sell the Not-So-Little-Jeep. Thus as  this is the is the end the "Little Jeep" era of our lives tonight the Jeep officially went up for sale. In case any of you dog-folk out there reading are also Jeep-folk like us and would like to see the add we posted feel free to message me and I'll send you the link.

So in memoriam here are a couple of shots of the fun we had.

I guess I will just have to continue on in the 4 legged lessons era of my life, and in the spirit of that I promise next time to have some actual training information for you!LOL

Mugged By A Herd Of Small Children

We went for a walk this evening. In 25 minutes we made it four houses away.

Not an auspicious start to our "walk X number of miles in 30 days plan." It's X number of miles because I haven't got that far in the plan yet to decide how many miles we'll do.lol Apparently our walking log will look like: Day 1: 400'

Oh well, it was all for a good 4 legged lesson.

So what happened four houses down? We were mugged by herd of children! No, don't be alarmed no one was injured or too permanently traumatized, they were a very nice herd of children. It started with two, then another little girl came out with her mom. That was interesting because the mom says to me, "Can she pet your dog with out getting her face chewed off?" By that point the first two kids were giving the girls treats and pets so I 'm thinking, "I hope so or these two little kids are in some serious trouble!"

Slowly three more little kids trickled out and joined the party. So here is me, Meeka, Maizey and FIVE kids all kneeling down on the side walk. Did I mention I don't have any kids? Yeah, me:no kids. I find when I'm by myself kids really aren't interested in me, apparently I'm pretty boring. But me and my girls? Now that's quality kid entertainment!

It went like this: us walking, Meeka perfect loose leash, Maizey on her new harness being a maniac because we are walking toward a scruffy black dog in a fence. Here comes two little kids, running, of course! I see them, I stop, put Meeka in a sit-stay and the kids of course run right up into the girls space, waving their hands and shouting, "Can we pet your dogs? Can we pet your dogs?"

Now here's is where it get's interesting. Maizey is still boinging  around and shouting at the scruffy black dog, the scruffy black dog is boinging around and shouting back, the kids are boinging around and shouting at me, Meeka is sitting, but wiggling, a lot. Cute girl.

I answer the kids, "You can pet them, but you all have to be nice." I don't think they realized I meant them and the dogs.lol So I told them to ball up their fists, hold them out and put them under the girls noses, then they could pet under their chins. I had to keep reminding Meeka to sit, but she would. Meanwhile. . . Maizey continues her crazy act.(sigh)

So I told the kids to back up two big steps, think "Mother-May-I-" in reverse. It worked! The kids backed up and then I told them to stand still (is that a stand-stay for kids?) and I backed up until Maizey was under threshold and could sit and do a glance "watch". Then I told the kids to come forward very slowly. I kept cuing the girls to sit and marking it w/ a yes/treat. Soon enough the kids were giving the girls the treats and, thank goodness, everyone was a LOT calmer.

By this time the other kids had trickled in so I asked every one to squat down and we played a crazy game of "hand zen". Picture the girls in a sit, and 5 little hands held out palm up just out reach above their heads. I place one treat in each little palm and tell them to immediately close their hand. Then I had them sit still with hands closed and when the girls sat and were calm, not nosing towards the treats, one of the little kids would open their hand and the girls could take the treat. If things started getting too wild (of course they were wild! Five kids, two dogs and a me is not a recipe for calm!lol) but if they started getting too wild I just told every one to close their hand and cued a "leave it" to my girls. They did so good! And they had a blast.

Then the kids wanted to see some tricks so I put Maizey on a sit in the grass and showed them Meeka's wave, and hand shake. That really got them going because then they all wanted to "shake her hand." So I told them to all get in a single-file line and one at a time they came up and put out their hand for a Meeka hand shake and gave her a treat. It was adorable. Meanwhile I was able to keep working Maizey on being calm and maintaining her sit-stay. The kids kept saying, "Can Maizey do tricks?" Little did they know she was learning the hardest trick of all-self control!

All in all we didn't get our walk, but their truly was too many great 4 legged lessons to list. For the pups and kids!

Airplanes Beware! This Rotti's Gonna Getcha!

So we deal quite a lot w/ the prejudice that is so often directed towards Rotti's. I admit it often hurts my feelings for my big girl when someone crosses the street to avoid her. (Yes I know I'm quite silly since it doesn't hurt her feelings.) The cynic in me wants to shout, "You don't have to toss yourself into traffic! She's not going to go crazy and chew your leg off!!" I never have, but you never know. . .lol

It is particularly funny to me since there is only one thing she is protective of, in a sense anyway. She is the best guard dog when it comes to chasing off airplanes. Yes, airplanes, and not low flying little planes but the big time jets that we can barely see. It is very funny to see her placidly laying in the front yard scanning, not the street, not the crazy dogs next door, not the kids on their bikes, but always the sky! Then she will explode barking, jump up and race around the back yard, and to the back of the house as she faithfully chases those vicious, dangerous airplanes out of her space. She is very diligent about it's and a good thing cause what if those crazy jets just decided to stay in her space?  I truly fear for the life of the airplanes!

The first time this quirk manifested itself we were in the car traveling across Nevada, we thought she was a asleep in the back seat when she explodes barking her "big dog" bark. I hollered and mehusbandy just about swerved off the road we were so surprised! Then what do I see when I whirl around? 80 pounds of Rottweiler trying to climb out the back window of our car to get to the jet way high up in the sky. Oh funny funny girl!

So, the four legged lesson? Beware of airplanes they are dangerous and unpredictable creatures!

"don't worry mom I'm on the lookout"

"Oh-Oh I see the enemy!"

"I'll get it! I'll get it!"

"YUM! Now that was a good airplane!"

Lumpers V. Splitters

In clicker training, particularly in shaping there is a concept called "lumping" and "splitting". I think most humans by habit are lumpers. I know I am.

Lumping is a term in clicker training that refers too asking for a complete finished behavior before your dog knows how to do that behavior.

So it goes like this: we want to teach a dog to lay down. We tell the dog, very earnestly and lovingly, "Down!" Pup looks at us and is thinking, "I know you want me to do something Mom, but what is it?" While they are thinking they stand there patiently waiting for more information, for a better explanation. Which to us looks "stubborn" when really we just haven't given enough explanation.

Meanwhile as they stand there thinking, we as humans stand there thinking impatiently, "Why won't this dog lay down? I have told her 25 times and she won't lay down!" Come on admit it, we've all been there.lol

Enter the beauty of splitting. Splitting is exactly what it sounds like. You picture the finished behavior and split it into many smaller behaviors. And with the right timing of the clicker you are able to reward any behavior in the right direction to the finished behavior you want. This is a wonderfully fun way to teach something because, really, who doesn't like to get paid for being successful? We all do, and so do our dogs.

As an example in L2 Tricks it states: Dog performs a trick of the partners choice. It may be very simple. L3 Tricks is much the same, but it has to be a shaped trick. So I chose to start shaping Maizey to ring a bell that sits on the floor.

Now think of this in lumping. I imagine it would go something like this, "Maizey here's a bell ring it!" At which point she looks at me as if I'm nuts and offers me 5 things she already knows all of which have nothing to do with ringing the bell.

But picture this w/ splitting, there are plethora of behaviors she can offer me that are in the right direction of actually ringing the bell. She looks at this strange shiny thing, click/treat!(c/t) she walks closer to it one step c/t! Two steps c/t! Sniffs it c/t! nudges it w/ her nose (can you hear me cheering?) c/t! and so on until she accidentally hits the little button and "DING!" c/t! and a huge cheer from me! She is excited and I am excited, I mean just look at all the things she did right! Do I care that the actual ringing of the bell was an accident? NOT AT ALL! It gave me the chance to reinforce the final behavior I want and then in the next session I can just go back to splitting. Gradually you can ask for more behaviors in the right direction before you c/t. But in the beginning if is important to have a high rate of reinforcement to encourage the dog to keep offering behaviors.

Here are two video's that show her third session.


You can notice in this clip we end on a successful "ding" of the bell.


Obviously I'm not a pro at this (yet;)) but hopefully this shows the basic concept. And please forgive the goofy 'dog talk' and probably just get used to it. The more enthusiastic I sound the more enthusiastic she is.

Cats have 4 legs too

Obviously most of what I write is geared toward lessons from our K9 four legged friends. But felines have four legs too ya know. I have two, cats that is. . .well and legs too, thank goodness! But back to the cats. I have two, both rescue kitties and complete opposites.

We have Edie, the scaredy cat and Nellie, the meanest cat alive. Ironically Nellie came home with me at four weeks old to be my 'cuddly kitten.' That lasted about 3 days before her true personality came out. The first time she went to the vet for shots he came in and said, "have you ever had a tortoiseshell cat before?"

"No." I innocently and ignorantly responded.

"You might find she can be slightly moody." he replied, with I'm sure no malice intended. Can anyone say: understatement of the year? I can!

This 'cuddly kitten' quickly ceased to be called Nellie and is most often referred to simply as, "Mean" or if we feel charitable, "The Mean." It's not intended to be malicious we just tend to call things as they are around here.

So now to the point, for all her quirks she is quite simply the smartest cat I've ever known. Not that  I don't think cats are smart, sometimes I think their intelligence quota outranks some humans I've known. Really I think she spends so much time with the dogs that she thinks she is a dog, just a far superior one of course!

Why do I think that? Well, we have bells on the back door that the dogs ring when they need to go out. The dogs and 'The Mean' that is. I never knew cats could learn stuff like that. I'm not one of those cool people who has ever trained a cat before although I know a lot of cool people who clicker train cats I just never have. And I think I would be seriously taking my life in my hands if I tried to interact too much with her. We have developed a 'don't mess with me and I won't claw your eyes out while you sleep' pact. But evidently she doesn't need me to train her cause she's got that covered all on her own.

Thus the bell ringing trick, which admittedly I think is pretty cool even if she does still hate me.

And now: "The Mean"

"But mo-om I don't wanna go potty here!"

Since I have to take Maizey out on a leash right now anyways, I thought we would jump ahead a bit to the L3 handling. The levels explain:

HANDLING 
Dog eliminates on cue. Tester should allow no more than two minutes for elimination to begin after the first cue is given. This is an optional behavior.

In the eyes of me this has never been an optional behavior.  If you have ever had to take a dog out on a leash at one o-clock in the morning in a blizzard you quickly come to appreciate a pup who will do her business in two minutes or less! Or how 'bout standing on the side of the road in . . .say. . .I don't know. . .the middle of Nevada? Yes, stand in the middle of anywhere w/ cars screaming past you and again two minutes or less? That is looking mighty fine!

So we have always trained our girls to go while on the leash and the two minutes part is not usually a problem. However I have always been lazy about training them to use a specific part of the yard, so L3 handling-perfect opportunity right?

Sure, except my idea of the perfect spot for them to use and Maizey's idea? Apparently not compatible. Every time we went out today she stood at the end of her leash and looked at me clearly thinking the whole time, "are you kidding me? I am not going here! I want to go over there, or over there, or how 'bout over there?" (Can you hear me sighing?)

 But persist we will and maybe by the time the new grass comes up they will know new grass is not for puppy business!

P.S. 

Who said Rottweilers weren't lap dogs? 

Not Meeka!

P.S.S. While we are on the subject of standing out in the yard at random times, am I the only one who thinks it odd that the neighbor who hardly ever says hello in normal daylight hours chooses one o-clock in the morning while I am standing outside in my p.j.'s and coat telling the dog, "go potty" to holler over the fence, "Have a good night!"?

Maybe it's just odd to me, but the four legged lesson?

Humans are so weird!

A bit of the hodgepodge we are working on

Looking back it seems I haven't covered much of the 'how to' of the behaviors we are currently working on. So here is a brief break down of a couple behaviors we hope to work on  in the next while.

COME L1

The dog must play the Come Game between the handler and a friend or stranger standing 20’ apart. An actual cue to come is desirable but not necessary. 

Maizey has not been working on the Come Game due to her knee surgery.But we have done some very brief sessions before she got sick. At this level we will be working to strengthen both her informal recall cue's, we use "comecome" the most. Also I want to build reliability in her formal cue's, "here", "Maizey" and "Maizey here" I also need to start a hand cue for recall, but I'm not sure what or if it is appropriate at this level. This is slightly different than how L1 come game is played.

CRATE L2

Dog enters crate with no more than two cues (vocal, body language, or hand signals), remains in crate while handler closes/opens door, no vocalizing or pawing.

Maizey loves her crate and often goes in to sleep voluntarily. She could test out of this level now, but we are going to follow the direction to work through each level. I am going to focus more on the continued education part by using her crate in the bedroom, also we will use a spare crate in the living area of the house. I'm going to focus a lot of attention on using her car seats in the house to build her comfort level of using them in the car.


A quick note on car seats, or restraints for smaller dogs: having a car seat is undoubtedly the safest way for them to travel, but w/ the neat seats they have now they can also serve as a crate, or safe place, to keep the pups confined when not in the car. Maizey's red car seat is also a backpack, has wheels and a handle and lays down to be a bed. It works well in the car and out of the car.

One thing not in the levels that we are working on is building toy drive. Now that Maizey is feeling better we are anxious to get back into training, but she is still on a bland diet of rice and chicken the consistency of baby food. A bit messy for treats! lol But not being able to use food for reinforcement did show me how important toy drive is. She is not toy motivated, mostly because I haven't taught her to be. So we are starting some toy games today. 

The first is from a Susan Garrett article from Say Yes Dog Training. It has a very fun game that is sure to make me laugh and anyone who sees me laugh at me-if not w/ me! The link is http://www.clickerdogs.com/createamotivatingtoy.htm

The second game is a controlled tug game from Aiden Bindoff. It was printed on Karen Pryors Clickertraining.com. Interestingly we played this w/ both girls last night. Maizey loved it, but Meeka was not so sure. Meeka tugs good already, but the structured way of playing was unfamiliar to her. The link for the game is: http://www.clickertraining.com/node/727

These games should be fun for us all. Which is really all dog training is-a fun way of playing w/ your four legged friends!