Saturday, July 31, 2004

JOEY IS MAJORLY CORRECTED BY BJ

I find myself again in the position of catching up this blog for many days at a time.

This morning was the second puppy agility foundation class. The pups continue to work on reinforcement strategies, playing with toys, running with the handlers. We worked on the two-toy game a bit. We also had one station of branches spread out for the puppies to walk through for learning to place their feet carefully. Joey was the demo dog for this. I knew he would galumph right on through snapping branches every which way. Within 3 or 4 passes, he was stepping daintily in the spaces. This was all done with just cookies for playing along, nothing specific to click for, just letting the puppies find their own way. We also worked on a bit of shaping and getting in and out of the kiddie pool. It was dreadfully hot and the dogs didn't have a huge amount of energy. We had alittle dog play complete with calling them out of play. We also did work on using greeting of another dog as a reinforcement and with permission of the other handler.

I was exhausted from yesterday's mad dash to the agility trial and home again for swing shift so we spent the afternoon in a nice nap. After nap time, I set up the laptop on the kitchen table and had Joey loose in the kitchen while I worked on balancing the checkbook and paying bills. I need to find more work that can be done in the kitchen on the laptop so that Joey can broaden his allowed area.

Well, Joey peed in the kitchen! I wasn't watching him as I really didn't think I needed to. He had just been outside less than an hour previously. He is so fastidious about not peeing in the Puppy Palace (X-penned off area of the kitchen) that I assumed that would carry over to hanging out in the kitchen. Well, it doesn't! So I will have to work on this.

After sunset we went out to the backyard. The young dogs played a bit with my calling either Joey or Marcus out of play, then releasing them back to play. I played a bit of longe whip with Joey. Then I let him hold the toy and pulled him a bit to get him moving. I was able to get him trotting around in a circle with gentle pull on the toy in his mouth. We did a couple of trotting circles in both directions but oh! is he ever a come-by dog!

We did some walking through the sticks area and played 2 Havanese fetch with the small tennis balls on straps. Somewhere in the shadows, Joey offended BJ mightily and BJ gave him one heck of a whopping correction. BJ just read him the riot act and Joey went ki-yi-yipping off across the yard with BJ in hot pursuit. BJ took him to the ground (which he can just barely do). They then dusted themselves off. By this time I arrived on the scene as Joey was limping away. His right front foot seemed to hurt a little. He did walk it off rather quickly.

This correction really upset all three dogs and they took a very long time sniffing and circling about in very separated areas. There are very few times that Marcus and Joey are outside together and not engaged in play so it was odd to see "nothing" going on, just quiet, calming communications, most of which we can only guess at.

By now it was dark and the yard was lit only by the farm light over the garage, about as much light as a full moon. I sat in my chair at the back of the yard in deep shadow just quietly watching and watching to see how the dogs would recover from such an upset.

They wandered and sniffed, sniffed and wandered. Marcus jumped up into the chair next to mine. Joey then lumbered up to Marcus, put his front feet on the chair and stuck his face very close into Marcus' face. BJ was not happy about that. He mounted Joey and took him to the ground but it was again quite a struggle for him to pull it off. I'm wondering if BJ has to do an over-the-top correction like that so as to maintain his ability to discipline Joey.

Joey then started FRAPping around the yard in big circles, running like mad. He came back by for a check on Marcus again and again BJ took him to the ground. Joey went off FRAPping some more, came back and behaved quite properly near Marcus.

By that time everyone was in good shape and Marcus started playing with Joey. They were all acting normally at this point so I called it quits. We all then walked across the driveway off leash and back into the house quite calmly.

I'm glad I waited so long and let them all have a chance to settle after such a disturbing correction. Joey shows no sign of being any worse for it and is still learning how to behave from BJ - which is all good. I'm still trusting BJ that he knows what he's doing even if I don't know exactly why.

Friday, July 30, 2004

JOEY SPENDS THE MORNING WITH AUNTIE TAMI


We all got up dreadfully early so that BJ and I could go to an agility trial in Hillsboro (1.5 to 2 hour drive). Auntie Tami graciously offered to have Joey stay with her for the morning so that I didn't have to worry about how many hours I would be gone from the house. Because of the trial logistics (part of a county fair), I had to travel light - one small dog, one soft crate, water, tuggie bone and that's it. That left Marcus to stay home by himself.

While Joey was at Tami's, another clicker friend, Heather, came over with her 7 month old Border Collie puppy, London and her parents who all wanted to see what a Beardie puppy looked like. Joey played with London along with Tami's two Scottie/Cocker mixes, Norbert and Nessa. Heather and Tami both took a multitude of photos which Joey's blog has sorely needed and they each wrote a blog entry about the visit. What nice Aunties they are!!

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HEATHER'S COMMENTS:
Hey Helix!
It was so fun to see little Joey today! The biggest surprise was how WIDE he was compared to London, he's like twice as wide and half as tall! Beardies are built so differently than border collies!

Joey was super gentle with taking treats, and totally accepting of being handled and restrained. I didn't get a lot of name recognition, but once I was able to get his attention he had good focus and a very cute and patient sit (with an adorable head tilt!). Which was good, as getting pictures of hairy dogs is HARD. The camera DID NOT want to focus on the poor guy!

Joey was very excited to see London when he arrived, your true bouncy beardie baby! London was like, "I"m way too mature these days to play with BABIES." And sauntered around the yard showing off his new leg lifting skills. Joey was definitely more dog focused while we were there. I didn't see him really solicit attention from the people, but he was more than willing to get some love when we went to him, not shy at all.

Surprisingly, London and Norbert hit it right off this time, perhaps because London is so used to playing with fiesty terriers! But once Norbert got London to play, London finally caved in and played with Joey as well. Joey has excellent dog communication skills from playing to calming signals to respecting an irritated lip lift, he did fabulous with all the dogs. He followed London around like a little shadow, it was adorable. He was quite the flirt as well, not the least discouraged when London didn't immediately play with him. He even tried to mount London at one point! London's self esteem must have skyrocketed today as he was so popular.





I was a little concerned with Joey's movement, but I'm not familiar with Beardies at all. He seemed very unstable in his back end and walking on the back of his hocks. I've never seen a puppy move like that before, is that normal for a Beardie and he just needs to grow into his legs?

All in all, my impression was a very confident, sweet, stable, even tempered puppy for whom the world is a very new and exciting place and he's ready to take it on. Fearless little guy, totally secure with strange people and new dogs.





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I, too, have noticed and been concerned about Joey's bumbly-stumbly walking style at times. If I saw what he does in an adult dog, I'd be off to the vet for a neurological exam! I put the question to the Beardie e-mail list and received assurances that's quite normal for a growing Beardie. He does look gorgeous when running flat out though! So I'll quit worrying about that for now.

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TAMI'S COMMENTS:
He sure has grown since we last saw him! He's as tall as Nessa, but twice as long, and a long tail to boot. We forgot to give Norbert some rescue remedy and melatonin before Joey's arrival. So he snarked at Joey I think three times and I said, no more Norbert needs a time out.

Joey got to wander around in the back yard with Nessa for a while and then I popped him into his crate with one of his kongs. He quickly had the peanut butter out and kibble falling in the pan of the crate. It was the smaller kong and so I thought he'd eaten all of his kibble and gave him the bigger kong. It wasn't until Helix was scooping them up later that I find out that he still had some kibble in the kongs. Oh well, he seemed to enjoy the veggie-chicken glop that Norbert & Nessa eat. It's certainly easier to eat than kibble without some of the teeth he's still growing in.

Joey and Nessa were back outside when Heather and her bunch arrived. Mom, Tracy and Dad, Craig came along to get a look at their first beardie. So Joey got some one-on-one time with London before Norbert joined the show. Joey was trying so very hard bouncing all over and play bowing to get London to play with him. London wasn't terribly impressed with the show, but did do some running around with him.

Norbert watched all this from the other side of the sliding glass door and wanted to come join in the fun. Since he'd been snarky with London when he was small, but did fine in April we suspected things would be okay, but still brought him out on leash. Brandon kept him on a pretty short leash for a while and let London and Norbert do the whole sniff and check greeting. So he took him off leash. Norbert promptly went into hump meister with London.

London must have taken the humping thing as a sign of hey let's play because there was whirling dogs from that point on all playing around. Norbert even accepted Joey in the area and a sniff check by him. Nessa was in the whole mix watching things closely and bouncing around a bit too, but more on the sidelines like Joey was. The only difference was that Joey didn't want to be on the sidelines, he wanted to be in the middle of it too.

London or Joey found a couple of toys that were in the grass and not picked up so we took care of those so there wasn't any resource guarding issues. I gave London a blue ball that appeared in our backyard months ago and neither of my two showed any interest in. It very quickly had a hole in it and a loss of air. London has a very good shake-kill on him and quickly killed the ball. Joey tried getting it when it was dropped but London quickly convinced him that it was his. It wasn't until London found the molecule ball that we actually saw a lip curl telling Joey to 'back off bub this ball's mine'. Joey was very respectful and backed off.

After London and crew took off we all went inside and I tried to get Joey to take a nap. You would have thought with all that running and bouncing that he'd be a tired boy. Nope! He was more than willing to be a snuggly pup. He preferred to sit mostly on my lap and draped across my body. I soon began to suspect that the draping was a ploy to get closer to the curious items on the end table - like the lamp, bowls, and the plant. He was terribly fascinated by the plants. I'm not sure if this means that Helix doesn't have houseplants, or they're just different kinds. He managed to scoot himself up my body so he was draped over me and onto the end table several times and then there was just the plain trying to stand on the end table. Luckily he's long but not heavy!

I tried having him sit with Brandon and he was doing the same thing. Flopping over belly up - rub my tummy please. Then moving on to draping himself all over Brandon - much easier to do as he has a longer body with all that height. Joey had the funniest little move he kept doing with Brandon of trying to tuck his head under his chin, when he wasn't trying to slither over his shoulder and check out the plant on the end table behind the chair. He was very persistent in wanting to check out that plant too, and got moved out of the chair after he tried to take a chomp on the plant. Silly boy!

We moved into the family room to watch a show, and Joey didn't want to sit on the couch with me and instead went and draped himself along the sliding glass door. After he started bouncing the bell there I took the hint that he wanted to go outside. So he and Nessa went out to explore around again. Joey also showed that one of the reasons he wanted out was for a brief potty break. Good boy! Joey then decided to try his luck with getting Nessa to play and was more successful this time. They were bouncing around a chair and planter on the corner of the patio and starting to have some fun. Joey barked his excitement which caused the fun police to come out - Norbert. Sigh. Forgot to put the block up on the dog door before we came out and Norbert came and snarked at Joey.

Once back in I decided it was lunch time for all puppies so everyone to their crates. Joey actually hung out in the kitchen with me and started on his plate. Helix had forgotten his breakfast, so he had lunch for that. So he got as mentioned above some of the veggie-chicken glop. From there we went back out onto the couch for some snuggle time to see if we could promote nap time. Nope! Back to the draping, this time the threw in some flirting by licking my ear and neck and having fun making me giggle.

Shortly afterwards Helix showed up so it was a matter of washing hands, getting to sit down and look at the pictures on the camera and then loading stuff up and heading down the road towards home.

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We made it home in time for a brief down time, shower, load up the truck and then off to work. Friday is my swing shift day, 4 pm to midnight. Joey was just so relaxed and calm at work. He hung out on the tether in the hall outside my office and played with a few toys, dozed or kept an eye on me. He had a very full day - no wonder he's so relaxed and calm at work!

More playdate photos here and here.




Thursday, July 29, 2004

WHAT'S THAT THING ON THE COUNTER?

0830 We went outside for some training. We worked on squirt/treat a bit so that I could see his face, followed by some name recognition. I am just not getting the head-whip I expect to see so I'm going to move to doing Shirley Chong's Recall Redux with Joey.

Responsible Heeling Step 2:
I started to work on this and Joey was doing a lot of looking away. I dropped back to only one step backwards and we made great progress. Joey was eagerly looking back to me and even moving into me before I could take steps backwards. I have to say that Joey is finally getting it on this!

We played a little tuggie with the Fuzzbee and before I could set up to work on something else Joey was walking into me to do Responsible Heeling. So we did a formal training session on this.

Responsible Heeling Step 2:
20X - looked away on Rep 7, big look-away on Rep 13, called him back, then he just sailed through to 20 reps! Excellent job. I'm declaring this step done.

Offered Sit:
With Joey hooked to a fence post, we worked on offered sits. We did 10X but there was a lot of drifting and sniffing. I body blocked each time and he went on. We did a second set of 10X in 60 sec. We definitely can do better than this but the second was a great improvement, no loss of focus!

I'm in the middle of watching Mary Ray's obedience tapes in which she uses a food-lure more as a target than a lure to make something happen - very much like Choose To Heel. I experimented with that a bit with Joey doing circles with Joey on the outside - heh, he wanted to bark and/or nip at my pants. That wasn't very productive.

I thought about it and I came up with this idea from two sources:

1) Mary Ray's first tape - From Puppy to Novice. In this tape she is coaching a person training a BC puppy, about Joey's age or so. She's doing a lot of luring in this part of the tape but it's not really quite luring. She's not using the food to draw the dog's nose. The food is more like a target held by the trainer in the correct place (much like in Choose to Heel).

Mary Ray is an incredibly elegant lady with free-flowing motions of her body. She is oh-so-incredibly-consistent in the way she uses her body and hands as cues to the dog. So when she uses this food-target-lure, you can tell she's done it 10000 times - it's all very consistent.

So the puppy is heeling along and the food-target is within reach of his nose. When he hits the EXACT place that is correct for British obedience heeling, he gets the treat.

In the next section of the tape, it's titled Clickers and something else can't remember what. She starts this section by talking about what we just saw (the various bits of behavior with the puppy) was how she used to train. She goes into a history of how that was very very good for her and she didn't really think there was anything that could make it better. Someone convinced her to try the clicker and so she says, we'll now see what she does with the clicker added to what she has always done. I haven't watched much more than that yet.

2) Watching Marcus and Joey mutually carry a toy that they both wanted. They carried it together but w/o tugging. They just walked along with it. Once in a while they tugged a bit with it, then resumed walking.

With Joey, I have been doing several different kinds of walking training - Choose To Heel, Walking With a Goal, C/T each step with me, following him when on leash, then turning and picking him up to have him come with me, and so on. I just work on whichever thing I feel like at the moment, whatever feels like it would be interesting.

I had a long sheepskin tuggy toy and I got Joey's interest in it and he grabbed it. I started off walking with it. He and I were connected by the tug toy but we were not tugging. I walked briskly in a circle with him on the outside. The INSTANT he caught up to me and was in correct heel position, I clicked, then initiated tug with the toy. We tugged for an extremely short time, one second maybe, then back to connected walking in
a big circle. Repeat.

We never disconnected from the toy. The toy was either inactive or active. It became active when I tugged on it and it went unactive when I started walking with it. I could click/tug just as quickly as a click/treat and then get right on with the next rep.

All those steps we took when he wasn't getting any tugging didn't drag down his rate of
reinforcement because he had the toy in his mouth. He just got BETTER reinforcement at the exact moment of correct position.

Just like Mary Ray's puppy in the video - the sight of the food is a reinforcer but the BETTER reinforcement came at the exact moment of correct position. This was a really cool experiment which we both enjoyed. I really liked being connected by a tug toy!

So we're adding this to our selection of choices to work on walking with me.

Teeth: I could have sworn that I checked his teeth a couple of days ago and saw the left incisor wobbly and ready to come out. Tonight there are two adult teeth up there!! I am so shocked to see that happened so quickly. I kept asking myself "did I only dream there were tiny grains of teeth there a couple of days ago?" These two are his Bucky Beaver teeth. I love to look at them because they are so nice and big. I'll really be glad when all the needle teeth are gone.

In the hot part of the day, I set up for the usual TV-fall asleep in a nap event. I was relaxing on the couch, getting sleepy, when suddenly there was a big black-and-white blob on the counter between the kitchen and the living room!!! I was so dumbfounded to see that Joey had managed to jump UP onto the counter. What he actually had done was jump up onto his wire crate (spacing is kind of wide between wires!) and then walk right onto the counter. Sheeeeesh.

It was very very hot today and very frustrating as to trying to figure out what to do with him on a regular basis. For nap time, it was into the crate.

2000 finally time we could go outside
Joey and Marcus had a little play time while BJ and I played fetch. Marcus had a session walking on the big blue tennis ball. Joey had a big digging session in the kiddie pool. That is soooo funny! He gets in there and just thrashes and thrashes. He then went off to the edges of the yard and got covered in velcro balls (little round sticky seeds from some weeds). This was followed by a giant FRAP around the yard while the Havs and I worked on back up.

And guess what? Joey is one giant mess and he's going to Auntie Tami's in the morning. So a major brushing session on my lap to get the velcro balls out.

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

UH OH, IS THE PUPPY LICENSE EXPIRING?

We worked on a series of cued sits this morning in the kitchen without the other dogs. I wanted to check his response rate to see if there was an improvement over a set of reps. I used a silent count starting the count the moment I gave him his treat. His response was pretty slow at first, as much as 10 at times. I kept going setting a goal of 3X in a row with a count of 4 or less - and we did get that!

I had Joey in the main part of the kitchen while I answered email and did other morning chores. Turns out he peed while in the kitchen. Aaarrrgghhhh! Apparently the whole kitchen does not carry the weight that his own half of the kitchen does in the sense of not peeing where one lives. I don't really want to figure out how to increase his area gradually as I'm pretty burned out on fighting with the Puppy Palace right now. So back to the Puppy Palace.

During the day I checked in with Joey more frequently, doing little sets of sits or downs to keep him entertained and not desperate to find new ways to break out.

Before Marcus' agility class we had a really nice session with the Magic Wand in the backyard. We also did a lot of walking with Joey carrying a tug toy and me following along.

After class we had off leash dog play with Kidder (Gordon Setter), Magic (large female dog), Keno (1 year old mix) and BJ. Joey kept doing care-soliciting behaviors at Magic's face and she snarked him. That's the first time an adult dog has told him no so I'm wondering if the puppy license is expiring for little Joey (16.5 weeks old). Joey had a great long run with these dogs and boy! was he pooped. I brought him inside and fed him dinner. He laid down with his head in his bowl and he looked as if he were trying to decide whether to eat it or just fall asleep right then and there.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

JOEY, THE ESCAPE ARTIST

Up early and outside for training.
Responsible Heeling Step 2: We are finally making progress on this! I have changed two things. I'm not tossing the treat to the ground. I decided this was confusing him. Also I'm remembering to keep my hands at my waist and that has helped a lot. When I had him his treat, he tends to look around to check the environment so he isn't continuously looking at me thus he has something to look at me from (if that makes sense). We got many good reps of 2 steps backwards so I think we are finally on the way!

Magic Wand: 3X chase, grab and tug. We love this thing!

Joey walked back across the driveway to the sideyard on a nice loose leash and sat for the gate to open. This is a workday so Joey had to stay home with his ice, his Kongs, his big new crate, lots of fans. It was very very hot today, 90+.

After work I like to watch TV and fall asleep. I've been working to get myself on an afternoon nap/stay up late/get up early cycle so that I can make better use of the cooler parts of the day. Today I thought I would try having Joey cuddled on the couch with me for a while. What a pill! He just couldn't stay put, wiggling, grabbing the couch cover, the remote, my socks. So back to the Puppy Palace.

Well, this wasn't so hot either. Joey managed to wiggle behind the Xpen panel which pulled open the cabinet door that it was clipped to. Joey then went into the cabinet and the door closed behind him since there was no longer any pressure to hold it open. I heard all the racket so, when I got there and saw no Joey in sight, I knew where he was. The little stinker!

I got him up, fixed the panel and back to the couch for my nap. Ha! Joey got stuck in the cabinet a second time. Sheeeeesh. After fixing this, he then knocked over the tension type baby gate across the hall. So I never did get my mid-day nap. I re-arranged the whole Puppy Palace putting the big wire crate against the baby gate so he can't get to it at all. I put up an eye hook to hook the X-pen to so that no kitchen cabinets can be opened. You have to wonder how long this arrangement will last.

I decided to try Joey with access to the whole kitchen. There isn't anything he can chew on except his own toys which he doesn't chew on anyway. We'll see how this goes with me right in the next room.

I soon discovered that Joey has a certain association about my coming to his area - and that is Potty Time! I came to check on him over the living room baby gate. I stood there asking for a sit and he squatted and peed!! I definitely need to work on this.

WHAT A DAY!

We went out to the backyard for a play session and all three dogs crossed the driveway off leash together. Joey was pretty excited and charged to the gate while not watching where he was going. Wham! Right into the corner of the garage with his left shoulder. He ki-yi-yippied a bit but all seemed to be fine once we got into the yard and moving around.

We had a very brief backyard time as I had a lot of errands to run. I haven't gotten much of this kind of thing done in this heat since I like to use what little time I have out on the yard with the dogs. But things had built up and it was time to give some time to running around. We played a little fetch with the Fuzzbee and Joey even picked it up a couple of times. Marcus and I had a great session with his rolling ball trick. He was able to roll it for about 10 feet. He gets very excited and then his rhythm gets out of whack. This is a tough behavior to stabilize I must say.

Monday, July 26, 2004

WALKING WITH A GOAL TO THE HAVANESE

Up early for some training before going to work!

Joey and I did LLW (loose leash walking) across the driveway area with CTs for steps, then a sit at the gate to the back yard. As I started to open the gate, Joey got up, so I took my hand off the gate. I then waited for him to sit again. Finally, he did! And the gate was opened. Joey's new at this game. We need to do this a lot more.

Name recognition:
20X - for cheese cubes.

Responsbile Heeling Step 2: 8X I did this by handing him his treats rather than tossing them on the ground. This is working so much better for him. Tossing treats to the ground made the ground quite important and was drawing his attention to the ground. He then was confused about looking at me.

Magic Wand:
We did some tugging, chasing, running in circles.

We came back to the house and did a sit at the door to go inside.

After work, it was very hot so we had our customary siesta down time followed by calls to clients in the evening. As I was getting ready to go outside for evening fun and training, Joey broke out of the Puppy Palace! Oh sheesh! This is getting harder and harder to manage. He knocked over the baby gate that was across the hallway.

This time I put Marcus and BJ in the back yard first, then walked Joey across the driveway area doing Walking With a Goal (WWAG). It took him only 3X of starting over and we made it to the gate very nicely! What a good boy! AT the gate it took him at least a full minute to sit. He could see Marcus and just stared and stared at him. So he finally sat, leash off and gate open. Wheeee!!

As the dogs started to run and play, I started calling them out of play. I would call one dog but get all three. Cookies for everyone! AFter that Joey had only sporadic interest in Marcus and much more interest in me. Good! I'm glad to see that developing so nicely. We did some walking with me off leash followed by fetch with Marcus and BJ using the small balls on straps. BJ was soooo frisky! He was really into running and bringing back the ball. Marcus was too but that's the norm for him.

At one point Joey wanted to play with Marcus who backed him right off. No noise, just body language. Very interesting. I suspect Joey's puppy license is about to expire. Joey picked up a ball once in a while and was CTd for the pickup.

We came across the giant tennis ball (inflatable) and so did a little shaping of Joey with that. He was clicked for whatever he did with the ball. Both Havanese have been clicked for doing things with this ball a lot and they kept barging in and wanting to do things. I think this egged Joey to be more active with the ball. I had to keep body-blocking the Havs so that Joey could work with the ball.

Joey finally came to a behavior he started repeating - touch it with his nose and slap it with a paw at the same time. Very cute! We got quite a few reps of that (with no frustration barking or nipping) and then ended.

Marcus was so desperate to get to the ball that I let him have a go at it. Shaped him to put his front feet on it (a la perch work) and dog gone if he didn't start rolling it! Wow!! He would let the ball roll, then step backwards with his feet, reposition them and by that time it had rolled a bit more. Repeat. I was clicking every tiny step of his feet backwards. Three times we were able to get 8 to 10 steps in a row rolling the ball quite a distance. Neither of us wanted to quit.

I then did some soft tugging with the moose with Joey, then tossed it for him to fetch a bit. Marcus ran and grabbed it just as Joey did and then the two of them were running and tugging with it. They ran side by side both holding the toy for a while. This has given me a great idea - more on that later when I try it out. This was much better than Joey using Marcus as a tug toy.

Inside, I put the baby gate back up with the release lever on the opposite side of the Puppy Palace, moved Joey's big crate around to back up against that and changed the whole configuration. We'll see how long this lasts. It's nice to have access to one of the cabinets again.

We then worked on a few reps of going into the crate, CT for that. I kept Joey up quite late with brushing and cuddling, so much so that the next morning I got up, let the Havanese boys out through the bedroom sliding glass door and Joey never even woke up. I had to wake him up to take him out to pee.

Sunday, July 25, 2004

JOEY'S FIRST WALKING WITH SELF-CONTROL

I got up early today so we could train before it became too hot. I think I have finally gotten a hot weather sleep pattern going - afternoon nap, stay up late, get up early. Joey and I headed outside to see what kinds of things we can work in with his teething.

IN PUPPY PALACE:
Down:
8X - 69 sec. He spaced out on one rep, had to abort, then re-cue. On one other he sat instead of down. He did 3 or 4 in a row that were very quick. He had to sit and scratch at one point and that took some time. I distracted him from scratching and got him back in the game.
10X - 59 sec. Much better. He dropped one treat and, even though I picked it up, he kept looking for it.

OUTSIDE:
We did a few reps of Eye Contact, followed by tuggie with the agility leash that I braided out of strips of stretchy knit fleece. This is the softest thing I can find, one with a lot of give/bounce to the pull.

Bungee Toy:
2X - good, took right off after it. On the third rep, he was half-hearted about it. Not sure if that was teething-related or not catching on.

Walking With A Goal:
It's been hard to get much of a Premack thing going with Joey as he doesn't yet strongly WANT anything, at least not enough to be demanding and driving me crazy about it. So I thought I'd set this up with a handful of treats to see if I could create some desire for those.

I put the treats on a low table, let him see me put them there, walked him back to the start line about 15 feet away.

* walked to the table on a loose leash with 3X starting over.
* walked to the table on a loose leash with 7X starting over. This time he really got it about the handful of treats and so was VERY excited to get to them!

Bungee Toy:
1X - very exciting!

Target Stick:
10X - 42 sec. One incorrect rep in which he flipped it with his nose. I was using kibble because that's what I ended up grabbing from in the bait bag. This took too long to chew so we'll work to avoid kibble for a while.

12X - 64 sec. One rep took many seconds looking for a dropped treat. One rep was a piece of Natural Balance beef that was larger than usual and it took him a while to eat it.

We walked and walked around the yard, just walking with Joey staying near me and getting CTd for that. Sometimes I would follow him where he was headed, then turn and pick him up and head out in my direction.

Magic Wand:
We did some running with this! He LOVES this toy! I have a small fuzzy snake tied on to it in addition to the thing that comes on it. We did some tugging with it. I checked his teeth and his upper left incisor is very loose so we'll leave off with the tugging.

Perch:
While picking up poop in the yard, we came to the block of wood. I hadn't intended to do any shaping with Joey yet but since we were right there, we did. He has a length of 4x4 in the Puppy Palace and he stands on it all the time with his front feet. Well, we didn't really do any shaping after all - he just plopped his feet on it immediately! I gave him lots of treats for standing there. I tried to give him a treat by bending his head to one side. Joey doesn't get it about following a treat in that manner so that's something we need to work on.

He got on and off several times with me click/treating him for getting both feet on. I tried to withhold clicks to see if a back foot would move. Joey started his frustration barking and nipping at my pants. I want to extinguish that before we do much more shaping! I'd really like his frustration to go into solving the problem.

I had a late agility lesson in the evening so we only had a short time, after the sun went down, for outside play time.