Frustration

Being the clicker dog in the traditional class is frustrating and exhausting.

I'm starting to think they aren't worth my time any more, which is awful because I can't afford private lessons and I don't know who I'd want to train with any way (that lives within 60 miles, if we had teleporters by now like we should this would be a non-issue) and I think I've reached the limit of how good a trainer I can be on my own.

But I've been in about seven different basic obedience classes in three years with just about many instructors at four different facilities, and I don't think a single one of them has been all that good. None of them teach mechanics.

I have accepted that putting a dog on a choke chain and popping them one every once in a while is probably not going to reduce the dog to a pissing puddle on the floor.

But if you're going to use one, you can't have the damn dog strung up the whole damn class. All you're teaching him is that working with you is uncomfortable and not a lot of fun but has no real consequences.

I can't stand it. 

I can't stand it when someone has a two inch flat collar on their dog, three feet of an 1" wide 6ft long leash wrapped around their wrist and pull pull pulls the dog around with it with constant leash, social, and physical pressure and the dog has zero chance of being right.

WHEN THE DOG IS RIGHT, YOU HAVE TO RELEASE THE PRESSURE.
I need to do all of the training, because everyone else is doing it wrong. 
>:|

The Lusty Month of May

[I had a whole opening to this all written out, but accidentally deleted it. In summary:

Gatsby is focusing on scent this month. Nose work, tracking, and scent discrimination games are all things we will be doing this month. We went to a tracking seminar in April and he was an utter natural. I've never been so proud of him, it was so exciting to be able to hand the leash over to him and not have to discuss every little thing I want him to do.

This post from Reactive Champion is the inspiration for Marsh's training plan.]

This is my outline for Marsh's obedience (and rally) foundation. I will be posting an agility foundation outline as well, but I don't have my Agility Right From the Start book handy. It really is superb, I highly recommend it.

Also forthcoming will be a field foundations outline, but obedience has to be in place first. Also, I don't know what I'm doing in that arena.

Marsh's Pre-training Assessment

• Focus 
• dog in front
• during backwards heeling
• dog in heel position
• with distractions

Marsh can find and hold eye contact while playing the T-Game. He can play it in a variety of new surroundings including the middle of campus with light foot traffic, training class during warm ups, during a kennel club meeting with talking and lots of people.

He need to practice it in more places, with more distractions, and in heel position.

• Targeting
• nose target to hand
• nose target to remote target (plastic lid)
• paw target to hand
• paw target to remote target
• all with duration.

Marsh has a nose target to hand (two finger boy scout salute) with a two second duration. He has always responded on cue. He has had two sessions of remote nose targeting to a plastic tupperware lid and understood the basic concept.

He needs to build duration and learn a paw target, as well as build duration to a remote target.

• Sit
• from a stand
• while walking
• at a distance.

Sit is very strong. He can sit from a stand and while walking and from about ten feet away. He will also sit on whistle, although this is not very reliable yet.

He needs to strengthen response to sit whistle and increase distance. He also needs a clearer understanding of sitting straight in heel while still pivoting to face me at a distance.

• Down
• from a stand
• while walking
• at a distance

Marsh's down is also very strong. He downs on a hand signal of the palm of my hand and on verbal cue.

The hand signal needs to change. Too many signals involve showing Marsh the palm of my hand and it is confusing him, especially on stays.

• Rear end control
• backing up away from trainer in a straight line
• perch work
• agility contact trainer

Marsh has had a little bit of work on rear end awareness. This is something that needs a lot more work but is not very high priority right now.

• Finish
• from the front
• from behind 
• left finish
• right finish

Marsh does not have any formal understanding of a finish, although with guidance he will throw himself into heel position in something that resembles an enthusiastic flip finish. It is very sloppy and usually includes ricocheting off of my.

• Recall 
• fast
• immediate
• direct

Recall is crud and needs lots and lots of work. He recalls very well as the second half of a retrieve, but recall from liberty is basically nonexistent.

• *Backwards Heeling
• Focus
• Attitude
• Position 
• Duration

Focus is coming a long very well and he is understanding the game. We need more work on choosing to play instead of being distracted by the environment.

• Stand
• Cecilie teaches this while walking backwards away from the dog. The dog will simply stop walking and stay put. She also uses “reverse luring”- teaching the dog not to follow a food distraction.

When Marsh is in a stand, he is relatively steady (thank you, conformation training!) However I have no reliable way of getting him into a stand and he is very fidgety during an exam.

• Stay 
• sit
• down
• stand

Sit and down stay are very strong. We will be fading out praise and increasing duration, distance, and distraction

• Zen
• The dog should not chase or eat food he has not been told to take.

A nightmare. Marsh has no problem launching himself at humans if he wants something in their hands. This needs to end.

• Hold Object
• at heel
• sitting at front
• while you lean over him
• while you touch the object.

Marsh will gladly chase and pickup nearly any object I toss for him. Everything is a toy. He is very ball and bumper motivated and these are our most common rewards.

He needs a formalizing of hold.

• Let go
• Dog moves head away from object in trainer's hand

Not a problem. Marsh will happily release anything in his mouth to the lightest of human touch. He is getting better at actively pushing an object into my hand.

• Jump
• away from the handler
• towards the handler
• curving away (ie, a directed jump)
• parallel to the handler
• both sides

Marsh has had no introduction to jumps while he has been with me (possibly before I got him). This is also low urgency and will be handled more under agility foundation.

• Scent discrimination
• Cecilie recommended using duration targeting while teaching this so that the dog doesn't learn to depend on “tasting” the scents.

No work has been done with Marsh. Gatsby is the Scent Test Dog and my training plan for Marsh will depend heavily on what I learn from training Gatsby.

• Tracking
• This may not be needed, depending on your venue

See Scent discrimination.

*From Fanny Gott, not Celeste

Order of Operations

Mission Critical:
Zen
Recall
Focus
Backwards Heeling
Hold Object

Continuing Education:
Sit
Down
Stay
Stand
Let Go
Targeting

Low Priority:
Scent Discrimination
Tracking
Jump
Rear End Control
Finish

Alliteration!

I have recently been following the discussion on [click-bite], a R+ group for training dogs for protection sports. I am also reading a book called "Drive" by Daniel H. Pink.

So this is the encapsulation of my training philosophy: perfect performance comes from confidence. Confidence comes from competence. Competence comes from clarity. So my goal will be to train my dogs with maximum clarity and minimum stress. I want my dogs to be so competent at their behaviors that they are not worrying about why they can't do them, but instead do them for the intrinsic motivation of doing them.

More Marsh + Contest

For a while now, I've been looking for a dSLR to take better pictures of dogs (also, knitting, but that's outside the scope of this blog). My problem was always budget, I need another hobby like I need another dog (desperately, but HOLY SMOKES would that be a bad idea), and good cameras get very expensive, very fast. So when a Nikon D40 with zoom lens (55-200mm VR), bag, and 1gb memory card popped up on craigslist, well, I made a rash decision.

And I love it!

Most of my pictures are still blurry, but they're better blurry pictures and I'm getting better at using it. My friend Erin-with-the-Aussies showed me what aperture and shutter speed and ISO are and how to change them and already I'm getting more shots in focus. Pre-lesson I shot 700 pictures at the Milwaukee Pet Expo and kept under 100, tossing out anything that was so blurry you couldn't see anything expect waves of light on a muddy brown background, and post-lesson I took 200 and kept more than half!

So, what you really care about, pictures of the boys (I really, really love using the plural!):


I love these two. The one of the Gipper is my new computer background.



Bite your FACE.

Aunt The Nun with Marsh

I love how pink he looks in these pictures.


I told you he was a beautifully built dog.

A great mover, too.

Oh, yes, does he move.



Oh, yes! Contest! See, now that Marsh is here, Greenlight Gatsby doesn't really cut it. It's not fair, right? This blog needs a new name! And gosh darnit, all this photography has just sapped my wells of creativity. So starting today to Midnight February 28, leave a comment with a new blog name and in March I'll pick a new one.

Wow, the chance to name a blog! That's very exciting!

BUT WAIT.

THERE'S MORE.

I have a copy of "The ABC's of Behavior Shaping" with Ted Turner (see second video here) for the winner. It's quite good, not a ton of new information if you're reasonably clicker/shaping savvy, and it's a little dated, but Ted Turner is engaging and it's a fun watch.

WOW, a blog name AND a DVD? I can't wait to submit ideas!!!

Multiple submissions ARE allowed.

That Book With the Turtles

I have a fondness for collecting old dog training books full of advice that I have zero intention of taking.


It's the one with the turtles!


I do wish this guy had more descriptive titles for his books.


Hey, Volhard! I bet this one isn't totally useless.


Oh, these look kind of useful too!

I bought a dSLR this weekend (got a REALLY good deal on craigslist) so hopefully I'll have some more pictures to share with you.


It's good to know that I can manage to mangle white balance on a $400 camera.

What I Did This Weekend

In September, I went on a camping trip to Minneapolis. It poured the entire time and I found a dog show to take shelter at. My, what a coincidence it happened to be the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever National Specialty!  I talked and learned and networked and picked out a couple of dogs I decided I wouldn't mind a puppy from. In a few years, the time wasn't right just yet.

In November, I received an e-mail from a breeder I had talked to at the show. She had an adult dog looking for an agility home because his owner's knees weren't holding up and did I want him. Well, that was complicated. I was still living with my aunt and grandmother, and while they adore Gatsby, they do not adore dogs that shed.

In December, we decided that I would move out and get my own apartment as a part of the normal process of growing up, moving out, and turning into a real adult. I started calling places in the newspaper. "Hi, what's your pet policy?"

In January, I started tracking the weather closer than most meteorologists. See, back in October, someone in Yemen mailed a bomb in a copy machine through airline cargo, and the TSA decided that no one needed to be sending things cargo into the United States. Even dogs. A plan was needed to move him from Calgary*, where he was living, to Minneapolis where he breeder lived. He could not cross the US-Canadian Border on a plane. He could not get on a plane if it was under 10*F at either end of the flight.

On Thursday, he flew from Calgary to Vancouver.

On Friday, he drove from Vancouver to Seattle, then flew from Seattle to Minneapolis.

On Saturday, he drove from Minneapolis to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

Pinehill's Rainkist at Baywood "Marsh"

I think he likes it here.

Thank you so much to Barb Rohr, Krista Wendland, and Brenda Brown for sending me this wonderful dog. He is a dream.

*Liberties have been taken with Canadian geography. My apologies to the Canuks.

Road Trip!

Going to Minneapolis, BRB.