We have had a busy and fun weekend. Friday night I convinced my husband Jim that I had to take Scoop out on the town for some social networking. I suggested that my favorite restaurant where you can sit outdoors in a busy shopping shopping district would be the perfect spot to eat and let Scoop experience the scene. Jim was convinced only because they have his favorite pommes frites at this local eatery. We packed up Scoop and all his accoutrements and hit the streets at Santana Row, doing some window shopping before landing at Left Bank for dinner. Scoop was really good in town, his only fault being that he might have tried to say hi too enthusiastically at times to some of the new people he met on the way. I decided to take along a fresh raw marrow bone to entertain him if necessary while we ate. Maybe this was a bit unorthodox, but he laid under my chair at dinner and quietly chewed on his bone. The restaurant staff was none the wiser, and only a couple of the patrons noticed him and his bone. I luckily got a thumbs up from all of them.

Scoop’s breeder, my friend Stephanie Spyr was here this weekend and we spent hours training and playing with our pups. Since Saturday afternoon was a stinking hot 95 degrees here, we headed off to Starbucks for iced coffees and the pups went along with us. Funny how all my socializing this weekend revolved around coffee and food. Steph walked them around the area while I retrieved coffees, then Scoop and his sister played and hung out with us while we sat on the sidewalk under a shady umbrella sipping our bevs. Families and noisy teenagers wandered by while the dogs hung out watching the goings on. A nice afternoon break for dogs and humans. Since I live and work on a quiet country road, surrounded by fields instead of homes and businesses, I like to find any excuse to take Scoop down the hill to visit. The only thing that has really bothered him a couple weeks ago was a group of kids on state boards. He was not interested in playing tug with me when we were in their vicinity, so I still have some homework to do in acclimating him to those kinds of activities. We will take it slow, one skateboard at a time. I am already thinking that Sunday afternoon at a local park might be just the ticket to find some noisy kid sports to watch with Scoop. Wonder if there will be a Starbucks close…….

I am having a fun weekend with my pup, hope you are having a great one with yours!

NJG

A couple students lately have asked me if teaching my puppy to remain in a sit or down position for a period of time will destroy his drive and put too much CONTROL on the focus of my relationship with my puppy. My answer was an unequivocal no. Scoop thinks staying in position for a minute and being rewarded with treats is really cool. He also thinks it is equally cool to hear me say break, and present his toy to tug like a maniac when he jumps out of position. If I had to correct him for moving, rather than reward him for staying in a position, that would be equally wrong. He is a puppy, and I try not to use punishment while training. Would I feel different about teaching him to sit or down for short duration if he would not play with me? Possibly. It is not difficult to teach a dog to stay if that is all they want to do. Scoop wants to go, go, go. I would still teach positions but I would be spending more time  teaching playing than staying.

I read recently handlers should not expect their dogs to tug or retrieve until they lose their puppy teeth, bulloney!:) Don’t always believe what you read. If you have the belief that your dog won’t tug/play with you till he is beyond 6 months old, then you won’t have the conviction to keep working on playing with your dog. Many years ago while teaching a pet general obedience class a puppy owner told me that the breeder of her dog said that her breed could not be taught to come when called. No matter how I tried to convince her in classes and in private training that she could teach her dog to recall, she was never successful. That breeder’s words echoed in her brain and convinced her that her efforts would fail, so why bother to make the effort. If you don’t believe you can do something, or teach something, then you can’t.

Some dogs are more interested in food than toys or vice versa. Of course I want my dog to desire them both. Sometimes it isn’t about what the handler wants though, it is what the dogs’ instincts and general nature is made of. I have struggled at times with dogs who would not always take treats while working when they were very revved, (Riot & Ace) and I have had to work very hard to teach good toy retrieves and tug to dogs like my border collie Panic and my sheltie Jack. It is all about balance. Read your dog and do what is right for them. At the moment you see a need to adjust, change, morph your training plan, do so. You have to be willing to change YOUR behavior to train and play effectively.

What I would never do is punish a dog who is not willing to play with me. Having a hard and fast rule that if your dog will not tug or engage in toy play with you he goes back in his cage could backfire on you. Don’t use the cage for punishment, number one. Number two, if you get your pup out to play with you and he won’t and you dump him back in his cage then he is even being punished for making the small effort he might have made to engage with you. You need to learn to play in a way that will be interesting for your dog. Retrieve and even tugging can be strengthened with clicker training and food rewards. Be flexible, remain balanced, keep reevaluating your training goal and plans.

If Scoop did not have a strong desire to tug and play with me, I would not do crate training games with food that emphasize being away from me and getting lots of treats for sitting still and doing nothing. I play crate games enough that Scoop is happy to jump in, drives out to a toy on release, and is calm when he needs to stay in one for a while. If your puppy won’t play with you, keep him out of the cage, instead of rewarding him for getting back in and napping.

Who taught you that?

While playing in the field and attempting to play “go round the can”, Scoop decided he wanted to get on top of the white bucket I use for various things. I thought he would tip it over, but he figured out the mechanics of getting on board and keeping the bucket righted. I said who taught you that? as he did it with such confidence and wanted to keep repeating it. I have to put the bucket away now when we are in the field or he runs and finds it to climb  on. I love these photos Marcy Mantell took of him looking all proud of himself for climbing up on his bucket.         

 I am going to rescue my puppy from his cage and go play some games now. His left  turn cue is totally perfect, maybe I will start teaching him to turn right today. Have fun with your puppy this weekend.  I am looking forward to spending the next few days at home with mine.

NJG

Scoop had a great weekend with Jim while I was at AKC World team practice. I think he wore Jim out though considering the number of trips he and Scoop made together around the property. Scoop likes to carry sticks while he is on his walks and we don’t let him bring them in the house at the end of the adventure. Jim let the stack of sticks accumulate and I got home to a great grand stack of them by the back door.

Scoop was happy to see me and I to see him when I got back on Sunday night. We even did some training and playtime before we hit the sack. I know I was only gone three and a half days but I wanted to see if he remembered what we were working on before I left. We practiced the go round the can game , and ran through sit, down, stand, break, feet up, get it, leave,  etc. Not that I thought he would forget:)

He knows to stay in a sit position now long enough for me to take photos of him even from a short distance. Today we took some in the agility field.

This week I am working on teaching Scoop to get into the water tub in the agility yard. I started with him just jumping in and out of the empty tub, but the goal is to progress soon to the big swimming pool here at our home. I have a couple commands that work to get Scoop engaging with any kind of “stuff”. He learned hop on meant to get on his little training table when he was just 8 weeks old. So if I want him to get onto something I can use that cue word to get him started getting on or in something. So a few weeks ago I started with saying hop on to encourage him in and then rewarded with treats and toys. We have progressed slowly to having a couple inches of water in the tub and he thinks it is lots of fun to play tug or get the toy while he is in there. Today it helped that it was about 90 degrees here, he liked having the cool down in the tub.

Sccop in the tub

Left and Right
Scoop is learning left and right. Well actually I say left when he turns left, and I use the word back for a right turn. My oldest border collie Riot is 14 now and does not do agility, but because of her name (Riot/right) I used the command back for her and it has just been easy to stick with the same command throughout all my dogs training.  I played around with using a toy to start teaching the turn, but wasn’t getting anywhere fast, so yesterday I shaped the left turn in a half dozen short training sessions (couple minutes each).

I sit in a chair with him in front of me and marked any motion of his head or body towards the left. I tossed his cookie further to the left and sort of behind him after I clicked so that I could get a bit more of a direction change. It took a couple sessions which I did while sitting in the same chair in the living room  as a prompt for him to realize that is what I wanted to work on. By this morning I was getting full turns to the left, and started using the word left as he began his turn. I felt confident that he knows the cue while I am sitting in the chair in the living room, but there were no distractions and I was still sitting down. I started moving around the room, and by this afternoon I was able to go to every room in the house, and to different places in each room and use the left command and he turned quickly on cue. I interspersed the left training with some sits and downs and releases. Before I introduce shaping the turn to the right I will see how fluent I can get this turn before confusing the issue.

The definition of fluency is to flow or move smoothly while speaking or writing. Fluency in animal training also means that you have performance speed and accuracy, and that the animal will perform the behavior on cue in spite of distractions or distance from the handler. I want fluency in each behavior I teach. I am working on speed right now. I would like Scoop to turn to the left as quickly as possible after he hears the word. To me that means he really understands what I am asking of him. In my last training session around the house I ran to each different room with him and gave him just one cue for left, and I got almost 100% accuracy on the ten cues in 10 different places. I delivered the treat as quickly as possible, and we were on to the next room. It was fun, it was fast and I got the training done. Next session will be outside.

In fact since I have to teach a class soon, I am out of here so I have time to go play and train my puppy! Hope you are having as much fun with yours as I am with mine!

NJG

I am trying to make time to write this morning, but Scoop is torturing me. The morning started great. Coffee followed by playtime and training. And then we had big exercise in the yard, and long retrieves using two toys to get him really driving on the return.  We came to the office, he got into his crate on cue and stayed there with the door open and random kibble tossed in. It was great, I got all my mail answered!

So why is he now racing around my office, tearing up his toys, getting in the catalogs, and generally trying to wreak havoc. About another minute of this and I will tear my hair out, put him in a cage, or give up, stop writing and take him for more exercise.

This week he learned to go around my office garbage can, so this mornings training  we practiced that off both sides. I just say go right now.  He leaves my side and runs around the can which is about 5 feet away. Very cute. Then I started working on shaping his retrieve. I really believe all dogs should have a shaped retrieve to hand. Too many handlers these days still relying on treats alone to reinforce agility skills. If you can train using OC then you can teach your dog to retrieve.

Today we started with me holding a short hard piece of rope. I marked for looking, touching, then opening mouth on toy, then closing jaws on toy. That is where we ended after 3 or 4 short sessions that lasted each just a minute or two.

About bones & leave it

Scoop was raised on raw food as pup and has had raw meaty bones almost daily since he was 8 weeks old. A couple days ago while he was in his cage next to my desk, chewing on an especially tasty one, Jack my 5 year old, 8 pound sheltie wandered up close to the cage. Scoop growled, the first real one I have ever heard from him. He is vocal but he doesn’t growl, at least not at me or the other dogs in any kind of vocal display. I think I screamed, out of shock, and luckily I was only a one second reach away from the cage door and grabbing the bone from him. Oh I don’t think so Mister, is what I intended to say.

Jack left the scene, but obliged when I asked him to come back and lie down close to the cage. I put the bone back in with Scoop, but kept my hand on the cage door. He didn’t growl but stiffened up and I took the bone away again. I tried again a couple times and he decided he would rather chew on the bone nicely than growl so he got to keep it for a few minutes, with me sitting near, and Jack getting fed cookies for helping out. Scoop always relinquishes bones to me, maybe because I have traded  him often for treats when I take the bone away, and he has never wanted to possess one in this way before. I got lucky when I reached in and grabbed it. He could have had a tug with me over possession, or growled more or tried to bite me. I guess my really quick bone/mouth extraction shocked him too.

I decided Scoop, aka too big for your britches, and I needed to have some training sessions on manners around bones and other dogs. I don’t want to make matters worse by making him defensive and stealing things from him. Like most pups he loves to pick up great things like underwear, my favorite shoes, or a dropped kleenex. I never chase or grab, I just call him and trade for the treat I have in my pocket. When he was tiny I traded him for his bones, and eventually I just removed the bone and then gave it back to him when he let me have it without resistance.

Time for an official leave it cue, as well as some training with the other dogs so that he did not feel he had to protect his bone from anyone when he is in his cage. We started with Scoop and I and a medium level tasty bone inside his X-pen. I just sat on the floor with him. I like to hold bones for my dogs to chew on and do this a lot when they are sitting on my lap. Without something for Scoop to chew on, he might decide instead to nibble on my fingers. So that is where we started. Me holding the bone, him chewing.

I showed him a really tasty piece of cooked chicken, and as he was coming off the bone to have the treat, I said leave it, and let him have the treat. I repeated it quite a few times, then started saying leave it without presenting the cookie, and while he was still chewing, and he started to catch on. Now I could mark him coming off the bone with yes, and present the tasty reward. I made sure the reward was high value (cooked chicken) and the bone wasn’t the highest (slightly chewed). Sometimes I would let him chew for a good couple minutes, and then ask him to leave it, other times he chewed just until he was really into it, then I asked. After a couple different sessions of this I felt reasonably confident that he would trade me on a leave it for a bone, and was starting to understand the command. All in context though. It was pretty good in his pen, without too much arousal on his part, and no dogs present.

I decided to try with a dog present, but on the other side of the pen. I called Riot, my still active almost 14 year old border collie over and had her lie down by the pen. I rewarded her a few times for being very close. I offerered the bone to Scoop and went through the process again. He stiffened up and thought about not giving up the bone once when I held his bone closer to Riot, but we had no growling and he always gave up the bone to me. Then I did some close quarter, nose to nose feeding of both of them with me holding the bone, but him not having access and that went ok too.

I know this successful start may not mean that I am done training on this subject, but I am happy with the start.

Leave it during play

I have started to use the leave it when Scoop is really ripping on his tug toy. I don’t like to use the leave it cue too much on toy play until I have a good tug and retrieve. Why do I need it for a toy release if the dog is not really into the toy? Yes the leave it could be used for lots of things, but primarily I use it in toy play.

Scoop IS a good enthusiastic tugger, and a pretty good retriever. And now he is happily dropping the tug toy on command. I use lower value cookies for this as he LOVES food and I don’t want to overdistract him from the toy play. I don’t ask him to drop it very often, and he is always rewarded for doing so.

Scoop will spend his first days away from me starting tomorrow. I am going to Wisconsin to Ann Braue’s facility for our first 2009 AKC World Team practice. Jim will be taking care of him and I will be the nervous mother calling home to check on the kid.

If I don’t post again till I return then I hope that you have a great week with your puppy, I hope Jim has fun with mine!

NJG

Scoop had a busy day yesterday. It started like almost every other…around 6 AM I get up and on my way to his cage I hit the start button on the coffee maker:) then I grab a small handful of his kibble. He gets a few pieces for staying in the cage when I open the door, then he gets one when he jumps out after I say break. I snap on his leash after saying put on your leash, yet another piece of kibble reward. We go outside to potty and that usually takes about one minute and he gets rewards for  hurry-up. After we come back inside I will train something for a few minutes while waiting for the coffee to finish. He likes to share my banana so sometimes he does stuff to earn bits of my morning fruit. We do crate training, or positions, or recalls. Sometimes I just let him climb into a low drawer in the kitchen that holds all the toys. He loves to jump in and he grabs something different almost every time. He rummages around the toys and then usually drags something out. Sometimes I sit on the floor next to the drawer and play tug or retrieve for a while. AFTER I drink my coffee we decide what else to train. Sometimes it is new stuff, sometimes just working on what he already knows. Yesterday we worked down to stand, left and right, and X-pen training. He spends some time each day in the pen. I usually use a short 18 inch high one so that he is learning to stay in a short pen. It is more about perimeter training, as he could easily climb/jump out of the little pen.

I don’t like him to be in a cage too many hours each day. 8 hours at night and an hour here and there during the daytime is ok. The pen is in the living room and he can hang out there and enjoy a raw meaty bone if he cannot be with me while teaching in the field.

Yesterday morning we went to the vet to get blood work done on Panic. Scoop went along and went into the office to say hi and play on the scales. He hopped right up, the techs were impressed I am sure:). We played tug and he did sits and downs around the waiting room. Afterwards we took a walk around the business complex to look for new people and places to visit. He was just perfect.

Channon Fosty, Marcy Mantell, Ashley Deacon and Sylvina Bruera came over to run courses in the afternoon and he got to play with Channon’s puppy while we course built. He decided he could not be quiet when I was running courses however, even though we used the Treat n Train, so back to the house he went.

He is getting more excited about watching agility, and if I am in the field with him in close proximity to handlers running, I need to keep him very interested in training with treats and in toy play. If I disengage from him he is quite willing to scream in excitement. If I am teaching he seems to be able to stay quiet if he is at the opposite end of the field and I have the remote to reward him with the TnT in his X-pen.

We had a few more training/play sessions in the field before the day was over, doing tug and retrieve and playing on his training box. We were busy but had lots of fun, and he was sound asleep at 9 PM.

He is a great sleeper thank goodness. I love to play and train with him, but also really like to see him hit the sack at night. This morning we started training leave it and I will tell you all about that next time.

Hope you are having as much fun with your pup as I am mine.

NJG