Leema's blog
| "The Plan" for dealing with Mac's dog aggression | 19.8.2009 15:15 | |||
| Mac has been progressively getting worse around other dogs, and after a seminar with Debbie Calnon a month or so ago I devised a plan. This was not her recommendations, but a plan inspired by what she spoke about. I have recently been inspired to actually put my plan into action after Mac has started to destroy things in the house. Because he is dog aggressive (or at the very least, dog reactive), I haven't been walking him and this has probably resulted in some boredom. So anyway - On with "THE PLAN". Mac has had two devices for walking since day dot - a harness and a chain. The harness is for 'mucking around'. The chain was for training and obedience. You'll be happy to know the chain is no longer in service, as I do NOT promote the use of check chains for training. I am a 'cross over' trainer, from the traditional to the positive+clicker world. However, the reason I bring this up is because Mac has very different responses when being walked on these devices. The chain he is miserable, ears back, and very quiet. It is rare for him to react on a chain. On the harness, he is highly reactive. If he sees a dog at a distance, he growls, lunges, barks. When he comes in contact with the dog he doesn't cause damage (he has pulled out fur before). It is more noise and bluff. Why he is this way in the harness I do not know. He has always been allowed to approach other dogs in the harness, so perhaps there is an element of permissiveness and also the fact that all good AND bad experiences with other dogs are likely to have occured on the harness. Either way, Mac thinks, "When I am on the harness AND there is another dog, I MUST bark/lunge/growl, and otherwise bluff." My solution is: Remove the harness. But I don't want to use the alternative, a chain, as he is clearly miserable. He doesn't react because of fear here, not because of confidence. So, insert a head harness. I've never used a head harness before, and am not using it to prevent pulling. Mac doesn't pull (except when there is another dog!). Rather, the head harness is like nothing else he has ever worn and so doesn't bring certain behaviours with it. For this reason, I have chosen a head harness to train happiness and confidence. That is, I want Mac to think, "When I am in a head harness, regardless of another dog, good things happen." I have begun training this. I will let you know how we go. I'll explain our sessions so far: First session: Click & treated Mac for interacting with the head harness. Mac is bad at click and treat games - he doesn't really get the clicker! But at the end of this session, he was deliberately nose touching the head harness! Score! Second session: Continued with format of first session, however found Mac responded better to me using "yes" than clicking. So we ditched the clicker here, at least for this stage. Third session: Put the head harness on and fed Mac dinner. Took head harness off before he finished. (This was probably a bit of an ambitious step. We won't do this again for a while! There was some face-pawing here.) Fourth session: Started off repeating marking ("yes!") and treating for interacting with head harness, then went to rewarding me placing the nose band over his nose. Then I would get the harness and hold it together (not buckle it together) behind his head. Initially, I was saying "yes", removing the head harness, and treating. I then thought that I should be rewarding more for WEARING the harness, not HAVING WORN the harness. So I started treating Mac while I was holding the harness behind his head, and removing it while he was eating. This made more sense to me. I will keep you all updated. :)
| ||||
| Crickey she's got it! | 18.3.2008 15:15 | |||
| We have been working on "watch" for ages. She gives a good solid 15 seconds... Glances away and then gives me another 15! She's good at it. :) We've been trying to do the beginning of a heel (right pivot) and finish (left pivot) using my eye contact as a lure, I suppose, is the best way to describe it. Unfortunately, I have tried to get all the fidget out of Clover and I think that made her less inclined to move position! So this wasn't working. So we went to food lures. She already knew "middle" (go inbetween my legs facing the same way as me), and I do think this helped. I can walk backwards and forwards saying "middle" and she will follow backwards and forwards. She vaguely knew "heel" as "stand at my left hand side in line with me" but needed some luring assitance with this. Many clicker trainers say not to use your word until it's the behaviour you want. I've always found it more useful to use it, and my dogs 'get' things quicker. So my basic pattern was this: 1) Using lure and "heel" with Clover in position. Frequent rewards in position only (no thrown treats here!). 2) Using lure and "heel" with a right pivot. Again, frequent rewards in position only. Sometimes a 'inclination of movement' was rewarded (just one step!). 3) Using lure and "heel" with a left pivot. Again, frequent rewards in position only. I often had to pull my hand back and realign her before the reward. She was like, "My head's in the right spot, doesn't that count?" 4) This was all done with treats in my left hand, held close to my hand and luring. Then I switched to treats in my right hand and held my left hand behind my back. The left hand behind my back has always been the cue to watch. Frequent rewards from my right hand rewarding Clover only while she's in position (including luring back to position if need be) for watching. 5) SMALL pivots with the word "heel" as she is maintaining eye contact - again, small steps towards success rewarded! Thinking about heeling with me rewarded! Anything remotely like the final behaviour. 6) Our left pivots were harder to maintain without a food lure. She would 'get there' but not get in position. We enlisted food lures to finish her off in these circumstances. :) Okay, so this was just to record our success for today. Today she's just gone CLICK and I believe it's a combination of lures and watch training that have helped us. I'm very happy. :) She almost heels better than Mac already.
| ||||
| Handstand Trick | 20.2.2008 06:06 | |||
| Clover and I started working on handstanding today. I had already alotted some treats to the walk we had today, so it was only very brief. Which is all I wanted because I do not want to overwork this behaviour at all. So, I don't know if this work or not, but this is what I'm doing. I've seen videos of people kinda letting their dog hind legs 'step off' their hand into a hand stand. This is what I was aiming for. So I started just picking up Clover's hind feet while occupying her mouth with treats. Once I had her feet sitting on my hand, I'd 'toss' her hind end up in the air and, while in the air, "YES" and treat... (A bit hard to use clicker her!) I did this a few times. Then I changed tactic. I chose one foot to hold up. When she lifted the other one up voluntarily, "YES". Then when she lifted the one on my hand up, "YES" again. We did a lot more times. She's quite clever and got this 'kick up' quite quickly. I'm not looking for duration at the moment, just that she gets both her hind legs off the ground. In conclusion, I was very surprised that she got so much so quickly of this trick. I don't want to push her with it, but it's going to be hard not to after such success on one lesson! But we're still trying to complete our level 3 with the levels program and hopefully that serves as distraction enough. :)
| ||||
| Clover's "Watch" | 14.2.2008 22:22 | |||
| Since Sunday/Monday last week, Clover and I have been working almost exclusively on the watch (her cue is "Clover"). Her main issue was that she would fidget and do other stuff... Which she is allowed, but she was thinking that is what I WANTED. So our process has been multifacted. We have been doing the '100 peck' (I think it's called) method. C&T for glance. C&T for one second. Two second. Etc etc... If she breaks (including doing a fidget) then I'll wait for her to stop moving and click her stillness. Then we go back to a glance, one second, two second, etc. When using a variety of treats (some left over cheese the other night!) she would get a 'boring treat' for a fidget and cheese for a proper watch. I wanted her to sit/drop and watch from there. However, then I was requiring two criteria and it wasn't sensible of me and thought it may result in confusion. However, I tried to have a greater rate of reinforcement while she was sitting or dropping (her choice). Understandably, I don't think it's all that comfortable for her to strain her neck looking up at me (my face is a long way up!) and she seems to tire about 2/3rds through our treats. This is understandable and then we do something else. :) The something else we have been doing is distance drops/sits/stands. I'm very happy with how 'my method' for this has worked, and I'll post details once she's A1 on it. So this is our watch story! Right now we are at a RELIABLE 10 seconds (to pass level 2 we had a few flukey moments). We need to increase this to 30 seconds to pass level 3 and then to start on the heel and the finish. As a cute comment, Clover made her eye contact clear. As we know, click ends behaviour. At the click, she'll move her glance to the hand that the food is going to be coming from... Makes me very aware that she knows what I want!
| ||||
| Clover's Second Day of Showing | 4.2.2008 15:15 | |||
| We didn't go for a run beforehand and it showed! She was a bit ratty, and Mike wore her down by running her up and down a hill. :) She was well behaved in the ring, but I was being skimpy on treats as I was running out... And Clover was like, "Well maybe you want me to do this instead..." and started offering behaviours... Backing up into our competition was the best. :p Anyway, she came 2/3, which is not really that exciting. Baby puppy is all about behaviour and I was happy with the behaviour we were getting. :) Then we got home and I was like, "YAY! Now we can work on behaviours that we don't get in the show ring." It's a lot more fun. :D We've been doing lots of things... Distance behaviours are getting better. We are getting a few distance stands now. Go to mat behaviour is good. Increasing time with gusto! She understands this well. Drop and sit stays are good. Slowly increasing time. She is getting the idea of "check" (clockwise around something). Now we're mainly working on watch (cue: "Clover"). This seems to be something most difficult for her. On the day of our second show, Mac and I started our 'Click to Calm' program. I now know it's okay for when he gets so agitated for him to not take treats (apparently he will eventually). I've also been using the Premack Principle as outlined in Control Unleashed. He finds sniffing around and peeing on stuff highly rewarding, so this is what I have been rewarding him with on walks.
| ||||
| Clover's First Show | 2.2.2008 02:02 | |||
| It was Clover's first show today and I could not be happier with her behaviour. She stood nicely on the table with little direction from me. She then gaited fairly well around the ring (only the occassional puppy enthusiasm!). Her shining moment came while we stacked on the ground waiting for the two other bitches in our class, and she was great - fully concentrated on me and was quite happy to stay still. We placed 3rd out of three, but I know Clover behaved as well as I could expect and, to me, baby puppy is absolutely about being well behaved. After the show, we went to my parents' place and she hung around... then we went to Bunnings, where she wanted cuddles from everyone. Then we went to the wetlands but it wasn't wet!! Very disppointing. This morning and this evening we went to the park and practiced gaiting and stacking. This morning we also practiced running with me in an attempt to wear her out - didn't happen! I was thinking that I might've been rewarding non-gaiting because it's hard to see when she's at the end of my lead... So got Mike to click for me as we circled around. I think I saw improvements and I think I was rewarding what I wanted initially!
| ||||
| Lead Training Take Two | 1.2.2008 02:02 | |||
| Okay, no freak outs this time for going outside. Focussed on me from the dot. :D Fantastic. She is gaiting in front of me, now, which I think looks nice and showy. However, she keeps looking back and so crabbing. I need to reward in front of her more, but she will get confidence as she knows that walking in front, gaiting is what I want. :) Her stacking is great, though. She stands still nicely. :) We know show training is a bit boring, so we did some RUNNING TOGETHER. She loves it, and she's great at reading my body language and doing quick turns - agility style. :) Silvia (website: LuLa Bu Land stresses the imporance of getting a puppy used to running with you. And Clover loves it! We also injected a few 'aways' in there... She wasn't that great in it, but I think she's not used to doing it while running, which is fine. She just need to generalise the behaviour. It's her big show debut tomorrow. Here's to forgetting everything we've learnt when we get into the ring!
| ||||
| Lead Training | 31.1.2008 11:11 | |||
| This morning we didn't do a training session. I was a bit pushed for time, but Clover's also teething at the moment, so I've been trying to give her more bones and things to chew on. So she had chicken for breakfast! And then this evening we did lead training. When we are not in the house or our yard, she gets a bit over stimulated and barks. She does calm down, but I can regain her attention with treats. I'll try to take her out a bit more tomorrow to try to make it a bit less unusual outside. But her lead work was great once she had stopped barking. :) While she is gaiting, she is often looking at me. It's nice, but I'd rather her look ahead because it looks more flashy. But I rather her look at me for heeling, which is far more important, so I'm not going to discourage the behaviour. For heel, I want her to trot, but right now I am obviously rewarding gaiting. I use the word 'gait'. Her stands are good. :) Her attention is superb... I missed two dogs and their owners coming into the park, but Clover ignored them. :) I wasn't worried about the dogs, but she just loves people! So, two more park visits before the show... We'll see how we go.
| ||||
| The Last Week | 30.1.2008 14:14 | |||
| For the last week, Clover and I have been preparing for the show! Most of our morning training sessions have been stripping. She has this nasty habit of letting out this hearty growl and biting! She is being rewarded for non-biting/growling behaviour and I have seen a decrease. I'm proud to add that we have been on the table with an open pot of food, and she only takes it out of my hand and not out of the pot. Zen training paying off! Despite the stripping and tidying up, she still looks BOOFY. A lot of it is not ready to come out yet, though. But her ears look nice? Yesterday I nipped the quick in her nail when cutting them. :( We immediately then engaged in a training session to desensitise her to me touching her feet. She did get better, but she spent the evening not prepared to come up onto the couch with me. :( (We do nail clipping on the couch... I sneak up on them when they're sleeping.) I was implementing the method as seen here. We have also been doing some gaiting practice - but not on lead yet. We should probably start on-lead today seeing show is in two day. :) (She has been on lead before, but not made to gait on lead.) I am using a very obvious hand position so she can differentiate between gaiting and heeling. Not that she knows heel yet. She knows 'stand', but doesn't conformation stack. That's okay, she lets me manipulate her rear end so she looks a bit nicer, and we are working on her bringing her weight forward a bit while stacked. Oh, and I bought new pants yesterday to show her in! I only had black pants, and she's mostly-black with some ticking at the moment - not enough ticking to show up! So I have my first pair of beigey coloured pants for years.
| ||||
© 2010, BorderCorner.com FAQ Credits Disclaimer Rules & Etiquette
Design ©2007 Snow Flakes. Designed by Free CSS Templates