Lately I have had a whole string of lousy training days in a row -- I couldn't get my goals straight, dogs weren't focused, I didn't train at all due to too much other stuff going on, et cetera. Then, today, in a span of twenty minutes maximum, I had great training sessions with all the dogs.
Zsiga is still working on the Levels. Well, with me he is. I'm trying to get Tim interested but so far no dice. That's fine with me. I'm happy to have Zsiga to practice on so I make my errors on him and not on my little Annie, who arrives in about a month. Zsiga is pretty much all the way through Level One. Today I started him on a target stick. He knows "Touch" for nose touching my finger, but I didn't use it with the target stick because I didn't want to confuse him too much with the new device. Nevertheless, he figured out to nose-touch it on his own in about five repetitions. (I was using the "Train Me" treats that I got in the box from Animal Behavior College. Zsiga loves them, Hilda likes them, and Sunny is suspicious of them and won't eat them.)
I decided to next work on Sit and Down in Heel position (which he doesn't even know yet). I told him to sit, then put myself in Heel position next to him, then told him to Down. He did -- a perfect splat down with his nose on the ground between his feet. I told him Sit and he did. Down again -- he did. He never questioned the fact that he was in Heel position when he's always been in front of me. Then, feeling brave, I did a couple stays. One in Sit, one in Down. I went out to the end of the leash and even put some pressure on the leash, and he stayed put.
Then I handled his feet and ears a little. He is a little iffy about the feet so I brought a peanut butter-smeared spoon with me. This helped. Touch the feet, give him a lick and pet him, repeat times all four feet and let him go. He was an angel about having his ears cleaned.
This dog is eleven weeks old, almost as big as Sunny, and smart, smart, smart. Also willing and food-motivated. That makes for a very easy dog to train. Plus, he is beautiful. His left ear still flops over. I will be sad when it starts to stand up. He's getting a little more tan as opposed to black every day, especially on the face. The look on his face is so bright and intelligent, I love to look into his eyes. I love him, but he's still Tim's dog, and that's fine with me because I want my little Aussie puppy.
I have decided to give up on any aspirations of titling Hilda in anything and just train her tricks instead. Damnit, she is going to be the dog who learns to get me a beer out of the fridge. (Never mind that I don't drink beer; that's beside the point.) This is taught by backchaining. I tried it once a few years ago. Hilda punctured a Mountain Dew can with her teeth when she bit down too hard. got a blast of Mountain Dew in her face, and has been reluctant to touch mouth to can ever since. (Gee, I wonder why.) Today I wrapped loads of duct tape around a can of Diet Cherry Pepsi, which I will never drink anyway because I'm off caffeine, and got her to pick it up in about five minutes. Another success! Next step with her will be to get her to retrieve it and bring it to my hand.
Sunny and I -- yuck. We have been stuck on Step 18 of Shirley Chong's retrieve for a week or so. (Step 17, which he had down, called for him to lift the dumbbell knee-height off the ground and look at me to earn a click. Step 18 called for me to touch part of the dumbbell before it left his mouth or as it was falling for him to earn a click.) He didn't get it and didn't like the movement of my hand toward his mouth or the fact that I had to bend over him a little to touch the dumbbell. He started all kinds of crap -- pawing the dumbbell, lifting it like a millimeter off the ground and then dropping it, lying down on top of it... I thought I had botched our retrieve forever. I didn't panic though, just didn't practice the retrieve at all for a couple days, then went back to Step 17 and reinforced that hundreds of times, then today when I attempted Step 18 again he didn't have any problem with me reaching towards the dumbbell. I got about 50 clicks in, and half of those were double rewards because the dumbbell actually landed in my hand instead of on the ground -- Step 19. Who knows what happened in his little brain during that time off, but I'll take it. And I will NOT rush to Step 19 without at least another 50 repetitions of Step 18.
I knocked out all this dog training in twenty minutes, and now I have three tired, happy dogs who will be in rest mode when I head out to WOG.
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