Reactive dog classes 9 and 10

October is just a busy month. I think this one just gone was the busiest. I’m amazed that I managed to get to 3 out of 4 of those classes! Last week wasn’t great, but with a new toy (crate) and a great class this week, I’m feeling really good about how things are progressing.

Halloween eyes

Class #9

Last week’s reactive dog class was pretty ‘blah’ for me. It was an attitude kind of thing. We did the walk and sniff, we took the mat up the oval. We did mat work sort of stuff, a tad of ‘off switch’ with a tug. I also tried to get her focused on me while walking, which didn’t go very well. I even thought about doing BAT, but the setup and the enthusiasm weren’t favourable, so just played with distance. We worked even further out than the previous week, but Amka seemed to be having a bad day – her threshold distance seemed a lot bigger. Heading back to the car, I opened one of those little cans of smoke flavoured tuna to lure her past class dogs, so though she pulled that direction sometimes, she didn’t ‘go off’, which was good.

The positives from this class were that we did some good crate-in-the-car work before starting and afterwards. Also, Amika didn’t have any full blown reactive episodes, just some barks and a little pulling. I completely forgot her front attach harness, but was able to handle her on her flat collar tolerably well. And the main thing was that we went, we were there, and it was an OK experience.

New toy!

I ordered and got a giant size soft crate for Amika, which arrived the day of the class. (I don’t think it triggered the moods at class though, that was probably me being over worked and stressed.) For anyone who is curious, K9+ is the company, and the model is a Royale2 size XXL. I went against my usual conventions and got a red one. (Big red things are SO out with raptorial birds: you’d have a panic attack too if you met a 9ft tall, live, walking, talking steak.) It looks good.

New soft crate

Amika was great: she stayed pretty much on her bed in the hall while I dealt with the delivery guy on the porch (we’d been having trouble with her running into the front room, where she isn’t allowed to go). And yes, there was a handfull of kibble dropped on her bed on the way out, but that was gone by the time I came back in with a BIG box. I think she’s figured out delivery people bring toys, as she often gets the boxes.

This particular box was wrapped in many layers of plastic wrap, like the stuff you’d use to cover a bowl of salad before putting in the fridge. Only bigger an tougher. I had fun seeing if I could unwrap it, but gave up and got out the scissors! Amika was encouraged to help with the plastic, but she wasn’t sure how to get into it either. The cardboard she knows about! I let her have the box (huge flat one) once the crate was out, but she was quite interested in proceedings as I set up the crate.

I left it at that: the crate set up in the office, plastic out to the bin and most of box (missing several bits which were still in the office!) went into the kitchen for further destruction. This increased later when we threw kibble in the bottom. She had a great time.

Amika's mess

Amika has had a wire crate for a long time (she started in plastic airline ones, but outgrew them fairly rapidly!) It occurred to me that a dark, closed up soft crate might be a bit daunting at first, so I opened it all up: 2 doors and a roof opening. I also opened the shutters on the non-open-able sides. I took out the supplied mat and installed a Snooza brand ‘futon’ that is her office bed, with the foam play mats underneath as usual. The futon is great, because it is made to go on top of a trampoline bed, and has velcro on the corners. It fits perfectly in the crate attached to the uprights, so won’t slide or get crumpled into the corners.

Amika had a good time checking out my new piece of furniture. I didn’t use food, just encourage her to check it out and go in, and she sniffed all over and decided going in and out was a good game. That was Tuesday. I had a big day on Wednesday (7 half hour talks to noisy year 8 students in groups of about 30). When I got home and had finished feeding and putting birds away, I was ready to drop. So I did, right into that soft bed in the office.

Amika came to see what I was doing (she’d finished greeting me some time ago and was resignedly laying on her bed in the hall) and joined in. At first she nudged me a bit to see if I’d play (hey, I was laying on the floor, that could be an open invitation), but I must have smelled exhausted, because she wasn’t at all persistent about it. She laid down and snuggled up and was very content there in the crate with me, especially while I rubbed her belly and patted her. It was very mellow and sweet, and quite funny when my partner couldn’t find me for a bit (and we have a very small house).

Thereafter, Amika decided that snoozing in the crate was a cool thing to do. I praised her when she went in on the first day, and in the days that followed I made sure that I went and gave her attention when she went in there to lay down. I also played silly little games where I’d throw a kong in and ask her to hand it to me, or while she was in the crate would show her a toy through the window and ask her to ‘get it’ and then take it in with her. This meant she was learning about windows: can’t go throgh them, have to turn away, go through the door and go around the crate.

Chilling out in the crate

The funniest bit was after I had taken the crate out into the back yard. It was great- she showed interest while I set it up, went straight in and chilled out in it for a while. When I brought it back in (having swept the floors and picked up all the bits of cardboard!) I turned in 180 degrees, so the door was on the opposite end. She again showed interest while I set it up. Once done, I was standing on the non-door end next to her and said “in you get”. She bonked her nose on the end window where the door had been. You could just see the  wheels turning: “the door should be here, but this isn’t working”. It took her a second to get it, and then we played the game of putting the toys in. We have had fun with the new crate the past week.

Class #10

Last night was much better in terms of attitude and performance. This was despite my fatigue after helping run a camp for another bunch of rowdy year 8′s.  Can you say “sleep depravation”? I had a bit of time to prepare, so read the relevant chapters of Control Unleashed and packed the new crate.

I decided that we wouldn’t go up the oval. This week, I didn’t even want to deal with proximity and stuff (so still no BAT). I wanted to focus on mat work and her orienting to me just in the environment. There were two other handlers and dogs there, and I went and talked to the instructor and handler who would be closest to let them know where I’d be staked out. Before class, I skipped the run around and sniff thing and did go to mat / car crate stuff with short sniff breaks and a bit of off switch with the tug.

Once class started I did more going to mat, sniff breaks, into car coming out when calm etc. I also took her to the crate, set up a couple of metres in front of the car on the edge of the oval. I had to encourage her to check it out verbally, as she was focused on what was happening ‘out there’ with the other dogs. Once in though, she seemed to immediately understand that this was like the mat: lie there and get treats! She also didn’t get up and leave until I released her.

We did quite a bit of LAT on the mat beside the car. There were dogs out on the oval, and people. That took some of her attention, but I was happy to see that she wasn’t particularly getting aroused by them. What had her popping up off the mat was the COWS! Across the car park, past the chainlink fence, verge, road, verge and fence, there were a couple of brown and white cows. So she divided her LAT left and right at the cows and dogs.

What I tend to do is play LAT, which is click for looking at… I do this for a bit until I think it is starting to get a bit old, then I switch to clicking for eye contact (often without a cue, though I do use her name to interrupt if the stare is going on too long and intensely). This transferred really nicely in the crate later on. I had intentionally set it up with all the windows closed, but with open door facing the oval. Once in and settled, she started playing LAT and then switched to looking at me intentionally after checking out the dogs. While in a relaxed down in the new crate! WOW! I kept these sessions short and she jumped out for a sniff as soon as I gave a release cue, so I’ll need to not push it.

After I finished, I did a little work on “quiet dogs get good things when owners come back to the car”. This involved another can of good old smoke flavoured tuna. And she was good in the car too- some barking triggered by hearing other dogs, but not over the top or stressed out. And yes, I did remember to bring the big dog blanket to go over the crate. Blocking her view is key. Once Amika was settled in the car, I went to see the two new people and how they were going.

What’s up with class?

The instructor had a new guy and his dog in one of the runs off leash. They were doing box work type stuff while mostly stationary. When I came up, the dog run forwards and barked, so I got to use some calming signals. Wow, that worked well! I turned away obviously, and she settled right down, and I also did some lip licking and she seemed to get that and be even better. Nifty! I watched as they tried a ‘mat’ (beach towel). The dog picked that up quickly as well, though it was a brief session.

We had a dogless class ‘meeting’ afterwards (a new thing) which was great. It meant the people cold talk together. Our instructor has really gotten into CU it seems! I’m over the moon, because when some of these students get the fundamentals down, we can start doing more interactive CU stuff. I can do circle work at a large distance now, but if we can get dogs on mats reliably and in a structured way, we’ll all be able to take turns to do circle work while other dogs are on mats at a much closer distance.

I’m also thinking that I am going to ask for a specific BAT setup at some point. This would make it less stressful for me, as I’d be able to have a dog ‘parked’ in one spot not doing anything that I could advance and retreat from. This way I can just focus on what Amika is doing and not worry that the dog is going to head in our direction. I really do tend to have a narrow focus when working with her.

I’m really looking forward to being part of class once the others get into mat work.! I am also really happy with how things are going with Amika training-wise the past week or so. Meanwhile, I’ll refine our mat work, and I have the Crate Games DVD on order (a motivation and self control program centred on a crate / mat). Now that some of the really hectic work weeks are behind me, I may be able to get a more productive dog training (and exercise!) routine going.

Going in and out