For a start, I was away overnight and arrived home to an enthusiastic greeting from Amika. She doesn’t like it when one of her people is out of reach, let alone out of sight or away from home. She doesn’t have serious separation anxiety, but she does miss us. I’m sure that she doesn’t sleep as well when we aren’t properly settled under her observation.

Today she didn’t get any exercise at all before it was time to go to class, and she was the most excited I’ve seen her since before the kennels. To top that, we were both in the car, and that really gets her thinking she’s in for a good time. Usually she settled and dozes on the long roads, but not this time: she was up circling and whining for half the trip.

So we had a bit of extra adrenaline, some no-exercise-yaya’s and someone else to keep track of. She did self calm pretty well after the initial singing session about being there. I got eye contact pretty much straight out of the car and didn’t put her back in the crate again until it was time to go home.

We dealt with the yaya’s (excess energy due to lack of exercise) by taking her into the greyhound run. She’d run out ahead, run back when I called, chase a Hurley, bring it back as we ran away… It was a short bit of off lead exercise, and well worth it. Exercise in this setting does drive up her arousal level, so we went back to the car for a drink, stopping on the mat on the way.

The virtual separation anxiety is something I’ve mentioned before. I think it is sheepdog gene related. Amika wants to make sure that all of her people are rounded up in one spot so she can keep and eye on them. If the flock splits, it makes her uncomfortable. This was pretty easy to manage simply by parking the man next to the mat. She knew where she’d left him, and he stayed there and was still there when she returned. Though having him out of reach did concern her.

The extra hype/ arousal stuff turned out not to be a huge issue. My dog has developed coping skills!!! She was more on edge than last week, which wasn’t great, but she showed excellent eye contact as a default and most of the time responded to cues first time. My partner observed that the trigger for her to begin reacting (mildly in all cases) was another dog walking towards us. Distance wasn’t a big factor at the distance at which we are working. That is a big change over last year, when distance was a big issue, as was ANY movement from the other dogs.

I worked on a couple of things tonight. We got in two people greetings, and I managed to do good at both. I got her to sit and acknowledge my existence for a split second before I gave her a release and let her close the gap. She still does the singing, lunge-ing idiot routine as people approach with eye contact, but it isn’t quite as intense. A few times on neighborhood walks, she’s actually almost ignored passers-by in favor of smells. This is a good thing.

I wanted to work BAT with the criteria of her doing a calming signal before running back to the mat (and the man- a big extra reward!) This got complicated because I’ve taught her eye contact really well, so she looks for a bit and then turns back and looks into my eyes. That on its own is incredibly amazing considering what I was up against last year. So I just went with eye contact some of the time.

Amika doesn’t offer clear calming signals very often. Tonight I missed marking and rewarding two beauties: a look-away and a lip-lick. I’m not beating myself up about it because I know I’ll get there eventually. I ended up just going with relative calm body posture (so subjective) and that fantastic eye contact. I did some reps of BAT: she sees the dogs, looks and is relatively relaxed and I mark and run with her to her mat. I also did CU-ish stuff with her offering look-at-that (LAT) and then eye contact for a treat.

Something different about the last few sessions is that she is definitely no longer hauling me towards the other dogs. Yes, she heads their way sniffing when I cue her to have a sniff (which is a combo calming signal, stress reducer and just plain fun for her). But the frenzy to close the distance seems to have gone. Tonight her focus was also with the other human whom she’d left by her mat, so her motivation to go away from the dogs was a little more pronounced. Even so, I’ve noticed she goes for mat breaks during rounds of people greetings, so she does seem to be using it as a self calming space and choosing to go there.

Towards the end of class, while the class participants were circling each other fairly closely, I approached with Amika. We got closer than we have been (about 30m ?), and even with a dog looping towards us Amika was able to cope without a reaction. We did some un-cued LAT reps and called it a very successful night.

I do need to lift my game as far as responding to her signals. Part of the problem is that I haven’t decided what I want to do. This is because I don’t know what Amika wants. She whines and kind of wants to bark at them, and I tell her not to. That’s not great, because I’m asking her to suppress behaviours, which is a lot of effort and isn’t going to support her in changing her emotional state.

I’m thinking that I will try clicking those signals and move away from the dogs. I think we’re at the stage where I might be able to really discern “I want more space” from “I wanna run wild with them”. We started with the latter when she was a pup, but now I think it really is the former. Probably both “space” and “play” are forms of stress relief from social interaction anyway. I’m also going to try to capture some calming signals and put them on cue. Easier said than done, but I have made a start on “stretch”.

I hadn’t intended to give her the summer off, but that’s sort of what happened. Between my lack of enthusiasm some days, very hot weather and general “other stuff” she hasn’t been back for two months or so. We finally had a break from the horrible hot weather today, and I was determined to get back again.

In the meantime, we have been working on stuff:

Through January I was taking her out for a run almost daily, plus doing clicker training stuff at home. The run at our secluded park always begins with some heeling work.  I was using food, but then found toys were more motivating for her. I also started walking her to different areas adjoining the park and practicing loose leash walking.

The beginning of February was the annual holiday for 11 days. I got her onto some Chinese herbs and homeopathic stuff before leaving her at the kennels. I also fattened her up some since they had trouble feeding her last year. She came home skin and bones with almost no interest in food. Now, 3 weeks on, she is approaching normal food motivation. It took 3 full days for her ‘happy’ to come back too. The herbs are powerful things, and I think part of her lack of appetite may be a ‘don’t care’ thing related to them. But she also just flat did not cope. I’m not sure what I’ll do next year, but don’t think I’ll go back to that kennel.

Back at home, I decided to push the envelope. Amika had a nice restful night at home before I took her out on the street. I haven’t taken her on a neighborhood walk in about a year, I think. She gets hyped so quickly and I have not had the emotional stability to ‘deal’ with her having an outburst. For some reason that’s changed, and almost every day we go for a walk or two around the suburban streets.

We started short and have graduated to going around a whole block and a bit. The weather hasn’t helped this endeavor, but I’ve just done it anyway. She still gets more anxious about night walks, so have to make sure we don’t overdo them. And since she had no interest in food that first week, I take a pocketful of treats and the rest of the time have focused on building toy drive, and used “go sniff” as a reward. Yes, there have been a few dogs. I just keep on going and reward alternative behaviours (the non-reactive ones).

Back at class, I didn’t know what to expect. One thing I learnt a long time ago abut animal training (and life!) is that the less expectations you have, the more miraculous the outcome. As soon as you form ‘expectations’ of your learner’s performance, you will be disappointed. I still do this… but not tonight.

I did the standard thing you do after a break: went “back to kindergarten”. All the criteria were low, the rate and quality of reinforcement was high. I had one set of behaviours in mind based on what I learned on the Caterpillar Dogs group. However it wasn’t’ formal or scientific- I was very relaxed about it.

On arrival, she reacted to a distant dog while still in the crate. I was at the back of the car getting gear, so I was able to open the other door of the crate, hold her harness and help her into a down. I have been trying Dr. Dunbar’s idea of being a broken record in certain situations where she can’t think, so it was “down, down, down..” and gradually she did, and I gave her some dinner-on-a-spoon as a reward. This dinner had mackerel mixed in, and that got her attention. She was able to self-calm pretty well after that.

I put her back in her crate once. That was just after getting her out the first time, since she wanted to react at distant dogs. After that it was all mat work. Our mat work is pretty shoddy at the moment, since I haven’t revisited it in months, but she still knows the drill. We moved out onto the oval, and other than some over-the-top greetings of people, she was pretty focused. I think this has improved as a direct result of the stuff I have been doing the past couple of months.

We headed out onto the edge of the oval with the mat and the container of dinner-with-a-spoon. I also had some new toys: Hurleys made by West Paw Designs. These are near indestructable floating, throwing and chewing on things.  She loves them. The pattern was this:

• Start on mat in relatively relaxed position, reward eye contact and relaxation.
• Walk on loose lead while having a sniff then sit by me and look at other dogs calmly- click.
• The reward is to run back to the mat and get food.

I also played with the hurleys a couple of times. To start out, she wasn’t that interested. As a reward for tugging with me a bit, I sent her to sniff. At the end of the session, I used the extension on her lead and did the whole sequence of tug, throw, retrieve, tug, throw… Also, when on the mat, I asked for “tummy scratch” a couple of times and got happy, relatively relaxed responses. She wasn’t snapping back to attention after, but I kept it brief. That seemed to calm her, and she just generally offered ‘relaxing’ on the mat in order to earn not only treats but another round of “go sniff” and heading towards the other dogs.

Amika did bark a few times. Mostly it was pure happy-excitement. On a couple of occasions other dogs got a bit too close but the reactions were pretty small and short lived. She’s getting much better at calming herself down. Part of that is the herbs, but she is also learning. We didn’t get particularly close, but I was thrilled with her level of comfort. She still breathed harder than normal- this IS hard work for her- but she left the oval more relaxed than she arrived!

On the way home, I thought about stuff. One thing I have known about for a while, but not really taken in as a belief, is that you need to let their emotions lead you in order to gain trust and build confidence. I haven’t thought of it in quite that way before, and mostly it has been just an ‘out there’ fact. I’m happy to feel that I’ve internalised that some more. I’ll be trying to use that more with my birds as well.

I’ve posted before about wanting to push to the boundaries which makes her fail. That mindset comes from just looking at coarse / big behaviours. Is she reacting? No- push closer. Still not? Even closer… until she fails and practices the same old unwanted behaviour. The stuff I’ve read says this isn’t a good way to do things. If, however, you focus on the fine detail stuff that just relates to emotional state, you get a whole new “edge” that is further out than the big barking display. Happy ears? Yes. Move closer. Still happy ears? NO! There’s the new edge- we’ve failed in keeping her 100% comfortable, but we’re still several steps away from practicing the bark / lunge mess. We haven’t lost ground by driving her adrenaline up a lot, and she hasn’t added practice to the old pattern.

I’m going to concentrate on Amika’s new edge, honoring where she says it is, and try, so very hard, not to push her beyond it. The next thing I need to believe in / internalise is that the distance she needs will shrink without me pushing it.

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

The main reason I didn’t get the degree of calm attention was a state of mind thing. As ever, we seem to be doing synchronised physiology. We have hayfever. Of course, in dogs this means itchy skin, but just like us they get fuzzy headed. As I’ve mentioned before, I think the antihistamines make her a bit dopey too (but at least she isn’t itchy).

Class part 1

I had trouble getting out the door (what did I say about fuzzy headed?) so we weren’t early. At least those extra two trips back into the house meant we had water and the big blanked to go over the crate in the car. I got her out with the usual choral whining, but she sat and stayed sitting while I clipped her up. She even turned back to me in a reasonable time once out (had to sniff grass first). Pretty good for a fuzz brain.

I’ve found that the best thing to do when we arrive is to take her on a sniffing expidition. She’s so excited just to be there and the sniffing helps her settle into that environment. I don’t let her tow me, and she was really good at moving with me tonight on the way out there. I didn’t need to do the ‘stop and wait for dog to notice owner’ routine. So she IS aware of me at some level. She also turns back to me when I call a fair amount of the time (this is a work in progress).

Having sniffed our way away from the area the other dogs were going to use, and seeing that some of the jitters were gone, I started asking for stuff. Earlier in the day, I showed Amika a new game in the back yard. We’d heel a short distance, then I’d say “turn!” in the same high voice I use for “run!” and use my body language to show her which way I was going to go. She thought that was a pretty good game. I tried it out (now on lead) and she ‘got it’ and came with me. So that one will work nicely for moving away from triggers once there is some more groundwork. I left it at that for tonight, as I had lots of other things to think of and work on.

While working up the back, I tried some BAT work (behavioural adjustment training) just a couple of times. Yes, I can see how this would work now. Basically, I walked Amika towards the dogs in the class, stopping before she would react. After seeing a lip lick or -something- calm, we turned and moved away as per the “turn!” but I didn’t use the cue or make it too exciting. Then we were back to doing other stuff for a bit at that slightly bigger distance.

Now, just sitting here writing this I’ve had a ‘duh!’ moment. The biggest excitement this evening was when our trainer came over to talk to us. “Oh boy, it’s my friend!!!!” says the dog. Ya know, using BAT with approaching the trainer as reward may be a really good thing. In this first instance, I -sort of- rewarded calmer behaviour, but there was a big distance and a conversation that needed having. So I allowed some pulling between asking for reinstatement of brain (stop, ask for eye contact, get it grudgingly after some seconds, go forward). To do BAT with this, I think I’d need to use a barrier so there isn’t so much ground to cover.

Amika the Star

It turns out my ISP had eaten an e-mail, and that class was learning about using mats CU style tonight. Could Amika demo? Oh, wow, my reactive dog class is using CU!! So the other dogs went back in cars for a bit while I managed Amika back down the oval to the car, collected mat (I’d been wondering how we were going to get past the other dogs to collect it) and moved towards the people. Oh, she was thrilled. A bunch of people looking at HER! Fortunately, they weren’t all clustered together, so she wasn’t sure who to apply her charms to first. That seemed to difuse the tension a bit.

I had her mat, which she did manage to notice after I squeaked and waggled it and bounced around a bit. “Oh, yeah, mat, calming down right now might be good.” And there in front of several people, she got on the mat, I clicked and she laid down to eat treats. She stayed there to eat treats. She stayed there while waiting for more treats. I released her to sniff and picked up the mat. Then when she noticed me again, I put the mat down and on she got for more treats. Then she stayed there while I backed up a few steps and then geve her another treat etc. I was really amazed at how good she was at being on the mat in such an aroused state with an audience.

Part 2

The demo over, the other people headed for cars to retrieve their mat and dog, and I headed up the oval again. We’ve got a second instructor / helper (they’re all volunteers btw) who came to help with Amika and greetings. After the first one, where Amika has trouble keeping her feet on the ground, she becomes a lot less aroused and more polite. She can also shift her focus off the person to other things.

The second half of class for Amika was being on the mat, interspersed with tugging (off switch),  sniffing and going over to say ‘hi’. She was really good with that. She was even able to stay on the mat while our person walked away and then came back! We also did a fair amount of LAT for the other dogs. We weren’t able to get true relaxation on the mat with all of the prior arousal and continuing activity. She did “tummy scratch” which is to roll on her side, but could only ‘not look’ briefly. I’m thinking now that it would be really good for me to choose to move another 20m out and specifically work on passive attention / relaxation for several minutes as a ‘break’.

Long skinny oval.

When I thought it was time to quit, I realised we had a dog we’d have to squeeze past. First, I made sure we didn’t do a direct approach, but came in on a tangent. Second, we got onto the dirt road at the edge of the oval, other side of trees. This made it fairly clear where we were going. Amika was pulling, and I accepted that mostly, just keeping a very short lead. Periodically, I stopped to get eye contact. I also body blocked by walking into her, pushing her shoulder with my thigh (she was on my left as we passed the dog on our right). I didn’t bother with food, and despite getting some barks from the dog (whose owner was moving him further away) Amika did not have a big reaction. I think a big part of it is that she knew that we were not going TO the other dog, but heading back to the car.

Putting Amika in the pressured situation wasn’t my first choice, but I was extremely pleased how well she did. She didn’t go berserk, and took treats as soon as we were past and calmed down rapidly. I let her have a drink, put her in the crate with treats and praise and covered her up.

As I was going to say goodbye to the others, I did some crate training. Amika has been barking a lot when I leave her in the car. She’s always had a tendency to have a tantrum about being left. At the moment, she waits a bit, then barks for a while and eventually (I guess) gives up. This doesn’t do her any good, so I’d like to get her out of the habit.

I left her in the covered crate, closing the car door, and walked off a few paces. I then returned, opened the door and gave more treats. Repeated that several times, increasing duration between visits. There was no barking. Then I went and said goodbye, but remembered I had some books to return. Went back to car. She was barking, but I think hearing one of the other dogs barking may have started that. I went and got the books (no treats) and left again, briefly. Since she was quiet I repeated the exercise (treat and leave) several times, again with more duration.

After returning stuff to the library and more chatting, I went back to a quiet car and gave Amika more treats before heading home. Nice finish to the night. I am just so happy with how she is doing and how well the class went (they commented on the dogs being less reactive while learning to be on mats). If the two new students practice mats at home, hopefull they’ll be able to get into some relaxation and games too.

The biggie for tonight- no lungeing (pulling, yes) and one or two wuffs, but no agitated barking. Yay.

The 5m radius is pretty comfortable for her, allowing enough room for exploration. I practiced recalls for cheese, which she enjoyed, and we just moved back and forth together, which was nice.

Today my car is stuffed, so we won’t be able to go to the park. We’ll work on tricks inside. She has just mastered the art of barking on command, plus I’ve started working a shaped retrieve. So between running like idiots in the yard, we’ll have some clicker fun.

This idea still wasn’t a plan, it was just an idea. I ran it past some people on the CU_Support forum and writing the e-mail helped clarify my thoughts a lot. The feedback was encouraging too. I then spent some time writing it out as a detailed, step by step plan. I put each step on the left side of the page, with space for notes on the right. I ended up with 34 steps and a better idea of how to implement training and the ability to track progress. It will also get modified as I go and see how Amika is doing.

The goal I was thinking of when I created the plan was getting Amika to the start of a track (at tracking training) in a controlled fashion. At the moment she gets so anxious knowing that there is a track out there -waiting- that she wears herself out and looses her ability to think clearly between the car and the start flag. She also tows me around and completely ignores me, which I don’t like.

In writing up the plan, I had to deal with the usual problematic distractions (namely the environment and people) and her lack of self control and escalating anxiety / excitement in the face of something she wants and gets excited about. These are our fundamental problems. So focusing on training for this one task at tracking directly addresses all of the biggest issues in our lives except other dogs. It indirectly addresses dogs because self control / anxiety / excitement is part of her problem with them.

The plan itself is based mostly on stuff in the book “Control Unleashed” by Leslie McDevitt. It centres around mat games and targeting, on / off switch games and more. It isn’t a simple plan, but rather an amalgamation of half a dozen individual training ‘games’ into a series of steps. The idea is to introduce Amika to some new games with a set rule structure. Once she knows the game, it gets more challenging as well as more rewarding and fun. Then we gradually bring in more and more distractions. The end goal is a dog working alongside former distractions in a focussed manner.

We’re up to step 10, which is where she can run to find her mat at the park, wait there for a reward, stay there while I do stuff for seconds on end and then come back, call her to heel off the mat for several steps at a time, handle her harness and lead (which is dragging) while she waits and then send her back to the mat (or the car) again. In the midst of this stuff, I’ll tell her to take sniff break and I’ll run off with her mat- which gets her back into playing straight away!

So we’re still just starting out with this plan of attack, but it is working well so far. I have a responsive, attentive dog at our quiet little training park. The game we’re playing has us working on recalls, targeting, getting excited and then calming down (off switch) and just generally being focused. And a big bonus for me is that I’m enthusiastic to try it all out and see what happens. I now have a plan I can follow and can apply all my creativity to solving problems along the way and modifying the plan as needed.

And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll seek advice from more experts.

(*From a Terry Pratchet Discworld book.)

An interesting observation from one of the tracking instructors is that Amika’s anxiety goes up when she looses the scent- the longer it takes to reacquire the track, the more excited she is. This accounts for the rocket take-off when she gets it again. It’s the zoomies on the track! I have been working at keeping her closer to the actual track but learning handling skills is challenging on such a fast moving dog. She has slowed down quite a bit though- perhaps because overall anxiety is lower?

A few things that are also going on are better manners when having visitors and when visiting my parents. For visitors, if they are dog tollerant, we leave the crate door open. She mostly stays in there when people come in through the (off limits) front room.  The visitors are instructed to ignore the dog and she does calm much quicker than she used to. At my parents’ she goes straight into the back yard to burn it off and when she is calm and can do the door routine, she comes in and gets ignored for a bit. She still has trouble sleeping there, so is often overtired when we leave.

A big chunk of this improvement is probably due to my anxiety levels dropping and me having more tolerance. That means that I can ignore behaviour that I would usually react to by shouting, grabbing the dog and shoving her somewhere else. Life in general has been happier though I keep letting myself do too much stuff at a time, thus wearing myself out.

I have undergone a ‘burnout relapse’ over the past few weeks, but that is to be expected. I’ve taken time off from training and other stuff and concentrated on doing stuff that I am motivated to do. Yes, Amika was bored, but at least she hasn’t been shouted at when I was trying to train her. The good thing is I’m no longer beating myself up about not training her when I’m in that sort of space because I know boredom is preferrable to abuse!

After getting some clothing on, I went out and found only one of the dogs- the other must have gone over a fence. I was able to make friends with the frightened little dude and bring him in to the bathroom. He was rottie coloured black and tan with a white chest. Too small for a rott, maybe a staffy cross. Of about 15 cavies, none could be seen, and chook was a bit shaken for a few minutes. Later on, Dion found one dead young cavy, and the others have started to reapear. But they are spooked.

I left the dog in the bathroom, took Amika out for the first pee of the morning on lead and then crated her. She was fairly hyped because she could smell somebody. Given that I would have to wait for business hours to call the ranger, I decided to set up some training.

I put Amika’s mat in the kitchen, just inside the doorway from her crate in the hall. The other end of the kitchen opens into the laundry and bathroom. The bathroom door is in view from the kitchen. I loaded my treat pouch and donned a clicker. The poor dog in the bathroom alternated between gloomy silence, sniffing under the door, leaping at the walls, howling pitifully and yipping / barking to be let free. But wasn’t nearly as loud as Amika’s barking.

The first exercise I did was coming out of the crate. We’ve been working on this, so she did pretty good. I had to wait out whining a few times, but mostly she was able to calm herself by lying down. So the first step to coming out was a down, then a stay while I opened the crate door. When called “here” she comes to front. From there I started the “look at that” game (“LAT” the cue being “who’s'at?”).

Once Amika had LAT going, I lured her to her mat and she went into a down as she usually does. I was able to get her doing LAT rapid fire. At some point the dog in the bathroom made a noise or moved and Amika jumped up and started barking, which caused me to put her back in her crate and end the session. This happened I think three times, each time she’d have a barking session in the crate and I’d come back when she was quiet and ready to work again.

I gradually moved the mat to half way along the kitchen, then tried getting Amika to face the bathroom and it didn’t work so good. A break and I moved the mat to a diagonal position, started her facing away and then turned her gradually. She was doing brilliant LAT’s and also looking to me when I said her name.

I gave her another break, then did some more rounds with a new game. The game was a little bit on/off switch, mostly mat targeting. I moved the mat further away again. I called her off her mat to front, then cued “place” (go to mat) and treated. I started by rewarding a sit, down, sit routine then go back to mat. Then I got the front without rewarding and sent back to mat.  After the ‘being away from mat’ thing, she was ‘higher’ and I would spend some time rewarding stuff on the mat: LAT, head down, relax, looking to me.

Another thing I brought in from the relaxation protocol (RP) we have been doing was to drop the lead, step away and then return and reward. I used this to go grab more treats, which she went through at a great rate. She knows the RP stuff and I think that actually helped focus her.

The next step in the calling off game was to take her towards the bathroom door. At first I got a sit and then took her back to mat for treats and ‘down time’. Each time I’d say “ready?” which isn’t a cue I have ever used, but she got it by the end. Then we’d walk towards the door. I gave her some breaks in this game, a couple times for reacting / non response and a couple of times just for a rest. The reactions were not particularly intense.

At the end, I was able to walk her up to the door and cue her to “sniff” and she was able to sniff the other dog through the gap under the door for a couple of seconds before I called her and headed back for the mat. She got the pattern of it and the final rep there was no leash tension at all.

That was a couple of hours worth of training- fairly intense. But she did very well, and the other dog was none the worse for wear. The ranger / kennel guy came and took the poor sweet boy away while Amika was in the office. She hardly barked at all. Amika is now full of treats and flaked out here in the office, having thoroughly examined the house and yard.

The GA and suspected reactive episode at the vet have mad the poor girl very quiet since I picked her up yesterday afternoon.  The last couple of weeks, we have done some RP and leash walking around the yards, so I’ll keep up with that. The toe is a soft tissue injury which the vet said heals slowly, and to allow only “yard exercise”. So walking on lead is in- and I’m keen to get back to daily outings. All we have to do is avoid the cantering and jumping stuff.

My initial plan is to get further along with mat games and RP, introduce finding her mat and take that on the road. One of the things that was in the CU DVD set was that it is good for a dog to have an expectation that when he comes out of the car, his job is to find his mat / station. I also need to start taking Amika everywhere with me and leaving her in the car (now that the sun isn’t quite so fierce). The staying in the car thing takes practice.

Having the all-clear on Amika’s hips means I’m not starting to think a lot about the upcoming tracking season, and to a lesser degree, scootering. I basically have a month to get ready for tracking- which means lots of staying in the car with distraction, and coming out going to mat. Lots of RP.

I haven’t been worrying about working with other dogs for the moment. My experienced trainer has suggested we see a behavioural vet, but I’m going to put that on the back burner. Once again, I need to put the training stuff into place. I have way more ideas than time to try them all, so I am going to narrow it down to making the world much more predictable and “in control” for Amika. To do that I’m going to use all the mat work stuff. I also need to introduce her to going out in that controlled framework. That should keep me busy for a while!

We went out this moring and I worked on getting us into the pattern for Monday’s training appoinment. I put the blanket over the box when we arrived and took her out for some attention work. She is getting better at walking “with” me but I’m impatient about it at the moment. Must lower criteria for duration of attention after coming out of the car.

I put her back in the car while I set up the mat and the pup (about 70m away). We did a few RP type reps then a lot of LAT with lots of treats for a single rep. Once we were done, I got her to walk back to the car with me, with attention. She did good with high rate of reinforcement. While she was in the crate I put away the stuff. She is OK with the blanket on the crate and the wait, which is good.

Got her out and did a little running around. Mostly let her go sniff. At one point she was about to wrap the line around a tree and I called her from 20m away. She came bounding over and I gave a jackpot. Very little pulling, just letting her run and sniff around for fun. It was a good session and I was pleased to get the new pattern in place.