Wooop actually doing a lot of training today. I lost my fav clicker so I had to use my old pos clicker and it's barely holding together. With Susie, we worked on: Touch Watch me Mat work Stand Her touch is fab, she really presses into my palm and so far she's done well with adding distance. I've never taught her a cue for watch me, I've always just reinforced for eye contact, but it's definitely a handy cue and now I'm finding it hard to believe i never trained it before. She offers me eye contact a lot so it's coming nicely. I got lazy with the mat work when we started a few months ago, so I started from scratch today. She seems to remember some of what we did, at least. Hand signal for stand was 100% this session, still working on verbal. With Sage: Touch- we've done a couple sessions with this, it's still in the early stages but he definitely gets the idea. Mat work- He is so good with this it's hilarious. I guess maybe because he's always calm and relaxed. He remembered everything tho. I got farther working on this with Sage than Susie. He immediately sat on the mat and then shortly after rolled on his side, did a long stretch, yawned, started cleaning himself, etc, getting reinforced all the while. He really is the most attentive pupil, I realllllllly need to start training him more. He talks to me the whole time and it's hilarious. Tyger: Sit- he's got the hand signal, adding verbal Touch This was our first session with touch and wow he was on fire. Got the idea after the second reinforcement, was so eager & engaged, he did quite well. So, we're making progress. Good stuff.
Took Susie to the farmer's market this morning. It was a bittersweet excursion because it used to be one of Fetch's favorite outings.
It was a wet and grey morning, unseasonably cool. It was also Susie's first time there. She's not big on getting wet and isn't a fan of the rain, but with that in mind she did really well. There weren't many people out on account of the weather, and we also went right before closing, so it was pretty ideal for her first trip, dampness aside. She was calm n quiet as we walked among the stalls and stopped and talked to vendors, if a little antsy because of the drizzle. Aside from some pulling on leash, understandable in this new and distracting environment, she was quite well-behaved.
I'm so excited tho because there will be so many socialization opportunities in Columbia. There's always something going on, and we even have a farmer's market on campus every tuesday. After she has time to settle from the move, we're going to have a blast.
We're going up to the mountains this weekend for a camping trip and I'm really excited. My boyfriend and I planned on going a lot more often than we ended up going this summer, but idk it really flew by. I'm currently pretending I'm not moving two weeks from friday and don't have a ton of stuff to do to get ready.
I'm excited because although Susie's been to the mountains and camping before, this will be her first time camping in the mountains, and I know she's gonna love it. And it will be another good, new experience for her. She did so incredibly well when I took her to Table Rock last fall, and Hunting Island earlier this summer (both places with a ton of people & dogs, very distracting & previously a potentially triggering environment), and her reactivity in general has been very manageable lately, so I'm feeling pretty confident. Two of my friends might also be coming with us, whom Susie's met once previously, and so that will be another good training opportunity if they do come. Either way, I'm really looking forward to it. There are few things I love more than hiking with my pup.
I think I really, really want to do group classes with Susie this fall. It's always been something I've wanted to do, of course, but I think we may finally be at a point where we're ready. We've made such progress with her stranger reactivity where it's usually a very manageable thing, and her dog reactivity has progressed to where she no longer growls/vocalizes/raises hackles etc. Her only real reaction at this point is wanting to pull towards the other dog, but when she does this it almost seems like more a frustrated greeter response rather than aggression.
Her dog reactivity is definitely what could use the most work now. There's so much that's up in the air about it, though. When we got her I was about 12 and knew nothing about dogs/training, nor did my parents, so she basically got no dog socialization (well- any meaningful socialization, really) from 4 months-on, aside from Fetch. So I think most of our problem, really, is that she has no idea how to interact with dogs, undernearth her fear and insecurity. She's literally never really interacted with other dogs, so of course she's insecure, combined with the handful of negative/scary experiences we had with aggressive off-leash dogs before I became better at management and learned to avoid certain places. But I'm really hopeful that someday we might be able to make the same progress with her dog reactivity as we have with her people reactivity, since they were about the same when we started out.
All this to say I'm definitely going to talk to the trainer we had private lessons with about a year and a half ago about groups lessons. When we initially worked with her, she felt Susie would be a good candidate for group classes, but she didn't offer any over the summer and in the fall/spring I was at school. This trainer is also a cgc evaluator and offers a class geared towards obtaining the cgc, so I think think taking a basic class with her and perhaps continue doing classes with her depending on how that goes would definitely be helpful in reaching our goal of getting Susie's CGC, and perhaps potentially doing some agility or rally classes for fun in the future. Grand plans, but group classes could be a start. Susie already knows all the things covered in the basic class, so we could focus the bulk of our time working on proofing in a distracting environment and doing reactivity stuff.
So I went with my family to my grandparents house and I brought Susie because I figured it would be a good training/socialization opportunity. I had a feeling my aunt would bring her pup, a cute & friendly boxer/Rhodesian ridgeback puppy, Zoe. **more on this later**
Before I go on a tangent about Zoe, I'll touch on how awesome my dog is. She hasn't seen my Aunt since last Christmas eve I believe, and only a handful of times before that, so for all intents and purpose she was a stranger to Susie. My cousin's girlfriend was also there, another stranger. Susie was so, so golden. We didn't even need LAT. From the get go, she was calm & relaxed. She didn't pay much attention to the 'strangers', but walked around the yard and hung out with us all and took treats for being chill/ interacting appropriately with people/ and I randomly reinforced her when people moved around/did potentially (to her) alarming things. Idk this is definitely the best she's done with strangers because she didn't even need me to manipulate the environment or to be reinforced quickly and heavily for looking at /not reacting at people. She didn't come close to reacting or being uncomfortable/uncertain. She was just confident, chill-- the outside observer would never know she's reactive. She even accepted petting eagerly from my aunt when we were talking later on and sought out affection/attention from her. Some really good stuff.
But my aunt has apparently been having training problems with her. We were all in the backyard by the pool for a while and Zoe was inside, but my aunt slipped out and took her home without saying anything. She was pulling into the driveway coming back from dropping her off as my boyfriend and I were leaving (** one of Susie’s previous triggers-- someone pulling into the driveway, but she didn’t care at all), so we started talking about it. They’ve just been having typical untrained adolescent dog problems, no recall, no attention, jumping on people, pouncing and over-exuberant/rude play with other dogs, really hyper, etc, which is why she took her home. So she asked me about training stuff, bc my parents had been talking to her earlier about all the training and stuff I’ve done with Susie and how I’m always reading about dog stuff. And she noticed how well-behaved and laid back Susie is now; she knew the Susie before I started training/playing an active role in her care, and it was not pretty.
So apparently they've been to two group classes so far with a local trainer. I immediately was a bit skeptical bc I know of most of the trainers around here, and there's a reason we worked with a trainer from a few towns over as opposed to someone local when I took some private lessons with Susie a little over a year ago. As the conversation continued, it became clear my initial suspicions were correct. I've hear of this particular "trainer" and they rely heavily on corrections/prongs/choke chains. My aunt relayed that she was unhappy with the progress they'd been making-namley, none. So we talked quite a bit more and I gave her some advice and she was very receptive. I love my aunt. And I know she really cares about her dog, which is why she sought out training classes. She was already a little uncomfortable with the training, but she genuinely believed the guy knew what he was talking about. She was happy to hear more about positive methods of dealing with these very common, very fixable adolescent problems, and I promised I would put together some resources/articles for her, and recommended she ditch the prong and try a properly fitted front-clip harness, in the mean time. I also offered to help show her some things and work with Zoe, and she seemed interested, so we'll see how it goes. It would be good for me, too, because then I'd have (eventually) a good canditate for socializing Susie with.
We both lamented that we hadn't talked before she signed up for the classes, haha. I don't really talk dogs/training to people unless prompted bc I'm always self conscious of sounding like a know-it-all and I often feel like I have a lot book-knowledge, so to speak, and not a ton of practical experience beyond training Susie (which counts for something, but still. I've also gained a lot of experience working with young dogs at the service dog organization, but, still), and also because when I start talking about dogs/training, I could talk about it for dayyyyys.
Idk. It just kills me and I really want to help because the "problems" are SUCH easy fixes in the realm of things--however, working with a compulsion/correction based trainer could create a lot of issues that aren't so easy to fix. So I'd really love to work with her, and I'm glad my Aunt was so willing to learn more.
We've moved onto the next behavior for L2, so we started working on 'stand' today (never something we've attempted in the past, although it certainly seems like it could come in handy).
Susie is the queen of sits. It's her normal resting position if she's just lounging around. She doesn't really stand much on her own, and we struggled with down for the longest time, so I knew we might have a hard time with this.
And initially, we did. In retrospect, most of the difficulty we encounter in training is just me trying to figure out the best way to teach her something, I guess kind of adapting the suggested way to teach the behavior into something she responds to.
So we played around with luring in the beginning and it wasn't going well at all. I'd attempt to lure her forward and she'd get up, inch towards lure, and sit immediately so even though I'd clicked her for the beginnings of a stand, I'd then end up feeding her while she was sitting. Attempted to lure her into a back per ailsby's outline but she'd just flop over. I try not to rely on luring too much when teaching behaviors, but pure capturing was out because she doesn't stand around much on her own, and I wasn't quite sure where to begin purely shaping this (so again, mostly user error). Most of these goofs were definitely my handling, but I was getting a little frustrated so we took a break and did some brushing up on targeting and then went for a long walk and I considered some things.
So I came up with a new game plan and now it's just a matter of repetion and refining to get a decent stand. We started the session and she was sitting already and I asked her to target my hand to get her out of the sit and on her feet, then clicked and tossed the treat a little in front of her so that she had to walk and get it and wouldn't sit down immediately. Did this a few times and then started doing a chain of rapid fire clicks + treats for continuing to stand after she ate the treat. Initially the window of time between eating treat + sitting was pretty narrow, but she started to get the idea. My criteria became all four feet still.
And then once she seemed to be doing pretty well with that, and we'd done several repetitions, I let her test things a bit to get a feel for my criteria, so she sat and I wouldn't click until the moment she got up onto four feet. and ended there.
So it's a start. I'm a lil pleased with myself for not letting my frustration get the best of me and instead reevaluating my approach. And as usual proud of Susie for dealing with my fumbling and confusion at times and always trying diligently to figure out what I want (her focus is pretty intense-- that offered eye contact is beautiful! and holy duration!) xD.
She's sleeping pretty soundly now. I spent literally all day with her, we went on that offleash walk this morning which was quite stimulating for her-- mentally and physically, did a lot of training, and went for another hour-long walk around my hilly neighborhood, so she's been worked pretty good today.
Really want to take the intro to nosework course coming up with Fenzi Academy, but I don't know if I can muster the $65. I've heard of a lot of reactive dogs having success with it though so I really want to give it a shot! May do some research online and maybe get a book and start working on some of the basics ourselves to see how she likes it, and try to take the course again later; as obsessed with scents as she is I think she'll like it a lot.
Late night training session w susie. We've had at least 5 lil sessions working on L2 distance today. I think most of the problems we were having were due to me trying to lump things together and generally being sloppy, and having smaller sessions throughout the day helped as well. As we stand, verbal cue is coming along nicely. Should be finished (finally!) with the L2 criteria for this behavior this week (hopefully, supposed to be going out of town w family towards the end of this week or next week).
