Just Click Pet Training

20/07/2024

Although Odie is 100% Good Boy he is also….

Excellent mix of bullys and herders! Not too many surprises apart from the corgi and the % pittie!

I still see a brindle collie when I look at him 😍

15/06/2024

I finally bought a DNA test for Odie and then I thought I better see how I need to collect the sample! Today we had a session building on other behaviours to introduce the swab (or cotton bud in this case!).
1. Reinforce the chin rest.
2. Little reminder of our lip lift and rubbing his teeth with my finger using chin to hand (already taught).
2. Introduce the ‘swab’ - I did a bit of targeting with him.
3. Then we use the swab as the start button reinforcing for a chin rest after the swab is introduced. We get a lovely cheek to swab chin rest here.
4. Start to bring in hand over the nose movement.
5. Touch hand to nose.
6. Hand to nose with a lip lift.
7. And finally, for now, lip lift with a touch from the swab.

Further aims now are to build on the duration for the swab before the test arrives 😃

02/05/2024

A little session of cooperative grooming tonight (rudely interrupted twice to remove cats with a death wish!). Odie was never a fan of the comb/brush so I taught him to say yes to grooming using a chin target. If he lifts his head (“no”) he still gets a treat but no click. So he knows that he can say no and still get a treat. Since I taught him this he has been so cool with grooming 😎. I love the dialogue with this because he tells me when I’m pushing it too far and helps me learn when he’s comfortable and when it’s too much.

16/04/2024

Pic for attention!
Thought for the day….if you need to yell your cue at your dog more than ONCE your dog does not understand that cue so you need to go back to basics and teach it again in all environments. Start in the place with lowest distractions and work up.

This is for the guy on the banks of the Ness this morning screaming “commands” at his dog at least 4 times, everytime! Exhausting for him and his dog I’m sure!

14/04/2024

Been working on scent discrimination with Odie, so he has to pick my smell from the neutral (or person off Etsy that made these doorstops smell!!). Today I noticed he gave me licks and stares and then picked the right block, I am sure he’s not but it’s like he’s making sure of my smell before he chooses 😂❤️

10/04/2024

Soooo close to a left side pivot into heel position😃🐶🐾

This has been a long road lol! He’s amazing on the right side!

08/04/2024

We’re still working through the behaviours from the Tromplo Off-Cue course. Even though the course is complete we still have a lot to do!
Yesterday we started to get a wee bit of duration with our hold! Instead of a grab and drop! I’ve tried for years to teach this with no luck….until now! I was very excited 😃

01/03/2024

Just starting week 5 of Tromplo Off-Cue course which we are LOVING! It’s given so much food for thought and plenty of training to work on for the next few months (until we can do Volume 2!).
For a couple of days this week we worked on a hold and the outcome so far has been amazing! We always struggled with this but yesterday I got a tiny (v. tiny) bit of duration! Part 2 of the video shows a pick up from the floor which I started by holding it and then fading out my hand being there and it seems to have worked! He doesn’t have the best technique (picking up at the end and not the middle) but I hope we can shape that, for now I am celebrating that he holds and picks up 🥳🥳

25/02/2024

Week 4 of our Tromplo “Off Cue” course and we’ve got lots to do, it’s been a hideous week generally (not training wise but it’s stopped us training) and I didn’t think we’d get to the course this week but I’m glad we did because we’ve had fun today!
So this is adding duration to a nose target with help from Martin Moo. It deteriorates rather sweetly towards the end 😉

21/02/2024

30/11/2023

Happy 12th birthday to my baby boy Odie!
🐾🐾🎂🥳🐾🐾

08/11/2023

Life has taken over so we’re still working on rubber band pivots. He has it (except for a front reset) but I thought I’d post again because I love watching him do this (and it blows my mind that we have this behaviour!) 🐾🐾🐾

08/10/2023

Look at these rubber band pivots (oh and one that I stopped by clicking too early - in my defence it’s hard to see what his back end is doing!) 😍. This was only our second session on these 😃
We’ve decided to heel on the right as we’re never going to do competition obedience (Odie would lose his mind!) and I think the problem trying to get the anti-clockwise pivot (for left side heeling) is my dodgy shoulder 🤷‍♀️.
Hannah Branigan’s Heeling workshop is really amazing. I love how all the steps are broken down!

22/09/2023

It feels like we’ve been on the anti-clockwise/counterclockwise pivot (the one I really really need to progress as we’ve been working on all the other exercises on my left side!) for a week or more and this is the best we have. I’m frustrated as hell! I changed my position which helped but he gets to within 30cm of me and then goes clockwise again. I think my reinforcement position is off so I’ve been playing with that but if anyone has any tips I would be eternally grateful!

16/09/2023

At the start of September me and Odie joined Hannah Branigan’s 21-day heeling workshop. We have never done any obedience work and although we will have progress in 21 days I know we won’t have much in the way of heeling! The first exercise is a pivot and I never thought we’d get it but here we are! Now I need to make sure we have anti-clockwise too! This was achieved after short sessions a couple of times a day for a week (we’re also working on the ‘backwards walking’ exercise at the same time)

19/07/2023

Short session with Odie tonight. Blood draw prep which has been slow, not enough hours in the day! Going forward we’re doing short and sweet sessions before dinner which Odie will prefer I’m sure and it will stop me pushing him too far!

Today we added in the clipper sound then some vibration. Rhum is a distraction at the patio door behind the camera!

Odes has a swelling on the right side of his face today which came up overnight. He is completely fine in himself and has been eating and drinking normally today. I checked his teeth and checked him for bites and all seems fine… I kept an eye on it to make sure it didn’t get worse but as it’s not gone down I will phone the vets tomorrow.

Thanks to JR Pet Products for the excellent box (which arrived with treatos today) and packing material that gave me the end of session enrichment!

16/07/2023

Martin is now on Solensia (by Zoetis) for his arthritis and it is costly (the stuff itself is nearly £60 a shot and that doesn’t include the consult). It involves monthly injections which means crating and then a round car journey of 40 minutes then a wait at the vets. Our vet suggested that I could do the injections at home to reduce stress on the Moo. So a wonderful vet nurse gave me instructions on what to do and a syringe and needle to practice with.

PLEASE NOTE I will NOT be practicing on Martin until the injection is due. The only injection he will get is Solensia. In my opinion it would be highly unethical to practice on him apart from to get him used to the skin “tent” and a prod.

The process is:
1. Fill the syringe
2. Change the needle
3. Tent the skin and find the injection point
4. Inject and the pull the needle out to ensure there is no blood, if there is blood pull out and reinject.
5. Inject the liquid.
6. Remove the needle and rub the spot.

All practice is done using a towel.

I was supervised in this session by Martin, Rhum and Odie, they were extremely helpful! Because Martin Moo decided to hang around we did a bit of “tenting”. I stopped when he appeared to get uncomfortable.

He just had his second Solensia injection at the vet. Three weeks after his first injection he had caught a bird to eat 😫 something he hasn’t done in a couple of years. It definitely works!

20/05/2023

I saw some totally inspiring stuff this week in the Karen Pryor Academy Cooperative Care course with the amazing Laura Monaco Torelli and the 8 excel teams. This was both in the lecture and the live zoom class. So I wrote myself a training plan for a cooperative blood draw as Odie needs a blood test in August. The full video is on You Tube.

I started with our middle behaviour (which is not fluent and needs work!) and added in the ‘cuddles’ cue which indicates tactile, and then a leg lift from the elbow (thank you Ali and Nightmare excel team!). Then we added in our third person (Odie’s bestie, his dad) and after I did the leg lift Kevin cued ‘poke’ and then took his paw at the wrist, then took paw and touched his leg where needle would enter, then held wrist and touched Odie’s leg with the metal end of a screw driver.
Video only edited for finding treats in resets. Although the grass has just been cut it’s still quite long.

Things to work on - middle behaviour (work to fluency), ensuring cues come before movement, inside so we have less latency finding treats and coming back to train lol!

14/05/2023

I added in a collar “grab” to our gentle restraint and then did some more full body restraints. Laura Monaco Torelli showed a video of someone cueing the restraint and the dog walking into it and said that’s what we should be looking for with ours, and guess what….my very next session, well here it is (although he makes me work for it lol!) 🐾❤️😍

11/05/2023

Tonight I decided to take a break from the husbandry stuff. I was watching the amazing Excel students on the KPA Co-operative care course last night and wishing I had more tricks with Odie so I decided (because I’m a glutton for punishment!) to try again with the spin I have tried, unsuccessfully, to teach him for years. Here is tonight’s attempt. I’m luring it and you can see on the first one he does what he always does when I’ve tried it before puts his bum down, but I managed to save it! And once he’s done it once we get several more successful attempts 💃💃💃🐾🐾🐾

I get very loud and very giddy in this video! Next steps, remove the lure and minimise the cue (my finger).

09/05/2023

I’ve posted a whole video with a description of the Dremel process on my YouTube channel but I wanted to post tonights short session here. I only really started training with the Dremel in earnest yesterday and tonight we filed a nail! I probably let the session run too long, this video is only cut for treat refilling, because although he is comfortable he gets a look on the last filing that I think means I was pushing him too hard. But I was so excited and I NEVER learn! I’m lucky Odie is a rockstar. I need to remember, 10 treats is probably plenty when working on hard stuff like this.

08/05/2023

This week is prop introduction week on the KPA Cooperative Care course with Laura Monaco Torelli. I haven’t done much Dremel stuff with Odie so today I started with introducing the noise of the Dremel while I was working. I intermittently set it off over a period of 15 minutes and Odie was very chill, it didn’t phase him at all. Then tonight we did lateral recumbency while it was in his environment and he was so comfortable that I started it going and he decided to target it himself. Really happy with our progress…AND LOOK AT THAT KITTY STATIONING!!! And that lateral recumbency is *chefs kiss*.

06/05/2023

Today we tried husbandry on a hike. It helps that our hike is in our own fields so the main distractions are birds, nearby cows and sheep and smells!
We tried chin targeting, nose targets for teeth exams, middle behaviour for tactile, more stationing, and ‘cuddles’ while sheltering from the pouring rain in the abandoned horse box!
Improvements required - clean up our nose target cue, sort out my clicker mechanics! I saw myself reach for the food before the click but hey, that’s why we record ourselves isn’t it?

03/05/2023

I messed up the camera position here so you can’t see the process properly so I’ve just cut it to leave the last bit. The cue is ‘cuddles’ and the process is:

Cue-click-treat
Cue- hand up-click-treat
Cue-hand-bend-click-treat
Cue-hand-bend-tactile-click-treat

The idea is to ensure you’ve finished the tactile before clicking the behaviour so I need to keep and eye on this. Also repeat each step until you’re happy your dog is comfortable before moving on. As we have a very comfortable gentle restraint already I’ve progressed relatively quickly.

The cats have been very interested the instant I start clicking with Odie so tonight I taught them a station on the Klimb platform before I started. I reinforced them on the platform for about 5 minutes and then intermittently reinforced them while I was training with Odie, always putting Odie back on his bed before I fed the cats! Rhum got off once but soon jumped back on when he realised reinforcement was contingent on him sitting on the platform. Martin just hung out there chilling and having a wash 😂 You can just see Rhum in the video.

01/05/2023

I was working on stationing for the KPA Cooperative Care course and we were struggling. Then I was just on Instagram and I saw a beautiful video of Emelie Johnson Vegh using transport to get a back up and I thought I’d incorporate it into my stationing. Plus I remembered a fantastic training session I had with Emelie and Eva Bertilsson at last years ClickerExpo live with really short sessions and a clear start and finish using transport to take the dog to and from their mat. So here we go, a super short stationing session with cat distractions and little training gems I was privileged to learn from amazing trainers 😍
(Don’t judge the state of me, I was gardening today 😂)

29/04/2023

Ah maaaa gaaawd look at this 👀 😍. Stinky distraction and a perfect recall to a chin target! I think we have this husbandry stuff down!

THIS! Moments like this are why I bloody love clicker training!

25/04/2023

We have “gentle restraint”! We also have a lateral recumbency on his right side, I realise he has the same cue for each side but because of his arthritic hip he tends to lean over on to his left side as it’s more comfortable for him.

23/04/2023

Last week we signed up for the Karen Pryor Clicker Training course Cooperative Care : Husbandry at home with Laura Monaco Torelli. I’m most excited to take part as an Engage team. I was looking through the materials today and started practicing to see which behaviours we had and we’re not doing so bad 😃. Here is our ‘lateral recumbency’. Cat interruption was not tolerated by Odie so I had to remove them from the training area. I didn’t think the whole open plan thing through….
Things to work on include minimising the cue, seeing if we can get a ‘recumbency’ on both sides, introducing examination.

29/10/2022

Oodles Poodles got extra exercises from Alba Physiotherapy Veterinary Services this week. He needs to flex his dodgy hip more so I decided getting a back up to a step would help. I am not sure if I’ve ever done this with him before so we started with a low step, added in the cue and then went big! As you can see by the end he’s getting tired and just kind of hangs his dodgy leg rather than completing the step so I asked for one more (begged rather than coerced!) and then we ended the session. As ever he’s a rock star and I was slow with the food reinforcement (I still need to get sorted and find a place for everything here!).

05/09/2022

This morning my wee man Harris became seriously ill very suddenly. I took him straight to the vets but there was nothing they could do. I am devastated to say my beautiful wee man passed at the vets.
I am going to miss opening the blinds in the morning and seeing him sitting on the drive surveying his domain. I will miss the evening head butts and cuddles. I will miss hearing him shouting back at me when I call for him. I’ll just miss his chattiness. I’m going to miss his psychic skills that mean he disappears when it’s time for a vet visits! And I’m going to miss how sweet he was with Rhum and Martin. I’m going to really miss him so much and hope my boy Sweep (who we lost suddenly 2 years ago tomorrow) was waiting for him at the rainbow bridge 🌈💔