27/11/2017
I love working with Lexie. She's a smart, willing dog who just soaks up learning. I did have to wait out the teenage "stupid" stage recently with her, but it doesn't last long and I'd rather give her brain a chance to settle than fight with it.
What is the teenage "stupid" stage? At 7 to 8 months of age they are going through both a fear phase and a growth phase in which their crainum expands. They become the equivilant of a teenage 14 year old in the home. Their brain looks much like a 14 year old's bedroom. Piles of known cues, clutter of silly stuff and nothing in order. It's not that they are giving you the paw, just that they are trying to sort out the mess in their brain and find the cue you taught them. They actually did "forget" and put it in the fridge that day.
When working with a new dog who doesn't have a long history of reinforcement with me, doesn't have a routine with me, starting a routine and taking it slow is best and that's what she and I did. We'd work on little things for a few minutes a day and begin making The Game a fun thing. Why? Because if the dog isn't in The Game then the training is lost.
She's in The Game. She picked up and soon started paying more attention to me than to my Too Sexy for his Fur Malcolm. She loves him and loves playing with him and that too was important. Building good communication with other dogs, strong muscles, bones and healthy play is all important to a sound service dog.
She is, after all, going to need a hard off switch and Malcolm is teaching her how to use one. How to flip that switch and play and be a puppy. Half of our training time currently is play. Train, play, train, play. She was roached and dropped in the back end and lean, mainly because it had been 12 years between puppies for the family. All it took was telling them to increase her food, increase her playtime in the yard and not take her for roadwork at her tender age and let her play with Malcolm for the right type of mucle development. Low and behold, she is looking amazing. Her back straighened out, her hind end came up, her weight increased ncely and her muscle developed properly!
And her brain, her lovely brain, is right were I want it. She's so smart. She solved how to open my gate by watching us do it. She saw Malcolm open my cabinets and Fridge and Freezer and can do that now too. She also figured out anything with a pull just needs a tug and tada, it's open.
She's starting her retrieve, though we have work to make it reliable. She's picked up keys, credit cards, nail clippers, medicine bottles and many other odd shapes. Wood, plastic, metal, cloth all have been lifted up by her. For a dog who loved "Catch Me If You Can" I have turned "What You Got In Your Mouth" into a much funner game.
She loves Take It, Give/Thank You so far in our tug game as we play a version of Its Yer Choice to calm her jumping to take things.
She's slow on the Levels because I wasn't keeping good track, but now that I have her charted we are plugging away. She's got Level 1, though we are plugging holes in her recall.
Now we are working my Combo Zen/Focus training. I have found if I train Zen twice, first as in the book, then again for eye contact, I get a much stronger Zen and a much happier Focus. They don't know they are training for Focus, as a trainer we train better for the Focus if we work for Food in our hand and the Dog thinks they are working for something and finally I can start playing a game with the numbers and randomize the game for them.
How? Lexie is there already. I have her up to a rought 5 seconds, but a solid 3 seconds of eye contact. I have, for weeks, been trying to get her to just glance in my eyes. For Lexie this has been very difficult. For Malcolm it was terribly easy.
Lexie is finally able to offer eye contact as a behavior early and with ease. After weeks of struggling with me, of looking at Malcolm, Max, the walls and anything but me, she today glanced right at me first thing. That was my cue we were ready for fly.
I had the clicker in one hand, hot dog in a bowl and a pile of hot dog between her and Malcolm. Very hard. Malcolm had chin downed beside me. This was old hat for him.
She brought her nose up and I clicked it. Okay, she thought, I am on the right track. From there I clicked twice for glances, several times for 1 second eye contact. Maybe 5 or 6 times. I then threw in a 2 second eye contact and went back to one second eye contact and did another 4 before doing 2 two second eye contact and after a bit we were doing just 2 second eye contact and I would throw in a 3 second eye contact and go back to the 2 second eye contact with a rare 1 second eye contact. I was slipping Malcolm a treat off and on for reward for being good. As she got good at the 3 second I started working at the 4 second level, but she didn't hold up as well, she was starting to break eye contact more often, glance at Malcolm or loose focus.
Her limit, or solid point, was 3 seconds and her best point was 2 seconds.
If I was to restart her again I would at 1 second and work her back up and do that two or three times until I was confident I could start her at 2 seconds and work her there for several times until I could start her at 3 or 4 seconds several times and then cold test her after she had reached the level in which I could attach a cue. I believe that is 5 to 6 seconds.
Or, in this case, Level 2: Step 3 Focus. Focus can be difficult for the dog and trainer or it can be a lot of fun; it depends on your approach to training it.
I decided to train it using Zen and found it a lot of fun. By the time I am training the higher levels I have a dog who LOVES eye contact and OFFERS it.
Malcolm made eye contact natrually. He was intense and easy to teach. Lexie didn't and I find most dogs don't. Making a dog such as Lexie happy to make eye contact and not fearful of it, is important. She has to be in The Game and enjoy the learning process.
So, working on a teenage brain and waiting for it to be ready to learn was well worth it. Today was wonderful. We got up to 3 solid seconds on Focus. She's retaining her Level 2: Target training, She started Level 2: Go To Mat this week, Last week we started Level 2: Distance, she's working Level 2: Zen, she's working Level 2: Relax, I need to eval her Level 2: Handling and begin her Level 2: Communication. She's on target for foundation work for starting with me when she did two months ago.
What she's behind on is Public Access work. I need to get her out to Red Level Areas. Begin her early training for PA work. She's such a sweet dog, but she needs the field work.
I need to figure this out.
