Set yourself up for success, dummy

I always try to attempt life on hard mode. This is great when it comes to striving to meet your goals and so forth, but it absolutely sucks for dog training. I always try to go just a half inch past the point where I should be, and I end up wasting sessions on minimal progress and lots of frustration. When I go back to the point where everything is 'too easy', the session whizzes past and suddenly everything is perfect. My new challenge is to try to have the highest rate of reinforcement I can physically manage. If I go more than one or two seconds without clicking, I have something to fix.

I think that's one of the problems with the crate behaviors. They physically take time to perform, which means that the rate of reinforcement has to be lower. There's got to be a way to fix this... Maybe a cardboard box with a door cut out on both ends? He could run through it and avoid having to turn around. Or maybe I should just upgrade to the larger crate, since his current one is starting to be on the small side. It's still a fine size for sleeping, but it is harder to turn around quickly in. I've decided to finish L2 Crate and then do a brief interlude of Crate Games ala Susan Garrett, to build a little motivation. I want to get up to L2 step 4 (30 seconds lying down) because I don't like shutting the door in Max's face. It just doesn't seem to build positive associations.

Target 2-4 was another problematic thing today. He always wants to bite targets, and it's something we have to keep squelching. It gets easier every time, but it can still be a hassle. As today, when we were working on a post it. He was mostly just trying to bite it last time we worked it, so this time I started him with the whole pad of post its in my hand. No biting. Then just one stuck to my palm. Minimal biting. Stuck to the bed, some biting but we managed to get rid of that. Same goes for stuck to my leg, and on the floor. However if I hold it in my hand so that it flaps over the edge, it's irresistible. Well, thinks I, why not just let him chomp on it a little and click any accidental misses or non-tooth touches? Right. He tore the note into three equal sections, chewed, and swallowed them.

That's right, my dog ate the target.

Note to self: switch to painter's tape.

Distance is looking great. I started the same as in the first session a few days ago, and clicked him for passing the pole with his right shoulder. This time I didn't lure, and he had it in about 7 clicks, which was all the treats he had left in his bowl anyway.

Here's the day's second session:

Distance 2-1, dog goes around a pole:



Not a great session. I:

• Left a toy in a bad place
• Didn't start with clear criteria
• Sat in a bad place for the criteria I eventually got
• Sometimes clicked late
• Went on too long

Aargh. I realized all of this as I was doing it though, and fixed it for the other behavior.

Target 2-4, dog touches post-it or tape on wall:

Aside from a truck outside distracting him for a little while in the middle there, this was a good session. He does snuffle my hands a little, but I believe that he's looking for a hand target, not trying to mug for food, since his bowl is full of treats and sitting on the floor next to me. I stop giving the cue a few times when he seems confused, and put it back on when he has it straight. When you see me taking away the target, it's because he's trying to eat the tape. Sigh. At least it stays put better than the post-its did.

We took a two minute break to play with the squeaky armadillo I so stupidly left lying around during the distance exercise, and then we came back to get our very first start on Target 2-5, closing a door.

He has a habit of sitting right by doors that swing inwards, so he's been whacked with doors a few times. I think that's why he shies away when I open and shut this door. I have a feeling that one more session will have him shoving the door with great elan, and then we can work towards having him push it shut (though he won't be able to push it hard enough to latch it) and also to learn to go around back for a door that's wide open. This will be a useful trick.

Cues are fun!

In keeping with my vow to not spend excessive amounts of time on this blog, I hereby limit myself to ten minutes to write and proof this post. So there.

Max is going to fast map! I can feel it. He's nowhere near that now, of course, but I have been able to do some fairly complex cue proofing with him today and yesterday. Yesterday he could differentiate between down, sit, and touch, even though I held the target out for every command. (Stationary. I think moving would be too tempting at this point.) Today he was able to differentiate between target and focus, which is especially good because the cues are "touch" and "watch", respectively. I don't think he's got focus down completely, but the proofing tonight makes me very hopeful. He seems to be learning that 'cue' is a category of thing, and that behaviors have cues.

Sardines are dog crack. I stirred a little sardine juice into his kibble at breakfast, and he went nuts. The bits of sardine meat were like goooold.

I really am torn about reinforcers for him... he's so small, and gains weight so easily, that I can't really do training sessions with treats alone. I seem to be having good success working with kibble/treat mixes, but I wonder what the difference would be if I was only using fabulous foods. Maybe tomorrow I should try a training session with just tiny licks of fish and see if I get as much accomplished. I could definitely use some extra good stuff for crate training, which seems to require higher pay. Especially since I had to lock him up while he had to pee today due to a small family emergency.

Worked on L2 Relax today as well. Shaping him to lie on his side. He's been offering a foldback down with head down for a few days, since I reward that when he's in his crate or on a mat while I'm working. I wanted more, though, so today in two sessions I shaped him to flip his hips to the side, and now I'm working on getting him to roll over his shoulder onto his side. It's not going well, mostly because I'm a dummy. I tried luring him over to his side and rapidfire clicking him while he remained there. He offered it a few times in the morning, but not in the evening. The worst part is, I realized belatedly that when I click him for lying down, flipping his hip, head down, tail relaxed, he's actually relaxing and calming down. When I lure him, he's all tense muscles, pinned ears, and laserbeam eyes. Not what we're going for! I realized that if I click him for moving his front elbows closer together, he'll naturally sag back onto his shoulder. That's the plan for tomorrow. I am proud of how well he's learning to be shaped, yowling aside.

Of course, this work is destroying his nice neat foldback down. Once Relax is on cue, I'll go to L1 Down for a couple of days and ignore Relax. Then I'll proof them against each other. Then, someday, I'll actually start working L2 Down, which is downstay. Boy needs some duration work so he'll stop yodeling at about second 8 of Focus.

As expected, he passed L2 Target, steps 1, 2, and 3 today. I'll work on Step 4 tomorrow (I think, can't remember what I wrote in my log.)

Sneaky edit: Dog blogs are no fun without pictures! My itty bitty camcorder will come soon, and then I can post a video of me being a sloppy trainer. For now, enjoy Maxwell attempting to look noble at 17 weeks.

Meet Maxwell

I know from the past that this is a bad idea. I'm very good at spending too much time on blogs, and also very good at abandoning blogs when I can no longer afford that too much time.

Seeing as I have a teething puppy seeking to destroy my life right now, I have even less time than usual. However, I also love to read other peoples' training blogs, and I feel like I should contribute. I also would like to have some more detailed notes than my training log.

For now, I'll post briefly (BRIEFLY) every day or two. I won't keep session logs here or anything, that's what my tiny little notebook is for. I will note what we're working on and maybe post some pictures and videos.



This is Maximum Oxytocin, just registered today. At home we just call him Maxwell. Or Maximilian, if you're my grandmother. Or Maxolotl, if you're my mother. Or Gwendolyn, if you're my grandfather, bless his heart.

Max is a mix of a mix. His mom was some sort of longhaired terrier..... thing, 12 pounds and less than a year old when she had Max. He was the only shorthair in the litter, and seems to have had a great upbringing before I got him. (I'm in touch with his foster family, which are awesome people.) Since I got him, well, I've done my best. :P

He's super-terrierish, about 12 pounds at 18 weeks, and teething up a storm right now. His black and tan is fading rapidly, and all bets are on him being saddle patterned when he grows up. Boo hoo, I like his markings nowwwww. However, if he must go from mini-dobie to mini-shepherd, so be it, I'll forgive him.

He is all clicker-trained, all the time. We're doing Sue Ailsby's New Training Levels, and they're amazing. I'm throwing in a little of this and that as we go, but her order makes so, so, so much sense that I haven't had to alter much.

He just passed Level 1 today, which means that he knows Leave It (which is our party trick, it's very impressive in a little wiggly puppy), Target, Come, Sit, and Down, all to pretty basic levels. On most of them he's at least partway through the next level, and we have started (or passed!) some of the Level 2 behaviors already. Aside from the levels, he knows not to eat off of my plate, how to rest in my lap even at the dinner table, a passable chin target, and fetch. He also knows that the whole world is his friend, and that every dog is his best bud. As of a couple of days ago, he also knows that momma hens are not to be messed with.

In Level 2 he has passed Zen (leave it) and Come, and has made significant inroads on Focus (eye contact), Lazy Leash (loose leash walking), Target, Go to Mat, Crate, Relax, and Handling. Untouched so far in Level 2 are Sitstay, Downstay, Distance, Jump, Tricks and Communication. I haven't done my Homework, either, but that's not really a problem.

My current goal is to have Level 2 passed by Halloween. I hope to have it done by the end of September, but that might be a little optimistic. It's hard to tell with such a young pup- he learns in leaps and bounds. It took him around 3 weeks just to pass Level 1 Zen, and then he practically flew through Level 2 Zen with hardly any practice at all.

Once he passes Level 2, I'll take him in for his CGC (provided his Level 3 Lazy Leash is good enough, we're working ahead on that in the interests of sanity.) There's a Rally O trial in town on the 30th of November, and a little evil part of me thinks we could do it. A more perfectionist part of me wants to finish all 4 levels before we even think about trialing, and a third part of me just wants to teach him everything all at once.

Aaaand I just had to pause to take away his crate rug because he was eating one side of it. Sigh.

The current system, which seems to be working, is that I work on 3 behaviors a day, unless they go really quick, in which case I'll just pick something else at random. I choose tomorrow's three behaviors and note down what to test sometime the day before, which really make it a lot easier to keep moving. I've also found that working different behaviors every day seems to help Max, who tends to get hung up if we work too much on something. I had to take a week off from Down, and then he got it within a couple of days once we picked it back up.

Today we worked Sit 1, Down 1, and Target 1, but that only took breakfast, so we also worked Lazy Leash 2 (in a far too distracting environment, bad trainer) and Target 2, which went smashingly. I think we could have that passed in 2 days. I tested the last remaining steps of Sit and Down before the training session, and he passed just fine, so we're official!

Alright, that's probably enough of an info dump for today. I'll just leave it that my puppy is a monster, a genius, and a cuddler, and that I really, REALLY want a camcorder to record training sessions with. :(

Edit: forgot we worked chin target also today. And... I went and bought a $60 camcorder and $15 tripod off of Amazon. No, I shouldn't have, money is tight right now. But I'm not feeling so cheery today, and a little retail therapy was called for. Can't wait to see training videos!