Disorganized Organization

By katie, on March 31st, 2010%

I am the queen of plan making. But when it comes to accomplishing those plans I seem to be somewhere in the league of wicked step-sister.

But really, I can make a beautiful, detailed, well thought out plan. And I do, make many many plans. This is true of the four legged lessons too. But, alas, the plans so often fall by the wayside in the face of so many interruptions. So I thought I would try to put together a few tips for organizing regular dog training.

TIP #1:DON’T MAKE IT SO COMPLICATED!

Recently on the Training Levels Yahoo Group (a wealth of info everyone should tap into) there has been some discussion of journaling about Levels Training. There is a great on-line tracker specifically designed for this by someone is not only skilled at making plans, but very skilled at accomplishing them. (Unlike certain other two legged people(me) who shall remain nameless.) I fall into the category of making my journaling way too detailed so that it always gets left undone. So application of tip #1: I am going to pull up their journals and see where we are at.

TIP #2: EVERY LITTLE BIT COUNTS

I tend to be the all or nothing thinker, and try not to let that apply to working the pups. But, ahhh. . . .the fallacy of beautiful, complicated detailed plans: if I can’t do the whole plan perfect its not to encouraging to even try. Here enters another thought from the wisdom of the Training Levels group members: even 30 seconds of work with their dinner is “daily work”. Which is something both girls do nearly every day, so two wags for us! Another not-original-from-me (unfortunately) thought was to train a different behavior on each commercial break. Not sure that works for us as if its not on the DVR I don’t watch it. But the principle is sound. 2-3 minutes of work on a particular behavior w/ a longer break in between and each session is a new behavior. Application of tip #2:start the laundry. . .do a short session. etc. . . etc. . .etc. . .

Real life work and lessons get done every day, all day in our house, but it is the regular, more structured sessions that I have been neglecting the past bit so hopefully this will help us get back on track. And now in the spirit of applying these useful organization tips I’m going to go start the laundry and work a go to mat session and then I am going to track it, so if you’re interested in how we did hop over to Maizey’s journal and check it out!

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Sometimes Old Toys Are The Most Motivating Toys

By katie, on March 30th, 2010%
 
Since the middle of March we have been working on building Maizey’s toy drive. (A bit of the hodgepodge we are working on)
 
Having appropriate rewards as reinforcement is vital in clicker training. The right reward, and a variety of the right rewards will really motivate your pup to work harder and offer more behaviors. Humans are the same as our four legged friends in this manner, the higher the paycheck the more motivated we are to work. While food is usually the easiest thing to use toys are a very important part of this. Because of Maizey’s knee’s we couldn’t play tug, so I really neglected encouraging her toy drive. But with a couple of weeks of playing the games mentioned in the “Hodgepodge” post problem solved!
 
She is now enthusiastic and excited to work for her tug goody.
At first she was a little confused to not work for treats. She offered me less behaviors at first and would do as I asked and then run to the kitchen and look at the counter w/ her eager, “where’s my goody?” look. 
“Comeon mom I did good lets go getta goody”
 
“Where is it? Where’s my goody?”
But that was a learning experience for me too, because it showed me she was learning to work at a distance from the treats, but also I need to vary where we go to get her treat. Quickly though she got the idea that the tug game was her “goody”. It has been a lot of fun to watch this develop. 
One of the recommendations is to have a toy you use only for rewards so I dug in the toy box and pulled out one of her oldest and most revered tug toys. Made by the famous Zoe and Dare’s mom for my pups years ago it’s still going strong, although now missing the tennis ball (thanks Maizey:)) and one of its strings, it remains her favorite tug.
“Yeah I know this tug is twice my length and girth! I killed it and its goin’ with me!”
“I’m gonna get it!”
 ”I GOT IT!”
“And I’m not letting go!”
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The End Of An Era

By katie, on March 26th, 2010%

warning: this post does not contain useful information about dog training. Unless you count the down-stay Maizey did on the hood of the Jeep. Hmmm. . .that may be stretching a bit though.LOL

I try to avoid clichés, and “they says” and I realize this is both, I apologize in advance. But, ‘they say’ “All good things must come to an end.” I suppose that is true tonight.

Once upon a time in a land not so distant from here, in my younger and more adventurous days I bought a Jeep Wrangler. It had all of  7 miles on the odometer when I drove it off the lot. Then I met mehusbandy and were were married. Not long after the big event he undertook to build my “Little Jeep” into a rock crawling machine. Needless to say I was overjoyed. For many years growing the jeep was our hobby, it got bigger tires, stronger axles, better gears, more even bigger tires, lift kits, short shaft kits, K&N filters, Borla exhaust manifold with catback exhaust. . .ahh but I could go on and on and this is a dog training blog not a rock crawling one. And as we grew the Little Jeep we climbed bigger rocks, and harder trails and generally “a good time was had by all.” (sorry another cliché-two in one story what is the matter w/ me?)

Sadly we must sell the Not-So-Little-Jeep. Thus as  this is the is the end the “Little Jeep” era of our lives tonight the Jeep officially went up for sale. In case any of you dog-folk out there reading are also Jeep-folk like us and would like to see the add we posted feel free to message me and I’ll send you the link.

So in memoriam here are a couple of shots of the fun we had.

I guess I will just have to continue on in the 4 legged lessons era of my life, and in the spirit of that I promise next time to have some actual training information for you!LOL
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Mugged By A Herd Of Small Children

By katie, on March 24th, 2010%

We went for a walk this evening. In 25 minutes we made it four houses away.

Not an auspicious start to our “walk X number of miles in 30 days plan.” It’s X number of miles because I haven’t got that far in the plan yet to decide how many miles we’ll do.lol Apparently our walking log will look like: Day 1: 400′

Oh well, it was all for a good 4 legged lesson.

So what happened four houses down? We were mugged by herd of children! No, don’t be alarmed no one was injured or too permanently traumatized, they were a very nice herd of children. It started with two, then another little girl came out with her mom. That was interesting because the mom says to me, “Can she pet your dog with out getting her face chewed off?” By that point the first two kids were giving the girls treats and pets so I ‘m thinking, “I hope so or these two little kids are in some serious trouble!”

Slowly three more little kids trickled out and joined the party. So here is me, Meeka, Maizey and FIVE kids all kneeling down on the side walk. Did I mention I don’t have any kids? Yeah, me:no kids. I find when I’m by myself kids really aren’t interested in me, apparently I’m pretty boring. But me and my girls? Now that’s quality kid entertainment!

It went like this: us walking, Meeka perfect loose leash, Maizey on her new harness being a maniac because we are walking toward a scruffy black dog in a fence. Here comes two little kids, running, of course! I see them, I stop, put Meeka in a sit-stay and the kids of course run right up into the girls space, waving their hands and shouting, “Can we pet your dogs? Can we pet your dogs?”

Now here’s is where it get’s interesting. Maizey is still boinging  around and shouting at the scruffy black dog, the scruffy black dog is boinging around and shouting back, the kids are boinging around and shouting at me, Meeka is sitting, but wiggling, a lot. Cute girl.

I answer the kids, “You can pet them, but you all have to be nice.” I don’t think they realized I meant them and the dogs.lol So I told them to ball up their fists, hold them out and put them under the girls noses, then they could pet under their chins. I had to keep reminding Meeka to sit, but she would. Meanwhile. . . Maizey continues her crazy act.(sigh)

So I told the kids to back up two big steps, think “Mother-May-I-” in reverse. It worked! The kids backed up and then I told them to stand still (is that a stand-stay for kids?) and I backed up until Maizey was under threshold and could sit and do a glance “watch”. Then I told the kids to come forward very slowly. I kept cuing the girls to sit and marking it w/ a yes/treat. Soon enough the kids were giving the girls the treats and, thank goodness, everyone was a LOT calmer.

By this time the other kids had trickled in so I asked every one to squat down and we played a crazy game of “hand zen”. Picture the girls in a sit, and 5 little hands held out palm up just out reach above their heads. I place one treat in each little palm and tell them to immediately close their hand. Then I had them sit still with hands closed and when the girls sat and were calm, not nosing towards the treats, one of the little kids would open their hand and the girls could take the treat. If things started getting too wild (of course they were wild! Five kids, two dogs and a me is not a recipe for calm!lol) but if they started getting too wild I just told every one to close their hand and cued a “leave it” to my girls. They did so good! And they had a blast.

Then the kids wanted to see some tricks so I put Maizey on a sit in the grass and showed them Meeka’s wave, and hand shake. That really got them going because then they all wanted to “shake her hand.” So I told them to all get in a single-file line and one at a time they came up and put out their hand for a Meeka hand shake and gave her a treat. It was adorable. Meanwhile I was able to keep working Maizey on being calm and maintaining her sit-stay. The kids kept saying, “Can Maizey do tricks?” Little did they know she was learning the hardest trick of all-self control!

All in all we didn’t get our walk, but their truly was too many great 4 legged lessons to list. For the pups and kids!

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