Week 4 post ultrasound: days 54/53 to 61/60 since 1st/2nd mating

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Dog and human friends

We started the week meeting Daniel and Dina – dog and human friends, check! Game wasn’t particularly interested in playing with Dina apart from being happy to see and greet her (Chai, for her part, was very much interested in running with her gal), but loved getting lots and lots of scratches from Daniel. These last few days, Game has become extra social even around new dogs: she’ll wag and greet and lick snouts/have hers licked. This is interesting; I would have expected the opposite as her due day gets closer. But Game’s social side is blooming these days!

Saturday morning with Daniel and Dina.

What isn’t blooming is her love of exercise: being heavier than she ever was in combination with unusually (well, we know that climate change means the unusual is normal) warm days mean that Game has now decided she will no longer do her supposedly healthy endurance trots. That’s okay with me; the queen gets what the queen wants! These days, this is snuggles, sleeping in my bed and lots of food. As I’m typing this, it is Sunday, a little after 4PM and Game just requested (and received) her dinner two hours early. She continues enjoying food toys and training sessions – but not too, too much running around, thank you very much.

Exceptional treats and scavenging

Monday, March 11, was the first day Game didn’t want breakfast (but insisted on her other meals). On Tuesday, she ate half her breakfast and, as usual, a full lunch and dinner, and by Wednesday, she was back to normal. Yay! I hope that’s the only discomfort she ends up feeling.

Two of this week’s extra meals: beef shank with marrow bone, a side of rice and a touch of parsley and a fish-and-rice bowl with avocado sprinkles.

Exceptional scavenging finds of the week:

  • Chilaquiles
  • Yellow and blue tortilla chips
  • Crunchy fried tortilla
  • Cake frosting
  • A big puff pastry

Little training sessions

Among other things, one particular shaping project for our daily little training sessions was a spin. These are, I believe, the first two full spins Game has offered! Pregnant dogs learn new things too. Isn’t she super cute? That belly really shows (particularly because you can still see where it was shaved for the ultrasound) and her movements look … well, let’s say less athletic than usual. Panting – also not something she’d be doing usually, but carrying that baggage around changes things! Love the waggy tail and how she is having a great time in any case, pregnant-bellied or not!

This week’s outdoors adventure came with water fetch!

It’s warm and carrying that big belle is heavy. Game has slowed down, but few things are better than a good swim, rolling in the dirt and a slow trot around the lake!

Jacaranda bliss!

Preparations

+ I re-watched the first parts of the Puppy Culture video. Some notes on it below:

  • Supposedly (no sources were mentioned), puppies turn out to be “more docile” (quote from the film; I am not 100% sure how they’d operationalize “docile”) when you stroke the dog’s belly a lot late in the pregnancy. So I’ve been focussing our snuggle sessions more on Game’s belly – if and only if she consents, of course. I assume that as long as she enjoys it, it can’t hurt, whether it actually does something for the puppies or not.
  • The colostrum – the milk produced in the first 24 hours after giving birth – is how the puppies get maternal antibodies against anything she is immune/vaccinated to. (I had forgotten about this fact and used to think they already get these antibodies when plugged into her system in utero.) The wild thing is that the puppies’ bodies are only able to absorb these antibodies without breaking them down (and losing their benefits in the process) in the first 18 hours of their life! So getting colostrum in the first 18 hours matters. The maternal antibodies will protect them in their first few weeks of life. This is important to me since I am going to prioritize socialization, i.e. the puppies are going to be exposted to visitors and go places etc. before their first vaccine.
  • Activated sleep: fun fact! Tiny puppies twitch in their sleep. That’s because in their first two weeks of life, all puppies do is sleep and eat. The twitching is caused by electrical stimuli and it trains their muscles to get stronger as they sleep. What a big difference between altricial (born before they are fully developed – for example, puppies are born with their eyes and ears sealed shut) and precocial species (like horses who’ll run around and eat independently within hours after being born!)

+ I connected with Jessica Hekman to find answers to some questions that will help me with my socialization plan.1 I want to focus on human and dog socialization – the rest, you’ll pretty much get for free in a Mal, but I want these puppies to get the best chance at being able to be family members in addition to whatever else they’ll grow up doing. I’ve taken an Avidog breeder course, I’ve got Puppy Culture, took Jessica’s Genetics/Environment FDSA class, read the linked papers, Carol Beuchat’s genetics class, read the linked papers there and watched all of Jessica’s FDSA webinars on biology and personality. I still have questions:

I know puppies can’t hear or see when they are born. They find their way to each other and to their dam by means of detecting heat. But are they able to smell right away? (This will impact my socialization strategy: if they can already smell different dogs and different people, I would not only handle them myself and have Game interact with them before they can see and hear, but also have other humans handle them and introduce other dogs even when they are still blind and deaf. As a dog trainer, I have seen so much behavioral fallout that when it comes to behavioral benefit/health risk assessment of fragile puppies, I come down heavy on the side of the most socialization possible, no matter the health risk. Personally, I’d expose puppies in my care to physical risks anytime if it set them up for behavioral success.2 Jessica believes they can smell – which means I’ll want to already introduce humans and dogs other than me in the first and second weeks of life (other dogs will be tiny dogs or be held so they can’t step on the puppies.)

BUT – and this was the second question Jessica helped me answer: I know that Game may be protective of her litter. Probably not against close human friends, but potentially against dogs she doesn’t know extremely well. In order to avoid the puppies being exposed to Game’s potentially negative response, I would remove Game when introducing other dogs or humans who aren’t close friends of Game’s. But of course Game would smell the strangers – human or non-human – on her puppies when I let her back into the room. So my question to Jessica was: will she be stressed by this smell on her puppies? Will this stress translate into her milk, and if so, will milk satiated by stress hormones do more harm than socialization does good?

I don’t know where to look for this information, and it has probably not been studied in dogs. Jessica assumes, based on her knowledge of the scarce research that is out there, that only chronic stress would be passed on to the puppies in Game’s milk.

These were the only two questions I still had that Jessica could answer – sadly, there are hardly any studies on puppy socialization.

That’s why I’m skeptical of Puppy Culture3 protocols, for example: yes, there are expert interviews, which is all good – but where are the sources? Show me the studies! Some things said in the Puppy Culture film are incorrect – for example, they suggest we not comfort a scared puppy in order to avoid reinforcing their fear response. We know it is not possible to reinforce fear though. They also introduce their “adult recall cue” by doing the new cue/old cue technique in the wrong order: instead of saying the new cue (in the film, it’s “Come” before the old cue (in the film, the breeder’s high-pitched puppy recall), they say the old cue first and follow it up with the new cue.

Knowing things like this, expert interviews are not enough for me to trust that what is shared in Puppy Culture is necessarily the best or only approach. I want to see papers or get the information from someone I know won’t say things that haven’t been studied. Jessica is scientifically rigorous, and I am glad that I found “it has not been studied in dogs, but based on what we know about other animals, it is probably biologically/physiologically/neurochemically this way”-type answers to two of my questions with their help. Thank you, Jessica! And thank you for not sugarcoating things we do not know for sure!

+ I got raspberry leaf tea (supposedly helpful in the last days before giving birth) – I’ll add a shot of it to Game’s food starting tomorrow, on the first day of week 5 (day 62/61). This has not been scientifically studied, but since I don’t see it doing harm, why not. Plus I like tea myself.

+ I got an x-pen that I’ll use to take the puppies to parks and other public places, and to protect things I don’t want them to get into at home.

+ I got a re-usable puppy toilet and an extra rectangle of fake grass! Almost everything is ready!

Denning news

On Friday, March 15, Game joyfully dug into the pillow-duvet-blanket fort I’ve built for her. I’ve showed it to her every day and spent some time watching my drama TV shows with her (and without Chai) in there every day since I’ve finished it, and on the last day of this week, she finally seemed convinced that it might be a good place to have puppies. Yay! (She can have them anywhere she wants, but it would be most convenient there. That way, I won’t have to throw out my couch or my mattress after they’ve been soaked in fun bodily juices!)

The week’s color tracking sheet

As of Wednesday, I’ve been tracking Game’s body temperature. Supposedly, it goes down by 1 degree 24 hours before giving birth. I’m curious if that’s actually true!

If I made another tracking sheet, I would update this one further: the second line in the left column would go, since outstanding scavenging is further down on the list already. And I’d put “temperature” in as a pre-printed field. As it is, I will stick with this sheet since I’ve already printed it twice – and I won’t need a third one since a dog’s gestation period is 63 days! Wheee!

  1. Let me add this here: Jessica – and I appreciate this very much – would refuse to give anyone advice about socialization (“not a dog trainer, not a behaviorist, but a scientist.”) The socialization I will be doing will be partly informed by how Jessica has answered my questions about “what do we know – what does science say,” but it will always be my socialization decisions (I am saying this specifically in case some of them turn out to not go so well). Jessica would not say, “Do or don’t do this.”
    I so appreciate people who know what they can and want to have informed opinions on and who will not present personal opinions as facts. So let me just reiterate: Jessica is not the kind of person who would tell me what to do with a 2 week old puppy. That’s all me. Jessica would just say something like, “In rats that get licked by their mothers in X way, it has been measured that at Y weeks, there is more of Z brain chemical present. Here is the study.” Jessical would absolutely not say, “I believe you should do XYZ with your newborn puppies.” She would say, “Watch Puppy Culture or consult a behaviorist. I am not a dog trainer.” And I very, very much appreciate this. The dog world has so many people with SO many opinions based on just-so stories that are presented as facts. Having opinions is absolutely valid. Claiming they are facts is not. My puppy socialization will be based on my personal opinions, which I am forming based on sparsely available facts and my dog trainer bias (I constantly see behavior challenges, but not medical ones). ↩︎
  2. This is how I, personally, want to do this. It is not based on a rigorously studied protocol, but on my opinion, and I am NOT saying you should do this with your litter. You do you, not me! It is absolutely valid to prioritize physical health or aim for the balance that is right for YOU! We do not have enough evidence to know what the best approach is (and I doubt there is a single best approach anyways.) So I say, like in many things in life, we all do our own best and let others do theirs. And we don’t get upset about the fact that of course, different people are going to do things differently. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Enjoy my puppies – and in case the way I do things upsets you, go enjoy something that brings you joy instead! ↩︎
  3. While I am skeptical of Puppy Culture and do not consider it “the one and only perfect way of raising puppies” due to certain factual errors in the film and the lack of resources, I very much appreciate the film and will be using many of its ideas. It is without doubt an excellent puppy starter, and as a future puppy owner, knowing the person raising the puppies followed Puppy Culture protocols is undoubtedly a green flag. For a first-time puppy owner, I’d also recommend checking out Puppy Culture materials. Perfect or not, it comes with A LOT of truly excellent information and fun ideas!
    I also know that making factual errors happens – I made one in the puppy book I wrote, too. When I asked for it to be corrected or a “please note that …” leaflet to be added to the book, unfortunately, my publisher told me they could only do this for the next print run because it would be too expensive otherwise (disappointing!) Anyways, my point is: while healthy scientific rigor is great, we can also learn from things that aren’t perfect. ↩︎

Week 3 post ultrasound (days 47/46 to days 53/52 after 1st/2nd mating)

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We started the week with a VERY lazy Saturday (I was out on Friday and very much socially satiated and lazy).

Sunday, we were ready to rumble again! Alan and Kiba were going to join our hike, but Alan’s mom had to go to the emergency room, so that fell through. Charlie, Hilo and Nemo joined us instead:

We were out for a long time and had food after. Unlike she typically would,
Game was happy spending Monday just being lazy.

Monday, the day after the hike, Game slept on the bed most of the day and regularly made content grunty sounds (I haven’t heard her make these sounds before – they are very cute). She also spent a lot of time on her back, legs up in the air, and encouraged Chai to lick her.

The last day of Game’s week, Friday, she got to see another human and dog friend: Alan and Kiba.

Alan, Kiba, Game. Can you see her pregnant belly? She’s also clearly saying, this is enough carrying my heavy belly around on a hot day in the second picture: our cue to head home!

As of this week, there MUST be an extra snack every day. Game asks for it and won’t accept no for an answer. She now eats breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’m using the different food categories I want to expose the embryos to, so the extra snacks are eggs, raw meat (different protein sources), meat bones, canned food of different brands and human-food leftovers. I’m trying to remember to use hotdogs and cheese to train even though she’d work for kibble. I would love for the puppies to inherit Game’s iron stomach!

As of Thursday, Game has requested a reduction in exercise which, of course, she is is receiving!

Two of this week’s raw dinners/extra meals/snacks. My dog obviously doesn’t care what her food looks like, but I’m having fun with it.

I also got an extra formal meal this week, aka 5-course sushi at what was probably the fanciest restaurant I’ve been to (I’m not a fancy restaurant person, but this tasted AMAZING). It was a “thank you for dog training support!” dinner a friend took me on. You all, feel free to “pay” me with food for things I’d happily do just because! This was YUMM!

It’s whelping box time!

On March 6, Game had another bout of denning behavior: she dug in between the two pieces of my couch and under its blanket. I thought we’d have another week or so, but she is letting me know it is time to get the welping box … ahm … my kitchen … ready. I’ll temporarily turn my kitchen into a whelping room. I rarely cook anyways, so it’s not as if I was giving anything up. I’ll put a low barrier in the door so Game can come and go, but the puppies will have to stay. The kitchen has a tile floor, but it’s old and I don’t want puppy urin and other fun juices to get stuck in the cracks between the tiles, so I’ll use a large tarp to cover the floor. I’ll add a layer of puzzle mats for traction and then lots of blankets and pillows for Game to make herself comfortable so she can really dig herself a nest or cave or build a blanket fort in a corner – whatever makes her happy. The far side of the digging corner will have a washable fake-grass puppy toilet and water bowl. Anything else (enrichment items, visitors etc.) will fit in between these two ends of the rectangular room.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering: we’ll only be in the city for the first few weeks of the puppies’ lives. I want them to still be in Mexico City the first week of their sensitive socialization period, but after, we’ll have a house and yard outside the city so the puppies can run. It’s close enough to visit the city and keep socializing, but for the most part, I’ll want them to have lots of space once they are mobile!

Exceptional snacks and scavenging log of the week:

  • Extra dinners (frozen meat bones (beef), chicken, pork, rice, banana).
  • Desserts with Panacur mixed in: yogurt, eggs, a new kind of canned food (last week was Royal Canin, this week is Pedirgree de res molido).
  • Crackers a kid must have dropped in front of a school.
  • Some horse poop (apparently, pregnant Games like horse poop.)
  • The wing of a dead bird, smashed into the street (we’ll call it a food toy.)
  • Hotdogs and cheese for training/shaping sessions.

Preparations

  • I bought a thermometer. Supposedly, a dog’s body temperature drops by 1 degree 24 hours before whelping. I’ll monitor her temperature starting one week before her theoretical due date.
  • Balloons: I got a bag of balloons that I’ll pop to get the puppies used to startling sounds (in Game’s absence) during the sensitive socialization window.
  • I got nailpolish in the colors of the puppy collars I’m planning to use. In addition to putting collars on the puppies, I’ll also paint one of their nails in case the collars slip off when they are still tiny. I’m hoping for 4 puppies, so these should be more than enough colors!

Yes, I know you all know what nailpolish looks like. I’m just excited
and want to share the little things! Documenting stuff brings me joy.

  • I got most whelping box ingredients: a tarp, pool noodles and tape to seal off the floor, additional puzzle mats, soft, washable carpets, duvets, blankets and pillows, a low see-through barrier (for the door) and an additional water bowl. Still need to get puppy toilets, but that’s not urgent. We’re almost all set!
  • I re-watched Jessica Hekman‘s excellent The Biology of Socialization webinar. Speaking of – below are a few notes!

The biology of socialization1

We know puppies have a sensitive socialization period: behaviorally, this window of time is sensitive because during this time period, the puppy is physiologically not yet able to experience a fear response. That is to say, if you measured the puppy’s cortisol levels during that period, you wouldn’t find any because the puppy’s body cannot yet produce cortisol. OR (I’m not sure which one it is) the cortisol is there, but the puppy’s body is unable to detect it/respond to it. In either case, as a result, we do not see a fear response in the puppy’s behavior while they are in their sensitive socialization period. We can still socialize (introduce them to humans and other dogs) after the window has closed (i.e. the puppy’s body produces cortisol and they have the ability to experience fear, which we see in their behavior), but it will take longer. The younger the puppy is, the less cortisol is being produced and the milder their fear response. 

The most important/effective time to socialize a puppy is before there is any fear response: they are quick to file away any stimulus they encounter as safe and normal in their world. This window varies, but it goes from approximately 4 to 7 weeks of age. If you got a puppy yourself, you would usually only get them at 8 weeks or older. So a lot of the determining factors of who that puppy grows up to be are entirely out of your (the puppy’s future human’s) control.

We know, and I’m sure that’s the case in humans as well, that pretty much everything is a gene-environment interaction. So yes, the puppy’s genetics do matter – for example, we know that separation anxiety and noise sensitivity run in certain breeds and lines of dogs. While we haven’t figured out the complexity of the contributing genes, we know that if a puppy’s parents are both noise sensitive or both have separation anxiety, their offspring will be at a high risk to also develop these issues even if they are being cross-fostered by a mom who does not have these issues – it isn’t a learned response. 

Apart from that, there is the in-utero environment that plays a huge role in who the puppy will be. Jessica explains it this way: there is an on-switch (the amygdala), an off-switch (the hippocampus) and a volume control (how much cortisol will be produced) as far as a dog’s stress response is concerned.

The sensitivity of the nervous system dashboard is determined in utero and in the first weeks of life. This makes evolutionary sense because canids live all over the world, and their environments differ greatly. The majority of dogs, for example, are free roaming dogs and not pet dogs. Depending on where you grow up, it makes sense to have a hair-trigger on-switch for your fear response, OR to have an on-switch that takes quite a lot of effort to activate. (If you’re a pet dog, there is no need for your on switch to be sensitive, but if you are a free-roaming dog in certain parts of the world, there may be. What increases your survival chances is determined by the environment you will be living in later in life, and your (the dog’s) body is fine-tuned to that environment before being born and in the first weeks of life. It makes sense that it would be at this early stage rather than later: young puppies aren’t very mobile and their dam will have sought out a safe spot to have the puppies. So there is no need to be afraid of what they encounter within or in the immediate vicinity of their nest. However, as they get more mobile and start venturing further from the nest, it makes sense to be able to experience fear because there may be dangers just around the corner. Once you (the puppy) venture out into the world, your chances of survival would be low if you were not afraid of, say, a bird of prey or a car. 

The off switch is equally important. It relates to what we trainers call the dog’s “bounce back”: does the dog startle easily, but also recover quickly? Or does the dog startle easily and then need the rest of the day to recover? Jessica calls the latter case a sticky off-switch. The hippocampus “decides” when the volume (the amount of cortisol (and maybe also other stress hormones?)) is high enough to flip the off-switch. 

For a family dog, we want an on-switch that does not easily get flipped. We want a volume control set to low (only small amounts of cortisol being released when the dog feels stressed in case the on-switch does get triggered), and we want a sensitive off-switch (it only takes small amounts of cortisol to “convince” the hippocampus to turn off the stress response again).

I want to make the most out of the sensitive socialization window in terms of introducing my puppies to as many people and dogs as possible to maximize the chances that they will feel safe and confident around people and other dogs in their future. With working line Mals, you usually get the drive and the workiness for free, but you sure don’t get socialbility and stable temperaments around dogs and humans for free. So this is where I’ll focus my efforts: I want to give the puppies the greatest possible chance to be lovely to live with and be able to go places with their humans, independently of what or whether they work and do sports. Both parents are like this, and with a little luck and a little help, we’ll get puppies like this as well.

This week’s color planner/tracker

I re-designed the trackers for the remaining weeks: I removed the check-box for the weekly car ride – turns out we tend to go on more than one anyways these days. And I added a few things based on what I’ve learned over the last weeks.

  1. This is how I understood Jessica Hekman’s fantastic webinar. All mistakes in the paragraph below this heading are mine! ↩︎

Week 2 post ultrasound

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We started the week with this week’s raw snacks: meaty bones (beef). Game and Chai both approve, of course.

Dog and human friends

Game met Porfirio at the park around the block. Porfirio is a wirehaired big something mix she really likes. We don’t see him much, but this week, we did. He counts as a dog friend even though they only interacted briefly. It’s those spikes in happy anticipation I’m after: Game shows them when she first sees and then gets to greet a friend. Her entire body perks up; she grows an inch and starts wagging not only her tail, but even a little bit of her behind (much less than your typical Lab but very noticeable for a Mal), her ears go forward and get as pricked as it gets, her facial expression relaxes into a joyful smile, and then she playfully prances up to her friend. She doesn’t need the interaction to last a long time – it’s this moment of anticipation and then the greeting; some sniffing together and then Game is ready to wag her goodby-s and be on her way (keeping some of that joyful look on her face for a while).

On the second day of the week, we met our human friend Charlie and their two dogs for a hike, so Game got to run with Nemo and Hilo. Human friend – check; two more dog friends – check and off-leash nature time – check!

Left and middle: Game and Hilo; right: Chai, Hilo, Nemo, Charlie, Game (curled up between Charlie and me) and I hanging out post-hike. Even energizer bunny Hilo was ready to relax for a moment or two!

It was fascinating to see Game try and crawl-dig into three different holes in the hillside. This isn’t something she usually does. I wonder if there were intriguing smells in these holes or if it was early denning thoughts kicking in!

Also outside of dog friends, was a lucky girl this week and got to hang out with not just one, but two of her favorite humans (other than me) for a few hours each.

Toy play

This week’s designated extra toy play session was with a fleece tug (I haven’t used one of those with Game in a while – we usually play with big dog toys). She very much enjoyed it, but opted out contentedly after a shorter than usual session. It’ll be interesting to see if she satiates faster on toys over the next few weeks! Here’s a snippet of toy joy:

Clicker fun

Game got an extra-extra session this week (orange on the tracker) because I needed demo videos! She does (of course) never complain!

Scavenging and delicacies

Scavenged delicacies that stood out this week:

  • Horse poop (Game doesn’t usually eat it, so this was interesting!)
  • A whole big pan dulce Game wolfed down all at once so Chai wouldn’t get it, leading her to regurgitate and get to re-eat it three times in a row. Lucky girl (I guess!)

Raw and other exceptional snacks:

  • Meat bone (beef)
  • Canned food (Game is getting some every day with Panacur/fenbendazole mixed in, starting on day 40 post mating and all the way to the second day after whelping. I dewormed Chai today as well (since I now have a mountain of Panacur), so she also got to enjoy some (according to the dogs) delicious canned food.
  • 3/4 of an extracurricular rawhide bone Game snatched from Chai. (Chai finished the last quarter.)
  • 2 raw eggs.

Enjoying extracurricular rawhide on Thursday!

Preparations

This week, we got …

  • 2 plush toys I’ll be saving for the litter (I don’t usually buy them because they are expensive, but I want the puppies to experience lots of different ones). My plan is to just pick up a new one every time I get puppy supplies. Getting one or two at a time will make it feel like I’m not spending as much money as I’m actually spending on them.
  • More cleaning supplies (a big bottle of chlorine to get the smell out of the reusable pottie pads I’ll get for the puppies.)
  • I stacked up on rawhide so there’s always something to chew (other than furniture) around … but I suspect we’ll use a lot of it before the puppies are born, so I might have to re-stock.
  • I re-read Karen Cornwell’s Layman’s Guide to Whelping Puppies.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

[Love Bowie; love the song; here’s a link.]

  • As of Thursday, February 29, 2024, Game can’t deny it anymore (at least not to me): she’s showing now! It’s easier to notice than it would otherwise be because her belly has been partially shaved for the ultrasound, so changes are more apparent than if it was covered in fluff. Someone’s in there, and they are growing! Some – not all, but some – of her nipples have also started growing a bit!
  • This week, there were a few neighborhood walks Game was moving more slowly, taking her time to sniff rather than trot. Something must be feeling different!
  • She is getting hungrier and has been asking for evening snacks the last few days!
  • She has been slightly less snuggly some days this week. On those days, I’ve switched to looking into each others eyes and telling her what a good girl she is, and offering my hand to rest her head on (which she will gladly do and sometimes nestle her muzzle up to my hand). Other days, such as today, Friday (last day of Game’s week), gentle belly massages are very much appreciated.
  • Some of the changes (such as walking more slowly) I’ve observed this week may be because it has been (I believe) this year’s warmest week so far.

Game’s color tracking chart for the week

The little boxes I added below each day, starting on Sunday, get checked off anytime I deworm – this way, I make sure I don’t forget. I’ll redesign my template once I run out of the ones I had printed.

Trick training: fetch anything to hand (part 4/4)

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January 25, 2024: woohooo!

I got the fridge-temperature beer can delivered to hand in between two rice-can reps, but off screen – so not sharing that video.

January 28, 2024: phone success and another fridge-temperature can video

I got the phone 3 times in a row! Woohooo! I didn’t add any easy objects; just did 3 spontaneous phone reps. Phone – check! Crossing it off the object-goals list!

I also repeated the fridge temperature can, this time on video – no easy objects. Chai dropped it a few times, but did well enough for me to decide it is ready to be crossed off my object goals list as well. Definitely not using this can again; we have dropped it too often for it to still be safe. Will occasionally repeat with new cans or new rice-filled cans.

Our updated object goals list:

Wallet, credit card, keys, phone, beer can, bank bill, full plastic bottles, coin, porcelain mug, thermos mug, leash handle, retractable leash, keys, silverware.

Easy-objects list:

  • 20-peso bill (Jan. 9, 2024)
  • Spoon (Jan. 10, 2024)
  • Fork (Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Coin (Jan. 12, 2024)
  • Keys (Jan. 11 & January 14, 2024)
  • Poop bag roll (Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Wallet (Jan. 17 & Jan. 18, 2024)
  • Rice-filled can (Jan. 21, & Jan. 22 & Jan 23 & Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Porcelain mug
  • Highlighter
  • Phone
  • (Rice-filled) can

February 5, 2024: thermos mug success!

Today, I used the familiar porcelain mug in combination with the second mug – a new one for Chai: the thermos mug (thank you, Chris). I thought the familiar mug might make a good introduction to the new one. Turns out the thermos mug was much easier for Chai than the porcelain mug! I’ll remove the porcelain mug from the easy-objects list (I don’t want it to break if Chai keeps tossing it around like this) and replace it with the thermos one instead. That’s the one I use (and drop) more often anyways.

Updated object goals list:

Wallet, credit card, keys, phone, beer can, bank bill, full plastic bottles, coin, porcelain mug, thermos mug, leash handle, retractable leash, keys, silverware.

Easy objects list:

  • 20-peso bill (Jan. 9, 2024)
  • Spoon (Jan. 10, 2024)
  • Fork (Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Coin (Jan. 12, 2024)
  • Keys (Jan. 11 & January 14, 2024)
  • Poop bag roll (Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Wallet (Jan. 17 & Jan. 18, 2024)
  • Rice-filled can (Jan. 21, & Jan. 22 & Jan 23 & Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Thermos mug
  • Highlighter
  • Phone
  • (Rice-filled) can

February 6, 2023: retractable leash success and thermos mug struggles

I’ve been slowing down a bit since I’ve gotten a little tired of this trick – I’m ready to switch to another one! – but I am determined to make it through my fetchable objects list first! So here we are again, using the thermos mug as an easy object to get more reps in and the retractable leash as a new object. Turns out the thermos mug was harder today than yesterday! Chai did it though, but good thing we kept it in the rotation. The retractable leash turned out to be surprisingly easy. I’ll bold the thermos mug in my easy objects list to remember to use it again soon. The retractable leash has another session to look forward to as well – next time playing the part of the easy object.

Updated object goals list:

Wallet, credit card, keys, phone, beer can, bank bill, full plastic bottles, coin, porcelain mug, thermos mug, leash handle, retractable leash, keys, silverware.

Easy-objects list:

  • 20-peso bill (Jan. 9, 2024)
  • Spoon (Jan. 10, 2024)
  • Fork (Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Coin (Jan. 12, 2024)
  • Keys (Jan. 11 & January 14, 2024)
  • Poop bag roll (Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Wallet (Jan. 17 & Jan. 18, 2024)
  • Rice-filled can (Jan. 21 & Jan. 22 & Jan 23 & Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Thermos mug (Feb. 6, 2024 & Feb. 20, 2024)
  • Highlighter (Feb. 20, 2024)
  • Phone
  • (Rice-filled) can
  • Retractable leash (Feb. 8, 2024)

Next session(s):

  • Do a mug game with yogurt on the handle before using the thermos mug again.

February 8, 2024: checking off the credit card goal!

Today, I took a break from mugs and used the retractable leash as an easy object. Go Chai! I also did a few more credit card rounds. I set myself a goal that would allow me to check credit cards off my fetchable objects list: pick up the bent/chewed-on card from the floor, whichever side is up, and pick up a new flat card (no tape, no raised numbers) from the puzzle mats. This was my compromise for actual credit cards on the floor (the only useless plastic card I had didn’t only not have raised numbers but was only half as “tall” as a credit card). I would have loved to try an un-chewed credit card with the numbers facing the floor on the floor itself, but I only have the one I still use and don’t want it to potentially die between the teeth of a Border Collie. I’ll just have to wait until it expires; in the meantime, the other card was a good compromise. Chai did great with these three tasks. Which means I get to check off credit cards! Go (not so) puppy!

Also, random note: I wish the flag on the wall behind me was Valentino Vecchetti’s updated one. I’ll give it away this year or swap it for the new one. It bothers me every time I see it on video. That said, as by my rule that I only keep things I use, it’ll stay up for now.

We now only have one new object left: a leather leash. I’ll swap in the thermos mug for this one, but only after giving Chai a chance to lick yogurt off its handle.

Updated object-goals list:

Wallet, credit card, keys, phone, beer can, bank bill, full plastic bottles, coin, porcelain mug, thermos mug, leash handle, retractable leash, keys, silverware.

February 10, 2024: licking yogurt and granola of the thermos mug handle and giving the leather leash a try!

My goal with this food toy is to make it more likely Chai will pick up the mug by the handle in our fetch anything sessions.

Unfortunately, the session we had after – thermos mug and leash handle – didn’t go as I had hoped: Chai didn’t target the handle of the mug and continued struggling to pick it up. The leash handle did not appear pick-up-able to her at all. Before having another leash handle session, I’ll try dipping it in something delicious. The other route would be to cut off the handle and teach Chai to pick up just that part – but I don’t want to ruin my leash unless I have to.

February 11, 2024: licking sweet cream off the leash handle

Again, my goal here is to make the handle of the leash the most appealing part to be picked up. The last time we tried, Chai didn’t pick up the leash at all. This time, I dipped it in sweet cream and turnd it into a food toy: I hoped she would carry it to the couch after (as she likes to do with most found treasures) if I just left it on the floor, but Chai wasn’t interested once she had finished her sweet cream feast.

February 20, 2024: highlighter, thermos mug, cut-off leash handle … and leash handle attached to a leash on a dog! Go Chai!

We had a bit of a break because our training time was spent videoing new demo videos – both Game and Chai got to play!

Now we’re back for more “Gimme” and taking another stab at the last object on our fetchable object goals list: the elusive leash handle!

I admitted defeat: having Chai lick tasty stuff off the handle of my old leash didn’t transfer to picking it up. So I cut the handle off my current leather leash (sniff), bought an identical one, taught Chai to hand me the cut-off handle and then the handle on the actual (new) leash.

This is the session with just the leash handle piece I’ve cut off. I’ve already added Game to the picture because in the final scenario I imagine using this skill, there will be a dog on the other end of the leash I drop:

After a break, I had another session – the break-through one! We can now retrieve leashes and will pick them up by their handle!

Wallet, credit card, keys, phone, beer can, bank bill, full plastic bottles, coin, porcelain mug, thermos mug, leash handle, retractable leash, keys, silverware!

I get to cross off my last object on the retrievable objects list. Wohoo! Mission accomplished! Before generalizing the behavior to new environments, we’ll take a break from this trick. Time to work on something else for a while – I’m ready for a change!

Week 1 post ultrasound: joy for Game and in-utero experiences for the REBELDEs

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This week’s food toy (Kong Wobbler)

I used to have a Wobbler but gave it away when I thought I was moving. To celebrate Game’s pregnancy, we got a new one!

This week’s out-of-the-city freedom trip

A little bit of this weeks at-home dog/dog play

Apart from Game and Chai playing, we also saw our dog friend Dina and two human friends, Daniel and Pabla, and Game and I tugged and played fetch at Ciudad Universitaria.

Scavenging and delicacies

A little scavenging happens on most walks, but this week, scavenged delicacies that stood out to me were:

  • a big, very ripe tomato
  • a stack of tortillas

    You’re a lucky girl, Game!

This week’s raw meal was 2 eggs:

Preparations

Our preparations are coming along:

  • I got 19 cute and tiny puppy collars (they came in a bag of 19). I’m pretty sure I won’t need them all – if you’re in Mexico City, reach out if you’d like a collar for your tiny dog or cat and I will gift you one!
  • I got cleaning supplies – among other things, 8 kitchen towel rolls. That’s because we’ve got a water shortage and there is no way of telling whether I’ll have running water to wash my usual cleaning stuff or not. Better be prepared. And yes, I know you all know what paper towels look like, but I’m in a picture-taking and sharing mood!
  • Equally important, today I got a giant box of the dewormer that’s recommended to be given daily from day 40 onwards (Panacur/Fenbendazol) and that I’ll also use for the puppies.
  • And finally, I’ve started re-reading Jessica Hekman‘s The Melting Pot: Genes, Environment, Personality class in my FDSA library. I’ve got a bunch of classes, webinars and videos about puppy development I want to re-ried/watch again over the next couple weeks!

Tracking fun

… and my old-fashioned hand-written tracker, just to make sure I do all of the things on this list a minimum number of times over the next couple weeks. A lot of them (and much more) would happen anyways, of course.

The “snuggle sessions” are interesting because they feel so meditative to me. I usually don’t pay quite as much attention when petting my dogs, but for the last seven days, I’ve looked into Game’s eyes, focused on her body, explored where she most likes to be massaged. Apart from stroking her ears and chest scratches – she’s always loved this – she is now making comfy-Mal sounds when I gently touch a certain part of her belly now that she’s pregnant. Of course, there are always breaks where I ask her if she wants to opt in again or has had enough.

And as you can see on my tracker, this week’s shaping project was all about playing with spins. Next week, we’ll do something else!

I’m finding it fun to do old-fashioned color pencil stuff every day – this really works for me, and it’s rainbowy!

Introducing the (yet to be born) REBELDE litter!

Game had an ultrasound 30 days after the first mating/29 days after the second mating, and it’s confirmed: she is pregnant! I’m so excited! Game is everything I’d want in a breeding female and more, but my previous attempts were unsuccessful. I’ll be transparent about the things going on with her and, once the time comes, the puppies because I want to share a slice of puppy joy with you all, and why not also share my personal dreams and reasons for breeding. You may agree or disagree with them – that’s totally fine; that’s about you, not me. Keep it to yourselves, please. No need to take away from my joy. That’s why I’ll be closing comments on this post. You can of course “like” if you are sharing in the joy!

Below are Game’s ultrasound results!

45807-GameDownload

WHAT am I doing here?

Just my own thing, really: something I’ve dreamed of ever since I was a little kid was raising a litter of puppies at some point in my life. I’ve learned a lot about breeding by reading books, taking Puppy Culture and Avidog courses and taking classes and a 1-on-1 from Jessica Hekman over the last couple years to learn as much as possible about puppy development. I am as ready as I will ever be. What I personally hope to get out of this (probably one and only) breeding adventure is more knowledge about dogs between 0 and 8 weeks of age: so far, I’ve only raised and worked with puppies who were 7 weeks and older. This litter is going to teach me A LOT.

Rebelde!

I have a litter theme! Why? Because it’s fun! Rebelde by RBD is Game’s theme song because I happened to be listening to it when I decided to give breeding her one last try (the next time she goes into heat, she would be too old for me to want to breed her).

While this isn’t the greatest song in the world, it fits in the sense that not everyone will approve of the sire I’ve chosen for Game. I’m okay with that. This choice is right for me and I will make sure every one of these puppies goes to a most excellent home.

I’ll share my puppy joy with you all because I want you to have a slice of it too: puppies are wonderful. They create bonds between strangers. They make you laugh so much and allow you to fully live in the current moment for a moment. Joy is not a limited resource – take as much as you can carry!

Selecting a sire

Before trying to breed Game for the first time in Mexico, I temperament-tested 6 different male dogs. I didn’t mind whether they were purebred Malinois or not, but I only tested active/worky (i.e. seemingly healthy) dogs of the shepherd-type. That’s because I wanted some predictability, and that’s easiest to achieve if I cross my shepherdy pointy-eared Malinois to a similar dog. Among the dogs I tested were:

  • Zero German Shepherds (they are popular, but mostly extremely show-liney and I very much didn’t want that)
  • Zero White Swiss Shepherds (I have yet to meet one who is cool and worky; I the ones I know are very mellow pets)
  • 1 Dutch Shepherd
  • 1 Mal or GSD mix, Mal sized and shaped, GSDish patterned
  • 4 Malinois (of the worky dogs I see here, Mals are by far the most popular)

I made up a temperament test that I’m sharing below. You’ll note that there is nothing about health testing (told you you wouldn’t necessarily approve of this breeding. That’s why.) It is not common in Mexico to health test in the way people in the US commonly do: breeders (i.e. people who make conscious choices about crossing dogs) generally observe and only breed dogs who are both good workers and lovely companions (or whatever temperament they want in a dog.) Mal breeders who are into bitesports, for example, are more likely to look for civil dogs rather than lovely companions. Bitesports in Mexico include personal protection, which is about teaching dogs to (also) attack people who do not wear bite suits and guard houses, specific individuals, cars etc. I’ve only researched the very, very surface of this when I first got here, so I hope I’m not misrepresenting it. The main difference the sport of personal protection seems to have from traditional bitesports is that it is not about impulse/self control but about the dog hanging in there and not backing down against all odds. So there is (I believe; I am not an expert by any means) more weight placed on attacking than on letting go. This sport has several levels, and the dogs are generally bred for and sold to people looking for personal protection dogs. You’re unlikely to see them out walking the streets because they are not necessarily safe to have in public.

On the other hand, there are also lovely companion Mals you see doing incredibly well in public, but I’m pretty certain that these dogs don’t typically come from personal protection/civil lines.

If a dog or their parent dies of cancer young, you don’t breed them. It is common to get regular health exams in breeding dogs, including blood tests for, I believe, cancer markers and general health (I wouldn’t know what you look at there if you’re a vet drawing blood) – but nothing more invasive. Drago (Game’s sire) was all clear on his last health exam, but that really is quite superficial. X-rays aren’t usually done and DNA testing hasn’t quite made it to Mexico yet either.

The humans of the dogs I temperament-tested would probably have agreed if I asked them to do x-rays of the dogs’ hips and shoulders as long as I paid for these exams. I didn’t ask because I want to absorb as much of what I invest in the puppies myself. X-raying would add quite an expense to this that I might have to pass on to puppy buyers, and I don’t want to do that. I wouldn’t trust a Mexican vet’s x-ray evaluation because there doesn’t seem to be a system like there is in Europe and the US. So I would have to send the x-rays to, for example, PennHIP. It would add expenses I may not be able to absorb and do not want to pass on to a puppy’s future families, and I may end up with x-rays where the dog isn’t positioned right anyways.

So instead, I consulted with a veterinarian with an interest in breeding and genetics who I trust. They considered it okay to breed to a dog who was not x-rayed as long as I knew this dog was highly active without showing injuries or unnatural movements suggesting pain and as long as my own dog was clear. Since all of the above is the case, I went without health-testing on the sire. (If you’re reading this and think I’m an idiot – fair enough. I don’t care and I don’t want to hear about it. I already bred the dog, so your opinion changes nothing. Move on with your life.)

I temperament-tested every candidate myself with the owner watching. Some questions were questions I had to rely on the owner’s answers for:

  • How does the dog react to firecrackers? (Mexico has A LOT of firecrackers, especially in small towns, and we know there is a genetic factor to noise sensitivity.)
  • What do we know about the dog’s past/pedigree?
  • Do we know anything about illnesses in the dog and/or their relatives? If so, what?
  • What does the dog eat and are there food sensitivities the owner is aware of?
  • Who does the dog live with and do they get along?
  • Is the dog trained/training in any sports, work or life skills? (I actually preferred as little training as possible because I wanted to see what “the raw dog” brought to the table rather than how good of a trainer the owner was.)
  • Has the dog sired a litter before? (If yes, what do we know about his puppies?)

For the questions above, I trusted the owner’s accounts. For the ones below, I tested the dog:

  • What’s the dog’s first reaction when I, a stranger, enter the dog’s home (in a friendly way)?
  • How does the dog respond if they have a bone or toy and someone approaches? (Resource guarding question: we know there’s genetics involved as well.) I first asked the question, then gave the owner a rawhide bone and/or toy I had brought to give to the dog and asked the owner to take it away again after a minute. If the dog didn’t mind the owner taking it and assured me it was going to be safe, I asked them to give it back to the dog and then took it away myself after another minute (observing the dog’s body language, of course – I wasn’t interested in getting bitten).
  • How does the dog respond when they head out and meet a strange human?
  • How does the dog respond when they head out and meet a strange dog?

    As for the two questions above, I took dog and owner for a brief walk until we had met both at least one human and at least one dog, and observed. I asked the owner to have their dog at liberty, i.e. either off leash or on a 5m long line I had brought, and not use cues/commands.
  • Is the dog interested in playing? I brought different toys and observed the owner trying to get the dog to play, and then tried playing with them myself.
  • Does the dog work for food? (Again, I asked the owner to demo and then tried luring a novel behavior myself with kibble and hot dog slices.)

The first time I tried crossing Game in Mexico was almost exactly a year ago. The sire was the Dutch Shepherd, Hades, who had beaten the second-highest scoring dog by one point: Hades doesn’t mind fireworks at all; he doesn’t blink an eye. We were trying twice when Game was in standing heat. She really liked Hades and was very flirty, but he couldn’t figure out his part. He hadn’t sired a litter before; Game hadn’t been mated before and things ended up not working. They both had a lot of fun and oral sex though, so good for them!

Game and Hades in 2023 (I think).

This time, I used the second highest scoring dog because this dog has already sired four litters – so I knew he’d know what to do. I had brought Game along way back when I tested this dog and they had gotten along well and played together, so I knew she liked him (Drago) too. (Game got to come to all temperament tests and let me know what she thought of the candidates.)

Left: Eduardo with Drago and Game during Drago’s temperament test, Drago (middle) and Drago (front) and Foxy (Hades’ owner’s other adult Malinois) playing fetch, 2022.

The reason Drago scored second rather than first is that unlike the Dutchie (Hades), Drago minds fireworks in a certain context: he doesn’t care about them at all as long as he is out and about with his humans, but when he is home and there are continued firecrackers, he retreats to his “dog house” in a safe corner until they pass. (He only retreats to the dog house for firecrackers – otherwise, he’ll rest close to his people or wander about the house/yard, depending on what is going on.) No shaking, stress-panting, vocalizing etc., but clearly a reaction that shows discomfort around firecrackers. Without Drago losing a point in my evaluation for noise sensitivity, he and Hades would have tied.

Drago’s evaluation

Below are the observations for Drago in the different categories:

What do we know about his past/pedigree: he’s from an FCI registered working/sports kennel in Toluca. His parents do agility and obedience. Drago himself does not have papers (in Mexico, you can get papers for the puppies of FCI-registered breeding parents, but it costs extra to get these papers from the club. It is common that breeders ask buyers whether they want the papers or not. If they want them, the buyer pays the cost for papering the puppy. Drago’s human, Eduardo, didn’t care about the papers.)

Drago himself and his previous puppies Eduardo is in touch with are healthy and have no food sensitivities; it is unknown whether the parents have food sensitivities but they are otherwise active sports dogs and appear healthy.

Drago eats partly kibble and partly a homemade raw diet.

Drago lives with Eduardo (his human), two female Mals, a cat, Eduardo’s sister and Eduardo’s dad. He gets along with all household members. Both Eduardo’s brother and a friend visit regularly with their respective children, the youngest one of whom is 4. Drago gets along with the kids, interacts but doesn’t get nervous and doesn’t push over the kids. He didn’t need to be taught this; he was naturally good around them.

Resource guarding: no. Both me and Eduardo could take things from him and he just smiled up at us in an “Alright, what’s next?” kind of way. Eduardo tells me the other household dogs can also take stuff from him and he’s chill about it.

When I entered the first time, Drago was relaxed and confident – neither desperate to greet me nor shy. He observed, saw that the new person entering (I) was being treated like a friend by his humans and wagged his hello without intruding my space. When I invited him to greet me, he came over and did so in a friendly manner. Nothing frantic. He didn’t mind me touching him.

Eduardo almost exclusively walks with Drago off leash when they roam the neighborhood. It was market day, so we went for a walk that led us through a street market where we met multiple dogs and people. Throughout, Eduardo just walked and Drago stayed within sight radius, sniffing and doing dog things without losing us. He didn’t mind any of the people or dogs we met, seemed confident and sure of himself and enjoying his walk.

Drago is a ball junkie. He’d fetch until he drops and also plays tug, but fetch is his favorite. On the day I evaluated him, I came right after they had had a long toy play session. It was a hot day, and I couldn’t convince him to play tug with me. (Based on what Eduardo tells me, I suspect I might have if he hadn’t just had the hot fetch session.)

He was happy to take my hotdog slices, but not my kibble (maybe also because he was hot). I could clearly see that he treated the hotdog interactions with me as transactions while he was in tune and there was a relationship-based work ethic when Eduardo asked something of him.

He has basic companion dog training and a sporty trick: he has a recall, doesn’t jump up on people and furniture, stays within his radius on their many off-leash urban adventures, doesn’t pull on the leash (which he rarely wears), plays with toys enthusiastically and cooperatively and can jump 2m (!) hurdles.

According to Eduardo, the basic living-together behaviors were very easy to train and just seemed to “make sense” to Drago.

He and Game played a little on neutral territory. Drago was more playful than her, but responded beautifully to the boundaries she set and respected them. Not timid at all, just really good dog/dog skills. He had no problem with her entering the house together with him.

When I temperament-tested Drago originally in 2022, he had sired two litters. By the time I visited for Game’s breeding in 2024, there had been two more litters and I got the opportunity to meet two adult puppies from two different litters: a female who now lives with Drago and his people and is very similar to him in her behaviors (Eduardo told me this; I saw her but didn’t test her) and a male who lives nearby. The male’s human came over with his dog when I was there so we could all meet. He (I forget his name) happily showed off his tricks in public (leg weaves, sits) … He arrived and left off leash and played with Drago and Game, showing exellent dog/dog skills even around my female in heat.

Left: Game meets Drago’s adult son, right: Game and Drago before their first mating. (January, 2024.)

Main criterion: sociability

As you’ll see from my temperament test, I was most interested in sociability (being able to be at liberty around dogs and humans without eating them), interest in working with humans for food and toys and – extremely important to me – noise sensitivity. This element matters because Game is noise sensitive, and I would like to balance this out with the sire. Personally, I’d call noise-sensitivity Game’s only flaw (but I’m biased, of course).

Ideally, I would have bred Game to a dog like Hades, the Dutchie, who doesn’t care AT ALL about fireworks. However, it didn’t work with Hades and ALL the other dogs I tested cared about fireworks to some extent. Drago cared the least amount.

This is not a coincidence – it’s not like I tested a particularly noise-sensitive population of dogs. It’s that I know hardly any Mexican or Guatemaln dogs who aren’t at least a little bit noise sensitive. (Except for Mexico City proper; the city is a lot quieter. I didn’t test any city dogs.)

“Noise” in a Latin American country isn’t the same as in the US or Europe. Many dogs sensitize over the course of their lives. That has been the case for Game: she spent her first New Year’s Eve in Austria and didn’t mind the single night of fireworks at all. Same about the occasional firework display when we lived in Thailand. When we moved to Guatemala, she started out that way too: she didn’t mind. But we moved into a house next to a church. Churches in Guatemalan villages – at least this church in this Guatemalan village – have several services a day, and they will announce each one of them with about 30 minutes of nonstop “bombas” (that’s the name in Guatemalan Spanish for INCREDIBLY loud firecrackers. They sound as if a bomb was exploding next to you. It’s nothing like what I’m used to from other parts of the world and I haven’t heard anything like it outside of Latin America). We woke up this way, it happened at noon and it happened at night – every single day. Over the course of a few months, Game sensitized to these sounds.

For a dog living in Europe, there is only a single day a year where there are fireworks – New Year’s Eve. I suspect Game wouldn’t have developed sound sensitivity there at all – but even if she had, it would be easy to medicate her once a year. Same goes for the US. Medicating your dog on one or two predictable days a year is perfectly fine. But you can’t medicate your dog three times a day, every single day of their life, with the medications we use for noise sensitivity. And Game’s puppies may end up living in Mexico – so I want to make it as improbable as possible for them to worry about loud noises.

An aside: Game has overcome her fear with the help of the Take A Breath Game from CU! It’s crazy how powerful that game is. First, we we consicously breathed and ate thourough each bout of fireworks. By now, she is okay even without the exercise!

In any case, I don’t expect Game’s puppy’s future owners to know CU and ideally, they won’t be noise sensitive in the first place.

Game

Speaking of Game – here’s some stuff about her!

Game is Ygame van’t Merleboosch, born in the Netherlands. She’s an FCI registered KNPV line dog:

This is her unique “genetic pawprint” (this is not an Embark or Wisdom Panel test; I haven’t done those):

These are her (pretty old) hip and shoulder x-rays, done in Austria. As by the European FCI evaluation system, these would be “A” hips (best score), “A” elbows (best score) and there is no lumbosacral transitional vertebra (we want there to be none as it, as far as I understand, makes dogs more prone to back conditions).

Game has passed her breeding evaluation test in Guatemala, where I was originally going to breed her – I just didn’t get around to it because I wasn’t able to renew my temporary residency and left the country. Anyways, here’s her “apt for breeding” certificate (which involved an evaluation by a judge) and the Spanish translation/FCI ACANGUA registration of her pedigree that I had to do in order to get “apt for breeding”:

I even registered a kennel in Guatemala. “Caniversity” was my business name for my in-person dog training business in Antigua, Guatemala, hence the kennel name “Caniversity’s.”

I’m now in Mexico, of course, so the Guatemalan paperwork isn’t valid – I’d have to go through the same process again. I’m not inerested in that though, so I didn’t. Game’s puppies will not have papers.

Game is a great dog with one flaw (I am aware of): noise sensitivity.

Game and I have dabbled in most sports you can dabble in, and she is (like her name suggests) game for anything: bikejoring, obedience, trick training, herding (cattle), nosework, cadaver detection work (fake cadaver scent), bitework, dock diving, parkour. We have not titled in anything but tricks. I LOVE training whatever we have access to and fun with, but I can’t stand competetions. (I was an A student, but HATED school and its grades to a degree that I will not subject myself to anything that reminds me of it as an adult. At least up until now, I have avoided everything and anything that pits individuals against each other. It’s fascinating to me how strongly I feel about this. The fact that Game doesn’t have titles isn’t about Game, it’s about me.)

Game’s main job is to be my demo dog both at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy and in person as well as my take-everywhere companion and service dog (she has two tasks). Public access, no matter what I throw at her, is easy for her. She has been in tiny boats on wavy water without throwing up, cross-country trains and busses. She has done transatlantic in-cabin as well as under-the-belly-of-the-plane flights.

She is very social for a Malinois (if she was a Golden Retriever, I wouldn’t say “she is very social for a Golden Retriever” – she does have her Malinois edginess alright and is a no-bullshit dog who will set boundaries and expect them to be respected).

She has matured late but has grown up to be a fantastic travel companion, house and apartment dog. She loves swimming, running through the forest and along the beach, gets really excited about seeing my friends who are always also her friends, and is highly food and toy motivated.

She currently lives with a female Border Collie and me. She has lived in a household with up to 2 humans, 5 sheep and 5 dogs.

She thinks cats and chickens look a lot like snacks, but I can recall her away from them.

She has lived (i.e. stayed for 6 months or more) on 3 continents: Europe, Asia and the Americas. She has lived (i.e. stayed for 6 months or more) in 4 countries: Austria, Thailand, Guatemala and Mexico. She has visited (i.e. been there for less than 6 months) 7 different countries with me: the Netherlands, Austria, Thailand, Guatemala, Mexico, Germany and 4 different US states. If she were a human, she’d speak 5 languages: Dutch, German, Thai, Spanish and English.

She has also modeled for my recall book that the amazing Isabelle Grubert took professional photos for, is up to date on vaccines and deworming and her latest health check says all good.

That’s all I can think of right now … you’ll get to know her better as I share more about her and eventually her and the puppies over the next few weeks! If you’re an FDSA student or reader of this blog, you’ll already know her quite well. Oh! One more fun fact: the first thing she does when we get to a hotel room, AirBnB or new apartment is look for the bed and roll all over it; it’s one of her trademark moves. Another one is interrupting online meetings with the undelayable need to have her head scratched and her ears massaged or, potentially, a toy thrown.

Looking ahead

In the hope of the mating being successful, I’ve spent the last few months collecting cardboard boxes, paper rolls and shreddable paper. The puppies will have lots to shred!

Now that I know the mating has worked, I will make sure to make as much of a positive (and avoid a negative) impact on the puppies in utero as I can. The in-utero environment is an important factor in terms of who the future puppies will be. They are, of course, still blind and deaf, but they are plugged into Game’s system. If Game’s body is flooded with, for example, cortisol or oxytosin, so will be the puppies. Keeping this in mind, Game will continue her usual life, but I will consciously make sure that she gets the following every week:

  • I’ll continue allowing her to scavenge for small amounts of random different food items she finds to normalize those. I’ll keep track of her most delicious finds for fun!
  • Apart from her kibble, I’ll feed raw once a week (either just an extra raw meat treat or a raw meal).
  • Shape/clicker train briefly 5 times a week – it gives her so much joy and she hasn’t had as much of it as usual because Chai is currently the baby who gets the most training attention.)
  • Off leash free run of the woods/fields/trails outside the city at least once a week.
  • Toy play at least once a week (may involve fetch, tugging, swim fetch).
  • Daily snuggle session; do so really consciously, 5 minutes or more (if Game keeps opting in).
  • Make sure she gets to hang out with a dog and a person (other than me and Chai) she loves or finds neutral at least once a week.
  • A car ride at least once a week (I don’t know if this will make it less likely to prevent carsickness in the puppies – but it certainly can’t hurt).
  • Make sure she has at least one canned-food meal while pregnant too. I don’t know if this will help guard against future food sensitivities – but again, it can’t hurt.

Many of the items on my list happen naturally. Most of the time not accounted for above is either running errands together, taking walks, hanging out in parks, Game snoozing on her couch or playing with Chai. I want to track the above items from now on to make sure they really do happen a minimum number of times every week. Apart from this, I’ll just let Game lead her normal life unless she lets me know she needs changes in food amount, exercise or otherwise. Another thing I am grateful for, even though it’s not on the list since I don’t have control over it, is dog/dog play: Chai play-wrestles with Game most days, and I love that this is likely to continue happening throughout her pregnancy. (If Game wants it to stop, she has an easy time letting Chai know – no need for me to interfere.)

I won’t be doing ENS (early neurological stimulation) on the puppies because. ENS is recommended for puppies who have a relaxed and sheltered in-utero experience, but not for puppies whose mother may have experienced stress during pregnancy. I believe that living in Mexico City – a city that never sleeps and gets as crowded as Times Square at times – is inherently stressful, even if a dog like Game handles it well. So I’d rather not add to this potential stressor with ENS.

I’m happy to report that last week (the week leading up to the ultrasound) checked a lot of the above boxes as well: we clicker trained (shaped) quite a bit because I needed new videos for a private student, Game saw two human friends and two dog friends, she went on a car ride, played lots of water swim fetch and ate an extracurricular rawhyde chew. She did her usual scavenging, but something that stood out to me last week was her favorite treasure: crunchy curbside bones in Iztapalapa. We’re off to an excellent start in terms of an enriched life, even “the week before” (the ultrasound)!

Puppy updates will show up here, on my podcast, Facebook and Instagram. Enjoy your vicarious Rebeldes, you all!

Acclimation … and everything that follows! An introduction.

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Acclimation (by my definition – different trainers have different definitions!) means allowing your dog to satiate on the environment you want to play, train, work or trial in. Students often say their dog never satiates on the world, and that is likely true. But the environment you’ll be working in is much smaller than the whole world – so it’s not really a problem. Let’s imagine you live near the beach (because that’s what I found a royalty-free image of):

Royalty free image by “Pexels” from Pixabay – thank you!

Let’s further imagine you want to practice recall games in the red oval that I put on the image. In the oval, there are 4 palm trees and a bunch of sand. This is not the whole world – it isn’t even the whole part of the beach that is in the image. It’s 10 to 20m2 (about 100 to 150ft2).

Acclimation phase

In our example, acclimation would mean:

  • Keep your dog on a leash.
  • Walk the perimeter of the area you want to work in (walk along the border of the red oval in the picture above), stopping to let your dog sniff however much they want.
  • Repeat if there’s a lot to sniff until they walk with you looking bored, not sniffing anymore.
  • Go into the red oval and let them sniff every spot they want to check out. Let them pee on the palm trees. Let them pick up a shell if they feel like it. Let them roll in the sand or dig a hole. Zig-zag and walk, following their lead, around the surface area of the red oval until they have had a chance to investigate every square foot of it.
  • If they want to leave the oval, gently stop them with the leash: no need to acclimate outside the oval because that’s not where you’ll be training.
  • Walk around the small area you have defined for training, play or work until your dog is bored of it.

Engagement phase

  • ENGAGEMENT is started by your dog – not by you. As the human part of the team, your job is to let the dog investigate for as long as they need to. Don’t try to distract them from smells or other interesting stimuli and activities. As long as they sniff, pee or dig, they are not done acclimating.
  • Being done looks different for individual dogs. It might look like offering to walk next to you rather than looking/sniffing around, and maintaining eye contact. In the case of my Mals, it could either be an offered sit with 5 seconds of duration eye contact, offered heeling or personal play initiated by the dog.
  • Go with whatever engagement behavior your dog naturally offers!

    Let’s imagine the behavior your dog offers is walking next to you and not paying attention to the environment. Define a specific duration they need to keep up this behavior for it to count as letting you know they are done acclimating. For example, you could say: when my dog walks next to me on a loose leash, occasionally glancing up at me, for at least 10 seconds, I get to start playing, training or working.

Warm-up/are you ready? phase

Before you go into more difficult work, training or play, gauge how your dog is feeling. A good way to ask this question is to invite them to play a simple marker cue game, like tossing 4 treats back and forth for your dog to chase. Observe them: do they stay engaged throughout those 4 treats (not distracted by the environment), eat every treat at once and turn on a dime for the next one? Great! Your dog is ready to start working/training/play!

Do they hesitate, get distracted or not eat a treat? Go back to acclimation!

Note that some dogs don’t need the warm up/are you ready? phase – they can go right from engagement into work/training/play. It is still useful to practice because a dog who doesn’t need a warm up in familiar environments may still benefit from it at a new, difficult or trial environment. Having practiced it means you can just pull it out your pocket, ready to use.

Work/training/play

Use the surface area of your oval to train or play whatever you were planning to for however long you were planning to … but make sure YOU are the one who ends the fun. We want our dog to stay engaged from the first step (e.g. first treat/first marker cue) of the warm up phase until you finish your session with an “all done” cue and end-of-session ritual.

Try this the next time before you train, play or work out and about! Observe your dog’s distraction level! Do they have an easier time staying engaged throughout the session? Perfect! This strategy is a winner! Do they still struggle? We’ll dig deeper and try something else!1

All done announcement and end-of-session ritual

Don’t just stop out of nowhere and go from full-on engagement to ignoring your dog – that’s rude! It’s as if someone walked away in the middle of a conversation with you and just left you hanging, or got up in the middle of a two-person meal in a restaurant without an explanation and walked out the door.

Instead, you’ll verbally announce to your dog that the session is over (I use “All done!” for this), and then follow it up with a transition behavior that helps your dog move from a working state of mind back into a just-being-a-dog state of mind. An easy option is doing a treat scatter after your all done cue (scatters are calming). Another option is personal play or calm petting.

  1. Trying something else would, at this point, usually mean one of two things: giving the acclimation ritual itself more structure (for example with CU games or start buttons), or adding a longer and more structured “ready to work” routine after acclimation. Shade Whitesel shares a great example of a ready to work routine in this blog post. ↩︎

Trick dog training: fetch anything to hand (part 3)

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January 18, 2024: wallet, phone and rice-filled beer/soda cans

We started today playing another round of 2-toy fetch with the rice filled cans. As before, I just picked one of those up in the street – I’m not even sure what kind of drink used to be in the dark one; I don’t think I’ve seen it in stores. It’s pretty though and it has a cool name: París de Noche. Anyways, this is to say: the streets are filled with food and toys. What a life for a dog (and their human)!

Since this went so well, I then added a rice-filled can to our fetch-anything-to-hand game! I’ll use the rice-filled can for practice (no danger of exploding) and eventually swap it out for a “real” can. That one’s gotta have beer in it just because.

For today’s fetch session, I used my wallet, the phone and one of the rice-filled cans. I love how in the first rep, Chai is so fast that I don’t even have time to put the wallet on the floor! Loving that confidence!

Starting at 00:54, you can see that the 2-toy session has worked its magic: Chai is now confidently picking up the rice-filled can! The wallet is the easiest to pick up and the phone is the most difficult. I keep interspersing easy objects to keep Chai’s confidence high.

Now let me transfer over our lists of easy objects and goals from the last post … I’ll modify; I’m happy with the keys as they are for now.

Fetchable-object goals:

Wallet, credit card (D), keys, phone, beer can, bank bill, full plastic bottles, coin, 2 types of mugs (D), leash handle (D), retractable leash (D), keys, silverware.

Easy-objects list:

  • 20-peso bill (Jan. 9, 2024)
  • Spoon (Jan. 10, 2024)
  • Fork
  • Knife
  • Coin (Jan. 12, 2024)
  • Keys (Jan. 11, 2024 & January 14, 2024)
  • Glue stick
  • Empty spray bottle
  • Wallet (Jan. 17, 2024 & Jan. 18, 2024)
  • Rice-filled can (Jan. 21, 2024 & Jan. 22, 2024 & Jan 23, 2024)

Next session(s):

  • Lickable stuff in porcellain mug and on its handle.
  • Use rice-filled can as easy object to build confidence and get practice – just in case the actual beer can explodes!
  • Keep the phone in the game; alternate between floor and puzzle mats.
  • “Gimme” cue!

January 21, 2024: woohooooo for porcelain mugs!

I played a third cup game today. I didn’t have peanut butter, so I used something a little less sticky: yogurt. After I had stopped filming, Chai eventually picked up the cup (I just left it on the floor) and carried it to the couch. Over the course of about 15 minutes, she dropped it off the couch four times, it made noise falling on the floor or on the treadmill, and Chai jumped after and picked it back up, taking it up on the couch again. No footage of the couch action, but here is a snippet of Chai enjoing her yogurt cup:

Because I had observed her like this and saw her interact with it on the couch (trying to chew and lick it some more), I decided to put it into today’s object fetch session … and it was a huge success!

Notes on this session: I’m interspersing an easy object – always the first one on my check list (see above) – with difficult and/or new ones. Because I know the mug is difficult, I go back to the rice-filled can after the first successful rep (00:06). There was a little hesitation about first picking it up. After the rice-filled can rep, we are ready to take another stab at the mug (01:12). Chai is more confident about it this time! I probably could have done more than the one mug rep here but I wanted to reinforce with an easy object and switched back to the can again after a beautiful single mug rep (01:19). The mug rep at 01:24 is difficult – but look at Chai working confidently at finding a way to pick it up! Superpuppy!

Next session(s):

  • Maybe another cup game before the next session?
  • Two-toy game with credit cards.
  • Keep using the rice-filled cans as an easy object to build lots of confidence (in case later the real beer can explodes). No liquid-filled cans yet!
  • Get some more phone reps under Chai’s collar.

January 22, 2024: credit card, rice-filled can, phone and porcelain mug!

Today, I repeated the first two cup games (no video). Then, I played the two-toy game with an expired credit card and some other plastic card I don’t need. Chai did great picking them up off the bed (easiest surface) and the puzzle mat. She could only pick the credit card up from the floor – and that may be because at that point, it had been chewed and bent in such a way that it wasn’t flat against the floor anymore. The other plastic card still was, and Chai didn’t manage to grip it until I added a piece of heavy tape to its sides (the tape is about 1mm thick). Chai was then able to grab it off the floor.

I then did a session of 3 difficult objects interspersed by a single easy one – the beer can. I couldn’t resist the temptation to try the card right away, and Chai was SO good! Only problem: I forgot to hit record. I did a second session, and that one got recorded:

January 23, 2024: no video, but a great session

Chai did really well on 3 reps with the rice-filled can (easy object) followed by 3 reps of the mug (twice lying down, once standing up), followed by one more rep of the can. I used the “Gimme!” cue every time, and for the first time, I didn’t set up the puzzle mats (the training picture Chai is used to) but just the floor. I’ve lowered the amount of food Chai gets for each successful rep in this session as well.

I’ll do one more session like this where I’ll include one porcelain mug rep with the mug turned upside down – this is the most difficult position because Chai needs to topple it over (almost impossible on the slippery floor without puzzle mats) or pick it up by the handle. Note to self: have some more sessions of mug game #1 on the floor (not on the puzzle mats) before asking Chai to “gimme” an upside down mug!

I also want to do a similar session with the phone, getting it from the floor 3 times in a row, and then I’ll cross phones as well as porcelain mugs off the “fetchable-object goals” list and move them to the “easy objects” section.

In terms of the can: I plan on doing one more session with the rice-filled cans, and then I’ll intersperse the “real” can at room temperature once. In a subsequent session, I’ll intersperse the real can at fridge temperature once. For now, I won’t use the same “real” (bubbly-liquid-filled) can more than twice to keep the danger of exploding cans low.

Next session(s): re-read today’s notes; focus on mug, phone and can(s).

January 24, 2024: porcelain mug in all positions – check!

We started the day with mug game #1. Chai did really well, picking the mug up at the handle every time! Then, we did a session of “Gimme!” Since the session below went so well, I’ll move the mug to the “easy objects” list!

The next session involving cans will have a REAL can at room temperature interspersed! Woohooo! Let’s do it!

I wanted to finish the phone challenge so I could move phones to the easy object list too. However … no luck. Not yet. I want 3 pick-ups in a row without Chai or me dropping the phone, and she dropped it one time. The good news: we got a fun easy-object rep in with the fork!

The lists – updated

Fetchable-object goals:

Wallet, credit card, keys, phone, beer can, bank bill, full plastic bottles, coin, porcelain mug, thermos mug, leash handle, retractable leash, keys, silverware.

I’ve crossed off the porcelain mug (and split out the two mugs) and removed my “E” (easy), “M” (intermediate) and “D” (difficult) predictions – they have turned out to be wrong more often than not!

Easy-objects list:

  • 20-peso bill (Jan. 9, 2024)
  • Spoon (Jan. 10, 2024)
  • Fork (Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Coin (Jan. 12, 2024)
  • Keys (Jan. 11 & January 14, 2024)
  • Poop bag roll (Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Wallet (Jan. 17 & Jan. 18, 2024)
  • Rice-filled can (Jan. 21, & Jan. 22 & Jan 23 & Jan. 24, 2024)
  • Porcelain mug
  • Highlighter

The porcelain mug has been added to the easy-objects list, and I also put the highlighter back on now that it’s been a while since I’ve used it. The easy objects I want to rotate through next are bolded.

Next session(s): repeat phone session with butter knife as the easy object (no need to video) OR do a 3-rep can session: rice can, real can at room temperature, rice can. Definitely video the latter one!

We went with the cans session next! The dark can is the rice-filled one and the Modelo (the white can) is a “real” beer can at room temperature. It’ll now go in the fridge so I can do a fridge-temperature session next! Superchai!

I wonder if the reason Chai dropped the rice can twice in the video above is that I’ve used cans SO much lately (to build resiliency in case the beer can explodes) that she isn’t being careful about it anymore.

Next sessions:

  • 3x butter knife – 3x phone – butter knife
  • Rice can – fridge temperature beer can – rice can (if successful, take a can break!)

… turns out I don’t have a butter knife (that’s the knife I’d have Chai pick up). So our silverware will be limited to forks and spoons (I could have sworn there were knives and I had trained with them, but oh well). Instead of the knife I had planned to use as an easy object, I used the glue stick together with the phone. I didn’t get the phone 3 times in a row – it is still difficult. I won’t cross it off my list just yet. However, I’ll take the knife off the list and replace the glue stick with a poop bag roll. (Let’s be honest: how often do I use glue sticks? Almost never. How often do I use poop bags? Every day. Having Chai pick them up when I drop them is going to be much more useful.) She already loves carrying these rolls around, so it was easy to just plug them in with the similarly-shaped glue stick. I’ll also take the empty spray bottle off my list above because the spray bottle that used to be empty is in use now and no longer empty.

While Chai ended up handing me the phone successfully, I’ll only cross it off once I get it three times in a row without either of us dropping it during the hand-over. (I don’t mind earlier drops, but I want Chai to target my hand well with all the objects.)

Next sessions:

  • Rice can – fridge-temperature beer can – rice can (record and, if successful, take a can break!)
  • 3x Highlighter or poop bag roll – 3x phone – highlighter or poop bag roll

Trick dog training: fetch anything to hand (part 2)

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January 6, 2024: highlighter, keys and bill

I’m layering easy objects in between new or difficult ones to keep Chai’s confidence high. Today’s easy object: a highlighter.

Chai found the 20-peso-bill VERY easy and did okay with the apartment keys + car keys. I’ll keep them in the rotation and play with them between rotations; they are more difficult than either key by itself.

Here’s our longer list of fetchable object goals:

Wallet (M), credit card (D), keys, phone (D), beer can (M), bank bill, full plastic bottles (D), coin, 2 types of mugs, leash handle (D), retractable leash (D), keys with new (yet to be acquired) key chain (D), silverware.

Next session(s):

Repeat keys (still difficult) and change the highlighter for another easy object!

January 9, 2024: exploding beer cans and a bit of fetch

I got two bottles of juice and decided to first play with them and then, if that went well, use them as the new object in today’s session. Since I was already at the store, I also picked up two cans of beer. I couldn’t find anything non-sparkly in a can, so beer it was from the beginning – even though I know about the dangers of exploding cans when playing with dogs. Well – we had fun with the juice. Chai also started out really well with the beer cans … until …

For the actual fetch session, I decided to leave the beer can be, but integrate a juice bottle. I didn’t realize how hard the juice bottle would be – the exploding can definitely had some bleed-over into Chai’s juice bottle feelings! She was being brave though after I made the juice bottle fun again. I ended on a successful rep and will add the bottle again next time to build more confidence. Lots of improvement on the keys though! I’ll add them in one more time before checking them off – basically, the next session will be a repeat of this one.

Next session(s):

+ Play with EMPTY cans.
+ Repeat today’s fetch session with keys and the juice bottle. Switch the easy object for a different easy object.

January 10, 2024: spoon, car keys, juice bottle

Chai did REALLY well today! I’ll keep the juice bottle for one more session – I want to catch it 3 times in a row before calling it done. That said, me dropping it in the first rep of today’s video is all me. The keys are turning into an EASY object! Wow!

I’ll keep my lists here, copy/pasting and adding new stuff when I think of it:

Fetchable object goals:

Wallet (M), credit card (D), keys, phone (D), beer can (M), bank bill, full plastic bottles, coin, 2 types of mugs, leash handle (D), retractable leash (D), keys with new (yet to be acquired) key chain, silverware.

Easy objects to rotate through and use “Gimme” cue on. The one(s) I want to do next are bolded:

  • Highlighter (Jan. 6, 2024)
  • 20-peso bill (Jan. 9, 2024)
  • Spoon (Jan. 10, 2024)
  • Fork
  • Knife
  • Coin
  • Keys
  • Glue stick
  • Empty spray bottle

I’ve also found a rule structure for this trick that I plan on sticking to:

  1. Start with 3 cued reps of an easy object. (More and more objects will move into this category and I will rotate through them to keep picking them up well oiled).
  2. Do a familiar, but not-yet-perfect object, aiming for 3 great times in a row.
  3. Do one easy-object rep if (2) was easy or 3 easy-object reps if (2) was difficult.
  4. Use a new or difficult object.
  5. If (4) went well, end after (4). If (4) was hard, do between 1 and 3 reps of the easy object and then end.
  • Every object should be picked up both from the puzzle mats and the floor.
  • New for future sessions: cue “Gimme” for the easy object of the day!

Next sessions:

  • Use the juice bottle again; new easy object with “Gimme!” cue (keys or coin).
  • Play with empty cans.

January 11, 2024: keys, juice bottle, wallet

I used the keys as today’s easy object … but they weren’t all that easy today! I’ll make sure to keep them in the easy-object rotation. The juice bottle was difficult as well; I will add it again in our next session. Where Chai knocked it out of the park was with the entirely new object: my wallet! She retrieved it to my hand 3 times as if it was the easiest thing in the universe! The wallet gets added to my easy-object list! I may take off the highlighter instead since Chai has been REALLY good with that one and done lots of reps with it already.

And, yep – I forgot to say the “Gimme” cue with the keys. That’s okay – next time!

Fetchable object goals:

Wallet, credit card (D), keys, phone (D), beer can (M), bank bill, full plastic bottles, coin, 2 types of mugs, leash handle (D), retractable leash (D), keys with new (yet to be acquired) key chain, silverware.

Easy-objects list:

  • 20-peso bill (Jan. 9, 2024)
  • Spoon (Jan. 10, 2024)
  • Fork
  • Knife
  • Coin
  • Keys (Jan. 11, 2024)
  • Glue stick
  • Empty spray bottle
  • Wallet

Next session(s):

  • Use juice bottle again
  • Play with empty beer cans
  • Remember to use “Gimme!” cue for easy objects!

June 12, 2024: coin, juice bottle … and definitely no mug (“How about some rawhide instead?”)

Today’s easy object was the coin. The juice bottle went well … I’m declaring it done for now! Go Chai! The mug, on the other hand, was a no go. I’ll have to think some more about how to introduce picking it up. Porcellain doesn’t seem to feel good on dog teeth! I found it very funny, smart and cute that Chai went and looked for something else to fetch, and ended up bringing me a piece of rawhide (something I’ve never asked her to fetch)! Also a win: I remembered to say, “Gimme!” when I meant to!

Fetchable object goals:

Wallet, credit card (D), keys, phone, beer can (M), bank bill, full plastic bottles, coin, 2 types of mugs (D), leash handle (D), retractable leash (D), keys with new (yet to be acquired) key chain, silverware.

Easy-objects list:

  • 20-peso bill (Jan. 9, 2024)
  • Spoon (Jan. 10, 2024)
  • Fork
  • Knife
  • Coin (Jan. 12, 2024)
  • Keys (Jan. 11, 2024 & January 14, 2024)
  • Glue stick
  • Empty spray bottle
  • Wallet (January 17, 2024)
  • Juice bottle (plastic) (Jan. 14, 2024; Jan. 16, 2024)

January 13, 2024: can and cup games for confidence

Today, we didn’t train-train (I was tired after our hike). So first, I left two empty cans out on the floor for the dogs to convert into toys – they did so quickly!

Following Game’s lead, Chai quickly picked up the empty cans carried them to the couch to chew on them. The Tecate is an empty can I found in the street. I don’t drink enough beer for this trick!

At night we played two cup games for the dogs’ dinner. You can see that Game is more confident toppling the cups in the first food game, but Chai is starting to pick them up in the second one! What a superstar! (Game had her kibble-in-a-cup while stationing on the couch while Chai was working on hers on the puzzle mats.)

Next session(s):

  • Play with beer cans filled with rice
  • Say “Gimme” on the second rep of easy objects (first rep is to test the waters)
  • Mug games: smear peanut butter on handle.

Sunday, January 14, 2024: cellphone success!

Wheeee! Today, Chai REALLY impressed me! I hesitated about simply adding the phone, but she was able to pick it up!!!! Go (not-so) puppy (anymore)!!! So proud!

Next session(s):

  • Play with cans filled with rice (for weight).
  • Use “Gimme” cue when I know she’ll fetch it!
  • Repeat phone with two easy objects! I’m not putting it on the easy list or checking it off my goals list yet – I want to see a few more fetches first; I can’t quite believe how well she did picking up such a difficult object!

January 16, 2024: I’m impressed by Chai’s phone skills!

I am tired today, so I just did a quick session, sliding the phone (which, in my mind but not in Chai’s, is still a difficult object) between two rounds of the plastic juice bottle. I wanted to use that bottle one more time before drinking it. Once again, Chai did amazing with the phone!

Next session(s):

  • Play with beer cans! (I filled them with rice last night; they are ready to go!)
  • If playing with them goes well, do a session of phone and cans and (if I feel like it) one other object: the wallet! If we get 3 phone reps in a row without dropping it, at least one of which from the floor rather than the puzzle mats, I will check it off my list!
  • Remember to use “Gimme!” when I’m sure Chai will fetch.

Note: instead of continuing to copy/paste my lists, I’ll be editing the previous one as we go.

January 17, 2024: wallet, phone and beer can play

We played with the two rice-filled beer cans. At first, Chai hesitated about picking them up even though she had chewed on the empty ones the other day. After making them seem special by juggling them and trying to “hide” them from her, she was ready to pick them up when rolling on the puzzle mat or being thrown on the bed. She’d carry them back to chew on the sofa, so I had to be quick to get them back to avoid rice-sized holes in the cans. No good video. I feel like we’re not quite ready to fetch them yet – I’ll do another round of this game tomorrow.

Our “Gimme” session went really well – I played with the phone and my wallet. For the first time, I put the phone on the floor (not the puzzle mats) as well. It was clearly harder to pick up there, but Chai rocked it! Go (not-so) puppy (anymore)!

I want to do another session with the phone on the floor before checking it off my list – I’d like to build a little more pick-up skills. And then … I get to sell that phone! I also wouldn’t mind a few more wallet fetches. While this is easy for Chai, we haven’t done a lot of repetitions yet. Our next session might look just like this one.

Next session(s):

  • More beer can 2-toy game.
  • Cup games: yummy stuff to lick off porcelain!
  • Repeat phone on floor.

CHAIARY – TRICK TRAINING: GETTING A fetch TO HAND VIA THE ONE OBJECT IN ANOTHER TRICK (part 1)

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Once Chai knows how to place objects into different containers, my hand will become just another container! Let’s see how we get from A to B.

October 12, 2023: first session of adding my hand to a familiar container

Nice start! In our next session, I’ll start with my hand in the bowl and then only offer my hand.

October 13, 2023: a lovely coin session!

I’m happy with today’s session!

October 17, 2023: Hand me a coin, continued!

Next time, I’ll vary the object!

October 26, 2023: I sit in a chair and Chai hands me a coin, tape, toy and toothbrush! Go puppy!

This is looking better and better! Some more generalizing of my body position, the location and the objects (this should also refine Chai’s targeting skills), and then the trick will be ready for a cue! (I’m thinking “Gimme!” or “Gimme, gimme, gimme!” – that ABBA song.)

October 29, 2023: different objects; no bowl to start with!

Chai did great today and understood what I wanted even though I didn’t start with a bowl! First object: the familiar baseball toy. No problem for her!

Second object: a squishy spiky ball. More fun to chew than hand to me!

Third object: the rubber thing that’s on my kitchen faucet. Tempting to chew at first but can then be handed over!

Fourth object: metal spoon. A little difficult to pick up the first time, but once she had figured it out, she did great!

I’ll keep working on this trick once or twice a week. I already have a couple winner objects I’ll keep mixing in: baseball toy, spoon, nail clippers, coin, glue stick. When using any of these, I’ll start using the “Gimme!” cue in the future.

I have a semi-new object (I used it but at an point in our training journey) I want to also use – no cue yet: an onion.

I also want to add the following new objects – maybe not every single one, but these come to mind: nail polish bottle (easy – I think), lime (easy – I think), plastic bottle lid (easy), beer can (medium – I think), mug (difficult to pick up), credit card (difficult), cellphone (difficult), wallet (medium), bill (difficult to not destroy?), keys (medium). No cue yet on any of these for sure.

I want to add a cue to all of the above and then try and get the same result when I’m standing up. Later on, I’d like to teach Chai to hand me objects I drop with the dropping itself being the cue.

October 21, 2023: adding the “Gimme” cue and standing up

Today, we worked with the glue stick, a 10-peso-coin and a spoon:

November 11, 2023

The keys on the keychain were too difficult … I’ll either take off the chain or use a different novel object next time!

January 3, 2023: Picking the fetch-anything-to-hand trick back up after a break!

I only used objects I thought would be easy and didn’t use a verbal cue in this session. I wanted to see how much Chai remembered!

Nice job, little Border Collie! She did really well and remembers the idea!

Notes for the next session:

I’ll use different objects next time – maybe start with the highlighter because it’s easy – and generalize a bit more before adding the “Gimme!” cue again and moving on to more difficult objects. I won’t use the DEET spray again because it probably tasted disgusting and may create aversion to this trick.

January 4, 2024: new objects!

Today, I tried some new objects and the keys Chai had struggled with when they had the chain attached … turns out they are still hard without a chain, as is a full water bottle:

Notes for the next session(s):

  • Keep up the 3-successful-reps-in-a-row strategy before switching objects!
  • Water bottle strategy: start with an empty one and work up to bottles containing more and more liquid (add weight) OR buy two full bottles and play a 2-toy game with them (like I did with the coins) to teach Chai she can pick them up.
  • Keys strategy: turn it into a game to teach her she can pick them up. Maybe 2 sets of keys for a game of 2-toy fetch?
  • Objects I want to eventually work up to (no rush): wallet (probably medium), credit card (probably difficult), keys (difficult), phone (probably difficult), beer can (probably medium after I’ve taught heavy, i.e. full, plastic bottles), bill (easy except for the danger of being ripped to shreds).

January 5, 2024: solving the key chain mystery!

I decided to play with the keys to see if I could encourage Chai to pick them up this way. My original suspicion, after trying with the full-length key chain attached, was that it was the keychain (the size of the object) that made it too hard to pick up. When I unclipped the chain (except for its little end piece) yesterday and Chai still couldn’t pick up the keys, I thought it was most likely the car key (the electronic key; maybe something inside of it smells weird or vibrates in some scary way you bite down on it). I tested this by first only using the keys, and then the keys with the keychain, and then only the car keys … turns out Chai is happy to play with both the keys and the car keys – but NOT with the little end piece of the key chain! Fascinating! I don’t know what it is about that piece, but I’m just going to have her let a say in this and will get a new keychain!

Without further ado – here’s our play session:

And the subsequent fetch session:

Here is a list of the overall fetch-to-hand objects that matter to me and the ones that I’ve already accomplished. Some of them are for fun; some of them are potentially useful service dog tasks if I drop stuff. This list is longer than yesterday’s list. E stands for “I believe it will be easy,” M for “medium difficulty” and D for “difficult.” This is just my suspicion; she may surprise me!

Wallet (M), credit card (D), keys, phone (D), beer can (M), bank bill (easy except for the danger of being ripped to shreds), full plastic bottles (D), coin, 2 types of mugs, leash handle (D), retractable leash (D), keys with new (yet to be acquired) key chain (D).

I’ll put at least one of the above we haven’t yet conquered into each new rotation! Eventually, I want “dropping the thing” to be the cue for Chai to pick it up and hand it to me. Same goes for pointing and “Gimme” if I haven’t dropped the thing. Only the beer cans may go into a more complex trick if I feel like it (open fridge, get beer, close fridge, bring beer …). The phone may be put on a “find my phone” cue if I feel like it – I am very talented at displacing my phone, so this may be neat and more useful (though less fun) than teaching Chai to fetch it when it rings.