Tag: mat work

Chiary, day 65 – June 10, 2023: play time, LLW, Parque México and restaurant relaxation with friends

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Chai had a Big Day and so did I: we had a lot of adventures today!

We started out on a brief morning walk around the block together with Game. For the first time, I let Chai partially off leash on the sidewalk during the daytime!

Next, we got back home and had a brief tug session on the roof of our building.

Loose leash walking – manners mode

Having gotten our morning crazies out that way, we went to practice loose leash walking in the manners context: when the leash is attached to Chai’s collar, I want her to walk next to me, staying behind the imaginary line1 at the tip of my toes. We worked up to 9 steps between treats:

We are now walking in the “real world” – the space we have available to us – a comparatively quiet street with a nice, wide side walk. If I had an even quieter street, that’s where I’d go – but I don’t, so I use the environment I do have. To help set Chai up for success, I walk the street on a harness before switching to manners mode in the same street. This way, Chai gets to get most of her sniffing and pulling needs out of the way before we start working on the more difficult behavior (staying behind the invisible line). Walking on a harness is our way of acclimating.

My goals in this session:

  • Cue “With me!” before clipping the leash from harness to collar. I want this to eventually become an informal heeling cue that also works off leash. I make sure Chai is already behind me when I use the cue.
  • Count up to 9 steps, then click with both hands on the leash (my defined home position), blink once with both hands on my leash (my transition behavior), then reach for the treat bag. It is behind my back to help Chai gravitate back rather than forwards.
  • If Chai oversteps the imaginary line running parallel to my toes, I cue “Touch!” – ideally (I don’t always succeed with this mechanics-wise) with both hands still on the leash, blink, and offer my hand. In this video, you’ll see that I’m sometimes too fast and take my right hand off the leash when saying the “touch” cue.
  • I turn sideways and lead Chai to my hand stretched back in the direction we just came from.
  • I feed slightly behind heel position with my hand targeting my side (again, something I manage to do MOST of the time, but sometimes … I get distracted and feed without my hand touching my side). My treat placement brings Chai back into the position I want her to be in for our informal heeling adventure.
  • End of video: when I want to go back to the harness, I cue “All done!” and clip the leash back to the harness. Where the leash is attached would in and of itself function as enough of a contextual cue for the two modes of leash walking to be distinguished by a dog. However, since I am planning on transferring the cue to off-leash informal heeling, I need that end cue just like the “With me!” cue in the beginning.

Stay-home-without-humans-and-relax practice while C goes off on a human solo adventure!

Chai then stayed home alone with Game while I went to climb The Wall – a 30 meters climbing wall on the outside of a building that’s just around the corner from my place. I had set myself the goal of climbing it at least once and enjoying the view from above. Today was the day! And I did it – I climbed all the way up to the top of the yellow wall in the left picture below. Unfortunately, cellphones are not allowed on the wall, so the only pictures are from below.

Chai then got to practice staying home by herself again during Game’s noon walk.

Parque México

Next, we drove to Parque México to get Chai a fancy adult dog collar, walk around a little and then headed to a meeting. Here’s Parque México – as busy as it gets on Saturdays – with recalls, check-ins and dog encounters off leash, followed by walking in a harness on the median of calle Ámsterdam.

This is Robert Sapolsky’s “dopamine jackpot” theory I reference in the video above:

Chilling with folks at a restaurant

At the table and under the table: the art of doing nothing.

We left when Chai became active and started throwing her rawhide bone all over the place – good conversations caused me to overstay her ability to settle until she let me know by throwing bones!

Heading back to the car, we practiced harness walking for a few blocks. When Chai is on a harness, I will …

  • Super easy environment: simply circle when Chai reaches the end of the leash. No food.
  • Slightly more difficult: in addition to circling when Chai pulls, click and treat every 4th check-in (offered eye contact). If she checks in twice and then pulls, I will circle and reset my count, starting to count eye contact over with 1 again.
  • If the environment is too hard for Chai to succeed on a predominantly loose leash with circle resets, I will keep the same rate of reinforcement but do won’t reset when she pulls: for example, she may check in twice on a loose leash and then pull (this triggers a circle), then check in again. In this case, the check in after pulling (and circling) would count as 3 rather than start over with 1.
  • If this is still too hard, I will up the rate of reinforcement to every 3rd, 2nd or even every single check-in.
  • If we need to pass something moderately difficult (think dogs barking somewhere up on a balcony on the other side of the street), we will pass and then scatter away from the difficult stimulus.
  • If we pass something very difficult (think dogs barking behind a fence right next to us), I will use my “floor” protocol and feed almost non-stop. I will explain that protocol in a different post.

In harness mode, I don’t mind if Chai is on my left or right side and I’ don’t care about a precise spot of food delivery’m less precise in my food delivery: harness mode is meant to be easy for me, the handler, just like it is meant to be easy for the dog.

Walking through Condesa and Roma, some food is required! I’m going with tier #2 described above: click and treat every 4th check-in and reset after circles.

The reason that my go-to is feeding every 4th time is that I want to hit the sweet spot of the dopamine jackpot: supposedly, intermittent reinforcement is most powerful if it happens either 25% or 75% of the time a behavior is being displayed (see video above).

Here’s a clip from walking either from Parque México to the restaurant where I met friends or back to the car after hanging out there for about 2 hours (I don’t remember which direction this was). Apart from our leash walking strategy (feeding every fourth check-in and resetting when Chai pulls), you will also see her disengage voluntarily from an unfamiliar dog, do a successful “leave it” for a tossed piece of kibble and work on her “warten” (wait) cue at a curb.

More leash walking (harness context)

It started getting dark by the time we made it back to the car, and we stopped for vanilla ice cream dinner before heading home!

Waiting at the rubber-duck themed ice cream store.

Chai and I are sure to sleep well tonight – hopefully, so will everyone else!

(1) Here comes my usual spiel: for more leash walking context, check out the leash walking lectures from Out and About in your FDSA library or look here for my December class and a micro e-book on LLW. If I don’t find a few more hours in my days soon, said December 2023 class may even focus entirely on LLW … stay tuned or send some extra time my way!

Chaiary, day 15: more old and new friends, mats at cafés and a little husbandry

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Today, we went back to Emi’s café to hang out for a while. Chai got to spend time with Emi, who has already become an friend, and his wife Rosie who I shared I co-working day with today. Rosie will hopefully also be one of Chai’s permanent friends.

I see socialization (of puppies to people) as a two-tierd approach:

  1. I want the dog to have neutral/positive feelings towards strangers. If a puppy starts out hyper-social, I will work on lowering those feelings to neutrality. If a puppy starts out a little hesitant or shy – like Chai did – I’ll make sure to create as many positive interactions as possible. The protocol for this – for Chai; it might look entirely different for a different dog! – is letting her approach a flat hand voluntarily (no food, no food smells). If she does – give the stranger food to feed from the flat hand; then move on – ideally without them touching her.

    This works with Chai because if a stranger doesn’t follow my instructions it won’t be a huge deal. If I had a puppy who panicked if things didn’t go perfectly or a dog who didn’t recover for the rest of the day when an encounter went sideways, I would NOT use random strangers and there might be no food at all.
  2. I want the dog to have a circle of friends that does not only include me. The reason I consider this important is that I want to be able to leave my dog with other people when I travel, or to have a friend come in and walk or feed the dog if I’m gone for the day. And I want the dog to feel good about this rather than deprived of me.

    This is something best built in puppyhood. If you give your dog a circle of friends in puppyhood, they tend to – in my experience anyways – be able to open up to new people as adults as well. Again, there are huge individual differences at play here as well. With some dogs, you get the circle-of-friends behavior for free. With others, you’ll have to work really hard. With others yet, you will never reach this goal despite your best efforts. As always: train the dog you have today, not the one you wish you had.

    Border Collies are sensitive and occasionally suspicious dogs, so I definitely want to invest a lot of socialization time in the ability to make friends – human and canine. So far, on Chai’s list of regular friends (who are not me), I plan to have 8 people – friends who are either dog trainers or dog lovers and who Chai and I have regular access to. I want to build out these relationships to the degree that I could leave Chai with any of them and she’d be happy.

    This is particularly important to me with Chai because I still plan on placing her – so I don’t want her to depend on me, the person Chrissi, but remain open to letting other folks into her inner circle.

Going to Emi’s café means working on both of the above: Emi and Rosie will hopefully be permanent friends of hers (tier 2), and hanging out at the sidewalk café for a few hours comes with lots of opportunities for (tier 1)!

In addition, we always practice mat work out here: once Chai is tired of the world, I’ll get out her mat, and she’ll naturally gravitate towards it and doze off: that’s how you set the stage for success:

If you want to work on a calm behavior (e.g. relaxing on a mat), wait until your dog’s curiosity and need to move are saturated. If you want to work on a high-energy behavior (such as toy play, recalls etc.), work with a dog who is well rested and chomping at the bit to get moving!

A circle of friends. Left: “Emi always has treats for me!” Middle and right: “I like you, Rosie! Let me climb all over you!”

Apart from Rosie and Emi (tier 2 – permanent friends!), we also worked on our approach-voluntarily-and-if-you-do-so-get-fed protocol with 7 strangers (tier 1 – neutral/positive feelings about strangers). Well – in fact, it was only 4 total strangers: people #1 and #2 were Mitsu and the person who owns the store next door, both of whom we see every time we go to Emi’s café. Person #3 was Hugo who was working in the street and stopped by for some Chai love – and who may end up in tier #2 rather than #1.

Of the remaining 4, one was a kid. I’m always particularly happy about this because kids tend to be more difficult than adults: they move erratically, they can be noisy and they are at a dog’s eye level. It’s easier for a dog to perceive a kid as a threat than an adult, and I want to make sure this does not happen for Chai. Who knows – maybe her future family will have kids, and their kids will have friends!

Here’s our co-working superstar, ready to rest on her mat after some excitement! Rosie is having té chai in her honor.

And the highlight of our coffee and co-working day, caught on camera: Chai was able to keep chilling on her mat in the presence of a strange dog who stopped for a drink and walked past! Go puppy!!!

Later today, we worked on brushing again – a behavior we currently get for free, but need to keep practicing in order to ensure it stays that way! I announce “Brush!” and then Chai gets brushed all over.

It is fascinating to me how different different dogs experience husbandry behaviors: some will really struggle with them. Others couldn’t care less. Chai tends to the latter side of the scale, and I want to keep her there.

The Puzzle Week – Part 3: More Mat Work, CU-Style!

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Now that I’ve built confidence around my presence and movement, and Puzzle is drawn to the mat, we’re ready for some actual CU-style treat dropping: I am wandering around the mat, clicking for being on the mat and for sniffing for treats, and dropping treats all over the mat while she’s busy eating. We continue building the association mat equals treats (rather than handler equals treats).

As a side-effect, Puzzle gets introduced to her second marker cue: the clicker.

A snippet from her fifth mat session (Day 2), showing that she has become magnetized to the mat:

A snippet from session #6 (Day 2), showing both attraction to the mat, CU-style treat delivery, and how she learns about her release cue – another useful word she is learning on the go in the context of mat work!

In session #7, Puzzle and I talk some more about release cues, and the fact that the mat goes offline when there’s no puppy on it. Backing up off of the mat works, too! Watch until the end for the cutest part:

Links to all posts in the CU mat-work walk-through:

1st post: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/the-puzzle-week-part-2-starting-matwork/
2nd post: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/the-puzzle-week-part-3-more-matwork-cu-style/
3rd post: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/the-puzzle-week-part-4-cu-mat-work-and-counting/
4th post: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/the-puzzle-week-part-5-adding-a-cue-for-going-to-the-mat/
5th post: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/the-puzzle-week-part-6-mat-work-outdoors/
6th post: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/the-puzzle-week-part-7-hang-out-on-your-mat-in-everyday-life/
7th post: https://adventuredogsanarchy.com/the-puzzle-week-part-8-teaching-the-look-at-that-game-on-a-mat/