Tag: puppy diary

Week 26 digest: September 27-October 3, 2023

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Content warning: this week’s diary is not for those of you who feel disgust easily when it comes to the things a dog might find on their walk. If this is you and you want to be absolutely sure you do not accidentally read about such things, skip September 29 and 30 as well as October 1 and its footnote, or skip this entire post.

September 27, 2023: deep taco-inspired thoughts on society (and some dog training too)

Activity level: average

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone during Game’s (short) morning and noon loops.

Solo adventures

Moring fun with Dina

Chai went on two solo adventures: one in the morning at the Urban Enrichment Jungle where we met Daniel and Dina. The two dogs played lovely together and it was great catching up with Daniel after his Morocco and my Austria trip.

Tacos de birria

For Chai’s second solo adventure, we went to buy tacos de birria from Octavio. Today, Octavio and I talked more than we have in the past. I learned that they live en el Estado de México. Their commute is 2 hours each way and they work the taco stand 9 hours a day. Octavio lives in their parents’ house (which they own), so it makes more financial sense for them to not rent a place in Mexico City. Octavio seems genuinely content with their life, the connections they make with customers like me (who always get free consomé) and the fact that they are away from home for 13 hours a day. A taco is, I believe, 20 pesos. I’m sure he sells a lot over the course of the day. I wonder how much is left of a lot times 20 pesos after subtracting the price of the taco ingredients and public transport home and back to Mexico City – 2 subways and a camión.

It is a life, and it is not a bad one I don’t think. And then again: there is no way out of this life. I’m not familiar with Octavio’s educational background, but assuming they are unlikely to be hired for a job that pays more, I cannot imagine that they are able to save a lot of money. They probably support their aging parents. They will continue on in their house en el estado for another generation if they go the traditional route of marriage and children and such.

I think about these things as we joke over the counter of Octavio’s bike-drawn mobile taco stand – their eyes gleaming, a big smile showing bright, white teeth, short dark hair molded into a triangular prism, slightly bent to the left for a daring, playful, boisterous look. A washed-out white t-shirt with a band logo, fashionably torn blue jeans, sneakers, dark brown eyes. Octavio is slender and moves fast behind the metal counter screwed to their bicicle trailer, strong hands with long fingers tossing and turning tacos on the hot plate, ladeling taco meat, snatching a styrofoam plate. Octavio is moving smoothly like a DJ turning the tables, like someone dancing to a song only they can hear (maybe Complicado by Gera MX, Jayrick and Ervin River). They are young, they are strong, they are handsome and they know it.

Theirs is a good life, I think to myself after, if it is the life you want. An excellent life if you’re a people person who gets along with their parents and wants that traditional thing with the kids in the multi-generational house and all. You know you’ll be a home owner one day, and till then, you never have time to get bored anyways. From a young age, you have the responsibility of being your parents’ (and potentially your kids’) financial caretaker. If it is the life you want, that responsibility might feel good: you are part of what keeps the family afloat. People depend on you.

A while ago, I read Abolish the Family and the other day, I listened to an interview with M.E. O’Brien. I remember how Sophie Lewis calls the nuclear family the smallest unit of capitalism. I agree. I agree that a free society that relies on family structures (biological or chosen) is an oximoron. It’s not that a free society can’t have people sticking together – we are social animals after all and people will stick together. It’s just that in order to be truly free, family cannot be a means of survival anymore than capitalism, gender or the police. A society that is truly free is radically different, not only slightly so. A society that is truly free (we’ll get there one day, but not in my lifetime) will have to be THAT different from the society we live in today that we wouldn’t recognize it and that the arbiters of power won’t be able to perceive it as a society at all. You are rightly scared of it if you like your life because your life in a free society will be unrecognizably different.

In a free society (I think, burning my tongue on the delicious, hot consomé in its styrofoam cup), Octavio could walk away from their family and the taco stand – or they could stay. The decision would be up to them, not up to the structures they are embedded in. In a free society, the main impact of Octavio walking away would be on their own life, not on that of others (as in, the financial stability and survival of others would not depend on Octavio).

In any case, Octavio seems content enough. Until Chai recalls away from everything, we will have regular chit-chats when I get tacos and sometimes, we’ll banter or flirt a little across the counter because it’s what you do in the society that actually is.

I think of Zane and how he believes that we tend to always see our actual life in a kind of golden light and frame it as a choice we have made rather than the only option we had in order to feel less at the mercy of things. Like Swankie in Nomadland who is dying of cancer and wants to take one last trip to Alaska rather than die in a hospital …. I thought it was a beautiful, romantic and bold choice. He thought it was sad, depressing and very much a lack of a choice. I tend to contradict Zane’s arguments (I like to think I’m free to make choices myself) but sometimes, I wonder if he’s right.

If the person I am today had Octavio’s life, I would not be content. And then again, there is no way I’d be the person I am today if I had Octavio’s life. It is perfectly possible that, if I had Octavio’s life, I would like it as much as they do. It is also possible that they don’t like it at all and just don’t show me.

“¡Hasta luego!” I smile, take my tacos and leave with my Border Collie.

Picking up the formal recall again

Chai and I walked to the Urban Enrichment Jungle. After an off-leash loop, I did an easy “Schnee” recall (formal recall) rewarded by a taco. The second taco will be for more distraction training!

Leash walking in manners mode (collar)

We walked in manners mode to a corner store (5-20 steps between treats) where Chai waited outside and continued manners mode practice on the way home. She’s now passed out on the floor, looking content.

The Game of Chai

Throughout the day, Chai and Game played a lot. Maybe they missed each other while Game and I were gone!

Tricks

We worked on the 4 paws in a bowl trick.

Husbandry

“Brush” with both Chai’s regular brush and a new deshedding brush I got.

September 28, 2023

Solo AM adventures and a recall

Chai and I went to the Urban Enrichment Jungle for half an hour. We started with a kibble recall in our second location. She did SO well!

Today’s formal-recall reinforcer: tacos de canasta con chicharrón! Yumm!

Shaping

We worked on the 4 paws in bowls #5 and #6 trick again!

Home alone

Both dogs stayed home alone for about an hour when I went to pick up Kristen and Zai’s washing machine. In the late afternoon, Chai stayed home by herself while Game and I ran a quick errand.

Afternoon solo adventure

Chai and I walked to the Toy Play Plaza. She ran around, chased squirrels and played in the fountain. I had brought one of my fleece tug toys and we did a brief tug-and-chase session. WOW, her tugging has improved! What a strong, confident girl! (No video.)

After some more running around, we worked on sits and fold-back downs (they have gotten hard again) both on a park bench and on the ground.

We walked home in collar mode, going between 5 and 30 steps between treats.

Husbandry

+ “Claws!” (both back paws) – Chai stayed relaxed. Yay!
+ “Brush!” (deshedding brush)

September 29, 2023: the best kind of enrichment (content warning: it’s disgusting!), an easy recall and otherwise a regular day

Activity level: on the lower end of average

Solo adventure

Chai went to the Urban Enrichment Jungle by herself for half an hour in the morning. We met Dina and Daniel again and our dogs chased and raced each other. Chai also made time to steal another dog’s ball 5 or 6 times.

Then she had her most enriching enrichment experience yet. This is where you’ll want to stop reading if you have a low tolerance for disgusting stuff. Pick back up at the PM Adventure heading.

She discovered bandages someone had tossed into the bushes. It was partly actual bandages, partly banana (?) leaves, dripping with what I suspect was human puss. It was bright yellow and I don’t remember the last time I’ve smelled something this disgusting. She slurped down some and rolled in some more (she was in heaven!) before I picked it up and threw it into a trash can.

How we experience disgust …

(Keep scrolling down if you don’t want to read about this!)

Seeing Chai slurp puss and tossing out the bandages/leaves felt SO much more disgusting than when my dogs have rolled in human poop – and that already feels quite disgusting.

It’s interesting how this works: other animal’s poop hardly bothers me at all. It’s the human animal that brings out this visceral response in me. Someone – I don’t remember who it was – told me that this is because as humans, we are most susceptible to bacteria, viruses and parasites that affect our own species. Therefore, we respond most strongly to things that might contain potential dangers while our response to, say, the poop of a different species doesn’t bother us as much since the associated bacteria, viruses and parasites are less likely to be dangerous to us. It’s a mechanism of self-protection.

I don’t know if that’s true or an urban myth, but if it is, judging by my visceral response, human puss is more dangerous than human excrements. It makes sense I guess: if there’s puss, there is probably an infection and avoiding close contact may be smart. If there’s poop, it may be perfectly fine.

Chai got home full of energy (and puss) and, after taking a shower, wrestled for another half hour with Game. Apparently, it was an animating find!

PM adventure

In the afternoon, I walked with both dogs to the Dead Poultry Park and looped around a little. It wasn’t a long walk today but squirrels got chased and Chai got an easy taco recall in (no video).

Home alone in the PM and beyond

Chai and Game stayed home alone for a few hours hours when I visited a friend to co-work in the afternoon.

Chai also briefly stayed home by herself during Game’s last night loop.

Shaping

We worked on the 4 in trick.

September 30, 2023: another day without special events (and disgusting enrichment, part 2)

Activity level: lower end of average

Solo adventures

Skip the first paragraph below if your disgusting-things tolerance is low! The second paragraph is safe.

Chai went to the Urban Enrichment Jungle for 30 minutes this morning. Once again, it was VERY enriching: she found part of the puss-covered banana leaves I had missed yesterday (apparently, none of the other animals in the park are into this delicacy), a few licky-mat-like spots on the ground and got to eat some of the bread the person who feeds birds every morning didn’t shoo her away from today.

For her second solo adventure, Chai and I went back to Urban Enrichment Jungle in the afternoon. We successfully did her distraction recall challenge (loose back tie) for a delicious taco de canasta con chicharrón, looped through the park and played tug and fetch with a fleece tug.

Shaping

We worked on the 4 in trick.

I was also going to start working on the hug-an-object trick … but I just didn’t get around to it.

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone for about an hour when Game and I went shopping.

October 1, 2023: two parks and a new trick

Activity level: average

The AM

We went to the Urban Enrichment Jungle for Chai’s solo adventure.

Shaping

I love how in the video below, you can really see an instance of shaping with marker cues making a difference: “Good” (room service) and “Get it” (chase thrown treat) have different meanings and allow us to communicate more effectively!

We had a second 4-in session (since this one was so short, I thought two a day couldn’t hurt) and her first two sessions of shaping the hug-an-object trick (which she very much enjoyed!)

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone for Game’s noon loop.

Afternoon solo adventure

Skip everything under this subheading if your dog-finds-rotten-animals tolerance is low and/ or your love live poultry! It’s safe to continue reading under the next subheading: Husbandry.

Chai and I walked to Dead Poultry Park, did a big loop and an easy taco-rewarded formal recall. Chai’s favorite part of our outing was finding a torn plastic bag with a long-dead rooster in it (the maggots and the smell gave away the length of his death – or maybe you don’t need to be dead all that long to start smelling and turn into maggot central? I wouldn’t know.) She had rolled in it quite a bit by the time I realized what she was doing and relocated the rooster to a trash can.

Here’s what’s puzzling to me: WHY do folks not compost their dead roosters, put them in the trash can or feed them to their dog? Why is it always plastic bags by the side of the road or in a park? The back story of said roosters is (I guess – this is a just-so story I’m telling myself) the loss of a cock fight. Alright. So you don’t want to keep your dead or injured loser rooster around. But why get rid of them in THIS particular way? I don’t understand.1

Poor Chai had to take a shower – the second one this week – once we got home. She smelled too much like dead rooster to welcome her on my couch otherwise. But now she’s all shiny, showered and brushed.

Sleepy pup post rooster-rolling adventure, a shower, drying off and getting brushed!

Husbandry

+ Brush (regular brush).
+ Claws (both front paws). This time, Chai stayed completely relaxed for the first paw and mostly relaxed for the second one. We got over that brief hump of not liking to have our nails done fast!

In other news

Chai peed on the living room floor today – something she hasn’t done in a long time. I’m pretty sure the reason it happened was that I accidentally closed the bathroom door for about 15 minutes. Since Chai doesn’t have a concept of not peeing in the living room, she didn’t hold it but just went. Oh well. I hope this stays an isolated incident. If it happens with the bathroom door open, I’ll consider harshly telling her “No” before picking her up to have her finish her business in the shower. While I am not mad at her for peeing anywhere (she can’t help it), it would be nice to one day live in a place where I can unmurphy the bed while the dog is out!

October 2, 2023: by now we are done with this week’s disgusting things. I promise!

Activity level: average

The AM

Chai and I briefly went to Urban Enrichment Jungle, starting with an off-leash recall away from an empty kitchen towel target in location 2. Chai checked in with me before getting to the point I meant to call her and I used the check-in as a start button for my formal recall. Immediate response and she loved her taco, and then went to check out the empty target. You can’t see a lot on my video due to Chai’s angle of approach, so I’m allowing myself to not edit or upload it – it really is time for a major video editing break!

Shaping

+ 4 paws in a bowl session (no video).
+ 2 hug-the-pole shaping sessions.

Kiba time!

Game, Chai and I walked to Kiba’s park to meet Alan. Chai found LOTS of street food and the two girls played together and briefly with a group of other dogs.

Home alone

Both dogs stayed home alone while I walked to the tlapalería to get an empaque (whatever this is called in English).

Leash walking

I realized I needed a second empaque and went again, this time taking Chai. On the way back home, we walked in collar mode, going between 5 and 25 steps between treats.

I’ll change my collar approach for Chai: I’m going to go “up to” X steps from now on, but mark, treat and reset my step counter anytime she looks at me before reaching the X threshold. I wonder how far and how fast I’ll get her eye contact up this way. Knowing Chai, I bet it’ll be easier to then go to intermittent reinforcement … We’ll see!

October 3, 2023

Activity level: lowish average

The AM

We met Daniel and Dina at Urban Enrichment Jungle in the morning, and the two dogs played as long and joyfully as I haven’t seen Chai play in a while. Watching those two is a great way to start the day – they seem SO happy (and Dina is SO fast!)

We also had an off-leash kibble recall success! Go Chai!

Chai was ready to doze off for the rest of the morning while I worked. She had quite the workout with Dina!

We’re turning into tlapalería regulars …

I took both dogs on a walk to the tlapalería. I’m rigging up my washing machine drainage system, and it’s turning us into tlapalería regulars. Maybe one day, if the dog training thing doesn’t work out, I’ll be a plumber. What I’ve come up with may not be perfect – but it sure works!

There was probably more going on today …

… but I didn’t take notes. So we’re ending our week 26 digest here, with two sleepy puppy pictures future C just took when proofreading this post on December 11, 2023:

  1. A friend offered a different just-so story to me: maybe the dead roosters Chai keeps finding at this park are part of a ritual that demands they be gotten rid of in a particular way or loaction. ↩︎

Week 23 digest: September 3-9, 2023

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September 3, 2023: a play date for Chai

Activity level: average

The AM

We only spent 15 minutes at the almost empty Fresa Parque: Game crashed into a park table/chair, whined and stopped putting weight on her left front paw. So we headed right back home, she got a dose of Rimadyl and is now sleeping on the couch. Pobrecita!

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone for Game’s shortish noon loop (trying to let her paw recover – luckily no limping for now, but I can’t tell if that’s the Rimadyl or her body recovering).

Noon and PM: Chai’s solo adventure

Once I finished work, it was time to head out and meet a colleague and their dogs for some dog geekery. Chai got to hang and play at Dead Poultry Park for 4 hours. She is passed out on the floor now! I had hoped to do some morning shaping (but work got in the way) or afternoon shaping, but I suspect we’ll just let sleeping dogs lie today! This was a lot of exercise and fun! Lucky Chai found a stinky water hole to get muddy in, played with my colleague’s dogs Hilo and Nemo, earned lots of treats for staying within a mostly approved-by-me radius, found a tasty bone and did really well hanging out next to a park bench while the humans had tlacoyos. Good puppy!

Dirty dogs are happy dogs!

September 4, 2023: a formal recall success, 3 parks and a little shaping

Activity level: average

The AM

The three of us had 25 minutes of fun at Fresa Parque. Chai got to play with a young Mal and then found something to eat somewhere behind some bushes where I couldn’t see her. (Of course, my informal pup-pup-pup recall didn’t work because found food is EVERYTHING to Chai and I am not using my formal recall in real life yet.)

Game was running around cheerfully again even though I haven’t given her a painkiller yet – looks like she’s all good! YAY! So glad! That “I am in so much pain” face and whining as she came back to me after crashing into the park chair/table really had me worried for a moment. She usually dismisses pain entirely if it happens while she’s having fun, so that was a strong reaction for her!

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone briefly while Game and I walked errands.

Solo adventure and formal recall success!

Chai and I spent 20 minutes at Toy Play Plaza. We started out by repeating last time’s recall on a long line … and succeeded! Go Chai!

Then there was a taco de birria for the bestest girl and looping around the park, briefly greeting two dogs and playing in the fountain (our personal public baby pool) twice before heading back home.

Shaping

We worked on the sit up trick. Unfortunately, I believe I got what Silvia calls an “ugly sit” again but didn’t see it in real time: Chai’s back paws weren’t facing directly forwards but to the side. I’m going to have to experiment a bit more to learn how to see the perfect position in real time!

We also worked on one object in another on the roof. The smaller container I’m trying to use instead of the last one isn’t working either … I’ll have to find something else. It may be time to go shopping for more kitchenware and look for bolitos in all the sizes! (I’m very much not someone who gets excited about shopping … unless it’s for dog-related stuff! Or plants!)

I had planned on also working on 4 in as well, but work got in the way. Hopefully tomorrow!

Kiba’s park with Game

Game, Chai and I went to Kiba’s Park to run around dogs, screaming and running kids and large umbrellas for half an hour:

They also did a lovely job waiting for me outside a pharmacy.

September 5, 2023: park time, formal recall oops and a little training

Activity level: average

The AM

We started the morning with 40 minutes of park time for Game and Chai. Mornings tend to be enrichment-based (unless Chai is in a mood to play with other dogs): both dogs will scavenge all over the park, finding scraps of what folks left behind the previous night and pieces of bread and tortilla chips the bird-and-squirrel lovers sprinkle like perfect scatters in certain areas in the morning.

Scavengers in their element! Now that Chai’s stomach isn’t as sensitive anymore, she gets to have all the food-finding fun as well.

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone around noon when Game and I went out to get Chai’s recall taco.

Solo adventure

Today’s solo adventure was short – just long enough to get a formal recall oops in! But a solo outing is a solo outing, and we’ll take it!

Tricks and obediency stuff

We worked on 4 paws in, one object in another on the roof and down/good/get it in the afternoon at Fresa Parque (no video of the last one but Chai did very well!)

PM at the park

Before it started raining, both dogs got to go back to Fresa Parque for another 40 minutes. Together with Chai’s solo outing, we’re at our solid 1.5 hour outdoors average (not counting noon and evening pee loops).

Chai found a cup of consomé and opened it for Game and herself, and they shared it. It smelled delicious and from what I could see, it tasted just that way as well.

Chai then went on to do her afternoon job: steal the balls of all the dogs in the park she could steal from to bring to me and trade for treats. She’s a busy Border Collie with a lot of jobs!

September 6, 2023: a typical BC fun-and-training day

Activity level: average

The AM

We spent 40 minutes at Fresa Parque and Chai had a good time with her park friends. Game did great taking treats for just letting everyone be, and then both dogs wrapped up with a little sniff-and-scavage fun.

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone while Game and I ran errands for 20 minutes. She hasn’t been home alone for longer periods of time lately, but we’ve been doing a good job keeping up with multiple weekly 5-30 minute home-alone sessions (without Game). Normalize, normalize and normalize again!

Trick training

We worked on 4 paws in bowl #5, sit up and placing one object into another one.

Afternoon park adventures

Chai, Game and I went to Fresa Parque, waited outside a store and practiced foot-on-leash downs at a papelería for 1.5 hrs. The walk there took us quite a bit because Chai was in the mood to pull on her back-clip harness, resulting in many, many circles! I’m really happy Game is an off leash dog, allowing me to focus on Chai when I circle!

On the walk back from the park, Chai walked partly in collar mode. I reinforced every 5 steps today – that way, I needed hardly any nose bumps even though Game was off leash ahead of us us!

At the park, Chai played a bit with two new dogs, both her and Game scavenged and both worked on the tunnel cue since we had the dog park to ourselves. No solo adventure today, but a good day for dogs! Especially for Chai who got an easy formal taco recall (when she was already looking at me!) to super-charge “Schnee!”

Good dogs waiting patiently at the papelería while someone is trying to figure out how to print a page without margins for me.

September 7, 2023

Activity level: going for low today to catch up with work and make sure every week has its low energy day! Let’s see if we’ll succeed …

Note from the future: I succeeded! Low it is!

The AM

Game and Chai spent 30 minutes at Fresa Parque, scavenging and, in Chai’s case, playing a bit with her friend Sam the Doberman. Game got brushed at the park: she is blowing her coat and there’s Malinois fur everywhere.

Chai got bullied a bit by another dog and came back to me to be protected. I love that she trusts I will look out for her, reinforced and did my best to keep the bully at arm’s length.

Happy morning play with Chai’s friend Sam!

Training – just a little bit!

We allowed ourselves a single sit-up session. I forgot to hit record, so no video. In any case: a single sit-up session is totally okay for a quiet day! We’re still within the boundaries of calm-day-ness!

The briefest of solo adventures

We went out briefly to practice a formal recall on a back tie at our usual spot and marvelled at a squirrel together. (Tip: show your dog that you share their interests!)

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone briefly while Game and I ran an errand, and both dogs stayed home alone when I went inline skating at night.

Watching Chai on a calm day

Chai has been really good! She played a little with what’s left of the dolphin toy tonight, tossing it up in the air and pouncing on it. She has been really good about relaxing and isn’t being a pushy, demanding pup at all, but totally able to entertain herself. I’m very happy with how she’s developing!

September 8, 2023: lots of training and fun with friends

Activity level: average

The AM

We spent 30 minutes at Fresa Parque. Chai played a little with now 5-months-old little Doodle Pipa and the dogs enjoyed their urban enrichment jungle (aka finding food and sniffing stuff) for the rest of the time. I ran an experiment with soaked tortilla-chip pieces someone had left for birds and squirrels by sprinkling kibble on top. These two food items seem to be the same value.

Shaping

We had a lovely 4-paws-in-a-bowl session and a great one-object-in-another session – the best one with our new object, the nail clippers, yet!

After I worked a bit, we did sit up on the floor and then I shaped a sit on a crate. I hope the crate is narrow enough to “force” Chai to keep her back legs facing forwards which, in turn, would allow me to work on the sit up trick ON that platform:

The video above ends right where I should have ended the session. Start to finish sit on a platform – perfect. Leave it at that; take the fact that a treat got stuck under my suitcase kitchen door as a good moment to end.

That’s not what happened in real life. See me continue for a few more minutes and Chai’s response below!

Solo adventure

Chai and I went to Kiba’s park to meet up with Alan. I got another successful recall away from Kiba before saying hi and we both worked our pups – Alan on leg weaves and downs and me on downs and stands, and both girls got to play single-toy fetch with Kiba’s ball.

We walked part of the way back in collar mode (5-20 steps between treats).

Chai also met Loki, a mix she enjoys playing with (see middle picture below), and found a dog food bag to climb into. Maybe she’s telling me to change our kibble brand!

September 9, 2023: out of the city with friends!

Activity level: high physical

Both dogs got their own morning loops today and then hung out at the house while I worked a little. Before it was time to leave on Chai’s solo adventure, Game got another brief pee loop by herself.

Solo adventure at Los Dinamos

Kristen, Kala, Luca, Chai and I went to Los Dinamos for the better part of the day. Chai and Kala played A LOT. Chai saw horses and mules – both grazing freely and with horseback riders – sheep, goats, got rushed by 4 of the shepherd’s dogs and recovered fast, saw various groups of suddenly appearing people and had no feelings about them, rolled in horse poop, played in the river and ate parts of an apparently delicious head- and partially legless rotten animal. It was mostly skeleton with little flakes of rotten meat stuck to it – probably either a small sheep or a mid-sized dog? I don’t know, but on the drive home, the entire car smelled deliciously corpse-like. Chai did not throw up on the drive there and back and did not get frustrated about Kala being squeezed in right next to her crate before getting to properly greet her. She was gentle with Luca and didn’t bother him at all, and interested in sticks and stones a kid tossed into the river for Kala and her. She also did an excellent C-runs-away easy taco recall – meaning the next one gets to be a distraction one again! The conversation with the shepherd was fascinating, and Kristen and I had a fun time. This may be the last time we’ll hang out because they’ll be moving abroad, but we sure made the most of it!

Left: Chai and Kala explore the river. Right: Luca is practicing being the cutest boy e-ver!

The last time Chai saw a horse, she got spooked. This time, she first contemplated this mule from a distance and then decided it was safe to go closer and sniff. (I didn’t worry here because Chai’s body language lets me know I’d be able to call her off and the mule doesn’t mind her presence.)

Chai and Kala came across a flock of sheep and goats!

The flock and two of the shepherd’s 10ish dogs. They are all related and puppies are raised with the flock, like lifestock guardian dogs traditionally are. Young dogs learn from older ones. They both guard and are able to keep the flock together. When nothing is going on, they doze in the shade. They are out with their human and the flock for ~6 hours a day. I learned so much from this shepherd, who was kind enough to hang out for a bit and answer all my questions about living with sheep and dogs as a small-scale subsistance farmer.

Left: right before Chai got rushed, she got just a little too close to the flock and the dogs made it clear to her. Right: watching the sheep from a distance after the shepherd has communicated to their dogs that we are friends. Chai’s herding instinct didn’t kick in – but it’s also possible she is still recovering from getting rushed and would have reacted differently to a flock without dogs. In any case, I’d venture it is safe to say that Chai is not magnetized to sheep. In the background story I have been told, her dad is a working sheepdog, but I am somewhat doutbful about the truth of this story.

I could have spent another hour talking to them, but didn’t want to keep them too long. While what I said above is what they told me, what follows are observations and parts I pieced together based on what I’ve read on this way of life in other parts of the world – it may or may not actually be the case for this particular shepherd and their flock.

The dogs and the life of subsistance farming (observations and thoughts):

The dogs are shepherdy-looking mixes about Game’s/Kala’s size; some with slightly more coat. From what this shepherd said, they are all related – so they have puppies and the puppies learn from their parents.

It is interesting to me that the dogs who are actually used for herding by people who do this for a living are not a particular breed of herding dog or even a landrace. I’d venture the most common breed in Mexico that is widely recognized as a herding breed is Australian Cattle Dogs (they are everywhere in the city, but usually not used to herd sheep), followed by Border Collies (used to herd sheep by people who do it for fun but not by people like this shepherd) and Old English Sheepdogs (who I don’t think are used for herding, but are a popular family dog breed around here). I’ve seen Australian Cattle Dogs throughout economic backgrounds while Border Collies and especiallyOld English Sheepdogs are fancier-neighborhood-dogs. I also have seen one ACD who was actually herding, but I was only passing by. I had the impression that this dog was an actual sheepdog, not a rich person’s hobby herding pal.

I found it extremely interesting that the dogs of the shepherd we met had a bubble around the sheep. There was clearly a boundary outside of which they allowed other dogs, but inside of which they would guard. Chai overstepped the boundary and their behavior changed immediately. Once they had chased Chai back of the bubble, they went back to chilling. I asked if the shepherd had taught the concept of the bubble to their dogs, and they said no – the dogs are doing this naturally.

It was also deeply fascinating to me that the dogs seemed to naturally surround the flock, protecting them from all sides. The flock did not seem bothered by the dogs at all and the dogs seemed very relaxed. The way they surrounded the flock kept the flock together and the invisible bubble kept intruders (like Chai) out.

I asked the shepherd if Chai and I might approach a little more so we could test how she’d react to the sheep when being closer (this is just something I’ve been meaning to test). The shepherd had control of their dogs – once they invited us into the bubble, the dogs stood back. (The shepherd had a stick and used body language to communicate with the dogs, but not in an aggressive way at all – they just communicated clearly that Chai was a friend to be welcomed into the bubble.)

I would love to spend a day with this shepherd, the flock and the dogs. I wonder what their everyday life looks like: how far from the green space do they live? How much do they walk? Are they always on the move or do they stick to one general area? How often is there a potential conflict? And is it always with visiting dogs or is there also wildlife or other pets to look out for? Maybe even humans? Is everyone on the same page about the shepherd using this (public) land for their sheep? What do the dogs eat (feeding 10 mid-sized to large dogs is a lot!) Do they have other sources of income or is it based on the sheep alone – on their meat? What does community or family structure look like? How much interaction is there with the wider capitalist society a subsistance farmer, whether they want to or not, is necessarily embedded in? If this shepherd had a kid, what opportunities will the kid have? Is it necessary for the kid to work as soon as they can walk in order to feed everyone or are they able to go to school, graduate, study; choose a totally different path in life?

I am curious about all of this, but it’s not my place to ask. I’ll probably never know. From the outside, to me, it’s easy to romantisize this life: it is calm. It has nature, animals, movement and little to no technology. It is physical and human-powered, not fossil-fuel-powered, and there is so much to observe about your animals, their interactions, the people you see, the changes of the plants, birds and insects around you through the seasons. I know there is a version of me who’d enjoy this life – its physicalness; the nailing of wooden planks to create a barn; the walking. Naming and observing your dogs. Keeping their puppies (the ones who survive); seeing them grow up. Observing local plants, birds, lizards; how their behavior changes with the times of day and year …

It is easy to romanticize because I wasn’t born into this life. If I were, I might feel completely different about it – after all, as it is, I did not keep the life I was actually born into and the same thing might have happened had I been born into a different life. And spinning that thought further: the life I was born into was a privileged one that allowed me to leave it behind. If I was born into the life of subsistance farming, leaving that life may not be an option. Or it may be just as much an option as it was for me and the live I actually got! I don’t know, but I can’t help but enjoy leisurly following these threads of thought as I’m clening up this pst at 2:30AM in the morning, a day before I’ll release kt.

Check the dog social post for today’s video of Kala, Chai and Luca!

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone for Game’s morning and pre and post solo-adventure walks.

Week 20 digest (August 13-19, 2023)

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August 13, 2023

Activity level: calm

We started our day off with 45 minutes at Fresa Parque. It’s nice how quiet it is at 7:30 on Sunday! Then our friend Dina joined the party and Chai and her got to run lots together.

Chai is now contently sleeping on the couch. This was a perfect start for the day! Game and her also found a bunch of stuff to scavenge on, including a bag of mysterious salsa.

Home alone

Game and I went trigger hunting, ran errands and park-officed for two hours while Chai stayed home. Really glad I made time for leaving her home alone – I need to make sure I keep up with Chai staying back and Game heading out with me as Chai is pretty much able to do as much as any adult dog, but still at an age where repetition is crucial for her to not develop FOMO.

Park-officing at Parque Morelos!

Now that we’re back, Chai is chewing on the Nylabonbe I got her yesterday. Based on her chew choices, I suspected she would like the hard rubber. And I was right! She is the first dog I’ve ever had who is into Nylabones! She looks blissed out chewing on it on the couch while Game couldn’t care less.

Solo adventure

In the late afternoon, Chai and I went out for about 20 minutes. We walked to the Toy Play Plaza on her back clip harness. I let her run around for a few minutes and, since there seemed to be a Squirrel Party going on, used her formal recall cue “Schnee,” marked with “Birds!” and ran with Chai to point out a squirrel. She had a blast! It was an easy recall with a big “IT’S A SQUIRREL!” reinforcer.

I then quickly set up for distraction recalls at the barrier stage with liver in container #1, location #2, reinforcing both with liver from my hand and the liver from the container. Today, Chai started towards the container while still chewing on the treat from my hand. She already knows she’ll get the distraction, and she is waiting for me to open her containers! I love it! I’ve been hiding my camera behind trees or bushes so it doesn’t become too much of a set-up cue. However, I suspect Chai still knows when things are set-ups. She’s just too damn smart to trick.

We walked back home in collar mode, making it between 5 and 20 steps between treats (20 only once: calm days are hard! That’s why we’ll make sure to keep at them!) Collar mode walking treats is how the Border Collie earns her keep on calm days that don’t have a lot of shaping in them!

House training …

August 14, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

We spent 30 minutes at Fresa Parque. Chai played with the black whippety dog and a few others. When she plays with this dog, it becomes really clear that she isn’t the fastest Border Collie on the block! That little black one runs circles around her! She’s not slow and her movement pattern looks great, but she isn’t the fastest Border Collie I’ve seen. 4-months old Maki is already as fast as Chai. (You won’t see little Maki in pics and videos anymore because she moved back to the farm she was born on yesterday. She had made it clear that she NEEDED to have herding in her life. Viri and Esteban listened to her needs. It was a good and brave decision – a hard one, but the best decision for all of them. I am sorry, Esteban and Viri. It takes strength to do what’s best for our dogs, and you did!)

After today’s stint at the park, neither one of my dogs was “played out.” So they continued wrestling on the couch while I worked. Now, after playing and shaping, they are both soundly asleep!

Shaping!

We played two-toy fetch with two 10-peso coins and then shaped one object in another with both a clicker and a coin in the water bowl. Chai ROCKED it! You go girl! I love how toy skills and shaping are coming together to make this trick happen!

Solo adventure

We walked to the Dead Poultry Park. While Chai ran around chasing ardillas, I stealthily set up container #1 in its third location, with liver in it, for our barrier recall. I didn’t record this time because I didn’t have my phone with me. Unlike most previous reps, Chai and I had to stroll past the distraction area multiple times before she noticed it. As I suspected, the tripod is a cue to look for and then recall from a distraction! Going forwards, each container will have at least one rep I don’t film – just to be sure Chai generalizes the behavior when there isn’t a tripod. In any case: she was being a superstar!

She also found puke in the tall grass and ate a lot of it. We’ll see what her stomach thinks of that. She then played for quite a quite a while with a 10-months old German Shepherd, an adult mix and a Boxer. She mistook a Chihuahua for a squirrel – but only for a moment. Clearly, we need more Chihuahuas in our life! If you’re in Mexico City and have one who’d like to befriend a Border Collie, reach out to me!

On the way home, we walked in collar mode between 5 and 30 steps (we managed 30 several times – Chai was tired and a superstar about walking next to me)!

Back home …

I decided against shaping today: it means I won’t video, which means I’ll save myself video editing time. I am slowly but certainly getting sick of editing, but am still committed to this project of documenting every day in Chai’s training life. And there are SO many videos I still need to catch up on editing from the last couple months! Every new one adds to the pile. I am now at a point where most days, I edit more than I add or manage to break even. Slowly but certainly, the backlog is shrinking!

Instead of shaping, Chai rested back home, wrestled with Game and then ate the last remaining pieces of the Nylabone I had gotten her yesterday. (No, it is – supposedly – not edible, but according to Chai most delicious.)

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone when Game and I walked to a pet supply store to pick up a few things – among them a Nylabone-replacement for Chai. It’s an off-brand chew, but Chai approves – and so far, it seems a lot sturdier than the original Nylabone!

Hours later, that toy has been played with and chewed on and is still intact!

Another reinforcer test

I also did a reinforcer test today. A few days ago, Chai found a pile of irresistible fish treats at the park – so I got fish treats (at a RIDICULOUS prize). I thought they might make another single-protein option if Chai’s stomach agreed with them. After all, she seemed CRA-ZY about the ones she scavenged. Well, pitted against dried beef liver (which we already established is the same value as cooked chicken), the fish clearly lost!

I wonder what the fish treats at the park had that the ones I got don’t have. They looked the same and I got them at a store close to the park to maximize our chances that they actually were the same brand. Maybe the ones she found just sat in a puddle of lukewarm rainwater for a while and went deliciously bad while the ones I got were still boringly safe for consumption?

House training

Just gotta keep it up two more days and I’ll get the next brownie!

August 15, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

We started the day with 45 minutes of being dogs at Fresa Parque where Chai got to play with a park friend.

Game did NOT beat up a Whippet who didn’t see her and accidentally crashed into her at full speed. She was going to and I immediately interrupted her. I don’t think she would have stopped before having told the Whippet that this behavior was inacceptable in the past. I have Pat Stuart to thank for this! Thank you!

Left: Chai and two of her park friends. Right: Game being a good girl who stays out of the commotion.

Home alone

Both dogs stayed home for a little under two hours while I worked with Scarlett and Panucho, a Golden who is taking his first steps towards being a social butterfly (rather than a grumbly grouch). He did fantastic and so did our helper Pau!

Panucho: breaking hearts with extreme cuteness since 2021!

Solo adventure

Chai and I walked to Kiba’s Park. I let her run and sniff and did a barrier recall with container #2 in location #1, reinforcing with liver from my hand and from the container. Like yesterday, I casually placed my distraction and then came across it; no tripods giving its presence away. Chai was being a superstar!

We saw Nicole, a kid who is crazy about dogs, knows all the dogs at the park and LOVES Border Collies. Chai has learned to stay just out of their reach since Nicole likes calling and picking up “their dog friends.” Chai has figured out how to dodge that bullet by now, doing casual drive-by-s but staying just out of Nicole’s reach. It soon started raining … time to head home after a shorter-than-expected adventure. Chai wasn’t done running yet and needed a high rate of leash-walking reinforcement.

Shaping

Over the course of the day, we had 3 four-in sessions and I did one session practicing my timing and mechanics without a dog. We’re down to (struggling with) my smallest bowl already! I’m proud of my girl.

House training

One more check mark tomorrow!

August 16, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

We spent half an hour at Fresa Parque. Chai had lots of fun playing with Doodle puppy Pipa and her friend Dina. Game got brushed and had fun greeting Dina and two of her human friends. We’re now at a point where Chai gets really excited to see Dina while Game gets really excited to see Dina’s human Daniel, who may already be regretting that he told me Game was welcome to Malinois-hug him anytime.

Chai also found a most delicious dead squirrel (nice and smelly after probably having been dead for a few days) and had some of it before I threw it out. We’ll see what her stomach thinks of that input tomorrow!

Home alone

Both dogs stayed home alone while I ran errands.

Noon and beyond

Around noon, the three of us walked to the Toy Play Plaza. Game and Chai had a blast trying to run up vertical palm trees after squirrels while I worked. We then did barrier recall with liver in container #2 in its second location. I tried setting up as casually as possible: first the tripod, then walk away, then walk past it, then place container #2 while Chai wasn’t watching. Of course she turned and saw it, moved towards it … and did a beautiful formal recall. I had planned to walk some more before encountering it, but this worked too. It was lovely to see the recall work just as well in Game’s presence! (Usually, I only take Chai for her recall set-ups.)

After 1.5 hours of chasing squirrels, getting treats for checking in while I was working and (Chai) practicing a recall and playing briefly with a mix, the girls are back home and sleeping peacefully on the couch. The highlight of this outing, I am sure, was finding and sharing a pile of what looked like gooey tortilla chips with some sort of salsa.

Shaping

We did three sessions of 4 in with only the smalles bowl (blue, bowl #6). Chai is doing great and much more confident than only a few days ago!

Reinforcer test

We ended the day with another reinforcer test. Since Chai had so clearly preferred the liver over the fish treats, I wanted to know whether fish was even better than kibble. I used a blanket this time to give the fish better visibility in case camouflage had been their disadvantage in the last session. If the other day was any indication, these fish need every bit of help they can get!

Believe it or not – kibble is better than fancy fish treats!

House training

We DID it! Anther week – another brownie!!

August 17, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

We started with 30 minutes at Fresa Parque – we had half an hour before it started raining. Since it was already drizzling, not a lot was going on this morning but we walked for 30 minutes and greeted a few dogs.

Shaping

We had three sessions of 4 in with the smallest bowl (#6). So much fun!

Solo adventure

TW: dead animals. If you don’t want to read about them, skip to the next heading (Home alone).

Chai and I walked around for two hours and she got off-leash time at the Dead Poultry Park where we practiced barrier recalls, did easy “Schnee” (her formal recall) recall games and a “Schnee” recall reinforced by “Birds” (squirrel chase marker). She very much knows what the marker cue “Birds” means by now and gets just as excited as Game does!

Chai also found another dead critter (not a chicken this time) – she’s getting annoyingly good at finding smelly carcasses. Of course, she enjoyed some of it before we agreed on leaving it behind. (I’d let her eat the entire thing if it wasn’t for her stomach issues.) Whatever this carcass was, it wasn’t a squirrel like the other day because it was BIG, but already decomposed to an unrecognizable degree. What is the deal with this park anyways? Is this where everyone goes to die?

On the way back home, we walked in collar mode with 5-30 steps between treats. (30 only once but she did well today in general!)

Home alone

Chai and Game stayed home alone in the morning when I ran errands and got my hard-earned brownie for yesterday’s weekly streak (it was delicious!).

House training

The brownie I earned for the weekly streak I completed last night!

New week – new streak!

August 18, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

The three of us spent 40 minutes at Fresa Parque – then we left because Chai had found some delicious spot to insist on licking for-e-ver, which meant she was done playing with her park friends. Other people get fancy licky mats – I just take my dogs to the park. Game is a pretty foodie dog, but Chai is another level of food motivated – probably my dog foodiest one so far. I’m not complaining! Not only does she not tire of working for kibble, she also gets super excited about low-budget frozen Kongs (filled with soaked and squished kibble).

Home alone

Chai and Game stayed home alone for 3.5 hours while I went to a no-dogs social thing.

Shaping

We did four 4-in sessions with the smallest bowl …

Rainy park times

… and then Game and Chai spent 40 minutes walking to and running around Fresa Parque in the light rain and waited for me outside a store. Walking on her back-clip harness on the way out was hard for Chai today! (Game was off leash and ahead of us.)

A little more training

I didn’t record it to avoid “having to” edit the video, but I LOVE how well Chai did! Fold-back downs on a verbal cue – no lure! I’ll record the next session.

House training

Two days into the next weekly streak, and it wasn’t a tie! Yay!

August 19, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

The dogs and I spent 45 minutes at Fancy Park I for our morning outing. It was a fun change for them, included play in the fountain and hide and seek.

Playing in one of the fountains! Chai was intrigued by the moving pillar of water!

Note to self: if going to Fancy Park I on the weekend, go early and parking will be easy!

Being in an area with bars and restaurants on a Saturday morning meant there was A LOT of food everywhere. I was daring greatly and recalled Chai away from two tiny yogurt containers with her formal recall cue (after pup-pup-pup failed). She came running and I sent her right back. Go puppy!

Photo proof of the first time I used “Schnee” in the real world away from food Chai had found, fed a handful of kibble and sent her back to finish her prize! So proud of you, puppy!

This, unfortunately, made me overly confident. I tried a second time with a food container while she was already eating. Chai did not respond. Ooops. Error on my side. I “helped” her let go of it, repeated my formal recall and then sent her back to eat more of it twice. She also found a mount of cream cheese with a tiny bit of bagel around it and thought it was the best thing ever. I did not try any recalls or leave its there but leashed her and walked her away after letting her lick a third of it. It was A LOT of cream cheese and I don’t think her stomach would have supported all of it. That said, I am going to get cream cheese and try using it as my highest value reward!

Scavenging and life quality (an opinion)

By now, I am less stressed about letting Chai go back to small amounts of food after a recall (or just letting her have small amounts of found food in the first place.) Small amounts seem to have become okay with her stomach. Judging by my observations over the last couple weeks, Chai’s highly sensitive puppy stomach has slowly, but steadily grown stronger and does now tolerate of a much wider range of food! A huge relief because I see scavenging as SUCH a species-typical dog behavior and want my dogs to have it in their lives.

After reflecting on this some more, I’ve decided that I’ll even take the occasional diarrhea day. I don’t want to create a dog who lives in fear that I’ll take away a treasure they find. I want a strong recall that works away from any kind of food source anyways and am working up to it in our distraction sessions – but I’ll only ever use it when absolutely necessary. When Chai finds the next delicious food container like she did this morning, I won’t call her away from it (for now – we’ll get there after more distraction recall practice) but celebrate the find with her. And I’ll send Game (if available) to help finish the job so Chai only gets to inhale 50% of whatever she finds.

Life quality (being able to show species-typical behaviors such as scavenging) matters more to me than diarrhea-free dogs. I put scavenging in the life quality category because I suspect that’s what the dogs would tell me if they could weigh in. My readers may see this differently and that’s totally okay. Like in most things life, there is no one right way of being out in the world with our dogs. You do you and I do me!

Allowing scavenging is of course not a recall cop-out: the way I see it, strong recalls also go into the life quality category. The stronger their recall, the more freedom I can safely give my dogs. I absolutely want a recall I can rely on even under the most challenging food circumstances, and because of who Chai is, I’m positive we’ll get there – probably not in a straight line, but we will. From what I’ve seen so far, I suspect that food will stay her biggest recall challenge, but food is a controllable distraction and she’s a trainable Border Collie who doesn’t guard resources. With that kind of dog, food is the best biggest recall challenge you could possibly have! (This is not true for all dogs. Add resource guarding or low biddability to the mix and things look different for sure.) Chai isn’t the most biddable Border Collie I have worked with by far, but that’s part of what makes her so much fun for me. It’s not only her Border-Collie-ness, but also her quirks and the ways in which she challenges me that make her a great fit for me.

Shaping

I was going to continue with 4 in and the smallest container, but Chai said she wanted a break from this exercise. So we stopped. I’ll give it a week and then continue where we left off.

We worked on positions instead!

Afternoon adventure

I took both dogs to Fresa Parque when the rain died down. Chai got to play with Pipa (the Golden Doodle puppy) and Lola (Pipa’s older Old English Sheepdog sister). I usually chat with Pipa’s human, so this was fun. Their friend was here too and they invited Chai to play monkey in the middle together with Lola and her baseball.

Monkey in the middle with Lola and her human!

Chai didn’t have a solo adventure today, but she’ll have a big one tomorrow! And then I’ll have to take Game on a longer solo adventure of her own – probably a bike trip – next week to make sure Chai gets some longer home-alone time without Game. It’s an important skill to maintain! It’s also important to me that Game gets her fair share of solo adventures herself. I’m too busy to do it every single day these days, but two or three times a week are usually possible.

Home alone

Both dogs stayed home alone when I quickly went to the grocery store.

House training

Today’s pee outing was unsuccessful – but fascinating! Game didn’t pee because, I suspect, she didn’t have to and it was thundering. I cued Chai to “potty” in a spot Game often goes, and she immediately squatted but didn’t pee. I have captured squatting, but not peeing! Her cue to squat is, “Potty,” her prompt to mark is Game’s fresh pee on the ground and her cue to empty her bladder is having to go when not distracted from the bodily sensation by the environment. FASCINATING! I have exclusively rewarded after the potty cue when I saw at least a few drops (marking). And YET, squatting is what Chai has learned as the meaning of the cue! Dogs are SO fascinating!

Week 19 digest (August 6-12, 2023)

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August 6, 2023

Activity level: calm

Today was perfect for a calm day: while Chai would have been happy to have another active day, I feel fried. I am clearly not used to hours of uphill hiking anymore!

This morning, we just looped around the block. Chai struggled quite a bit not to pull – either because she had been locked into her luxury kennel earlier last night and let out later than usual this morning OR because yesterday, she got to pull on her front-attachment harness. We’re back to the back-clip harness today, but I can’t tell whether yesterday’s pulling experience carried over to today’s first walk or if she had simply fully recharged and missed her morning off-leash park time.

In the afternoon, Chai, Game and I walked to the Toy Play Plaza and I let the two run around, chase squirrels, drink from the fountains and just be dogs for 15 or 20 minutes and then did one rep of our current barrier recall challenge (kibble container #3 – the live mouse trap). Chai was a superstar and recalled right away! Her back-clip harness leash walking looked a lot better on the way home than it had on the way out, too – getting to run around must have helped!

Husbandry

+ “Brush!” Chai looks very fancy after yesterday’s shower and today’s brushing!
+ “Claws” (all claws on her left back paw; it was easy for her today).

Mini solo adventure

Chai got to come to the bakery with me and practice “lie down when my foot is on your leash” while I paid. She did well and her back-clip harness leash walking was almost perfect again. I suspect her harness-mode success is multifactorial: not having an off-leash Game around AND having had time to run at the park already, even if it wasn’t for a long time.

“Home alone”

Both dogs stayed free in the living room while I went up to the roof to put my freshly washed towels on the clothesline. No apartments were destroyed in the course of hanging laundry!

Frog!

After a late-afternoon pee loop, I lured a frog … on the mattress and NOT off a cliff!

Thoughts on the calm day

Chai is very active! She is NOT in the mood for as calm a day as we had today (calmer than we usually would because I’m exhausted from yesterday).

House training

The streak continues!

My next brownie is only one more (successful) day away …!

August 7, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

Chai and Game got 35 minutes of running around at the park to start the day. Chai played with Maya, the fun little Corgi, Border Collies Eva and Maki and a mixy-mix friend, but was mostly interested in finding ALL the food scraps.

During a work break, I took both dogs on their short leashes on an errand. Chai did really well not pulling even though Game was around: morning runs really are a must for her!

Home alone

Both dogs stayed free in the living room when I went to get the brownie I earned when Chai pooped outside this morning. (Outside poops immediately spawn a check mark in my streak game.)

Then they stayed home alone again when I ran a slightly longer bike errand.

A new person doing unusual things …

I had asked a plumber/painter/electrician to help me with a shower piping issue. Chai gave the briefest snarl-bark when they first came in, I scattered kibble and then she proceeded to observe from a comfy spot on the couch and eventually join us in the bathroom to sniff all the tools. Brave girl!

Solo adventure

After some more work and two shaping sessions – 4 in, one with only bowl #5, one with bowl #6 in bowl #5 – Chai and I headed out on a solo adventure. She waited in line with my foot on the leash for quesadillas. I used one of my randomization strategies: reward every time a red car drives by. Since the quesadilla stand is located on a medium-busy street and Mexico City’s rate of red cars is just right, this makes for a perfect rate of reinforcement.Have you found creative ways to randomize reinforcement? Let me know in the comments!

We then went to a nearby park where I had my quesadillas while Chai got to run around. She is developing juvenile independence, so she kept me on my toes when wandering to the other edge of the park! (She found dry fish treats on the ground and feasted on them.) We did two recalls with kibble container #3 – in real time, I got the impression that the first one was a double take at the distraction, so I added another one in a different part of the park after a break. Then we headed home and Chai waited outside a corner store and joined me at a pet supply store to pick up – you guessed it! – fish treats.

On my evening pee loop pre-class with Khaleesi, the new Husky client, I used magic hands on a large bag a person was getting plants out of in front of our building.

More home alone time

While I worked with Nancy and the wonderful Khaleesi (¡Le gusta hacer travesuras!), Game and Chai stayed home alone again. Meet Khalessi with the most beautiful eyes:

Young and full of energy! We made an exercise and enrichment plan for her that should take care of most issues.

And more shaping!

We had two more shaping sessions of one object in another: first the baseball toy in a small crate, and then switching from the baseball toy to a paper cup mid-session. Chai did great!

As for the liver treats, small amounts for training seem to be fine. I’m a little suspicious because she teetered on the verge of diarrhea several times since I’ve been using them (relatively sparingly) in recall training. I’ll make sure to keep the amount low. Chicken, so far, is our best bet for high-value treats she can have a lot of. I also prefer it because it isn’t as crunchy. Liver makes a good back up to just have at home though!

Diarrhea

Chai has – once again – diarrhea. I suspect it’s the fish treats and other stuff she found to eat in the park today while I was busy with my quesadillas de flor de calabaza y queso myself and just let her wander. We’ll test out the fish treats soon enough. Other treats I want to test are bread and tortillas – first plain tortillas and then friend ones (two things she finds in the street a lot). If her stomach tolerates them, they’ll be all hers.

House training

If it weren’t for the magic outside poop rule (outside poops immediately earn me a check mark for the day, whatever happens pee-wise), I wouldn’t have been able to finish the week’s streak but would havehad to start over on the last day of the week. Yay for setting myself up for success!

August 8, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

Both dogs enjoyed their 35 be-a-dog minutes in the morning. Chai went straight from the car to the fish treats she had found yesterday and had some more, sharing with Game this time. Then, both of them played with Eva (chocolate BC) and Maki (red merle BC puppy), two of their park friends.

Park friends.

Lots of running and even Game played and let the others chase her!

Chai gave me a diarrhea-y outdoors poop. Diarrhea’s gotta be good for something, and if it’s teaching Chai to poop outside because she simply has to go – I’ll take it.

Home alone

Both dogs were loose in the living room while I ran a 5-minute errand. When I got back, one of them had stolen a kibble container from my desk, opened it and eaten everything in it. We learn: no untethered home-alone time for Game and no unsupervised living room time for Chai!

They stayed home alone again when my friend Kayla, who is visiting for a few days, and I went out for dinner – this time, Chai safely tucked away in the bathroom!

Shaping

I was going to start out with a session of 4 in with bowl #6 in bowl #5 – but Chai let me know it was too difficult today by lying down. So we ditched bowl #6 and just had a few reps with #5.

Our second shaping session was one object in another. We started with the baseball, then did the paper cup, then a shoe and finally a roll of tape. Chai is acing this trick!

Husbandry

+ “Claws”: all nails on her right back paw. She didn’t even flinch! I’m curious if her front paws will continue to be more difficult – we’ll find out soon!

Solo adventure

We walked to the Dead Paultry Park, got pambasos (and treats for being in a down position with my foot on the leash anytime a red car drove past) and park-officed briefly. Since the pup-pup-pup informal recall seems to have lost its power, Chai is dragging her 5m line today. Selective deafness is a common symptom of being a juvenile dog! Sadly, being a selectively deaf juvenile dog today means having to be tied to a tree in my park office. Sorry, Chai. Can’t have it all!

Chai was suspicious of the warm, loud sound/air coming from a vent we passed. We walked past several times, each time marking with my cookie toss marker and tossing the cookie away from the entry once we had passed the vent. Chai did well with that, and I’ll keep coming back to practice more. I’m calling this the treat toss/R- game (until I think of a sexier name). It is R- because being past the entrance was, given Chai’s body language, a relief. Of course I made sure the leash stayed loose the entire time and let Chai decide with how much distance she wanted to move past the vent. The sidewalk next to the building with the vent is very wide and Chai’s comfort curves allowed her to stay on it. If things go as planned, she’ll curve less and less out into the sidewalk with every time we practice.

Friends and frenemies

The mighty Norbert.

I put Game in her car crate for our first evening with Kayla, Barley, Niffler and Norbert in the apartment. (Game isn’t Barley’s biggest fan, and while Game and I worked on the Norbert project during our time in Cuernavaca, neither Kayla nor I were in the mood for a training session tonight. We wanted to work on our respective work things and then just hang out and enjoy nerdy dog trainer talk and friends-catching-up time.)

Chai was fascinated by Norbert and respected the boundaries he set. She played with Niffler (keeping an eye on Norbert at all times, just in case) and enjoyed Kayla’s snuggles.

House training

Week 2 starts today!

August 9, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM and noon

We started the morning with 20 park minutes. Chai’s Corgi friend Maya was around and they played a little, but she was clearly more tired than usual and didn’t feel like running as much.

On our noon loop, Chai was pullier than usual. All rested up and ready for some shaping, little Border Collie?

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone WITHOUT Game (finally! It has been too long!) while Game accompanied me to get a haircut. Game enjoyed her solo outing greatly – and the rawhide she got to chew while hanging out!

Shaping

I did a quick “four” session: 2 “get it” treats with only bowl #5 and then 2 “get it” treats with bowl #6 in #5. Chai rocked it! We’re building back up! (No video of this session.)

The second session after (starting with bowl #6 in bowl #5), Chai considered too hard.

We abandoned the project for the day and worked on a fun round of putting different objects in the wooden crate instead.

Late afternoon and post-taco evening

The dogs got a 30 minute outing at the toy play plaza. Chai was pully and peppy! After some work and a quick “Frog” session for Chai (on the couch but not feeding off the “cliff,” my two girls and Niffler stayed home while Kyla, Barley and I went out for dinner.

Lucky Barley got his own taco with extra meat!

Later that night, Chai had a blast playing with Niffler and spying on Norbert while Kayla and I recorded a podcast … and then, she slept VERY well!

The podcast episode we recorded:

The only downside of today:

House training

We broke our streak. The excitement of having guests and me wanting to focus on our conversation rather than constantly interrupting to take out Chai are likely culprits. But that’s okay and totally worth it. Tomorrow, we’ll be back on track. In any case, the good news: no accidents in the living room!

August 10, 2023

Activity level: calm

The AM

We went to the park and the dogs had 30 minutes of fun with Eva and Maki.

I went back home to work and take a nap. It’s probably time to slow down on both the socializing and the inventing-new-projects-for-myself fronts!

Home alone

Because I had taken a nap rather than shaped Chai, the dogs just got a quick outing before I handed them over to Kayla who worked from my place while I headed out to see another friend. Kayla worked for about 2 hours before heading out herself and I got back home 2 more hours later, so Game and Chai had both good company and then two more hours alone.

House training

… and we are back on track!

August 11, 2023

The AM

We went to the park for a full hour this morning to make up for the very quiet Thursday. Chai played with Eva and Maki, found lots of tortilla scraps meant for birds and shared them with Game (tortillas should be next on my food testing spree!) and we trained a bit, using the bench as a start button and working downs and stands until I ran out of treats. No video, no pictures – but we are up and running!

The PM

After working, I did our usual 4 daily shaping sessions1: 3 to work on the “one object in another” behavior and one “4 in” one. Chai did well!

Solo adventure

Chai and I walked to the Toy Play Plaza in one of my work breaks. I had meant to walk there in Chai’s back attachment harness and back in collar mode, but forgot the collar. So instead, we practiced “With me” for crossing streets IN her harness (high rate of reinforcement for the win!), I named squirrel chasing (“Birds!”) at the park and did a single fun obstacle-run-away-recall game with Chai’s formal recall cue at the empty playground.

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone while Game and I went for a walk.

House training

A close call, but we did it again! Go puppy (and go me!)

August 12, 2023

Activity level: average

We spent 25 minutes at Fresa Parque and left earlier than planned because there wasn’t a lot going on except for ALL the food scraps Chai kept being drawn to.

In the afternoon, we had two 4-in sessions and one object-in-another session, went to a different park for about an hour and explored, worked positions (stand and down) and did one distraction recall (container #1 with liver in location #1); liver from my hand and opening the box as reward – Chai did phenomenal! – as well as an easy “Schnee” recall when she was already running in my direction.

Both dogs waited in front of a store and then I walked Chai home in collar mode from there. She had a hard time (Game was off leash and I’ve not worked on Chai’s collar mode with Game off leash much!) We did 3, 5 and 10 steps between treats with most of the reps being 5 steps between treats. If things are hard for my dog, I’ll up the rate of reinforcement accordingly!

While Chai didn’t get a solo adventure today, she got to stay home alone all by herself while Game and I ran an errand.

Finally, after a semi-successful one-object-in-another session where I tried to get Chai to pick up a coin, we played the “2 balls” game with two 10-peso coins to teach Chai to pick them up. She did great and had fun once it turned into a game and she realized picking up coins was possible!

House training

I’ve noticed that if there is a tie before noon (like today), I usually can’t turn things around and the best case scenario is to keep the tie a tie (like today) rather than breaking my streak. It’s as interesting to collect data as it is to watch my own game-fueled behavior!

  1. I’m not saying that every single day for the rest of her life, Chai will get 4 shaping sessions – that’s just how things have worked out over the last couple weeks. There will be many days in her life that have zero training sessions in them. ↩︎

Week 18 digest: July 30-August 5, 2023

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July 30, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

We started out with half an hour of park time for Game and Chai. There was some playing with old and new friends for Chai, but mostly it was a quiet morning of walking.

Back home, Chai wasn’t tired but wanted to interact. That is excellent: training wasn’t available, but snuggles were and I made sure she got to enjoy them!

Both dogs slept while I worked, and then Chai did her first frog in a different location – Silvia had suggested we try somewhere other than the couch. Below is my video and the text I submitted with it:

“I chose another place where I had a “cliff” to prevent crawling off (the mattress). I’m not sure she’d be able to do this without crawling if there was no precipice … What do you think?“

Noon and beyond

I got a nerdy single-paw shaping session in (see this older post I just updated with more detailed geekery if interested), and then we went for an …

Afternoon walk and a little more shaping

After the shaping session, Chai had some inner pressure to get rid of! She wrestled with Game and then we went for a walk – just Chai and me to check off her daily solo adventure.

We visited two parks and did some collar walking in between. The first time we went back and forth between 5 and 15 steps between treats, the second time between 5 and 25. Good puppy!

We ended the day with a final single-paw target shaping session.

House training

The streak continues!

July 31, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

We went to one of the parks in our area and Chai had fun with Border Collie Eva and her new 5-months old sister Maki. Their folks Esteban and Viri will take classes with me if Maki gets to stay – I’m excited; she is very cute! (Still on a trial period though.) Today, we also saw a leaf blower at the park (Chai’s first or second one ever) and she didn’t care. Yay!

I’m aiming to mostly use our AM park time for “just being dogs” stuff for both dogs (and of course cueing/paying pees, paying voluntary check-ins as well as recalls and leave it-s).

Chai’s second adventure of the day is a solo one whenever possible and I’ll train in addition to having her run and play and do her own thing.

A frog

After getting home and working a bit, I tried another frog with Chai after reading Silvia’s feedback:

“I think you can try no cliff as well – should be fine at this stage.”

In this video, I kept the “cliff” (fed off the mattress) but tried for more extension. This led to more leg movement. Going forwards, I’ll try to get more extension without (or with less) leg movement on the mattress and, once I have that, without a “cliff.”

Husbandry

+ Brush

Solo adventure

At noon, Chai and I went on her solo adventure. We took a decently long back-attachment-harness walk – hardly any pulling, i.e. this morning’s run and play time must have been just right – and went to the indoors market. This was Chai’s second time there without Kiba. There was more going on today and she was a little weirded out by people playing the trumpet and the drums. That said, she was a trooper and stuck with me through all my purchasing and laid down anytime I stopped at a stand and stood on her leash!

Waiting in all the places!

AND! On our way out, Chai PEED without Game nearby – actually peed, not just marking! – in the spot Game usually pees! Party for the puppy!!!

AND and! Almost home, we ran into two people with 3 dogs and Chai walked up to them on a loose leash! AND to the water bowl in front of the café she likes to drink out of, again on a loose leash!

Shaping!

We started shaping picking up a spoon, but I got lots of paw touches (no surprise there; we’ve been working on so much paw stuff lately!)

After a pee and corner store walk for both dogs, I tried holding the spoon and then switched to a toy. NOW I’m getting mouth action!

Evening fun

Since I’m planning to make tomorrow this week’s calm day, Chai went out for another 45 off-leash park minutes. None of her friends were there but I found a new client with a 2-year old Husky and Chai played with her as well as a 4-months old little Doodle. (I haven’t seen a single Doodle in any of the other parts of Mexico City I’ve stayed/lived for a month or more. This place is clearly more fresa: there are Doodles everywhere.)

I’ve decided that the Mexico City Doodle index goes from -5 to 10. 10 Doodles means a place is very fresa, and I currently live in a 5-Doodle neighborhood. The neighborhoods I like best are 0-3-Doodle places.

House training

Sadly, tonight’s a tie.

The tie between indoors and outdoors pees means we reset week 1 of challenge #2 tomorrow, starting our counter over with day 1 of week 1. (While frustrating, it works out well: tomorrow is the first day of my gamification class. Just like my students and colleagues, I’ll be starting from zero.)

“Do not judge me by my successes – judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again” (as Nelson Mandela supposedly said.)

August 1, 2023

Activity level: low

The AM

35 minutes of play and park loops. Chai met her friend Dina and I got a spontaneous hug from her human – a good way to start the day!

Home alone

Chai and Game stayed home alone for a little over 3 hours.

Cape ONNN!

Since it’s our quiet day, I had and appointment AND it’s the first day of both FDSA classes and my gamification group, we just did a little bit of fun stuff: a rep of “Cape (the service dog vest) ONNN,” chasing treats and hand touches while wearing it and then “Cape OFFF!” Chai is doing great – no body sensitivity with wearing capes or harnesses at all! I wanted to do the Pride sweater I had bought her as well – but turns out she has outgrown it already. That was fast! I’ll have to find someone with a slightly smaller dog to gift it to!

Husbandry

+ “Claws”: I clipped the nails on Chai’s right front paw. She was not happy about it this time so we called it a day after the one paw. I’ll do the next one tomorrow.

She’s a young dog – feelings change. She may just be having a paw-touchy day or she may be growing up to be a dog who doesn’t like her nails clipped after all. We’ll just have to see and find out. In the former case, things should be getting easy again soon. In the latter case, it’s a good thing we started working on nail clipping early!

Frog

Another calm day behavior is the frog. We did two rounds on the mattress without videoing. The first one went well but Chai didn’t fully extend and was a bit wiggly in the second one. Note to self: this stretch may become physically harder the older Chai gets. Make sure to take a longer break between frog sessions in the future!

Park fun

I used a rain break to let the dogs run around the park for 20 minutes (I set an alarm to make sure my planned “low activity” day really stayed low activity. This, together with this morning’s outing, is the max amount of off leash fun I want Chai at 7.5 months to have on a calm day. It was 20 minutes well spent: Game got to go naked (I usually have a bandana or a collar with an ID on her and so I have something to grab if necessary.) But Game sometimes feels itchy when wearing any kind of equipment. Her favorite style is naked, and since it was drizzling and muddy and we had the park to ourselves, she got to be naked today. She zoomed around the puddles and slid through the mud and had the best time. Game and Chai also found a baseball toy they managed to play tug with (even though it was really small!) and did well with a few Leave it-s from various food items. Chai got paid for check-ins and leave-its.

House training

Like yesterday, we ended up with a tie: Chai peed in the shower as often as she peed outside. I promised myself that if I couldn’t get more outside pees two days in a row, I’d lower criteria from more pees outside than inside to at least as many outside as inside pees. So while we’re starting again from 1 today, I’m giving myself that check mark! 


The reason it is so hard to get the outside pees isn’t that I don’t know when to take Chai. I almost always know exactly when she needs to go. The reason is that at this point, most of the time – say 90% of the time – Chai needs two things to be in place in order to pee outside:

  • She needs Game or her friend Kiba to pee or poop first; this inspires marking.
  • She cannot be distracted. This part is difficult: for every inside pee I got today and yesterday, I had just taken Chai outside – and she was distracted when Game peed. This just happens to be a distracting city and I don’t have a yard, so luck (distraction-free moments) is a big factor in our success. 

Anyways, a tie seems to be doable even on distracting days – so I’ll play with these modified rules! When success feels out of reach, games stop being fun. I want the challenge but I don’t want to keep failing more than one day in between successes due to factors out of my control. So check mark #1 – here we go!

No more resets for ties. Let’s set ourselves up for success!

August 2, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

I set up a park office to work from and also did recalls away from closed container #2, implementing the latest version of my Chai-specific distraction recall strategy! Chai aced it!

We spent about 2.5 hours outside. Park offices are the best!

Husbandry

+ “Claws!” – left front paw. Chai wasn’t exactly happy about it, but significantly calmer than yesterday!

Shaping!

We had three sessions of “4 in” with the cue attached in the last two sessions! Chai is getting better at balancing in our current bowl! Go superpuppy!

We did two shaping sessions of our latest trick with the toy we found at the park yesterday! I love how much she loves to work!

House training

The streak continues and we are on a roll today!

August 3, 2023

Activity level: average

+ Off leash container 2 at location 2: formal recall success!

+ Solo adventure: indoors market, including waiting outside the bathrooms by herself.

+ I park-officed and the dogs were outside for about 3 hours. We also met Kiba and Alan and I got a perfect “Schnee” recall off leash away from Kiba! (Pictures only.)

Shaping

+ 2 “one object in another” sessions. In the first session, the baseball ended up in the bowl in the last rep!

+ 2 “Four” sessions. Today went well! Next time, I’ll be moving my home position back behind my back!

Home alone

Chai and Game stayed home alone for about 3 hours when I went to see friends in the evening.

House training

5 pees outside, 3 pees inside. Go Chai!

August 4, 2023

Activity level: average

The dogs got 30 minutes of off-leash time at the park in the morning. There weren’t any friends to play with but a lot of running around for Chai who also happened to find A LOT of random food, including a fried tortilla-something. (Fingers crossed tomorrow won’t be a diarrhea day!)

Morning shaping

I got home and worked, then did two rounds of shaping one object in another with box #2 I had used for the 4-in game. It’s bigger than the water bowl and the results showed! Good puppy!

Solo adventure

Chai and I walked to and through the indoors market for a while. We came across 2 scary balloons on the floor and conquered them with magic hands, both inside the market and later outside (they had clearly been thrown out so I took them with me). I purchased container #3 at the market: a live mouse trap (I wanted a wire-cagey thing and this was perfect.)

Foot-on-leash cue at the market.

We went into the dog park near the market because Chai let me know she would like to greet the only dog inside – an older Vizsla. They played briefly and then Chai, unprompted, peed in the dog park! Lots of treats for the best girl!

We then set up and did a long-line recall away from kibble in the mouse trap – Chai didn’t even get close before she checked in and I took it as a cue to call her. We looped around the park a bit and then did a second recall set-up in a different corner off leash. She aced it again! Even though the mouse trap looks nothing like containers #1 and #2, Chai patiently waited for me to get out the food for her. Good girl!

As of today, we are working with dried liver as the high value reward – we ran out of chicken. However, if tomorrow is a diarrhea day, I can’t necessarily blame the liver … the lucky girl found even more street food on her outing.

We walked part of the way home in collar mode with 5-20 steps between treats. It was hard for Chai today though and we switched back to back-clip harness mode after a short stretch.1 I stopped at a corner store to pick up toilet paper and Chai waited outside, and then we made it home where the little one is now passed out on the floor while I’m working and Game is relaxing on the couch.

Afternoon shaping

Two rounds of four in – one with home position on my thigh, one with home position behind my back. She worked hard and did well with bowl #5!

Home alone

Both dogs stayed home alone for a little over 3 hours.

House training

Today was another tie of inside and outside pees. I’m glad I’ve changed the rules for ties to count! Otherwise, this would be my third streak break in a week, which would be highly demotivating. Maybe after getting my 4-week streak, I’ll do another round of 4 weeks where ties don’t count? A ver.

Have you ever gamified your dog training (or something else in life)? What game did you play and did you find it helpful? Let me know in the comments!

August 5, 2023

Activity level: high (VERY high physical, low mental)

Rachel, Miriam, Ari and I spent all day at Los Dinamos with the dogs, including 4 hours of relatively strenuous (for a young dog) climby hiking. With the exciting drives (being held on laps), four hours of off-leash, steep climby hiking, playing in elbow-deep mud and getting cleaned off twice (once with a hose at a restaurant and once in the shower at home), both dogs are the good kind of tired today.

Some of the highlights:

+ Meeting a new person (Ari). Chai warmed up to them much faster even though Ari pet her entire body right away. Very little avoidance behavior! She rocked it and then chose to take turns sitting in Miriam’s and Ari’s lap in the back seat on the way to Los Dinamos.

People – as important as dogs!

+ Meeting random hikers – one or two at a time – in the woods. As a Mexico City puppy, Chai hasn’t really had this experience before, except for the one time I took her and Game out to a different section of that same nature preserve. She did phenomenal: I scattered to the side of the road anytime strangers passed us and Chai only gave a single bark of insecurity the very first time someone showed up out of nowhere. Then, the counterconditioning effect kicked in full force and she was no longer worried at all. Game modeling indifference probably helped as well.

+ Getting to run and climb and jump over obstacles. All puppies I’ve previously raised have grown up with natural obstacles – only Chai hasn’t really because the city center doesn’t have these kinds of obstacles. And yet, she was fantastically coordinated and made it across fallen trees, climbed rocks and ran and jumped with Game over rocky, root-y steep trails as well as walking them more slowly on leash. The only obstacle she needed help with was a deep artificial canal she was afraid to jump across (I picked her up and jumped with her).

This is very interesting, especially when I compare Chai to Mick. I got Mick as an adult. He probably had a lot of time running off leash as a puppy, but no obstacle practice – and when I got him at age 2, he was VERY clumsy. So was Fanta who I also got as an adult, and who most definitely did a lot of running as a young dog – but likely never met an obstacle in his life before me.

I wonder how much of a difference body awareness tricks like 4 in, paw targets and the frog are making for Chai and how much is just getting to run and play with other dogs in general. Or maybe it’s mostly genetic – who knows! In any case, it was really fun to observe how well she dealt with her new environment.

+ She settled with Game on a mat (my hoodie) when we took a hiking break at La Boca del Cielo.

+ Game and her settled outside the car while we had lunch: waiting and relaxing outside for quite a while in a new place – check!

+ We did one fun and easy “Schnee” recall when Chai was trotting away from me but not towards anything in particular. (Gotta make sure I balance our formal recalls out with fun and easy ones!)

+ She wore her pulling-allowed (front clip) harness for the second time because I didn’t want to slow the others down with my dog training.

+ No throwing up on the way there and back when she rode in people’s laps!

Here’s a compilation:

And the best news:

House training

As far as I can tell, ALL pees and two poops happened outside today! (Except for a third poop in the crate on the car ride home. The crate may happen to be a place Chai has learned to go anytime she has to in her previous home (she may not have had the opportunity to leave). In any case – happy to report that as of now (9:30pm), we had zero pees inside and two poops in addition to her pees outside!

Proud of a check mark that’s not a tie but a crystal clear win!

Inching closer to the next brownie!

Husbandry

+ An unwelcome shower! Game got one as well, and I got two. We were all covered in delicious mud! Not anymore though!

  1. Speaking of loose leash walking: I’ll be running an intense 4-week group for anyone who wants to work on this. You get to pick one of 6.5 R+ based approaches for your dog, are welcome to work together with housemates or partners, your dogsitter or other co-dog-caregivers and will get time-stamped video feedback. E-mail me for details or to sign up! ↩︎

Chaiary – week 16 digest: July 17-22, 2023

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July 17, 2023

Activity level: average

Mostly bullet points today!

Activities

+ 45 minutes at the park: running and playing with other dogs and a single-rep success recall off distraction #3 (kibble) behind the closed plastic container barrier. Woohooo!

+ Shaping “Earn it!” with 3/4 of Chai’s daily food ration.

+ After our impulse control shaping session, Chai needed some Game-wrangling time to let out all of that pent up need to move and DO rather than hold back. I totally get it!

+ Then Game and I went out for three hours to bike around and meet a friend for coffee …

Enjoying a chew at the café and guarding “my” Ecobici (Mexico City bikesharing bike) outside a store on the way home.

… Chai got another round of “earn it” – and we made it to food on the floor! This was followed by the necessary roughhousing with Game. Impulse control means all that pent-up DO-DO-DO needs to come out! I have never seen as clear an example of this as I’m seeing in Chai.

+ Chai and I walked back to Fresa Parque and repeated the next formal recall step I had come up with … with fascinating results. This girl is challenging me and I love it!

In terms of good news, she left a green paleta when asked to “Leave it!” and the same splash of dog poop she was tempted to eat twice. Then, however, she found something else that smelled like a mixture of human poop and rotten animal and managed to eat quite a bit of it before I got her away. Tomorrow will tell if whatever disgustingly smelly something she had the pleasure of enjoying today agreed with her stomach.

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone for 3 hours while Game and I went on bike rides and a coffee outing, and again for Game’s evening walk.

House training

How can this be right? I just had a brownie! Where does the time go?

July 18, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

Chai spent 20 minutes running around Fresa Parque with dog friends and Game practiced staying calm and eating treats surrounded by the morning craze. I had been planning on repeating the barrier step at the park (kibble in closed container) and, after a break, kibble in the open container just to see where we were at. But since I hadn’t had my coffee yet … I forgot both my tripod AND the container. No recall training this morning. We’ll go back and try again later!

Next, we did some paw target shaping with new objects. I want to improve Chai’s precision targeting!

Noon

Around noon, we headed back to Fresa Parque in harness mode. My plan was to walk home in collar mode and spend the time there practicing the recalls we didn’t get to this morning. And that’s precisely what we did after be-a-dog-time.

After rep #5, I gave Chai time to run and be social with the noon crowd. Her intensity was ratcheted all the way up: these recall games take a lot out of her puppy brain! And all that concentration leads to pent-up “Whaaaaa!” that is best released in playing with other dogs! I took a video from beginning to end of the play session. You can see HOW intensely she plays at first – this is a way for her to release the pressure that concentration and impulse control build up! – and how her social needs saturate within a few minutes and she’s then able to move on to sniffing and exploring. Meeting your young dog’s social needs on a regular basis is a big deal!

I’d usually feed check-ins, but I was out of treats. While running out of treats can be annoying, it is also convenient: anytime I run out of treats, I will substitute personal play as a reward. Running out of treats about once a week ensures that we keep personal play as an outdoorsy reinforcer as well and don’t become solely dependent on tangible reinforcers.

On the way home, Chai got to wait outside the bakery and at a corner store while I went inside. Good girl!

Afternoon

After a fun-and-easy recall from the bathroom into the shaping space (checking recall 8/101 off Silvia‘s modified list!), we worked some more on single-paw targets with easy objects (balance pod, lid of a pot, turned over metal bowl), putting the cue back on and switching both the position of the objects and my position in relation to Chai (turning my back, standing on one foot, feet and hands on the floor and looking at Chai through my straddled legs etc).

The upside-down metal bowl works great – I want to find something stable that is equally tall but less wide (to ensure she only gets one paw on) and then start reducing hight and size from there! Maybe styrofoam will do the trick … I could slowly shave it down and tape it to the floor for stability …

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone for Game’s two short rain-break walks.

Husbandry

+ “Brush!”

House training

(1) New recall rule: I’ve done quite a few into the shaping space and it’s time to mix it up again! I’ll make sure the last two fun-and-easy ones are outdoors! Maybe one for toys and one for food?

July 19, 2023

Activity level: low

Woohooo! Getting this week’s low-activity day out of the way!

Recalls and collar mode in the AM

After a brief morning walk work, Chai and I went to the park to repeat our same distraction recall in the same space, aiming for a single-rep success. Unfortunately – this being Mexico where public spaces are shared and used and alive! – there was a dance class happening in our usual spot with the piano mural.

I decided to go for it anyways, having Chai wait in her usual spot and simply setting the distraction up in the other direction. Would I suggest this to a student? No. I would tell them to go home and try again later But with my own dogs, I experiment more – and that’s what I did here. I was curious if Chai would recall away from the tapedd plastic container if it was in a different spot.

Pre and post distraction recall, we did a short loop through the quiet (except for the dance class) park. There were no dogs to play with and I’m thinking of keeping today low key. I threw in one fun and easy “Schnee” recall when Chai was already about to turn my way, reinforcing it with “chase” and 3 ball tosses. Her ball game was a bit lacksadaiysical today in terms of returning the balls, but it was a lovely recall and a fun “chase” reinforcer! Recall 9/10 for Silvia – check!

We then walked home on a collar (5-35 steps between treats). I upped the rate of reinforcement to every 5th step when passing a single dog and a group of dogs. Chai did SO well today! I used to feed a lot more when passing dogs, and now she’s just rocking it!

Home alone

Chai stayed home with Game for 5 hours while I co-worked with a friend, and then again alone by herself during Game’s brief pre-rain walk.

“Cape ONNNNN!”

For the first time, I announced the service dog vest (cape) and put it on, fed the unimpressed Chai a few treats that required her to move around and then “Cape OFFFF”ed her again. Tomorrow, we’ll go to the airport for the first time. She will probably not wear the cape – it’s still new to her – but if someone asks, I want to be able to put it on without her freaking out!

“Frog” progress

I used the remainders of Chai’s meal for the day for two frog sessions. For the second one, I did not fold the pillow! This is a great calm day activity, and my (randomly discovered) trick of feeding with Chai’s head off the couch is helping her to not try and crawl towards me: there is nowhere to crawl when your front end is at the edge of A couch!

House training

Woohooo! I’ve got a 3-week/21 day-streak!

July 20, 2023

Activity level: average

Morning fun and formal recall success

Chai nailed her single-rep success recall with our latest barrier strategy – a closed container I will open for her after recalling for chicken. Go Chai!!! Then she got to run around with several dogs she knows at that park, found a mud puddle to lie down in and is now – after half an hour of training and off leash fun – peacefully asleep on the couch.

Rough-housing – and a break at the exact right moment

After resting up, Chai and Game enjoyed some fun roughhousing around the apartment. Timing was perfect – the people in the apartment below us were also being loud, so I didn’t worry about them being bothered by the dog nails screeching on my floor (their ceiling). After roughousing, I scooped up Chai to put her in the bathroom for a break … and when I came in just minutes later for my own bathroom break, she had already peed in the shower. Yay for great timing! May the housetraining streak continue!

Even juvenile dogs who are already learning where to do their business may forget when they are all wrapped up in playing – until they can’t hold it anymore and pee on the spot. Supervision still matters (even more so with Chai who hasn’t learned to pee outside as a young puppy, but really with any young dog.)

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone while Game and I went for a brief late morning/C-gets-a-brownie walk. The person working the place that sells the brownies already knows me and invited me to come in WITH my dog(s) the next time: they had seen that I asked them to wait outside every time and let me know they are welcome. People are lovely!

Chai had another brief home-alone stay on Game’s evening loop.

Husbandry

Chai got brushed – she’ll look good at her first day at the airport!

“Cape onnnn!”

We practiced putting on, walking with and taking off the service dog vest one more time, just in case. (I didn’t end up using it at the airport.)

Airport adventures

Getting ready: when going to a place that your dog may consider indoors as well as outdoors – be sure to bring cleaning supplies just in case! (We didn’t need them. Tip: if you get Nature’s Miracle, do NOT get the “melon burst” scented version I accidentally bought. It smells disgusting.)

Left: be prepared – don’t forget your cleaning supplies! Right: airport parking garage. Ready to adventure!

We went for a socialization trip to the airport, saw LOTS of people, heard suitcases roll on different surfaces, rode the airport elevator and I carried Chai up and down an escalator. She also got smacked in the head with a “Caution-wet floor” sign by a cleaning person in the bathroom who didn’t see Chai and just bounced back. She took it all in stride. Go Chai!!

The only thing that didn’t go as well as it could have: Chai threw up in the car on the way to the airport. She happily got in again after our adventure though. No fallout from car sickness so far. Fingers crossed it stays this way!

After getting home, Chai joined Game’s sniff loop to empty out the puppy so she could hang out in the living room without accidents. Just now, a bit after 6PM, both dogs got to go on a short pre-rain loop – and we got an empty puppy again!

4 in (“Four!”)

We went from bowl #2 down to bowl #3! This is HARD and Chai is being a superstar!

Frog

I tried two frog sessions with the tired evening puppy: one with the (unfolded) pillow and then one without a pillow. She couldn’t do it without the pillow so we went back to the pillow for session #2. Short and sweet, praising gently and releasing with “okay.” Me putting the pillow on the couch is becoming a cue – Chai goes right into frog position! Feeding off the edge of the couch keeps her from crawling forwards!

House training

New week – time to start a new streak!

It looks like I might really get that massage …! Only 6 more days!

July 21, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

We spent half an hour at the park. Game got to sniff and chill and Chai played with her dog friends and worked on positions in between. She did great!

Home alone

+ Chai stayed home alone for Game’s noon loop.

+ Both dogs stayed home for a little over 3 hours while I ran errands at a no-dogs-allowed place, and again briefly when I picked up dinner.

Shaping

+ We repeated yesterday’s session from bowl #2 to #3 (no video). Next time, we’ll start with #3 right away!

+ We worked on single-paw precision targeting.

Husbandry

I trimmed Chai’s ear fur back a little: another no-big-deal (for Chai anyways) grooming procedure preceded by an announcement.

Frog

We worked on the frog behavior again. Silvia agreed with my plan of taking out the pillow and filling the pillow case with smaller and smaller things. First, I tried just a hoodie but that was too hard. A hoodie, a t-shirt and shorts did the trick though! We’re already downsizing from the pillow in the pillow case and it’s looking good!

The evening

The dogs did some gentle roughhousing, the three of us had snuggles on the couch, went on an evening pee loop together (yay for empty puppies) and had fun with informal toy play in the apartment (with both dogs at the same time and the always-out toys). We’ve been building gentle fun with tugging between the dogs and me, and Game has been a great teacher for Chai. (No video.)

House training

Wheee! I keep winning at my game! House training, including the version of it I am doing, is mostly a matter of consistency and vigilance: I know when it’s safe to let the puppy into the living room and when it isn’t, and she does already pick up some slack for me, like the other day when she herself went to the bathroom (the door is always open) to pee and poop while I was distracted and let her in the living room too long.

After week #4 (which may or may not be in only 5 days), I’ll up the ante on myself and try to get more and more outdoors pees. I still have to make up the rules of the new game, but I think I might do something along the lines of “green check mark any day she pees outside more often than in the bathroom” to start with.

We’ll also have to take a closer look at pooping again once I’ve streaked through week 4: Chai hasn’t pooped outdoors in a while, just in the shower. I’ll have to go back to massaging her belly and spending more hours working from a park office rather than from home: after the pee games, I’ll come up with a poop game! (These games are for me, of course, not for Chai: they motivate me to set her up for house training success every day. I hope to get her as house trained as she is capable of becoming, which, due to her unknown past, may or may not be fully housetrained.)

One of Chai’s favorite spots because she can reach the toilet paper from there if I forget to put it out of reach – and toilet paper is FUN!

July 22, 2023

Activity level: average

The AM

We started out with a round of paw-target shaping, just like yesterday.

Chai and I then walked to another neighborhood in harness mode to meet Alan and Kiba. We started off with my new recall plan for Border Collie stares/recalls: shaping. I’d wait her out at the end of her leash and then release her as soon as she gave me a weight shift or any sign of reorientation. This was easier said than done, as you’ll see if you follow the link in this paragraph.

I’ll be helping Alan with Kiba next week so I may be able to repeat the set-up. What I want to change next time: call her the moment she gives me a check in rather than immediately releasing. Feed and release! This may be clearer to Chai – and it brings us closer to the actual goal, which is a recall anyways!

We then just hung out and Chai and Kiba got to socialize with Ivan’s Border Collies and their dog sitters. Nicole had fun throwing Kiba’s squeaky ball for Chai, and Chai found a non-intimidating way of interacting with Nicole, a kid who is at the park a lot and wants to hug all the dogs!

On the way back – harness mode again because I was out of treats – Chai waited for me outside a store. Good girl! Waiting is no problem, even when Game is not with her! She trusts I will be back for her.

More shaping

After coming home, I worked on the frog twice for a handful of treats each. Silvia’s feedback on my last video (see above):

“Left leg looks great here – but right seems a bit harder (going out 2nd, leaning to the left when she does so), so I would stay on this height for a bit to get her totally relaxed with the right leg as well before fading the support further.”

Silvia Trkman

For now, we are staying with the hoodie, t-shirt and shorts in the pillow case!

After a little break, we went back to single-paw target shaping in 4 brief sessions. It is coming along nicely!

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone during Game’s potty walk at noon and Game and Chai stayed home alone when I met folks for a picnic at a no-dogs allowed (sniff) section of Chapultepec.

… and MORE shaping!

After getting back home, we did a 4-in session, starting right away with bowl #3! Chai did well!

An evening loop …

The three of us went on an evening loop during a rain break. Unfortunately, it didn’t result in empty puppies … so Chai went to bed (aka to into the bathroom) a little earlier than usual. No living room time for puppies who still need to pee! I want my weekly brownie!

This evening walk came with a startle for Chai: right in front of us, someone at the wall to our left tossed a rolled-up sweater to someone standing at a car to our right. The person catching the sweater was wearing an (according to Chai) creepy and unusual yellow dress. Chai growled for a second before I interrupted her with a scatter cue, tossing the treats ahead and away from the people, and then we quickly moved on. (I know, Chai! You never know what articles of clothing the big city will throw at you next!)

House training

Woohooo! Almost halfway through the week!

May 12-16, 2023: puppy diarrhea isn’t fun

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Chai got diarrhea, meaning I put her on a diet. She was tired and so was I – neither one of us was up for a lot of training for a few days. Apart from sleeping, going out (and actually pooping because of the diarrhea!) a few times a day and wrestling a little with Game, not a whole lot happened. Here’s the bullet point version!

May 12, 2023

+ I took Chai to the lavandería in her backpack and we rode the elevator twice. This time, I put her on the floor in between the doors opening. She did okay. Slow and steady wins the race! One day, she’s going to stroll in and out of that elevator with her head held high!

+ We walked past the Pitties twice and Chai was being a superstar!

+ Chai and Game got to go to UNAM together so Chai could get some outdoors pooping done. We didn’t much else because her stool was pretty liquid.

May 13, 2023

Chai seemed tired and her diarrhea had a little blood in it. I took her to the vet in the late afternoon to make sure it was nothing serious. She did amazing! You go, fearless puppy!

Loose leash walking on her back-clip harness on the way to the vet’s:

Chai got some mysterious stomach medication which turned out to solve the problem over the next few days. The vet also suggested that in case she had a sensitive stomach, I do not use hotdogs in training again. Apparently hotdogs are the worst possible reward for a dog with a sensitive stomach because we have no idea what is actually in a hotdog. They probably have a point. Chai got A LOT of hotdogs the other day. If THAT kind of diarrhea is what they are capable of causing, there will be no more hotdogs in her future. I’m sorry, puppy. I know you like them a lot.

Yes I’ll take those post-cat-watching snuggles!

Galleta, the wild child, was more scared of Chai than vice versa: Chai approached her as if she was another puppy. Galleta said NO and fled to her vantage point up on the stairs!

After the vet, I met up with friends – first at their place where Chai got to watch cats and then get loved on, and then I put her in her car crate to rest while we went out for dinner.

Yummm!

May 14, 2023

We had a stay-home, sleep and watch Netflix day. Chai was a tired and sad puppy!

The Border Collie life is hard.

May 15, 2023

Lazing in the morning sun: one of them has got to keep their eyes open at all times while the other one rests!

Her poop looked almost normal again this morning and she was more active! Yay!!

+ We went to la Michoacana (where a lovely Michoacana ice cream vendor always stops to chat) and through the Walmart corridor in her backpack.

+ I lured and named all three positions: sit, down and stand.

+ We rode the scary elevator and Chai was more confident than last time! She got to stand during the ride while the doors were closed and I carried her in and out.

+ She did REALLY well walking on Game’s shorter leash and her harness and hardly pulled at all. Good girl!

+ Chai was also ready to play a bunch with Game in the apartment. Definitely feeling better!

Tonight, Chai’s poop was finally completely normal again – and so was her level of activity (and mine too). We’re ready to adventure again with Scarlett tomorrow!

May 16, 2023

Chai’s poop looks fully normal! Woohooo! Hopefully, there will be no more puppy popop talk for a few days!

+ We went to Petco Oasis. Chai showed no fear of its sliding doors and did great walking around in the pet store!

+ We went to a park Chai hadn’t been to before.

+ Husbandry: I clippered Chai’s nails on the right front paw. No problem!

More well documented training and adventuring starting up again tomorrow!