Tag: training

Chaiary – week 13 digest (June 26 – July 2, 2023)

Leave a comment

Monday, June 26 2023 (day 81)

Activity level: low

Not a lot going on today. We started off with an attempt at playing tug reinforced by fetch with two balls on a rope at Fresa Parque. Shade had suggested we move to a place where Chai can really run and I can throw the ball further than on the roof. While our last session went well, today we had some pretty intense dog interruptions – but Chai was able to fetch despite being body-blocked by a Whippety dog! Go puppy!

After toy play, Chai got to run around a bit with the other dogs at the park and then had her morning walk with Game. The rest of the day was lazy.

Chai stayed home alone while Game and I walked errands for about an hour – good puppy! And then a not-so-great puppy when I took a shower: I closed the door to the bathroom and Chai had an accident on my bed. Note to self: always lock Chai into the bathroom with me when the door isn’t open!

It has finally started raining this week, so Game and I walked around the block during a rain break and Chai got to practice staying home alone again. When I got back, I found that she had even worse diarrhea than she had this morning. Pobrecita! I hope it passes soon and we’ll be able to go back to eating and training!

Tuesday, June 27 2023 (day 82)

Activity level: average

Good news of the day: no more diarrhea! Chai gets to train and eat again!

Morning walk

Chai started her day with the usual 2-dog morning walk.

Staying home alone x3

She stayed home alone 3 times during the course of the day: when Game and I went to drop off laundry, when we went to pick up our laundry again and for Game’s evening walk.

Toy play

We played two rounds – the first one rudely interrupted by an entire manada of dogs – at a park Chai hadn’t been to before. I like it for training: it tends to have less food on the ground than some of my other favorite parks. Chai did well tugging and getting reinforced with fetch!

We used my Magic Hands1 strategy on a circle of stones. Magic Hands worked fast AND I got video of it:

Magic Hands

Loose leash walking – Manners Context

Heading home from the park, we practiced loose leash walking in collar mode. Chai was a superstar! 5, 15 and then 20, 20, 20 … steps for the win! Two of her 20-step treats were replaced by a “good” treat for waiting at the curb and one by a”get it” to reinforce a “leave it.”

Fun at the park with Alan and Kiba

Chai spent two hours playing with Kiba, Loki and a new pup. We then walked to the market, went inside and practiced lying down and chilling at the pet supply stand and the chicken stand.

A different kind of doing nothing: waiting patiently in a down in the presence of delicious chicken smells!

At the market with Alan and Kiba.

After another round of running and playing at the park, we walked Alan home and then worked on our LLW on a collar some more! Played-out puppies are successful loose-leash walkers!

Manners-context loose-leash walking back home

Chai’s collar walking is really starting to look good! More and more, I am able to swap the twenty-step treat for naturally occurring reinforcers: a cued wait at a curb followed by “good” and a room service treat, or a “leave it” followed by a treat toss behind me. These treats (wich I would be giving Chai anyways; Game also still gets them for stopping/waiting and “leaving” things) are starting to replace LLW treats. I have faded most hand touch treats and soon, I’ll add environmental rewards to the game! The biggest success of the day: we curved out into a quiet street past two leashed dogs while keeping up the 20-step treat rate! Go Chai!

“Floor” protocol

You’ll notice the dark blue arrow in my image above. “Floor” is a marker cue that means I will place a treat at the heel of my foot on the dog’s side. Placing it on the ground is arousal-lowering because the dog can’t sniff for it/eat it and bounce up and down at the same time. It is similar to what I’m doing when passing the Pitbull in this post (May 31; first video in the post), with the only difference being that the marker cue is “Floor” and the treat is being placed at my heel. When I use one “Floor” treat after the other – every step or every other step – I call it the “floor protocol.” When walking past new dogs for the first or second time, I will often use this approach with Chai and then change to feeding from my hand once she knows the dogs are there.

Wednesday, June 28 2023 (day 83)

Activity level: high average

Adventures in house training

After Chai’s and Game’s usual morning walk, Chai sadly had a pee accident on the bed when taking a moment’s break from wrestling with Game. I had everything washed after the accident yesterday, but it is possible that something got into the mattress and it still smells like pee … I also wonder if Chai is like one of these puppy mill puppies who have spent a sensitive period of their puppyhood in a crate and need to poop and pee where they sleep, and if therefore, she will never be fully house trained. Puppies don’t usually pee where they sleep (and start showing this behavior at 3 weeks old already, according to a student’s breeder!). Chai sleeps on the bed during the day, so if she had read the manual, she should technically not pee on it. Good thing I love Chai too much to particularly care about the occasional accident.

At night, she had another pee accident – next to rather than on the mattress, woohoo! We are making progress here! (This is me being sarcastic in case you couldn’t tell.)

Eye contact

Chai got treats for making eye contact and I added a cue to the behavior for the first time: “Watch me!” We played while Zane was having breakfast and learned to offer me eye contact rather than beg for his danish.

Relax while people are eating

When I stopped the eye contact game, Chai offered lying down. I fed a treat between her front paws any time she was not looking at me. Zane was still eating and she stayed relaxed – that is precisely the behavior I want around people having food. I don’t want Chai to focus on me either, so I am waiting for looking away to feed.

Dog fun and recalls at Fresa Parque

After my morning work, we went to Fresa Parque. On the walk there, we passed someone working with an angle grinder. Chai was neither impressed by the noise nor by the flying sparks!

My plan was to work on distraction recalls at the park. Before we got started, Chai got to play with two dogs her size who enjoyed running games and confidently met her first Irish Wolfhound.

Then I set up my camera and the first distraction (see this post) and casually skipped 10 entire steps of my distraction tracking protocol without even noticing. The protocol I have taught others for years! THIS, my dear students, is why I want you to print out your distraction tracker and look at it before every session.

I completely forgot that I hadn’t done the barrier stage “in real life” yet and jumped from barrier recalls in locations 1 and 2 straight to off-leash recalls at the park. Chai passed distractions 1 and 2 in flying colors but failed distraction #3 (kibble). Only then did I realize how many steps I had skipped! Note to self: practice what you preach! Print out Chai’s distraction tracker (I tend to only look at stuff I print).

I was going to get us quesadillas for lunch and passed the dog park on the way there. Since the dogs in in it seemed calm and there was a Great Dane, I decided to let Chai inside briefly so she could meet another large dog. She did phenomenal just like she had with the Irish Wolf.

Adventures at Fresa Parque and a Great Dane in the dog park. Yep, she’s a dog park puppy!

We got water, looped the park again, did some personal play and then headed to the quesadilla stand. Chai did a fantastic job lying down when I stepped on her leash! It is becoming a pretty solid cue, and like in the morning, I am treating – without marking, thanks to Matthias‘ post in the Canine Paradigm discussion group the other day – when she looks away: shaping relaxation in the face of distractions.

Standing on the leash as a cue to lie down and shaping relaxation at the quesadilla stand.

We got back home after about an hour and 20 minutes, having trained up almost all of Chai’s daily kibble meal. Chai was a fantastic (aka sleepy) coworking pup for the next several hours.

Being a good coworking puppy.

Positions

We worked on positions in the kitchen when I took a work break. Messy but fun!

Squirrels, toys, magic hands and sits!

I took Chai and Game to the plaza around the corner that we discovered for toy play yesterday – I want to get our daily toy practice session in there!

The two girls got to run around and chase squirrels for a bit and Game got brushed, and then I put her on her mat and played – interruption-free! – a brief game of 2 balls on a rope tug reinforced by fetch with Chai. She did awesome! I’m keeping things short and fun to build her stamina and joy for both games. (No video.)

Game, meanwhile, also did amazing and held her stay on the mat even though Chai and I were tugging and tossing balls right next to her.

Chai has started imitating Game’s tree jumps after squirrels. She’s going to like critter-chasing quite a bit with this role model!

Example of a trademark Game tree jump/climb.

We ended the field trip by playing in the fountain. Next to it, there is a suspicious metal lid with holes covering the loudly whirring water pump. We did Magic Hands and I added Game’s Magic Sit on the metal cover, and after a few reps with “Get it” treats tossed away from the fountain, Chai put two paws on the concrete rim around the metal cover! Brave puppy!

Chai also found a piece of chocolate today. Here’s to hoping it won’t mess up her stomach for the second time in a week!

Husbandry

+ Brushing

Thursday, June 29, 2023 (day 84)

Activity level: average

The AM

We started the day with our usual morning walk. Chai confidently met three new dogs of different ages and morphologies. On the way back home, I got lots of check-ins on the retractable leash while Game was off leash. Chai needed and hardly any circles! She realized when she was nearing the 5-meter mark and stopped on her own! Good girl!

Plaza work and another stab at real-world distraction recalls

Chai and I walked to a nearby plaza on her harness. After looping the park and greeting a few dogs (and eating grain someone had put out for the birds), we started over with barrier recalls in the real world: time to take another stab at those distractions! Chai struggled with distraction #2 (paper bag that used to have food in it) the first time, but tested out of all 3 barrier distractions over the course of the AM. After each session, we took a break and another loop and occasionally met another dog. I am proud to report: barrier recalls in the real world: achievement unlocked! Our next step will – or should anyways! – be off leash in the house.

Real world informal “pup-pup-pup” recalls have also been working well: I had two or three opportunities to use them when Chai was trotting towards a leashed unfamiliar dog and she nailed it every time. It’s only her friend Kiba who is difficult to recall away from!

We then had a toy play session: 2 balls on ropes; tug reinforced by fetch. I added the “Tug” cue and Chai did great – even when a young husky showed up! She kept tugging!

After another off-leash park loop, we played magic hands with the pump at the fountain again:

We walked the entire way back home in mostly 20-step collar mode. Real-world reinforcers have started becoming “a thing”: stopping behind me to sniff something? Absolutely! I will wait for you to be done! “Leave it”? Bring it on; another non-leash-related reinforcer! This route is also convenient in that it has several crosswalks to practice “Wait” at the curb reinforced by “Good” (room service), replacing another LLW click. We even dismissed and then walked behind a group of 5 dogs for about 30 seconds before they veered off in another direction.

Once home, we went up on the leash and took a video for a new Out and About (FDSA) bonus lecture: walking towards a distraction on a loose leash! Now, Chai is passed out on the couch next to Zane, being a most excellent coworking puppy again.

Chai then stayed home (in the bathroom – her “crate”) – with Zane while Game and I went to the market at Fresa Parque to get lunch. Thrusday is market day here – and the market doesn’t feel fresa at all. It was great! My favorite day at that park so far!

More loose leash walking challenges!

In the afternoon, we were going to film invisible-line challenge #2 on the roof … but right as I was starting to set up, it started raining. We worked on it in the house instead. This is significantly harder in small spaces but Chai was being a superstar and soon understood! This time, we did not walk towards, but past the distraction (2 pieces of kibble on a plate). Not only did we practice the manners context – we also practiced our “Leave it!” cue in the same session. In the end, Chai got to eat the distraction, of course!

Housetraining gamified!

We have not had any accidents in the living room so far! Go Chai! And go me: I have successfully kept full puppies in the bathroom and only let empty puppies into the living space. And I’ve turned my mattress into a Murphy bed to give the puppy less inconvenient (for me) surfaces to pee on. But – let’s not count our ostriches before they hedge. It’s only 16:45 and there is still plenty of time for accidents.

Final accidents-in-the-living-room count for today, right before going to sleep: 0! Woohoo!

I’m starting a streak game and aiming for 4 weeks with zero living room accidents! After 7 days without a living room accident, I get a fancy brownie. After 4 weeks, I get a deep tissue massage. If there is an accident, it only resets the current week. Once a 7-day streak is completed, it is locked in and cannot be lost (i.e. at the very must, I will loose 6 days.)

Wrestling and intelligence

I have been interrupting Chai and Game wrestling on the bed when Game starts barking. I announce to Chai that I will pick her up – and inadvertantly, I’ve been saying, “Let’s take a break!” before doing so. Chai has now picked up on this and stops playing and lies down when I say a sentence with “break.” As a result, Game stops barking and I won’t pick up Chai to put her away for a few minutes. I love observing this puppy learn!

Evening fun with the rest of Chai’s daily meal

We used up the remaining kibble of the day with positions in two sessions: one was sit and stand and one was down and stand. I need to get clear about when I want to room-service mark (good) and when I want to click. Chai, for her part, did great and she is FAST!

Friday, June 30, 2023 (day 85)

Activity level: average

After our usual morning walk, we walked in manners context from my house to the Plaza and back. Chai practiced 20 steps between treats, sniff reinforcers, waiting at curbs, dismissing dogs and “leave it”s and was a very good puppy. It was a little harder today than yesterday because she hadn’t had much of a chance to get rid of all her puppy energy beforehand!2

After a work break (work: me, break: Chai), we walked to Fresa Parque on Chai’s back clip harness and Chai got to run around there off leash and meet and greet several dogs. We also repeated the teeter and stairs exercises in the dog park we had done last week. It was only a 30 minute outing because I didn’t want to be late for a lunch date with friends.

Home alone

Chai then stayed home with Zane for 2.5 while Game and I biked to Condesa to meet friends and give Game her much-deserved only-dog time.

Two 20-minute Ecobici rides and a coffee outing later, Chai was ready to attack-play with Game!

Positions

I cut the crazy short by doing a single longer session of sits, stands and downs. Stand and down are going really well! We’ll focus our next session on sit versus down.

2 dogs on short leashes

After resting, wrestling with Game, drinking A LOT and more resting while I worked, I took both dogs on a short loop around two blocks to get milk. This is the second time I’ve walked them both together on short (2 m) leashes; Chai on her back attachment harness.

Usually, Game is either off leash or one dog is on a long line or the retractable leash while the other one is on a short leash. Like the first time, they did well! Chai’s initial excitement wore off soon and after some circling, she was able to sniff the world and not rush to the end of her leash. The reason I brought both of them out was that I wanted Chai to pee … and I knew she’d follow Game’s example. She did, and now the empty puppy and the empty Game are passed out in the living room without the danger of furniture being peed on. Plus they got to practice waiting outside the mini market together while I went in for milk!

Recalls!

We practiced off-leash recalls away from unprotected distractions #1 (empty plate) and #2 (plastic bag that used to have food in it because I couldn’t find a paper bag) in the house and got a single rep success on each of them. Go Chai!

For distraction #3 – the kibble – I wanted to go back a step due to my faux pas the other day where I skipped a few steps and she got the kibble. My helper was still working and I don’t have a barrier in my house, so I went back to a long line. And indeed: she hit the end two (or was it three?) times before we could end on a success: recall on a loose long line, chicken from my hand and release to eat the kibble. (No video.)

Toy play a la Silvia Trkman

Since I’m currently watching Silvia’s Puppy Diary (10/10 would recommend to sports and especially agility folks), I decided to play with their approach to toy play: create some sibling rivalry by playing with more than one dog – and more than one toy – at once. Game and Chai and I had fun with three always-out toys on the bed (decent grip for playing partly on the slippery floor!)

Husbandry and a lazy evening

Chai stayed home with Zane while Game and I ran errands and Game got some well-deserved only-dog time again. Chai was still sleepy when I got home, so after dinner, she got Zane snuggles, got brushed and then fell asleep on the couch until I transfrred her over to her luxury crate aka the bathroom for the night.

I said her potty cue right before she peed on her pee pad in the shower cabin – this is the second or third time I’ve named the behavior.

Housetraining

0 accidents in the living space! Streak counter:

Saturday, July 1, 2023 (day 86)

Activity level: average

The AM …

We were going to go on a hike today, but my friends couldn’t make it and I woke up REALLY tired this morning … So I decided to take it easy instead. We started with a longer morning walk with Game. Chai got to play with lots of different dogs at Fresa Parque and I recalled her running towards different new playmates two or three times successfully, rewarding with chicken and sending her right back. She was being a superstar and had lots of fun, again meeting dogs of new sizes, ages and morphologies.

Meanwhile, Game practiced being calm and getting fed for holding sits and just watching the craziness around her unfold. (Game is neutral with others but can tip over into bullying mode if dogs she doesn’t know very well are running like crazy, so I won’t let her participate.)

Chai continues being much better (hitting the end less often) on a 5 meter leash even when Game is off leash ahead of her. I let them play when one of them is wearing a long line or retractable leash but enforce a no-play policy when both are on short (2 meter) leashes. So far so good! At the park, Chai is off leash and Game, depending on how much dog traffic there is, on leash or off leash. In the streets, Game is off leash and Chai on a long line/retractable leash or they are both on short leashes.

After getting home and some morning wrestling, they are both contently sleeping on the living room floor.

Formal recalls revisited!

Since I fucked up my distraction plan and Chai got to the kibble in the park (what with me skipping a few steps), we worked back up slowly. After yesterday’s long-line stage, Zane agreed to be my helper next to kibble in the house with Chai off leash. She nailed it on her first attempt! Single-rep success: check!

We headed up to the roof after a little break. Here, Chai kept going after “Schnee” (my formal recall cue) the first time and then recalled in the second break of this session.

Since my criterion for moving on is a single-rep success session, we took a little “just be a dog” and ping pong recalls break on the roof and then tried again. This time, she succeeded right away, got her chicken and a release to the kibble … good girl! Achievement unlocked! (No video.)

Now Chai is in the bathroom with a chew to relax and unload. I’ve learned my lesson: only empty puppies get to be in the living room. The strategy has given us two days sans accidents. We’ll see how things continue …

Skipping recall steps again – and Chai knows how to exploit my absent-mindedness!

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to go from kibble protected by my helper to unprotected kibble at the park we already failed at. Click here to find out what happened …

Human barriers out and about

Chai, Zane and I returned to Fresa Parque in the afternoon – the park where Chai has failed distraction #3 in the past. I didn’t want to repeat the barrier stage for the easier distractions, but thought it would be a good idea to give them another try with kibble and my friend’s help. I was right: Chai went for the kibble on the first approach, and my helper picked up the plate. Keep reading here to see the plot thicken!

2-ball tug

Zane went to get pastries while Chai and I switched gears: our homework for Shade’s class is to get a good strike.

“When you are about to let her strike, make sure the ball is still.
So, good “misses” look like:
ball is still, dog locks on to target, ball is whisked away, repeat.
Try that in your misses, so we can start teaching her to have a good strike. When she gets a good successful strike, she’ll like it more!”

(Shade Whitesel)

Post-recall dog socializing

We then headed home, needing almost no circles at all: I believe I have never seen Chai this tired before! Part of it must have been the sheer amount of food she got at the park and part of it the warm day.

Another short outing with Game

Since Chai hadn’t peed at the park, I took her out on Game’s pee walk. At this point, we entered the sleep-deprived toddler stage, needed lots of circles and threw ourselves at Game on the way down the stairs. Game peed right around the corner and Chai – good girl! – followed suit. We headed right back home and Chai fell asleep right away. No accidents so far today – the third day in a row!

Husbandry

+ “Claws!” (This is how I announce nail clipping and then just do it.) I try to do all paws once a week. Chai was great today – 3ish hours after our outing, she was still zonked and didn’t mind me clipping nails.

+ The last thing we did today – after a break after “claws” – I spent some time cutting the fur between Chai’s toes. She likes this less than nail clipping. Today, I introduced the announcement “clippers.”

+ Brush.

Home alone

Chai stayed home alone for Game’s evening walk. That’s the first time in 3 days she has truly been alone: for the last three days, Zane and I co-worked from my house and there was always someone there when I left with Game. After visiting for a month, Zane went back to Chiapas in the afternoon today. It’s going to feel lonely here without his company! I’ve been in this apartment for only two more nights than he has!

Sunday, July 2 2023 (day 87)

Activity level: high

We started the da with a short morning walk, a wrestling session on the couch (the dogs) and coffee (me).

I’m planning on working partly from Chapultepec today, so after coffee #2 and two FDSA forum responses, I’ll change locations before the parking at Chapultepec fills up.

Chapultepec and Chai’s first real swim!

Chai recalled away from strange dogs she was moving towards … and then swam (retrieved balls from Lago Mayor) for the first time! Go Chai!

And then – unprompted! – she pooped outside! Praise and treats! We take house training success wherever we can get it!

Chai met a younger puppy who had a blast playing with her, and then discovered she is a Border Collie: here she is bordercollying and then forgets what she’s doing, which I use as a recall opportunity.

2 toy fetch and tug

We played tugging reinforced with fetch – and I had the idea to hold the ball as if it was a tug toy! This may be our ticket to good strikes!

I settled down under a tree to continue working after about half an hour of water-and-dogs fun. Chai, wet and zoomy, is playing with Game around me and about to start inviting a younger puppy to play. Can’t imagine where I’d rather work from!

Water fetch as a recall reinforcer!

We had another swim, and for the first time, I used “chase” as a recall reward for “Schnee” two or three times. Turns out this Border Collie loves the water – it makes a perfect reinforcer! There was a lot going on the second time we were there. It reminded me of Silvia Trkman’s “all the toys and all the dogs are out” philosophy that teaches their puppies to not let anyone steal their toy – better bring it all the way back to your person! I created a similar scenario even though I hadn’t planned on it.

The video below shows Chai meeting a bunch of new dogs, Sunday chaos at the swimming spot, water fetch fun and formal recalls for Chai (recalling away from dogs other than Kiba is easy):

We then walked around the lake, followed by another brief water fetch session (I want to keep them short for the puppy to be sure they stay special and fun! I bet swimming uses muscles she isn’t used to using yet.)

Below our walk around the lake. There’s lots of people, animals and things for a puppy to see: bikes, people of all ages, rollerblades, kid cars, strollers, all the dogs, fish, birds, runners, music, street vendors, toys, giant soap bubbles, boats …

We ended with another walk the other direction, through the sculpture gardens where I took a few recall videos away from dogs Chai was approaching because I want to show them to a student:

After 3 hours at the park, we all piled back into the hot, hot car and headed home. Both dogs are passed out and content, and so am I. Content, that is, not passed out … yet.

Loose leash walking on the collar

After Game’s solo evening walk, I remembered I wanted to go to the bank. It’s just around the corner, so this time, I took Chai while Game stayed home. We walked on her collar there and back, practiced waiting at several curbs and passed a leashed barking, lunging dog up close (with one click-and-treat right after the other). In the ATM cabin, Chai got to work on her foot-on-leash-means-lie-down cue. She did amazing on this evening outing!

An interesting observation: Chai’s hand touches are already getting sloppier now that I don’t feed them anymore. (I only feed the first one that gets her in position before I attach the leash to the collar.) Of course, in other contexts, I still feed all hand touches – but they get used most often during LLW. I’ve started feeding some of them again. Today, I fed two and enforced some other slow responses with Chai’s leash pressure cue. It’s a balancing act between creating a behavior chain of pull – touch – feed (I don’t want that) and pull – don’t touch, or take your time responding – no food (I don’t want that either). See my June 30 leash walking video in this post to get a glimpse at hand touches not being reinforced.

As always, every dog is different and not every dog will create a behavior chain at all. I know Chai will, so in her case, it is important to keep an eye on her hand touches and their reinforcement history. If I get more pulling and beautiful hand touches, I am clearly reinforcing too many. If I get slow responses to “touch” and lackadaisical touches, I haven’t been reinforcing enough. We’re still looking for that perfect balance – and it will likely keep shifting since Chai is a juvenile dog who grows and changes every day!

Take-away of the day: observe and train the puppy you have today and stay aware of the fact that tomorrow, things may look different! Whatever the training project – never stop observing your puppy!

Husbandry

+ Brushing

Housetraining

0 accidents in the house and an unprompted poop at Chapultepec! Peed twice on cue in the shower cabin and got rewarded with a treat and the opportunity to join Game and me in the living room! Go Chai!

  1. There’s a brief explanation of how Magic Hands works in this post, under the Magic Hands heading (June 13). ↩︎
  2. Wanna learn how to do what I do in the video below? I’ll teach a class on this in December; mail me to learn more or sign up! ↩︎

Taking Shade’s Toy Class with Chai – part 1

Leave a comment

This is the first of several special-topics posts I am going to link to in future Chaiary posts rather than inserting all video links directly into Chai’s diary!

Shade Whitesel runs a fantastic toy play class over at Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. I’ve taken it twice at Gold now simply because it’s SO good and highly motivating for me, too.

If you need help with toy play or know how to teach toy play but are looking for fun, community and accountability, hop into that class! Here’s a link where you should be able to find whenever it runs next (as well as Shade’s other classes – 10/10 would recommend anything she teaches!)

So this post is about Chai’s tug toy journey with Shade. We took the class in June 2023 so I’d keep up my own motivation and have accountability.

Since Chai already knows fetch games, I decided to focus on tugging – something I haven’t done with her at all. I’ll share all of my class videos, but if you want to know more details about how they came to be, what lecture they are based on or why Shade recommended what, you’ll have to check out the class yourself!

How to make sense of this post:

When there is text to go with my videos, it’s part of my class posts from June and partly thoughts I’m adding now. I sometimes copy/pasted my class posts into my video description which I can now (now being September 11, several months after the class) go back to and copy/paste into this blog post! When I ask questions or use the word “you”1 in the text that goes with a particular video, I’m addressing Shade. When I use the name “Shade,” I either added this thought today or changed the “you” from the original post to “Shade” because the name sounded better to me in a particular sentence or context.

June 1, 2023: tug baseline

Note: I have never played tug with Chai before (it didn’t seem a priority behavior for a foster dog who might go to a companion home). In this video, I’m just seeing what she thinks about various tug toy options, most of which are new to her.

I’ll have to bring down my own arousal for her next time! I can tell that Chai is not used to my Malinois toy play state of mind! It is fun how different she is from Phoebe, Grit and Game who all latched on to anything they were presented with and didn’t let go from the start!

June 3, 2023: a flirt pole and a fleece tug for Chai!

I am writing this post 3 months after the fact, so I hope to get things right – I believe this was my second class video. I made a flirt pole to engage Chai with a fleece tug. Unfortunately, Game’s mat was harmed in the making of this fleece tug: I braided two identical onces and cut up Game’s fleece mat for it.

In any case, we’re getting some lovely chasing and tentative tugging on this toy! It’s soft (perfect for teething puppies), it runs away, and the distance between me and the fleece tug that is created by the flirt pole (a broom stick and a strong – I usually make my own flirt poles) reduces pressure from my side. I’m happy with this first flirt pole session!

June 5, 2023: playing with the fleece tug on my bed and with the flirt pole on the roof

Clips from 2 short sessions. My Observations:

+ Chai will occasionally target my hands rather than the toy (that only happened when playing on the bed).
+ It is very easy to (accidentally) pull the toy out of her mouth. Is that okay because it will teach her to clamp down more should I be more careful so it doesn’t happen?

I have my own answers to questions like this last one, but enjoy very much following an experienced trainer’s advice. I do not remember Shade’s response but I’m pretty sure what I ended up doing is starting gently so Chai is unlikely to constantly loose the toy, but making it run away immediately and harder to catch anytime she did let go or I accidentally pulled it out of her mouth: critters don’t sit around waiting to be eaten by predators but will use any opportunity to escape!

June 6, 2023: Chai’s second time playing with the flirt pole and tugging on the roof!

I aimed for gentle, steady pulling (not jerky). What should I do when I have let her win and she’s shaking it dead, like at 00:12-00:18 in the video below? I kept the flirt pole string loose and just admired her strength this time.

At 00:20 she was holding it and lying down on it, so I got the second identical fleece tug out to get her off the one on the flirt pole without conflict. Then I reactivated the flirt pole.

At 00:34/35 I was about to let her win after steady pressure for 2 seconds, and right then I accidentally pulled it out of her mouth again. Ooops! Sorry, Chai!

01:28 in the very end: “Treats” is my scatter cue and how I end the session and get the toys back.

June 7, 2023: playing with the fleece tugs on the bed (my non-slip indoors surface) for the second time

A compilation of this morning’s best bed tug moments. It’s fun to work with someone so different from the Mals and GSDs I’ve mostly played with over the last few years! (I’ve also played with a ferociously tugging Border Collie, Mick, whose personality is quite different from Chai’s, and a ferociously tugging pug!) There must have been plenty of others, but these are the ones I actively and personally worked with a lot and had the most fun with!

Even in personal play, Chai is being really gentle. I’m used to blood, bruises, torn clothes, dog-head-hooks to the chin and battle scars from social play! (I love roughhousing – it’s only partly the dogs. And yes, I exaggerate!) It is only toys and humans Chai is gentle with though. When she plays with Game or crunches down on a plastic bottle, she crushes those sharky teeth right in!

June 8, 2023: playing with fleece tugs on the roof without a flirt pole!

Chai is pulling back VERY gently (I am saying that from a crazy Phoebe-Poodle/Mal baseline) – I just make it look as if she was pulling strongly. In the second rep, she caught the tug too fast for me to get a chance to present a good striking target. Otherwise, we’re having a great time!

June 11, 2023: tug attempts on the roof as well as on the bed – a comparison

Roof play:

Our tug attempt on the roof did not go as well this morning. Chai lay down and never brought the toy back, so I ended quickly. (It’s warmer than usual and she has had play time with Game before – tomorrow morning, I’ll try roof play before any of this and play earlier in the day.)

Or did I overdo it this time and tugged too long rather than making it too easy? (Shade has suggested I make things a little more difficult for Chai.)

Indoors play:

We took a second stab at tugging in the apartment. My floor is not an ideal tugging surface because it is slippery, but I know Chai gravitates to the bed – so I wanted to see what would happen if I tugged her off the bed and then ran away back TO the bed. She brought the toy back all the way every time. It’s about the bed I suspect, not me, because the bed is the best place to chew on something … Hrmmm …

June 12, 2023: another roof tug session

This session was right after getting up with a puppy full of energy and okay temperatures (it’s been really hot during the day but mornings are okay).

In this session, Chai brought the toy part of the way back once, about two thirds into the session.

What do you think about bringing out toy #2 when I can’t convince her to bring back toy #1 (like 00:20/21)? I can’t ask her, but I get the impression that she prefers tugging with me over chewing a toy on the floor – but she has not figured out that bringing back the tug is a part of that game …

What happens most of the time is that I try to encourage her after running away, and she then comes running but forgets the toy (see 00:41-00:43). I then ask her where her toy is, and she goes back to the toy and looks at me expectantly or lies down again to chew (00:47-00:49).

The last part of the clip (00:50-00:59) is the one time in this session she brought the toy partially with her when I encouraged her to come. I can’t tell if I did something differently in this rep than in the other ones or if it was a coincidence.

We’ve also had a session on the bed, and Chai continues predictably gravitating back to it when I’m on it. I’m flashing my hands in target-them-with-the-toy position. She does not target yet but runs towards me/my hands (because I’m on the bed).

Should I keep practicing in both locations or modify something?

June 13, 2023: a blanket target on the roof!

Shade had the great idea to use a blanket as a “target” to run towards on the roof – a stand-in for the bed. It worked like a charm every single time I ran to the blanket. (It’s clearly the blanket, not me. When I tried running somewhere else, she’d still go to the blanket.)

I have a second identical blanket – should I stick to one or try with two?

June 14, 2023: our second session with a blanket target on the roof.

Shade’s input:

“In order to transfer off the mat, we need to have physical signals (hands to target and frontal body position) that happen before she sees the mat.”

My response:

Good point, that makes a lot of sense! In today’s session, I only got the head thrashing movement once. In general, she is letting me lead her more with the toy now that I’m pulling more strongly – rather than pulling back, she’ll often walk with me with her mouth on the toy. I’ve been grabbing the toy to continue tugging as soon as she reaches the mat. I wonder if that’s not the best strategy. Should I only put my hands on the toy when she lets go of it – even if I’ve flashed my target hands at her before? The reason I wonder is that in the last rep of today’s session, she lay down off the mat (right next to it) with the toy rather than coming all the way back to me and the mat. I ended there with a scatter to get Shade’s opinion before I continue.

This was part 1 of our work in Shade’s class (our first 10 videos)! Here is part 2 and here’s part 3.

(1) In this particular post, “you” never refers to “you, the reader.”

Chaiary, day 31: May 7, 2023

Leave a comment

Chai, Game and I had a full day in Mexico City before our road trip tomorrow! We did a bunch of stuff but kept it low key:

+ Chai joined me on a trip to the lavandería and a loop through the Walmart corridor in her backpack.

+ Husbandry: “Brush!” and “Claws!” (all four paws and doing well!)

+ We worked some more on her understanding of the different meaning of treats in my open hand versus closed fist.

+ We worked on distinguishing “dish” (take food from bowl) from a tongue click (come to my hand for food).

+ We walked to Calle Cuauhtémoc and back and Chai did REALLY well passing the two Pits both going out and coming back!

My neighbor has a car repair shop – and, true to the stereotype, two (lovely!) Pit Bull Terriers.

I’ll end with another paragraph that, like the footnote in Scarlett’s post, has taken me a while to phrase more or less the way I wanted. Future posts should be smooth sailing again, so you can expect your daily Chai update AND eventually (I promise; I’ve started doing weekly digests) we’ll catch up to the present day!

Thank you …

… for all our inspiring and nerdy dog training conversations, Chris Cernac, over the last few months. I’ve loved them. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and questions, your knowledge and points of view. I’m sure you will (if you look) see traces of you in my future training. I’ll give you credit when I can. In case you read this one day: know that I appreciate this part of our paths crossing.

I realize that leaving Prince and Chris pictures and stories out of Chai’s May diaries is leaving out part of her experience, but I can’t write about Prince and you without also writing about personal things that I don’t want to share online at this point. It’s not about you – I wish you well. This is just me not wanting to share these particular personal stories with a wider audience today.

Chaiary, days 23-24: April 29-30, 2023

Leave a comment

Day 23, April 29, 2023

We started the day with another trip to the furniture market where Chai voluntarily approached and got fed by two more strangers.

The furniture market is great for puppy in-store training!

Food hand positions: a common vocabulary

Back home, I worked on the meaning of different food hand positions:

+ I use a particular hand position for luring that means “follow my treat until I release it.”

+ A closed fist means “stay away from the food.”

+ Food in open flat hand means “take the treat.”

Developing a common vocabulary about food hand positions makes a HUGE difference for future training!

… and more exciting things!

+ Both dogs worked on our platform game and Chai worked on positions.

+ Chai also went through the Walmart corridor and into a corner convenience store in the puppy backpack.

+ We practiced the “brush” announcment.

+ … and finally, we practiced passing the two Pitbulls who are tied up to the left and right of the street I have to walk in order to get out of the plaza I live!

Today was a BIG day for a puppy – I just wanted to get a few things in before dropping Chai off for her first overnight stay with Scarlett tomorrow! So today included more action than usual. More on passing dogs and overnight stays in a separate post!

Day 24 – April 30, 2023

Las Islas

Today Chai will go to stay a few days at Scarlett’s. We made sure to get the puppy crazies out by visiting Las Islas before dropping her off.

Left: the calm before the storm. Snuggly morning pups! Right: fun at Las Islas for Game and Chai.

Husbandry

The tired pup got her nails done before being dropped off: “Claws” announcement and clipping nails! The back ones were easier today.

Sliding doors!

On the way to Scarlett, we quickly stopped at Petco to pick up food for the week. It was a different Petco than the last time – but wow, Chai strutted in and out through those sliding doors like a pro! Go puppy!

Being looked after/spending nights with people who are not the dog’s primary caretaker in places that aren’t home: something to practice from puppyhood onwards!

It’s important to me that a foster doesn’t get too attached to me. Ideally, we’d be doing this with all our puppies, not just fosters: having someone we trust look after them for a few days now and then. If you don’t have that option, just dropping them off with a dog friend for a few hours or overnight is also enormously helpful. I am planning on repeating this experience in the future so Chai gets used to staying with other folks every now and then.

To set my puppy up for success, I will visit my friend or dog sitter WITH the puppy before dropping them off. That way, the dog gets to know the space as well as the person. Even if they only spend a little bit of time there, it will help them adapt. When I actually do drop them off, they will be coming back to a familiar place and see a familiar face rather than being abandoned with a stranger in a strange place.

As a rule, I do not leave my dogs with complete strangers (I would in an emergency, but that really is the only reason).

Scarlett’s dog sitting business continues to grow, and because I want to eventually adopt Chai out, I did NOT give Scarlett instructions of how to interact with Chai or how to handle her around other dogs she is looking after. Instead, I asked her to just do things her way. I want Chai to get used to different ways of being handled, and this is a fantastic opportunity for exactly that! After all, I don’t know who will end up being her forever home.

With my own dogs, I do leave precise instructions about how to work with them/walk them/treat them when I leave them with someone (and I only leave them behind if I absolutely have to!)

Chai day 4: MORE puppy socialization adventures!

Leave a comment

Today Chai went to Parque las Américas and saw lots of people and dogs, heard new sounds, walked on different park surfaces and smelled new smells. Before we got there, we had this little encounter:

We then walked all the way to the park on our own four paws and saw and met, among others:

A person who followed my instructions about how to invite Chai to approach: not from above, but from below, being still and letting the dog take the first steps. I decided, after seeing Chai shy away from hands reaching for her a little more than I’d like to in the last two days, that I will make a point of having her meet people “the right way” every day. There is, of course, no one right way – you’ll have to look at the dog in front of you to find out what works for them. In Chai’s case, I opted for asking people to stand still and hold out their flat hand, palm facing up. If and only if Chai approaches, sniffs the hand and looks comfortable, I will then give the person a few pieces of kibble to hold in their other hand and feed them, one after the other, from their flat hand without touching Chai and holding the hand low enough so all four paws stay on the floor.

I would NOT start with food without having Chai opt in and approach voluntarily first, and if she was shyer than she is, I would not use food here at all. Food can backfire extremely easily if used as a lure to get an uncomfortable dog closer to a stimulus they are unsure about: they’ll take the treat and then realize they are WAY TOO CLOSE! With Chai’s level of people curiosity, it is really just the head reaching she has feelings about. And because she is cute, people will reach for her head. I am countering these experiences by means of providing positive ones in the way I described above. My instructions are simple and easy to follow, and they work well for Chai. In the case of my very first helper (random stranger from Costa Rica I met in the street), we chatted long enough that they actually ended up making friends with Chai and being able to scratch her chin:

We also saw a bakery bike!

… and several dogs …

We met another person who also ended up touching Chai on the side of her head – not something I encouraged, but she was okay.

We walked past an outdoors assembly of some kind and saw a person on a skateboard with a dog, a kid in a stroller and more dogs:

And the Chai and I rested in a (comparatively) quiet corner of the park and she posed serenely for a bit before we made our way back home.

How much is too much?

… you may be wondering. Didn’t Chrissi just get this puppy, who had been confined to her house and yard and a crate from 8 weeks to 3.5 months of age, literally three days ago?

Indeed, I did. And indeed, this would be too much for MANY Border Collie puppies with this (lack of) experience. It would have been too much for Hadley right after T got him and it would have been too much for Mick (and would still be too much for Mick today. Mick is a farm dog who wants exactly three things in life: sheep, a person to work sheep with, and zero other people). Hadley today, as an adult, would likely be okay in this environment – he’d just pull all over the place trying to sniff things, I suspect.

Is it too much for Chai? Am I flooding the poor puppy? No – at least I wouldn’t say that I am. But in order for this term to have any meaning at all, I need to first define it. “Flooding” is one of these buzzwords everyone uses slightly differently.

I just looked at the glossary of my 4 go-to behavior books, and it isn’t in any of them. That surprises me – but maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe flooding is a term trainers borrowed from human psychology, or maybe it is simply a layperson’s word. Next stop: Google.

Bingo! I got lucky at the APA Dictionary of Psychology, which sounds like a decent source. Plus it matches my own definition of the term and the way I’ve been using it, which is reinforcing.

So – no, I have in fact not flooded Chai. She is not an anxious dog – just a curious one who lacks experience. I have not exposed her to a maximum-anxiety-producing situation or stimulus. (I would have on day 2 when I was just trying to get a feel for where we were in terms of exploratory behavior, fearfulness and resilience. Based on what I saw on day 2, I made choices for day 3, and based on what I saw on days 2 and 3, I made choices for day 4.

Because Chai is not an anxious puppy and her sensitive socialization window is rapidly closing, I want a lot of exposure to what is going to be normal in her world if she becomes a Mexico City dog. If she doesn’t become a Mexico City dog but finds a home somewhere else, all the experiences she is currently having won’t hurt either. For example if she goes on to be a sports dog, these experiences might help her learn how to focus on what matters (“gate”) in busy trial environments.

Chai day 3: adventuring

2 Comments

We went back to the same park today. This is going to be my main focus: I’ll come here (or a similar park) every day for exposure.

It will likely mostly be this particular park becaus not only is it close – this is also Mexico City. Which means something different will be happening every single time I go. I can keep one criterion consistent (familiar environment) while all the others vary: new and different sounds, smells and stimuli every time.

Today versus yesterday

The biggest difference that stood out to me after yesterday’s outing: Chai walked by herself all the way (about 5 minutes) to the park. Yesterday, I carried her and only put her down anytime something interesting was happening – she wasn’t able to walk coordinatedly on a leash on a sidewalk yet.

Compare the video above to yesterday’s video! Do you see differences? What are they? My thoughts are below – but think of your own answers before you keep reading!
.
.
.
.
.
Ready? My thoughts are below.
.
.
.
.
.
I am impressed by Chai’s remarkable improvement between these two days: being able to walk on a leash to the park and back? Reorienting when feeling leash pressure? WOW! And that person (okay, they were doing things well by not reaching for the top of her head, but still! So much more confident!) The initial confidence around dogs has improved too.

We’re still eating kibble in public (I may have used about 5-10 pieces for the same reasons as yesterday) and understand the meaning of the tongue click in a new and exciting environment. I only introduced the tongue click in the house, yesterday. She’s doing SO well!

Sleepy pups getting closer!

Ice Cream, not Politics!

Leave a comment

The dog training world is very campy. That’s bullshit, but it is the way it currently looks to me. This image is what I’m picturing when I say “left of center” or “right of center” in the podcast. It also shows you where I’d put myself, training-wise … and who I’d consider “my people”: anyone who’s not a campy extremist, really.

However, in an ideal world, there wouldn’t be a continuum at all. Instead, we’d have a menu of sorts, like a menu at a restaurant. On that menu, you’d find everything from BAT to Nepopo. We’d order the menu alphabetically in order to not play favorites.

Every training technique and system ever invented would be on the menu. And we dog trainers would choose one or two or three of them to study and become experts in by means of learning from the ones who came before us (standing on the shoulders of giants, as we always do).

We’d pick in terms of what we want to learn and teach; in terms of what feels good to US as individuals. Our picking would not be judgmental. It would be like picking the flavors of ice cream to go in your cone – not like picking a political party.

By picking your flavors of ice cream, you are not saying the other flavors are evil – you are just saying, these are my favorite flavors (these are the ones I want to learn more about and become an expert in). You can still be best friends with someone who chooses different flavors of ice cream. You can even talk about ice cream or taste their ice cream out of curiosity, and let them have a taste of yours. It would be encouraged rather than criticized: tasting each other’s ice cream is what friends do, after all.

That’s very different from choosing a political party: if you choose a political party, you are making an idiological (rather than subjective) decision, and you feel strongly about it being the “right” or “better” one – at least that’s how I feel when it comes to politics. I only have voting rights in Austria. Austria is a democracy with a large menu of political options. I oscillate between two of them, and have never voted for any other one: the Green party and the Communist party. I like both of them, and which one I will end up voting for is often a close call, and depends on the issues at hand and how they are handling it. I can’t see myself voting for any of the other parties, and some of the other parties (the ÖVP and the FPÖ, for example), I consider downright harmful to the planet, humanity, society and community.

In an ideal world, dog training would be like eating ice cream, not like voting. Thank you for coming to my TED talk!

Here’s a link to the podcast episode this post is riffing off of:

The Norbert Experiment, part 4: adjustments

Leave a comment

So much to learn from yesterday’s session!

The reason I ran out of both high-value treats AND kibble is that I did not expect to go more than 2 or, at the most, 3 sessions. But such is life! I learned:

  1. As long as the toy is out, Game will keep going.
  2. Game is indeed able to choose the toy over the cat after running down the staircase several times (her motivational state is likely different at that point due to being hot and tired because neither of us is used to this climate).
  3. Game can take kibble within this staircase marker game – at least starting at the 4th round.
  4. Once in the bedroom after the 7th scatter (no sight contact to cats or toys), Game is able to relax right away.

Based on this, I will adjust in the following way:

  • Remove the toy during the scatter (leaving it on the floor until then will give Game the option to grab it if she needs to earlier on).
  • Only go down the staircase once.
  • Move swiftly to the bedroom after the scatter and take a break – no matter whether there are cats or not.

Making it measurable

I’m going to do a session like this, and then decide how to best measure our progress. I also realize this is not necessarily going to be easy to measure because there are different cats, and the distance at which they appear often differs, too. Sometimes they move, and sometimes they are stationary. Sometimes there is only one at a time – and sometimes there is more than one. Sometimes, they stare at us (we are in a display window at this AirBnB – for people and cats). This means the sessions are not directly comparable, which is a shame. We don’t live in a lab!

If anyone readong along wants to throw their suggestions of how they’d measure this at me, go right ahead! I’m writing this up more slowly than I’m training, so by the time I read our suggestion, I will likely already have implemented whatever I came up with myself. But if you want to think along and decide what you would do in my situation – go right ahead and have fun with this in the comments, and I’ll be sure to get back to you there!

Since I have no video for you today – take one of the cats instead:

The Norbert Experiment, part 3: a long session filled with information!

Leave a comment

I’ve dug the harness out of my luggage – still looking for the longer line (when you live a mostly off-leash life, you tend to lose track of your lines). We’ve been on a long walk, it’s hot (significantly warmer than at the previous place we were), and Game and I are both tired. Lazy play is just right for both of us today!

Here’s Game’s marker/arousal staircase image, with time stamps for each of the steps below.

Video A

Round I

Step 1: Consider the lobster cat

00:00-00:10 Considering the cat (longer than ideal but I wanted to show you all the cat)

Step 2: Tug

00:10 Tug marker. Game responds well!

00:30 I realize I had closed the glass door and can unclip Game from the tether.

01:05 A quick look at the cat, and then Game disengages and keeps playing! Yay!

Step 3: Chase high value food

01:37 My first tossed treat cue. Game is slow to let go of the toy here! These are the things I pay attention to: does she respond to marker cues at baseline speed or below? This response is below. I may have caused it by my teasing tiny tugs on her toy right before the marker though. It is not clear whether the latency is cat related.

01:45 I remember I was going to leave the toy out, and see whether Game will gravitate towards it if she needs to sink her teeth into something after the first run down the staircase.

01:50 I was not planning on tossing the treat at an angle that would let Game see the cat easily right after eating – she does really well though, and does not get stuck.

02:13 Team work!

Step 4: Eat high value food from hand

02:16 First click for eye contact!

02:25 That look may have been at the cat (who is still under the white table) or the person walking past. I can’t tell.

02:29 This look is clearly at the cat – the person has passed already. This is okay: looking at things in the environment/pointing them out by looking is just as clickable as looking at me. This is a both/and, not an either/or paradigm.

02:34/35 Another one for looking at the cat! You just look where you need to look, Game.

02:37 I shift a little to make the different directions of looking more salient. Now, looking at me is clearly looking away from the cat, and looking at the cat is clearly looking away from me.

Step 5: Scatter

02:46/47 First scatter cue, marking eye contact.

Round II

Another round! Game is looking at the cat again. Calmly so – but she’s looking. For now, I will take this as a cue to restart the staircase.

Step 2

03:32 Tug cue. Game is looking at me (she knows what’s coming), and I can mark that. If she were to continue looking at the cat, that’s what I’d mark with “Tug!”

04:27 By moving away and allowing Game to bring the tug toy back to me, I’m giving her the opportunity to restart the game. This is how I keep things cooperative.

Step 3

04:40/41 That response to my “Get it” marker was perfect: that’s Game’s baseline speed, and what I want to see! As soon as I said, “Get it,” she let go of the toy.

04:45 Again, tossing into the cat corner is not what I had in mind when coming up with my training plan.

04:47 … but Game handles it well! So well, in fact, that I might want to add a sprinkle of the Give Me A Break CU game to our cat sessions!

Sidenote: this is what Give me a break looks like: the treat can eventually be put down close to a stimulus, and the dog will dismiss, like Game dismisses the police person in the video below:

Step 4

04:56 Click for eye contact.

04:58 I’m moving to give Game more of a choice in terms of whether she wants to look at the cat or at me – now we are obviously in different directions.

Step 5

05:11 Scatter cue for eye contact.

Round III

05:37 The cat is still there, and Game is watching again. She is not in predator mode (which may be because of the scatter … or because she isn’t used to the heat. Being hot (or cold) influences motivational states.

We start over with step 2 after video A ends.

Video B

Round IV

Step 2

00:00 The last part of toy play. Game went back to cat-watching after the previous scatter, and I started over at step 5.

00:08/09 You can see she’s tired. She isn’t super fast and intense, and holding the toy gently rather than hard. But keep going she wants, and I want to keep experimenting – so we keep going.

Step 3

00:26/27 Realized the treats from my pocket were gone; had to get them from the counter. At this point, we are using kibble – I have gone through all the high-value treats I cut up already.

00:37 Game doesn’t mind chasing kibble – this is good!

Step 4

00:58 Waiting for Game to offer eye contact …

Step 5

01:11 Scatter cue for eye contact. Kibble again. Game doesn’t mind.

Step 6?

01:39 She starts circling here – she considers laying down for the first time!

Round V

Step 2

01:43 Then she circles past the tug toy. This is a training toy, not a toy I usually leave out for her to disembowel. She can’t resist it, and asks for another round.

This is good information for me: she did not look at the cat, and then choose the toy. She was going to do step 6, then saw the toy and changed her mind. I’m going to need to adapt this approach (leaving the toy out) since this is not what I’m aiming for.

01:50 I mean it’s a good decision to bring me the toy rather than get sucked into cat watching. But watching this video back, I can see that the decision she made was not “do I stare at the cat or get the toy,” but “do I lie down or get the toy.”

We continue down the marker cue staircase again after video B ends.

In round 6, Game looked at the cat, and then channeled her cat thoughts into the toy unprompted – that is awesome and exactly what I was going for! Good girl! I’m not showing you video of this because by that time, the camera had fallen over.

There is a 7th round. Rounds 4, 5, 6 and 7 were all played with kibble rather than high-value treats. By round 7, I run out of kibble as well (I only got her portion for the day from the car, and have no refill at hand). So after the round 7 scatter, I encourage Game to follow me into the bedroom and close the door (no sightline to the cats). She is able to relax right away.

Lots to learn from this long session! Tomorrow, I’ll share the adjustments I’ll make based on what I’ve seen in this session. There is lots of room for our cat experiment to grow!

The Norbert Experiment, part 1: Game’s cat baseline

Leave a comment

We got to a new AirBnB the other day. Turns out there’s a lot of cats in the shared yard space the apartment opens out into! It’s also warm here, so for the most part I’m only closing the screen door, but not the actual glass door. Screen dors are not Malinois-proof barriers, meaning I need to tether my dog to keep the risk of cats (or screen doors) being harmed as low as it can be.

I’ll be here just long enough to turn this into a fun little training project. I’m finding this project particularly intriguing right now because I’m also working with someone on household-cat-acceptance using a different (tried and true) approach – more in that below. The approach I’ll be using with Game in The Norbert Experiment (1) is a bit more experimental, and it’ll be fun to compare the two.

Baseline response to tongue click, treat toss cue, and “leave it”

Today, I’ll show you Game’s baseline response to cats outside the apartment (glass door closed here, not just screen door). I know she wouldn’t be able to take the treat from my hand (this is kibble; I can usually work with it on almost anything). I’m only clicking and offering it to her to demo to you all that she can’t take it, not because I expect her to take it.

I was not sure if she would be able to chase kibble. Chasing food is higher value and higher arousal for Game than the same kibble from my hand, and she is able to do so in many situations, even when she can’t take treats from my hand. Game says, nope, can’t do.

I am surprised that she is able to respond to my “Leave it” cue – twice, no less – in this clip, but maybe I shouldn’t be: I have reinforced “leave it” as well as recalls with permission to chase cats, and that is the functional reinforcer Game is after in this situation.

From this clip, I learn two things:

  1. I need higher value treats for this project.
  2. I’ll want to consider adding toy play to my reinforcement/arousal shifting approach. I suspect (but will have to ask Game to know for sure) that tugging is equally high value as considering out-of-reach cats.

Speaking of reinforcement value and dogs who like to move their body …

Game could not chase treats here, but Keeshond Via below sure can. I love this clip because it shows that for Via (who just saw a deer), chasing treats is possible even when taking treats from Allison’s hand (“Yes”) is not. I love marker cues! I also believe we are severely underutilizng them in the dog training world. (Keep your eyes out for anything Karen Deeds has to say about this topic!)

Thank you, Allison, for allowing me to share your clip!

Chasing as a reinforcer (for coming back, leave it-s etc.)

With the cats in the alleys of Guanajuato, I used chasing as a reinforcer, just like I do with birds or squirrels who can easily get to safety. Guanajuato’s alley cats are dog-savvy and know that they just need to jump up a wall or roof and can give Game the finger from up there. I did not feel like I was adding substantial stress to their lives – just a single jump, which is something they are used to doing in their environment. I know this is an ethically foggy area. Personally, I’m okay with chasing as a reinforcer as long as it does not (and this assessment will be subjective, too) unduely stress the animal(s) being chased.

Here’s Game chasing birds (I don’t have a video of her and an alley cat). You can see how when I start the video, she is not mindlessly going after the cattle egrets. Quite the contrary: she waits for me to ask something of her so she can earn egret chasing. And as the video continues, she gravitates towards focusing on me rather than the birds. It is SO powerful to harness your dog’s greatest distraction, and turn it into a reinforcer! It removes the conflict of either/or (either I do what my human wants, or I do what I want) and replaces it with a both/and paradigm.

LAT on a mat for cat acceptance

The team I mentoned above is currently doing LAT from a mat, with the ultimate goal being acceptance of the household cat: the dog is on a mat, and gets marked and fed in a specific way for either pointing out the cat to her human or offering eye contact to her human. We keep the sessions to one minute and track the looks at the cat versus looks at the owner, and have a certain threshold point where we reduce the distance between cat and dog by one carpet square. This method is tried and true, and should also work for the goal of the dog learning that she will never chase that cat (anything CU means there will be no direct interaction with the stimulus). Once the dog is aware of this, it removes a lot of uncertainty from interactions. Uncertainty is stressful for many dogs, which is one of the reasons CU can be so powerful.

This is what this looks like with Heather’s cat Vignette and her Dutch Shepherd Saphira:

Sidenote to stress the beautiful training in the LAT clip above

Note that there are a several foundation behaviors that go into a training plan like the one Heather, Karl, Saphira and Vignette are implementing. If you don’t know what to look for, this may look effortless – but it is, in fact, amazingly complex and based on strong foundation behaviors, clear communication, and an excellent dog trainer (Heather) working with an excellent cat trainer (Heather’s husband Karl). Not only are they really good at what they are doing with their animals – they have also managed to build a habit for themselves: the habit of working on this together every evening they are home.

A training plan that requires time usually also requires us humans to develop a strong habit to keep at it. We can trick our own minds a bit here by clearly defining when that habit is going to happen, and turning an already established preceding event or behavior into our prompt for that new habit. Heather and Karl have been making great progress because they have committed to working on this at a particular time every day. The more we make something a habit for ourselves, the easier it feels to make time for it, and the more progress we are going to make.

Saphira’s foundation behaviors that need to be in place before a session like this is even possible:

+ A strong station-on-cot behavior

+ Understanding that the marker cue “ground” means a treat will materialize on the ground in front of her (in this case, on her cot bed, between her paws). The reason this is the marker cue we chose is that it resets Saphira: when taking a treat from between her paws, she is looking away from both Vignette and Heather, and can then make a new choice: does she want to look at Heather or does she want to look at Vignette? Both behaviors get reinforced equally.

+ The LAT game in easier contexts (knowing that pointing out a stimulus in the environment is a reinforceable behavior).

+ Knowing that eye contact with Heather is a reinforceable behavior.

Vignette’s foundation behaviors:

+ Relaxation in the presence of dogs.

+ Wearing a harness.

+ Walking on a leash and harness voluntarily. Karl isn’t pulling Vignette up to Saphira – they are just walking up together.

(The leash and harness are for safety, to make sure Vignette doesn’t run up to Saphira, just like Saphira is wearing a leash that Heather holds for safety. We don’t plan on needing them, but it’s good to have them – like seat belts.)

Shout out! Heather, Karl, Saphira, Philo (their second cat) and Vignette – I LOVE the work you’ve been doing, and the progress you’ve been making! You make a fantastic team!

Back to the Norbert Experiment!

Since I don’t mind sending Game to chase some of the time (I just need it under stimulus control), I don’t need (or even want) a purist CU approach here. Instead, I want to marker-cue her down every time she sees a cat outside of this particular apartment.

The idea is that eventually, seeing a cat through the screen or glass door will become a cue to ask me for a toy. This may not happen before I move out of here – I’ve got about two weeks. OR it just may. We’ll have to find out! I enjoy playing prediction games with myself, so I predict that I will see some kind of progress in these two weeks.

The image below is what I suspect Game’s hierarchy of arousal and reinforcement value looks like. She might proof me wrong, which is okay. I’ll have to ask her in order to find out if we’re on the same page about this! I suspect that considering cats is as arousing AND as valuable as tugging with me. The shift from step 1 to step 2 is therefore a horizontal one. It is not a shift in reinforcement value or arousal level, but a shift in attention (from cat to toy/me).

From step 2 onwards, I can then – theoretically – go down the arousal and reinforcement value staircase, shifting vertically down from one step to the next lower one until we are at step 6 and can move on with our lives, not thinking cat thoughts.

I may be wrong about the value of considering cats outside the apartment versus the value of tugging in their presence. That is okay – I am going to ask Game if this reinforcement hierarchy is indeed hers, and adapt based on her response.

I’ve used this method with different dogs in the past, but this is the first time (and I might misremember because human memory is not reliable) that I consciously include a potentially competitive toy game: tug. Tug can easily turn into a zero sum game, which would further increase arousal. I’ll try hard to keep it cooperative rather than competitive. I do not want Game to fight me for the toy. In order to keep it cooperative, I will make sure to keep letting go of the toy and allow Game to restart the game. I will also push back against her chest at least as much as I’m pulling on the toy, and I’ll work with her on the floor rather than standing up. This way, I hope to play Game’s calmest version of tug.

Should there be toy play around cats?

I’ve thought about whether tug is a good idea at all, because it will likely keep Game’s arousal at cat-level, and it is directly related to sinking her teeth into a toy – someting I would very much not want her to do with a cat.

Since this is my own dog who I like to experiment with (and know I can keep the cats safe from), I am going to go ahead with it and find out what happens. I believe, based on Game and my history of toy play, that this is going to increase her impulse control around cats – and that’s what I want. I don’t need relaxation right away, but I want cats to mean tug.

So at first, I will take her focus vertically from cats to a tug toy. Then, I’ll bring her arousal level down horizontally by switching from tugging to chasing high value treats, from chasing treats to treats from hand for offered focus (“Can you offer a behavior with a strong reinforcement history?”), and then to a scatter. Sniffing for treats is a relaxing behavior. Seeing whether Game can or can’t engage in it will make an excellent gauge of whether she is able to move on. Since most (not all) of the cats out there walk past rather than staying right outside staring in, by the time I’m all the way down to the scatter, the probability that Game will be able to move on (because there is no more cat) will be high, too. If not, I’ll do another round.

Keeping data

I’ll need a way to track my progress or lack thereof. My preliminary plan is to switch from high value treats to kibble every fifth time I go down this staircase. Will Game be able to do it with kibble or not? I’ll also keep recording video after the scatter to see what happens, and find a way of coding her body language to know how long it takes her to truly move on (maybe how long it takes her to lie down in a relaxed position and not stare catwards.)

(1) I’m calling this The Norbert Project because I just met Kayla’s cat Norbert, and sadly, I could only invite Norbert into my previous AirBnB when Game and I were out. It would be nice if the next time Norbert and I crossed paths, he could actually be inside at the same time as Game – even if only for a little bit. Also, meet Norbert, travel cat with Kayla of K9 Conservationists. A shout out to Norbert for inspiring the name of this training series, and for being his amazing van life travel self! Cats don’t get much cooler than that!