Yoshi & Trek Training Diary

Yoshi and Trek Training Diary - Nov 2012

By Ellen Clary (Copyright 2004-2013)
(reverse date order)
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Fri Nov 30
Busy day at work so dogs had the day off. They have a herding trial this weekend anyway.

Thu Nov 29
Went to work a little later so Yoshi and I went over to the elementary school because there are always a lot of dogs around as parents drop kids off.
As we walked up I saw no fewer than 6 happy dogs tied to the fence. We watched from across the street and he ate a goodly amount of cheese I was very happy with him and my timing was good. I'd wait for him to look and said yes and he would look to me for a treat.

As we were walking back a Golden came around the corner right at us. We did a BAT u-turn, he barked once and they happily went along with me as we went a different way. Then we wound up parallel walking with a very small dog. That one was harder for him but he did cope with some leash tension.

Trek noon walk. We were on Johnson when I heard a dog barking, I looked over and the dog was out and running towards us. I start yelling help and pick Trek up and then I notice that the dog is not interested in us. Turns out doggy had escaped her yard and we all tried to catch her but she was having none of it and she took off again but we woke up her owner who started chasing after her. Fortunately she stayed in the area as a local cop had been chasing her for around two hours. Her name is Shamrock and I hope she's ok. Poor Trek said she didn't like getting dragged into these things but wasn't that traumatized and got to say hi to the cop.

Wed Nov 28
It's raining so Trek go a very short round the block walk. Because it had just rained all the glorious smells were up so it was a challenge getting her going, but she did eventually.

Yoshi's walk was much nicer weather and his walk was almost completely uneventful but right at the turn for home a very small dog was crossing the street on the other side. Yoshi saw the dog first and went to the end of the leash and I pulled him back turning in the other direction saying Yes and he refocused on me and earned some treats. I do wish I had seen the dog first and I'll know I'm getting somewhere when his default reaction changes to focusing on me when he sees a dog without me having to prompt him.

Tue Nov 27
Trek morning walk. This was intended to be a down the block and back one. It was but we encountered 3 trash trucks. The first two were ok but we had to walk back along with the recycle truck and all the clanking glass and metal and she wasn't happy about that but we got through it and she got a lot of cheese for it.

Mon Nov 26
Yoshi walk in the fog
Breakthrough (well continuing).
Saw a German Short Hair Pointer on the other side of the street. Actually Yoshi saw the dog first but didn't react. Another resident dog in a house was barking furiously. We stopped at let them approach. When he looked at the dog I said "Yes" and he looked to me for a cheese treat. He would look at the dog again and I said Yes and he reconnected with me for another treat. After the third time, he stopped looking at the dog and just kept looking at me for a treat. Good boy. Once the dog was past we continued on.

Then we saw another dog cross in front of us but we stopped and let them go by.

Trek noon walk. She really wants to learn something else. Her stop and stands are working well, both moving and from a sit. I don't need it with her in front of me looking so I haven't taught her that but she knows the down, sit and recall signals.

Evening: Got out a metal article and had her eat a lot of squeeze cheese off of it. She will allow her teeth to hit it. Then I started asking her to put her mouth around it and rewarded that. Then we worked up to her holding it for one second which was fabulous. What she will do for that appalling squeeze cheese (Kraft, not Cheese-wiz though I don't think it really matters once you've sunk that low.) Dog love squeeze cheese and peanut butter.)

The exercises she needs to learn better are the Open Broad Jump (need to make some or just use boards), Utility Articles, Utility Gloves. Utility Stand for Exam (which is more thorough than the Novice one.. I am hoping the Pre classes catch on so that we can skip the Open stays.

Sun Nov 25
Yoshi bike run Washington Park
Went around 1.5 miles. He was tired so we went over to the dog park parking lot and worked on Rally exercises. the parking lot was half empty which was perfect as we had a lot of room to work. Every time he saw a dog I said "Yes." and he looked back for a cheese treat. He was able to do this consistently and not stress about it. The first dog he saw I didn't have my timing right and he barked and lunged until he hit the end of the leash and reconnected with me. There was a small dog in the park that he was complaining about too.

The thing is that he is getting it. If I continue with Click to Calm reward style, he might start to learn that it is more rewarding to look to me instead of lunge at the dog.

Trek. Went to Lincoln Park and laid out 3 tracks into the wind each about 21 to 24 steps long treats every 3rd step. She would weave around but always found the treats. She often would pull to the left and she wanted to go too fast.

Sat Nov 24
Yoshi at Lincoln Park. Did great and then suddenly not so (twice). Each time his threshold was crossed.
[fill in]
Trek walk. Mostly sniffing them some nice Rally work. We need to start working more on the utility exercises. Mostly worked on moving stand and signals.

Fri Nov 23
Dogs got whisked off to herding after I drove back from Lake Wildwood.
Yoshi got to work driving goats through panels and Trek did much the same with ducks.
I think they're ready enough for their trial next weekend.

Thu Nov 22
We all went to Lake Wildwood for Thanksgiving. Dogs got to separately walk on a trail in the area.
Did ok though there was one dog on his property barking at us some. I picked Yoshi up and whisked him further down the trail to avoid incident.

Trek got to practice tracking us back to the car. She has no problem following my track so other people are going to have to lay our tracks.

Wed Nov 21
Basic walkies.

Tue Nov 20
Yoshi morning walk. It was raining lightly but he seemed to want to go an Trek wasn't at the door so we went. He did fine and didn't pout much. Saw Dorothy and her walking companion. That's about all we saw.

Trek noon walk. Met Judy on Court who is Jim's partner or wife and I answered some questions about Corgis and she said hello to Trek. Trek was worried about some construction going on near by, but she coped

Mon Nov 19
Trek morning walk. Went fine.
Yoshi noon walk. Still using the prong collar. I think I will for a while to see how it affects his behavior.
Saw a small dog from a distance but they turned off before they got to us. Better was that a dog that looked like a large dachshund coming towards us and they immediately crossed to the other side of the street and came towards us. We just stood on our own lawn and watched them approach. Yoshi would give this excited exhale almost bark and then look to me for a treat. He did this about 3 times. What was really interesting is that the dog was being clicked and treated the entire time. I really need to meet with this woman and maybe we can get together for training. Though she might be a hired trainer for the dog.

I got permission from my neighbor Eric to do some tracking on his front lawn which is larger than mine. Hopefully he mentioned it to his family.

Sun Nov 18
Yoshi dog walk. I'm going to walk him on his pinch collar for a little while to see what the effect is. Today he charged at a squirrel who ran right in front of him and he wound up giving himself a correction. He was surprised but recovered. Later on the two reactive Bichons (I think) walked towards us and turned off with one of them screaming at us. Yoshi watched carefully but didn't react. The were about 2-3 houses down and across the street.

Trek walk. We were half way and I realized I dropped the cheese so we turned around. After recovering the cheese we went over to the school and worked on heeling. There was a ball bouncing some but she held it together.

Later on I set three tracks in the yard and she seems to be catching on. Debi says that I can't reuse the track for 3 days and should instead go over to Lincoln Park.

Sat Nov 17
Trek's first Tracking class. It was raining lightly but persistently and I got soaked and cold. I work my Bay Team rain pants and those can only go so far. I switched to quick dry pants and things improved. One issue is that the class wound up being 5 hours long which makes it a ginormous timesink. I also can't make it for the next two Saturdays (Thanksgiving and the herding trial.)

Trek mostly didn't mind the rain once I talked her out of the car crate. She liked the treats though still isn't sure what to expect yet. That will come with practice and I'm going to have to practice at home fairly often. I can do some at home but I'm going to run out of room fairly quickly.

Tracks she did were 18 steps with treats every 3 (twice) and 20 steps with treats every 5. She is happy to fetch the article. Debi suggests using smellier treats than just cheese. I think I'll bring Natural Balance.

Fri Nov 16
Herding with pooches.
They both did very well, I was very happy with both of them. Yoshi needs more of an outrun, but I think we'll just have to cope because next Friday we'll be in Lake Wildwood and not at herding and the weekend after that is the trial.

Thu Nov 15
Yoshi noon walk
Walked him on his prong collar just to see how he is with it. More careful and of course better behaved. I get the impression that he wouldn't learn much with it on. No dogs. Probably need to continue it until we see a dog.

Trek evening walk. Getting dark but haven't seen any raccoons in a long time and didn't see any tonight but I carried a trekking pole just in case.

Did a peanut butter metal article session. she liked that

Started to fill out Dr Overall's questionnair - it's 34 pages - yikes.

Wed Nov 14
Trek morning walk. Pretty straightforward. Did some Rally work which was quite good. Her backup is now stellar.
I should put her in a trial or two.

Yoshi noon walk. Our neighbor's cat was stationed comfortably on a fence post and Yoshi was barking and barking and trying to charge it. I gave him a couple of very firm corrections which only slightly got his attention though he started to engage with me, then would look at the cat. It was perfect as the cat never moved so nothing he did caused a reaction so he chilled out and we did some heeling past the kitty and he was able to finally focus. But again my verbal calling to him had little effect at first, and this is frustrating. I even had part of a bagel with me as a reward.

Trek's tracking training starts Saturday at 9am - I think in the Morgan territory. $30 a session.

Evening: Trek got another peanut butter on a metal article session. She likes this.

Tue Nov 13
Yoshi morning walk.
Worked a lot on looking at people carrying things which catches his attention.

This went well but as we were approaching home you could see the hound puppy approaching. Castly different reaction. Growl bark bark pull. I called his name - nothing he was already locked on. I yanked on him which bought me half a second of attention then he was back. I yanked again and by this time we're on our lawn and headed for the driveway. I have half of his attention once we got near the front edge of the house he engaged with me and the puppy walked by without incident.

So he is very much not with me when a dog approaches and it's been over 60 days on Prozac.
Several choices and not exclusive ones either.

- do nothing different and just put up with him for the rest of his life (he is 9, this is a valid choice)
- add stronger corrections now that he seems less anxious
- add stronger rewards (hard to imagine this will make a difference over cheese which he loves, but pizza does have a special draw)
- increase his Prozac to 10mg
- consult with Dr. Overall

In the interest of following through (since I have to live with whatever choices I make with him and will be looking back on it) I'm leaning towards the last one.

Trek noon walk. Pretty simple, went down Lincoln to High street and back around.

I'm thinking I'll take her to Rally class at ODTC tonight with the idea that I'll bring Yoshi there in the future.

1:30pm on the way back to work saw 3 dogs being walked. Argh - they must just hide from us.

Lori thinks that Trek should get a week of peanut butter on an article without being asked to pick it up. Ok.

Mon Nov 12
Trek morning walk. She offered some good Rally work so she still finds it fun.
Saw one of the GSDs, but we were able to just stand off in a driveway and they passed by without incident. This one was smaller and a little darker, possibly less reactive.

Yoshi noon walk. Went fine - he was staring hard at some strollers and bags but recovered. He was obsessed with sniffing a tree and Yoshi come wasn't getting a response, so he did get a pop for that but otherwise he was fine. For the most part "Yoshi" gets a stronger reaction than "Come" does. so it's Yoshi and Yes are the magic words.

Evening: Trek briefly picked up a metal article.
Hurray for peanut butter.
Tried using Lori's vetwrap idea once she was interested in the article and the peanut butter, but still didn't want to pick up the metal. Trek started to pull off the vet wrap to get to more peanut butter. I let her (she even picked it up by the vet wrap) and then just worked with the article. She would open her mouth and hold it for a moment, before she got courageous enough to pick it up.

I was just going over the additional obedience classes here:
http://images.akc.org/pdf/events/obedience/Notice_New_Classes.pdf

and I notice that the "pre" classes are open to all dogs and they can 
stay in the class even after they get a title in it.
This means that my I-want-to-fetch dog can go into pre-Open without a 
CD, though it might be useful to complete Beginner Novice or pre-Novice 
first.

In fact, if I'm interpreting the rules correctly a dog could be legally 
entered in all of the pre classes.  The idea of being able to enter 
whatever level you feel like trying is appealing.

These are effective July of 2013.  It will be interesting to see if a 
club is willing to hold them.  Not having group stays is a time 
advantage for a host club.

I am thrilled that Trek can now go into open though her heeling needs to be better. More Rally will help this. Not being able to talk to her that much is an issue, but she really likes fetching so that might be ok.

Sat-Sun Nov 10-11
I am working at Lori Drouin's Obedience Workshop this weekend so the dogs have the weekend off.

Saturday: I bought Lori's book and looked at the teaching articles section. You start with peanut butter on something metal (I already have articles so just got a metal one). Trek liked that. I put it away and then two hours got it back out and got an immediate enthusiastic response which was a test. I put more peanut butter on it and after she had finished it asked her to bring it to me and got this want to / don't want to response. I finally asked if she would open her mouth and let me place it in her mouth. She let me but wasn't thrilled. She was richly rewarded. Twice.

Sunday Yoshi got a quick drama-free walk.

I think it will be good to start teaching Trek the Utility Exercises. I should finish up her Open skills too. Things like broad jump, and finally get around to formalizing the drop on recall. I love her recall so much I don't want to mess it up but I think it's time to move on past Novice and come back to it.

Fri Nov 9
Herding today

Morning. I had some time so I walked Yoshi over to the park. Right at the get go there was a GSD across ths street that Yoshi stared at and tried to charge (what a fool) the dog reacted back barking and I called Yoshi with his name or Come and Yes and got his attention back pretty quickly despite the GSD still barking.

In the park, at first there was no dogs and I was just about to leave when a Golden appeared. Y grumbled some but then was able to work successfully. Right as we were trying to leave another dog came in the park coming right at us. This one he most definitely reacted to and was barking and pulling on the leash. We backed up and finally he relented but not that quickly. It was a short haired medium size brown dog who wasn't really looking at us even though they were coming right at us.

Herding
Both dogs did quite nicely.

Yoshi started with goats and we were able to walk through a lot of panels and do tight turns around a cone. Lost one goat at the dragon but was able to repeat it several times successfully. He did try to run at Beltane the dog but I started running after him and he came back.

Then I put the goats in a different pen with some sheep and then we were able to gather them all up and walk around some with everyone. Goats have a nice calming influence on sheep. Actually they have a calming influence on everyone. My dog, me, and the sheep. After the Dec trial I might start using a mixed flock to see if I can get him to transition to calmly working sheep.

When it was just the goats, I could also stop and once I could get Yoshi to stop barking (who was barking because Trek was barking from the car) we all could stand around very nicely.

Trek was doing a lot of duck buzzing but Linda got out there, and waved the stick in such a way to get her to stop. (Scared her a little I think but not too much). I found if I said Stop or Out just a little sooner it make a difference too. The rest of the session went very well.

Thu Nov 8
Yoshi Prozac Day 60
I really should be testing out his reactivity more now but won't have time this weekend though I can see how he's doing at herding tomorrow.

Yoshi morning walk
This time went over to the school which is a little shorter but better odds of seeing dogs - don't know where all the dogs on our usual route that we used to see last winter went.
Followed some little dogs for a little while and then a small to medium size one crossed our path and he was successful on both count. He was intently looking at someone carrying a bag but no reaction to speak of.

Trek noon walk. Mostly a sniff-a-thon until it started to sprinkle and then I got the show on the road because we had 5-10 minutes before it was likely going to start to really rain. We made it back just barely in time.

Wed Nov 7
Yoshi Prozac Day 59
Yoshi morning walk. We weren't seeing any dogs so I was "yes"ing for his looking at people which is useful if not the same thing.

We were on Gibbons and I was distracted putting some trash into a bag and he say a young medium sized dog possibly a slim bully breed or a hound. Yoshi tried to run at the dog and hit the leash and came right back then refocused and when I got a chance I said "yes" and we started the game up. The other dog is staring right at us wondering what we're doing. I am kicking myself for missing this nice opportunity. His inclination is still to charge the dog but it doesn't seem to be nearly as hostile but I need to test this a whole lot more. As he comes up on 60 days on Prozac I have to decide if it's helping him. He does seem to be less anxious. After 60 days I'll have to try removing GABA or L-Theonine and see. Then I have to decide whether to consult with Dr. Overall.

Trek noon walk. Did a short bit Excellent Level once she finally reconnected with me after spending two block smelling everything she could. Fortunately the Rally was spot-on, even her backing up was very nice, I don't have to rotate my shoulders so much, but instead just look down and to the side at her. I've very happy with her Stand these days either moving or from a sit. Maybe I should be competing with her more though I want to see what her tracking training schedule will be.

Tue Nov 6
Yoshi Prozac Day 58
Yoshi morning walk - again no dogs.

Trek short noon walk. She has class today so kept it just to an out and back.

Trek agility class. Her last one. I'm sure she's thrilled, I'm sad.

Mon Nov 5
Yoshi Prozac Day 57
Yoshi noon walk - gorgeous day, no dogs.

Trek dusk walk. We went into the Fernside in search of fewer trees and no raccoons. Missed the raccoons fortunately.

Sat Nov 3
Yoshi Prozac Day 55
Trek Rally at Napa Valley DTC at the Fairgrounds in Vallejo.
She did remarkably well. She wasn't nearly as freaky about the ring environment. Fortunately it was a relatively small trial and it wasn't crowded. She was even able to recover from them having to move a trash barrel right before her run. I wound up carrying her to the gate.

	This is her Advanced run. It went ok, felt rougher than it actually was. I did a moving stand and was supposed ti sit and stand so I lost 10 points. Otherwise she only last two points. Score 88/100. Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TL0FvC6sxs&feature=youtu.be
	This is her Excellent run. She did very well and got a 98/100 Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuXbMZusdI8&feature=youtu.be

Yoshi Walk.
Finally I have some solid information.
The one thing that makes him break off from staring and turn to me completely is the word "Yes" which is like a click and these days has a stronger association than a click.
Walking down Central sun partially in my eyes so I didn't see the dog across the street until he was pulling on the leash and barking. I pulled him back and right as he was staring at the dog I said "yes" and he immediately turned to me. We did some more LAT (a Boxer I think) and every time I said yes I had his full attention. This is what I've been looking for. A way to get his attention without a leash. Was able to repeat it with a different dog (Swiss Mountain Dog) with no leash involved.

What's cool is I can introduce new cues by following them up with "Yes." (New cue - Old cue). It's cheating some since the Yes is a marker word not a cue word but I think the principle will work similar. "Come, Yes." "Yoshi, Yes."

Fri Nov 2
Yoshi Prozac Day 54
Herding in Woodside
both dogs did well. Both are stopping. Trek is responding to Out. Yoshi is a little.
I took some video of them. Here is Trek working ducks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNolouGHN3s&feature=youtu.be

Yoshi was able to move the goats through the gates much better this time and no goat took a swing at him because I didn't put his through the gate till the goats had cleared it.

Thu Nov 1
Yoshi Prozac Day 53
Yoshi evening walk. Yoshi was up and being a swivelhead and wanted to charge into the street because a kid was carrying a bag. Saw the two black dogs walking down Santa Clara. I let him look and then I said "Yes" (like a click) and he immediately refocused on my while keeping a careful eye on them. Did some Look At That while they passed by. The we waited a little while and then went into the park. Nothing at first then a black dog that looked like a Dobe-LabX came by. We kept a distance and he was able to watch them go by without incident.

Then on the way back almost home we wound up following what looked like a small Swiss Mountain Dog. Yoshi seemed itnrigued but didn't bark just watched.

Trek evening walk. Day after Halloween and she has the sniffs big time. She finally mostly refocused and we just did a basic walk with a little bit of backing up tossed in.