Training Session 1

My health and a number of other things going on (Shawnee in heat, Molly with a problematic toe injury, and a sick horse) have prevented me from getting to the training goal before today. I just did a short session with the girls--worked Shawnee while Molly was on mat then worked Molly while Shawnee held a stay (She isn't advanced enough to mat on anything like Molly is). I started with a few post-it targets on hand then quickly advanced to my knee. Once they did that a few times, I moved the target to the doorbell. No problem--they targetted it there. Molly did have her usual "are you sure I'm not supposed to retrieve this?" issues but Shawnee was easy going and confident.

Unfortunately they are not yet pushing hard enough or precisely enough to ring the bell, but I am sure we can work that out with time.

I'm very proud of them for remembering the yellow target when it has been so long since we last trained with it and we had done so few training sessions on it.

Name Recognition

One of our primary goals with training for the past few weeks has been to get the girls to learn to respond only to commands directed at them. I have worked a lot of puppy push-ups with both girls at once, rewarding only the one I ask to do the behavior. We also played the come game using the girls names, rewarding only the one we called. DH has spent many evenings in the pasture, incorporating play into the training.

Shawnee Learned to Stay

Shawnee passed her level 2 sit-stay and down-stay tests. I think we have DH to thank for this. Here are a few pics from last weekend's pasture play session when he did some stay training.




Before that, I had only worked on sit stay. This is the first she learned a down stay. But if you can stay when Daddy walks that far away with your toy--and turns his back to you--you can stay when Mommy walks that little bit away without a toy even if your sister isn't lying next to you offering moral support.

A Very Overdue Update

I'm sorry I haven't been able to to keep this blog up to date lately. The pain in my hands has become come unbearable, so I'm no longer able to type. But fortunately I just got a copy of Dragon naturally speaking, so I am able to update with voice. Some words may show up at the wrong word a little bit complicated, but hopefully you'll be able to figure out what I mean.

Despite me being sick and us having a number of family emergencies, the girls have continued well in their training. Shawnee is doing well with learning sit-stay. She is able to hold a stay for about a meter while we walk away and back to her. Molly's training is on break at the moment
because she's in heat.

Shawnee has learned to eat and is now eating consistently every time she is fed. Unfortunately, Molly has been going on intermittent hunger strikes. It may be related to her season, but for now we are putting her back on the strict eating plan.

I had been having some trouble with Shawnee on the tether and in her crate. She is no longer throwing herself to the end of the tether. I followed a friends advice and put some mentholatum on her leash and now she's not chewing on it anymore either. Her calmness in the crate has also improved dramatically.

Fortunately, she's almost completely housebroken now. Her accidents are very rare and very small despite increased time off tether. Additionally, she is alerting to her need to go out by going to the door. We are thinking of adding a bell but have not had the chance to create one yet.

I haven't learned how to put pictures in with the text yet. So for now you are stuck with text updates, but that's probably better than nothing.

Lots of Public Access Practice, Eating, and Training with a Toy

Wow. We've been busy. Too busy to blog enough.

Two days ago when DH and I ran errands, I took Molly into a big store in town. For you Americans, it reminds me a lot of Best, if you remember those. You walk around the store and look at all the stuff. When you find something you want, you fill out the info on an order slip. When done shopping, you hand in the order slip and wait for them to get your purchases out of the back--in nice sealed packages and without anyone in the store having had the opportunity to fiddle with them. Some really cheap and special sale items you can just take out of bins, but most stuff works on the order slip method.

So anyway, the first time we were in the store ages ago, I'd seen someone come in and wander around a little while with a small dog on leash right past store people without anyone saying anything. It wasn't an SD. So I didn't bother about asking for permission, figuring I'd explain, apologize, and leave if asked. But no one said anything. So while DH returned the broken item we had, Molly and I walked around. She was so good!

Then DH also wanted to look at some other stuff so Molly and I went with. She continued being quiet and very well behaved. A very successful PA practice. Also the floor there is superslippery, so it is really good practice for the airport and other businesses.

Yesterday DH needed to go see the dentist for a follow-up so we went into town again. We sat down on a bench and worked on sit stays and mat for a while. Molly did really well and was much quieter and calmer this time. I think she'd just been a little excited the first time in town because of having been stuck home so much while in heat. She only made noise once and it was to bark once at a little kid wandering around alone. No idea why she barked at him. But maybe she was picking up on something I didn't notice. It was a 5-6 yr old boy walking through a busy town without any signs of an adult, so who knows. But parents are much more relaxed here in DK about leaving their kids alone, so it might have just been someone who lived locally.

This morning I started working on clicker training again. I got a lot of tips from Erin (Z's owner) so I am finally feeling confident that I won't devalue the clicker by not giving treats but playing instead. It showed me how way out of practice we are. I tried training Watch, a very important L3 behavior. She used to be able to give me 10-20 secs eye contact on command without much trouble, but I was lucky to get 10 this morning and she wasn't responding well to the cue. I realized I needed to back up and rebuild the behavior.

When I put the toy away, Molly wasn't happy--she really wanted to play with the squeaky yellow hedgehog, the only one she's ever had WITH squeaker (usually DH pulls them out for safety). I decided to use this excitement as a training opportunity and sat down near where the toy was on the shelf and invited Molly up on my lap on the sofa. After a while, she volunteered eye contact so I clicked and treated. In a little while, I got up to 15-20secs of voluntary eye contact. She was even offering eye contact while the toy was in her mouth. A few more days of this and I should be able to recue it and get her back on track for L3 watch.

As for eating, Molly got 1 handful yesterday morning (we went from one kibble the night before to the small approx. 32 piece handful). She immediately ate it and kept looking for more. So last night it was 2 handfuls, again eaten right away. This morning she got 4 and also devoured it.

We're going to stall out here at 4 handfuls for a little while. We want to wait to up it until she is reliably devouring that much _and_ looking for more. Then we can try building up really slowly.

I will try to get some pictures up a little later today if I can find time. I have tons to do, but Molly wants to report on her small friend that arrived in the mail yesterday, so I will try to find time to get pictures online for her.

Last Night's Pasture Pictures as Promised

Like Molly said, we had a lot of fun in the pasture last night and I took a lot of pictures. Here they come as promised.

During the course of our play session, we took advantage of the opportunity to test Molly on a couple Level 3 behaviors we knew she was ready to pass. I haven't quite finished training and testing the last few level 2 behaviors, but this stuff is ready and the weather was right, so we did it. As in the picture, Molly had to hold a sit stay for 30 seconds with one mild distraction and handlers 20 feet away. She actually can hold for 45 seconds or more on 1 cue instead of 2. Distractions are both DH playing with the ball and traffic on the road.

A passing down-stay requires a minute stay at 20 feet distance with distraction. She again succeeded with normally only one cue (on a few tests we did give a second if she started looking uneasy) and both ball play and traffic as distraction. We tested both behaviors multiple times. She just did so well, but really she doesn't find those behaviors to be a big deal.

The crouch is one of the identifying traits of a working border collie. Molly has a really good crouch and she uses it both for work in the BC sense and for playing. These two shots show her crouching for playing fetch. She focuses on the ball and on DH, who has the ball, and will slowly walk closer and closer to them, staying down in this position. Staying low makes the dog less likely to spook sheep, as does moving so very slowly. Another identifying trait is their "eye" but I'm not sure how to show that with pictures.

When DH throws the ball, Molly turns to chase it. I think her balance and athleticism are just amazing, especially when you consider that we don't play like this every day. She's focused, intense, and unbelievably fast with every throw.

One time the ball crossed a small section of temporary fence. The first time it did, she asked permission to go past it. From then on, she usually went under it. One time last night--just when I happened to be taking pictures--she jumped gracefully over to get the ball.

Once Molly has the ball, she runs back with it as quickly as she can to start the game over. She really loves to play.



Molly has gotten really good about letting us know when she needs a break. She just lies down before returning the ball until she feels ready to run again. We usually take these pauses as times to remind her to go get a drink, so we generally start saying "Water" at her. It often works--we tend to think it works if it needs to--and she will go drink from the nearest water source before play resumes. Last night we didn't want to keep going so called it quits after she started showing signs of needing breaks. The weather was nice and cool, so we'd actually had a long play and train before that.

Before we came in, I took Molly off-leash to potty. She is trained to potty on command, so it only took a moment. Because it is apparently a parent's duty to embarrass the child by taking potty pictures and showing them to as many people as possible, I did so. Sorry Mol, but just be glad I didn't go and take a video or film like some parents do! BTW, this potty behavior passes handling at Level 3.

After she was finished, I gave her a simple home command. Like the good girl that she is, she ran home and waited for me to come and let her in. Once I got there, she took a drink of water and we came in and called a night. She made the blog entry and everyone went to bed. That's that for yesterday.

Practicing with Distractions

We spent Sunday afternoon at DH's parents. They live in town and have a fenced yard. Molly loves to go there and is always eager to play in the yard. But this time she had to behave for a while until DH erected a fence around the newly planted vegetable garden. With him banging posts into the ground and messing with fencing and his parents puttering around, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for training with distractions. The neighboring properties also tend to be noisy, especially in good weather.

To start we focused on down stays and sit stays. The picture shows Molly in a sit stay. She's been making great progress at home with both and we'd even practiced sit stays this morning. Sit stays tend to be harder because it is more natural to go down for something that takes time. But she did great and was able to hold both types of stays while I walked to the other side of the yard and back no matter what other people were doing. She's a good girl and really is progressing fast in both service and obedience training.

Once the fence was up and everyone had worked so hard in the hot sun, it was time to relax and get a cool drink. Molly took part in the relaxation, too. She'd earned it.

Of course we then needed to practice retrieve because we couldn't leave cans in the lawn.

Now Molly is normally quite good at picking things up, but by this time the heat had gotten to her. She wasn't showing signs of real problems but her brain was not quite its usual self. She was a little unfocused. To make things more difficult, we had to repeat retrieve and give several times to get decent pictures. Fortunately Molly is a patient and hard working dog, even in hot weather. She got lots of treats and water was readily available.

To finish things off, DH had to water the seeds he sowed for his parents. Molly has always been weird about water, especially moving water like the hose. We speculate whether she had a bad experience before we got her. But with lots of encouragement and help, it finally clicked that it could be a game and she played with the water from the hose with DH and me and looked so happy doing it. That really cooled her down too. But we didn't get pictures because we didn't want to risk getting the camera wet. She barked a bit more than would be acceptable in town in the long run, but she'll learn with more playing here at home in the future. We're just glad she can finally see water as fun.