Winter Classes

Many pet-related services see a drop off in clients/customers during January/February.  Everyone is getting back to school and work after the holidays and they're a little more hesitant to spend money when they've just been through the holidays.  As it starts getting warmer in March, services often pick up (boarding kennels with spring break travels, groomers with "spring haircuts").

Interestingly....we've seen an increase in class sign-ups in the last week.   Most of the classes I teach are on-going enrollment, meaning that students can start that week.   We had two "fixed start date" classes start last night, a class for shy dogs and a class focusing on walking and settling with distractions.

This time around, the dogs in ShyDog class are more outgoing than the first group.  We have one dog repeating the class and three new dogs.   I've already adapted the class quite a bit from the first time we offered it last fall.  We're focusing more on handler skills than dog skills now, and hopefully this leads to better application at home and then more improvement.  We're still keeping a lot of the same activities, but we're adding in more intermediate steps, specific homework, and group participation.

Luna looking like a shy dog in 2008  We were at a state park in... PA?
The trails were very rocky and steep. I was scared of the slippery steep path....
she was worried about the people we passed.

Luna and I get to be in the Focus/Distraction class, she was incredibly happy and loved the young border collie were paired with.  Sometimes I feel like she's ready to go back to agility class. And at other times, it seems like I just barely have control.   She was getting tired so I switched out partway through.  I intended to let Blaze have a turn but he's not feeling good after crashing into walls during a fetch game on Tuesday....     Griffin got to work and I'm always surprised at how well he does in a group environment for the -very- small amount of group class time he has worked.   The other dogs and people weren't a challenge at all and he's really quite reliable in a class setting.  It's almost like the presence of the other dogs and people are a cue for him to have more self control and to be working harder with me.
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In other news.... early last year I was really excited about the great seminars for the year.  Somehow, this year is even better!  Everything seems really far away, but in reality it's going to go by incredibly fast.  I can't wait until there are details to share!

Luna was Brave

On Wednesday, Luna had her first class on since ~May 2009 when we stopped agility due to a lack of progress in agility and an increase in trouble-making.   Luna was in a sort of self-control-around-everything-and-other-dogs class.  She very happy.  She wasn't very responsive to cues, but was offering more attention than I've gotten in -months-.  In our daily training sessions she's been so inattentive, freezing and staring off into the world, and non responsive. But...back in the environment of "class" she was amazing. Last time she was in the training building with me she would jump at every noise and had her tail between her legs. Maybe it's being on anti-anxiety medications, maybe the past reinforcement history of a class setting...I don't know. I walked out ready to sign her up for agility class...then I developed some self control.

It was a huge contrast from Griffin at agility class. He did not have a good week. Our homework is a lot of speed and focus and response to cues.

Griffin at Agility Class: Week 3 and 4

Last week... Griffin was very fast, working very well, and amazing.  We made mistakes on every single exercise.  But the speed and enthusiasm are definitely a priority for now. I was very happy.

Today...   Sometimes fast, sometimes not.  Sometimes coming when called, so fast he would skid. And other times running out of the ring for water or to beg his friends for play time.

We had a lot of trouble with some of the exercises.   Griffin was often moving in too close to me, rather than staying out and taking obstacles.  Back to that obstacle focus issue.

For the first time in many weeks, we tried the weave poles... and only got it 1/3 times.  One mistake was continuing on after the entry, and another time he cut out at the end when I moved past him.  He can weave if I'm behind him, but we haven't done work with me ahead or moving past.  

His very best parts today:

• We did an activity with 'directed jumping' of sorts. He was great, I could be very far away and I didn't have to move to get him over.  Because of our obedience work and fluency work...he already understood most of this.  Many other teams had less experience in this area and they had to be closer to the jumps or move and prompt the dog.
• Aframe, flipping to a tunnel underneath.   He's always great at this, but we've never done it away from our usual training place.   He was perfect and responsive. It sure was easier for me than it was for many of the teams who had to be much closer to cue.
• Table:  He's not seen very many tables, but he was able to jump up and Down right away. He almost broke position a few times as I moved, but he fixed it himself.
• Stays: While others walked the course.  He had people moving within 12" and he held position, easily!

Things to work on: 

• Straight out of the chute:  He turns towards me quite a lot...making it potentially unsafe (for both of us) and more difficult for any handling challenges.
• Dogwalk: (Help!).
• Weaves: esp with entries, with handler ahead, and handler moving past
• "pushing" out to a jump, away from a line we are following.
• Recalls.....

Focus points today:

• Keep food in my pocket until after the sequence.   
• Feed low (rather than high like for Heel position).
• Run!

My goals, student goals

Personally, I'm really horrible at setting goals.  I've put in a lot of effort to learn about setting goals. I've used business resources, athlete resources, and general resources.   And it never really works out that well for me.

I am better at helping students reach their goals. Probably because it's a lot easier to be asking someone else to do all the work to get from Point A to Point B than it is to do that work yourself.  It's why I prefer teaching to training my own dogs!

That said... some of my recent reading has prompted me to re-think client goals.  Should pet and sport/enthusiast classes be different? Shouldn't I hold everyone to a high standard? If I set high expectations, will everyone work to achieve those levels of success?  Or should the content be different because of the different goals?

Blaze's goal is to never leave the water.  Griffin is considering the options.  

The first questions I typically ask in class are, "What are your goals for this class?  What prompted you to sign up for class right now?"  But maybe I need to add in, "How much time are you willing to commit?"  More than usual, I've had a high number of clients who are not meeting their goals.

I don't want to be the stereotypical dog training instructor and say, "They never practice, it's their fault!"   It's my responsibility to help them reach their goals and maybe my instruction wasn't clear or it was too difficult or I gave too many steps.   With a lot of these recent cases, the first thing I hear is "We didn't get to work at all this week.  The XYZbehavior is horrible, it HAS to change!"   No training happened.  More importantly, no management was put in place. The dog practiced the inappropriate behavior dozens of times during the week.  Somewhere I am failing those families and something has to change.

I'm going to start adding in to my questions, "How much time are you wanting to put into training?" and we'll use that measurement to help with the activities. It's part of the reason I don't use the bells that some dogs ring to go outside.... most of my student's don't want to spend the time period teaching the dogs.  I don't blame them...I've never done it.   Last night we talked about a puppy getting into the trash. They've used some management, but not always. The puppy is getting more sneaky. We talked about all the training we could do...."But in reality, it would just be easier to get a locking trash can.  Spend the $25-30, and then you have hours and hours to spend with your puppy training other things.  You don't have to worry about your dog making a judgement mistake and grabbing something that could kill him."  If someone doesn't want to put in the time, we can find variations and management options.  For whatever reason, life-long management sometimes gets a bad name in dog training, as if it's not really resolving the issue.  Sometimes other things are just more important ways to spend time.

On the other end of it, I've had a small number of very dedicated clients, with fairly normal dogs, wanting to do lots of sports and activities, wanting a high level of proficiency, and putting in a lot of practice.  Yet they are getting very little progress.  I can see the weak training skill areas. I try to design lessons to improve the human's ability for training and to address the dog's weak areas.  And it still doesn't go well.  I'm letting down those students as well, but in a very different way.

All that said, I'm not unhappy and am excited to see if the upcoming changes in classes will get even better results.

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In other news.... I'm already behind on processing and rewriting my seminar notes.  Griffin was pretty great at class, super fast and not running away. We messed up every single exercise.... but the speed and enthusiasm were our priorities. It should go better next week.

"What was hard?"

After leash reactivity class we try to always ask "Which part was the best and which part was the hardest?"

It's very, very interesting how most people will then tell the best part.. and the "worst" part.

Part of that probably is that "worst" is considered to be the opposite of "best"....and so it just comes out.   It also just seems like a very human thing to do... to perceive the question as where the errors/mistakes/fault could be.

We ask the question so that the following week can be set up to decrease that difficulty, if at all possible, and then work through it.   And also to keep the owners thinking about what is easier or harder for the dog.  Sometimes someone will say that none of it was hard.  If I had seen that the dog -was- finding parts to be more difficult, I can prompt with, "Were there any exercises that seemed to be a little more difficult than the others?"

The difference in the questions is very important.  The "worst" part (not responding to a cue, barking, getting stiff when another dog barks, etc) is not always the "hardest" part (-when- another dog barked, -when- we got really far from the opening, -when- we were turning away).   "Hardest part" tends to be something about the handler's choices or the environment.   "Worst" parts are typically about incorrect or poor responses...and while we definitely have to consider these....     it's the environment and handler that we can change.  And to change the environment and handler, we have to know what parts were harder and what components led to making things too hard for the dog.

I try to ask the "best and hardest" questions after all of my own training sessions.  Griffin has been really great for the last few days.   But a few of his behaviors hinted they could be weaker than I thought. He didn't make errors, he met criteria, and I couldn't even say how the behavior was different.  Something wasn't quite how it should be....and I make a note of these weaker areas so that I can address them separately.

Group Class Exercises for Greetings

1: Offered Sit:  The handler/owner/family can practice this.  When the dog sits...toss a treat. Repeat until the dog is readily sitting with no prompting.  If the dog does not offer a sit but does respond to the verbal cue.... cue the behavior, reinforce. Repeat 5-10 times and then wait and see if the dog will sit.

2 Sit for Petting:  The owner practices petting the dog. Clicking for a still dog (at the hardest point of the petting), stop the petting, feed a treat.  Pet, Click/Stop, Feed. Repeat. Work up to enthusiastic petting.

3: Rotate, Offered Sits:  Everyone sets some treats on a chair 5-10 feet away. One at a time, the instructor holds a dog (reinforcing for quiet, stillness, etc) while the student goes around the room. S/he picks up a treat, approaches the dog, waits for a sit. Reinforces, then goes back for another treat.  We do 3 repetitions per dog, then to the next student dog.   It goes much quicker than it sounds.  Those who are waiting for turns can practice offered sits and sits for petting.   If the dog is doing well, we can add in duration to the sitting or add in petting from the visitor.

4: Sit with Handler:  This time, instead of the visitor feeding the dog, the owner will feed the dog for offering a sit.  The owner holds the leash at half length so that the dog can't get too far away.  Repeat 3x per visitor, per dog. If the dog is doing well, we can add in duration to the sitting or add in petting from the visitor.

5: Turn Away:  Any extra people/instructors are used, ideally one per dog.   The dog and owner walk towards the person, then the owner moves backwards, reinforcing the dog for turning and coming with the owner.  This is done at a distance where the dog is likely to succeed.  This is repeated, walking closer to the person for greater challenge.  For some dogs we have the person sitting, offering food, making eye contact, talking, etc.

The Best Class Yet

I don't know if it was because I had an almost normal amount of sleep for the first time in 10 days or if the information from vet conference was finally seeping into my head, or if it was just luck, but class last night was great.

All the dogs made measurable improvement within the hour. All the choices I made were effective, all the dog students were happy, all the human students had a great time.

The night started with a head halter fitting. We picked a color and a size and I shaped the puppy to put her muzzle into the loop. Horray! Less than two minutes! And then while the puppy had a break, the owner was able to practice putting a head halter on a fake dog. Then I did another shaping session with the puppy and the owner had a turn. The team will work all week on putting-it-on-for-treats and putting it on before meals. Next week we'll start walking with it and maybe putting the leash on it too.

In both the 7:00 and 8:00 classes, we started with walking like usual. Some dogs were working on the squirrel game. Some were introducing walking with the "backwards walking" activity. Another was doing pace changes. Puppies were attentive and happy.

We then worked on recalls, while I helped one team, the others worked on reinforcing "more relaxed" behaviors. We talked about what those would be and how we would have to be using a high rate of reinforcment due to the excitement of one dog running. The humans were so good on this. Most of the dogs didn't even stand up. It was amazing. This happened in both classes!

And the recall dogs were great. While we didn't directly talk about "how to train a perfect recall" at vet conference... the things discussed did helped me be very concise and good at pointing out the most important parts to students. We talked about rate of reinforcement, value of reinforcer, and building a solid foundation. Look for more on this another day!

One class had time to do leave it, some dogs were on the first step, others were a few steps into it. Most were wanting to put the cue to it now, so we talked about whether or not we wanted "leave it" to mean "Sniff my hand and back away" or not. As usual, I told my students, "If you want that, I'm okay with it. It's up to you! Personally, I don't want my dog to nose touch my sandwich before backing away, especially if he just did that on a walk to a dead squirrel!"

And then in both classes, we worked on polite greetings. One dog was held by me, getting fed treats and learning it's okay to be with a stranger. And the owners would go to each station and stand at a target, while the dog owners reinforced their dogs for appropriate behaviors.

We talked a little about how to work on greetings at home and then wrapped up for the night.

Usually I walk out thinking about the things that could go better. Exercises I could teach better, places I could be more tag-gy. Exercises I should train differently. Dogs that weren't progressing. Dogs I needed to find ways to lower stress.

But last night was next to perfect.