Secondary Reinforcers, Toys, OFA's, Walks Without Food. Agility

Yesterday was a Good Day. And we got a lot more done than I expected.

Play: With a few inches of snow, I safely let the dogs play in the yard for half an hour while I cleaned out the van and even vacuumed it. They had fun digging and running and getting snowballs on their feet. Dog cars are hard to keep clean.

Tracking: We met our new training friend to do some tracking. It was about 15*. Wind chill made it about 0*. We didn't last very long, we both ran one dog on three tracks. Blaze's first: he stopped to go to the bathroom. And couldn't seem to find the track, but kept working. But when he was going through a 6" drift and stopped holding up his feet...I carried him to the car. We did his next two on the snowy gravel and he did much better but was still working WAY slower than usual. I was smart and used more food on the later ones... but I was still surprised at how much it slowed him and how well he kept trying!

Toy Play: Griffin was going to have his OFA xrays done in a few hours and couldn't eat food. So after tracking, in my many layers of clothing, I got out a longline and we played frisbee fetch-tug. And it went really well even with no food! I was able to reinforce recalls, and it was just a lot of fun to be at the park with absolutely no one else there at that point. He was adorable and we REALLY need to do more of this. Our play reinforcement value is greatly growing!

Walks in Town Without Food: We had twenty minutes until our vet appt, so we parked and walked around town. Without food. With two golden retrievers. And it went really well. Even with the cold, we saw quite a few people and walked past them. I wanted to reinforce, but had to go with "great dogs! Let's GO!".

OFA sedation and Secondary Reinforcers: The sedation part is what I was worried about. Once sedated, all is fine, but before then, he could be a flailing scared dog. I tried pinning him to the wall (which he thinks is great, do I want a leg lift with that?). And then using his conditioned secondary of head scratching. We repeated several times, and it definitely was a reinforcer. Then it was time for the real thing...and the vet touching was not okay. Griffin reared up and put his front paws on me. So we did the injection like that. And it worked. Much easier than I thought.

Waiting and walking: Blaze and I had twenty minutes and took some treats and went around town again. I took food and reinforced attention and good walking. And once we were to well-shoveled areas, I took off his Gentle Leader for about ten minutes. He was adorable, prancing along and staring at me. And it was somewhat sad to think that even almost-ten-years-ago as a puppy we spent time walking in the exact same places. In some ways a lot has changed, and in other ways, not so much. still, just walking along, wanting his treats. We went back and picked up Griffin and went home. Griffin wasn't up for agility training that night, so I took Luna.

Luna's agility: She was great! Attentive and focus and never wandered off. She wasn't her fastest, but she seemed happy, what do you think?

Sometimes she's super scared there and sometimes happy. I wasn't sure if tail-up was happy dog or if she needed to poop. But I think she was happy. I have to find a way to get her in class and trialing again.

Enrichment Variety: Toys

Everyone knows that it's important to provide enrichment for our dogs. I'm constantly working to be better at providing a variety of enrichment activities for my dogs as well as helping clients better provide enrichment experiences for their pets.

Last week I came across The Shape of Enrichment, an organization focused on enrichment, primarily for zoological settings. One of the pages had this nifty flow chart about types of enrichment.

When I talk with students, we talk about different types of toys. Some toys go in multiple categories. Some dogs only like certain categories. Not all types are good for all dogs.
Training toys: Things pulled out for training, put away at other times. Some of these fit in other categories.
Tug toys:... toys we play tug with!
Fetch toys: Toys we fetch with.
Chew toys: These can be nylabones and bones or varied dried animal parts.
Kongs: Have their own category. They aren't quite chew toys, we don't have the dogs chew off pieces, but they aren't the same as other food dispensing toys either! Kongs can be stuffed solid, frozen, or filled with big dry biscuits.
Food dispensing toys: These are all the things we put our kibble or treat pieces in. Lots of nose pushing or pawing is used to make food come out.
Dissecting toys: Things we can tear apart. Most dogs used stuffed toys this way. Or paper.
Puzzle toys: Nina Ottosson type toys. Not something the dog does on his own without supervision.



But I hadn't thought about putting enrichment into the categories that "The Shape of Enrichment" uses. I've taken the chart and looked at applications for dogs. Part II soon!