I've decided I want an off-leash recall by the 4th of July. I've no idea whether that is a reasonable goal or not, but it is helping me focus on actually working with Kumi and not letting it stagnate, so I guess it's a good thing.
Going into this, I thought about the problems we've had working with her outside (which is where off-leash matters, no?). The biggest problem is that she will *not* take treats outside. Things she will work fairly hard for indoors, she will completely ignore while outside. It's like opening her mouth and chewing is too distracting from looking around to be worth her while. I don't know, but treats don't work, and that makes things difficult.
Doing nothing also has no effect. She gets really into standing and watching, so she really doesn't care if we ignore her, or don't move, or what have you.
So, we've already crossed off the 'positive' and 'neutral' training types, and are down to the dreaded negative things. But...going back inside when she does something wrong has been somewhat effective. So is that 'removing the reward' of being outside, or 'introducing an aversive' or...I get so confused when I start to think about it, but it seems to work? I do stay happy when we do it, just 'nope' then 'okay, time to go in' or something like that.
One of the best successes we had was when she was ignoring my directions when trying to get her in the car (she LOVES car trips). We got out to the car, and she wouldn't sit while I opened the door and was generally being a jerk, so I took her back in and did some dishes for a few minutes and tried again. She was SO enthusiastic and SO good - her butt was hitting the ground like, well, I can't really think of a good simile, but normally even her being-good-and-paying-attention-because-I-want-dinner obedience is to yawn and think about it, and slowly lower herself down once the committee has gotten back with a resolution on this 'sit' thing. This time, however, it was more like some crazy border collie who actually *wanted* to do what you said.
So, I'm thinking that maybe I'm not letting her fail often enough? Apparently she does get it, and just knows she can get away with things. Previously I would repeat the commands a few times thinking she might be so focused on the outside she literally didn't hear me. I'd only go in when it was really clear she wasn't paying any attention. Part of this is due to the whole 'negative' thing. I admit I felt bad going in with a plan of setting my dog up to fail so I could bring her back inside as a reinforcer. But...this is changing my perspective.
Anyway, armed with that inspiration, I put her on a long line, and went into the unfenced front yard, expecting to ask her to touch once, have her ignore me and head for the neighbor's yard, and bring her back in.
But, she didn't. She wouldn't walk more than, oh, 8 feet away from me, even with all sorts of coaxing. This is farther than our normal leash allows, but still absolutely in the realm of 'your off-leash dog appears under control'. She was looking away from me, but...she does that, and she didn't seem 'zoned out'.
And she listened to my 'touch'.
She did eventually get distracted by the dog across the street barking, but I felt that was a little unfair. My paradigm shifted again.
Kumi's appallingly bad leash manners always seemed at odds with her impeccably polite house manners. Maybe she would have been good, and just wanted to do it at a farther distance? when relaxing around the house, she normally sits some distance away from people and looks 'out' - maybe that's her mode outside too. Were we being unreasonable asking for a more strict heel?
On the other hand, maybe it's just that the attention work on the shorter leash has paid off more than I realized. Or she's bonded with us more now, and she would have stayed closer now regardless of what training we did.
I don't know anything, but it has made me think.
To begin with the not:
We gave up on the 101 things. It seemed to make Kumi very nervous to have me watching her with a reward ready but not giving any commands. Even when I studiously ignored her, she could sense that I was waiting for something, and tended to go into a down stay, watch me intently, and act generally unhappy.
So. That idea went into the bin.
On the other side, we've had pretty decent success with some new tricks. M taught her to roll over (or at least show her belly), and stand in one evening each.
I tried a different technique with teaching her to get the ball. She sometimes plays with it when you toss it, and I spent a while rewarding her when she picks it up. She definetly works better when you give a cue, or lure something. Her default behavior is stillness, which makes it hard to capture things.
Anyway, the reinforcement had two effects - first, she will now almost always go after the ball, and pick it up in her mouth as soon as she catches it when you toss it (previously she would often just push it with her nose or bat it around with her paws like a cat). This is what I was trying to train. Secondly, she drops the ball immediately upon 'yes' - which is not quite what I was going for.
I think from here, I'd like to try to train a retrieve, and possibly a catch - I think the catching is more an issue of her practicing coordination than one of motivation. She will sometimes catch it, but often seems to try, but physically 'miss', so I don't want to discourage her efforts, but I also don't want to train 'pretend to try to catch it'.
In even better news, despite very limited practice due to inclement weather, she's getting much better on the leash. I don't mean she has a perfect heel, or even that she is paying attention to me all the time, but she's stopped pulling so much, and will come back to me and touch upon request about half the time. It still takes her a while most times, and she often smacks my hand with her nose very quickly, and with a disapproving grunt, but she is doing it, which to me is huge. She is at least acknowledging that there is someone on the other end of the leash, and that paying attention to me might help further her interests. This is a big, big change. Now that she knows I'm here, it feels like the rest will be easy (well, at least possible - which before I had doubted). I am looking forward to good weather!
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Well, the 'pay attention' training has been cut short a bit by the fact that it is darn cold here in the winter (oh YEAH). Of course, she already does fine with it in the house, so it really can't be moved indoors. I've been leaving extra time to load her up when we do go somewhere to give her chances to 'fail' and have to go back in if she's not on good behavior, and she does seem to be making pretty good progress given how little practice we're doing.
But I have a replacement.
I noticed a few days ago that Kumi is convinced that the only things we might ever ask her to do are sit, down, stay and touch. Mostly she just escalates to lying down when she wants something, then looks at us with a confused expression if it doesn't work. For the most part, that's been true so far, but I don't want her brain to get stuck that way, so we're trying something new.
Back in my pre-dog voracious internet reading days I heard of a clicker training exercise called 101 things to do with a box. There's a reasonable summary of it here: http://www.canineuniversity.com/articles/training/train_28.html and some more detailed points here http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/2001b/101.htm . Basically, you put down an object and mark and reward any interaction with it, possibly shaping a particular behavior, but mostly rewarding creativity and differing responses.
Well, we didn't have a box handy (amazing in this house), so I used one of her nylabones, with the idea that maybe I could work towards something like a retrieve.
Well, we're a long way from retrieve.
I started by wiping a little gravy on the bone to get her going in the right direction. She got rewarded for licking the gravy off, and spontaneously nosed the bone a few times, which also got rewards. She did the nosing thing consecutively a few times, which made me think she might be getting the idea, but didn't continue more than two or three times.
In general, she actually seemed fairly stressed during the exercise. She quickly went (unprompted) to the down, but didn't relax. She was watching me very closely, and panting a little - seemingly nervous about not knowing what to do.
Needless to say, we kept the activity short, but it does seem like a good idea for 'training her to be trained' per-se. I also think next time I'll try to be more active at rewarding just looking at the item in addition to touching it.
Cooincidentally, I discovered a good new reward. We had some leftover thanksgiving gravy in the fridge I wanted to get rid of since we'd eaten the associated turkey, so I let her lick little scoops of it off a spoon. She seemed to like it more than many rewards, it didn't require chewing, and unlike her other high value rewards it didn't get my fingers greasy (or slobbery) since it was all on a spoon. I may try similar things with other soft foods like peanut butter or cream cheese.
In other news, I'm working on her letting me handle her front paws without pulling them away (she let me clip the back ones). Touch, yes, release, food x 10 or so.
I also put the dremel by the back door and am turning it on before I let her out. I was hoping she would run past it while it was on, but that wasn't gonna happen, so we're going slower.
Finally, to help break the 'sit, down, stay, touch' ultimatum I've been brushing her before meals and giving her a scoop when she's stood still for a few strokes rather than asking for tricks. So far she still tries to run away unless I put an arm under her waist, but is getting better about biting the brush and struggling. She also, surprisingly, lets me brush her while she's eating, though I'm not sure if that's a good idea to keep doing or not.
We haven't made very good (ahem, any) progress with loose leash walking on the plain collar since this summer, so I've come up with a new strategy. We're working on just getting out the gate and down the driveway, not even thinking about leaving the property yet. She has the yard to exercise in, so 'short' is the name of this game.
She is very reliable about sitting to go through gates once she 'got it' so I'm hoping we'll have a similar break through here.
We start at the gate, I have her sit, and put the leash on. Open the gate, tell her to go ahead through and close it. By that time, she's generally at the end of the leash, pulling a little, and not paying attention to me. So I ask her to touch my hand. Right now I will wait a bit and if she glances back at me I will repeat it and give her a second chance. Sometimes I'll even walk up (but not give her any more leash) and put my hand next to her face so she just has to turn her head. I'm thinking I have to make doing the right thing really easy for her now or she's not going to catch on that it has good consequences.
So anyway, once she touches, we start walking until she hits the end of the leash again, then I ask for another touch. I offer her a treat when she touches too, but at least half the time she doesn't take it - she'd much rather get going.
I make the first touch really really easy to be sure she gets it, but I 'cheat' less and less as she does more. Generally, we get through about three before she spaces out and won't look back at me. Then we just walk back to the gate and are done.
Here is what makes me think this might work:
For one, she really does like going places - and down the driveway apparently counts as 'going someplace'. Obviously, trips have to end sometime anyway, and I'm hoping that 'if you ignore me and stare into the distance, then we go home' is a sufficient deterrent. Since just standing and watching things seems to already be such a huge positive for her, we haven't made much progress getting her to stop doing it by offering other positive things. But associating it with a negative (brushing) was successful in the case of sitting at the door. I'm hoping by using really short sessions here I can associate staring into space while on a leash with the negative of having to go home.
Also, really short sessions keep me from getting cranky about standing out in the cold with a dog that's ignoring me.
I'm also hoping that using 'touch' instead of teaching the loose leash directly will work more immediately on attention, which is the 'mother problem' you could say. 'Touch' really requires her to redirect all her attention back at me. Not just glance at me and think about it, but really mean it.
Previously, when we tried treating for being in the right place, or correcting for getting too far ahead you could tell that she absolutely didn't get it. She really has very little awareness of where she is in relation to you to begin with - she's much more outward focused. Working on 'you need to pay attention to what I want' and 'you need to know where you are in relation to me' at the same time as 'this place is good and that place is not' was just too much.
So, my immediate goal is to get in her head that she has to drop what she's doing and pay attention whenever I say or we go home. (did I mention she doesn't like going home?)
My secondary goal is that once I have her attention, she'll start noticing that I'm a crazy jerk lady who keeps making her touch my hand all the time, and she'll cut her losses and stay next to me so she can get the 'touch' thing over with quickly when I ask for it.
But I like the idea that I'm directly training the first, more important goal. Once that is working better, I'll have more tools to work with on the second one.
She was completely cool with the new commands again. Maybe it was just a morning grumpy thing.
One of the things they required in the class was a pouch or apron to put the treats in. It works pretty well, but I'm beginning to wonder if the dog would associate context that she only has to listen when you're wearing the pouch. Similar I guess to not having food in your hand. It's like a catch-22. How to reward without having a a reward on you.
Also, I cooked the chicken, so that will be ready for next week.
Finally, I'm pretty sure she ate some squash from the compost that I dumped there after it went bad. I guess I'm either hoping it was a raccoon, or going on the premise that it didn't actually look really bad yet - I just knew how long it had been in there. She seems to be suffering no ill effects.
Maybe I should try summer squash as treats...
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Class was a mixed bag.
We started out all sorts of wrong, with Kumi running and pulling like never before all around the yard. The actual class was in a soft dirt arena, and she completely has better traction than me in there. For a moment, I was all but waterskiing behind her.
But, she did calm down, and was pretty impressive for most of the training. We worked on look at me, and touch my hand, and she was very quick to pick them both up. Model pupil level of quick.
Then it got long and boring, and she wanted to look at the other dogs, or, you know, somewhere other than me. We tried walking it off out in the yard again, but that just triggered the same crazies as when we arrived. Never really got focus back after than.
Also, she completely got sick of the treats. Sniff it on my finger and walk away sick of them. We were going to cook up an extra chicken breast and cut that up for treats, but dinner plans changed and so all we had was cheese and hot dogs. Honestly, it seemed like her stomach was a little off in general - she was much more hesitant with her dinner when we got home than usual. I've already saved some hamburger for next week, and we should have chicken too.
Then, this morning, it was like she'd never heard of this 'touch' thing before. 'why the heck is your hand in front of my face'. At the time, I figured it was just because it wasn't part of the morning routine and she was grouchy about having to come in from the yard. Thinking about it now, it might have helped to do a few rounds of the charging thing before asking her to work for it, since that's how we started the class. Make my hands smell like cheese and all. She did manage to do sits and downs, which is what we'd previously been asking for when she gets fed, so maybe it is the routine thing after all.
So, there's that. I'm hoping we do some work on leash manners sooner rather than later, because she's embarrassing in their yard, and I'm not sure how to stop it. She gets completely uninterested in treats. She'll sometimes check back in with me a little (flicking her ears, or sometimes glancing back) when I ask, but I don't know how to reinforce it. Even if I toss a treat up to her, she almost never looks down and eats it.
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I may have mentioned that Kumi is a somewhat fluffy dog. Thankfully, she tolerates brushing, because it would need to get done one way or another, but it is not her most favorite thing by any stretch. I recently came up with a way to make some lemonade out of the situation.
One of the things we are trying to teach her is to sit and wait until told to go through a door. This was proving a bit hard, as all our doors have windows, and she was quite content to stand there and look out the window for a *long* time. Going through the door was a good reward when you got to it, but looking out the window was fun enough that she didn't see any need to do what you said in the meantime. She could just wait.
So we put a brush by the door. She has the choice between standing there looking out the window and *being brushed*, or doing as told and getting to go outside. This is speeding the learning process significantly. She now offers a sit as soon as you walk up next to her, and is getting better on the stay.
I want to reiterate that this isn't retributive brushing, or anything intentionally uncomfortable. It's just getting the tangles out, which would have to be done at some point anyway. We just timed it strategically.
Other training issues are she seems to have learned 'sit' as 'come over next to you and sit' I'm not sure how to re-generalize it to 'sit wherever you are' but for now there are other fish to fry.
We've gotten lazy about the leash walks since we got the fence, preferring games of catch and chase. Her leash manners are regressing. Particularly on the regular collar. It sucks.
On the positive side, well, the door manners are good, but she's also got a pretty good grasp on down now. She knows it a lot better from M than from me, and mostly only knows it in the kitchen (and not, for instance, when she's standing in front of the tv), but still, good progress from 'I have no idea what that means'.
Also, we have our first (no dogs) session of training class this evening. I am inordinately nervous.
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