A Few Foundations Videos with Payton
It was really really hot even at 6pm… he started getting really tired and hot by the end of the second video. We tried to do lesson 3 but he was just too hot so I didn’t force it. We’ll try again Wednesday…
Sends to the tunnel are going so well you can’t even see our starting point for most of this video. =P I did not film sends to a jump today.
This is where he starts getting hot and tired. These are really tight wraps and he’s not quite ready for some of them. Bars should be lower but I forgot to put them down… bad trainer.
Payton and Georgie’s First Fun Run!
Well, thanks to my mom apparently not understanding “PUSH THE BIG RED BUTTON TO RECORD” I only have one video of Payton. I impromptu decided this morning to take Georgie – it was only $5 and I thought it would be good to get her in a ring and have her do some jumps. Plus I am generally in a less serious mood playing with her, so I thought it might lighten my mood to bring her along. I thought about taking Auggie but he HATES the floor in this building so much, so I didn’t. I wished I had, but when I say he hates the floor I’m not kidding, so it wouldn’t have been fair to him.
Somehow my mom managed to get video of all three of Georgie’s runs… just not Payton.
Anyway, Payton did fairly good, no new problems presented themselves, all stuff I was expecting and dare I say maybe a bit better than I expected. One of the people I trial with locally showed up with their dog and I was like “oh yaaaay… people to see the terror…” hahaha. He took jumps, even most of the ones I asked him to take. He didn’t pee on anything, though he considered peeing on the table the first time he jumped on it. And he didn’t drop any bars. (I decided to run him at 12″ instead of 16″ today. He’s a baby, I don’t care.) He did surprisingly well considering what a horrible dog he is. My plan was to totally avoid all contact obstacles, but everything was basically right in our path and, well, we do have a teeter and have been working on it – so I took a chance with him. The first run (no video) he was like “errr nope, dunno” and took a pass on it. The second run (no video!!) he put a few steps on it then changed his mind, so I took him back and tried it again just telling him “go touch” – and this time he did a BEAUTIFUL drive to the end then once it was down stepped into a perfect 2o2o. I’m so mad I don’t have video of that. I was happily stuffing food down his throat while he held his 2o2o and specifically stepped out of the way so my mom could get it on the video… *flips table*
The third time he slid off the teeter, and it bounced up behind him while he was sitting there, which he believed warranted a telling off of the teeter for being rude. Yeah. That one’s mine.
Be warned, he doesn’t shut up for most of this video, so you might want to mute it. Also sorry for the Blair Witch Project type filming, apparently my mom had been drinking today.
Georgie was the surprise superstar, though I’m pretty sure my mom was underselling her to people and then when I ran her everybody was like “……” I couldn’t remember if she had ever seen a chute before – we just found mine buried in the storeroom – so I tried to put her through it, but no go. The first time a lady outside the ring said “oh, let’s lift the chute up and get her through it!” so we did that and she went through. I thought she might try again after that but nope. Not her fault, I really don’t remember if she’s ever seen one before or not, and I kinda think no.
Neither dog has ever done the table before (hence why I’m saying “on,” it’s just our cue for climbing up on something) so excuse all the shoddy table stuff, it’s their very first time just playing on it. I figured why not? I paid my money, let them see it.
Very proud of the baby girly today. And Payton was not terrible. I would have liked better, but for a baby dog I think he did pretty good. I realize on video they probably look fairly similar. I realize I’m being harder on Payton since he’s mine and I’ve trained him so my standards are higher. He got lots of cheese and kisses and got to sit in my lap between his second and third runs, so don’t feel sorry for him.
Payton Tricks: Riding a Skateboard
I’m cheating and also using the movement as a precursor to putting him back on a teeter (my adjustable teeter is almost ready!) so lots of rewarding whenever it moves under him too, even if it’s not closer to the final behaviour…
Session 2:
We’ll come back to this one, I absolutely must have a skateboard riding dog. It’s just necessary.
Back Stalls (or Push-up with Puppies)
Here’s Payton, Georgie, then Auggie who fails at the whole “stall” part of this game LOL. But he’s adorable and I don’t really care. Seriously for like ten minutes he jumped back and forth over me and I laughed the entire time. Also he totally whacked me in the head with his paw. And I still laughed.
Including a blooper at the beginning because we were trying to get the shot set up and neither of us realized my mom was cuing Payton to spin and he was totally doing it…
(yes I know my form is rubbish, these do not count as real push ups.)
Both P and Georgie are doing pretty good with me moving under them considering we just started this trick, but mostly just getting them more comfy with me moving while they’re standing rather than a sit. Payton is trickier because his weight is distributed along my entire back… my butt was up way higher than it should be for a push up because I was trying to keep him from sliding down along my back. We’ll have to keep working on it so he learns to distribute his weight forward a bit and NOT slide off. Georgie is easier because she’s small so fits pretty close to my shoulders and that’s about it. =P
Payton agility training 12/26/12
Baby P at the training building tonight.
Need to clean the teeter up some more, he thinks it’s faster to get on by hopping on it halfway. So I’m trying to reward both when he gets on it straight and when he exits. I really should decide if I want a 2o2o or not because I keep changing my mind and it’s going to confuse him…
Some handling stuff at the end and also a blooper clip very last. I laugh every time I see it. I’m so mean.
Pepper playing ball
Not monumental for most dogs, but Pepper is so goofy about playing it’s a pretty big deal!
And Payton is kind of annoying, sorry. Ignore him.
Pepper perch work
After “spin” wasn’t going well with Pepper, I decided to start perch work with her instead.
What’s funny is how many times she was offering me a left head check… I guess she WAS getting the spin shaping after all!
Trick Training: Spin
This week our trick training challenge is “spin.” Auggie and I worked on this one a few years ago but I never really put a cue on it or had it perfect, so cleaning it up will be Auggie’s challenge this week. I haven’t done this at all with Payton or Pepper.
Once again I just started shaping with Payton, clicking for back end swiveling. Payton already knows “pivot” of course, and starts offering that (it’s one of his favourite tricks to offer.) I decided to go ahead and reward that and see if we can’t turn that into spinning.
I tried to lure Pepper but she isn’t handling my arm going behind her back well, so I decided to just try and shape a head turn instead.
After this video I decided Pepper was just having a hard time and maybe she isn’t ready for something of this level yet. Having only just started clicker training with her a few weeks ago and so far only really doing some targeting work, this might just be too much. So I think Pepper will sit this week out in favour of me trying to shape her to do something else, like maybe climb into a box?
Final video! Just Auggie and Payton:
Both of them can only spin one direction reliably – teaching them to spin both directions is my next task!
Trick Training: “Sit Pretty”
The dog forum I belong to is having a trick training challenge. Each week we get a new trick to work on. This week we had “sit pretty” which is a trick I’ve been wanting to train anyway, so I worked on it with all three dogs. At first I just decided to lure with all three, but that wasn’t working very well for Payton who is quite good at shaping anyway, so I scrapped luring with Payton and switched to shaping. It worked out just fine with him. For both Auggie and Pepper, I lured, and then switched to targeting (which is also more or less luring, I know) my thumb. This will turn into my hand signal for the behaviour at a later point.
On with the videos!
This one has all three dogs in it:
Just Payton in this one:
All three dogs for the “final” version here! Of course we still have some cleaning up to do, but this was the end of the week so this is our final video rather than final version of the trick. Auggie is the one struggling the most with this, but I think physically it’s difficult for him. We’ll keep working on it though.
Payton “cop-cop” training – again!
It’s been a while since we worked on this trick, but I haven’t forgotten about it. I still think it’s a really cute trick so we came back to work on it some more.
Here’s two videos of us working on it:
Apologies for this one where you can’t even see my feet, I realize how completely unhelpful that is!
More Clicker Training with Pepper
Second target training session with Pepper! Once again, watch the video, then look below for more on what I did (and why) in this session!
I started this session with the same criteria as we ended last session: I wanted a nose push. She offered to dig at it with her paw pretty quickly, so I started rewarding for any kind of paw touch. I also flipped the frisbee back over at this point since I was no longer trying to catch my cookies in the middle of it. I pretty quickly got her to dig at the frisbee reliably. At this point I started holding out for a sustained touch rather than just digging. This is the first point where she starts to check out a little bit because she’s not sure what I’m wanting… I went a little too quickly for her. So I went back to rewarding for persistent pawing, and started rewarding low to the ground and in front of the frisbee, hoping that would result in her accidentally stepping onto the frisbee and getting the paw touch I was really looking for. It didn’t totally work, but I was also almost out of cookies in my hand so we just ended there with some pawing at the frisbee so we could end on a good note with success!
Clicker Training Pepper
Miss Pepper has never really been trained with the clicker before, at least not that I remember. I have started shaping behaviours a lot more often since getting Payton, so I don’t think I really did a lot with her previously. So now that she’s here, it’s time for the clicker training. Previous to this video, I did one quick session where I asked her for sits and downs and C&T for each. With Payton I really didn’t do any “charging” of the clicker and it has obviously not been a problem for him, but Pepper has four years of learning WITHOUT the clicker so I thought I would put a small deposit into her clicker training bank account before starting. But that is all I did.
I tried to figure out which behaviour I thought would be best to start with and decided one of the easiest things to do – and the easiest to “show” for video purposes – was to teach her how to target an object. Both of my boys are very good at this and even Georgie is pretty quick to try targetting stuff if she thinks it will get her a cookie… so easy enough, right? Right.
Watch the video, then read below for how I approached this training session!
At first I wasn’t sure what she would do when I put the frisbee (my favourite starting target) down on the floor. Would she go sniff it, mouth it, maybe even paw at it right off the bat? So I put the frisbee down and just watched to see what she would do before I decided what to click. Well, I should have predicted she wouldn’t do ANYTHING, but as usual I forgot that she is completely unlike my other dogs. So after a few seconds I knew my first move was to just click for looking at the frisbee. I quickly realized I also needed to use my treat placement to help out and started throwing the cookies towards the frisbee. I flipped it upside down, which is usually how I use it when it’s a food target, because the cookies would then get trapped in the frisbee. This let me reward for sniffing the frisbee, then I started waiting for an actual nose touch rather than just a sniff.
I started waiting for forward paw movement, but before she really started doing that, she actually pushed the frisbee with her nose. This was exciting to me, so I clicked it and decided to reward that for a while. We ended the session there!
Payton learning “shake”
Yeah, yeah, so my puppy is almost a year and a half old and I never bothered to teach him “shake.” I realized this is an issue when I told Payton he might need to start performing tricks on the side of the road to make us money, and then remembered HE DOESN’T REALLY KNOW ANY TRICKS. Are people really going to be impressed by a dog who can sit, stay, and do weave poles? I didn’t think so.
Well, if he’s going to do tricks to bring home the bacon, I guess I’d better train him up. I mean, he should at LEAST be able to shake.
Right off the bat I kept missing opportunities to reward him. DERP. I also realized I shouldn’t have been rewarding with the same hand I wanted him to “shake” – I was using that hand because the clicker was in my other hand, but rewarding with my right hand meant every time I wanted to reward him I had to take my hand (the target) AWAY. Not what I wanted to do! So I switched reward hands.
Obviously the trick isn’t 100% done by the end of this video, but I’ve got the behaviour I’m looking for! Next is to continue to reinforce it in different locations, and then to put it on cue and name it.
Next: “roll over.” Which is always hilarious to see Auggie do because he kind of THROWS himself over. We’ll see if Payton will be any better at it!
Impromptu Flatwork Session
The other day I decided to do some impromptu flatwork with the puppies. Click to watch the video below…
Admittedly I haven’t done hardly any flatwork with Georgie at all. Sometimes I’ll do a few handling maneuvers with her, but that’s about it. So her, uh, interesting take on flatwork in the video is not exactly her fault! She just needs more work. Lots more work. It’s okay, we’ll get there. She’s not even a year old yet, she has time.
Payton is improving a lot. Our biggest struggle is that instead of chasing the shoulder so to speak, he was more interested in trying to bite my legs. We have gotten past that at least, though the barking, THE BARKING. It doesn’t stop. Hopefully once he has something to do besides just chase the shoulder he will use his brain more and stop using it to vocalize!
Auggie was stuck in there just for fun. His session is rather different since we are working more on building drive and speed, though admittedly, we don’t really have drive or speed problems in the yard… only at agility trials… but whatever. We’re working on it. After this we had an impromptu game of tug and fetch, in which I threw the toy, he went to retrieve it, and as soon as he reached the toy, I turned around and ran the opposite direction and he had to catch up to me with the toy. GREAT fun for Auggie and I was dying before long, sprinting in circles around the yard and trying not to break my ankle stepping in any of the holes in the ground or trip over the garden or whatever. This is definitely a game we’ll play more.
All three dogs want to squirt behind me and take the wrong side, so there’s more to be done. It would obviously be nice to have a larger space to work in too… working on that one…
This is how my puppy sings
He doesn’t do this much. He did it once the first day he was home and maybe once or twice other than that. I wanted to record it because I think it’s kind of funny how he kind of warbles, LOL, and he wasn’t doing it anymore so I was bummed and thought I missed it.
Well, he did it today when I came home from work and went to go to the bathroom first instead of letting them out. So I set up the camera and then went to go change into my running clothes, and this was the result.
(and yes, I realize it’s pretty much time to change out his crate for the bigger one. Unfortunately that means he won’t be able to sleep in my room anymore because there’s no room for a bigger crate in my room. He doesn’t wake me up in the middle of the night but I kind of like having him in there with me and Auggie… I don’t trust him not to pee in my room in the middle of the night loose though… =<)
I keep watching it and I think it's hysterical. Does that make me a bad dog owner?
Auggie attempts to communicate
I decided a while back that I might teach Auggie to speak. Part of me thought this was a terrible idea, for once I taught the dog to bark on cue, he might NEVER STOP. Another part of me thought, because he barks when he’s being bratty and playing, if I could get him to bark on command, I could also basically get him to be bratty on command. (I can hear you out there asking, but WHY would you want your dog to be bratty on command?? Well, the answer is because I’m crazy of course.)
Either way, I decided to just go ahead and do it. Tonight I sat down with the clicker, the dog, the big bucket of treats, and a plan… click any vocalization, no matter how quiet, that might be considered a bark. Whining, whimpering, grunting, wookie-noises, or various other attempts at talking were not to count… only what you might call a bark.
What happened next was so hilarious I had to actually stop and get out the video camera to record it and show people how absolutely ridiculous my dog is. So watch the video… and enjoy.
The Journey
I was poking around on YouTube and stumbled across this video again, and I thought I should share it.
This video makes me cry every time I watch it. Sort of ridiculously so, but I am a big baby who sometimes cries just watching commercials on TV, so it’s okay.
Funny enough, about an hour ago I was cleaning up the house because family was due to come over. I moved Auggie’s ribbon displays into my bedroom while I cleaned the office (right now they are all framed but just sitting on the floor) and then wasn’t sure if I should move them back into the office. In the office, they’re sitting out in plain sight, and I thought about how some of my family might make remarks about competing with my dog. I sort of didn’t want to deal with the snide comments about what kind of person I must be since we compete and get ribbons and toy prizes and Q’s and titles.
And I thought to myself, I could just tell them, “It doesn’t really matter. Even if we had no ribbons, he would still be Auggie. And at the end of his life I will not think ‘If only we had gotten a few more ribbons!'” I’m sure they would smirk and snidely say “oh of COURSE.” And I could just smile knowingly, because they will never realize the real reward of competing with my dog is not the ribbons we come away with… it’s just that feeling of working with him.
We returned to agility practice this week, doing some indoor work on Tuesday. I do need to get him conditioned to get back into it, since our first trial is March 17th, but I mostly just took the opportunity to play with my dog. And we played and played and played. I did work on a few things, like calling him into or pushing him into a tunnel opening that was “wrong” – that is, not directly facing him – but mostly, the idea was to just have some fun. And boy was it fun. Even more fun was how FAST Auggie was, and how much delight I felt because of how much fun HE was having. It’s not fun at all when he’s not having fun, after all.
I loved it. And I love the game. Not because of the ribbons… but because we get to play the game together.
