Day 19

Lazy lazy Saturday! Lots of naps and cuddles most of the day.

The little bit of training that we did get done, was playing with the Nina Ottosson DogTwister brain game. Bennett had never played before, so this was her first shot at it. It took her a while to catch on, and kept offering sits and downs to try and make the trays open. But after she figured out that she was allowed to bite and scratch at the toy, nothing was going to stop her! She also worked on her first "It's not your turn" down-stays. Since I train multiple dogs, first 2 and now 3, I like to be able to switch back and forth with them to give everyone a chance to play. Gio and Romeo both know how to hold down-stays while the other is working, so it is time that Bennett starts to learn this concept, too. So while Gio or Romeo were playing with the DogTwister, Bennett worked on down-stays. I was very pleasantly surprised by how well she did! I really do need to stop being surprised with this little girl. She was able to hold her down-stay on her own while I reloaded the toy, and only needed a couple of reminders and encouragement Cheerios while the other boys were playing.

Our people greeting and door manners lessons from Halloween seem to have done some good! The pizza guy only got one bark from her when he rang the doorbell, and she politely greeted him, allowed some scratches and coo's, and stood nicely at my side while I signed for the order. Of course, then she tried to follow him back to his car ... I can't really blame her, though. He was cute, had pizza, and fawned over the dogs. This girl has good taste!! Her recall was quite nice, and after I called her back and reminded her that she lived with me, not him, she came trotting back to the door.

I also trimmed paw hair today. After a brief struggle, she settled nicely and let me shape her paws and trim around her pads. Much less painful than our previous attempts at nail trims. Perhaps this is a sign of nail trim acceptance, too? I didn't press my luck with that today, though, and just stopped with the hair trim.

Days 16, 17 & 18

Oy!! Look at me falling behind on the blog posts!

Okay, Wednesday was Day 16. I did toe nails after work. While Bennett was lovely the first time I did her nails, last week she decided to put up a fight which resulted in screaming and guilt. I didn't get any nails cut that time, so I really wanted to get them done on this attempt. Since Bennett is super food motivated, I decided to try a new little trick. I found a heavy ceramic mug and smeared a spoon of peanut butter in the bottom of it. I then arranged Bennett for nail clipping (ie. with me sitting on the floor and Bennett on her back between my legs) and stuck the mug over her muzzle. This tilted her head out of the way as she worked on getting the peanut butter out from inside. Completely distracted, I was able to clip all 4 feet without her even noticing! Fantastic!

Then it was off to puppy class. She remembered Max, her GSD buddy from last week, and they started the night off with some screaming pouncing puppy brawls. That was cut short, much to Bennett and Max's displeasure, to work on some skills. We did hand touches, downs, recalls, and then a play session with call-back breaks. Of course, Bennett had already started on each of the skills introduced, so we did some of our own stuff off to the side. Heel position, fronts, focus, and down in heel position. Her downs do need work, as I know I haven't done too much with them yet.

Thursday was Day 17, and it was also Halloween! The focus of the night was socialization. I set up the x-pen flat across the front door entry way so that no dogs could sneak out. None of them are flight risks, even Bennett I am pretty confident with at this point.  But Romeo and Gio have always prided themselves on their skills as baggage inspectors. They love sticking their heads in whatever guests bring to the door, not necessarily to steal, just to check. This makes Halloween one of their favorite nights, but tends to freak the kids out a bit.

The dogs all wore their costumes, Bennett a pirate, Romeo a devil, and Gio a dinosaur. The night was really nice, and a bunch of the neighbours were outside socializing, so the front door stayed open most of the evening. In addition to the bowl of candy, I also kept a bowl of dog treats by the door. I asked any child that paid attention to the dogs to give them cookies. Romeo and Gio showed off their tricks, and Bennett lapped up the attention and compliments! One toddler dressed as Thomas the Tank Engine freaked Bennett out a bit, but after that she was golden. Even the kid (gender unknown) that appeared to be dressed as an air conditioning unit ... essentially a giant walking box. Bennett quickly decided that she quite liked this door greeting gig, and parked herself on the door mat to be the first to catch the kids as they came up.

Today is Day 18. I introduced Bennett to the bucket tonight, an overturned decorative basket thingy, for the purpose of doing some hind end work. She's a little clueless about her back legs, and was more prone to just jumping over the basket than moving those toes around. But she did enjoy standing up on the basket with her front feet, and patterned to that really quickly. I'm confident the back end stuff will come along as we practice more. After a bit of a break we went back to the clicker for some heel patterns and downs. Now that she has a decent sit-stay, I introduced her to the rules of the 5 Steps heel position game. Interestingly, THAT game got her hind end moving very nicely, when the bucket game seemed to confuse her. She showed off a very nice 180-degree bum-swing with plenty of enthusiasm! We then did a little bit of small space heel doodling, working mostly on left and right circles. About Turns seem to be no problem for her, which will be refreshing after Romeo, who tends to lag on About Turns. The turns to the left need more polish, but she is clearly working to try and stay in heel position, just needs more control over those silly hind legs. I think with more of this circle work, the 5 Step game, and the bucket, it will all come along in short order! I wrapped the night of training up with a "down" competition. I've found with Gio and Romeo, a little bit of competition seems to help them with focus and speed. If one dog is getting cookies, you better believe the other wants in on it, too! So I let the older dogs loose from their couch stays and we played a crazy down game. Basically, me running around the house with dogs racing around me (no worries about heel position this time!) and randomly stopping and asking for a "down". Gio and Romeo know this game has a rule that only the first dog "down" gets the cookie ... but since it was Bennett's first time playing, she got a cookie each time. (Tonight, "cookies" were Honey Nut Cheerios. Anything goes for a food hound!) After a couple of rounds, she started to get the competitive bug and was racing around and sliding into downs with the big boys. She's still not the fastest with the downs, but she had a lot of fun with the game and was consistently dropping with each cue.

Days 14 & 15

Mondays mean a trip out to Frederick, MD to teach my Bridge Obedience class. As with last week, Bennett accompanied Romeo and me.  The one session of outdoor heeling that Bennett and I did on Sunday transferred fabulously to the training building. Amid plenty of distractions, dogs, people, food, noises, trains, etc, she held her focus and rocked her heel position/front position transitions, and performed some lovely heeling up and down the crating area. I'm comfortable calling it a "heel" now, despite our obvious need to clean things up and practice more tricky moves. The action is much different, in a very purposeful way, than her normal polite walking (and MUCH different than her normal IMpolite walking!). I'm not suggesting in any way that it is perfect yet, but she has grasped the concept and now we just need to repeat ad nauseum and throw all the fun complications in there! The auto-sit is coming along nicely, and she only needs reminding about 10% of the time.

I did realize, however, that we need to practice heel position "down" a little more. She is readily offering downs, and will down on command when I am sitting on the floor with her. But apparently we haven't worked it in heel much. I did, however, introduce the idea of a "go around" transition to heel and she is becoming comfortable with following the hand signals without food lures now.

For clean up after class, I let her and Romeo run and bark in the mostly empty building. Last step before leaving is to turn off the large overhead lights. I, on a whim, stuck her in a sit-stay and walked the ~12 feet away, past some chairs and around a crate, to turn the lights off. Not only did she hold her sit-stay, but she held it right up until the point that a big snuffly Lab came over to check her out. And, upon Lab inspection, she only stood up and stepped to the side, not breaking eye contact with me! Good lady!!

Today, Tuesday, was a bit of a gong show. By the time I got home after work, all I could focus on was the new bottle of sweet red wine sitting on my counter. I decided to be a good little dog owner and get some nail trims in before zoning out for the evening. I've always trimmed dog nails with the dog flipped over on their back, held between my legs as I sit on the floor. With some practice, both Gio and Romeo have become comfortable with it, and it's become the only way that I am really comfortable trimming nails. So, of course, the idea is to introduce Bennett to this same process. We've been working off and on with flipping on her back, fondling toes, trimming a nail here and there, with plenty of cookies for being calm and not screaming like a diva when I touch her feet. So far, so good. Until I broke her tonight. I had fully poked at all of her paws, treating whenever she lay still, and was about to clip just one or two nails and call it a night, when someone shifted and something happened that resulted in "I'm really not joking!!!" scream. I have no idea what got pinched where, but I felt so bad. She hated me for whole minutes!! I flipped and cookied her again, and all is fine. But, of course, I'm now letting her destroy a toy and am sharing my ketchup chips with her ... just in case she still hates me. ... Yeah, I know. Don't even say it, and let me ease my conscience this way!

Now on to the wine.

Update: Bennett is SO broken, that she was only able to manage a dozen or so laps up and down the stairs with Romeo before pouncing on him and invoking his wrath. It appears I have another diva on my hands ...

Days 12 & 13

Day 12, yesterday: See, this is why I didn't post a video of my "awesome new idea for teaching fronts". I tried it, I didn't like it. Idea discarded! Back to the same old routine with good plans of being pickier about the final goal. So that is what we did this evening. Bennett and I worked positions, front and heel position, speedy speedy speedy, lots of enthusiasm! Play, tug, treats, I want FAST and snappy position changes. So far, so good! Bennett approves of fast and snappy, so we're in agreement.

Day 13, today: Sunday mornings are for lazy naps. Luckily, Romeo and Bennett ran themselves into the ground last night during their fits of zoomies. They were both more than happy to chill and snooze most of the morning ... after potty time and breakfast, of course!

Yesterday, Bennett's ear glue let loose, so I tried to follow instructions from her breeder to fix things. I failed. It was a big goobery, glue-crusty mess! Sewing glue EVERYWHERE! I took advantage of the lazy atmosphere to re-tackle the ear issue. Bennett was a trooper and sat nice and still while I clipped and pulled and brushed to try and sort out the mess. For the most part, she was happy to lay on the couch and chew on the string of my bunnyhug as I fiddled with her ears.

This afternoon, we took our training-so-far on the road! Well ... into the parking lot. Due to space constrictions, I can't do much moving heel work indoors. We've been working positions in the living room and that is fine, but anything with motion is a little awkward. This was our first official attempt at working a moving heel. Overall, I'm REALLY impressed with our progress ... and was even MORE impressed when I got to see it on video. We definitely have a very promising base to build on here, and Bennett even showed me a glimpse of the sassy-pants strut she is going to have once she figures this all out! YAY!! Another prancing Sheltie heel!!

I tried to upload our heel training video, but Blogger complained. So HERE IS THE LINK to the video on Facebook. Most of the people reading this blog will be my friends on Facebook, so it should work. If you somehow found your way here and are NOT my Facebook friend ... I have no idea if you'll be able to see it. Sorry.

Days 10 & 11

Day 10, yesterday, was a bust. Between work, a doctor's appointment and an evening class, there was no training done. I was a horrible, neglectful, awful dog owner! I tried to compensate with extra kisses and a shared evening snack of chips.

Today, I started teaching Bennett a front position. With Gio and Romeo, I absolutely adore how they work, and honestly don't regret any of the challenges we've had along the way. Taking into consideration my personal starting point  and what we have all worked through, I regret nothing and am absolutely thrilled with them. ... BUT ... if I got to choose one thing to "fix" about their obedience performance, for both dogs I would fix their "front"! It is my own darned fault that they have sloppy fronts. Too far away, crooked, inconsistent, and requiring entirely too much coaching on my part, even years into their obedience careers. I want to nip that right in the bud with Bennett, and am going to work on some SOLID position work with her right from the beginning. Her heel position is beyond what I could hope for at this point. She is fast, eager, and precise ... exactly what I want from her! I want that same level of enthusiasm AND precision with her front position.

I've brain-farted what I think could be a really cool idea for teaching a front. I've never done it before, and I haven't personally seen anyone do it, either. However, I make no claims of being "the first" to come up with what I think is a pretty cool idea. I'm sure someone out there has already done it and claimed it. But it's new for me, so YAY!

With that in mind, I'm making a video documenting each step along the way. ... And I'm going to keep it secret until we have something of a finished product. Muahahaha! I'm doing this for a couple reasons. 1) It might fail horribly, and I don't want proof out there on the eternal interwebs documenting my failure. 2) I know some people *ahem ahem* that will swipe in and end up finishing training it to their dogs before I can get it done with Bennett, and steal my thunder! 3) The video will be cooler if I can splice it all together with each step along the way.

So, bear with me. Long story short, Bennett remains super eager and enthusiastic about our new game. We had a couple hiccups as I tried to figure out what the hell it is I am doing. But an overall successful clicker session!

On a somewhat different, though still related, tangent ... I'm frequently getting whines and/or scratches at the patio doors for potty times now! We did have one accident during our training session tonight (eager puppy didn't want to tap out for a break, and silly me couldn't tell the difference between sniffing for crumbs and sniffing for a squat). But earlier this evening, there were 2 alerts to go outside! Hoorah! Progress!! ... Now, if only I could convince her to completely empty her bladder in one trip, instead of saving some for later. For a girly that can hold it all day while I am at work, I don't know why she feels the need to schedule pee times for every half hour in the evening!

Day 9

Day 9 was yesterday, seems I'm getting in a habit of posting a day (or two) late. But I'm still hoping to stick to it and not miss any days!! *fingers crossed*

Last night was Bennett's first puppy class. We had a class last week,  but it was just for owners. The class is held at the local vet clinic (bonuses: it is VERY close to my house, and Bennett gets to learn that she can have fun at the vet clinic!), and the trainer was recommended to me by a lady I met at a recent obedience trial. She is very pro-clicker, shaping, reward based, so that is good for me! The class is quite basic, however, and much of the time is spent chatting and doing ground level stuff that I have already covered with Bennett in the past week or so (loading the clicker, name recognition, offering behaviors, learning to relax, etc.). But that is fine, the instructor seems quite accepting of me working a little on my own when the other students are catching up.

Last night was a lot of chat about the basics, while the other students rewarded for their puppy offering downs on a mat. Bennett and I worked on some shaping of a "head down" trick during this time. We did do a "find my face" exercises, which really just highlighted how well all of our heel position work has been sticking! The idea is to turn your back on the puppy and click-reward for them moving toward your front. Little steps at a time, until the puppy is eventually coming around to sit in front and look at your face. Bennett kept getting stuck at heel position, sitting and looking at me there. It took some more effort to get her to step toward the front. In all honesty, though, I'm not going to force the issue that much. The goal of the exercise was to encourage the puppy to offer you focus and attention. I don't particularly want Bennett creeping forward out of heel position, and am quite happy if she wants to stop there and offer focus instead. I plan to train a "front" position separately, and focus is clearly not a problem for this puppy so far!! I think we are going to follow up on the "find my face" game next week, so my goal is to teach Bennett the "front" position by next Wednesday so that we have something to show for ourselves. Not exactly the game the instructor wants, but getting the same behavior and more conducive to my long term goals.

Bennett rocked the class during the puppy handling exercises. Touching the feet, ears, face, belly, giving kisses and checking teeth. She lapped it all up! Surely because of the plentitude of kisses she received as a wee baby!

The recall exercise was fun, and it really highlighted my background in flyball! While all the other owners used food and puppy voices for their recalls, I had Bennett's plush tug and yelled for her. Racing recall and LOTS of tug drive!!! Growly crazy tuggy praise = crazy fast puppy recalls! She was moderately distracted her first attempt by the very cute GSD puppy in the class. He had just finished his recall, and she thought him to be quite handsome as he walked past. They showed their mutual attraction during play time, where Bennett and Max the GSD had a rowdy and loud bout of puppy zoomies and chase time! New best friends, I think!

Needless to say, there was a VERY tired Sheltie in the house last night, and I didn't hear a peep from her all evening until potty time in the morning.

Days 7 & 8

No time for writing last night, so I'll squish yesterday and today into a single post.

On Monday nights I teach a Bridge Obedience class for Breakaway Action Dogs in Frederick, MD. I normally take Romeo with me to demo the different skills we are working on. Last night I took Romeo as usual, but also left a bit early and took Bennett as well. I worked Bennett in the lobby area of the training building while the classes before us were going on. I didn't teach anything new, rather just focused on polishing previous skills in the new location. The building is purely a dog training building, so lots of fantastic smells! A puppy class was on at the time, so about 10 bouncy puppies as well. Bennett did really well with her sits, downs and "get in"s. She met some of the other trainers and students, and wasn't hesitant or shy at all! At this point of the game, because she can have a tendency to be hand-shy, I'm letting her approach whoever she wants (within reason), and even put paws up on them, so long as she is polite about it (ie. not pushy, scratching, or noise-making). Her "sit" is nice and solid, and she offers it readily, so once the confidence with other people is solidified, we'll work on sitting nicely.

A couple of surprises during the evening: 1) Bennett is not too thrilled about hanging out in dark corners. Okay, so that maybe isn't so surprising, but it came up randomly when a slightly reactive dog came in and we moved to give her space. We spent some time hanging out in the dark corner, exploring, and working on heel position. 2) Trains are super interesting, but not scary. This is good, not noise phobic at all! But very noise curious. She had to sit and listen to every train that went past. 3) Her sit-stays are really coming along, and it appears as if other dogs won't be much of a distraction! She held a sit-stay when a young Lab from the puppy class escaped and came for a visit. Good girl!

Tonight, Bennett had her first shaping session. We worked on laying down on her mat. It was straight shaping, with no verbal or body cues. It took a while for her to get started, but after a couple of minutes she figured out that the mat was the focus and was quickly moving to down on it repeatedly. She's picking up the idea of the clicker really nicely!

I have to say that Bennett's working style is not really what I am used to!! She is a crazy, loud, energetic, and bratty puppy. But when she is working she is very intense and focused. I'm used to kamikaze and skirting the edge of sanity. Bennett is methodical, but not slow. Very careful and thoughtful, but not to the point where she is reluctant or hesitant. For the down on her mat, I was clicking for a down, and then tossing the treat away to the side to get her to stand up and leave the mat. She would do a weird little Border Collie stalk away to her treat and back to the mat again. I could almost smell the gears turning, and every movement on her part was very precise. While it is certainly not a problem now, I will have to keep an eye on her to make sure that she doesn't start thinking "too much" and getting slow. At this point, it is lovely! But I can see pickiness on my part resulting in hesitancy on her part. Just something for me to keep in mind as we move forward. That said, there is some fantastic potential for really sharp work from her! She pays much more attention to detail than either Gio or Romeo do.