Meet Huima and Hiili

The first half of Silvia Trkman’s trick seminar is behind and lots of homework to be done before the second half on Sunday, which is way too soon for us to get them done!

Being a lazy ass, who has been avoiding challenges with Hiili, I was going to attend with Huima. Huima has been shaped since a baby, so he will keep on offering behaviours even when I am not so spot on with my clicking. When there’s clicker involved, Huima isn’t interested in what’s happening around, except if there’s squirrels, bunnies or girls on heat.. Plus Huima isn’t a barker and knows how to settle down, if nothing is happening. In other words, Huima is quite perfect for clicker seminars, if a bit clumsy for balance tricks and way too big (28kg..) to jump to my flimsy arms. But Huima has a nasty ear infection that doesn’t really agree with balance tricks, so Hiili got to go.

With Hiili I was a bit concerned if all my energy and the space of Hiili’s stomach would go to treating her for staying quiet. We haven’t really been attending dog happenings — now there were eleven other dogs and we would work in groups of six without any barriers. The place was new to us and so was the dogs. Have I mentioned we have been having a bit of barking problem lately? When we go out, Hiili barks to every dog in sight, if she doesn’t get to pull all her way to meet them. And because we don’t move forward with tight lease…

The good news is that eventhough I am a complete slacker, I have been teaching Hiili some Crate Games! So, I left Hiili in the car, and went to set up everything. Walked Hiili (we saw couple dogs from far away and I managed to keep her attention in tugging with me, yay!) and put her back in the car. Went to listen the theory part. First group started and everyone else stayed inside to watch, so I got to walk Hiili in peace. Decided against risking a loud entry and picked Hiili up (they joys of switching to a smaller dog!) and let her in her crate. Treated couple of times and decided to see, if she settled down. She did! Bark-o-meter = 0

I picked my shaping spot optimistically based on lighting, to be able to shoot some training video. As I released Hiili from the crate and headed to our spot, I got to notice my lapse in judgement. Too many distraction in almost all directions. Bark-o-meter = 3 So, I moved to nice corner near our crate, where I could enjoy the peace of three walls and only have one side exposed to the rest of the hall and most dogs. Plus none of the audience — a nice bonus, no self acquired pressure to succeed anymore!

The first trick was to get the dog to hug a pole that the handler held up. Trkman said its an easy trick she uses the get a picture of how well we shape our dogs… Well, it made me realise I haven’t taught Hiili anything where she uses her paws to target things. Too bad most of the tricks involved targeting stuff with paws. First Hiili backed away from the pole, so I started by shaping her to come next to it. She soon offered couple nose touches, but you don’t want to reinforce them longer or you are stuck. So, I became a lumper, as I waited tiniest movement of front feet towards the pole. My bad, I would have been able to keep the rate of reinforcement up, if I had started with any movement of the front feet. Lumpers get disengaged dogs, so Hiili rather paid attention to the other dogs. Bark-o-meter = 5

I needed a break, so after re-established contact and some tugging, I let Hiili back to her crate.

The second trick was standing on an object (Hiili’s metallic water bowl upside down) with the front feet and going around it with back feet, was better. We have done this couple sessions maybe half an year ago. Also, I had had time to remind myself of the importance of rate of reinforcement and breaks. So, we started by tugging while I digged the treats out of the pouch with my other hand. When I had clicker and treats ready, I brought out the bowl and sat on the toy. I got Hiili standing on the bowl after four reps (without luring, of course) and fed her rest of the ten treats feet on the bowl. Bowl away, tugging and treats ready. I wanted to test would Hiili get on the bowl again from couple of angels, and she did. So I treated her on the bowl, tossed a treat on the ground and let her do it again. No, problem. Ten repetitions done and time to tug before moving on. Have I mentioned how I enjoy Hiili’s eagerness to play with toys? I’d be in big trouble, if I just let her hang out for the breaks, like Huima does (he lays down). Our bark-o-meter would be clocking big numbers by now. For more relaxed breaks, we have the crate.

Okay, then the hard part, moving on to clicking for the movement of the hind feet, while the forefeet are on the bowl. I know I suck in it — I have been practicing with Huima on the flat (without the bowl - ala Sue Ailsby): I got the movement, but it was hard enough with more operant dog and in the peace of our living room. The plan was to reward any movement of the hind feet and reward top of the bowl, but little side of the head to support the movement. We did 2 x 10 reps, but the problem was that Hiili started to come off the bowl. Didn’t have time to make a new plan, as it was time switch groups. Many people lured with their movement, but I don’t like fading it.

Bark-o-meter still at only 5 barks! It’s like having a mute dog.

After some quiet crate time for Hiili, it was again our turn. We were to teach our dogs to put all feet in a bowl. Two out of six dogs in the first group had managed to tilt their bowls so that they hit the dog in the head. No physical damage, but the both dogs had started really eagerly and we now circling and turning their heads away from their bowls. Such is the ill power of positive punnishment, even if it was unintentional. So, we were all adviced to hold on to our bowls to prevent any further accidents. I sat on the floor and kept the bowl between my legs. I got Hiili to put her forefeet on the bowl, but was stuck on clicking the back feet. Again.

Fourth trick was squirrel sit, or that’s what I call it. The dog sits and lifts it forefeet up. Silvia advised us to use our hand as a target where the dog touches with her paw or two and then move the target higher and higher. I considered using the time to teach Hiili to target with her paw (she hasn’t even been taught to shake hands..), but Silvia then suggested to me that I ask for nose touches higher and higher. I got her to lift her forefeet couple of times, but then her nouse touches started to get weaker and I had to go back on reinforcing strong touches to moving hand not so far up.

Fifth one was jumping to your arms. Hiili used to be a natural at this — when she was less than a year old she used to jump on my arms when I was sitting on the floor, which was heavily rewarded as a cute behaviour. It then evolved to her jumping to my arms half standing etc. Once she surprised me and I didn’t get a comfortable hold, so that I jerked her middle body a bit and since then she hasn’t done it. I found the jumping in your arms very charming, so I would like to teach it again. Silvia gave us permission to lure to our hearts content, but I wasn’t very successful.

The last trick to teach was lifting one of the legs up in the air and adding duration to it. Silvia suggested we use targeting to catch the behaviour and would just click just before the dog touches the target. My first step however, is to teach her to target with her paws. We only did approx, ten reps with Hiili and then called it a day.

The pace was pretty fast for a slacker like me, who uses a month to teach her dog right and left, though the actual training time might be a tiny fraction of it. But here we moved to a new trick after each break. And almost all of those “should” be finished by Sunday, our homework includes:

• Dog has front feet on the bowl and handler stands right next to the dog. Dog circles from one side to another and back, moving only her hind feet.
• All feet in a bowl
• Squirrel sit
• Jumping to your arms
• Lifting one of the legs up and keeping it stationary for a little while

I was really happy how well all Hiili could stand distractions after the first trick. We even took a short break outside between tricks and could walk past other dogs without any ticking of bark-o-meter. The final number of barks was only five! And she tugged eagerly each time I gave her the chance! Our Crate Games deteriorated after two first tricks and she wouldn’t approach the crate further away, but instead lay on the floor. Because I wanted to concentrate on the tricks, I just lift her next to her crate, where she went in. But gotta work more on getting into the crate in different situations, so that it crate will stay great place. Now Hiili got lot less treats for staying in than before.

Again I had too little time with Hiili during the last week. She on the other hand had splendid time at my friend’s with her two standard poodles Salsa and Tango while I was in Bad Gastein, Austria, spending a long weekend off with my family.

Today I had cheese as treats for the first time, as I didn’t have time to boil and chop anything healthier for her. Hiili loved the cheese. Hiili was very interested in the young, fast border collie, who is quite rarely in our class, so I kept Hiili leashed while we warmed up a bit more by doing shadow handling and got re-connected. When she was hanging on the toy instead of goggling at the border collie, I unleashed her and we did some tunnel. I asked for a nosetouch to a palm to get her oriented on my side and then releashed her to a u-shaped tunnel. Hiili stole once to another dog, but came back immediately. On couple of the repetitions she went around the tunnel and then later to the tunnel entry that we had just done, but which was further away and not on the line.

On our second session of the tunnel (and shadow handling), the border collie was doing a couple of obstacles some way behind the tunnel and Hiili didn’t even consider blasting past the tunnel entry to go say hello to the buddy. I was very pleased. I now think we have enough distance and distractions to start paying attention to the meaning of my handling and practicing discrimination with the tunnel. On some sessions I will keep on building distance. Distractions will always need special attention — today we only had two other dogs, next week we will have more challenges.

I also let Hiili get more used to the moving teeter between a mini and maxi table, as last time she was a bit wary of the movement under her feet. She wasn’t fearful then, but more like choose to jump off when the teeter started to move. I kept Hiili on leash in case I dropped the rate of reinforcement too much and she would feel the need to go find her own fun like the last time we did this. It wasn’t for keeping Hiili on the teeter, it was for us being able to do the teeter while the others kept their dogs off leash. So, we did maybe 2 x 10 reps of running from one teeter contact to another. After couple of repetitions the movement was no issue anymore and Hiili only tried to dash after the other dogs once and otherwise kept on the teeter until asked down. Now that we have the little movement sorted out, I really can’t do more of the teeter until I have taught the end position. With Hiili being only 10 kilos, I think instead off 2on2off, it will be a crouch (weight back) on the end of the teeter, where I want her to run full speed.

The others did handling with jumps and tunnels, but we aren’t there yet.

Nope, we weren’t on a walk with dogs where we encountered asps :)

The main things we practiced today in our agility class with Huima, were the dog walk and serpentine (obstacles 1-3 in the picture below) with the wall, a regular jump and the long jump. Huima happens to train with small dogs, so as speed has been our main issue, we have been happy to use jumps on mini height, which meant that the wall and long jump were easy to execute even with the angle (a little less than 180 degrees). I chopped the serpentine to pieces and then combined the different parts to an actual serpentine. Huima did really nicely and was really eager, wagging the tail every and going quite ecstatic when he was sent to go get some snuggles from Hanna, the best reward.

As you can see in the picture, there’s also a sent to the slightly curved tunnel and a pinwheel. The pinwheel was easy and I even managed some lateral distance. The send was harder, as Huima is anything but a tunnel sucker. But we did the tunnel five to seven times, Hanna as a reward, the main goal of keeping the tunnel fun was achieved and we got couple of maybe one meters  sends.

Up until now Huima has been walking the dog walk, the goal being a “dog blast” and me wanting to achieve a gallop even with Huima some day. Well, today we got as far us trot and mouth hanging open with excitement! Those of you who know Huima, know the expression. Makes me smile too. Huima will run past the 2on2off position if I keep on running, so we worked on Huima’s understanding of what to do at the end. He will keep the position until released once he has ended up in it, but still need to work on him independently seeking it.

After the class I took Huima to my aunt’s where he would spent the weekend with her, my cousins and their golden retriever Miko.
The picture will be added later.

Hanna was instructing Huima’s class this week, like she will be for the rest of the winter. I like that she keeps the exercises on enough basic level, I hope the others do to, as many people here tend to want to train too complex and long drills for it to be efficient. Many dogs in our group need to focus on speed or both control and speed, so I’d say they too need short drills to be apple to reinforce enough.

Today we had a short drill with a bit of finding the line, front cross and either couple of pull throughs or push throughs. I only did the beginning and front cross with Huima. Hanna has been learning Greg Derrett’s handling system for almost three years now (the only problem is that I was the instructor, so it was a shared learning process from the beginning and not some information packed guru), so I get good feedback from her. It’s so much easier to give advise to others than follow it… So, Hanna made me focus on the placement of my front cross and lateral distance, as I was drifting toward wrong direction without acknowledging it. In other words pretty much following Huima and then making and ill-placed front cross. I did manage to change my handling after I was made aware of what I was doing :)

We also did Susan Salo’s bend work. Huima was great to the left and straight, but two reps out of three to the right were out of rhythm and was it once or on both times that a bar came down. Huima has always bent really nicely. I was only moving a little and I feel that we are ready for some more movement (it’s thought as a distraction), so that we can some day move to the advanced drills on the second DVD set. Of course, there’s plenty to work with the distance etc. stuff that is done on straight line.

There was some room left on the other side of the hall, so I pulled the chute in the middle, left Huima sitting in front of it and headed to lift the cloath. Huima, who is really good at holding his sit stays, broke his sit stay and dived through the chute in a leisurely manner. Well, I guess I should be faster with upping the criterion. I then did sends from different angles to the chute. We worked up to three meters and 180 degrees. Next I want more speed, though it already was above Huima’s avarage.

Huima was enthusiastic the whole hour and had a bit more speed than usually, if we can keep that up or even get a bit more, I will be satisfied with it. It might not get us to the highest competition class, but it’s a gallop and enough good for little competing. With Huima I go for the happy attitude and him not shutting down (be it zooming around or getting slower and slower) before the class is over. And it felt like that was an easy achievement today. More of this, please!

Hiili and Huima have been on constant playmode for couple of days. Maybe it’s catching, as Jori has been too. They all stay in the living room - Jori plays some addictive video game and the dogs wrestle on the carpets, Hiili bouncing and speeding on the sofa as well.

Up until quite recently Hiili has been let to play in the living room only for half an hour at a time before taking a loo break outside. Now she hasn’t peed inside for a month or so (knock on the wood!), so she has been given more privileges. I gotta say - finally! Hiili can play anywhere, but Huima needs more room, so it has been such a pleasure to see him take part in the wild play now that they have the living room and its big carpets to play on.

It’s either all the fun had inside or the little bit of snow that we now have, but today’s walk in the forest was all games too. Hiili speeded like she always does, the awesome part was that Huima was racing after her in big circles and bouncing over the fallen trees. I hope they keep this up, makes exercising Huima so easy! Plus the grins make me smile too.

After a very boring week for Hiili it was time for the puppy class again. Hiili spend the first ten minutes barking at things the instant she didn’t have my full attention. She was just so aroused, so can’t really blame her. After crating her for five minutes or so to get my calm, happy training mood back before loosing my cool, we did some hand touches with very high rate of reinforcement. She did really nicely! I then dug out the rope ball, which got Hiili 98% focused on working with me. I relaxed and we had fun.

Rope ball seems to be the ultimate toy. Hiili loves her fleece Flappy with a squeaker and soft braids on both ends too, so I tried to start with that. She did play with it eagerly, but was more prone to distractions. So, we will keep on using other toys when training with less distractions and build on that.

We did some sit stays and shaped finding the line with a toy as a target. I released Hiili to the ball approx. every third reptition and other times marked and delivered the treat to her mouth. I think she had nice start considering the distractions, but I still want to work this on several occasions without distractions before starting to send her over a jump or call her from different angles over it.

Before switching to the rope ball Hiili run off couple times to zoom past friends. The worst was a total party later during the class and Hiili stole off to run wild circles and wrestle with charming young fella called Jymy — an eight month old jack russel terrier. I had had Hiili loose while going over a tippy board between two tables and rewarding with treats. The rate of reinforcement dropped as Hiili had some bouncy fun with the lower table and I withhold the treats. I should have known better and just called her to me when I still could! Well, after minutes of speeding around the hall, we finally managed to catch Jymy while they were kind of wrestling and then Hiili, who didn’t care to run alone this time. It’s hard to not to laugh when they are so over the top with fun.

We then did a puppy circle: one pair circling around and between the other pairs that were sitting in a circle. I jogged with Hiili loose and she only stopped for a second to sniff one of the pups.

To finish we did some sends to a curved tunnel with Hiili. Max. distance was about two meter, but mostly less, and I could even send her from 180 degree angle and then cross behind her. A lot better than curved tunnels before!

We had a break in agility training this week with both dogs, as I had quite massive head ache for several days and my ears still feel kind of blocked. Might have something to do with the last weekend’s diving in chilly water and taking breaks with wet head without a cap… So, the dogs have had a boring week with only Jori taking them out and me slacking in the training department as well. So, it was time to give the birthday girl something to do in the warmthness of our livingroom.

I haven’t really done much nose targeting (one lazy try with the plexitarget and some sessions with the target stick), so I decided to start with hand touches in the ripe age of one year. Huima started targeting the stick with his nose before he even had a name :) It took only couple of reps of Hiili catching the idea, so I variated the angle of my palm and then moved it. During couple of sessions we worked up to me moving from one corner of the carpet to another and Hiili shooting to touch my palm. She has quite light touch compared to Huima, but as I plan to transfer the touch to a plexiglass target and then on the ground, it’s maybe for the best. After the first session Huima provided bit of distractions by joining us, as I hadn’t fenced him off the living room. So, Huima got to do some nose touches and was then sent to go find Jori, so Hiili could do some more.

So, should I name the hand touch, what do you think?

Happy birthday to our little Hiili and her siblings! To celebrate the occasion we just got our first little bit of this winter’s snow here — let’s see if it sticks until the morning. Hiili enjoyed the moment though and bounced around the yard.

Today we have this fun measurement and picture thing with Hiili’s litter mates and Pepper’s mom Marianne will make an Excel sheet out of them for us. As I am into doggy data, I really like the idea. So, Hiili got just home measured, she is now approx. 42,5cm and 9,6kg. It’s a shame I don’t have a proper measuring stick, so this rough estimate was once again gotten with a DVD cover against door frame. I trust the scale though, which means she must have lost some muscle or fat (she don’t have any extra) since the last measurement in September. Gotta keep on feeding and exercising her!

I promise you pictures soon! I just need to get my Photoshop re-installed, so I can edit them a bit. Also I hope I get to go out tomorrow during the sunny hours, so we can get some well lit action photos. My friend Laura groomed Hiili yesterday, so she is one very fine lady at the moment. Though just waiting to get her paws dirty. She lost the rubber band in half an hour again and would be all muddy already, if I hadn’t been sick last couple days and Hiili had had to rely on leash walks with Jori.

What do you when you come home from watching chick flicks with a friend on Friday evening at 11pm and it’s pleasantly crisp and clear after a week of wetness? Damn right, you get inspired and pack the dogs in the car and go do some jility!

It was so quiet that we warmed up behind the ice hockey hall and the dogs got to run free. I have normally kept the other one waiting in the car, but now I decided to use a crate. Huima did splendidly, but Hiili hollered, when we were further away with Huima. Will have to do some distraction training with the crate and take a planket with us.

Instead of whining about Huima being slow, I thought I should start training the speed :)  At least when I am alone, we can do exercises that are very simple and focus on building value to different obstacles. To get started, I decided to start with Huima’s favorite obstacle — the table. Since Huima was quite young, he has been rewarded for jumping/climbing to different kind of rocks and concrete blocks. It transfered really nicely and quickly to table. Huima takes it when ever it is close to his line of travel and I haven’t really bothered to teach stimulus control. I find that with Huima control is easy to build later on and we should focus on enthusiasm.

So, I put the table and two jumps (only 45cm high) in a row and started by sending Huima to the table. And then bit by bit backchained all the way behind the first jump: jump, jump, table. Huima was faster than me, yay! We then did one session of table and release, as Huima stays nicely on the table, but I want him to react to my release word faster. So, more pig heart chunks for coming down than getting up :) When we had the release in order, we did the same to the other direction: table, jump, jump (backchaining again). And double yay, Huima was still faster than me and read the line really nicely. Finally I angled the jumps a bit and for the last couple reps and let Huima do the tunnel as well.

This all was divided to three sessions. Crating Huima during the breaks to watch Hiili run seemed to keep his enthusiasm up. Before we headed out, I let both Hiili and Huima loose and let them chase Huima’s treat pocket. Hiili and the chasing got Huima so thrilled that I tugged with them both hanging on the same toy and finally tugged only with enthusiastic Huima. I couldn’t have been happier!

Besides shadow handling, Hiili got to do the straight tunnel again. The aim was to work on harder entry angles and get Hiili to turn back to me tightly after getting out of the tunnel. She’s smoking fast! We got really nice entries, up to 180 degrees and I can’t get closer to the tunnel than that. We only have approx. 2-3 meters of distance, so we will still have to work on distance. And the same with curved tunnel and tunnel with buddies somewhere behind it. The return angles got tighter too, only one meter out and then back to me. I still want a bit tighter, though :)

We also played a bit with going around the jump standard again. It went nicely, but I refined my training plan a bit again. I realised I need two more foundation behaviours before we should continue. Firstly lining up next to me (Finns: sellainen rento sivulletulon versio) and secondly some collar grab games. I haven’t really done those, as I rarely use the collar in any other situations than leash walks. Now I found out that I would really like to restrain Hiili a bit, while revving her up a bit and then release to blast around the jump standard/cone/whatever.

Wow, feels we have been visiting Agitokola so many times that I don’t have time to write about all our training sessions there. Better training than writing!

Today was another puppy agility class, we had five puppies present. When we drive to the parking lot and I take Hiili out of the car, she would want to go into the hall immediately, not spend time peeing and warming up outside. The hall is full of fun fun fun. I love her enthusiasm, but like I sometimes demand she eat a treat before being released from the car, we definately won’t skip warm ups etc. It’s a good routine. I have to admit, I don’t warm up so much with Hiili, as we are basically playing and not doing physically demanding stuff just yet. But as it’s getting colder, I notice that I would need lot of warming up to prevent little sprains, so I guess the furry guys need it as well. I should try to remember that at home too, before play dates in the forest.

Today I did sit stays with Hiili. She was a really good girl. I am now moving away up to ten meters, but mostly stay closer and play with distractions. In these puppy classes I use the other dogs as distractions (they are the hardest — interesting as hell and not under my control), when we are alone, it’s mostly my movement and the ball. I called her over one jump (just a speed bump between the standards, remember?) couple times and then later we did the basic Susan Salo jump grid with five jumps and speed bumps lined up. She hold her stay really nicely.

So, those jump grids. I have to watch over Susan Salo’s DVDs once again, but until that I think it was safe to do three repetitions of those five speed bump jumps. I used four and half my feet, but my shoes are huge ;) Hiili ended up jumping over the last gap. I tried putting the ball closer (for the first try I only called her, no other lure) to the fifth jump, but she still wouldn’t put a bounce between fourth and fifth jump. Well, we test it again in couple of weeks and I try to get it taped. As I am still uncertain how much jump grids (even just with speed bumps) I can do with Hiili, I will want to keep the repetitions down to a very small number. I might be overcautious, but better safe than sorry. In the mean while Hiili will keep on jumping on her own: to the sofa with a couple of meters bounce full speed, over a tunnel (to go see a buddy) and over bunch of stuff in the forrest. But maybe this collection stuff, jump grid thingies are different?

We also kept on practising going around a jump standard. Now it was a quieter spot and I decided to concentrate on teaching her to go around anticlockwise. Went much better! Zero distance (well, maybe 30cm, so I don’t have to put my hand over the standard) and I was still gesturing with my hand — too lazy to shape it! Bad me. Anyway, Hiili did go around it 80% of the time.

Hiili got to do the chute too! Heli helped us and held the canvas up from the middle. There were two buddies tied to the wall almost next to the chute, so we kept it easy and didn’t do many repetitions.

To sum it up, I really liked Hiili’s attitude. She was instantly playing with me. I still marvel her eagerness to tug with me, Huima keeps me from taking it granted. Eventhough there were maybe six occasions, when she couldn’t restrain herself and run to or towards the friends, she reacted to my calls better than the last time. She turned around couple times immediately when called, got as far as to make contact with the buddies and still came back, and then two times when I had to go and get her.

Oh, Hiili got to see the ice hockey hall next to ours. Some kids jogging around the parking lot after their ice hockey practise were being heedless: they pushed one of the kids inside our hall and kept the door shut after him. It was so rude towards the boy locked inside and towards us, that I headed to their hall to search for their coach. Couldn’t find him/her, but the people at the cafeteria were taking it seriously and I trust they take care of talking to the kids or let the coach know. Hiili tends to bark to people who drag/pull bags or just have big bags, so this was a good place to show her. There was also lot of noice, people and two rings full hockey players. I guess we have to make a couple more excursions to socialise Hiili a bit.