Honey

Sometimes my animals are so smart they scare me. Vivre and I were on the way to my grandparent's house to pick up something. Vivre was laying quietly in the backseat, which is usually what she does when we are in the car, so I didn't think anything of it. Then I heard the licking sound. I sort of glanced behind me and saw she was licking something up from the car seat. Then the smell of honey filled the car. I had left the brand new jar in the car so I could take it to my parent's house. I had driven all over town and up and down bumpy country roads and the lid stayed on, but it apparently couldn't survive the force of nature known as Vivre. I was close to my grandparent's house so I went on. When Vivre jumped up on to the front seat I saw that all four legs were completely covered in honey and she was leaving little foot prints every where she walked.

I got her out of the car and tied her to a tree in the front yard while I went to get a bucket so I could wash her and my car seats. When I came back out my aunt, Dyan, was hosing Vivre off for me. Funny since she hates tubs and pools, but loved the water hose. Even after she was clean Dyan stayed out there with the hose just so she could watch Vivre attack the water.

I had to clean my car seats twice and then pull them up to get the honey that had drained in to the carpet, but it did get all cleaned up. Thankfully this car has those pseudo leather seats. I have only had it about three weeks, my last car has fabric seats. Those never would have come clean.

I am still trying to figure out how she managed to get the lid off that jar.

Weird Puppy

I had gotten some shrimp fried rice yesterday. It was horrible, so I set it aside to put it in the dogs dinner later that night. I left the room for a minute and Vivre had climbed up on the desk (yes she is part mountain goat). The weird thing is, she ignored the shrimp and was trying to get in to the package of dried mangoes. She is a strange little puppy.

She has one puppy tooth left. An upper canine. Her big girl teeth are all starting to poke through, but her canines just barely. I finally caved and played tug with her this morning. It makes a world of difference. When we don't tug, it doesn't matter how much we play fetch (or try to), or train she always has energy to spare. A good game of tug and that really goes a long way to working off that puppy energy.

EEK! What a Weekend

This last weekend I was sick all day Saturday. I couldn't hardly get out of bed. Vivre was actually very good. I truly expected her to be a total wild child since she wouldn't be getting the work or play that she normally gets. And she was, but not nearly as bad as I expected. For most of Saturday Morning she just laid in bed with me. By the afternoon however she had to do something with all that energy. Every time one of the cats would move she would fly off the bed. I was sick, tired and irritable and ready to do her bodily harm. Really though as soon as the cats moved away or laid down and ignored her she would come right back to bed and settle right down.

Of course that energy doesn't just disappear because she stayed calm. Sick or not I had to work the Fair horse show that night. Which meant she was crated for around seven hours. My aunt came over and let her out for a bit, but said she was still revved when she put her back up. Just as she was still revved when I got home after midnight. Again wouldn't have been a problem except I had to get up early to go to club practice the next morning. I let her play for a bit, but she still wasn't happy when bed time came.

Sunday Morning I get up way too early and start our drive. The schutzhund club practices at a park a little over an hour away. I am not a morning person, and our training director has been out of town a lot since I got my puppy. I haven't made it for tracking before which was in another part of the park. So I get there thinking practice has been canceled and I left before I could get the email. No big, I have a hyper puppy and a relatively strange place to train. We start doing downs all over the (thankfully) small park. Of course I realize that my bending over to deliver the hand signal has become part of the cue (Duh! Becky) and start working on fading that. She does very well, never misses a down and I can almost stand completely straight. So we get ready to go, I get in my car.

My keys are gone. I haven't owned this new car long, maybe a week and a half. Haven't gotten extra keys made because the key has a chip and I haven't caught the locksmith in yet. This is bad. The only key in existence to my car is lost somewhere in the park. We get back out and start retracing our steps. This would be a good time to point out that my key chain is a small green rope horse halter, that blends well in the grass. Thankfully as we are walking Vivre's nose goes straight to my keys. Of course she then dismissed them as not of interest and went on, but she did point them out. So I am going to try the locksmith again this afternoon and see if I can get a copy made. I really hope he is in.

There is one thing I found amusing. Our Schutzhund club meets at a public park instead of having our own field. While we were doing bitework on Sunday a car pulled in to the parking lot. I was a little amused since after sitting in the car and watching for a few minutes they turned around and left. I guess seeing a GSD swinging by it's teeth on some guys arm wasn't what they were expecting when they came to the park.

Luring vs. Shaping and Capturing

I started teaching Vivre heel by teaching her to walk on my left side and then shape it to an actual heel. We got very enthusiastic and bouncing heeling. Or almost heeling any way. However I watched a video the other day where you teach heel by using a paw target and starting with a pivot. It looks like a great method and has the added bonus of also starting fronts, finishes and helping the Vivre learn to use her body.

I started by luring Vivre on to the paw target. In this case a book. After the first day I decided that she didn't seem to be noticing what her feet were doing, she was just watching my hands. Whether I had food in them or not. So I left the book down and after clicking for a couple of glances at the book, just started to click when she would touch it with her paw. It was always accidentally at first, but eventually she started to understand. It seems like it was much quicker that way, even though I spent more time to get less reps than with luring. Of course it is hard to say since she had already had over 250 reps with me luring her on to the book.

The session was convincing enough though that with the exception of sit and down I am going to try to avoid luring behaviors. We already have a lovely, quick, sharp fold back down on a mostly reliable hand cue. A nice square, tucked sit has been a little harder to get, regularly, but I have put more time in to the down.

This session also demonstrated the usefulness of the clicker. I was clicking anytime any part of Vivre's foot hit the top of the book. Because of where I placed the book when she would try to lay at my feet she would lay a paw on the book. At one point she decided that she was supposed to lay down on the book to get the C/T. She tried to purposefully down on the book twice, both times interrupted by the click. After that she had it. I shudder to think how long that would have taken with just treats.

Any way she is pivoting very well to the left and pretty well to the right. We did the three sessions to the left before I realized I was only going in one direction. Occasionally she moves off the book and follows my hand as I reach for a treat. Not wrong since the click ends the behavior, but I always lead her back on to the book to get her treat. I need to do some more doggy zen work, but it isn't generalizing well.

Oh, for anybody who is interested there is a new clicker training list specifically for bitework. Called Click Bite.

Amazed

I shouldn't be amazed any more. I have been clicker training my animals for years. At some point I should just be able to say "Yep, that's normal." But I'm just not there yet. I was working with Vivre on standing on a paw target. This will transfer to several other behavior. We had a couple of training sessions with it earlier, but I hadn't revisited it until now. So we usually work in short 2-3 minute sessions and were on our third today. Two of the cats got in to fight, for those of you who have heard cat fights you know how awful this sounds. Normally Vivre rushes straight over there to get in to the middle of it, but today as she started to take off she hit the target. When I clicked she stopped dead. You could see her practically dancing from foot to foot trying to decided if she should stay and get her treat or head off for the cats. The treat one out and as she was headed back to the cats she hit it again. Click! She stayed. Part of her mind was still on the cats until after the second click, but I love the fact that a dog, especially a puppy will choose to stay and work rather than go check out the cats.
That is the reason I ended up crossing over to clicker training. My GSD mix, Yoda's, biggest distraction was the ferret. I didn't know enough about training when he was younger to understand raising the distraction level slowly. I had always been told to just correct them if they didn't listen. I hated doing that and finally just accepted that he would never work around the ferrets. Until I decided to train the cats and gave clicker training him a shot. The only time he looked away from the target stick was when the ferret was litterly walking on him and even then it was a quick glance and then he shot his back to me to make sure he didn't miss a chance to touch the target.
I know some people do, but I don't know how you can have that and still go back to traditional training. I couldn't.

Monkey Puppy

I think that Denise has sold me a puppy that is half terv and half monkey. Vivre has learned that she can climb. She is putting this new skill to use. She climbs everything. Boxes, chairs, my computer desk, which wouldn't be a problem except the places where I can put off limit items is rapidly dwindling. I'll need to get more furniture with drawers if this keeps up. My cats seem to be working with her. The only two places she can't reach are the top of the bookcase and the top of the fridge. So the cats knock the good stuff down to puppy level.

Teething is going well. I've noticed she seems a little needier this week, but I have been gone more than usual this past week so I can't tell if it is a side effect of teething, or of me being gone. She has finally gotten big enough to knock the buster cube around. That has been a life saver. I have only used it for my horse so I wasn't really aware of how noisy they are, but it keeps her busy and lets her work some energy out. I can handle the noise. It will be nice when teething is over with and she can go back to tugging, she climbed up on to my desk and got the squit bottled we played with it and chewed it just enough to make it useless. Silly Puppy.

Teething

Vivre is teething. Of course she always has her mouth on something, so there isn't too much of a difference in chewing.

The big difference is since we aren't tugging now she has a lot more energy. Which she has devoted to becoming a monkey puppy and climbing everything. I'll be sitting at the computer and will feel her climb over the arms of my chair and plop in behind me, or will look over and see her climbing crates and boxes to get to where the cats are sleeping. Before too long I am going to walk in find her standing on the bookcase eating the cat food.

Since it has been a busy couple of days I have been gone a lot. Yesterday my aunt came over and took Vivre out and over to her house. Vivre and Jethro (yes, that really is his name and it suits him,) ran and wrestled and played. I am shocked that Marti still has a house left.

I have been invited to a fireworks show this weekend. It is supposed to be a very impressive show, but I am worried about leaving the dogs. We are over a mile from our nearest neighbor, so there shouldn't be any loud fireworks near here, and none of the adult dogs are afraid of fireworks. I just hate to leave Vivre where she might get freaked out if some idiot rednecks decided to go off in to the woods to set off fireworks. Which means I will probably be home. Of course I don't like crowds so it won't be a terrible loss.