Bad Blogger!

I haven't been keeping up with this lately. But I have good reason. At the end of October we had our open house here and we stayed very busy getting ready. Then the last couple of weeks have been so rough that for a while Vivre very nearly became an only child. My older dogs still aren't right. I am having to watch Yoda, my gsd mix and Apollo, my golden mix, when they are together. They had a huge fight and still aren't back on track yet.

Any way Vivre has always been ridiculously easy to shape. Even with the relatively little free shaping experience I have she picks things up so quickly. Making huge leaps over several small steps. I gave up on every being able to wear her down mentally with shaping, but I finally had a session where she tried things wrong! Okay why am I so excited? Because it means she finally has the chance to learn to keep trying new and different things when something doesn't work.

After years of saying "Why waste time training tricks? Train something useful." I am eating those words and looking for new stupid things to shape. Not only because it is more fun, I mean no pressure who cares if I mess it up? But because it helps Vivre learn to learn and to learn to use her body in a deliberate way. So I just stop and randomly shape things, like climbing straw bale. The other night I took her out and started working on getting her to go around an over turned bucket. This actually isn't completely useless since it will help with the blind search as she gets older, but the context will be different enough that I am not too worried that I will mess something up. It was the first time she couldn't figure out what I wanted. And trust me that doesn't imply exceptional shaping ability on my part. She is just that good. She tried walking up to the bucket and turning toward me, she tried sniffing it, heck she even tried lining up in heel position with the bucket. Actually she had better heel position with the bucket than she ever has with me. I did get her going all the way around it, but I was using treat delivery to help. By the end she would walk one circle around the bucket and come back to me. The light still never came on, but she was definitely having to work her brain to figure it out.

I have actually been getting more training done, but doing it all outside, but it is going to start getting too cold for that soon. I took some new pictures on flickr a few weeks ago, but they are very similar to the last. Though there were a few where she was actually standing still. I need to do better about posting. That hopefully will make me get on the ball. I also really need to start tracking again. I don't know why I dislike tracking. I think because I really have no idea what is going on in the dogs head. Or the dogs nose for that matter.

When Poodles Attack!

What is it with little dogs? Why do they never seem to realize their size? Vivre and I were coming back from our walkabout today and I realized that my aunt had all her little dogs out. I'm watching carefully as Vivre goes running over because her new foster pug mix isn't supposed to be good with dogs, though he does fine with hers. She is running around with the others just running happily behind. At first anyway. Then her little poodle does his thing and jumps up and nips at her face. Talk about turning ugly fast. That got him and the pug chasing after her biting at her heels, my hands are full of halloween decorations I was putting up and Vivre is running from these little dogs. We start yelling at the little ones trying to get them to leave her alone as I run to go get her, she finally realizes they aren't leaving her alone even when she tries to leave and starts to turn on them and tell them to back off. And you can't blame her for that. Marti gets most of her little guys called off, as I get Vivre's collar and start toward the car (which was closer than the yard) and I am having to pull her around me while this 14 year old terrier mix keeps trying to bite her legs. She could have eaten this dog in one bite. She jumped up in the car as soon as I got the door open and we put the little guys up so I could finish getting her home.

I never see bigs dogs do that. She really wasn't doing anything wrong, though she was fast and bouncy even after her near constant running and exploring. I can see how she may have made them nervous, but even when she tried to back off they wouldn't let up.

She watched them cautiously through the fence and who can blame her. None of them made contact, but jeez. So I guess the lesson here is make sure Marti knows when we are going for our walks, and if I see the little dogs turn around.