I am so excited that December is here!! (ornament by Sally's Bits of Clay on Etsy) And we are officially a two Christmas tree household! Due to being sick and time constraints, we did get a real tree this year, but we got it from Home Depot. Since we already have the fake Christmas tree, I decided to do the fake tree as the dog tree and the real tree will be the main one in the living room. And I am LOVING it! The dog tree has all of my Scooby Doo and dog related ornaments on it. I eventually would like to get a dog tree topper, but a regular gold star will do for now. I did take some video of us (basically all Tanner while Dom and I hung out) putting up the tree. Dom was pretty cute. He also decided it was a good time to start barking at the Rudolph statue that has been out for almost a week now...
Now on to the #100DaysofDogTraining!
Day16
Day 16 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: Two paw pods and a partridge in a pear tree....
I posted the video previously of Dom working forwards and backwards with one set of paw pods and the FitBone. Today we added in the other set of paw pods. Outside of this video I did warm Dom up with the paw pods by themselves and with the one set of paw pods and the FitBone (I feel like I'm saying paw pods a ridiculous number of times). His confidence is definitely increasing and I like how he's thinking about placement with those back feet.
Day 17
Day 17 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: This, is a behavior that we have been working on for several weeks. The goal behavior is for a him to do a tuck sit while maintaining his front feet on the FitBone. After that, I'd like him to go from a stand to a sit and back.
I'm glad that I took video during our very first session so I have a pretty good comparison of how he's progressed. Again, rear end movements take a little extra concentration for him and aren't the simplest thing. Tucking in that rear end for a sit is work.
The first half of the video is of our very first session. During this session, there is a longer latency between some of the cues and attempting the behavior. I could tell that he understood what I was asking and that he was trying. So the first few sessions involved rewarding for effor and rewarding for his approximations of my desired end result.
The second half of the video is from today. This week I have been really happy with his ability to maneuver that rear end. I WISH that I had videoed our sits on the platform as he is really coming along in those tuck sits! Because of that, I decided to video his progression to now. He is SO close! I did put the FitBone up against the wall as he had started to really swing his rear out and I thought he could probably use a little help keeping it straight. He is definitely tuckin that rear in more. He doesn't QUITE have the understanding to keep his front feet on the FitBone though. But we are seriously close and I am so proud of him! I did push it one repitition too far during this session. Again, something for me to work on.
Day 18
Day 18 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: The end goal of this behavior is for Dom and I to sit in these positions and roll a ball back and forth between us. This was the very first session of that. I'm starting by rewarding nose touches to the ball. Eventually I'll get to rewarding nose touches with more force, but this is a good place to start. I did decide to test out a smaller size ball to see what I thought of it, but I prefer the larger ball. I'm also hoping that starting this behavior from a down will get him to focus on his nose touches and not throw in paw touches. I'd like to use this behavior for other tricks, so I think this will help us to lay (no pun intended ;) ) a more solid foundation.
Day 19
Day 19 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: apologies for the coughing and sniffling. It's now my turn to catch the gunk that's going around. Today we worked on balancing on the FitBones in different configurations. I warmed him up with other exercises before working on this. Then I eased him into the balance work with the easiest configuration first. And we ended with the most challenging.
Day 20
Day 20 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: Or as I am calling it today, Day 2 of The Plague. This sucks. I did a little bit of training with Dom tonight and that is the full extent of his activity today. Thankfully he's a very good little dude to just hang out on the bed with. Because we've been doing a lot of that.
Today's video is of a shaped chin rest behavior. My end goal was that he would come up, at the cue for "chin," he'd rest his chin on the towel. The video is a compilation of our very first session, third and today, which is either our seventh or eighth session.
At the very beginning I started by clicking for steps towards me and the towel. And why, you may be asking, am I using a towel? By now you've seen the froth this boy produces. I love him, but I'm not a huge fan of having a froth filled lap, so we use a towel. After he got the moving towards me down, I started clicking for head dips towards the towel. Towards the end of the first session I was also getting some consistent front right foot movements with the head dips, but I was pretty sure those would go away once he figured out that I wanted him to put his chin on the towel. That first session he was just figuring everything out.
In our third session you can see that he very clearly understands to chin bump the towel.
In between our third and today's session, I worked on adding a cue to the behavior and then started on duration. This behavior is basically where I want it, but it needs a longer history of reinforcement so that it becomes more reliable. Eventually I want to use this behavior for husbandry related tasks like cleaning ears and brushing teeth. Actually, the reason I started training this behavior is because I decided that I wanted to start brushing Dominic's teeth. What I realized is that he doesn't like having his mouth messed with. He doesn't have a dramatic reaction, he just very clearly moves away from my hand when I try to do anything with his mouth. I've decided to tackle this in two ways. The first is teaching him the chin rest and everytually working up to using the chin rest as a precursor to ear and teeth cleaning. The second is that I'm working on desensitizing him to my hand coming towards his mouth and eventually touching his mouth and hopefully being able to look into his mouth without the need for a chin rest. THAT has been taking a while. I periodically video where we're at with the desensitizing, so I have some pretty good examples of him saying "no thank you." And I also have a list of ways I've tried to go about it. I think I've figured out a manner that he is currently comfortable with, it's just going to take a bit. I may post a video of where we're at compared to our "failures" along the way.
Day 21
Day 21 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: Following after yesterday's video of why I was working on a chin rest behavior with Dom, here is the video of the desensitization work that we're doing with my hand going towards his mouth. The beginning of the videos are clips of the "nopes" from our previous sessions. As you can see, I tried slightly different techniques and I've tried with him in a down and standing. With this behavior, I think it's just something that is going to take time.
The end goal behavior is for him to let me lift up his lips and brush his teeth. We've got a ways to go to get there, but he is definitely making progress.
Day 22
Day 22 of the #100DaysofDogTraining: Today's behavior is really just for fun. I decided to shape Dom walking through the hula hoop. Why the hula hoop? Because it's a random object that I've had sitting in my garage for quite some time and it was about to get donated to Goodwill, so why not do something with it?
This video shows Dom during our first session and then today. I shaped him initially for approaching the hoop, then putting his head towards the center, then through it and eventually for putting a foot on the other side. This did require some coordination on my part and it took me a couple sessions to figure out exactly what to do with my hands depending on what side he was on. I did find out that I needed the treat hand to be the one on the side of the hoop that I wanted him to end up on. I only recently started adding the verbal cue "through" to the behavior. I think I'll continue building up the reinforcement history for this and I may add the hula hoop in with some other equipment. Who knows! Now that we've done this I kind of feel like we need to actually do something else with it.
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