You just gotta laugh

My Terv friend Kila shared this with me and I hope it makes you laugh as hard as I did. Enjoy.

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
(Dog Trainer Version)

Pavlov: we fed the chicken on the opposite side of the road each day at 4 p.m. until the chicken’s autonomic system actually began causing the chicken to cross the road at 4 p.m. without even questioning the “why.”

B.F. Skinner: on prior occasions when the chicken voluntarily crossed the road, this behavior was followed immediately by a reinforcing consequence.

Cesar Milan: I bullied, chased, poked, and intimidated the chicken until it raced across the road, because I am a strong leader…

Barbara Woodhouse: You just say, “Walkies” with the right accent and place a crumpet on the other side of the road…

Karen Pryor: by associating R+ with road crossing and P+ with standing still, with a VR schedule, and offering a reward in keeping with the Premack principle, we increased the intensity and frequency of the road crossing behavior.

Bill Koehler: a few well-timed pops on the choke chain and the chicken was happy to cross the road.

Nicholas Dodman: I gave the chicken fluoxetine, sertraline, paroxetine, carbamazepine, and azapirone and then it was happy to cross the road.

Patti Ruzzo: I crossed the road, pausing every step to spit a treat out of my mouth like a human pez dispenser and the chicken followed along catching the treats.

Electric Collar Advocate: whenever the chicken does not cross the road I give it an electric shock. But do not worry, the shock is no more than you would feel if you walked on a carpet wearing socks and it does not bother the chicken at all. The feathers standing up and the smell of burning flesh mean nothing. In fact, they are happier having nice clear communication than they would be otherwise.

Yuppie: chickens are just like little people in feather jackets, and if you love them and give them diamonds and feel sorry for them all the time, they will be happy to cross the road for you.

Paris Hilton: Because I put it in a Gucci bag and carried it.

Shelter director: Any chickens that do not cross the road will be euthanized for their own good, and the others we will “adopt” out tomorrow for only $200 each. Please send us money so we can keep doing more of this important work!

HSUS member: I do not know anything about animals, I have never been around animals and am not really fond of animals, but we passed a law mandating that chickens be kept without cages because animals belong only in the wild and cannot be happy coexisting with man, so now they are walking wherever they want.

PETA member: chickens have the right to live in world without roads. Any chicken that lives within a hundred miles of a road is suffering an inhumane existence and might eventually be hit by a car so we should kill it today to ensure that it does not die tomorrow.

Take your dog to work

One of the best things about my job is that I can take my dog to work. I used to do this a lot with both Jamie and Phoenix, when he was a baby.

Then things got ugly at work with the layoffs, downsizing, furloughs and the basic crash of the newspaper industry. Everyone was tense and short-tempered. I didn't want to bring my dogs anywhere near what had become a very toxic work environment!

But time goes on and things change. The office has settled down and things are basically good again. So Phoenix came to work with me today. I originally planned to train in our former press room (empty, since our printing press is in Venezuela now) during my lunch hour but the day was so beautiful with pleasant temps and low humidity for a change that we went to the town square park and trained there instead.

No hot air balloons this time but there were guys running a little backhoe and trenching machine, installing electric lines, plus all the general chaos of a small town square park. You'd be surprised how noisy they can be on a summer day. We had a good training session. I was really pleased with Nix's attention and ability to tune out all the background noise. One thing about having a puppy who grew up on a farm, machinery noise is basically a non-issue. Nix has his quirks but sound sensitivity is generally not one of them.


His crate is right next to my desk. I left the "sunroof" open. He's been getting a lot of petting from co-workers and a few cookies. He's also been doing the silly boy "let it all hang out" thing. He was sound asleep until I tried to take a picture, of course. Dogs are awfully cute when they sleep on their backs.

Mayhem & hot air ballons

Last night, a friend and I met at a local park to train. The air temp was 92 and the heat index was 102. But really, what else did we have to do? Like Jill said, it was possibly the shortest training session ever. It was also one of the weirdest.

When I got to the park, a woman, two kids and very big yellow lab (running loose, of course) were walking around a field. No problem, I thought, and drove to the other end of the park. While I was setting up ring gates and jumps, I heard someone yelling, "Blue, come!"

You guessed it, here came the lab, running straight at me, woman and kids in hot pursuit. Thank doG Phoenix was still in his crate in C3PO.

"Blue! Come! Come! Blue, you hear me? You come! Come here! Blue! I said come! Right now! You come here right now! Come! Blue! Blue! Blue! Get over here! Now! Blue!"

Yeah, right, lady. I don't think that's gonna happen.

Not only did Blue not come, HE JUMPED INTO MY VAN!

The back hatch was open and it was still full of a few jumps, folded up crates, a lawn chair and some bundles of newspapers I would deliver to area stores the next day. But that didn't stop ol' Blue. He piled right in on top of it all.

Did I mention Phoenix was having an absolute ballistic bat sh*t meltdown in his crate?

Seriously, Mom, do I look like I would have a bat sh*t meltdown?

I started to walk around to help the woman get her dog out of my van but she'd already hauled him out and put his leash on. Then she walked away without apologizing or even making eye contact!

For just a minute I thought about telling her if she couldn't control her dog any better than that maybe she shouldn't let it run loose in public places but decided if she needed to have that fact pointed out to her, she was probably not going to be very receptive to constructive criticism.

Shortly after the psycho lab left, some guys in a pickup truck pulling a trailer drove past where we were training and disappeared over a little hill. I didn't see any dogs with them so figured all was good.

Before long, I could hear a whooshing, flapping noise and wondered, "Now what?"

Here's what:




And off they went, floating away on a lovely hot July night.

Now really, how often do you get to proof heeling and stays with someone launching a hot air balloon 50 yards away? And no, the balloon really didn't bother Phoenix. He was interested in it and we sat and watched it together for a little bit, but when I asked him to go back to work he was like okay, whatever. What a good boy.

Doing the math

One of my goals for our summer "vacation" is to teach Phoenix a new left finish, one with a happy little bounce instead of just walking into place. I'm working on putting a bounce in the right finish as well, but that's more of a by product of our left finish work than an actual goal itself — because I've got to ask for some right finishes too, to keep him balanced and not thinking he's going to go left ALL the time.

So anyway.

I'd like to be able to ask for this new finish with realistic expectation of getting it when we go back into the ring to finish his CDX the first weekend in September. That's six weeks away. If we practice 10 finishes in the morning and 10 finishes in the evening (c'mon, it takes about a minute to do this, seriously) that gives us 20 finishes a day and 140 finishes a week.

Of course, these will be PERFECT finishes because initially, I'll be using food to get exactly what I want. When the food disappears from my hand (okay, it already has), I'll be setting up for total success and rewarding every effort that meets my criteria.

That's 840 perfect finishes under our belt by the time we get back in the ring Sept. 4. Even if a few of them aren't perfect and don't get rewarded, there's still a really good chance he will have done about 800 perfect finishes with this 10 in the morning and 10 in the evening formula.

This is useful math I can understand!!! My elementary teacher who taught multiplication would be so proud.

Spa day

Today was spa day at our house. Both boys got a bath and blow dry and so much brushing my arm may fall off. Jamie is 100% against this process. Brushing, good; water, bad. Phoenix is all about getting in the tub but takes a dim view of being shampooed.

Lather, rinse and don't even think about repeating!

Mal-annoyed

Unless they get into something stinky, I don't bathe my guys that often. But I brush like crazy, all year 'round. This was the mid-summer bath. Yeah, there's an autumn bath and a spring bath, too. Usually no winter bath, though. Jamie really likes winter.

The worst thing about this (besides having to clean up the bathroom when I'm done) is that we're not even GOING anywhere. Nope. This was my third of four weekends at home. Things get a little more exciting after next weekend. We start a marathon of matches and trials that will carry us clear through November.

But for now, I have clean, shiny, fluffy dogs for no apparent reason other than I had time to do it today. I think they've forgiven me and are talking to me again. It's about supper time so I'm sure they'll come around.

Also made seven (count 'em, seven!) loaves of zucchini bread this weekend, all from the monster zuke Tammy gave me Friday night. Can I have another one? I go psycho on the zucchini bread this time of year and fill the freezer. It tastes so great in January.

It's okay to be confused

Thanks for the responses to yesterday’s post about using both gloves AND toys in the directed retrieve. Several of you said you wouldn’t ask your dogs to do this because of the potential for confusion, especially if you had proofed the dog against picking up toys on another retrieve.

First, let me clarify: the only way I would use toys as a DISTRACTION on the directed retrieve is if they were totally out of the line of the retrieve, otherwise how could your dog tell what he was supposed to mark and fetch if two items are directly in line with one another? (The retrieve item isn't being thrown on this exercise, unlike the dumbbell retrieve.) I would, however, put a toy out IN PLACE OF a glove.

So let’s look at what the directed retrieve requires: A) dog looks at whatever I mark him to and B) dog fetches that item on command, no matter what it is. If I mark and send him to #3, I expect him to bring #3, whether it's a glove, a toy or a plastic cup.

Phoenix WAS confused the morning I sent him for a toy on the directed retrieve because it was the first time he'd seen that picture and he’d been proofed on his dumbbell retrieve with toys scattered around on the ground. It’s okay to be confused. Confusion means the dog is thinking. He’s not sure what to do. He’s trying to figure it out. If he needs a little help to be right, that’s okay.

Help.

Encouragement.

Not a correction. And never anger. Too often I think our frustrated human response when a dog makes a mistake is is “must punish” when it should be “must help.” Is it little wonder so many dogs don’t like obedience?

I didn’t realize until Nix veered off the toy and went to get a glove instead how solidly the “avoid toys on retrieves” lesson had sunk in. Wow. Again, he learned more than I thought I was teaching. What a clever boy.

It only took a few quick reps for him to understand the "fetch what you mark no matter what it is" concept.

With my first few Utility dogs (the shelties), I was so scared I would “break” them that I did very little proofing. I was just happy they learned how to do the exercises and wasn’t about to mess around with it beyond that! Fortunately for me, they understood and enjoyed their jobs so thoroughly (UDXs and OTCh./UDX5), proofing was not as important as it became with subsequent dogs. (What a beautiful gift Jess and Connor were!)

I want my dogs to be able to think and make correct decisions. I want them to understand their job so they can do it with confidence under show ring pressure. That’s not going to happen if I never allow them to make mistakes in training, then work through those mistakes with them. The key words here are WORK THROUGH IT WITH THEM. You can’t “correct” a dog for being wrong when he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do in the first place. I realize this doesn't stop some people from doing it anyway, then they wonder why their dog has a bad attitude.

Years ago, I remember being baffled the first time I saw someone proofing a dog. I thought it was awful, they were setting the dog up to fail. Why would anyone DO that? Gradually I came to understand that when done correctly and fairly, proofing sets the dog up to succeed by giving him the ability to make decisions, not shut down or make failing errors, when faced with distractions in the ring.

Plus, proofing keeps your training fresh and challenging to your dog. Some folks like to train by going through the same motions over and over. Hey, whatever works for them.

But Jamie and now especially Phoenix never thrived on simple repetition, so I try to find new ways to approach the exercises to keep him thinking. My goal is never to deliberately create confusion but to be prepared to HELP my dog if it happens because if you train long enough, it’s pretty much inevitable.

Yes, I think you can take proofing to unnecessary extremes but that’s probably an individual decision for each dog and handler. How far do you want to push your dog? Obedience diehards will remember Diane Bauman’s “Beyond Basic Training” book from the early 1990s — the one with the cover photo of a dog working scent articles with little turtles in the pile. Extreme? Probably.



But my sheltie Connor worked articles with a cat in the pile. I didn’t deliberately put the cat there (it was just a weird cat who always showed up when we trained) and Connor didn’t seem to care so I let it go. If he’d been totally messed up by having a cat in his articles, I would have removed it. Would Phoenix do articles with a cat in the pile? Oh dear doG. I don’t even want to think about that!!!

Odds and ends

First, my apologies for so much text and so few pics lately. I love blogs with pics. I love seeing pics of other people's dogs, homes, cats, flowers, etc. Maybe it’s because I’d rather look at pictures than read words. But I have a lot of words in my head and if I don’t let them out they just keep rattling around and bugging me.

*****

Remember a few weeks back when I said I was going to abandon Phoenix’s auto down on the table and teach an auto sit instead because there didn’t seem to be any consistency with his apparently non-existent auto down at trials and I didn’t think he understood what I wanted?

So we spent a week working on teaching an auto sit every single day and darned if that crazy dog didn’t do a perfect splat auto down on the table every single stinkin’ time in spite of me signaling and telling him to sit. That tells me the auto down program is embedded in his brain and is going to be really hard to override. I’m just failing to get the auto down reliably in trials, probably due to the stress of the moment . . . so we’ll keep after it. My goal is NOT to create any more confusion than I already have.

*****

Phoenix and I went outside to work the directed retrieve one morning this week and wouldn’t you know it, there was only one glove in my bag. Lots of toys. One glove. Story of my life.

So what the heck, I put out two toys and a glove in the directed retrieve pattern. It’s a retrieve, right? What could be more fun that fetching a toy?

Lined him up, did the turn, marked him to Glove (Toy) #1, sent him, watched him race out, look at the toy, look at Glove #2 (which actually was a glove), change his mind, fetch the glove and race back like there was no doubt in his mind. “Gotta get a glove, not a stinkin’ toy. Get in trouble for fetching stinkin' toys when we’re WORKING.”

Oh, the mind of the malinois. It took some convincing to help him understand YES I REALLY DO WANT WHATEVER I MARK YOU TO, EVEN IF IT’S A TOY. I may play this game again and use a shoe, small garden tool, etc. Apparently, I thought I had trained a directed retrieve when in reality, I had trained a glove retrieve.

*****

No doubt the above confusion stemmed from some retrieve proofing I’d been doing by scattering toys around and then having Phoenix retrieve his dumbbell. He’d been corrected for wigging off and grabbing a toy instead of the dumbbell that had been thrown, so in his mind, toys on the ground in the context of training were something to avoid.

I’m learning to think like a dog. It means I have to stop thinking like a human. Amazingly, that’s not hard to do.

*****

Our Utility work continues fairly intensely, since I’d really like to go straight from the last CDX leg this fall straight into the Utility ring. Of course, I’d LIKE a lot of things but I’m thinking positively here and doing everything I can to be prepared. Nix and I have the basic concepts. What we don’t have yet is the polish, animation and confidence that makes a performance both enjoyable to participate in and to watch. I don’t want to go into the ring “for real” without that.

*****

The “more funner” approach to obedience continues and I’m working to incorporate Bridget’s Carlson’s theory of “over training,” which essentially means asking for more speed, enthusiasm and overall general performance in training because if your dog stresses down in the ring, you’ll lose part of that energy but still turn in a great performance.

This is hard for me because I tend to focus on smoothness and efficiency in training without getting too crazy. But Phoenix likes crazy so crazy it is. Besides, it’s as close as I’ll ever get to an aerobics class.

*****

It’s been hotter than heck here lately. Dew points are in the tropical range, which means if you do anything more intense than breathing outdoors, sweat pours off you in buckets. We’ve been training for about 10 minutes before breakfast in the morning, then try to get another session in the evening. I really, really, really can’t wait for fall and cooler weather. Did I mention I am not a big fan of hot weather?