March Day Eight -- Where are you going?

Today I had a good example of how important it is to vary your training so dogs generalize their training. Sia has been in her crate while I'm in the same room and when I am out of the room and does really well. But I hadn't had her behind a barrier where she could still see me. When I went to another part of the yard and she was still gated on the dog side, she was a little worried.

She whined and bit at the gate in frustration even though she was with her friends on the other side of the gate.

This is something we will need to work on so she is more comfortable by herself in this situation. We can do this by making it really pleasant for her on her side of the gate and practicing for short increments and building up until she is more comfortable. I'm also not going to make a big fuss when I cross the barrier and keep everything low key.

I still expect a sit when I open the gate.

Lots of distractions because she's anxious for me to be on the same side of the gate so she needs a little help with a hand signal to follow through.

It was good we had some time for a last romp before Sia leaves. We know she will be back but it won't be long before her friend, Kravitz, goes on to Canine Companions for Independence to work with someone who is disabled.

And we also like to see Sia showing signs of being well exercised. That's a good kind of pant!

March Day Seven -- Here Comes the Sun!

The day we've been waiting for! Sunshine!! I think we stayed outside almost the whole day soaking in the sun.

I'll admit, I like the ease of exercising the dogs when the sun is out. I can sit and watch them play for hours on end. It gives me a little break from trying to come up with more creative, rainy day games. I actually love the indoor games...it must be the long winter talking. Regardless, we were happy to be out in the sun today soaking up some vitamin D.

Of course, the more exercise Sia gets, the less likely she is to get into trouble. That can be a challenge with smart dogs...if you don't give them something to do, they will find something to do and it's probably not going to be something you like.

Good thing we had lots of work to and a sunny to day to play with our friends. Have I mentioned how much she and Kravitz get along? She really gets along with all the dogs I introduce her to. Sometimes she's a little too busy for my older dog, Healey, who gets a little grumpy but that works a bit in my favor. If Sia tries to slip up on the couch when my back is turned, Healey is sure to alert the media.

I am really pleased to see how much she is relaxing into her downs. By that I mean that her hip is turned out, her head is down, etc. She's not ready to leap to her feet. I started shaping this a while ago but now I'm really noticing that she is doing that all on her own.

This makes her much more relaxed when a distraction comes along. She didn't even attempt to get up. What a good girl!

Of course there is a limit. Poor Sia, she's working so hard and Rosario comes along and makes it even harder for her. At this point, I either remove the distraction or release Sia. She is doing good but I don't want to push her past her limits and I want to end this session on a good note. So, release it was and her reward for such a nice stay was to go play some more.

Did I mention how much we enjoyed the sun today?

March Day Six -- New and Old Friends

The snow melted and the sun was shining for a short while and we decided to take full advantage of it. And besides, I wanted to make sure Sia was well exercised before our outing today. If she is not contending with excessive energy when we are out and about or in a training session, she has more opportunities for success. If she has more opportunities for success she will learn more quickly. Imagine if I was only able to reward her once or twice for success during a session as opposed to twenty to thirty times? It would take me much longer to train her.

 She was happy to see her old friend Kravitz. They get along really well!

And she met a new friend, Mitch, who was her for a short time until a volunteer came by to get him.

A lot of times she stayed on the outside of their play groups. Labs tend to have a somewhat unique way of playing that other dogs don't always understand. But she was happy to sit by and watch and periodically join in.

Funny girl, she seemed to be going against traffic at times but she sure had a good time!

On our outing I spent some time right outside the car just working on attention work and response to easy commands like sit. There are a lot of new sights, people and animals around so it takes her a minute to get acclimated. I want to make sure she is well tuned into me before we go into the store. Again, I want as many successes as I can get in this session. This also helps her want to learn (no one likes to do something if they always get it wrong).

When we first got into the store, there were other people and, more importantly, other dogs inside. We spent some time right inside the door far away from the distractions working on attention. When she was clearly more interested in me than everything else, we moved in a little closer. We did this several times until we were 10 feet away from other dogs and she was still being attentive to me.

Sometimes we get caught off guard by a distraction like when we left the store. Outside was a small dog tied up on the sidewalk. We had to walk past her to get to the car but I don't want Sia to pull or get ahead of me. First off, when she got ahead of me when she first saw the dog, I stopped. Ideally I would have seen the dog first and started to get her attention on me before she got distracted. But life doesn't always happen that way. So now that I had stopped, she knew the only way to get me to move forward was to return to me. I know at this point, there are a couple of things I need to do in order to get past this distraction successfully. I am going to move Sia to my left side so she is farther away from the distraction. I'm also going to walk as far away from the distraction as I can. Before we get to the distraction, I increase my rate of reinforcement and give rewards for proper positioning and attention more frequently. If she starts to get ahead of me, I can turn around and start walking until she has caught up with me and then try it again. I ended up only doing this once before we successfully walked past the little dog. Yea! Big party (lots of praise) for that!!

March Day Five -- New Friends & Life Lessons

Two new service puppies, Rhett and Sam, arrived from California today. Sia was very excited to meet them and they were thrilled to meet her as well.

Sia is really good with young puppies...really good. She squishes them with her paw on occasion but otherwise plays really well. Soon after she met them we worked on her recalls, fast sits and downs, and some stays. It was a good opportunity to see if she would be responsive even with these two cute fuzzy distractions. Sure enough, she was wonderful and very responsive.

We're continuing to work on the barking. She is still barking some but she comes away from the window immediately when asked and she stops barking the second say anything to her. It's important with barking to keep an even tone of voice so it doesn't sound like I am barking too. If my voice is raised, she's more likely to continue barking (after all, if the leader is barking, she must be justified in doing so). But a nice, easy "Sia, no" or "ah" will stop her mid bark. Then a quick recall and lots of praise when she responds well.

She is doing really well with her on/off switch -- not an easy task for such a busy girl. But like I said previously, she loves those ear rubs and almost fell asleep standing up.

Thankfully she had a bed nearby.

She loves her creature comforts...

But the hard lesson is learned later in the day when you are the last to settle down and there are no dog beds left because some pesky little puppy has taken the last one.

I think she's got this all figured out. It's a good thing Rhett likes her...

March Day Four -- Stepping Up Our Game

Now that Sia has had some practice responding to commands with the distraction of one dog, it's time to step it up a bit.

I set my criteria a little bit lower in this new environment but it doesn't take long before she's at the level she was with one dog. By the end of this training session, my expectations were as high as they were when she was with one dog. Proofing her in a wide variety of environments and under different circumstances will help her be more responsive in all aspects of her life.

And even harder is doing a down with all the other dogs around but she succeeds! It's also a good time to work on her stays with distractions.

If I'm going to catch her before she breaks a stay, I don't want her to get any further than this before I redirect her. It's much more difficult to get her back down if she's gotten all the way up. Better yet, if I can catch her just as she's getting a little wiggly and thinking about getting up it's much easier to reinforce the stay. Just saying "no, stay" is enough to settle her back down into her stay. And, of course, lots of praise when she complies.

Her barking is another behavior that is much easier to curb before she starts barking. When a neighbor made some noise on the other side of the fence I could tell she was going to bark by her body language.

But, if I can get her attention before she barks, she'll start to learn that it pays off more to pay attention to me rather than bark. Most of the work you do to decrease the barking happens before she barks. She's already getting the idea that if she sees someone outside, if she comes and checks in with me instead of barking, she'll get rewarded. This also makes it much easier to redirect her if she does get a bark out before I catch her.

It's just one more reason why attention work is so important. So many things start to fall in place once you can get her to pay attention to you no matter what is going on.

March Day Three -- New Horizons

Sia does well responding to my requests when there is not a lot going on but it's a little harder for her if there is a lot going on around her.

We practiced a lot of sits and downs today with a wide variety of distractions. We started out with mild distractions and worked our way up to having several dogs around while she was practicing her commands. In the beginning, I didn't set my expectations high but just rewarded compliance. So maybe it wasn't the fastest sit or maybe she wasn't all the way down on her elbows in her down, but if she complied with all the distractions she got a reward.

As she got better, I set my criteria a little bit higher. She would only get rewarded if her elbows were all the way down or if she responded quickly. I always praised her when she complied but to earn the food reward she had to follow through quickly and more accurately. It's fun to watch her brain work and figure out what she needs to do to get the food reward.

We also worked on "leave it" with food on the counter. She is doing so much better with showing self control when her meal is being prepared but this is just a nice way to reinforce some of that training. She did pretty well with this exercise but what I was really pleased about was how she responded when I verbally interrupted her if she went for the food. Even with the temptation of a treat right in front of her she would still respond to a normal tone of voice to redirect her. It is so nice when you can tell a dog "no" and they respond by happily coming towards you to interact with you.

We're getting lots of practice in with the barking (or lack of barking). Being near a school offers good opportunities for training when a dog barks at people or dogs walking by. Any time she was at the window, I called her to "come." If she barked at all, I responded by saying "ah" and then calling her to come. She would stop mid-bark almost every time. The one time she didn't stop barking I just put her in a quick time-out. She's starting to get the idea that, if she sees someone outside, good things are going to happen (I'm going to call her to come and she's going to get rewarded). We should have plenty of opportunities to practice this throughout the week.

March -- Day Two: Ears, Eyes and Nose

I love seeing Sia's ears! This is the first time she's stayed with me when I've been able to see them. It's amazing how much you can learn about a dog in any given situation by looking at their ears. When reading a dogs' body language, it's important to take the who picture into consideration and not just one body part but it sure does help to be able to see the ears.

When she's waiting for the other dogs to round the corner, her ears are facing out and she's alert.

They would get a little floppy when she was playing and having a good time.

But when she was worried or a little bit unsure, the ears went back. I saw this a lot when she first met Chase. He can be a little loud (he's a bit of a talker) when he first meets a dog and Sia was a little unsure of him. It took her a while before her ears would stand up when she was playing with him.

Here's a good example of taking all the body language into account when trying to interpret what she's feeling. Her ears are back, like they are sometimes when she is uncomfortable. But she's being very playful with 3 month old Rosario. Sia's doing a play bough which is usually an invitation to the other dog to play which tells me that her ears are not back because she's uncomfortable but, in fact, because she is really enjoying herself.

I also like her ears because I can rub them and she melts. A lot of dogs calm down quite a bit when their ears are rubbed. I thought Sia might fall asleep when I started to rub her ears.

In all her joyfulness today she got a little nick underneath her eye. I'm not sure what happened but I suspect she caught a tooth. I laughed when I pulled up this picture and could see my reflection in her eye. But it made me think how nice it was that she is use to people handling her. So, when I cleaned up her little wound, it wasn't a big struggle to get the job done. I'll continue to clean it and give her treats when I do that so it continues to be a positive experience. It's already looking better!

We can hardly talk about ears and eyes without talking about Sia's nose. Sia loves to use her nose to explore. I try to give her a lot of outlets to do this in appropriate ways so it is easier to redirect her when she's putting her nose in places where it doesn't belong. She's a curious girl as it is, I can't imagine trying to redirect that nose if she didn't have opportunities to explore a bit.

It's a perfect little nose. Even more perfect when it's not getting her into trouble...which seems to happen less and less with age, consistency and guidance. Ahhh maturity...