All-Positive Monday 28 - El Zorro (The Fox)

For this Monday, we worked on a new object and a new Spanish word. The object is his fox toy and the word is, "zorro", which means "fox" in Spanish.

However, there seems to be something about this word that Wally does not like at all because he just looks at me like I'm crazy. He won't go to the toy, or if he does, he looks around a bit and sits. This is really, really interesting because it's the first time he's ever had this type of response since he (and I) have started learning some Spanish words. It was as though he was hitting "dislike! dislike!"

I wonder what he is thinking. I wouldn't imagine someone in his past used "zorro" for anything. Perhaps he can't hear the "z" sound? It's certainly the first "z" word I've used, perhaps he's not used to picking it up.

Well, I used "fox" for now, and he didn't mind that word. Crazy dog. Oh, Wally - don't think I've forgotten about "zorro".

With a word he actually "likes", we were able to get some exercises in with the fox toy. We did a lot of playing with it and I'd throw it and say "Get the fox!" (note to self: learn how to say "get the..." in Spanish) and he was all excited and stuff.

I probably said "fox" about 100 times today, I'm tired of hearing it. Don't even want to type it right now! Oh the sacrifices.

Have your fun now, Wally, because soon we'll be doing some three object discrimination.

Once you get over your dislike of "zorro".

"All Positive Monday 27" - Heel position

Been a while for an All-Positive Monday entry, but today I decided to try to build heel position with this approach.

What I did was click and treat (mark and reward) whenever Wally was in heel position. I gave no cues or anything of that nature. When he reached heel, he got the reward, even if he seemed as though he was going to go too far.

Being the food-monger that he is and of course the "click" is burned into his head, he immediately looked up for the treat. After that, he stayed in the position, aligning himself closer and closer each time, and looking up at me in the process.

The key on my end, other than the timing - which is a constant thing to look out for - is delivering the treat in a good spot. I don't want him to hop up, but I also want to make sure he's eating in heel position. In other words, I want him to be where the treat is delivered and that also to be heel position.

This paints the picture fully for him. I believe if I keep this up, he'll get the position down and he will be better able to maintain it on his own. With it being no cues from me and almost a "shaping on the move" exercise, I'm hoping those same shaping-esque principles 'click' (no pun intended) as well.

The eye contact might be a nice little side effect. The concept behind the phrase "feed the position" is that how and where the reward is actually taken and consumed by the dog also imparts information to the dog. The click explains the behavior, the delivery and consumption of the reward explains the location. Judging by past attempts to adhere to this makes it ring true for Wally it seems. Refining front happened with the help of "feed the position". The treat always came directly down and center from me. If he was off to the side or otherwise not aligned, I would not let go of the reward. In fact, it was out of his reach (and he already learned that raising up to get it made it go away completely so he keeps down on the ground).

The first run through shows promise and even after I stopped the training session and released him for some sniff/fun time, he continued walking in heel position. Very promising indeed.

Granted, in the interest of disclosure, Wally is not "completely green" in heeling. We have worked on this in various forms ("keep up"/"slow down" was the first way with heel being the correct spot - we just never "formally" named it "heel" or worked it until later). Still, we are far from masters at it, so this hopefully will continue to help us build the skill.

Wally Still Remembers, and Loves, Home

Went by the house today to take care of stuff and brought Wally along, figuring he'd enjoy the chance to sniff the old grass and stuff.

Boy did he ever. He immediately wanted to go sit on the porch that I've taught him to do so many times. And then I took him to the fields we ran on and practiced our ball catching and looooong distance recall and retrieving and he was just so intense. Charging at me like he loves to do when I call for a front from 90 feet away and just seeing how BIG his eyes were - like he just got done eating 50 raw steaks. He would literally jump up from the sit when I cued finish like we used to practice when doing this.

He was having so much fun and so excited. He remembered all his pee-mail spots and was checking out the grounds and re-marking his spots. So funny he remembered them all like we came there yesterday.

Was so great to see him cutting loose and giving me his full speed outside since there's OPEN GRASS to actually run around on. For a small dog, he needs a lot of space now because of all the walking and running he's done. He eats up ground almost like he's big and two strides and he's through the strips of grass around here.

It was amazing that he remembered all our tricks and stuff we did. Our route, where he sniffs and pees, that we usually stop at the mail box to get the mail. The go-arounds too. He remembered how he can go around the light posts. It's been months since we did it, and he called it up through all that excitement.

Object Discrimination 6 - Ball (Pelota) and Star (Estrella)

Getting back into the groove with object discrimination and it's a review process for now, assuming he still remembered anything from when we tried this last. Of course, I don't have all the old objects (though he still has the bone) - so that brings up a new object I bought for him, his fuzzy star-shaped toy.

He loves that toy, so that's always a plus. For the ball, I'm using one of the balls we were using to practice catching with.

I put the ball and star on the ground and said "pelota". Of course, he had no idea so I kept saying it, ready to give him a click and treat when he touched the ball. He eventually touched the ball and got the reward. I kept doing it, and he went consistently straight to the ball and we were getting into a rhythm.

Then I moved the ball and the star and tried it again. Didn't go so well. He went to the star again, but after not rewarding that, he looked around for something else to touch/grab. He didn't appear to see the ball, or perhaps he didn't think he was supposed to get it.

So I picked the star up and cued "pelota" again. He still was at something of a loss, but then eventually touched the ball for the reward. After repeating it with just the ball done a few times to get him going to the ball directly, I put the star back down. He looked at the star but went away from it to touch the ball. Good.

Did a few of those and then gave him a little break before introducing "estrella", the star. Having been going away from the star, it was harder to now get him to go TO the star. So I picked it up for a few seconds, then put the star down while saying "estrella". He went up to the star and that got him rewarded. I said "estrella" again and he went back to the star.

I didn't put the ball back in, but played a game of fetch with the star, but said "estrella" as he went after it and brought it back. I rewarded when he brought it back to me. Did that for about ten minutes then called it a session.

At least we got some progress going and maybe it will "re-activate" that info in his brain. Of course, if he forgot it all - well, we are still on the right foot...er...paw.

Mom Gets In On The Action

My mom was making Wally do some of the stuff I had him do, and caught a video of her getting Wally to walk/hop on his back legs. Hope you enjoy them!