From Throwing to...Folding?!

That's what happened when I was shaping Wally tonight before bed and he tried to "throw" the rug.

After rewarding his attempts to grab and pick up the rug, I decided to hold out on him and see what he would do. He tried the grabbing again a few times, tried some other behaviors, and then kinda starting thinking (he stood there just staring with his tail wagging). He went away a bit and then came back and just grabbed the rug and tried his hardest to throw it.

I gave him a big jackpot, a rub love, and lots of praise for that effort. He looked really proud too like he did something grand!

This is something I will definitely have to try to build on going forward. I wonder if he can indeed learn how to intentionally fold something in half?!

Opening and Closing the Door II

Tapped out on new things to try with Wally this week, I decided to see if he knew how to open and close the door...with me being on the other side of the door. It sounds silly, but this is a big change. Usually I'm already through the door.

Sure enough, he got mixed up. He wasn't sure what to do. I put a small opening in the door, like I usually do for him to open it, gave him the "abres" cue, and he closed the door! He did the wrong thing out of his confusion. Same thing for telling him "cierras" to close the door.

So we have a new thing to work on soon. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. Another thing to try is doors that open from different sides. The bathroom door opens from a different position so he has to figure that out. Again, seems silly to us, but to a dog, it's a big deal.

I think I know how I'm going to do it, and, as usual, will try to make a game out of it - or at least keep it moving fast and exciting.

Other than that, we've been rained out most of the week and he's been in no real mood to do much of anything, and neither have I, really. He did do some catching on one rainy day when it wasn't so bad, but once the pouring rain came, he and I both just wanted to get back inside as soon as possible. And once inside, he just wanted to dry off and get warm and I was pretty much in the same mindset.

At least now, we have something new indoors to try.

"All-Positive Monday 22" - Building Desire In Catching And Carrying

With Wally more and more interested in catching things, and getting a bit better at it, I took part of the day to have Wally like the ball even more.

I want him to do anything he can to get the ball in his mouth. To do this, I turned to shaping-type activity.

The behavior I want is him getting the ball in his mouth. Once he did this, he got a reward for it. Nothing happens with any other behavior. Nothing else is good enough, no pawing, poking, pushing the ball, just picking it up.

I went through about a dozen of these and then switched to a more active scenario. I rolled the ball, and he had to go get it, but without me saying so. I want it to be the default behavior. See ball moving...get ball in mouth.

Our prior working on retrieve training interferes with this as he is used to waiting for the cue to go after whatever it is. I want to frame this differently, so he can understand the difference between the two activities. That is something for me to think on.

After doing this, I held the ball in my hand and moved it around. He had to try to grab the ball. Again, all of this in an effort to get him to go into "Must. Get. Ball. In. Mouth." mode. Each time he succeeded, he got a click and a reward. I also kept getting him and keeping him excited the whole time, which had him increasing his efforts.

However, it didn't stop with just the ball. Also on the agenda was developing his "pick up and carry" desire. Since we had been working with getting the ball in his mouth, this would be a good follow up since it's also involving getting objects in his mouth.

This is a little more difficult since he's not as apt to carry a lot of things, but I used the ball again. Instead of catching the ball, he had to pick it up and carry it to me. Success netted him a game with the ball. That would be the reward I used for this set of exercises.

After getting him warmed up with the ball, I used other light household items, like a duster, balled up napkins, stirring spoons, and so on. Hopefully, this could be the precursor to other actions like putting the object in a box and moving him further along in becoming something of a "housework dog".

From "Housework Dog" to "Treat Finder" and A Couple New Spanish Words

Whew, a multi-faceted day for Wally on this Saturday!

The Housework Dog

Or, at least my assistant of sorts. He got a lot of practice with opening and closing the doors today as I had lots of things to carry around and stuff to do all over the house. Actually, he got a lot of practice all the way around because he had to go up and down the stairs as well.

In addition, I was cooking so there were times when he had to bark at timers going off (a job he loves). He even barked at the tea kettle when I got side tracked and forgot I had it on. If only I could get him to bark at when a pot boils over!

About only thing I didn't have him do was carry things for me. I didn't think about it at the time, and too bad because this would have been a perfect time to get him more used to carrying different things. Other than that, he was very good with getting the doors opened and closed and he remembered all his Spanish nicely.


The Treat Finder

Instead of having to hunt around for leftover treats and other crumbs, I had Wally do it. This gave me an excuse for using a kind-of-new Spanish cue, "Donde esta?", the new cue for "find it" (it means, "where is it?", prompting him to go find "it" in the future, I'll be trying to attach names of things). We've been working on this a bit, so he had an idea of what to do.

He was a bit confused at first because I didn't set up anything for him to find (he's used to me explicitly hiding things for him to find), but after some encouraging and saying the cue again in an excited way got him going and sniffing around. Once he did that, he was finding some crumbs and stuff. He sniffed around for a little while and then looked up at me since he couldn't find anything else.

There a few he ended up missing (and stepped on, which prompted him to sniff and eat the crumbs...and lick my shoes), but I think he did a pretty good job. This gave me some ideas for how to step up the challenge for finding things in the future as well.

A Couple More Spanish Words For Wally

Today, I introduced him to a couple new words, one of which I can't believe I forgot about.

That word is "Vámanos" meaning "Let's go" (or is it "vamos"...or "vayamos"...ARGH I remember why I hate irregular verbs in foreign language...or in general...*random verb rant* would some Spanish-inclined person please help this newbie? Por favor?) - anyway...the reason I can't believe I didn't use this one is this is like the first word ever on Dora - which is where all of this Spanish trying started from, his (Wally's) fetish with that girl.

So (at least after I try to figure out what it is before I say "gah" and just go with "vamos" and call it a day...) I started using it as cue for when we start moving or are going somewhere. It's basically my "come on, let's get moving, we're going" cue.

The other is much easier for me to figure out - "Bien" meaning "good" and it will be used as a reward marker. This will be easy enough, though I'll probably want to formally teach it using classical conditioning (in other words, "Bien", shove food in this mouth, "Bien" shove food in his mouth, etc, etc) so that it can have the intended effect I need for a marker.


That's it for now, oh, and to all the mothers out there "Feliz Diá de las Madre!"

Wally the Picky Picker-Upper

Wally was carrying stuff nicely, so I was thinking of making that a job for him. He can be a "third hand" for me as well as his opening and closing doors that he does. Okay, so he carries the duster, can pick up and carry his toys to another room, and watches the kitchen (read: barks whenever something beeps in the kitchen so I can come check on it). All seemed well.

Ah, but dogs a great that showing you the bugs in the training you've done, and Wally found one.

He only picks up certain things

Well that's not going to work out so well, so I try to have him pick it up again, but he just won't. I hold the thing in my hand, and ask again. He puts his paw in my hand instead. At first, it seemed like he was confused, perhaps I was sending mixed signals.

But, if I put, say, his dumbbell or rabbit toy in my hand and ask for a 'take it', he grabs it like it was nothing. So what's going on here? Why is he not taking the other object?

It turns out it's more a textural thing. In other words, he doesn't like the feel of the object in his mouth. He'll eventually take it and either drop it immediately or just barely have it in his mouth, like he's holding it with just one of his small teeth.

After a lot of coaxing, he'll eventually hold on to it and carry it, but that's not good enough. Other objects he struggles with, like my mom's glasses, because he has a hard time getting a grip, literally. I think, overall, it's a case of more practice and getting him to be more mouthy/more willing to offer mouthing behaviors on objects.

I think I have my idea for next week's "All-Positive Monday", though! Practicing picking things up! We'll attack it from a shaping direction to see if that doesn't help him get more of an idea.

Job Creation For Wally

Cotons aren't noted for having "jobs" like a working or sporting breed, but I try to come up with things Wally can do for me as "jobs" that he is physically able to do and uses the behaviors he's already learned. So, like with a human job, I try to come up with Wally's "résumé" of sorts - a list of things he can do that could be put to work.

• Barks loudly, especially for the size of dog he his. Cotons don't have yippy, "little dog barks" and that's certainly true of Wally. This let's me hear him bark in almost every place in the house no matter where he is or I am.
• Likes to use his paws.
• Can push things with his nose
• Will stay in one spot if so instructed
• Has some ability to pick up small/light objects

With these skills in mind, I have to come up with things I have teach him how to do and that he could do either on a quick cue and he can carry the task to completion, or he can do based on environment (what he sees and hears triggers him to do that task).

This will be something of a project for us but he has some of jobs already.

• He opens and closes doors for me (though we are still working on the closing part, and developing new cues to make the sound distinct - for now we are using "abres" and "cierras" spanish for "open" and "close")
• Whenever a timer goes off in the kitchen or the kettle is whistling, he barks loudly so I can hear it, even if I can't hear the actual sound (like I'm in the basement). Sometimes he'll even hear the ding of the toaster oven timer from the basement and bark!
• We're working on this but if I drop something small or light, I'd like to have him pick it up and hold it for me. We're working on both the pick up and hold/carry, and him doing it when something drops without a verbal cue from me.
• If there were light switches on the floor, I'd have him push them with his paws, but alas... 
• With planting season right around the corner, I wonder if he could dig holes in containers or loosen up the soil...

He enjoys doing these things. Seems like it gives him something to do and think about and of course he loves the praise and rewards he gets for a job well done. Then there's just another thing we can spend time together doing - all things dogs love. Hopefully, we'll be able to learn more behaviors and get better at these things so he can continue to learn and gain more confidence as a "houseworking dog" of sorts!