PE for Wally 7 - Throwing A Ball

A video this time of me getting Wally to do his throwing. He's pretty good with the ball...not so much with the Post-it Note! Still, I thought it was pretty cute and not that bad.

I'm still thinking of ways to try to hone this. Throwing at a target. Maybe trying to throw it into a bowl, box, basket, etc. Throwing it to me. Things like that. Not quite sure how to go about "explaining" it to him with shaping, but it's mulling around in the brain.

That Time of Year Again...

...The Fourth of July and nearby days (and probably all of July and August really).

That means fireworks and that is one of the few outright fearful events left, largely because of how infrequently encountered they are. Literally, just once a year. No way to do much classical conditioning to reverse that association and nowhere near enough for habituation. So we go through this every year. Poor Wally.

This year, I used some pieces of grilled steak and sausages - really top-value stuff for him. I took him out and on a usual route we walk. Sure enough firework sounds were going off, some sounding like a mortar just fired off. I bet to him it did sound like a war zone.

Each time he looked at a sound, I marked and give him a bit of the reward. Pretty much using the "Look at That!" game mentioned in Control Unleashed to help him. Of course, ideally, I'd do this constantly but this is something that's pretty much random and may or may not happen on our walks now that the Fourth itself has passed. It's just a matter of if there's any "leftover" fireworks being used. When they are, I use this and, of course, have good value treats that can "cut through" his fearful energies (which will keep him taking the treats instead of the fearfulness shutting off his appetite as well as not being able to focus by sight of the treat, but the scent can capture him).

For the most part, it went pretty well. He was still very nervous and showed all the signs (tail looks like it got cut off, lower height, skittish, choppy steps instead of his usually 'strut' or 'bouncy' steps, constantly scanning around obsessively), but he kept taking the treats and the scent did indeed capture his attention. He gulped them down like he had to eat-and-run (another sign of being very nervous), but he kept eating them and they did help him focus more on me and what I was doing.

Overall, he really held it together well, considering what was happening around him. He stayed close to good position and stayed near me. He did his business, even if it took him some distance away from me, and he never completely "zoned out" on me. It was just harder to grab his attention.

Luckily, it's only once a year and he's overall a more confident dog and that we've built some trust up over the years, so he believes I'll protect him and he sticks close by when he gets scared. Much better than him trying to bolt and risking choking himself, that's for sure!

Happy Birthday, Wally!

Today is Wally's 5th birthday. Can't believe he's that old, guess time really does fly!

He had a special lunch today with some of his favorite foods and he'll get some desert after dinner (like a bit of a doughnut or something that's safe for him to eat).

He'll also get the day completely "off" from training, just lots of fun and games today. Of course, he's enjoying that a lot!

He got a new dog bowl as a birthday present - a nice ceramic bowl that's colorful and much better than his tiny bowl. He also got some treats, a couple beef jerky sticks, and a new ball.

I hope the rest of his day goes nice and easy for him.

This summer will also be the 4th year he's been in my care. Can't believe it's been that long there either!

PE For Wally 6 - Working Through Zoomies

Like probably every dog, Wally gets those seeming sudden, out-of-nowhere bursts of energy we sometimes call "zoomies". When this happens for Wally, he blazes around, just running and running.

So I thought - maybe there's some way we can use this time for something other than him just doing...whatever it is dogs do when they get zoomies.

When he gets like this, I tell him something to do. For example, he's having zoomies, I throw his ball somewhere and tell him "Find your ball! Donde esta pelota?!"

Once it gets through to him, he's running around trying to find his ball (it looks crazy too. You'd think he'd slow down. Ha! No.) So he's darting around, and I'm repeating the task. Eventually, he does find it and then he shakes the heck out of the ball and charges back to me.

So I start him going running around again. I pull his hair a little and stuff and he's charging around again. Then I throw the ball and repeat the instruction.

Then I mix it up. I might ask for a recall while moving in a different spot. So he has to find me and follow my voice. I'll mix up a go-around the pole of the basketball hoop or a tree trunk. Then maybe finding the ball again. And so on.

After about five minutes of that, he's slowing down, but I'm keeping it going. Then maybe 5-10 minutes later, he's moving decidedly slower and then it's time to call it.

The look on his face is like he just had tons of fun, almost like a look of relief maybe. One more thing we can do outside, and now at least when these zoomies happen, there's something we can do with them.

PE for Wally 5 - Sprints

With the warming weather (borderline to downright hot), we were able to get out for some more PE outdoors. This time, I wanted to see his speed.

I used trees and a utility box in the ground as landmarks for the start and finish. Unfortunately, I don't know how much distance it is, but I estimated by "counting" steps, and, yes, I measured my foot.

Anyway, I counted the steps and estimated the distance. The first distance was 724 1/2 inches, about 20 yards. The second one was about 14 yards, 514 1/2 inches.

I had him in a stay while I got my phone on stopwatch mode and went to the end point. I then called him and started the clock. When he got to me, either sitting front or jumping up to "tap" (more like slam) my legs, I stopped the clock.

He ran the first distance in 8.2 seconds and the second in 4.2 seconds.

Now, the first distance, he curved because it was on a hill and he took some funky arc to get to me, so that ate into time. He actually ran farther, much like how the outside of a track is a farther distance from start to finish.

The second was flat terrain and he ran right at me, so perhaps it's more accurate.

Converting it into a 40 yard dash time, I estimate it at 10.5 seconds. I don't know if that's fast or slow for a Coton or a dog of his size in general. I put this into a conversion calculator on a website to get the speed in miles per hour, and it checks in at just under 7 mph (6.95). Again, don't know if that's a good speed for his size/breed.

He certainly had fun though. He LOVES to run and especially at full speed like that.