18 Months: September 16 - 20

Goofy Jack.

Jack the goof!  What a silly boy Jack has been.  He loves to learn so much he gets to excited to learn.  he makes me laugh.  Just today I was working with Jack on retrieve and he did this flop and flip thing with the dish cloth we were working with.  He's funny and playful and gentle and can be a handful to train because of it.

Jack is learning to retrieve.  With the number of times I've seen his handler unable to pick up anything due to spasms in her back it became the priority for our learning.  He was so excited about grabbing the items I was offering he wasn't getting anywhere close to a hold.  I decided to change direction with him and shaped him to picking up a dish cloth.  It took two days of shaping, but he got it.  He's not perfect, but he's getting closer every time we work on it.

Since the break through of picking up items I have worked on his putting them into my hand with purpose.  Jack is not natural at sharing what he has in his mouth and this has been a harder lesson for him.  He's starting to move his nose forward and place the item in my palm, but it will be another week of training before we see the final product.

Another factor for Jack is he thinks I am pointing out food when I point and forgets I am asking him to pick up something.  So this too is being slowly worked on.  He's starting to get the idea that when I point I want him to pick up something, but again, we are in the rough stage of carving out a new behavior and none of it is very pretty right now.

While working on this we revisit the idea of taking and holding an object in his mouth for me.  He's bearing down with his teeth with a great deal of pressure and I have tried different textures and densities to see what would soften his grip and get the focus on what I am really working on.  It appears Jack is gentlest with metal objects, which he has no problem taking in his mouth, so I will work on his hold with a fork or spoon for a while and then transfer the idea to softer objects when he has the concept.

We also worked on Mat behavior and Distance this week.  In his class he was introduced to the idea of getting on and stopping on his mat.  I continued the lesson the following day and was seeing him get on and drop on his mat.  Nice.  I also worked on going around a pole.  I worked a bit on it o Monday, where he was totally confused and had no clue what I was asking, and again on Wednesday where he got the idea and started showing signs he understood.

We need to continue Zen for Jack.  He is so food focused that he stops thinking when I hold treats.  I have been using a treat bin and reaching only for the treats after I have clicked instead.  This has slowed him down a bit and gotten him to thinking of what he needs to do to make me click and treat.

I have also used shaping for this concept.  I want him to understand he has to do something for me to click and treat.  Once he gets THAT rule he should excel at learning.

Overall Jack is progressing with retrieve nicely.  When we were working in the kitchen I did see a lot of offered behaviors where he was figuring out what I was clicking for.  He did sits, flats, targets, paw raised (for shake) and eye contact all for a click before looking at the dish cloth.  I see a bit of that when I am sitting also.

When I am sitting the primary thing he offers is a flat or head on my lap.  The behavior of head on lap is due to our need to clear a thick semi white goo out of his eyes daily.  I started it in the bathroom, where he follows me and wants my attention.  I have treats by the toilet and when he lets me clean his eyes he gets one.  I have taught him to rest his head on my lap and let me clean his eyes - it is becoming a loving default behavior when I sit anywhere - which will make it easy to teach him a task for providing comfort when his human is having major spasms.  I find when he does that and I am in a lot of pain that it eases my pain to run my finders through his hair or pet his head while he rests there like that.

Overall, Jack is doing well this with his training.  I need to slow him down a bit so he can learn and progress, but otherwise I am happy with his progress.

Jack will have surgery on his tail next Monday.  His tail bone is still growing on the end and has pierced the skin.  To prevent infection or injury to his tail the bone spur will be removed and his tail cleaned up after the bone is cauterized to prevent regrowth.  He may need rest more than training next week.

18 Months: Progress Update

Gentleman Jack

I know it's been a long time since I wrote on Jack's blog, but that doesn't mean that Jack's training came to a halt.  A lot has happened for Jack and myself since our last update.

I had a foster dog for a while.  Her name was Maura and she was a handful all by herself.  During her stay here Jack stayed at his owner's home during the day.  At first she tried to crate Jack during the day, but that failed miserably.  Deva, Jack's German Shepherd sister, taught Jack he could escape the crate on day one.  Together they found enough trouble to ruin Jack's owner's language.  I was informed they had raided the counter, chewed a phone, destroyed DVD cases and basically found all sorts of mayhem.  This continued the entire time Jack stayed unsupervised and by the time he returned to me, he was without question out of control when it came to the crate.

I had barely instilled crate skills in Jack at the time, and thus found myself at a loss as to what to do about Jack and his crate behaviors now that they were gone.  Since a friend (Thanks Judy) loaned me a set of crates to crate Maura, Emma and Dieter (who at the time was still crate bound) I had enough crates to rotate who was in what crate if I had to run an errand.  Emma went into a plastic crate as did Dieter and Jack took over the wire crate.  He also came very close to destroying it.

After two rounds in the wire crate and no successful escape, Ronda brought back Jack's crate.  The one he learned he could escape from.  I once again asked him to stay in his crate while I was gone.  I came up with a few strategies to convince him that escaping crates in MY home was not possible.  I removed his bedding - since he returned to shredding it again - and then parked my power chair in front of the door with the back of the crate pressed against a wall.  Low and behold, Jack couldn't escape and within three times of leaving him for errands I was able to return bedding without his shredding it.  I left the power chair in place each time I left for up to 5 times of leaving him in the crate and then moved to leaving the glide rocker in front of his crate door.  I did this until Monday.  On Monday I crated him, didn't block the door and left for a quick errand to pick up my son.  He was still in his crate when I returned.  I did it a second time when I took my son home.  Today I left him again in his crate when I went to run his Rott/Mix sister Chautzie to the vet - which is the longest time to date of leaving him in an unblocked crate and returned to him calmly and quietly waiting for me.

The howling, fit throwing, door popping behavior has been replaced by a dog who willingly enters his crate, quietly lays down and is calm and waiting for me when I return.  I am not getting the howling (which we had not fully removed before the upset in his crate training) and over excited behavior on exit I used to get.  This does not mean he's crate trained for anywhere but my home just yet.  I need to take this one the road and build up his crate behavior again and again until he's crate trained - but we are making progress.

When we last left Jack he was struggling with Zen.  His drive for food was so strong that he couldn't think and thus learn.  Jack is now 18 months old and with age his ability to self contain has improved.  I started to make real progress on Zen once he returned and watched it blossom when Jack attended his first group class.

Jack took Headstart at Diamonds in the Ruff in August. I saw a huge improvement in Jack as he took this class.  Ronda and I took turns taking him into class, so I also got to chance to see his progress as he attended from one week to another in the classroom setting.  Another bonus was I was an assistant for one of his classes, so I got to see him in class all three weeks!  It was fantastic.

His Zen snapped into place after the first class he attended.  He picked it up at the Ruff House and carried it over to my home.  He also learned he could be in a busy room and still focus on me, something he had trouble doing.  On his second class he was very alert to Ronda, and was - with some difficult - able to ignore me.  Ronda was having a bad back day and Jack was alerting her to her pain and comforting her.  I took him to his third class and the dog I had taken in on the first one was refined and controlled.  He could relax and put his chin down, join in on the training, wasn't as worried about the instructors and his Zen was up to my putting treats on his feet and all around him.

Meanwhile we've worked on leash manners, focus on us while out and about and adding duration to his sit and flat.  I've also been working on his separation anxiety.  What I haven't done is an honest evaluation of where Jack is and what needs to be done next.  I'll be doing that shortly and move forward with Jack's training.

Right now Jack is attending Prep at Diamonds in the Ruff.  I will check what his homework for the week is and work on that as well so he has greater success in his classes.