Safety Dog Class

Well, now I know just how well my resolution to post a weekly blog is going to go. Here's a quick update on two weeks' worth of work, mostly to help me figure out where to go from here with Kaia's training. Caspian and I finished our Reactive Dog class and we have a few weeks before we do it all over again. I'm trying to control my disappointment - I knew we'd be repeating the class, but it was still frustrating to hear all my classmates discussing their next plans.

Anyway, onto my "good dog." Kaia and I had a horrible time in Safety Dog in our first week of class, because she'd been too busy being an absolute angel during an orientation right before our class. I want to get her more accustomed to being at work with me without being the center of attention, so she came with me for a human-only orientation I teach for our clients who are going into private training. I used her for a couple of demos, but for the most part her job was cruising around to say hi to our clients, and being quiet while we discussed clicker training.

She was awesome! A tiny, tiny bit of crying every 20 minutes or so, with no other issues. I treated her for staying near my chair, but didn't require anything of her except during the demos. However, it's clear that her ability to be in a stressful environment still caps out around an hour and a half. We made it about 15 minutes into our class before I decided to take her home.

So, that means we came in this week having fallen behind our other classmates. Not a huge deal, we've already been working on a lot of the "tricks" learned in Safety Dog (SD) class. (Just a quick explanation, SD class teaches dogs to perform behaviors that make their owners feel safer. Kaia is learning to turn a push light on and off, bark and growl on cue, stand behind me while I lock or unlock a door, and search my car or house. I also need to teach her one more trick, but I don't know what to teach her.)

On Wednesday, we came in and did our best to catch up. Mostly, last week's 15 minutes of class consisted of playing "look at the dog" with the dogs in class - Kaia is much better than she was when I first got her, but she's still not always dog friendly, and neither are several other dogs in our class. This week's "look at that" went much better - no more hard stares, and she was much more responsive to her click. She was even willing to focus on me while everyone practiced barking and growling, which is understandably a huge distraction for her!

She currently has a cue called "Be nice," which was supposed to be our scary growling on cue. "Be nice," however, is an adorable, silly behavior in which she barks, growls, playbows, and wags her tail in huge helicopter circles at me. I love it, and I'm keeping it. But if I want a cue that can help me keep people at a distance, I'm going to need to go for something a little less playful. Right now, we're using the intermediate cue of "grrrr" and clicking and treating any vocalization that isn't accompanied by a play bow. It seems to be going all right, but we've always struggled with discrimination between cues. I think we might lose "Be nice" if we get this other growl. And really, what I'd like is to flip my cues: have "Be nice" as a 'scary' growl and something else for the playful stuff.

We also worked on turning the light on. I have to say, I'm definitely a ham when my dog and I are ahead of the rest of the class! Not everyone has a light yet, or knows how they're going to teach this. Kaia's default behavior when I put an unfamiliar thing on the ground is to pounce on it or whack it with a paw, so the push light hasn't been much of a problem for us. We had an initial session or two with some frustration while she learned that she can't just touch it to earn the click, but she need to touch it hard enough to make the light turn on or off.

Now we have a problem that I think is absolutely adorable! She's hitting it over and over again, and I have to be /really/ good with the timing of my click, or I end up with a strobe light. I think I might try to add distance next - I'm hoping that we'll fade out the multiple taps because she'll hit it once then want to come back to where the treats are. If that doesn't work, then I'll work on just hitting it once.

We've made zero progress on searching things, because I forgot my search item. I'll be curious to see how this goes. I think it will be all right, because we aren't asking her to pick anything up. We've had a horrible time working on "take it" because she has, so far, only been willing to take very high value items from me with her mouth. Since she doesn't have much interest in toys, and she almost exclusively offers to push things with her nose or whack them with a paw, I think we'll work on her finding the item, without worrying about what she does with it. I'd like to keep working on an actual retrieve, but I'll do that separately. That said, if she picks up the search item, it will earn her a jackpot.

Standing behind me is a tricky one. She's reluctant to go behind me at all - she'll go around my body with a target stick, but we're struggling to fade it out, and she won't go between my legs at all. I've had decent luck in the past, using educational praise when she does something. (I told her "good bow" for two weeks whenever she play bowed, and now she has the behavior on cue.) I'm thinking I might put her in a sit freeze and put myself into the correct position, then give educational praise, "good lookout," and see how it goes.

I am completely at a loss for what to do as her last trick. Maybe I'll have her stand in front of me, so I can have "look out" behind me and some other cue for standing between me and something in front of me. I've been toying with the idea of teaching her a "mark" behavior - we're currently clicking and treating for looking at a post-it note on a nearby wall, I figure I can then fade out the post-it in a variety of ways to get some nice behaviors where she's not looking at me while she works.

I had forgotten how much fun it is to have such a relatively stress-free class experience. I mean, there might be a problem if the dogs in class got really close to one another, but since we're all working at a distance, it's a real pleasure. I love Caspian, but Reactive Dog classes are really stressful. Being able to relax and play with Kaia in class this week was great, I'm actually looking forward to next Wednesday!