I think two of us made a lot of progressthese past few days... We moved to lower valuse treats in the yard (some random dog cookies + kibble for things that I find easier for her (for example, to treat a successful ball search), and we moved to the road. I was a bit unsecure with that, knowing that she would usually start pulling in all possible dirrections and run around me in circles the moment we would step through the door. So, I left the door open and made a step oputside. just one step. had nice hot dog pieces treats with me and waited. She was a bit over excited for ferst minute or so, and then she started looking at me. and I clicked and I treated and I was happy. Our first session was just standing on one place and asking for eye contact, maybe staying in one place etc. Now, I can walk around (i'm not moving more than 20-30 meters away from my house yet, just in case I see a dog and need to get in my yard ASAP), even if the leash becomes taut, she turns back and is at my side again (I think I accidentaly shaped this behavior of turnign aroudn going around me, coming to my left side and looking at me when she feels soem pressure made by her harness). I'm really happy with that, we are now somewhere around 10 paces between every click and I think it's great.
Even when she saw a dog (no LLW here) and I lightly pulled her away (I didn't even want to try calling her, knowing she wouldn't respond at this stage, although she did look at me when I dirrected her away form the dog) she continued being quite calm. Before, if I could get her be calm outsid,e once when something triggered her, even if we moved away, even few minutes later, she would be in her excited state. I really like the fact that it's not like that any more. Maybe I became more calm to...
What I started doing is prepairing her for the walk. I don't take the dog out from the yard, into the house and then out again, now tot he road. I work with her in the yard before han, after we get out of the house, and I think it's paying off. First I let her sniff aorund a bit etc. I realized that if I don't, she'll eb just too distracted. Then, we do a bit of eye contact game, and every time, she has to do it for longer and longer time. Then, I put her in a down-stay in the garrage and I go and hide her balls omewhere and then tell her to go look for it. I did realize she had some problem with staying though so we're working on that a bit to. She loks for a ball few times, then I toss it for her a few times. Then I put her harness on and reward her for walkign close to me. at this point she's really really with me. I try toi put some shaping into this, trying to teach her to fetch a leas, just ebcause shaping really puts her in a working mood and her concentraiton is up. And when she's with me, calm and thinking, THEN we go outside.
While working with her I was thinking a lot about LLW, about how dogs behave outside, distractions, etc. And I realized that LLW training on its own, meanign teaching a dog not to pull on the leash, is something quite. i don't know, useless?. I wouldn't call it useless, but there is so much more. I clearly remember when my first dog was on a choke chain and was still a crazy youngster.. and he wouldn't pull, but he wouldn't walk with me either, when he was somewhere interesting he would be right, left, in fromt, on the side, carefull not to make the leash taut, but still quite crazy. and in the end, when he would get really excited, he would pull. Distracitons caused a lot of problem for Reeva to, she woudl so often overheard my clicks when she saw something. I talked to Turid Rugaas and I realized I couldn't do much: to work on ignoring distractions, my dog needed to walk nicely. to teach my dog to walk nifcely, she would need to ignore distractions. But, I realized I could work on both if I split them. And I decided for walk nicely to mean "be with me and don't pull in a familiar place with not much distractions around", to mean "when I attach a leash on you, you're not supposed to run like crazy". If there's a distraction and you pull it's completely OK. I don't ask her to not pull when there's something she cannot quite cope with around. But I will try to turn that thing she cannot cope with into something she can cope with. so, we're working on this at the moment:
1. leash means no running around
This is a very simple one just because I'm working without distractions, and I believe that the distractions are the biggest problem with LLW. Dog sees something and she pulls. dog smells soemthign and she pulls. I let her smell I follow her around as long as the leash is loose and we have a nice and pleasant walk.
2. stay calm after I pull you away from something that makes you excited
This one's harder, just because I can just hope she wil stay calm, try to give food and ask for eye contact hoping she'll get into the look at me game. so far it worked quite nicely and I rewarded her being calm a lot
3. that's not interesting, I'm much more fun
An obvious one that's usefull in everything, from down-stay to LLW and come. I plan on rewarding eye contact and deciding to walk with me after she sees another dog or a cat or something. I'll call her by name if i'm quite sure she'll respomnd, but for now I wait for her to offer the behavior. I know that I should work every behavior through distractions, but what i want is to make every day distractions less distracting so she could perform even new behaviors more easily around them. I don't know if I'm making a lot of sense. I gues it's some kind of desensitization to diferent stimuli although I think I'll sometimes work a bit over her treshold: enough for her to quite a bit of interest but not so much that she wouldn't decide to turn around for good treats. Maybe it's just because I'm rushing (I don't have a lopt of time to reach something one can really work with, like being able to somehow walk in one direction while there's another dog on the other side of the street), but I also want to work on her being with me. I want her to go with me even if she's into something else so I guess I'm putting two things into one...
hmm, this was a lot, but I really have to sort out what I'm trying to do cause OPften what hapenes when I try to train something serious is that I loose direction, there are to many things, I'm affraid to raise criteria etc... But I think I'm going somewhere...
writing things down also allows me to look at them more critically and I have some kind of conversation with myself in which I'm trying to defend what I'm doing. and it's interesting how, just now, I noticed that constantly, on the road I have treats in my hand and that conversation in my hand went in a bit different direction. I remembered some web forums and people looking advice there. And one voice said: "my dog won't even look at me if I don't have a treat!". and the other one said:"Sp she looks at you when you have a treat? that's great!". And I realized that If I ca have my dog do soemthing when I have a treat, I already have ma dog performing a behavior, so she can do it. it's just a matter of fading out the treat... Wow, I feel Like we can do everything now, she would nearly always (meaning if she's not franticly barking at sth) do anything for a treat :-)
