Training Tuesday: The Lazy Trainer Edition

She'd rather relax on the couch.

Do you ever just have lazy training weeks?

I hope I’m not alone in this, but every couple of months, I just don’t feel like training. Don’t get me wrong- I love training- but sometimes it starts to feel like more of a chore than something I enjoy. I hope it’s good for Maisy, too. I know dogs need downtime, and I’ve read about big-name trainers who give their dogs blocks of time off, so I don’t feel too guilty about it.

Anyway, that’s pretty much the summary of the last two weeks: a break. I even skipped class last week! We’ve done a bit of training here and there, but not much. For example, I’ve only done two relaxation sessions with Maisy.

Previously, I talked about moving to Day Zero of the Relaxation Protocol, which is really just mat work. You guys made some great suggestions in the comments, so I took them! We all agreed that I needed to change the picture from training mode to relaxing mode, so I’ve been waiting until Maisy begins to relax on her own in the evenings. Then I set her mat on the floor next to the couch and direct her to it. This allows me to keep the picture mostly the same- I’m not making eye contact with her, she’s already mostly relaxed, the only change is the addition of the mat.

The first time, it took her three to four minutes just to settle on the mat. She kept getting off it to sit by me on the couch, where she would promptly lie down. The second time, she settled on to the mat quicker, but she was still very “operantly relaxed.” I really think the mat has become a cue to “work” versus relaxing. Still, all four feet were touching the ground (usually, she’ll have several legs sticking straight out, stiff as a board), so she was at least more relaxed than usual.

I have two ideas to address this, and I’m not sure which to pursue. I’m hoping you guys can help me! First, if the mat is a cue to work, maybe I should change the mat. The problem with this is that she seems to have generalized her fake relaxation to any mat-type object, and I’m not sure how else to change the picture. My second idea is to move the mat. She almost never relaxes on the floor next to the couch. Instead, she chooses to lie on the couch next to me. Perhaps putting the mat there would help me get better results. Or maybe I could do both somehow?

We have done a bit of obedience stuff, though. In my last goals update, I said that we hadn’t really worked much on heeling or fronts, and that I probably wouldn’t. But, I felt kind of sad about that. I don’t know if Maisy will ever trial again, but there’s no reason not to train just in case! So, I’ve been working on calling Maisy into heel position from multiple angles, focusing on her being straight. She’s no longer over-compensating and ending up crooked when I do pivots, so that’s cool. We’re also working on straight fronts. I’m pretty impressed by how well she’s doing, even though we haven’t worked on it much.

Anyway, that’s what we’ve been up to. We’re going to class tonight, and hopefully I’ll figure out how to tackle this relaxation stuff so we can start working on it again. Let me know what you think…

2010 Goals: First Quarter Update!

So, it’s been three months since I set my 2010 dog training goals, and I thought it would be nice to evaluate our progress so far. Overall, there’s been some great successes, some moderate progress, and a few places where I’ve dropped the ball entirely.

Goal: Complete the relaxation protocol.
Progress: We did the relaxation protocol daily for several weeks, getting to the point where I was ready to progress to the “second day” of the protocol… but then petered out.
Looking Forward: Doing the relaxation protocol is a bit boring, especially to do it every day. This quarter I’ll try to work on it once or twice a week.

Goal: Increase Maisy’s physical exercise.
Progress: I feel like we made a ton of progress here! Unfortunately, the numbers disagree: I walked Maisy 47 out of 90 days, which is a success rate of only 52%. Still, this does include the month of January, when we had sub-zero temperatures for the first two weeks, as well as the two weeks at the beginning of March when I had pneumonia.
Looking Forward: I am anticipating even more progress next quarter. The thing that really surprises me here is how much I love walking Maisy. I actually tried to walk her while I had pneumonia because I missed it so much.

Goal: Develop novice obedience stays.
Progress: None. Haven’t even tried. Oops!
Looking Forward: I would like to spend some of my Five Times Challenge time on this goal.

Goal: Improve heeling so that we can complete a novice-level heeling pattern.
Progress: I’ve really built a lot of attention into her heeling. I’m getting excellent eye contact through the first several steps of heeling, and she often offers a nice, attentive heel during the off-leash portion of our walks.
Looking Forward: I’m hoping to continue to build these skills. First, I need to work on improving duration. Then, I want to work on reducing food treats. Finally, I’ll need to drop the verbal encouragement, as well. That’s three sub-goals, and I have three quarters of the year left. Neat!

Goal: From heel position, hit the proper front position on the first try.
Progress: Some progress seen. She’s usually getting heel position on the first or second try, but not yet from heel position.
Looking Forward: I’d like to spend some of my Five Times Challenge time on this goal, too.

Goal: Develop jumping skills for a recall over high and directed jumping.
Progress: I was able to send her over a jump from heel position during a trial in February, and one of those times, we were six feet away- the required distance to avoid taking a 3 point deduction!
Looking Forward: I learned at the Suzanne Clothier seminar that due to Maisy’s structure, jumping will probably never be her strong suit. We’ll continue to work on it in small pieces, and I think a jump or two will be doable for her.

Goal: Reduce ring nerves.
Progress: I did get through a trial without using stomach medications, which was a huge improvement! I did this by using Rescue Remedy. Unfortunately, I was so nervous that the judge actually took me aside and had me smell an essential oil to help me relax a little. Oops.
Looking Forward: I have an appointment at the end of April to get hypnotized to help deal with my ring stress. Hopefully it helps, but if not, I suspect I’ll talk with the therapist about some visualization and other exercises to incorporate.

Goal: Complete ARCH.
Progress: Maisy completed her Level 2 title in February, which was the first step towards the ARCH.
Looking Forward: She already has enough Level 1 points, so we just need 40 Level 2 points and 5 QQs. I don’t think we’ll actually achieve all that this year unless we travel, and that, of course, is going to be dependent on whether or not I can get my ring nerves under control.

Goal: Get one leg towards a CD (any venue).
Progress: None officially, but we are working on the skills necessary (heeling, etc.).
Looking Forward: I’ll probably try St. Hubert’s CDSP program first. The problem with that is that the only local trials are held in conjunction with APDT rally… and that might be too much for one day since I want to work on her QQs then.

Training Plan- Results!

I've spent just over a week working on the training plan I created. Here are the results:

Exercise: Get-ins
Criteria: Sit straight when in heel position
Data: During the first trial, she succeeded 40% of the time. On the final trial, she succeeded 80% of the time.
Notes: Interestingly, this was the only set of data the reflected steady upward growth. All of the other exercises went up and down day to day.

Exercise: Attention heeling
Criteria: Maintain eye contact with the first step of heeling
Data: The data here was all over the place, starting at 90%, dropping to 50% and then returning to 90%.
Notes: I am unsure what her true ability is here as I just don't have that much data. Part of it was complicated by the fact that I was working on two elements of heeling- separately, but still, I think this made things a bit messier. Sometimes she got clicked for the eye contact, and sometimes she didn't. I think this could be made much clearer if I just worked on one aspect. And, I believe Laura said that in the comments, as well. Laura is massively talented; I should have listened.

Exercise: Fronts
Criteria: Sit straight and roughly centered (between my feet)
Data: She started at 60% and ended at 50%. In the middle, however, she tested at 60% or 70%.
Notes: This is the only set of data that I do not feel is an accurate representation of her abilities. During training, I would guess she is at closer to 90%. I'm not sure why the test was so poor today.

Exercise: Duration heeling
Criteria: 300 peck heeling, more or less
Data: The first day we did approximately 50 feet without a treat while maintaining attention. Today, we did approximately 120 feet without a treat while maintaining attention, and I think she could have gone further.
Notes: I am unhappy with how this was tested. Since I didn't want to set her up for failure, I didn't push her until she quit, so I never got the full sense of her abilities. Also, I didn't get fun percentages. I like percentages.

I really enjoyed doing this. I like charts and checklists and such, so I often write training goals, but this is the first time that I've written out exactly what my criteria is as well as tracked the results. I definitely want to do this again!

Revised Training Plan

In my last post, I set up a training plan for the next fortnight. Laura and I had a nice conversation in the comments about my criteria on heeling, and as I've both worked with Maisy and thought about what she said, I've revised my plan slightly. I'm still training each exercise for 2 minutes, but I've changed some of the criteria and testing slightly.

Exercise: "Get-ins" (sitting in heel position)
Criteria: Sit straight. Position and closeness do not count.
Testing Method: Put Maisy in heel position. Pivot 90 degrees to the left. If Maisy sits straight, click and treat. If not, try again. See how many trials out of ten she does correctly.
Notes: Unchanged from original (but I've seen a 20% increase!).

Exercise: Eye contact during first step of heeling.
Criteria: Maisy must maintain eye contact when I take the first step of heeling.
Testing Method: Put Maisy in heel position and get eye contact (she offers it the vast majority of the time). Step off. If Maisy maintains eye contact for the first step, click and treat. If not, try again. See how many trials out of ten she does correctly.
Notes: This is a pretty big change. Originally, I said I wanted to do 300 peck heeling with eye contact, but I've changed my mind. I don't want eye contact the entire time, just during the first step, and then intermittently afterwards.*

Exercise: Fronts
Criteria: Maisy must sit straight in front of me. She doesn't have to be centered or close, but she does need to be between my feet (so, generally centered).
Testing Method: I call Maisy front, and then pivot 90 degrees to the right. If she moves and sits straight in front of me, I click and treat. If not, I try again. See how many trials out of ten she does correctly.
Notes: Same as originally set up.

Exercise: Heeling with duration.
Criteria: Maisy will maintain attention* while heeling.
Testing Method: I am teaching this one with the 300 peck heeling, except the pecks don't correlate with a single step but rather in roughly 8-10 foot increments. (The reason these increments vary is because I have a large circular route I can follow through my house. Well, it's more of a square, really, and each side of the square varies slightly.) So, I set off in heel, and if Maisy is attentive for one side of the square, I click and treat. Then we do 2 sides, click and treat, then 3, and so on. If she loses her attention at any point, I start over at one side. We do this for two minutes during the training phase. During the test, we work backwards. We try for 3 sides. If she makes it, the test is complete. If not, we try for 2, and so. I record how many sides she completes during the test.
Notes: I know this sounds complicated, but it's not, really. The reason I chose to do it this way is because I wanted to set her up for success. Previously I was going to see how far she could go until she lost attention, but that meant that in order to measure her progress, I had to wait for her to fail. This way, I can build on success, and then test to see if she maintains what she achieved during the training phase. If she doesn't, I lower the criteria and try again. This way, she is always rewarded for doing well, and thus is set up for success.

*Laura rightly pointed out that I had two different criteria for heeling: eye contact and duration, and you're never supposed to work on two criteria at once. Since I don't want eye contact for the entire time we're heeling, it was kind of pointless to do 300 peck heeling with eye contact. Still, I need Maisy to pay attention during heeling, so I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about what attention looks like if she's not making eye contact. I'll post later this week about why I don't want constant eye contact, when I do expect eye contact, and what "attention" looks like. (Sorry to be such a tease, but it really deserves its own post!)

Training Plan!

One thing this weekend really drove home to me is that I've been incredibly complacent in our training. Oh, sure, I train a lot, but I suck at raising criteria. This is kind of silly, because I understand ways to do this: click only better efforts, ask for more duration before clicking, etc. And yet...

So, I've devised a new training plan for the next two weeks. I chose two weeks as my timeline for two reasons. First, we have a trial in two weeks, so I'd like to see some improvements before then! And second, because it seems like a nice amount of time to reassess our progress.

In addition to devising a training plan, I've also developed a method to track our success, so that at the end of our two weeks, I can see exactly how much progress we've made. (This also appeals to my geeky graph-making side.)

I'm going to work on four main behaviors. I will work on them in two minute increments (I have a timer and everything, and let me tell you, two minutes is a LONG time), once or twice a day. The behaviors are:

1. Sitting in heel position ("get-ins"). The criteria for a click is that she is sitting STRAIGHT. In the future, I'll work on straight AND the correct position, and then add in closeness. For now, though, she just has to be straight. I chose this as the criteria because she often wraps around me or sits crooked. The way I'm going to train this is to do 90 degree pivots (then 180, then 270, then 360) in both directions (working on one direction at a time, and eventually including finishes), clicking only for straight sits.

2. Heeling with eye contact. I'm going to use the 300 peck heeling method. I do not require strict eye contact for heeling in general, however, I am going to require eye contact for the first 5-10 feet because I often lose her at the first step.

3. Straight fronts. The criteria is that she must be sitting straight. Okay, there's a second one: she must be sitting straight, and somewhere between my two feet. Closeness and centeredness doesn't matter; as long as she's sitting straight, she'll get the click. I'll reset the exercise by pivoting 90 degrees (and then 180, etc.) to the right (and later the left).

4. Duration heeling. My house is laid out such that I can make a giant circle through five different rooms, for a total of about 40-50 feet. The criteria here is that she stays roughly in heel position (position and closeness don't matter much as long as she's roughly at my left side) and paying attention. I won't require eye contact, but I will require signs of attention- ear set, head position, etc. It's hard to describe, but I know it when I see it.

I'd also really like to work on fast pace heeling as well, but I have no idea how to teach it. Ideas? I've tried throwing toys and treats ahead of us, and she's terrified of a target stick... I'm not sure what else to do, other than just click and treat when she changes speed with me. And... maybe that's enough? Thoughts?

After we've done our training session(s) for the day, I'll wait at least 30 minutes, and then do a test so that I get some data. For the fronts and get-ins, I'll do ten trials and count the number of clicks she gets. I'll increase the difficulty when she gets a 90% success rate.

For the two heeling exercises, I'll do one trial, and measure the distance she covers before failing (and then, of course, do an easier version so she ends on a good note). I'm a bit uncertain about doing the test this way- I hate to set her up to fail- but it seems like the best way to see what her maximum duration is each day. Any thoughts on this?

I won't be updating this every day, but here's today's baseline:
1. Get-ins (left, 90 degrees): 40%
2. Attention heeling: 2 steps
3. Straight fronts (re-set with a 90 degree pivot to the right): 60%
4. Duration heeling: 1.25 laps

I'm really pleased with how well she picked up the attention heeling for even one step. I've never required that before, and she's never really offered it either, so it's cool that I got two steps! I'm also surprised by the number of straight fronts she got. I did feel that she was frustrated with the duration heeling, which means it's good I'm working on this, although I'll need to be careful not to raise that criteria too fast.

Anyway, I'd love some feedback! Does this sound reasonable? Is there anything you'd do differently, or not at all? Let me know!