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(Man angrily shakes finger at dog, while dog happily wags tail at man.) at The Cartoon Bank
I’ve been working with Jellybean wagging her tail on cue but Brit just ALWAYS wags her tail so how cute if she were to do it when I was saying, “no no bad dog” and shaking my finger at her?
I have a friend who is very into tarot and various spiritual pursuits and he asked me this morning when we were IMing if he could do a tarot reading on Jellybean. I copied and pasted most of the conversation into a post with his permission just because, although I do not believe in tarot readings or horoscopes (although I do check mine regularly!) or whatnot, I did find it an interesting way to think about things.
If you are interested in having a reading done on your own pet, you can contact quelsen via twitter or email him with the subject of Animal Tarot.
This is an edited version of the conversation.
quelsen: i am sort of getting that she doesnt want to be trained justs wants to be with you. but i want to ask somemore
quelsen: infact that training is too stressfull for her
barrie: what about the fighting w/ brit?
quelsen: working on that one now
barrie: right now she is wearing a gentle leader and a leash and is under my chair
barrie: i’m sure she would rather not have to wear the gl
barrie: but again, I cannot have her kill brit
barrie: i think she LIKES the clicker training and the frisbee stuff
barrie: i think she views that as a game
quelsen: ok i have asked this several times, how can brit and JB live in peace and harmony
quelsen: and I get that you have to train brit to fawn on jb. and that it will take training on both parts and that you are the magician here.
quelsen: also there needs to be a peace offering
barrie: what???
quelsen: i personally wanted another answer
barrie: brit will NOT fawn over jb
barrie: that just is not going to happen
quelsen: i know that
quelsen: which is why i kept asking
quelsen: how frustrating
quelsen: essentially brit has more range and abilites than JB
quelsen: JB is so hurt by her loss [initially quelson told me that Jellybean was mourning the “loss” of a male littermate and that having him back in her life would completely settle her] that she has a very narrow choice of actions
quelsen: her best action is to just be near you and be loved and minimally trained
quelsen: i visuallized training britt to share her stuff with jb
quelsen: like britt taking her toys and shit
barrie: does she dislike the clicker/treat training as well? or is that just fun time w/ me and she doesn’t see it as training?
quelsen: jb knows it is traingin and still sees it as fun interpersonal time
barrie: ok good
barrie: so it is just the gentle leader she is objecting to
barrie: which i can understand
quelsen: she does not want to kill brit
quelsen: she is aware that can kill britt
quelsen: sometimes she sees brit as a threat to her life and sometime she is playing
barrie: does jb have any feelings about the prozac?
quelsen: are you wanting to know if she wants it or are you asking if it is currently affecting her can you be more clear
barrie: both of those
barrie: like does she like how she feels on it or does she hate it or what?
quelsen: ok i was guided to pull 4 cards let me get the book so i can make a comment
quelsen: wow , ok. King of cups. King of swords, Ace of wands, 10 of wands
quelsen: Prozac makes her (1) more calm and peaceful, (2) raises her cognitive abilites (3) give her a chance to lean and be more creative ( 4) feels like a weight has been lifted from her that she could not bear
quelsen: i woudl try teaching her new tricks
barrie: WOW
barrie: that is GREAT
barrie: i wasn’t noticing much effect lol
barrie: what i see w/ the biting brit is two issues
barrie: 1. sometimes it is resource guarding of me
barrie: 2. when jb gets immensely frustrated/over-aroused she will immediately run to brit to bite her neck
quelsen: cards say it is not resource guarding
barrie: ok
barrie: then what is it when they are under my feet and quarrelling?
quelsen: mostly just scared
quelsen: and the prozac shoudl help with some of that
barrie: resource guarding can be fear based
quelsen: brit seems ten feet tall to her
This is a BAT session with Jellybean going to my mother who is a relatively “safe” person for Jellybean with the reward being bacon and chest rubs.
Sorry I had the camera set for indoor lighting so the video is hideously overexposed but in general I feel very good about this session! I feel like I was relaxed and kept Jellybean well under threshold and she had a positive experience - she got BACON so how much better does it get?!?
I think, in all, we did about 6 or 7 reps (there were a few initially where you could only see my mother’s knee which I deleted from this cut.)
It is VERY clear to me that her chest is the ONE spot where Jellybean actively appreciates being touched by people. One of my concerns with asking people to pet her on her chest is that most people will be standing and that that puts them in a looming position to reach down to touch her chest. I did get a very slight cued “wag” which is something I have been working on in hopes that it would change her emtotional response to being touched by people other than me.
Someone on the Clicker Solutions Yahoo Group was having trouble teaching her dog to go to a mat and I said I would do a video with Max, the German Shepherd Dog currently living at my house - Max is a lovely, neutered six year old dog who really needs a person of his own if anyone is interested in adopting him! It seems that her issues with the go to mat were resolved yesterday with a Kay Laurence or Sue Ailsbery solution but I still thought it would be fun to do a little video of my doing the Leslie McDevitt Control Unleashed exercise.
This is Max’s fifth or sixth clicker session and only his third go to mat session with a week at a kennel in between the second and third sessions.
And then the old fashioned, with body pressure go to bed with my 6 year old Jack Russell Terrier, Britney. I taught Brit to go to bed when she was a baby and have not done it in recent memory. Notice that I do not use the clicker in this video at all.
And finally, Jellybean doing again the Control Unleashed version.
With Max, to me it looks like I am training with a clicker rather than clicker training. I don’t know if it is because Max is not my dog or that he is just not a very smart dog at all or that I didn’t have particularly great reinforcers or that he’s come off of a week at the kennel with limited interaction with people or if we were just having an off day. I mean, he did fine. I am satisfied with his behavior but we were getting sits and then downs within 2 or 3 minutes in the first two sessions and it took him 13 minutes to lie down this time. My timing wasn’t stellar with Max and he doesn’t understand a clicker well enough for me to be able to get away with not having my timing down.
At any rate, I found the three different dogs and two styles of training an interesting comparison and hope that anyone else out there finds it useful or interesting :-)
….training.
Sundays are the perfect day to teach your dog a silly or useful or fun behavior. You have the entire day to yourself. I stopped by Home Depot this morning while I was out doing a pet sit and picked up a light switch for 75 cents to work on teaching Jellybean to turn specifically my bedroom light off and on.
I don’t usually finish my Sunday training projects. I started this morning with teaching Jellybean to jump on a chair placed just under my bedroom light switch and will sit down to work on the flipping the switch behavior tonight but if that is as far as we get? That is fine. To me Sunday training projects are less about completing a trained behavior and more about doing something fun with my dog and building our learning relationship.
I did not quite get the photo I wanted from this photo session. I did not have the thought to put Brit in the pot on top of the stove until the last minute. I forgot that Heidi won’t wear a hat and Jellybean knocked the celery and carrots down into the roasting pan so you can’t see them and then Abby’s hat blocked Jellybean anyway.
I actually cleaned my oven just for this photo! Jellybean would NOT lie down in the roasting pan. I’ve been taking group, costumed photos of the daily dogs for several years.
What I have learned in the last five years of taking goofy photos of various dogs is to expect the unexpected! Some dogs just will not wear hats..ahem…Heidi! The yellow lab in many of these photos is Butter who cannot take any pressure, she completely shuts down, so I have learned that I cannot raise my voice even in the slightest while doing this even if I am horribly annoyed. As a result, the entire time I am getting the dogs positioned (hint, place your best staying dogs first) I keep up a running low “goooooood gooooood staaaaaay gooooood veeeeery goooood staaaaaay” Does it help? I don’t honestly know but I do know that if I don’t keep saying it I am more likely to yell and then it all falls apart. Of course, it usually falls apart at some point anyway :-)
Have a very happy and safe Halloween everyone!
I am not going to wear red hats with purple. I am going to clicker train beautiful, soothing Koi that don’t bark or need fetch sessions or to be walked :-)
The Bubble Blog » Halfway Hoop
Jellybean got Brit last night but no blood so I only count those incidents as 1/2 a fight (I keep track on my calendar and we’ve had one other 1/2 fight a few weeks ago but no blood since August 11th) but then Max, the visiting GSD jumped Jellybean…sigh. No blood with that either but the entire situation was upsetting and unnerving.
Sometimes I forget how fun it is to just goof off with the dogs for 1/2 an hour or so. I have a friend’s German Shepherd Dog staying with me right now for seriously remedial leash walking but I have discovered what I believe to be as the root of the issue: he never ever looks at your face. Ever.
Before I can fix the leash walking issues I need this dog to make some kind of connection with me.
I’ve been reading Control Unleashed which I am oddly having some trouble getting through. I generally can’t put any new training book down but I have to MAKE myself read 1/2 a chapter of CU. I am only on the third chapter and have already found loads of useful information but something about the way it is presented is a total turnoff to me as a reader although I am not sure what or why.
I have always hated the idea of putting “look at me” on a cue. I want that to be the default for the dogs in my life and it is with my dogs and my daily dog clients. I just randomly reinforce eye contact with all of them but I love Ms. McDevitt’s exercise for getting extended eye contact and played the game with Max this morning. I held a bit of hot dog in my closed hand and just waited for him to look anywhere but at my hand…click. The dog will eventually give you at least a teensy micro-second of eye contact….click…jackpot. I was getting a full second of eye contact by the end of a 5 minute session at which point Max gave into the stress of actually learning and wandered away despite my bowl of hot dogs. He’s a shepherd, he’s stressy. So far as I know this was his first ever clicker training session in all of his six years!
Brit has been staying home most of the week so I took her with me to the store to get some beer cheese and pepcid…I know if I gave up one I wouldn’t need the other!
I have been trying to make it a habit to always take a minute to throw the ball for Brit when she comes with me nicely off lead from the car to the backyard to motivate her to pay attention to me so I sat on the stoop and played ball with Brit for about 10 minutes selectively reinforcing her for better returns or SPTs prior to a throw, etc. She was so engaged! I forget how much ball drive that dog has. I love her but she is wasted on me I know.
We came in and I put Brit in the living room to cool down for a minute and brought Jellybean into the kitchen to deal with her fear of the flexi lead handle. It is getting ridiculous. Jellybean walks beautifully on a leash, really more so than any of my dogs since I didn’t get her until after I was a professional pet sitter/dog walker so she grew up walking with all the daily dogs. The problem is that if I need to stop to scoop, I ask everyone to sit and I set the flexi leads beside them and Jellybean completely panics about it. I decided that some CC/DS was definitely in order and grabbed my clicker, a bowl of hot dogs and the flexi lead. I clicked Jellybean for any interaction with the flexi lead at all for about 10 minutes.
It took me longer to write this post than it did to 1. engage with the dogs in my life and 2. teach them each something and now I have three dogs curled up on pillows and beds on the kitchen floor with tummies full of treats and some mental and physical energy burned off :-) Go play with your dogs!!!
I was VERY excited when I came home on Friday and found my Amazing Treat Machine (TAMT) had arrived! I read about TATM on the Raise a Green Dog Blog (RAGDB) but now re-reading that post I am wondering if the writer had actually set up and used it personally.
The RAGDB is primarily about the eco friendlyness of products and on that front I would rate TAMT a 10 out of 10. TAMT is also a very clever idea: Simply fold some cardboard into shape and stick an empty water bottle in the pre-cut hole to dispense treats.
However, my experience with TATM was neither fun nor simple.
My complaints about the product:
My dogs might not be the best test since they are:
Could I train my dogs to us TAMT successfully? I feel positive that I could. Do I have any desire to do so? No.
I found the idea appealing on a variety of fronts: the simplicity of the product and the novelty of the dogs using one object to interact with another object to achieve a goal.
I have no desire to invest the time in teaching them to use it properly and I do not want to make my dogs stop trying things on their own with food puzzles since they are so incredibly useful in diverting energy with high drive dogs.
I intended to do trials with my two girls as well as the German Shepherd Dog, Max, who is currently at casa Barrie for some remedial loose leash walking lessons. But since Max doesn’t even understand the cue “sit” I decided not to bother with him.
If anyone wants to try it out, leave a request in the comments and I am happy to pass it along :-)
I have a serious love/hate thing going with video. Every time I tried to convert the .mov file it screwed up the audio so that what I was babbling about did not even remotely match what was happening. I finally just decided to upload the raw .mov file. I should really get a flip ultra at the very least since I am using my digital still camera for the videos I do.
I also both love and hate how glaringly obvious it is to me that I am screwing up when I watch videos since on the one hand I absolutely know that watching the retrieve training videos of myself really cleaned up my clicker work but it is just appalling to see how awful it is and never mind the normal girl “oh I look soooo FAT” kind of stuff and my hair is NOT that light ;-)
Next complaint is that after these repetitions the next time we walked into the clinic Jellybean detoured towards the desk area in the hall in front of the other exam rooms where there were two techs working on computers.
Jellybean is afraid of people and I didn’t feel like we were making a ton of progress in the room so I decided to allow her to work in the hallway where we had two people who know about Jellybean’s issues who were being mostly stationary so we could move towards and away from them at our will.
Gee Barrie, couldn’t you have moved the camera into the hallway so we could see it? I DID! I even asked the two techs if they minded the camera being on them! Apparently I turned the camera off in the process and never turned it back on….sigh.
The most glaring fault on my part that I see in the video is that I am not anywhere near dynamic enough with Jellybean. I’m just standing there and babbling incessantly. That has to be just meaningless noise to Jellybean which, it would stand to reason, makes her less likely to actually listen to me when I have something important to say to her.
I am also still really struggling with determining criteria for BAT with Jellybean. Remember that my ultimate goal is using BAT to help Jellybean make the decision to allow someone other than me to touch her.
My idea for our next session is to do the hallway again but have one of the girls bend as though she is going to pet Jellybean (Jellybean remained calm all while the girls were walking around us so I looking to up the ante a bit) and then immediately we will walk (I won’t even pretend we’re running since if you watch the video you can see how sloooooowly I am moving in all of this…sigh) back out of the clinic for a treat.
You might also notice that I don’t touch Jellybean a lot in the video. Jellybean is often itchy and I think that makes being petted somewhat unpleasant to her. She will decide she wants a cuddle and rub all over me or climb into my lap sometimes but if she doesn’t solicit it, I pat rather than rub.
So the things I see that I am doing wrong are:
To me, it seems easier and makes more sense to do BAT in a more natural way like we got with the workmen putting in the back door at my house. I’m not loving the completely artificial set ups. It is funny because my twitterpal, Deborah Flick, is complaining that she can’t manage more artificial settings with her girl, Sadie, when that is what she thinks would do the trick.
I am sure the BAT list will have more things I am doing incorrectly and hopefully some more suggestions for us for our next session.
