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Dog Blog Post #483: I set out to take a picture of "Texture", but it wasn't meant to be.

When I sat down at the computer, hours later, the pictures I had snapped in a hurry were both overly washed out and too dark (yeah team) and simply weren't going to work.

Plan B: See What Else was on the camera.

What Else turned out to be a series of washed out, murky, but otherwise decent shots of the boys playing fetch (who'd a thunk it?)

Hmm.... what to do with that?

Turns out the most recent prompt for Our Daily Challenge was "Black, White, and Grainy" - and thus you have the fairly heavily processed picture up top (mostly to bring out "grain".)

This also works for 111 Pictures in 2011 - "22. Black and White".

The rest of the shots were taken a few days ago, and have no purpose in life other than to (hopefully) make somebody smile...

I'm calling this the "St. Zachary" collection, as I'm pretty sure he is one of the world's most tolerant dogs.

© 2011 BZ Training - All Rights Reserved

Sit Stay

Dog Blog Post #103: OK, I’ll admit it. I'm totally baffled.

(Yes, that is a picture of a Limpet. No, I have no idea what kind of Limpet. Well, I know it is a Point Lobos Limpet – or at least, the sort of Limpet one finds at Point Lobos – but beyond that, I haven’t a clue.)

You see, after six months of Zachary clearly demonstrating his inability to hold a Sit-Stay for more than 30 seconds, he has suddenly decided to be…

(sorry)

… a Limpet.

It first sank in the other day, when he breezed through his Training Levels Four – Watch (30 seconds) while holding a sit-stay, seemingly without effort. I noticed it again during Find the Squirrel, when he has held his sit-stay during the hiding for the past two days (six successes in a row!)

It defies explanation (hence the bafflement) as I haven’t actually done anything in particular, certainly nothing I haven’t tried before over the past six months, to have caused this sudden change in behavior.

So tonight, feeling emboldened by this auspicious date (Friday the 13th?) I decided to test Training Level Four - Sit-Stay, 2 minutes, 2 distractions….

… and Snug Bug was a Limpet.

Neither tempting cookies nor a friendly Beau dog were enough to pry his little Limpet butt off its brick-path resting place.

Yes, Beau passed too, and I’m proud of him as well. But let’s face it; we all knew Beau would pass. The Big Dog could probably out Limpet a Limpet, if sufficiently motivated.

But Zachary?

Mr. Ten Seconds?

Dancing Zachary?

He just hasn’t been a sitting-there-doing-nothing kind of dog.

At least not until lately.

Perhaps, just perhaps, his Limpet genes have kicked in, and future duration activities will be a breeze!

Or not.

Dream On

One Size Fits All

I made a rookie teaching error this last week. Well, I’d like to think it was a rookie error, although truth be told I’ve been in (bad) dog classes where the instructor has made the same mistake.

It began innocently enough. The task was to get Zachary to stand right in front me with his nose pointing straight toward me and his tail pointing straight away (Sue Ailsby’s Training Levels Three - Front) Simplicity itself, right?

Right.

We began in the usual way. I stood in the kitchen with a clicker in one hand and bunch of treats in the other. I then visualized the final product (Zachary as a compass needle) and tossed a treat behind me to get things started.

While Zachary dug around under the cabinets for his morsel, I refined my mental picture a bit. I was now standing on an imaginary line running left to right. As soon as Zachary crossed that line while heading back to my front I would click and treat. Sure enough, after Hoovering up the first cookie and find no others, Zachary came trotting around to see what was up. As soon as his feet crossed my imaginary line I clicked and tossed another tidbit behind me.

We repeated this for a while with excellent results. Once I could see he was really hooked on the game, I bent my mental line at my feet, reducing his 180 degrees of success to about 120 degrees. No problems. When he didn’t come around far enough and I didn’t click, he just took another step – “Hey Mom… Hellooooooo… anybody up there?” Click. Treat… we were doing great so I called it night. Might as well end on an up note.

The next day I decided to changes things up a bit. Same goal, of course, Zachary as a compass needle, but now I was tossing the treat behind him instead of behind me. I was hoping this would keep his body straight vs. wrapping around my leg like some furry, carnivorous vine.

Worked like a charm, he came in straight as an arrow. I figured I’d be videoing this one in no time.

On day three I got fancy and turned a bit so I could toss the treats off to the side. Yes, I did try it the first time without turning and ended up on my hands and knees digging a pea-sized dog treat out of the fridge grill. Ewww.

So canted slightly sideways with respect to my kitchen, I tossed the treat to the side and waited for Zachary to return. I kept my 120-degree requirement from before (60 degrees either side of front, dead center) and held off clicks until he was within my imaginary angle. He was now shifting around a bit to the find the “sweet spot”  (see Ten Seconds and the cosmic trap door.) When his location was within my imaginary lines I would click, treat, and toss the cookie off to the side. From there I gradually started reducing my 120 degress to “move” him right in front of me. Sue’s instructions were quite clear on this point. I was–to click while the dog is in motion. In fact, here’s what she says:

“and it will be MUCH better if you click while [he’s] still in motion than if you wait until [he] stops”

And thus I made my rookie mistake. I neglected to consider my student when applying the instructions. Now had I been working with Beau, those instructions would have been dead on accurate. Clicking while Beau was stationary (or heaven forbid seated) would have created a nearly impossible to budge statue in short order.

But as my good instructor is forever reminding me, Zachary is not Beau. And so, while I thought I was teaching Zachary to move increasingly closer to front, what I was actually taught him was that shifting a little bit this way and a little bit that was what Mom wanted.

Before I knew it, I had dog that would NOT stand still. He tiptoed to the left, sashayed to the right, one step forward and two steps back.

Sue summed it best when she labeled him “Dancing Zachary”. Arg!!! I just wanted to Velcro his paws to floor. So it was back to the drawing board.

The new improved (Zachary specific) criterion is now standing STILL. Perfectly STILL. Like a rock STILL. So long as he is within about 30 degrees of center either way, and STILL, I click. A straight on front gives him a jackpot.

Just the other night I was standing in front of the TV, awaiting the pasta to boil, having just cut up some Jarlsberg cheese. Zachary loves Jarlsberg cheese.

When what to my wondering eyes did I see

But my Zachary, standing STILL as a tree.

He had come from the side - swung his rump right around

‘Till perfectly fronted, not a fault to be found!

And he heard me exclaim as I ran for the cheese,

“Stay right there, don’t you move, let me film this now – please!”

Merry Christmas!

Ten Seconds

Happy days! Zachary stared at me for ten whole seconds on Friday! Woo Hoo!!!

I’m sensing a lack of enthusiasm on your part. I know, ten seconds doesn’t sound very long, so what’s the big deal, right? Would it help if I said it was the last item left in Sue Ailsby’s Training Levels Two? How about if I added that it took us three weeks of training, ten video sessions, and over 900 seconds of video of him NOT looking at me for ten seconds in a row before I finally got those ten seconds? That despite a weeklong self-imposed moratorium I put on videoing part way through. It was just too depressing.

It’s not that nothing was done during those minutes. Oh on… in fact, “doing” was sort of the problem. During that time he must have done a hundred sits and downs. He did a fair bit of spinning (both left and right) and even tried bowing. He is darn cute when he bows, but that was not what I wanted.

All I wanted him to do was look at me – for ten seconds.

We started out easy – with an eye flick toward me. Click. Treat. How hard could this be? I think we got to two seconds within a day or so, but that was it. As soon as we hit the two-second mark he was off doing something. He brought me toys, touched imaginary things on the ground, and tried to get me to play tug.

After all, this was training time. The whole point was to DO something, right?

So we started over with an eye flick, then one second, then two, and then he would start doing something again – maybe walk around a chair, bob his head, or nudge my hand with nose.

At some point he gave up on me altogether and nudged the clicker in my hand. I’m convinced he was trying to make it click on his own. Perhaps he thought the click itself summoned the treats, or caused some cosmic trap door to open and release its bounty. He’s very into the magic of training.

Back to an eye flick, then one second, then two, and then he decided that the problem must be where he was standing. He tried inching forward, tried walking backward, and even tried moving from side to side. Sometimes he moved a lot, sometimes just a paw. It was like he was searching for some hidden trigger in the floor (back to that cosmic trap door theory.)

Never has so much been done when so little was required.

In contrast, it took Beau about ten seconds to learn the task. Beau’s default behavior – what he does when he doesn’t know what else to do – is first to freeze, and then bark. Since he freezes for more than 10 seconds (just in case I change my mind and give him the cookies anyway) this was as easy skill to teach. I’d stand there and look at him. He’d freeze and look up at me (probably praying for cookies from heaven) and after ten seconds a click would occur, his prayers would be answered, and the cookies would fall.

Beau could do this all day.

Zachary’s default behavior is to lie down (so far so good) then sit up (not ideal, but not a problem so long as he is still looking at me) then lie down (we are now at the two second mark)… and then try everything else he can think of. He could have crammed every trick he knows into those ten seconds, and he knows a fair number of tricks. It was just beyond his comprehension that all I wanted him to do was nothing.

We got there eventually; one second at a time, one day at a time, one week at a time, and I really think he has it down. I sure hope so. The next level requires him to look at me for triple that time. Thirty seconds - just think of all the things he could do.