Training Tuesday

Thanks for your very thoughtful comments yesterday. I had no idea how many people had experienced similar feelings about a parent's death as I have. You helped me see how many people never stop grieving a beloved parent and that many of you have experienced a feeling of disquiet when your age approached the age of your parent's death.

Today is training update day. Shyla has had a stupendous week of training. We had a few fabulous trips into town, visiting shopping areas and the spooky park where the skateboards scared her so much last time she was there. She handled everything in stride during socialization this week although she was not tested by skateboards. She was tested by a hand-truck in the vet's lobby, and she declined to go anywhere near it. That was fine because she bounced back from her initial fear so quickly that the hand-truck fear didn't affect anything else about our outing.

We visited a pet supply shop that was the first shop that Shyla was ever willing to enter last fall. This week, she and I wandered the shop, doing obedience practice in some aisles, meeting nice people and dogs, and browsing their treat department. When I went to the register to pay, the owner of the shop said that she'd been watching us, and, if she hadn't seen Shyla last fall, she would've thought that Shyla was a perfectly well adjusted dog with very few fears. In celebration, she gave us a bag of home-baked treats to take home! It was wonderful to get that external validation that we are making big progress!

At home, we kept working on old tricks and new tricks. On one evening walk, it was just me and Shyla (the boys were running), and she did a prolonged off-leash heel despite many distractions. I was very proud of her because I consider off-leash heeling to be a critical part of staying safe during our hikes and bike rides. I'm still working on teaching her to heel next to my bike - that's more of a challenge but we'll get it eventually!

We practiced her "relax" cue in all sorts of places.

She now needs rarely needs guiding with my hands to get into position. I can stand up straight and say "relax", and she lies on her side. She is so smart!

We started working on her rolling from one side to the other. So, she starts out in a "relax" on her right side, then rolls over into the "relax" position on her left side. She still needs a lot of guidance in the form of hand movements from me. I hope that we can strengthen that behavior in the coming week.

We have expanded her retrieve so that she'll pick up and return a variety of objects. A piece of PVC pipe...

A screwdriver...

She didn't always look happy about holding the screwdriver!

And, a brush...

She still is leery of holding metal objects with her mouth so that's on our "to do" list. I also want to practice fun retrieving games outdoors. Now, when she's calm, she retrieves beautifully. But, after a few repeats, she gets so excited that she forgets to return the object to me and instead zooms in circles around me. I think that if I move away from her excitedly after she picks up the object, I may be able to shape a fast and fun retrieve, even when she's excited.

Shyla has started creating her own tricks, which is one of the most fun parts of clicker training - dogs are not afraid to try out new behaviors. As you know, I've taught her to "take a bow".

Separately, I've taught her to rest her chin on the ground.

To my surprise, she decided to combine the two tricks, taking a bow with her chin on the ground! I gave her a jackpot of treats to teach her that creativity is encouraged!

An even funnier one, which I didn't capture in a photo, was that she decided to "wave" while lying on her side in the "relax" position. The next time she does that one, I'm going to click to tell her that it's good, and then try to get her to do it again. It was SO funny!

Our last thing for the coming week is that I want to continue to teach Shyla that nail-clipping is not a bad thing (we had quite a struggle over nail-clipping last week). I'm using a Youtube video as my guide. Basically, I started by taking her to the spot where I always clip nails and having her lie down. Then, I held her paw in my hand numerous times, rewarding her with a click/treat each time if she didn't pull away. Over a 10 minute session, I worked up to holding her paw while spreading out her toes and touching a nail with the nail clipper, without any signs of stress from her. I hope that I'll be able to clip a nail without any resistance within the next week.

I am finding that Shyla is perhaps the most trainable dog who I've ever worked with. She loves to learn, loves to get praise, and loves to puzzle out what I'm trying to entice her to do. I think that, in terms of training specific behaviors (e.g., tricks), the sky is the limit. In terms of socialization, I'm not sure where the limit is (e.g., skateboards may never be okay) but we'll keep working at it so that Shyla can eventually handle most things in the everyday world without a hitch.

I'm having such fun with this beautiful dog!