Travels and Transitions

The long ride up North - road construction

The past few weeks have been busy ones for Rocket. He traveled up north with us over Labor Day weekend and took a short hike in Split Rock State Park.  We followed a steep trail for only a few blocks to the top of a hill that gave us a spectacular view of the lighthouse and shoreline. Loose leash walking was pretty challenging, as he was overwhelmed with all the scents and sounds in the woods, but we took our time and finally made it to the top. If you’re ever on the North Shore I’d recommend the Day Hill Trail – it’s not at all crowded and quite worth the short climb. On the way home, we stopped at Gooseberry Falls State Park.  Being a holiday weekend, the park was overrun with visitors, and Rocket had plenty of chances to practice his seated greetings.  It has been fun to watch his progress with this.  Now when he sees someone new coming, he will often sit without being told, and as the visitor comes closer, he sometimes automatically throws his paw out as far as he can reach – he is beginning to figure out that shaking the paw is followed by lots of love and attention. Everyone thinks he is pretty adorable – of course, from my completely unbiased,  wholly objective perspective, I’d have to agree.

Cooling off in the Gooseberry River

As you can see from the picture at right, Rocket is growing pretty rapidly – he doesn’t have that far to go to catch up to Risa, and I’m confident his adult height will surpass hers.  He has made a couple of transitions lately that were milestones of a sort.  First of all, he rarely sleeps in his crate at night any more – Risa has a dog bed, and since I haven’t bought one for Rocket yet, he has appropriated hers.  I usually find him right there by my side in the morning, and when he knows I’m awake, he rolls over and offers his belly for his good morning scratch.  His territory is also expanding while I’m at work in my office; he no longer spends time in an ex-pen, but has the run of the room while I work.  Although I do have to redirect him every now and then, for the most part he simply lies down close by and lets me work; that is, unless Risa is also in the room – in that case, they still spend a LOT of time wrestling.

Then last Saturday was our first Tall Waggin’ Dinner, the major fundraising event for  Helping Paws of the year, held at the Southwest Marriott in Minnetonka. It was a very fun evening, and I was astonished at how well Rocket handled himself.  He didn’t jump on anyone, remained calm, was able to practice a few sit-stays in the midst of the very crowded hallways, and gave me some wonderful attention when we walked up on stage with the group of other new foster puppies.  We learned that at that time he still needed $2700 to be fully sponsored for the year, and I hope that with the money raised that evening he will be fully sponsored soon – I’ll be anxious to hear.  And a big THANK YOU to those of you have already pledged your support for Rocket – whether you’re in the Rocket Fan Club (hi G and K!) or are donors, I appreciate it so much!  It helps to know I have people cheering us on.

One cute story from this evening.  The newest skill Rocket is learning is to go to a rug and lie down.  I was in a hurry this evening, as I had a meeting to go to, so I decided to multitask and work on this while I was eating my dinner (okay – confession here – it was a bowl of cereal).  I set myself up with the clicker, a bowl of his kibble, and put his rug across the kitchen.   Rocket likes this exercise and offered a few good, solid behaviors, planting himself squarely in the middle of the rug.  Normally we are supposed to give the reinforcement in the position we are working on, but since I was in a hurry I was making him come to me to get his piece of food after the click.  After a few of these instances, Rocket decided he had had enough of this back and forth, and he picked up the rug, moved it over next to the table, and laid down on it, waiting for his click and treat! He may not have known exactly what he was doing or why, but I do like to see that he isn’t afraid to try something new – this is why I like training him – it’s so fun to watch him think!

Wouldn't you like to know what is really going on in my head?

Learning the Push Command

I’m going to let the video do most of the work in this post (remember, I promised not to write so much?).  A couple of weeks ago Rocket started to learn how to push things with his nose, and I thought it might be fun to track his progress as he went through the  process from the very beginning.  In all, I think we probably spent a total of about 20 to 25 minutes over the course of a few sessions for Rocket to get the hang of it.  My goal was that this would  give an example of how a behavior can be shaped with the clicker.  I started out by  clicking and treating him for merely showing interest in the piece of blue tape on the door and then gradually raised the criteria until he needed to push it hard enough to close it.  Since I filmed this, he has learned to close refrigerator doors, closet doors, drawers, and also can push the laundry basket  and his dish across the floor with his nose.   We were told in class that the “push” command will also be used in teaching him to turn on light switches in the future.   I hope you find the following interesting:

Two Steps Forward . . .

Rocket meets Noah!

It’s hard to believe Rocket is now 4 months old, and he has learned a lot in two months.    We have had a busy July, starting out by traveling up north for the 4th, where he attended a parade and enjoyed meeting several people.  I was a bit concerned about how he’d react to the loud air horns on the trucks in the parade, but he wasn’t phased by it at all and did a fantastic job of keeping focused on me.  He also met our new grandson and decided that he most definitely loves babies!

I am hearing a lot of comments from people about how well behaved he is for being only four months old.   I usually tell them that it is a good illustration of what consistency will do.  With our own dog,  Risa, I did  take her to some obedience classes, but to be honest, I was kind of lackadaisical about practicing the skills with her, and it shows.  With Rocket, however, because I have homework sheets to fill out and am held accountable, we’ve missed very few days of training.   The most compelling reason, however, to keep up a consistent schedule of training is the realization that someone else is going to depend on my doing a good job.  And when things aren’t going super well, I get a little worried that I’m going to do something wrong and “ruin” him.  So it was good to be reminded in class a couple of weeks ago that the training process doesn’t always go forward in a nice linear fashion, that it’s perfectly okay to back up a step if he’s having trouble with something, and that he doesn’t have to be at the same level on everything as every other puppy in class because  they often learn different things at different rates.

Here’s a list of the skills we’re working on this week and how he’s progressing:

THINGS GOING WELL:

Watch/Eye Contact: When we’re out in public, once he settles down he will often sit and just stare at me and people say, “Look at how he watches you!”  Since I work at home and he is in the office with me for part of every day, he will often plant himself by my side and just stare, as if to say, “See how I can watch?  Where’s my treat?”

Long Down: We practice this at night, usually when I’m watching the news.  He is put on his side and is expected to stay there until told to “Release.”  I can take my hands away from him and sometimes sit up on the sofa next to him for a couple of minutes, but sometimes I need to put my hands back on to remind him to stay there.  I can feel him relax right away when I put him in this position, so he seems to understand what this is about.  We’re up to doing this for 10 minutes at a time now.

Shaping/Wearing Gentle Leader: He loves to put the Gentle Leader on.  He still likes to rub his nose on the ground and sometimes on my legs, but he is doing less of this as time goes on (most of the time).

Sit With Variables (Increasing Time and Adding Motion): We are gradually increasing the time he will stay in a sit.  He will pretty reliably do it for 20 seconds at a time, and the goal is to get up to 60 seconds this week.  We introduced motion last week while in the sit  position, and he did well with that, too.

Recalls: He loves to come to me.  If he is out in our fenced back yard and wanders away, sometimes all of a sudden he stops and looks for me, and when he sees where I am, he pauses for a second,and then all of a sudden takes off  in a gallop at full speed toward me, and, of course, I take that opportunity to give him the cue, “Come!” (The $100 rule from class:  Don’t give the cue unless you’d be willing to bet $100 that the dog will do what you are asking him to do).

Loose Leash Walking: In low distraction environments he is doing awesome on this.  When out in public, after he settles down from his initial excitement at being in a new place, he walks happily by either side without pulling for several steps at a time.

Target Stick: A couple of weeks ago we were given collapsible metal rods and have been teaching the puppies  (with the clicker, of course) to touch the end of the sticks with their noses.   Rocket picked this up very quickly and will follow it now while I walk with it.  We’re apparently going to use the target sticks to help teach some future skills – I’ll let you know when we start to do that what they will be.

Roll Over: This command isn’t what you might think.; it means for Rocket to roll onto his back and not all the way over.  We added this skill last week, and Rocket learned it quickly.  It’s pretty cute – he bends his front paws and waits for his tummy rub as part of his reward.

Get It/Retrieve: We have been told we can add the cue “Get It” for the retrieve games we have been playing.  However, I didn’t add it yet because I felt Rocket has been kind of confused about this for the past few weeks, so instead I went back to the very beginning this week and just practiced throwing things into a corner and putting my hand under his chin when he picks the object up and having him give it to me.  I think the light bulb of understanding has been switched on again.  Tonight I had a bowl of popcorn in the living room – Rocket picked a clicker off of the end table and brought it over to me, so I put my hand under his chin and he gave me the clicker – I gave him a piece of popcorn, as I definitely wanted to encourage that  behavior!- I’ll have to check with Nancy if it was okay for him to have popcorn (usually I just use his regular food for training).

ONE STEP BACKWARD BEHAVIORS:

Shaping/Wearing Pack: Last week, I noticed that Rocket wasn’t moving forward all the way into the pack.  A couple of days ago, all of a sudden he even started turning his head away from the pack – yikes!   He was so happy about it before, I thought that would never be a problem (never say never, right?).  I’m guessing that this didn’t “just happen.”  I’m probably unconsciously communicating something to him with my body language about the pack, so for the last two days I’ve been  clicking him just for walking over to the pack.  He’ doesn’t have any problem if I put the pack on him myself, but so far he won’t walk into it any further than his head.  Maybe I’ll try working on this right before his meals to create a happier, more excited association with it.  This was probably the issue I was thinking of when I mentioned my occasional worry about “ruining” him.

Better go Now on Leash: For some reason, Rocket isn’t always responding quickly to the cue for this now – I’m going to go back to not giving the command until he is actually “going” and make sure to click and treat for it every time to see if it improves over the next few days.

Drop: He seems confused about this right now and will often just go into a sit instead.  I’m going to stop giving the cue for now and go back to getting a more reliable behavior.  I’ll post our progress to this and the other issues when I have anything to report.

Now I feel better – it helped for me to write these things down and get a good perspective on how well we’re really doing!  Yes, we have a few challenges, and I’m sure we’ll work through them.  And once that happens,  new ones will probably crop up.  In some  ways I enjoy  these little problems because  it is very satisfying to solve one!

Just for fun, here’s a little video of Rocket practicing “wait” for his food:

Challenges of a Well-Dressed Young Man

Boy am I growing! Now up to 26 pounds!

It has been a while since I’ve posted; we have been out of town visiting our new grandson (Of course, I’m very excited about this, but since this is Rocket’s blog, I’ll control myself and stick to the subject at hand ).  While we were away, Rocket was able to spend some time at another foster home with his littermate, Zuma, and from all accounts had a great time.  Thanks, Darleen and family for taking such good care of him!

Since last writing we had been given the go ahead to have the puppies wear their Gentle Leaders and packs (their blue coats) to class and on outings.  I was looking forward to this.  Besides the fact that he looks so adorable all dressed up, I was hoping it might make it easier to explain to people who wanted to pet him that he needed to mind his manners and remain sitting whenever he greets someone.   Last week I took him over to the neighborhood park while a ball game was going on, hoping to practice some greetings with children, and to my surprise people didn’t come up to me and ask to pet him at all – I heard one mother tell her children – “No, you can’t pet him, he’s working.”  While I appreciate that people understand this, it is going to force me to be a bit more assertive and ask people outright if they want to meet  him.

Oh, and remember the last time when I bragged about how well Rocket was doing with the Gentle Leader?  He still loves to put it on, but he doesn’t necessarily love to wear it right now.  In fact, he has been rubbing his nose on the ground whenever he gets onto a patch of grass, and to my embarrassment, on a trip to Petco he scooted around much of the store on his nose.   Nancy, our teacher, suggested that I make my trips to the pet store very short for now, merely walking in, practicing a few “watches”, and leaving quickly.   In class on Thursday I was also surprised that Rocket wasn’t picking his retrieve items up like he does at home; it dawned on me that I had been only practicing this without the Gentle Leader on.  Therefore, I am now practicing play retrieves while he’s “dressed”  at home, and I can see it might take a while for him to make the connection that it’s okay to pick things up with the Gentle Leader on.

In my best outfit.

Overall, though, I’m sure these are minor things that will be worked through, and I believe Rocket is still doing very well.  He is walking on a loose leash very, very well, with great attention, knows the “sit” command, can shake his right paw on command, is learning “drop,”  and can even have a bowl of food set in front of him and wait to eat it until he is told “release.”   One of his favorite things right now is a recall game, a dog version of Hide and Seek.  I throw out a piece of food to distract him, then run and hide somewhere in another room and call out “You can’t find me!”  He gets SO excited when he discovers where I am.  My understanding is that the goal of this game is to reinforce the idea that coming is always an exciting, fun event.  I have to admit it’s my favorite game to play with him, too.

Well, that’s our training update for now.  I took some pictures of him all “dressed up” this evening, but since I was home alone I had to tie his leash around the tree – he wouldn’t wander far enough away from me to get a decent picture of him -  a good thing!

It’s a Whole New World

Now that Rocket has added some inches to his legs, he has discovered a whole new world to be explored – anything that is up high!  He is spending a lot of his free time trying to reach things above his head and launches himself at things like the phone cord, dishes of kibble on my desk, cords on blinds, the kitchen table, etc., and I am having to be extra vigilant to keep an eye on him and distract him from this new obsession.

One very cute thing happened the other day, though.  We have been starting to work on his wearing a Gentle Leader and have been shaping him with the clicker to put his nose into the loop as a first step.   Most of the time Rocket has loved this exercise and is progressing well with it, other than a few times when he just wants to bite it. We had been given a small blue cloth bag to hold retrieving items, and a few days ago I discovered Rocket had pulled it off  of a bench in our entryway.  I asked, “What do you have there?”, and he promptly pushed his nose through the loops of the handles on the bag waiting for his click and treat – I suppose to him it looked just like his Gentle Leader!   What a smart boy!

The Secret to Just About Everything . . . .

. . . . .well, at least the secret to teaching most of the behaviors Rocket needs to know, that is.  And the secret is . . . . .

A clicker!

I’ve come up with a top 10 list for why I like clicker training:

10.   You don’t wear your voice out yelling at your dog.

9.     A clicker trained dog can theoretically be taught to do anything it is physically capable of doing, without even touching him/her.

8.    A clicker trained dog learns to be a problem solver and to think for himself.

7.     A clicker trained dog works because he wants to, not because he is forced to.

6.    A clicker trained dog learns new behaviors more rapidly than with traditional training methods.

5.     Clicker training is a gentle way to train, won’t psychologically harm a dog, and because of this it can be used with very young puppies.

4.      Clicker training is based on solid scientific research into how animals learn.

3.      Clicker training creates a happy working dog.

2.      Dogs think clicker training is fun.

1.      Clicker training is fun for trainers!

To begin training Rocket, the clicker was first “charged up.”  For several days before every meal, I clicked the clicker and then immediately gave Rocket a piece of his food, several times in a row.  By about the third day, I could see he was beginning to understand that whenever he heard the sound of the clicker, he was going to get something good.  It was as though a light bulb went on in his brain that I could literally see happening, and now that he had made this connection, he began to try to figure out what he could do to make that clicker click again so he could get a piece of his kibble.  Since Rocket is extremely motivated by food, I now have a powerful tool I can use to communicate with him, and I can use this to shape most of the behaviors he needs to learn.

Rocket already loves the clicker and is proving to be a very quick learner.   I am having a blast working with him, and  I hope I can keep up with him!

We’re off to a good start

Here we are a little over three weeks since Rocket came to live with us (I started writing this last weekend), and he is settling in quite well.  We have an 11-month-old Golden Retriever of our own (Risa), and she is convinced we have brought home the best toy ever.  Rocket and Risa have become the best of friends, and if they were allowed, I think they’d  spend the entire day, every day,  wrestling with each other.  Sometimes we have to separate them just so we can get a break from the commotion they create.  Risa lets Rocket do anything to him, and I mean anything. He will grab onto her lip and hold on for dear life, and Risa lies on her back and wraps her front paws around him in a big bear hug.  When Risa gets too rough, Rocket dives under a chair or the end table in the living room, wrinkles up his nose, bares his teeth, and he and Risa snap their jaws at each other for a while (all in fun, of course).  It’s quite an elaborate play ritual they have established, and it is fascinating to watch – almost like a choreographed dance they have created that they practice over and over and over again.  I think it will be quite a while before we get to the point where we can sit on the couch in the evening with both of them lying quietly at our feet contentedly chewing on a bone.  But that’s okay – they are both getting a great deal of exercise, and it is helping Rocket to sleep well at night.

Training Rocket has been going amazingly well.  We have had assignments to work on since the day we picked him up, and Rocket is proving to be a quick learner.  One of the things I appreciate is the amount of support Helping Paws provides.  We have weekly classes where we learn to teach the puppies the new skills and have our questions answered.  So far, Rocket is learning to watch me, respond to his name, sit, go into his crate, accept handling and grooming, and that coming to us is always, always a happy, happy event, among other things.  At first glance, the assignment list might look intimidating, but in reality I only need to work with him a few times here and there for just a few minutes at a time each day; after all, puppies don’t have great attention spans at this age,  and as time progresses, I’m sure I’ll get better at integrating training opportunities into my daily routine.    In addition, we’re also concentrating on socializing Rocket; we have assignments to have him meet several new people each week.  He is also being introduced to new situations, such as visits to a vet’s office and pet stores.  Rocket is doing great with all of this – he’s quite the social butterfly and has lots of self confidence.  He’s a real trooper, and we’re having tons of fun with him!

Here’s a little example of one of Rocket’s play sessions with Risa.  In this particular game they are using an old stuffed goose toy (sans the stuffing – that was history a long time ago):

A New Arrival

I am starting this blog to keep an account of the training process we go through with Rocket, an 8-week-old Golden Retriever foster puppy who arrived at our house on May 1st (2009) courtesy of Helping Paws of Minnesota.  We expect that he will be living with us for about two and one-half years, and during that time we will be taking him to weekly training classes at Helping Paws, with the ultimate goal being that he would be placed with someone as a service dog.

Friends have been asking me, “How do you give a dog up after living with him for two and a half years?  Won’t it be hard?”  My answer to that is that I’m sure it will be hard.  After only a week in our house the little stinker has already captured my heart.  However, I don’t think it will be as difficult as having to say good-bye to a dog due to cancer, thinking specifically of Fuji, my once-in-a-lifetime dog who succumbed to lymphoma two years ago.  If I know that Rocket will be well cared for and well loved, it will be a big help.  And I am confident that Helping Paws wouldn’t place a dog with someone who didn’t meet those criteria.

I’ll update more later about the training process we have already started.  For now, here’s a picture I took today – I have to say that a Golden puppy is about as cute as you can get – wouldn’t you agree?

Rocket at 8 weeks old