Ruby discovered something underneath a side table that was super exciting to stalk. When I investigated I discovered … A GRUNTY HIPPO!!! I gave it to Able a couple of years ago, but he never saw the point in it and I’d forgotten he ever had it.
Ruby is delighted with her hippo. She very rarely puts her mouth on it, but it’s super fun to poke it with her paw and make it grunt. And of course it’s also good to stare at…
Ruby loves her hippo so much that she has been ferociously resource guarding it from Able, who didn’t give two shits about the hippo when it was his, and still doesn’t now. Fortunately her hippo-specific personal space has been shrinking throughout the week as Able continues to pay no attention whatsoever to her treasure.
It’s All About Rewards
I like to train with positive reinforcement. That isn’t possible if I don’t have things that I can reward my dog with. This week we’ve experimented with lots of rewards including:
- Higher-value food treats (cheese, chicken, Possyum) for excursions. I’ve been spoilt with Able and Rik, who would both murder their grannies for a piece of kibble. I’m going to need something a lot more exciting if I want to convince Ruby that my silly games are as fun as staring at birds and insects.
- Reset cookies. A week ago I couldn’t get Ruby to take a tossed treat unless it landed between her feet. She’s improving but I still have to make a big obvious hand gesture if I’m throwing one behind her.
- Tug toys. I have a rabbit fur tug that Ruby is interested in picking up and carrying around, but she won’t hold onto it when I take the other end. I suspect really she just wants to sneak off with it and pluck all the fur off it. I’ve tried a sheepskin octopus tuggy as well but she had no interest whatsoever in that.
- Balls. I threw a ball for Ruby and she was immediately chased it, picked it up, and brought it back. And did it four more times. Possibly the kids in her last farm home taught her how to play fetch?
- A Holee Roller. This was not an immediate hit, but I warmed her up by chucking a Planet Dog for her a couple of times, and then she got the idea of picking it up and bringing it back.
Up & Down & Up
This week I began my first adventures with the Control Unleashed style of training, with the Up & Down game. The game is very simple really:
- Place a treat on the ground (although I’m using a bowl because my dog’s never eaten out of one and I’m trying to build some value for it).
- Wait for the dog to eat it, look around as much as they want, and then look up at you.
- Mark when the dog looks at you, and place another treat on the ground. At first you can mark for any glance at your body, but over time you can select for looking directly at your face.
Day 1 looked pretty promising, and she was soon eagerly staring up at my face waiting for her cookie. But then every day got a little bit worse … after a few reps she’d adopt this miserable-looking crouch and stop raising her gaze up above my knees. I thought she was worried about me leaning over her as I delivered the treat so I tried sitting. I tried quieter food that wouldn’t rattle in the bowl. No luck.
On Day 4 I figured it out – she wasn’t not looking up (because something about how I delivered the treat was worrying her), she was intentionally looking down and crouching over the bowl (because she’s a stalky heading dog and COOKIES ARE GOING TO APPEAR THERE!). I added a step to the game, so now I feed her one cookie from my hand and then drop one in the bowl, and she improved hugely in one session!
The moral of the story is that placement of reinforcement matters. Dogs will look where they expect the cookies to appear. I think I also didn’t start trying to build some duration for head up early enough, which might have prevented the stalking problem.
Other Adventures
Some of the other things we’ve worked on this week:
- A pre-visit to the vet. Rik’s first vet visit was traumatic for both of us, and for the vet who got his finger nipped when he jabbed her. We popped in for a visit in the middle of the day when there were no patients and she was fairly happy in the waiting room (I even managed to get her on the scales with no drama: 19.1kg), but she refused to set foot inside the consult room. Not a promising sign before her appointment tomorrow…
- Nail trimming. Our first session of “nail trim training” actually turned into me trimming one toenail on each paw while I rubbed her belly, and she never even noticed. I got the Dremel out too to see what she would think about the sound; she was not so happy about that so we will leave it for later.
- Paws on things. I started this last week but it was not going super well. I switched to a raised dog bed (after all, she does like jumping onto the human furniture) and I think this was clearer for her because of the bigger height difference. She still has a tendency to get “stuck” and sit waiting for a verbal cue though.
- Vito’s Game. I really like this shaping exercise because it tends not to create as much frantic behaviour as some of the other things I do. I thought I’d give it a crack to see if I could get Ruby unstuck, and she actually picked it up faster than Rik or Able did! We’ve only done one session so far, but she was going back and forth happily and I was even able to straighten my legs to make a couple of trotting poles for her.
- Dog club visit. I popped into dog club to measure some dogs on Saturday, so Ruby came along to see the sights. She was able to focus on me while we played the Up & Down game, but when we weren’t doing that she was very distracted by all the BIRDS and PEOPLE and DOGS. Natasha and Lucinda brought their bikes along and she wasn’t bothered by those – one thing I don’t have to work on, at least!