Rejection

Recently Vito has really been showing me how far he has come in obedience and agility.  He's been the club a good handful of times now since my return and has always been ready to work in just about 5 minutes.  It's felt good.  My dog can do things!

But he keeps me humble too.  Spring is here with all its new smells as well as my recent planting of the agility equipment.  Yesterday was especially gorgeous out and I wanted to work with Vito on our reward sequence in agility.  Mainly watching his ball being put down, happy and focused walking away to the startline, then choosing to shove his head back through the leash and going to sit in front of his ball.

Vito had different plans. Plans of sniffing the spring air, and probably munching on some sweet grass too.  Rejected me and my silly games.  I could have easily brought out the ball, teased him with it, and got him obsessive over it in just a manner of seconds.  But that wouldn't have accomplished much of anything.
Oh well.  There's always another day!

Boring video of a dog who did not want to work.  Usually I don't leash up during acclimation time, but I wanted to actually use the leash in the work I had planned!

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Using Run Throughs Wisely

I finally had the opportunity to do an obedience run through with Duckie.  Sadly it was only her 3rd time at an official event and she will be 2yrs old in a few weeks!  Not the amount I wanted to get in by now.

With my local Ring Confidence class just ending and my new online Ring Confidence class starting in two weeks I have the topic of run throughs on my mind.  I have a very specific plan on how to use my 5 minutes of ring time to get full benefit for future trials and I can't say it looks anything like what I watch everyone else doing during their time.

My goal for a run through is to continue my ring confidence work- attitude and focus.  I don't see any point at all in going through a full formal run and listening to the "judge."  Time and time again I see others doing that and all it usually results in is a stressed dog.  Either the dog is a bit down in attitude and focus which the handler completely ignores, not supporting their dog, or corrects like crazy in order to teach him that he can't get away with that behavior in a trial and usually results in the dog developing even more stress towards that exercise.  Even happily interrupting and resetting an exercise in a positive manner can add stress to the behavior, something I want to consider very carefully in a trial environment.  A run through is not the time to teach or fix a behavior before your show.  The dog is either trained or he's not.  In the majority of cases if your dog shows up in a trial with the same level of attitude and focus he shows in practice than the exercises themselves will be there!  Of course that is what makes trialing so hard!  How do you get that attitude and focus in a trial?!

Ring Entrances
So that was my plan tonight with Zumi.  Attitude and focus.

I started with step one of my ring confidence work.  Or in Zumi's case I actually skipped straight to step two as I knew without a doubt that Zumi would be able to offer me great focus from being released from her waiting position to entering the ring and setting up in heel.  I also had strong suspicions that she could do more than just a few steps of heeling with the energy/focus I wanted but I didn't add that in right away as being too greedy had the potential of backfiring and adding stress to this trial like environment.  So all we did was enter the ring- setup in heel- and had a gigantic party.

Left the ring after that first party and waited again for her to push me to work.  Repeat.  Since I wasn't greedy and it went well I added in removing the leash before the party.  Then slowly added more and more trial like behaviors into the mix each time I re-entered the ring and saw that she wasn't just handling it well but was excelling.  I know I looked like an idiot to the others waiting outside the ring and that added a tiny bit of stress. Perfect.  Just enough stress to replicate some trial like feelings for Duckie to experience without actually doing anything difficult.

Because Zumi has had a lot of experience with this type of work, just not in a formal show like environment, I was able to progress quickly with her and actually do bits of heeling and simple versions of other exercises she knows well.  I even did all of it with her toy on the stewards table, putting her in a sit and bringing the toy to her whenever I wanted to party.  But with a dog who has already started trialing and showing signs of stress, or a dog less experienced with ring confidence games, I would stick to pure ring entrances=party.  Exit and try again if the dog shows he's still ready to work.  Rushing through steps and trying to get to the actual exercises will only degrade the hard work you've put in.  Baby steps!

I found out that Zumi's second turn in the ring was a bit too much.  We still had several nice ring entrances but occasionally struggled with taking the leash off when she could see the dog in the adjacent ring having fun with their dumbbell.  So we backed up.  Literally actually.  We just calmly exited the ring and I waited for Zumi to decide she was ready to work with me again.  Which due to her temperament and training didn't take too long.  In the future I think one turn for Zumi is enough, at least for right now.

Choosing to Work
Vito also came along to the run through.  But unlike Zumi, I did not register him for actual time in the ring.  Vito has even more experience with Zumi in the ring confidence games, but I also knew that with the trial environment it would be unlikely for Vito to choose to work at a set time to actually take advantage of ring=fun type games.

So instead this particular location had plenty of room along the edges of the ring and in the exhibitor area to just hang out on leash and let Vito decide what he wanted to do.  I let him sniff around, let him stare at things, and occasionally asked him if he was ready.  Vito told me "no" repeatedly and I respected that.  He will offer me great eye contact, but I know Vito well enough that just eye contact is not a true indicator of being ready to work.  Vito could smell treats on me but I never pulled them out.  I knew that if I pulled out a cookie I could likely get Vito excited enough to overpower the environment but that was not my goal.  In a trial you don't have rewards to overpower the environment.
I also knew that I could ask Vito to do his squish behavior which has been trained/classically conditioned enough that when released from the position Vito will immediately engage with me and with some energy.  But I didn't want to do that either.  That trained squish I only do when I already have a dog.  Using it before he's ready to work will have the effect I want, but the more it's used that way the more it's like withdrawing money from an account versus building that behavior up to be stronger.  I only want to use it that way in an actual trial, if I have to.

So Vito and I walked around a bit, stood around a lot, he got a few butt rubs and some crouching down next to and I just supported him.  And at some point Vito surprised me by actually telling me he was ready.  Still in just the extra space outside of the rings I started personal play and a bit of heeling, and then brought out the food.  I repeated this a few times, releasing him back to sniff/stare after each cookie reward to see if he was done or not.  Only once did Vito tell me he wanted a bit of break.  We didn't play/train long, less than 3 minutes before I put him away.

And I was happy with my decision not have Vito get actual ring time yet.  If you are not yet sure if your dog will engage with you outside of the ring without being shown their rewards then you are not ready to be doing a run through yet.  Instead focus on visiting different locations and just hanging out.  Having an official ring time puts too much pressure on yourself to try and get the dog to work at just that moment.

And of course if you need help with these concepts or want a more concrete plan for  prepping your dog to enter a trial please come join my Ring Confidence class starting October 1st!

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The Obedience Experiment Conclusion

For those who followed Vito's experiment last winter/spring I never really posted it's conclusion.  Last update in April was 5 months in.  I did another month before ending the experiment, kinda took another few months break, and resumed obedience training in August.

The experiment of taking away all his food/toy rewards wasn't all unicorns and rainbows.  It certainly didn't have the results it had when I did it with the Corgi but nor did I expect it to.  Unfortunately the dogs who I think can benefit the most from really building up the value of personal play and choosing to work are also the dogs who will really struggle with it.  The dogs who naturally have great "work ethics" are likely going to excel whether they go through a learning stage like this or not.
Vito can come off as a high drive working dog, but it's purely obsession that masks his naturally low energy, low work drive.  His experiment was painful.

The last month (and remember it was still extremely few sessions each month) I tightened up Vito's freedom by keeping him on leash.  He still had full control of whether he wanted to work or not, but less choices of what to do during his time.  We would walk together around the training building and let him sniff all the things, but then I would stick to one spot.  It didn't bother Vito at all as he was still pretty darn content to lie down and watch the world.  But I do think it helped.

Actually we did have 1 downfall of doing this experiment.  Vito got in the habit of being able to sniff and explore the area before working.  Acclimation is a GOOD thing, but Vito was past the point of needing to directly acclimate in the working area vs just outside of it.  All the sniffing and crumb finding he practiced for months was quite the rehearsal.  If I had done the on leash exploration earlier in the process I think it would have helped.  For the most part, 1 month back now into jackpot training and criteria for choosing to work outside of a ring, then full focus in the ring, and Vito is back to not checking out of work to explore.  Except weirdly enough the exploration kinda seeped into agility training at home.  I never quite using toys in agility but all summer Vito runs out into the agility field when it's his turn with happy helicopter tail exploring the yard, searching for a non existent ball, for a few minutes until he runs back to me ready to work.  It's a bit odd.

I do think the pros of this experiment are still many, even for dogs like Vito.  Vito's personal play skills increased.  His value for his dumbbell increased.  He fully understands choice in working or not working and it was thrilling when he did work even when he knew there was no rewards.  Even now with the introduction of rewards back into training- still never on my body- we can go quite a long time before a reward.  It's a bit more like the rewards are a bonus than the sole reason for choosing to start work.
Precision is still slowly working it's way back, but I think it will get there again.  At least the precision errors have remained due to excitement errors and not lack of effort.  Mainly we have forging, crabbing, and creeping.

Here is a long video of Vito's training session on Wednesday.  The first 3 minutes are of absolutely nothing.  I am waiting outside the ring to see if Vito is going to choose to start work or not.  There are no rewards on my body.  Then Vito does decide to start work and once we enter the ring he stays in work mode until I decide to have him sit and bring over some treats for him.  I then repeat the process of exiting the ring and waiting.  The 2nd time is much shorter and I cut the video off once we make it back inside.

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Acclimation and Engagement

The concepts of acclimation and engagement are the 2 things that changed my dog training the most in the last 5 years.  At that time I didn't really have any words to put to it and I muddled my way through it with Vito.  But it was game changing.  And painful.  Really painful actually as I spent more sessions not working than actually working Vito and often questioned if this was the right path.

Those 2 words were also a core concept last week at the Fenzi Dog Sports Camp.   If there is one topic I wish all teams would understand it would be this concept.  And yet is really hard to understand!

So what is it?

Acclimation

Acclimation is the easy part.  It is simply allowing your dog the choice to look around and get comfortable with an environment.  This may be done through a formal down stay or more commonly it is done by taking the dog on a walk through the environment while letting them see and smell the world.  

This is SO important for many teams.  I think it is a rare dog who is ready to start work in a new place without knowing where they are.  Some dogs have such a high love for their motivators that it can seem like they are ready.  Indeed Lance is one of those dogs.  He loves his cookies so much that I could ask him to work the second I got somewhere and he would, even without seeing the reward since he has been trained well to know that offering work usually pays off.  And with Lance I was lucky.  He's not a nervous dog and the fall out from working him right away would be minimal.  Thankfully I rarely did that.  Lance didn't need much acclimation time to truly give me his all, but giving him just 2-5 minutes would really pay off huge.  No little glances away in his work as he already knew what was around him and felt safe.

With Vito I could also work him right away if I had his magical ball.  And I DID do that years ago.  I tried the advice of getting Vito to go straight from the crate to work.  And if I had his ball nothing else mattered.  But with a dog like Vito who has anxieties about people pressure and who drastically loses motivation without an obsession to focus on, there was no way that approach was going to hold up in the ring when the rewards were gone.  And for some dogs it could backfire big time if they suddenly got too close to a trigger they didn't notice because they were obsessing about their reward. 

I took Vito's lessons and am now applying them to Zumi.  Zumi is more of a normal dog compared to Lance and Vito.  In a new place she wants to look and walk around a bit, but she also wants to check in frequently.  She can fool me into thinking she is ready to work before she really is.  Indeed she demonstrated this at the Camp this past week as Zumi offered sustained eye contact and even tried to further engage me a little bit just a few minutes in.  But I knew better.  I knew that if I didn't immediately shove a toy in her face that Zumi would very quickly go back to looking at the environment and that she needed to do so.  And I knew that if I did choose to shove a toy in her face and play that I could get a bit of work in, but that as soon as the action stopped and we worked on less intense behaviors then she would feel the need to look around some more.  At Zumi's stage in training I want more.  Just forcing her to walk around a bit and get more comfortable in her environment gave me the picture I wanted.  She felt comfortable and was capable of giving me her all.

Acclimation takes as long as it takes.  Some dogs are fast and are ready to work in under 5 or 10 minutes.  Other dogs might need a good hour in a difficult environment in order to feel safe and confident enough to work.  And often with Vito, well we might never get to that working piece.  And that's ok.  I know that in the long run it will pay off.  As dogs get used to the idea that they will get enough time to truly acclimate, it not only will take less and less time for the dog to do so but their work performance skyrockets as they don't feel the need to check out once work has started.

What about dogs getting ready to trial?  I still use acclimation to get my dogs used to an environment.  The difference becomes that everytime I go somewhere to work I acclimate my dogs outside of the ring, or designate an imaginary line that become my work-no work line.  My dogs can walk around and sniff in a designated area and then we work in a place they got to see but not actually walk in.  And that concept transfers perfectly to an actual trial where the dogs do not get to acclimate in the same ring they will work in.

Engagement

Engagement is a more tricky concept.  It looks different with every dog and is hard to pin down.  But in general it is dog driving the work.  Denise Fenzi has written that "Engagement training is the process of moving responsibility for enthusiasm, focus and desire for work from the handler to the dog."  In early stages all the dog has to do is focus on the handler before the handler can start a party.  But the eventual goal is for the dog to work hard in order to get the handler to start play/work, all without seeing or knowing a reward is available.  That is some deep stuff!  

As I mentioned earlier, engagement looks differently from every dog.  Some dogs may just stare at you and wag their tail, others may jump up and maybe even bark.  The key with most dogs is getting them to move at you.  If you back away from your dog do they follow and keep focus?
The lines of engagement and personal play often start to blend.  If you don't reach for your rewards right away once the dog chooses to engage the question becomes will the dog continue to try and interact with you?  Can you use just yourself and no formal work cues to keep up your dog's focus and energy?  The dog making the true choice to work is thrilling and goes a long way to getting the same focus and energy you have when your dog sees your classical rewards to more advanced training when the rewards aren't on you.

In the ring you are stripped of all rewards.  There are no food, no toys, and certainly no corrections.  The only reward you can take in is yourself.  But if you've made it that far in your training there's a good chance you have a great relationship with your dog already!  Your dog chooses to work not just for the external rewards but for the whole package, including your attention, your praise, and your play.  That package of work, rewards and human interaction are blended and really can't be separated out.  Play may vary by your dog's temperament, but every dog can be taught how to engage in some form of personal play with you.

Here is Vito from a few months ago choosing to start the engagement process and gradually we flow into work. He is high as a kite in this session and is very pushy!  Note that if you're just starting out you will not get this type of response and some dogs will never look like this no matter how much experience they have.  In the below video you will also notice that while Vito does grab his dumbbell and I do some interactions with it, it's really not about the object:


And here is a much calmer Vito also starting the engagement process with me sitting in a chair.  But in this case he doesn't really mean it.  You can see how he looks around still and isn't really committed as I continue to ask him if he means it:


If I had chosen to ignore that and started work there is a good chance he would not have given me his full focus.  Or I would have needed to overwhelm him with constant food, toys, or high energy just to keep him focused.  That type of training just doesn't hold up in the long term.  Be exciting in reaction to your dog's own energy, but don't try to use your own energy to overwhelm the dog into playing with you!  The general guideline is to match the energy level your dog is giving you, or just 1 level above.  Notice I am much calmer in the 2nd video than in the first video and that is so I don't use my own energy to overwhelm and try to pull him up.

Denise Fenzi has an entire online class on how to develop engagement in your dog and spells out stages to get there on her blog as well.

I strongly believe the best way to make sure your dog is really ready for the ring is to focus on the concepts of acclimation and engagement.  When your dog is the one driving the work and pushing you to start then you're no longer the one trying to bribe your dog and shoving the rewards in their face to get work.  Instead the responsibility moves to the dog.  You don't have to try to be more exciting than their environment!  You don't have to do cartwheels to get your dog's attention!
But this does take time.  Get ready to settle in and be ready for the chance that your dog simply tells you they are not ready in that session.

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The Obedience Experiment- 5 Months

Vito has been continuing our no food/toys obedience with choice experiment.  It technically has been just over 5 months since Vito has received a traditional reward for working with me in obedience although sessions have been roughly once a week this past winter.  Vito has also gotten rewards still for his work in agility, gun dog foundations, and recently nosework.  I am also certain that Vito has zero confusion between what sport we are doing and whether rewards are going to be forthcoming or not.

I think my last update was mid Janurary, 2.5 months in.  At that time he had a 100% rate of working at the club but was hardly choosing to work at all at home.  That changed.
Less than a month later (probably only 4 sessions) Vito was happily sniffing around the ring at the club but was choosing not to work at all.  He would come in for butt rubs and to check in with me and then would go back to sniffing.  Didn't look like stress sniffing in any way, just a dog who loves, loves to sniff and take in all the information he could.  Very relaxed when coming over to me for some rubbing.

A few more sessions later and Vito was back to sometimes working and sometimes not.  Working sessions were incredibly high energy with an extremely pushy and vocal Toller.  Accuracy not quite there, but the intensity was high.

Due to his inconsistency and me being ready to experiment with another change, I decided on 2 changes that started the last week of February.
First I started putting him on leash for our sniffing sessions and walked the ring with him for several minutes.  Pointing out things to sniff and crumbs to lick up and praising him.  Then we would go and just sit together in the middle of the ring where I would pet him if he wanted to be petted or he could continue to happily air sniff.  If he looked like he was done and would maybe work, I would invite him.  Otherwise we would just sit together.

And secondly I added the addition of a toy at the very end of our session, separated from any work he may have done.  So if he chose to work, at the very end we would go back to just sitting on the ground and petting/praising him for being a good boy.  Then after a bit I would stand up and get him a moderately valued toy and just tug/toss it for him with no asking for any other behaviors.  A free toy that would be given regardless of his decision to work.

Because I made 2 changes at once I can't be entirely sure what has caused a bit of difference. I first thought it would be the toy.  That even though it was unrelated to work, he would connect it.  But I'm not so sure.  Vito hasn't shown any signs of seeking out the toy (that I might not even have in the ring) nor of looking expectedly while working/not working.  In our jackpot training we've done previously there were always at a few moments where Vito would look to where the toy was to at least ask me if he earned it yet.  I'm not seeing that now.

I do think the on leash exploration with me followed by the restriction has made some difference.  Likely less to do with the support/inclusion of me and more to do with the restriction afterwards.  Vito loves to air sniff just as much as ground sniffing, but I'm sure being limited gives him greater incentive to do something with me with his choices more limited.

Anyway, currently for the last several sessions Vito has been working almost every time and has been almost butt tucked in his work.  Calm and happy sniffing the ring, calm lying down, then suddenly high as a kite and stressing UP.  Whether or not I wanted the dumbbell to be his primary reward it certainly has become it.  At first his high behavior worried me a little bit.  Major stress?  But now that I've been able to do a session at home (yay spring!) I haven't noticed that much of a difference.

At the club last week:


At home:


This last week at the club was a bit more relaxed.  So relaxed I didn't think he was going to work.  But he did and was still pretty intense, just without the panting and butt tuckedness.

We're going to continue this journey for a bit longer before transitioning back to traditional rewards.  If this has done nothing else it has taught me that we rely way too much on our food/toys to keep a dog working versus truly giving them a choice.
And hopefully it has increased the value for playing with me.  And his dumbbell :)

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Obedience Experiment- 2.5 Months

Vito's obedience experiment has been going on for about 2.5 months now.  Due to lack of daylight and the weather I don't have nearly as many sessions in as I would like.  As stated before, in house training with full choice is simply not an option in our tiny space.  Vito would never even know a session was available as there's no way to set up a "training area."  But over the holidays I had off work and got in quite a few sessions over the two weeks in my yard.  I bundled up!

Sadly it's been kinda demotivating.  Vito has full choice to do what he wants and he knows that very well by now.  And I admit it's a blow to the ego when once the snow hit it wasn't even Me vs Grass but Me vs sniff the snow and air scent?  

Of course we have had some really great sessions.  It's been interesting that his speed and drive still haven't decreased at all on the sessions he chooses to work.  Precision is off, but really not by much considering I've pretty much "rewarded" everything he does with gushing praise and butt scratches with only a few full resets.  The only thing Vito is still very reluctant to do is his down signal.  Vito has always hated lying down when working and it's always been a training challenge to keep the distance downs with speed and style vs the awful lazy butt first and slower slide.  Without the rewards Vito just isn't on board.  Actually that's not fully true, as he has surprised me by starting to do well with the verbal at a distance or at minimum being sassy and barking at me when I give the signal vs sitting or staring at me.  

Most of the time Vito carries his dumbbell around.  I will usually do a bit of light tugging on it with him but don't do a ton of throws.  Tugging is fairly low value for Vito and he was never a dog to carry around a toy in his mouth before.  Throwing would be very high value for Vito and I'm sure I could create a dog really obsessive about his dumbbell if that was my goal.  Right now I'm happy to see that the dumbbell has increased value and is somewhat a substitute toy, but I'm not interested in taking that a step further to really solidifying that as the main reward.  We will see if my view on that changes in the future for him!

What I find most interesting about the experiment is our 100% rate of working at the obedience club.  Now we haven't done very many sessions there compared to the training we have done at home, but every time he has been very quick to engage- between immediately to up to 3min.  And there are way more interesting smells to sniff and activity to watch from other classes when there.  

I wish I had done more non dinner time training in our yard before starting the experiment as I wonder if habit is part of the reason.  Training obedience in the yard was always associated with meal time and other times we just hung out in the yard.  But the club was either chill in your crate while I teach, or come out and train.  Huge history of associating the building with work and not a free for all type of environment.

Here is Vito's last session at the club.  I actually forgot his dumbbell so I borrowed one, just a bit too large for him.  He chose to work almost instantly although there were also slightly less distractions as normal classes were off that week for that time.  Some people entered the ring at the 5min mark which was hard for Vito.  I was happy with his choice to mostly keep engagement with me and ended the session a minute later

.

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Vito Experiment- Session 22

The no food/toys obedience experiment has continued!  Slowly due to lack of daylight.  But have done 22 sessions now.

At this point we don't have any consistency of whether Vito chooses to work or not.  But when he does work it's very engaged, fairly high energy, and he rarely checks out now once he has decided to start. Precision isn't fully there.

A lot of has evolved into the dumbbell being a reward.  Not the direction I was planning on taking it but maybe it is the best route for Vito.  I let him carry the dumbbell around through a lot of the work so it's still a lot more personal interacting than just fetching.

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The Experiment- First 2 Weeks

It's officially been 2 weeks and 10 sessions since I started the experiment with Vito.  Seeing how far personal play can take us to maintain well taught behaviors.  Seeing if dogs are actually willing to, and excited to, choose to work when they know no other reward is on the table.  The difference between this approach and the work that some balanced trainers have done in the past is that here the dog has full choice.  Play with me, eat grass, stare out into the world, get a belly rub.

I'm even going a step further than I did with Lance in that I'm not trying to get Vito back when he opts out.  Lance didn't completely opt out much when I did this a few years ago, but I know I upped my game and tried to be more exciting if he wasn't sure he wanted to play.  Not anymore.  I don't mind being more fun once I have a dog who made the choice to play/work, but I'm well past the point in my learning when I used to try and be more exciting than the environment in order to convince the dog to choose to me.  Subtle, but big, difference.

There's a small group of 4 of us working on this with different dogs.  Currently none of us have "high drive" dogs with great "work ethics."  It certainly is a different learning curve than my experience with Lance who loves to work!

But I have learned quite a bit so far.  Dogs DO want to work.  And sometimes they don't :)  And we use way too many external reinforcers in our training sessions.  It took a few days for every dog to finally realize food/toys weren't on the table.  Granted these are all advanced dogs, but the fact that on day 2 and 3 dogs were still hopeful that if they kept working a reward was coming says a lot about how little food/toys are needed to maintain a consistent level of dogs choosing to work.  And these are low drive dogs!

So far Vito's journey has pretty well matched my expectations.
First 2 days, complete hope.  Worked well.  Session 3 had a lot more checking out, but still gave me a section of nice work.  Session 4 I saw the first frustration based behaviors.  Vito's always been a little loud in play but here was the first time he gave me repetitive frustrated barking at the end:

And then Session 5 was the very first day Vito chose not to work at all.  Past the hope, and currently into stage 2- Despair!  I prefer to think of it as my "unplugged" time.  I sit in a chair, bundled up, and watch the Red Cow graze.  Sometimes he checks in with me and gets a few butt rubs before he turns back out to the pasture.  And sometimes he teases me into thinking he is going to play with me, but it only lasts maybe 30 seconds before he's gone.  

Today, session 10, was the first day that Vito decided he was done grazing and chose to lie down by my chair.  

It is going to be hard to continue this process due to the weather and dwindling sunlight.  Currently I've been racing home from work and have a total of 15min before it is pitch black.  Soon I will have zero.  Since training like this in my house is impossible, I am guessing I will be limited to weekends and maybe once a week at the club.  

Again, if anyone is interested in playing along we have started a closed facebook group.  But active participants only.  

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Agility with an Audience

Zumi got to do agility in public yesterday!  Her 2nd time doing agility in front of other people, the first being at a seminar when she was 8 months old.  This was also the first time she did agility at this location, and her first time on turf carpet.

I was so proud of her focus!  The first run I used a tug toy to ensure she wouldn't do a victory lap.  I kinda let Zumi do little victory laps at home so I wouldn't have been surprised or upset if she did one.  But the 2nd run I even threw her ball and she came right back to me each time!

I discovered I haven't actually taught Zumi the tire.  She did the tire in that little puppy agility class I briefly had her in when she was like 4 months old, but no jumping was involved then and she hasn't done it since.

Zumi kinda remembered the auto down on the table!  Another thing I only practice with her every few months as I don't have a table at home.

And she even did the dogwalk!  This will be the 3rd dogwalk she's ever been on.  The one at my house, the 2nd at the club she just started doing these last 3 weeks since she has been at full height, and now #3.  The first run she came off it on the upside to chase after me.  I put her back on and she did hit the yellow, but it was fairly high and I don't think it would have been in on a USDAA 36" zone.  In run #2 it was much lower and was easily in, although still not quite the criteria I want.  Still, I thought her first time at a new location went fantastic!

My handling not the greatest.  I haven't actually gotten to "run" Zumi yet on a full course setup.  Even with breaking down and rewarding lots I'm just not used to doing a course with her.
Run #1:  https://youtu.be/AeWul8ahT28
Run #2:


Vito also got to play for 2 runs at the match.  I handled it like the UKI trials I've done FEO at.  Warm up with one toy, set it down outside the ring like at a real trial, and have a hidden ball in my pocket he doesn't know about.

First run- happy toller!  Rewarded him after the teeter which was actually pretty decent for a "trial" teeter.  Then redid the teeter and it was magically the teeter I get in practice- fast and immediately into the 2o2o position.
Then did a stopped dogwalk with him as I hardly ever do that in a trial and it isn't very fast when I do.  Because he already got a toy the stopped dogwalk was the same I get in practice :)

2nd run had a fast teeter I verbally praised but didn't reward.  Then I rewarded the stopped dogwalk again.  And finally I chose to do the dogwalk a 2nd time, but as a running dogwalk.  Awesome!  First time he has done both running and stopped in the same sequence outside of practice!

Glad Vito got to play.  Never enough opportunity to reward him with toys for doing agility in public!

Oh and you guys are killing me with the zero comments to Vito's experiment!  Seriously?  No one has any words of encouragement or expressions of confusion?

I don't know if I clearly stated that this experiment will be limited to obedience only.  Vito will still get toys in agility for 3 reasons.
1) Agility runs are short enough that there is zero reason to really fade the reward.
2) Agility is all about speed.  There is no way I will ever get the same drive and speed without external rewards, in agility and in obedience.  And since Vito doesn't naturally love to just run, the difference in his speed would be huge, although the process would still be easier in agility versus obedience.
3) Little to gain.  Nothing to gain really from my perspective.  Agility is postively trained already and most trainers do not have a huge problem getting what they have in practice to what they have in trials.  The differences that do exist are more so due to arousal differences than the lack of reward, for most dogs anyway.

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The Experiment Begins

Thanks to Denise Fenzi and 2 other people on the Fenzi alumni group, I am re-inspired to begin my no food/toys experiment with Vito.  I have absolutely nothing to lose with Vito, especially considering his recent meltdown in AKC and going back into retirement.

For those who are confused right now, the basis is that I will be taking away all food and all toys in our obedience training for the next 6 months? year??? forever?
The goal is not to gradually fade reinforcers.  Not to see how long a behavior itself can be a reward for another behavior.  The goal is to see if a dog will CHOOSE to work when they KNOW the only reward available is me.

Why?  Because clearly I'm a glutton for punishment.  It is not necessary to do this in order to be successful in the obedience ring.  All dogs if you trial long enough, and usually it doesn't take that long, will learn there is never any food, toys, (or corrections) in the ring.  You might be able to trick your dog into thinking you still have food on you for a little while.  And if you do a lot of matches or CDSP trials it may even hold up.  But good trainers don't trick their dogs.  They systematically teach their dogs how to deal with the formality that trials have.  How to handle working long stretches of time without reinforcement.  How to smoothly transition between exercises.  And usually have some sort of jackpot system, with the reward off their body and out of sight.

What I am fascinated with is the process of building up the value of the working relationship.  The value of personal play.  And if successful, then trials become no different than practice.  There is only you and your dog, no external rewards, and no hope of getting them.  Some "balanced" trainers do this.  But what I am interested in is finding a way to successfully accomplish this when the dog always has a choice.  The choice to say no and stop training at any time without consequence.  Is there a way to trump the value of you over the environment and have your behaviors hold up?

Many positive trainers would say no, at least initially.  Behaviors are reinforced through food, toys, and reinforcement rate is gradually diminished.  If behaviors start to diminish you look at where you've been putting value recently.  Recently the value of personal play has been talked about a lot on R+ obedience groups and people are starting to use it a lot more.  Not many trainers silently hand over a cookie anymore or toss their toy without also inserting themselves in the process!

But personal play is still paired a lot with external rewards.  And it's hard to know just how reinforcing personal play can be if you're always backing it up with another reward.  Take tugging for example.  Most trainers don't tug with their puppy in exchange for food anymore as they find it's not needed.  With good toy mechanics, dogs quickly discover how much they love to stalk, chase, pounce, and even kill the toy.  And dogs will love different parts of those sequences  with some dogs preferring the chase and never want to actually bite and some loving that kill.  Dogs who tug for food look very different than those who tug for the sake of tugging.  A few dogs will start to cross over and love tugging even if it's never paired with food again, any my guess would be those dogs just needed food to get them started but quickly discovered how much fun it is on their own.  And even with good toy mechanics there will be some dogs who value tugging very little.  That's ok.

I suspect that just like some dogs value toy play more than others, there are dogs who naturally value personal play.  Those dogs will be easier!  But I don't want to shy away from dogs who don't seem to hold high value to personal play.  The more you use a reinforcer the more you develop it.  Many dogs find food from their food dish way higher value than the same type of food just handed over to them.  Dogs practice eating out of their bowl twice a day, every day, in most families.  I don't think we spend nearly enough time trying to develop the value for play itself.

So this process is seeing just how valuable can we make personal play.  No tricking the dog into believing food/toys will come.  Just giving the dogs a chance to make a choice- play our game or not.
And at first the process will be very, very painful.  Mainly for me.

The first stage will be Hope.  Vito will keep playing with me because he hopes the reward is coming.  He doesn't see the reward until he chooses to work as it is, so he just won't know if I'm working on a very long behavior chain.  I will see an increase in some frustration behaviors, likely more barking.

But then will come stage 2, Disappointment.  Actually punishment.  If you were to give me a Kit Kat every time I took out the trash and then you suddenly didn't, I would feel cheated.  Even if I knew the chocolate wasn't anything more than a way of saying thank you I would still feel upset.  It's not just about not getting a reward, it's about that feeling of loss as I compare it to my expectations.
I fully expect Vito to check out.  To choose to eat the lovely grass in the yard versus playing with me.  And I will let him.

And we will then see what happens in the long term.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe unicorns and rainbows.
Lance made this experiment extremely easy.  Lance loves to work and while he felt the loss of food, the chance to keep playing with me still trumped other choices.  Vito will be harder.  But there is nothing to lose and everything to gain from this knowledge.  I expect that 10 years from now, positive training is going to look very, very different.

If you are interested in playing along I would highly recommend already having a solid foundation in many obedience behaviors with the dog choosing to work without seeing the reward up front.  An attitude of curiosity and caring more about the process than the results will also be necessary as a positive trained route to this path is still in the experimental process.  But this is me publicly committing myself to this process.  I just wish winter wasn't on its way.

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Training in Public

Ouch.  What I thought I was going to be videotaping was Vito choosing to look around a bit on the first session, ignoring me, and then choosing to engage.  Instead we hopped onto a time warp and fell back a year or more on our journey.  The first session Vito didn't engage at all in 5 minutes.  This second session is about 15-20min after the first one.  While Vito seemed to connect a bit better, you can tell that he's really not into it and that becomes even more obvious after he receives a reward.

I used too much pressure to try and will him to play with me and the result shows.  Trying harder than your dog is never helps in the long run and it certainly won't get you trial ready.

Zumi is doing well with focusing in new places.  I pushed her a bit too hard in this session but lesson learned for next time.  With a dog eager to play it's hard to do any lasting damage :)

And finally here is a recent session from Vito training for dinner at home.  I ran into some errors that were very unexpected and apparently were bigger issues than I thought at the time.  I should have either had a higher reward rate for when he was correct, or abandon what he was struggling with and come back to it later when it likely would not have even been a problem.  But Vito was focused and happy and I'll be more prepared if he makes some of the same mistakes in the future.

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Engagement: Choosing to Work

I've written quite a bit on the work I've done with Vito's obedience training and the re-training I had to do for myself to stop trying harder than the effort he was giving.  It was easy to wave the food or toys in front of his face and pretend that he was really engaging with me.  But of course all of that was just fooling myself into believing that he didn't really have issues of focus and motivation.

All of our re-training went into Vito choosing to work and giving him the power.  Our initial "work" was really 95% play.  But it was driven by Vito and his choices.  No more somersaults and pleading from my end.  It also meant a lot more time spent on doing nothing.  And we still have that issue, especially in new places as he has to check out the world.  Baby steps.

But Denise Fenzi's blog post yesterday on the topic of engagement summarizes so eloquently the philosophy that I had to move to with Vito and have taken with all the puppies since.
Comfort first, then engagement, and then finally work.
http://denisefenzi.com/2014/11/03/basic-engagement/

Py loves offering focus and "heeling" for any possible chance I could be willing to train and hand out cookies!  With Vito I have a million deleted pictures of his butt or maybe of his body but with his head swiveled in another direction.

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Bursts of Work

Vito accompanied me to a puppy raiser outing at a public park this weekend.  I was planning on bringing Gracie but she's still in the slammer.  I knew that this would be difficult for Vito as he has a hard time adjusting to "non-dog show" environments but was also pretty certain he could handle it.

On arrival Vito did a bit of stress whining from the parking lot to the entrance.  I parked farther away so that he would have a bit of a walk and hopefully tone down the whining before getting to people.  And for the most part it worked.  We were able to hang out and wait at the park entrance for the small group of puppy raisers to arrive.  It took Vito about 20min of looking around at all the people walking by for him to be able to work for 5 seconds.  Then he came into heel position nicely, did 5 great steps of heeling, got some cookies, and then I released him back to the environment.  He needed more time to soak everything in so I put him back in a down and waited again.  Another 10 minutes passed before he was ready to work again but this time after 5 seconds of work, a reward, and a release back to the world he re-engaged me with me almost right away!  I think we did maybe 4 or 5 more bursts before I could feel him waning and we went back to hanging out.

A little bit later we went for a walk around the large playground and made several stops for the dogs to work on attention and behaviors.  Vito was able to work at a few.  In the 90 minutes we were at the park we probably did a grand total of 5 minutes of quality work.  At one spot towards the end he started getting anxious about nothing in particular.  I found that just giving him treats for being calm and lying down nicely did nothing to help him.  But work he understands.  Vito wasn't in a state of mind to offer nice work and focus but I could fake it by showing him a cookie upfront before doing our 5 seconds.  Repeat.  The heeling was lovely and his attitude was great.  But that's still not something I want to get in the habit of doing with Vito.  Bribing doesn't get you very far in the long run and certainly won't hold up in the ring.  At least it kept Vito from having a melt down in a situation we couldn't leave.

All in all, I am very happy with how Vito did at the outing.  The park was very busy and there were kids running around everywhere.  Because it was so busy I didn't expect Vito to have any reactive episodes (nothing stands out in chaos) and that held true.  He took a very long time to acclimate and if I was there on my own I would have brought out his crate for him to hang out in.  But he did eventually choose to work and wasn't bribed or pepped talked into doing so.  Some of the times he worked I feel he did so purely because he's a good dog who knew what I was waiting for.  So he did a little work and upon his release he went right back to watching the world.  That tells me he really wasn't ready despite choosing to do so.  It makes me happy to see that choice, but it also means I was greedy and pushed him too hard.  Overall we were there a long time and he mostly handled the environment well.  See the relaxed eyes and face in the pictures above?!

In case you haven't read it yet, Denise Fenzi posted a brilliant post on the topic of working in challenging environments..

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Ring Confidence Class

As briefly alluded to, I organized a ring confidence class to help me with Vito's issues.  We've been doing our weekly meetings since February and are now getting ready to disband for at least a few months.  Vito and I have been doing ring entrance work for a long time so along with my co-organizer we had the 2 advanced dogs in the class.  The rest of our small group consisted of dogs who were either at the novice level or who hadn't started trialing yet.  I strongly believe EVERY dog should have experience with this ring confidence stuff, even if some dogs will pick it up along the way and make you look good without it!

We're somewhat following Denise's ideas for her class at the Fenzi Academy.  Amazing class with some great proofing ideas I never would have thought of myself.  Mainly the class is about focus and handling pressure.  Teaching the dog what their expectations are for handling all the little things that go on when you're in the obedience ring.  Stewards/judges pointing to the setup spot, removing the leash, handing off dumbbells, following orders, and so forth.  When you break it down, you can see SO many areas that could easily allow a dog to lose that connection with their handler if it's not trained.  Very important stuff!

It's really been amazing to watch the new dogs pick up on their new criteria and blossom.  At minimum they're learning how much fun the ring can be!  One of the handlers during this past week's lesson will soon have to be working on her dog not forging during heeling when just a few weeks ago there was sniffing and lagging issues!  Half the battle for most teams is knowing how to split the work down so that criteria can remain high but the dog knows how to reach success.

Since I know many of you need visuals, I put together this video from our session this past week.  We start every week with ring=party.  Since Vito is more advanced, I don't start our party until after we setup and the leash is removed.  Focus must be 100% or we leave the ring and try again.  This was a really good session for Vito.  Sometimes he's still not ready so we don't even make it into the ring and briefly skip our turn.  

We then did the same 2 exercises this week that gave us a really hard time the prior week.  First was handing over the dumbbell.  Last week he followed the dumbbell and jumped on the stewards.  This week he did a nice job but the person coming from the front was harder than from the side.  Secondly we worked on the figure 8 posts coming into the ring.  Last week he had a hard time maintaining 100% focus and his little eyes shifted back and forth as he tried so hard not to look.  This week had little glances but much improvement!  Running and stomping from the stewards was much harder though!

If you're in the Minneapolis area and interested in this work, I will likely be putting together an official class to start sometime this summer.

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Obedience Work Continues

So now that Lance has completed our quest in obedience, where does that leave our training?  Lance loves obedience and I love training for it so we're going to keep at it and see how far we can go.  We currently sit at 45 OTCH points and our 3 firsts, all earned in the last 15 months and most of it towards the end of last year.  At least we will continue to learn about maintaining precision and attitude in the ring vs the backyard champion.  Certainly tons of learning left on both our ends!

- Long Sit:  Continued work on having Lance do at least one long sit on a daily basis.  He also gets the opportunity to do one formal group sit in the weekly class I teach and can do another informal sit next to a dog while I walk the course during his agility practice.

Ever since I started having people feed Lance on his sit stay while I'm out sight I am happy to report that Lance hasn't broken a single sit in practice since.  Seriously, one cookie erased the progressively worsening issue we had going on when Lance was in a lineup with other dogs.  Unfortunately it's not spilling over to trials, at least not consistently.  Out of new ideas.  It's definitely not an understanding issue with Lance but rather a stress issue.

- Go Outs:  Continued work on stanchion training for straightness and lots of proofing with stuff on the floor and gates.  He loves proofing go outs!  Vito is currently working on not taking jumps on the way out so I've moved the jumps way in so the gap is pretty narrow.  Corgi barks with glee.

- Signals:  Lots of games to build confidence, especially as I'm walking away.  The only way I can replicate an error in practice if I go more than 3 times the normal distance.  Or sometimes if he's next to a dancing toy creeping towards him.  Then his little eyes get huge as he tries so hard not to look at it that his brain doesn't have enough left over to comprehend the signal.

All the other exercises my goal is confidence, confidence, confidence.  Now that I'm not as terrified to break them, I'm going to have fun with proofing games.  Keeping it very relaxed but challenging.  Retrieve over high with barriers to go around.  Super exploding article pile.  Fast repeated work to try and fool him into anticipation.

I'm also going to start working on an entrance routine with Lance.  Vito obviously knows one really well and I'm very clear on what criteria I expect from him.  But since Lance doesn't have the same issues as Vito I've never really done any specific training of it with him.  Typically he stands between my legs and on my feet while we wait to go in the ring.  This works pretty well for us as he can look around a bit but I can also choose to make the wait time pretty exciting by bouncing him on my feet and talking to him.  What I realize I need to train still is the explosion of that position and into heel.  I've also decided that I will start training and then requiring eye contact while the leash is removed and working on exploding to the first exercise together.  Lance is hit or miss on that piece and I know it would help our connection on that first exercise.

And finally, once the weather actually feels like spring up here, I'm going to work obedience in my own yard!!!  This will be the first time this is actually a real possibility for us since a little rental we had 5 years ago!  My plan for our home turf work is to re-introduce all the work I did on fading food rewards and replacing it with personal play.  I still do a lot of that with Lance but I feel like it's morphed into jackpot style training for him since the 2 days of work I get to do with him at the obedience club is followed by feeding him dinner there before I teach.  I could feed him right before I train him, but that would seem backwards.  It's not that I think the jackpot method is hurting our training in any way, I just feel like going back to making him less dependent on the food will only help our training.

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Vito's Re-Debut into AKC Obedience

Today Vito and I are celebrating.  After more than a 3 year hiatus from AKC obedience we stepped foot inside the Pre-Open ring together this morning.  Long time readers will recognize what a long journey it's been for us, and will continue to be for us, to get to this point where I finally felt ready to give the AKC ring a try again.

Pre Open is one of AKC's new optional titling classes.  It is essentially the exact same as Open, but without the group stays and the option for lower jump heights.  Since I've essentially spent the last 2 years working solely on Vito choosing to play with me without bribes, and a billion and one ring entrances, I haven't exactly done any group stay work with him in ages.  At this point while I think he would be OK in a lineup, it's not really something I wanted to gamble on with his confidence and certainly not something that was relevant to my goal for this trial.  So Pre- Open it was.  While Vito has done CDSP obedience a handful of times over the past 3 years, the experience is not quite the same as that of an AKC trial.  CDSP offers the ability to praise during exercises, treat in between exercises, offer simultneous hand signals and verbal commands, and a generally more relaxed atmosphere.  AKC is the gold standard of obedience for a reason.

I felt brave enough to enter, finally, because I knew we had a good chance getting the attitude I wanted and at last only a small chance of having a meltdown.  I figured even if he wasn't quite ON the way I was hoping for that we could finish the run without having had any real damage done to the work I've put in.  I only entered one day and chose Sunday because the judge is awesome and I knew he wouldn't give me a hard time if I chose to support Vito with extra praise if he needed it.
The greatest video ever:


Vito blew me away.  He had a few moments of disconnects after entering the ring and through the first leg of heeling.  But from then onward he was ON.  Heeling was bordering on forging and we definitely had some crowding!!!!  We had a no sit on the last halt but it didn't seem to deflate Vito at all as he happily jumped on me afterwards.  Actually on every single transition between exercises Vito was happy to jump on me and he even did a few high hand touches on the last transition.  I think this was one of the only times in a trial that Vito didn't just jump on me because I was asking him to, but did so out of joy.

On the retrieves and recall he didn't just trot but actually ran!  On the figure 8 a post was a child!  Wearing a hat!  We did a bonus figure 8 loop because the judge apparently wasn't quite ready for daylight savings and I threw him by going right.  So our halt was right before the inside post, something that can make it hard for Vito to regain momentum and negated my wanting to go right to drive, drive, drive the Toller.  Vito was still amazing!  At the very end he needed to go check out the judge.  But Phil is awesome and just gave Vito his dumbbell, turning the experience into judges=awesome.

Ok, things to work on.  Unsurprisingly, all are skills.
- Fronts :)  Vito is improving greatly at home with his fronts while holding an object but we're no where near being ready
- Drop on recall.  Vito had a slow response to my hand signal.  Actually, I'm blown away that he did it at all.  Vito is not a fan of downs and I wasn't sure if he would do it in a trial.  In CDSP I give both verbal and hand signal and I think he has needed it.  At home I've been doing a lot of drops, followed by backing up in a down (after that seminar).  Vito still doesn't like the initial drop, but LOVES his down-backs!
- Broad jump.  Another neglected exercise and one I can't practice at home.  He pretty much cut the corner and I expected to NQ.  The judge disagreed on the cutting part, but agreed that it was funky and deducted 2 points for the exercise.

Unfortunately neither of the 2 upcoming local AKC trials offer the Pre classes.  I am currently debating about doing 1 day of AKC rally but we will see.  Otherwise we will soon be entering the lull of obedience trials until late summer.  There is another CDSP trial in April that I will likely enter him in just for more fun ring=awesome experience.

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Preparations for Obedience Trials

Several people have asked me to give more details on my training with Vito.  So this has been my long plan with The Toller to get him back in to the AKC obedience ring.  Written in a rough order of our progress, but often we are working on several at once.  My goal for Vito is joy.  "The utmost in 
willingness, enjoyment and precision."

1. Increase personal play
We've been working on this for quite a while now.  Vito has been difficult for me to figure out what type of play he likes.  Too much pressure can shut him down.  Chasing me games can be fun, but I have to be very careful not to get too far ahead as he doesn't recover well from lagging.

So far our play is a combination of building value for hand touches (not a natural motivator for Vito), me quickly stepping backwards and letting him jump on me (he loves the release in pressure), butt scratches, and his favorite trick the reverse chest vault.  Other options I'm working on building value for are very gentle pushes, releases to go out around a pole or other object and then catching up to me, and spins during heeling.  We didn't really make the progress I wanted to see with this focal point until I started to address point #3 below...

2. Self control around food and toys
My dogs have quite a bit of impulse control training from early on.  Vito has always done very well with leaving both food/toys/objects on the ground that he will never be released to and with leaving his eventual reward.  All of this training is done without using any sort of verbal cue such as leave it as I don't want my dogs thinking that something is fair game if they see it before I do.
More thoughts written here on focus around food.

The later is definitely harder which is why I tell my puppy students to do way more training of always handing a different reward from their hand versus letting the dog be released to it.  And while I consider Vito to have a low work ethic, he is a very obsessive dog.  Knowing he's not going to get it is one thing, but knowing the toy will be his reward is another.  Puppy Vito took months and months of work on not Toller Screaming for a ball.  Now days he's pretty good if I have the ball, but not so good with anyone else.
We are also making considerable practice on heeling with his ball on the ground.  We're to the point where eye flicks do not go un addressed and our biggest work is on maintaining focus between exercise set ups.

3. Choosing to work, and with full effort/ Ring entrances
The meat of our issue.  As readers know, this was something I didn't realize was a problem for us until it was pretty darn bad.  We also likely had the added difficulty of Vito's anxiety medications lowering his already poor work drive (at the time he was on Xanax which really was not a good fit for Vito) and his need to check out the environment for safety concerns.

The issue was Vito choosing to work with me with his full focus and effort.  Vito could/can be very slow to turn on and even slower to give me that intensity I want in our work together.  At the time I was skirting around that issue by using Vito's obsessiveness to my advantage.  Appearance of his favorite treats or a fun toy was absolutely needed to get him to focus on me instead of the environment.  At the time I didn't see it as much of an issue.  I was just getting him warmed up, heating the porridge.  But in the process not only was I expanding way more energy than my dog, but I was also lowering the value of our personal play, and teaching him that I would bring Disneyland to him versus him actually getting off the couch and walking in with me together.

Revolution on this point was almost 2 years ago thanks to a lesson with Nancy Little.  And a very, very, long road of figuring out how to apply it.  Mainly I started with Ring Entrances.  A combination of the idea that the ring was our Disney World, and the idea that he had to enter with full engagement.  We spent a lot of time entering that ring and immediately exiting if he didn't meet my criteria.  Of course criteria at the beginning was one step in the ring with full focus on me, then party.  Lots, and lots of exiting.  Seriously.  Now I'm happy to say that he really understands the criteria on entering the ring, setting up for that first exercise (usually heeling first as a way to gauge him), and now transitions to other exercises.  There are still times I need to leave the ring, especially when in a new place.  I will never force my dog to play with me, so if he doesn't want to then we just leave.  At this point I can usually try again immediately, but in the beginning I would wait outside the ring until he offered focus.  If he kept up engagement while I asked Vito if he was ready, we would try again.  Repeat.
This is pretty early on in our journey, but past the hardest initial work. I'm working on entrance, leash off (I now have eye contact criteria there too), and running to new setup spots: http://laurawaudby.blogspot.com/2012/09/ring-entries.html
Food was still on my body and I am still putting out a ton of energy.  That day I didn't need to do any immediate exits.  In the beginning I also used a low to moderate value reward (which for Vito was kibble or packaged dog treats) so that I could really focus on engagement first, reward second.

4. New locations
Going somewhere new and starting over.  This is something that I haven't put a lot of effort into doing and one I know that is highly important for him.  I was putting a higher priority on it this fall and we made a lot of progress very quickly.  Then winter hit and playing outside was no longer an option.  I do try and take advantage of Vito always coming with to Lance's trials by utilizing the warm up ring if there is one, or at least respectfully playing in any open space I can find.

The hard thing is still holding criteria high on what is important for Vito.  For us, that means no showing upfront the reward, and once we begin work his focus has to remain.  In the beginning rewards were plentiful.  And I also spent a lot of time just standing in one place outside of the ring, whether it was a real ring or just a predefined area of grass.  See the above notes on doing lots of nothing because he simply wasn't ready to work.

5. Jackpot training
Since Vito is no where near ready to work just for the sake of playing with me, we have started some jackpot style training.  Nothing real systematic and formal.  Once Vito decides he is ready to play with me, I show him his reward and place it on a chair or shelf right outside the ring.  Eventually the reward will be back at his crate.  Then we go the ring and play.  The hard part for Vito is his obsessive nature, but the work we have been doing above in part 2 laid most of the ground rules.  In many ways this training is WAY easier then our previous work on engagement from the start.  While I'm still asking Vito to work with me without getting him revved up with food and toys, he can see the reward he can get before we actually go in the ring.  Basically I'm just asking him for more and more work before I reward him, sometimes doing an easy rep.  Transitions are harder as of course he sometimes thinks my praise means he gets his toy.  But we're working on doing his personal play as a reward and I am trying hard to make sure that it's actually some what fun even if it pails in comparison to his jackpot.

Actual release to the jackpot is something I'm still figuring out with him.  Currently, I'm requiring Vito to move with me to the exit of the ring and he's not allowed to spring there on his own.  I put on the leash and at this point I'm leaving him in a sit while I grab the reward and bring it to him.  I'm still wanting to the actual jackpot to be done inside the ring at this point.

6. The exercises themselves
Other than some training with Vito's food inside the house, he has extremely little training on the obedience exercises themselves.  Seriously.  ALL of our work at the obedience club and in other locations has been on engagement with me and monitored through heeling.  I chose heeling because it is the staple of obedience, easiest to judge his focus level as it requires 100%, easiest to apply little games to and smoothly transition back, and I just love it.

Now Vito has had an introduction to every single obedience exercise since he was a puppy.  He has not been trained to proficiency, but at least knows what I'm asking for.  Utility exercises are the weakest as they require the most confidence.

It's only in the last month or so that I've actually been stepping up his obedience training at home and actually doing some at the club.  The reason that I wanted to wait until now to bring it back is because the root of our problem had nothing to do with the obedience exercises themselves.  Attitude first, precision second.  I also knew that re-focusing on the exercises is drastically increasing the number of rewards he is getting during his obedience training and I didn't want to fall back into the huge hole I dug earlier.  So now when we're away from home but in a well known location, I focus first on jackpot style training, and then fall back on bringing the rewards in the ring for the other exercises.  So much fun to get back to it!

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Obedience Seminar

I just finished attending a big name obedience seminar on problem solving and I'm not quite sure what to say.  I definitely wasn't prepared.  I knew this wasn't a force free trainer but I also knew she was big into motivation and drive building so I guess I was thinking the corrections wouldn't be as frequent or as harsh.  I was wrong.

For the most part I saw dogs who didn't know how to win, not dogs who were lacking on effort.  I guess I didn't find it funny when a few of the dogs tried to avoid the situation by hiding behind mom or even running to their crate.  There were repeated comments about needing to release the pressure by doing fun tricks afterwards and putting dogs back in drive.  I guess that's good and all but I don't see why dogs need to be pushed so hard that they were in danger of shutting down.  There were several moments where dogs were repeatedly asked to a do a behavior over and over until they failed just so they could get a correction for lack of effort.  That Have To moment that supposedly is so important in obedience training.

It honestly was a great seminar though and I have quite a few ideas that should be easy enough to apply in a force free manner.  I'll just focus on building that Want.  In the presenter's defense, she did speak often of building that Want as a puppy so that you don't have as much shutdown with corrections in the future.
Seminars are so hard as you only get 10 minutes to spend evaluating a team and trying to show solutions that should takes weeks or months to implement.


Actually the most fascinating part for me was all the focus on cookies.  Cookies to keep the dog in drive, cookies as part of the correction process to lessen the defensiveness, and cookies to keep behavior's valued. I certainly wasn't expecting that.  Some of the methods were similar to what I've been doing with Vito in his training.  He's not ready to fully immerse into the get rid of all the cookies! plan I did with Lance this past year.  No cookies, no force, building the Want towards the joy of working just for me.  Vito's on a modified jackpot type of training plan, mixed in with a lot of personal play.

Anyway, here are some ideas I'm excited about trying, or re-visiting, with my crew:
- scooting back in a down and in a sit for our signals and drop on recalls.  Re-fixing it so Lance actually does it instead of just barking at me :) Vito actually has a decent version of both.
- doing multiple really fast spins with Lance to try and incite some forging in practice.   He actually doesn't forge very often in practice anymore (yay!!!) so it will be fun to try and get him really high and see if he can collect his brain.
- fronts after fast spins
- working on tiny fixes of fronts instead of bigger, easier ones: setting up a front, cuing wait, and stepping to the side only 2 inches in either direction instead of 12 inches before calling him to front again.
- Working on more moving tricks with Lance as I realized I generally don't do very many spins or touching while heeling due to his smaller size.

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Loving Obedience Work

30 seconds!  That is how long it took Vito to choose to engage with me upon getting to the edge of the park.  I had no food on me, no toys, and after 30 short seconds of Vito staring out into the parking lot he made the choice to come through my legs for butt scratches and begin work.  I did decide to quickly end our start when Vito had some glances away while I tried to take the leash off, but he yelled at me for that choice and then remembered the rule on our immediate attempt #2.  I love when he sasses at me.

Today I did 2 sessions and focused on 3 lessons.  The first part of each session was evaluating how quickly Vito chose to engage with no rewards on me.  As mentioned above, that was pure awesomeness!  But, the work itself needs some more confidence.  Vito was doing a ton of bouncing and forging.  While I am extremely happy he's doing that and I now feel he is ready for me to start working on precision.  I did quite a bit of slow time and left pivots.  It's remarkable the huge difference in handling I've been able to begin.  Way less work output for me!  I am also assuming that even without me doing any work on precision in our heeling that the bouncing and forging will start to go away on its own.  Right now I feel it's part of a over excited and frustrated response and as he settles into being more comfortable working in new places it should go away.

After a few minutes and he got a ball reward, I then worked on leaving the ball on the ground.  The amount of focus this required for Vito actually improved his heeling tremendously.  Keeping eye contact with me when we got close to the ball was a bit hard, and staying engaged with me when I tried to play with him without releasing him to the ball was harder.  But heeling progress was very nice :)

The third part I wanted to work on was Vito heeling with the ball in his mouth.  I haven't done much with this before and it was an idea Denise Fenzi recommends on her blog and classes.  The idea is to 1) increase the challenge of heeling and 2) to insert the handler more into the reward package.  The dog having the toy is fun, but it's even more fun when you're involved.  Of course that's way easier to do with a tug toy as you can just reach down and tug every now and then, but I'm making it work with a ball.

Training obedience with Vito is really becoming fun again.  It's not that it wasn't fun before, but it was requiring so much more thinking and planning on my part.  Progress is continuing in leaps and bounds from even a month ago!

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Obedience games on the road

Vito is continuing to progress, in some ways, with his obedience training.  Still working extremely little on actual behaviors and focusing completely on engagement.

Progress is hilly with the first test.  The ability for Vito to start training on the first attempt with 100% of the attitude I want is mostly getting better.  But it can still take multiple exits and restarting on occasion.

The second aspect I just started working on with Vito is very short sessions of no food or toys.  Success in this is HUGE in many ways.  With Puppy Vito this was very easy to do but as his anxieties started to increase after his 2nd birthday I lost this ability.  The pushing and shoving I would do suddenly became too much pressure and only served to shut him down.  I've been slowly building it back up by trying very hard to insert myself into the use of food rewards, doing lots of relieving of pressure through backing up and/or running away, and creating high value for his hand touch and chest vault tricks.

Today I walked to the park with Vito to see how he would do with this game in a "new" place.  Vito's been to the park a lot for some off leash sniffing and we used to practice disc there, but he hasn't really done much obedience work there.  Here's me acting like an idiot:

I'm giving our session two thumbs up!  Pushy Toller appeared and he happily engaged with me for a full 4 minutes of play/work!  I did give him two treats in the last minute but I'm hoping they were the bonus cookies they felt like rather than bribe cookies to stay connected.  Our play was definitely obnoxious and I will eventually work on toning it down so that it could actually be useful in the obedience ring.  But for the now, the scratches on my arms and belly are a fun reminder.
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