Seminar - Michelle Pouliot Part 1

Stella and I had a working spot this past weekend at a Michelle Pouliot seminar.  Michelle is a top-level competitor in Canine Freestyle and is also Director of Research and Development for programs at Guide Dogs for the Blind.  I saw Michelle at Clicker Expo and really liked her presentions plus once I viewed a few of her freestyle routines I was blown away. Anyone that can complete a long routine like that with no food or toys and a happy working dog has my utmost respect.  The focus of the seminar was freestyle but she also has a strong obedience history and adapted her information for both types of participants.

I came away from the weekend with two "aha" areas that I want to focus on going forward over the next little while.   The first was working attention.   The second was the importance of visual cues.  This really isn't new information for me but I feel that life has a way of slapping us upside the head with information when we need to revisit something.

Michelle feels that we need to train more attention and focus less on training skills in other environments.  This makes a lot of sense to me because once I have great attention behaviours in all sorts of areas then the dog will naturally be able to perform the exercises I request.  This doesn't mean that the exercises don't still need to be trained, generalized etc but the biggest first step is just to get the working attention on cue and with duration. 

I worked attention with Stella as a puppy but realized that it had fallen away as we moved onto "sexier" stuff.   When we competed our pre-novice rounds a few weeks ago we passed but I wasn't happy with her heelwork as she was fairly sniffy and distracted.  She is capable of much prettier work than we gave.  I tend to have a mindset where I still think of her as a puppy and excuse things like distracted behaviour .  She is still a young (14 months) dog but I now recognize that I need to set and maintain some better standards when we are working together.

When training attention we have the following progression of goals:
1.  Have the dog offer attention.
2.  Get duration attention. 
3.  Get attention on cue.
4.  Have on cue attention fluent. 
5.  Attention is reliable in goal environments. 

Attention is a trained, reinforced behaviour for most dogs.  We want our dogs motivated to want to work with us.  We need to have a strong history of reinforcement (food, toys, play, interaction etc.) and a mutual trust and respect with our dogs to be successful.   We can't take food or toys in the ring so the relationship will be what gets us through.  We can classically condition praise by using it after we click but before we treat/play.   Stella has a few pretty good non-food/toy reinforcers in that she likes when I clap my hands and she gets to jump/bounce but that can get her a bit over-stimulated for a ring environment so I'm going to also explore other reinforcers.   Michelle believes in using the dog's favourite natural behaviours whenever possible as rewards.  One of her dogs loves to jump straight up and down and the other loves when Michelle is laying down on the floor.  Stella does love when I get down on my hands and knees with her so that might be useful for us. 

Michelle believes one of the biggest problems we have with attention is that as humans we self-sabatoge by checking out on our dogs.  We do this to talk to our trainer or friends, to think about what our next trainings steps will be, to set up stuff etc.  This teaches our dogs to dis-engage with us and move onto other self-rewarding behaviours like sniffing.  Attention is a two way street and we need to give our dogs 100% when we are training with them.  When we get attention on cue that is our "ON" switch so when we cannot offer our dogs 100% of our attention in return then we need to use our "OFF" switch.  Dogs need to be taught to shift into a neutral off that will allow us to do things like talk to trainers/set up.  This is not the same as an "all done" situation.  With young dogs she recommends placing them in a down (sit or stand also ok), give a cue like relax etc and then step on the leash so it is very short and prevents the dog from exploring the environment.   This is generally not a rewarded behaviour as the object is to teach the dog that we are not going to interact so there is no point in doing anything other than just waiting for us to turn them back "ON".    If you need to remove your attention for an extended period then it is better to crate or tie your dog somewhere.

I did the "OFF" exercise with Stella and she went down nicely and then I stepped on the leash.  She got bored quickly and wanted to explore but while the leash would allow her to stand it wasn't a very comfortable position for her.  She struggled a bit and I totally ignored her so she didn't think this was about me.  She wasn't stressed or freaked out, it was basically a discussion between my dog and the floor and eventually she flopped down and settled.   We've done this a few times since then and each time gets better.  I can see how this will lead to a better understanding of when we are working and expect engagement.   Michelle actually takes the whole thing further and uses a set routine where she crates for a short period before and after each training session and uses a specific leash on/off routine.  This pattern becomes a strong cue to the dog that work is about to start and is also useful in a trial environment when our dogs are often crated.  It certainly works for her!  We were lucky enough to watch her work her dogs and it is impressive.  Her dogs obviously love to work with her and equally obvious how much she loves and respects them.

I've rambled on long enough now so will talk more about visual cues another day. 

Remembering Lucy

August 14th marks the two year anniversary of saying goodbye to our beloved yellow labrador Lucy.  She was 14.5 years old when she left us and I miss her.  Lucy was our first dog and was a bossy, smart, stubborn, loveable girl who helped make us a family.  She was a very naughty puppy and we wondered if we would ever survive that stage.  Riley and Stella have seemed like dream puppies compared to her craziness.


Riley is the dog that taught me to love training but Lucy was the dog that introduced me to the world of natural dog health.  She developed food allergies as a young dog which eventually lead me to raw feeding.  When she was five years old she got terribly sick and was diagnosed with Chronic Active Hepatitis and was expected to live less than six months.   We chose to support and fight her liver problems with many supplements and healthy food and she rebounded and did not show liver issues again until much later in life.  She also had bad problems in her final years with mobility so we learned again about things like IMS therapy (similar to accupuncure), dog chiropractors, swim therapy and supplements.  Her smile was ever present no matter what life threw at us.

She had a bad experience with a jack russell when she was six months and held a life long grudge against small, bossy dogs.  I know now that we probably could have trained past that but luckily her situation was easy to manage as it was easy to know the type of dog that would bother her.  She was ten when we brought home puppy Riley so they never really played much but were very good friends.  Riley was always gentle with her and was her great protector in her senior, wobbly years.

When I think of her now I am flooded with happy memories.  Our recent camping trip to Oregon had us laughing at funny thoughts from years camping with our yellow dog.  I still have moments where I cry and  my heart aches from missing her so much but mostly I am just grateful to have known her.  Thanks for being our dog Lulubelle, you are forever in our hearts!

Gotcha Day & New Title

Today is the one year anniversay of our wonderful little girl coming home with me.  I love this dog and she has brought lots of fun and new experiences to our family.

We "celebrated" by competing at a show in Victoria.  Stella successfully passed her remaining two legs of her pre-novice obedience title so now can add P.C.D. to her name.   Next up will be training towards the Rally Advanced (RA) and Novice Obedience (CD) titles .  She did a pretty good job today although her heel work wasn't nearly what she is capable.  My fault for not working it very much lately plus I also entered her in our first confirmation class at this same show so have been cramming in last-minute training for that this week.  It has confused her to go from a heel with attention and automatic sit (obedience) to focus forward and stand/stack when stopped (confirmation).  I'm sure we could easily sort that out with some more time but it made things interesting today.  Luckily she is pretty easy going and adaptable.

The confirmation actually went pretty well and I didn't fall flat on my face or embarass my lovely dog :o).   We competed with some local Vizsla friends so things were very relaxed and friendly.  We didn't come away with any points but it was an interesting experience.  I am still evaluating if this is something I am interested in pursuing further.  I have no plans to breed and showing gets pretty expensive especially when there is any travel.  A lot will depend on how things progress with Riley over the next month or so when we meet with the surgeon to see if we will do hip surgery.  If that happens then the show and training budgets are going to be pretty tight for a while.

Here are a few pics from her first day home with us and then today at the confirmation show.

Already showing signs of her love of shoes

Sneaky cuddler

Smile

Vacation Part 1

Hubby, the dogs and I headed off a few weeks ago to beautiful Oregon with our trailer for some summer camping fun.  First week was LaPine State Park near Bend, Oregon.  This is a great area that would likely be classified as high mountain desert.  The Deschutes River winds through the campsite and the Newberry National Volcanic Monument Park is close by with wonderful sights, lakes and hiking. 

We had a very relaxing, mellow trip.  Riley is okay with shorter (1-1.5 hours) hikes so we did some exploring and took advantage of swimming opportunities.  Stella ate some grass that irritated her throat badly on the first day which then caused her to want to eat lots more grass to throw up and repeat in a vicious cycle.    This resulted in a few miserable days for her where she had an upset gastro-intestinal system (vomiting and a few diarhea poops) and a sore throat area.  Through all of that she still was mostly her happy, bouncy self and everything got sorted out and settled down after a few days.   Both my dogs munch on grass often here with no problems other than the occasional stringy grass poop but this stuff was just longer, dry stuff with sharper edges.  She is also low to the ground and darn sneaky so it was very hard to keep it away from her unless she was tied up on a short rope in the campsite.  Luckily once she felt better it was much less attractive to her.  We still managed to have lots of fun and the warm weather was perfect for dog swimming.

  Stella swimming in Paulina Lake



Riley swimming in Deschutes River



Friends exploring the trails

We also met a fun three month old female vizsla pup in the campground.  Stella had a blast playing with puppy Olive who actually lives fairly close to us here in Vancouver.  It was funny to meet them when we are both so far from home!

Stella playing with Olive

Campsite