Hunting and gathering ...

The cats are hunting, but I am gathering.

My 2lggd mom loves the nuts that fall on the ground all over our yard. She gathers them by the sackful. I like them too, but I just find them one at a time, and then crunch them up. Here we are looking for nuts.



My two kitties are not interested in the nuts. They only want to stalk the squirrels that eat the nuts.

The big pecan trees in our yard did not yield much crop last year, but this year is looking very good so far. The nuts on the several trees vary in quality. Some are very small and round, hard to crack, but extremely tasty. I don't bother with them; too much work. Others are large and oblong, papershells that can be easily cracked against eachother in one hand, with large sweet and juicy nut meats inside. These I collect for snacking.

Last weekend was very breezy, and I picked up many nuts off the ground. Tomorrow is forecast to be also very windy, and so the coming weekend should be good for collecting many more. Emma likes to crunch the nuts. I think she goes after the pecans that have already been partially chewed by the squirrels, because she can smell the sweet nut meat inside. Unfortunately, the sharp shells sometimes cause her digestive problems, and I find her barfing little chunks of shell during the night. I try to stop her from eating them, but I know it's quite pointless because the yard where she plays with her friend Buffy is strewn with them.

The cats are very social animals. When we walk around the yard, they keep us company. They are about 18 months old, and have become fairly good at catching mice, shrews, and young rats. They have been practicing stalking squirrels without much success. It takes some time for a cat to become an accomplished hunter, and they are just starting to get the knack. They caught their first squirrel (that I know of) last week. I have given them a pep talk about not letting those darn squirrels munch pecans with impunity. Even if they do not catch a squirrel, they should at least keep them on their toes, don't let them get too complacent. I don't begrudge the squirrels some nuts, really. I will leave all the small hard nuts on the ground for them and take the big papershells for myself, HA!

Kathy, Emma's 2lggd mom

Technorati Tags: PWD, Portie, Portuguese, Water, Dog, video, pictures

Thirteen Miles to Merrimon

Well, Mom says it's actually more like 16 miles, but she can't go to Merrimon without singing the song about it.

Thirteen miles to Merrimon,
Thirteen miles to the setting sun.
I could go east; I could go west.
But I won't go just like the rest.

Yesterday they went to Merrimon without me. Mom wore a dress with a TAIL; and she had sparkley HORNS on her head. They came home so late, I thought they were NEVER EVER coming home.

But today they went back and I got to go with them, and I got to visit with Lily and Popeye (mother and son PWDs), and Jack (Border Collie). I have met all these dogs before, but the only one who knows how to play is Popeye. Popeye is only a year old. His mother, Lily, is a little older than I, and Jack is the oldest. When we arrived, we were greeted by Jack, but then Lily comes roaring around the corner of the house. I must admit that even I can be a little cranky occasionally about my territory but Lily is a total you-know-what. There's a dog who needs to get in touch with her inner puppy.



Popeye and I have played before, on the beach. As we were getting into the swing of things, Lily was keeping an eye on us. She's always the one keeping everyone in line.



We got all the butt-sniffing formalities out of the way.



And then we went to visit the goats and chickens in the barn. There are five goats, but Sebastian is the only one that came into the barn to visit. He and I sniffed noses. I like the goats, but I'm not into the chickens.



Then Popeye and I played zoomie games. Let the old fogies Lily and Jack just get out of the way. We'll show them how it's done. Those 2lggds on the other hand, they are completely hopeless. Just standing around yaking. They just don't know what's worth doing!

Mark and I went to a Halloween party at my friend Tia's house in Merrimon. Mark's band, the Jumpin' Mullets, was playing the party, and so we stayed until the bitter end, which was fine with me. I dressed as a she-devil in a hot red dress with a tail and horns.

Tia has two Portuguese Water Dogs. Lily is a very large girl, weighing over 55 pounds and a little long in the body. But she was able to finish her championship in spite of her size. She had a litter of puppies, and they were all spoken for but Popeye's prospective owners changed their minds. They seemed to be worried that his white face would be hard to keep clean. Tia fell for him, and now he is her first "grandchild!"

Saturday was very wet, so Emma stayed home when Mark went out to set up sound equipment. But Sunday when we went back to pick up the equipment, the weather was fine. Lucky Emma got in a nice little playdate. She had been out there before but I don't believe she had ever before met a goat nose-to-nose.

Kathy, Emma's 2lggd mom

PWD Portie Portuguese Water Dog Border collie play playdate video

That's a pretty fancy stick ...

I've got plenty of sticks right outside the front door. Mom didn't need to cut one special. This clicker game was pretty easy ... just hold the thing, right? It made Mom happy, and it made my tummy happy ... Yum!

Emma likes to carry things, and has no problem holding stuff on her own terms. Me asking her to hold is another matter. If she brings me something, she wants to drop it at my feet immediately. So we are working on holding, as it is essential for water work

Someone on the Dog Trek group suggested teaching her to take and hold my finger. That didn't work for us. Emma has never been scolded for putting her teeth onto human skin; she grew up with bite inhibition training involving plenty of hand play. But nonetheless, she did not want to take my finger in her mouth. It seemed pointless to try to teach that, so instead I cut a wooden dowel for her to hold.

Emma takes the dowel readily when I ask her to. My touch on her muzzle may appear to be a very firm grip at times, but actually it is not a firm grip, only a light touch to give her the message that I would like her to steady.

Early releases were never punished, just used "uh uh" as an NRM; there's lots of debate about NRMs, and whether they are actually mild punishment, but I do use them some. There is one early drop where you'll hear me say "oops, uh uh." Progressively longer holds were rewarded with a C/T. The click sound I used this time is not the mechanical clicker, but rather a tongue click matching the rhythm of a clicker. Emma made the connection right away several years ago when I began using the tongue click for convenience. She understood right away that the sounds are similar and mean the same thing. It seems to cut through to her brain more reliably than a "bridge word".

I think we made some good progress here. The session was long, but she did not seem to tire of the game. By the time we stopped, she was holding, and letting me repeatedly touch and remove my hand from the dowel before release by the click. She already knows the word give, so it should be easy to add that once the hold is firm.

Kathy, Emma's 2lggd mom

PWD Portie Portuguese Water Dog work waterwork clicker training hold video

More clicker games with a dummy this time

I'm very good at carrying things around, so this was an easy game. I think Mom was really happy with the way I played the game. And I was really happy because I got lots of biscuits. When we finished playing the game, Mom took away the dummy, and put it up where I could not get it. Too bad, it might have been fun to chew on.

Although hunting dogs are taught to hold a dummy at the middle of the dummy part, I am teaching Emma to favor picking up a retrieving dummy by the rope.

Most of the items used in PWD water work have ropes on them, and are better taken by the rope for various reasons. The gear bag is required to be dragged by the rope; grasping the fabric in the teeth might cause damage. The bouy ball is too huge and can only be taken by the rope. The floats on the float line will fit in a dog's mouth, but I've heard that too much damage to the floats can result. In the case of the dummy, a dog will get less water in her mouth when retrieving by the rope.

I felt it would be a good idea to teach Emma to take by the rope, but I double checked with a question posted on the PWD Pets group. Everyone who responded confirmed and reinforced this decision as being a good one.

This session is the first time since age 1 year that Emma has worked with a dummy. I used Diamond tiny puppy biscuits, broken in half. She was consciously choosing the rope end by the time we quit. I remember that she had a similar dummy when she was small, and chewed the rope off, so I put it out of reach when we were finished.

Kathy, Emma's 2lggd mom

PWD Portie Portuguese Water Dog work waterwork clicker training video

A good day for a romp

This is my play pal, Buffy. She's about 6 months younger than me. We play almost every day, in Buffy's back yard. Buffy knows how to play, but she was better at it before she got fat. Now she poops out after a short while.

Buffy is sort of a Beagle-Jack Russel mix. She has Beagle ears on a JRT head, JRT coloring, and a body somewhere between the two.

Kathy, Emma's 2lggd mom

PWD Portie Portuguese Water Dog play video PortieFlix

... I prefer a sand bath, thank you

I had a nice afternoon at Radio Island Beach. Mocha (Norwich Terrier) and I, and our 2lggd moms spent a couple of hours there. Mocha won't go in the water. She won't play either. And today Mom wouldn't go in the water either, but she threw the ball for me a lot, sometimes up the beach, and sometimes into the water.

Mom was clicking and treating me sometimes after I came out of the water. I'm not sure what she was driving at, but hey, the biscuits were great. Sometimes she seemed to be "herding" me away from the beach blanket (haha, she wants to be a Border Collie). She didn't want me to shake off there. So then I would go roll in the sand instead.

When we got home, Mom showered. She called me and then she came looking for me. She found me lying on my loveseat, NOT looking at a big pool of saltwater with biscuit bits dribbling across the floor. Don't know where that came from! Whoever did that, I'm sure glad they didn't barf it up in Mom's car on the way home. I hoped that she would forget about my shower by the time she finished cleaning up. But when she finished, she took my collar off, and I knew I wasn't off the hook.

Now I smell like shampoo, instead of like the ocean. All those perfectly good sand baths, down the shower drain.

Emma was certainly being a little thick at the beach. Finally, after four summers of seeing her happily gallop over to my beach blanket to shake off after each dip in the ocean, I have decided to put "shake off" on cue.

I'm using a combo verbal/hand signal cue. I waited to capture each spontaneous shake-off with a c/t, and a couple of times actually caught her shaking-off away from the blanket. I did in fact try to block her path to the blanket several times, and when I did that, she would either give up and not shake-off, or she would indulge in a sand bath instead.

What on earth goes through their heads??? So many dogs do that; wait until they are right next to people, or their things to shake off.

Eventually, I just gave up and started capturing shake-offs at the blanket. She happily snarfed down biscuits, but she never made the connection. It will take more sessions, but the weather has turned cooler. I don't know how many more beach days we will have this year.

Emma's 2lggd mom
Kathy

My Mom the Whistle Blower

My 2lggd mom played a new clicker game with me today. She was giving me the sit hand signal, and I was sitting, but then at the same time she started putting this thing in her mouth and making this loud whistle noise. She had the thing hanging around her neck. At first when I heard it, I found the sound a little distracting. I got confused, and forgot that I was supposed to sit for the hand signal. But then I figured out that the whistle sound meant sit TOO! After that, the biscuits came really fast! FUN! (Yum).

I think that I could learn a lot from the ways that hunting dogs are trained. The only problem is that too much of that training involves coercion (shock collars, ear pinches, and so on). Emma and I just do not train that way; I will only use positive motivation. The only things Emma gets punished for are things that are always patently wrong (such as climbing up onto the desk to eat cat food out of the kitties' LeBistro).

Last week I saw a couple of videos of Lindsay Ridgeway working with his Golden Retrievers, Lumi (age 4) and Laddie (age 4 months). Lindsay dislikes coercive training methods just as I do. The "Pinball Drill" shown in these videos is an exercise that Lindsay is using to teach the dogs the "handling" cues to direct them to retrieves in the field. I can see that such fine control to direct the dog at a distance would be just as useful in PWD waterwork. Whether its dead birds, or fishing gear, a retrieve is a retrieve, right?

I joined the Dog Trek group so that I could learn more about this pinball drill, and how Lindsay trained it. He provided an excellent explanation. For me, teaching the whistle sit is the first step. The whistle sit is used to cue the dog to stop and visually check in with the handler for a new directional cue. When the dogs are working in the water, they apparently have no problem translating the "sit" as stop and swim in a tight little circle to check in for another hand signal. I got out the whistle which I once used for teaching sailing to 10 year olds, and we got to work. Right now, I am continuing this work, trying for more distance. At greater distances, Emma has a tendency to want to step toward me before sitting, so we are working on that, reinforcing only the prompt sits, ignoring the traveling sits.

An unanticipated minor problem: now when Emma sees me with the whistle she starts offering uncued sits.

Here are the LL&L videos:



Laddie, at only 4 months then, is astonishing! Such a great testament to clicker training.



And Lumi is such perfection, she is a joy to watch.

Kathy, Emma's 2lggd mom

PWD Portie Portuguese Water Dog work waterwork clicker training whistle sit