The past week rushed past in a haze, being the last seven days leading up to the first hands-on workshop for my KPA Dog Trainer Program. The weekend would involve 2 intense days working with my instructor and classmates on refining, practicing and testing the skills we've learned so far in the program.
While trying to keep a handle on my stress and anxiety levels, I scrambled to pack all of the clothing and paraphernalia necessary for Chris, myself, and Buster to spend the weekend in Calgary. I arranged for Hunter's weekend visit to the local boarding kennel, and clocked as much training time as I could squeeze in; trying to fine-tune all of the KPA behaviors I'd taught Buster this past month.
It's safe to say that 60% of the pressure I felt had to do with the workshop, and Buster and mine's performance, while the remaining 40% was associated with Hunter and his first stay at the kennel. My main concerns were how Hunter would react to being handled and taken care of by a stranger, all while living in a noisy, slightly chaotic kennel environment. I called to schedule his stay at "Pampered Pets", the local boarding kennel, and expressed my concerns to the owner. Luckily, she is an experienced German Shepard breeder and knows the breed well, much better than I do. Along with this she is experienced with training and handling such breeds, successfully showing hundreds of dogs in her career. She suggested that Hunter come visit her at the kennel one morning during the week to observe how he responded to the kennel environment, and allow him to become situated with the building.
Recognizing what an exceptional idea this was, I jumped on the opportunity. With some helpful recommendations from my amazing mentor and trainer, I prepared Hunter for his boarding 'dry run' Wednesday morning. I saturated his collar and bed with DAP (Dog Appeassing Pheromone), a pheromone that is said to produce a 'calming effect on the part of the brain that is connected to the dog's behavior and emotion, and packed him his favorite bone and stuffy. When we arrived at the kennel, the owner knew immediately how to deal with Hunter; ignoring his nervous barking and allowing him to check her out with a good sniff.
When I picked him up a few hours later, he was mellow, relaxed and quiet, and seemed to have developed quite a fondness for the owner of the kennel, licking her hands and rubbing up against her for a head scratch. Feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders, I took Hunter home feeling proud of our accomplishment. For a reactive dog, meeting a new, strange person and entering a foreign environment, full of multiple, noisy, new dogs is a lot to process. Hunter did incredibly well, and definetely gave me some encouragement that he will be capable of handling the 'real world' when his disability gives him the freedom to experience it.
Friday morning I awoke feeling strangely calm about the weekend and what was to come. The weather had taken a turn for the worse that day, giving us a sense of urgency to get out of town as soon as we could to attempt to avoid the snowy mess the highways were about to become.
We arrived in Calgary around 8:00pm, had some dinner at the hotel and were tucked into bed quite early, resting up for the busy weekend ahead.
The next morning I awoke extremely excited, and feeling refreshed after what I thought had been a good slept - despite being woken up a couple times to Buster growling at elevator sounds in the hallway. As I got ready for the first day of the workshop, but face provided me with completely different information about my night; my eyes were bloodshot and grainy, and my dark under eye circles were more prominent than usual! Great....
With my Tim Hortons in hand, and a truck full of dog related equipment, we arrived at the Dogaholics Center (http://dogaholics.ca/index.html) for the workshop extra early so we could get settled in before the workshop started. After helping me assemble my crate and organize my supplies, Chris left me...and that's when the anxiety started to creep up on me! The workshop was upon us!
The first day of the workshop, we were required to demonstrate two of the behaviors we had 'captured' in our dogs - the first behavior was a lip lick; we had to capture our dogs doing this, reinforce it, and eventually get it that specific behavior on cue. My second captured behavior was a right paw raise, which we also got on cue. I was nervous about demonstrating our behaviors, as they were not 100% reliably on cue, and we would be performing in a new environment, around new dogs and people.
Our lip lick (with the cue "Tasty") went OK, and our paw lift (with the cue "Owie") was demonstrated as well. My biggest issue with Buster is that he is SO incredibly eager to learn that he wants to offer every trick in the book in order to earn a reward; the treat. This is partly my fault, as I have not successfully managed to get all of his behaviors ' on cue'.
The second half of the day involved some discussion, as well as an exercise where we had to 'capture' a behavior in our partner's dog. I worked with a 10 month old Golden-Doodle named "Niso", and I captured her investigative sniffing nature by reinforcing her targetting her nose to my shoe. This went quite well, as did our 'demonstration' to the group.
Buster lounging on his bed at the Dogaholics Center during our KPA Workshop
The second day started with demonstration of our "shaped" behaviors; behaviors we've reinforced in small, 'baby' steps. The behaviors I had shaped, and we demonstrated to the group, were "Go to Bed" (pretty self-explanatory, Buster would run to his bed and lie down) and a bow (which we called "Take a Bow"). Buster's 'go to bed' behavior is quite solid, as this is something Chris and I have trained in the past, and my obedience instructor focuses strongly on 'mat work' and 'settling' behaviors on the mat. I had to encourage Buster to perform his bow trick by kneeling down to his height, which prompted him to offer the bow repeatedly once he figured out what I was asking.The second half of the day we worked on shaping behaviors in our partners dogs: today I worked with a 15 month old Greater Swiss Mountain dog named 'Swizzle' and attempted to train her to target a dumbell. She is a slow and methodical dog, polar opposite from Buster, and the process went painfully slow, but we did make some progress in the alloted time.
Then it was time for our evaluation: we were given 4 minutes time, and a few rules: you could not remove yourself from the chair you were seated in, and you had to shape a behavior involving the pylon provided. Luckily, Buster and I have worked with a lot with props and objects, and I find the shaping process to be quite fun. When it was our turn, I sat in the chair and knocked the pylon onto it's side. I first reinforced Buster for targeting the pylon with his nose, and then increased the criteria to capture him targetting the pylon with his paw. Within 1.5 minutes Buster realized what I wanted, and was consistenly flipping the pylon with his paws back into the standing position. We then added the cue "Flip" to this behavior, and before we knew it our time was up! The second half of our evaluation we were alloted 15 'clicks' (the marker signal we train with to say "Yes! That's what I want") to get the behavior we'd just shaped on cue. This went relatively well, Buster even offered a pause to wait for me to cue him to interact with the pylon.
Before we knew it, the second day of workshop one was complete and we were packing up our stuff for the long, snowy drive home!
I departed from workshop one feeling confident, proud, and excited! After meeting some friendly new people and their pets, experiencing training with a couple of different dogs, and recieving a wealth of knowledge from the excellent workshop instructor, I was truly exhausted!
I am incredibly proud of Buster - who proved to be the most accurate choice as my KPA dog, and was extremely reliable and well-behaved all weekend (not to mention adorable in his Canucks bandana!)
Buster, exhausted after a busy weekend of training!
I cannot wait to get started with my next unit, to teach Buster new and improved behaviors, and am eagerly anticipating our next workshop in April!
Until next time...happy training!
Sounds like an awesome weekend! Good for you! (and Buster)
ReplyDeleteJill C.