Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

SUMMARY: Boost's jumps and weaves; Tika in general.

Well, Thursday night's class was interesting for the Merle Girls.

Back up a step.

Last weekend, Boost handled beautifully, as if runouts and refusals had never been an issue. But, out of 12 runs, Boost knocked 10 bars. Ten! That's, shall we say, excessive. And although her weaves, which have been really excellent for several trials now, were perfect on Saturday, on Sunday out of 4 weaves, she missed one entry and, on another, popped two poles early.

The weaves were nuts, because I've been practicing weaves and not much else lately. So we might just be in another one of her sine-wave cycles (I should plot it out sometime) of not knowing how to do weaves.

The bars were nuts, so I actually had the energy and determination to do bar-knocking drills at home three days this week so far.

So, in class last night: Boost popped out of the first set of weaves FOUR times IN A ROW! Jeez!

But she continued her awesome running style from this weekend--nice run after nice run after nice run, just the way I always imagined it would be with her.

And the entire evening, she knocked or ticked only ONE bar!

Hi C-Era Interstellar Propulsion: Always a challenging border collie.

Tika, meanwhile, had a pretty nice weekend of competition: Qed 6 out of 8, and missed Qing in each of the jumpers by one bar, which has been unusual for her since she moved to performance. She placed 2nd in both Steeplechase and Grand Prix, which is pretty good for an 11.5-year-old dog.

But in class, all kinds of things went awry that I'm assortedly attributing to her not hearing well, possibly her not seeing well, and me not being fast enough to compensate for what always used to work well. After each of our garbled runs, I wondered how we ever manage to Qualify at all with this kind of handling and confusion.

Now, if I stop because we've gone astray in class, she *immediately* goes into "I'm looking for treats somehwere in the grass here" mode. She used to do that quite a bit when she was a young dog, but not much at all for several years. I'm taking it as a sign of stress rather than her really being naughty--I think she really doesn't understand what I want and probably doesn't understand why I'm not SAYING anything (do dogs realize that they're going deaf?).

Anyway, everyone presents challenges, including myself. Last week in class, I felt fleet of foot. This week, legs dragging. What's the difference? No idea.

Soooooo we might do a few more drills today and tomorrow.

This weekend, Friday through Monday, is the Western Regional Championships, and for only the 2nd time since 1995, I'm not going--well, except that I gave in an signed up for just the first two classes Sunday morning: Jumpers and Snooker, hoping to get that last Snooker that Tika now needs for her PDCH-Gold at our home club. If I don't stress out too much about it, which I'm wont to do.

So, if any of you are there, I might see you during my brief appearance Sunday morning. Otherwise, good luck at whatever you're doing this weekend, and have a great time.

Catching Up

SUMMARY: Deaf dog training, knee, Tika feet, Stairs from Heck, agility class, movies, titles, online slang.

Deaf dog training: Ummm, not so much. Busy.

Knee: Has been feeling lovely since going up Black Mountain wednesday night.

Stairs from Heck: Did them Friday morning. They're still there. Still tough. Boy, those thigh muscles burn by the time I'm doing the last 50 or so. Wonder whether the Merle Girls get muscle burn like that? What is that, lactic acid? Ooooohhhh, yeah, here's an interesting Scientific American article about that!

Tika foot dragging: Haven't heard that toenail drag again after that one day last week.

Agility class: Boost and I did great in class Thursday night. Another thing giving me hope. Hoping that it isn't, again, false hope. For a while, TCam's Human Mom and I kept talking about switching dogs in class occasionally to see what it was like. Now that T is on the world team, I'm pretty sure Human Mom won't be in a switching place for a while.

Movies: I go to see a lot of movies. Don't often see movies twice. Just saw Avengers for the second time this morning. One can never get too much of a crew of smart, athletic, hunky, active, super-competent, wise-cracking, good-looking men. Er, I mean, I went for the action and the plot.

Titles: Last month Boost completed her Tournament Master Silver!! How could I miss something cool like that? That's 25 grand prix, Steeplechase, and DAM Team Qs, with at least 5 of each. But can't get dang Jumpers or Super-Qs. As always, go figure.

Online slang: "[headdesk]" means to bang your head on the desk as one might if one does or is the victim of something stupid. Don't say I didn't warn you.

'K, gotta go; off for a 4-mile walk with friends along the Guadalupe River Trail and Gardens and dinner (if all goes to plan) at Gordon Biersch. In 90-degree heat. Yah. Ta!

Deaf Dog Training Day 2/3

SUMMARY: Not sure whether I'm making progress.

The deafdogs.org training suggests that you keep your dog close to you (with a leash) all day and periodically hit the button and give a treat so that the dog learns to associate the vibration with you and will eventually look at you if you don't give the treat, so then you give a big jackpot, because that's what you want to do.

I haven't been keeping her close to me with a leash, but when she's been near me, I try to wait until she's not looking at me, then hit the button and give a treat.

Yesterday, because I was still never seeing a reaction from Tika, I handed the collar to my renter and walked around the house hitting the button. He reported a vibration every time. So then I felt more confident that Tika's getting the signal.

DeafDogs suggest that, on the 2nd day, I try hitting the button and waiting to see whether she looks at me. So, at one point when I was behind her at the breakfast table, she was lying on the floor facing the kitchen, and the renter was in the kitchen, I hit the button--her head popped up and she stared at the renter! Dang.

This morning I put her collar on her and periodically hit the button/treated as I prepared and ate breakfast, and a couple of times she even looked at me when I did that, so I gave her a big jackpot.

Then I discovered that I hadn't turned on the transmitter, so there was no vibration the whole time! I'm sure that set me back by a couple of days. Dang again!

I'm puzzled by the charging time for the transmitter. Before the first use, the collar took over 12 hours to charge; the transmitter I think 15 or 16. After the first day, when I used it quite a bit, took the collar a few hours to recharge and the transmitter about 15 hours. After the second day, when I didn't use it all that much, collar took a couple of hours and the transmitter still wasn't fully charged this morning after 14 hours. I hope the recharge time improves.

I spent no time yesterday working on hand signals, but today is still young, so we'll see what transpires.

Deaf Dog Training Day 1

SUMMARY: Some training notes.

First, note that Tika is not completely deaf, and has been with me for 10 years of training, so she's also not a brand-new-to-training dog. She's clicker trained, too, and is quite "operant"--that is, attempts various behaviors on her own when the clicker or even the treats come out, allowing me to easily shape behavior.

Tika's hearing, however, is getting bad. I'm sometimes convinced that she can hear me across a field, and yet--f'rinstance, yesterday she was lying on the landing at the top of the stairs, with her back to my bedroom door, about 2 feet away, awake with her head up. I stuck my head out the door and whispered "Tika!". No response. Said it in a normal voice three or four times. Not even an ear twitch. I then yelled "Tika!" and she visibly perked up--but all her attention was in the same direction she was already looking. So, yeh, real problems with hearing and detecting the direction of noise.

My goal is to leverage her existing command set and work on converting verbals to visual cues. The point of the new vibrating collar is simply to get her to look at me when it vibrates, and then I will give the verbal/visual command from there.

For regular commands, that means I'm going to do a lot of repetition of basic behaviors, adding the gestures.

For sit, down, and come, I'm using fairly standard dog obedience gestures; DeafDogs.org has animated pictures of these gestures.

They also suggest using American Sign Language (ASL) signs for other common words, because others might use the same signals. So I'm using "thumbs up" with one or both hands for "yes!", which I have previously trained as my verbal equivalent of a click.

Tika's release word is "OK", but I like the ASL gesture for break, which uses two hands--imagine grasping a stick and breaking it so that your hands move up and apart (see video).

So, today, I started by "loading" my thumbs-up the same way I loaded the clicker originally: Show her the thumb, give a treat; repeat about 10 times about 3 times during the day. Then to tie it to the verbal, I repeated another 10 or so times with the "Yes!" as well as the thumb up.

Later in the day, I've done several of each sit, down, and come with the verbal command and gesture, confirmed correct behavior with verbal "Yes!" and gesture of thumb up, and given her a treat. Then I use the verbal "OK" with the break gesture, and of course she releases because that's what "OK!" does.

This is challenging for me, as I've previously avoided gestures for commands because wisdom has it that dogs, being body-language oriented, learn gestures much more quickly than verbals and I wanted to maintain the strength of the verbal commands.  So, for me, it's challenging to remember "Sit" and lift hand simultaneously, say "Yes" and thumb up simultaneously, then quickly give a treat, then "OK!" and the break signal simultaneously. It requires coordination and reprogramming myself, and anyone who's ever watched me try to figure out a handling move in agility knows I'm not that coordinated.

Lastly, I've been following the deafdogs.org suggestion to just vibrate the collar repeatedly and toss a treat to her, several times a day, several times each time, and then at some point after 2 or 3 days of this, I'll do the vibrate and wait to see whether she looks at me before tossing a treat, as in, "Hey, you've been giving me treats for that; where's the treat?" and then we're on our way to what we want, which is her to always look at me when she feels the vibration.

I'm still futzing with how tight to make the collar, and there are so many holes so close together that it'll be challenging to get the same hole every time; will have to put tape or something on the collar to mark it (it's black plastic so can't write on it).

And I've been wondering whether a level 1 vibration is enough or whether it needs to be 2 or 3 to be sure she's really noticing it (it goes up to 15). I tried it with my hand under the collar touching the side of the vibrator, and I felt it just fine, so I'm guessing that she's probably feeling it ok-- the one thing I'd have liked is for the collar to beep or otherwise let me know when it vibrates, but there was no device in the whole list on deafdogs.org that had all the features that one could want, so I'm going on faith that it's actually vibrating when I hit the button. It's supposed to have a range of half a mile. Wonder how to test that? Get a friend out there with me, I guess.

So both Tika and I are learning, and meanwhile I'm trying to also make sure that Tika plays normally while wearing the collar and that I don't neglect Boost while focusing so tightly on my own learning curve and tika's as well.

A New Training Phase

SUMMARY: Tika's vibrating collar arrived!

The replacement vibrating collar (the first one didn't work correctly) arrived last night and is charging up.

I've reread the instructions, which have tons of warnings about how just the prongs rubbing against the skin could cause problems. I know to watch for this, because the prongs of the Invisible Fence collar that our Sheba had to wear all the time did indeed cause problems with her skin (but in her case, it was a tradeoff between that or her getting out of the yard all the time).

Tika is now wearing the collar for a little while to see whether it bothers her (it doesn't seem to) and to let her get used to just having it on without anything going on, so she doesn't specifically associate wearing the collar with paying attention to me.

Meanwhile, the control unit finishes charging up.

The collar didn't take as long to charge but also supposedly needs charging every 14 hours or so, so this is not a wear-all-the-time collar. I'll have to see how the training goes to decide whether i want her to wear it all day at home every day (and charge it every night), or wear it only when we go out and about.

I've read their training instructions, which use the vibration "at an uncomfortable level" (you test it on yourself to figure out what that is) as a discouragement for bad behavior or encouragement to do something that you want them to do (it stops when they sit, down, etc.). Whereas I want to use it as an alert (the lowest level possible) to get Tika to look at me.

The instructions I'm going to try using are from DeafDogs.org, which is also where I found the name of the device to order. I picked the Unleashed Technology GT-1 because it's one of the few without a shock option and I wanted there to be NO chance of a mistake, also for its range; shopped for the best price; and that's the one that arrived and didn't work right. I called their support number and, after a long discussion, they said that they'd just have to replace it with a new one. They also told me that "Unleashed Technology" is an obsolete model and the new model is branded PetSafe. The equivalent number is PDT00-12892 (Remote Trainer with Vibration).

Assuming that this replacement set works correctly, I'll post more in the future.

P.S. Incidentally, for those who wonder about operant condition terminolgy, if one were to use the collar in the way that the collar manufacturer suggests for normal training, applying an unpleasant thing until they stop an unwanted behavior would be a positive punishment: that is, you add a punishment to make the behavior stop. Don't confuse "positive punishment" (adding an aversive) with "positive training method" (which advocates primarily using positive rewards (that is, adding rewards) for desired behavior.

P.P.S In addition to the deaf dog training site above, here's another summary of training deaf dogs.

P.P.P.S. This is NOT a shock collar; it is a vibrating collar. None-the-less, I would hesitate  to use the highest vibration setting.