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.

Miscellany Again

SUMMARY: Vibrating collar, newspaper fetching, face plants, Border Collies, excellent agility dogs.

My new vibrating collar arrived yesterday; I was so excited! Plugged it in for its 12-hour charge, tried to turn it on this morning, and it doesn't work per the instructions. Half an hour of trying to figure it out, then 20 minutes on the phone with support, and they're going to have to send me a replacement. Sigh. At least I'm getting a new one, but I so wanted to be able to play with it this weekend?

[break]

Y'all probably know that Boost gets the paper from the driveway for me every morning. She loves it; so excited to charge out there, pounce on it (sometimes sliding and a little ripping, but I don't mind), grab it, and come running back in. Sometimes I get the Excited Bark before she goes out.

The other morning, as she was running back up the driveway, a squirrel ran right in front of her and off across the lawn! I saw those ears go up, the tail come up (the "wow, now THIS is REALLY INTERESTING" look) and she veered from her path about a meter or so (in this context, saying "about 2 feet" or "about a yard" both seemed to be ambiguous, hurray for metric), with me thinking, "uh oh", then she veered back in and continued running up the steps to deliver the paper! You go, Border Collie!

Tika was never that kind of dog.

[break]

Speaking of Border Collies--Boost sometimes likes to sleep in her crate in the bedroom. I think when the nights are warmer, she goes there. She hasn't slept in it for a while, but the last two nights, she's gone right in there. Last night, as I climbed into bed, she stuck her head out, stepped out stretching, and I said, "Oh, look, a Border Collie!", trying to be funny, but she completely misunderstood: Went into alarm barking, looking around and at the door in particular. Took a while to convince her that SHE was the border collie I was talking about!

[break]

Last night in class, I did a faceplant. Not doing actual agility, no, of course not. I had just snapped the leash back onto Boost to leave her at the sidelines, turned and stepped away, and somehow a loop of the leash caught my foot and slammed me face forward onto the ground. I've never had this happen before. Usually you *trip* over something--your foot catches and releases as you flail, trying to catch yourself. Nope, it was as if my foot had been suddenly nailed to the ground and the centripetal force slammed me down before I could even get my arms out. Hit my forehead, cheek, nose, glasses, chin, shoulders, hips. A little stunning but on the face of it (ha) almost undoubtedly less painful than landing on my knees or having my arms extended trying to catch myself. I'm quite proud of myself for being able to use centripetal in a sentence.

[break]

Both dogs did great in class last night. Tika and I seemed to be communicating very well. Boost had one little sequence where she knocked 3 bars in a row and we stopped and regrouped. Mostly bars did not come down. And at the end, a tricky run with a couple of back-side-front-cross funny things we didn't get through, and I decided that was enough practicing failures and stopped that quickly. But mostly all really nice, including Boost sending to the weaves 10 feet on the far side of the dogwalk from me.

More false hope for actual Qs in the future.

[break]
No agility again this weekend. I'm looking forward to it.

Silent World

SUMMARY: Tika's deafness--and vision.

I seem to be able to watch Tika's deafness increase week by week, almost day by day. Some developments:

Now sometimes she can't hear me if I say her name and she's in the same room, but usually she can if I say it loudly.

For a while, she's been lying in her bed periodically woofing once (that gets to be really annoying--about about every 3 to 8 seconds, "woof!"). I wonder whether she's hearing ringing in her ears. Or voices! Or she can't distinguish little random background noises from things she used to bark at. (Believe me, when she used to bark at things, there was no quiet single woof thing going on.) Oh, she still sometimes hears louder things and sounds off as usual. It's those inbetween things that are just odd.

No more barking when someone rings the doorbell or knocks on the door. :-( In fact, I used to never even have people get that far, because Tika would start barking before they got there.

No more barking when the mailperson comes every day. That used to be so handy if I had something I needed to mail and hadn't set it out. Not sure how long that's been going on; just one of those things that I became aware isn't happening any more.

This morning, Tika was lying with her back to me about halfway between me and my renter, about 10 feet away from each of us. I got up from my desk and opened the sliding door to the yard; no reaction. I said her name in my normal voice, no reaction. I yelled her name--she jumped up and went to the renter! Oh, my.

Today I ordered a vibrating collar so I can start train her to look for me in response to a vibration. I ordered a type with no shock option because I don't ever want there to be a mistake.

Also I've been wondering about her vision. Often lately when I toss a treat on the floor for her (to protect my fingers), she doesn't seem to see me toss it, and then sometimes can't find it when she does see me toss it.

Trying not to cry about it. She's always been such an active (and reactive) dog, and so good at finding things and letting me know what's going on. And physically she seems fine, still running like crazy in the back yard for her toy.

And she was beside herself with joy when a couple of my friends came to visit yesterday.

I'm still entering her in agility trials a couple of months out, waiting to see how all that goes.

Oh, mannnn...I'm now rattling treats in the treat jar two feet above her head, and not a reaction at all. (Boost, in the other room, jumped up and is now staring at me.)

Oh, Tika...

OK, she heard the clicker above her head, leaped to her feet! Big jackpot mostly because I was so glad to see that.

Always Make Sure Your Dog's Brain Cells Are Intact

Jake has never been the brightest pixel in the doggie display. It sometimes makes for challenging training. For one thing, he's perfectly content to wait for a thousand hours for you to tell him what to do rather than experimenting on his own, which makes shaping a hard thing to do with him. Actually makes training him to do ANYthing hard. I don't know how we ever managed to do agility. Actually someone else taught him most of what he knows.

I fixed his tunnel inconsistencies by putting a tunnel in our driveway and doing 50,000 tunnel commands with a tennis ball at the end.

So I'm trying (for the 2nd time) to work with him with a vibrating collar. What I want is something that will get the largely deaf dog to look at me when he's trotting off across a field and not looking back. He's wearing the collar. I started by just vibrate, treat, vibrate, treat, vibrate, treat, about 40 or 50 times. You'd think that then, when he looked away, and then I hit the vibrate button, he'd look at me to get his goodie. But no. Nuthin' at all. No reaction. Oblivious.

I did manage to catch him a couple of times looking away from me, and did the vibrate, and he looked at me (I think sheer coincidence) and he got a treat. Now he has apparently figured out that, if I have the control and dog goodies, he's likely to get treats. So for the last 25 minutes I've been sitting here at my desk, typing, trying to ignore him, and he's lying there, staring at me. I can't test the vibrate-look-at-me thing, because he's ALREADY looking at me. Every time I carefully peer over my shoulder, there he is, staring at me.

Wait! Ha! Got him! He was starting to doze off. Vibrate. Pops eyes open and of course he's already got his head pointed at me. Cookies! If I do this too often, though, he'll NEVER dare go to sleep in case he might miss some doggie junk food.

Dang dog.

Jake's Hardness of Hearing

Backfill: May 7
OK, it's clearer now that Jake *is* hearing more of what I'm saying than I had thought. I don't know why, in a quiet room, when I say his name directly behind his head in a variety of tones and loudnesses, I get no response. But on the agility field, when I say it loudly and in a low voice (not the usual high-pitched excited voice I use in agility, not necessarily intentionally), he often responds perfectly.

Karey pointed out the first day of camp when she saw Jake run that he seemed to be responding to my voice commands.

Rachel had told me before camp about a vibrating collar that she used with her agility dog, Spinner, when he showed signs of losing his hearing. She took it to camp to loan to me to try it out, but the battery was dead. Today I got new batteries for the transmitter and collar and started playing with it. Not clear what Jake thinks about it--he had no reaction to it at all as I started loading it up like you'd load up a clicker. He was too excited about the junk food to really pay much attention to a little vibrating whoosie thingie.

I'm going to try using it like I'd use a clicker normally, to mark desired behaviors. Especially & particularly, I want to mark him looking at me while doing agility obstacles. We'll see how persistent I am with this...