#positivereinforcement — Public Fediverse posts

So in the midst of chemotherapy, everything is a road back into reinforcement of a healthy training relationship with my dog. I will probably be back to more or less regular energy next week but infusion week means I need her brain engaged and no big expectations on me. I'm wobbly and tired. So in order to keep letting her have dog-led walks sniffing on a long line I jack my treat quality up enough to remind her We're Working and then every time she gets to a cross street way ahead of me I work wait, then focus or look and then heel across the street. Do I do this normally? Nah but in my ideal world we'd have a handoff back and forth over who is driving. I want it, I call it. I give it back to her when I'm done she gets to trot a bit further. The fact I'm using the Good Treats reminds her she can potentially earn something worth her trouble by giving me more attention. At home when there's nothing in my tank, I'm making her take a treat off her own flank or doing another stretch, trying to teach her to raise a specific paw (1-4) or give me a giant bow as a stretch. I have extreme limp noodle energy but if her brain is engaged she's good with it. We are patient with each other. Day in day out she's the best company #dogs #dogsOfMastodon #positiveReinforcement #dogConditioning

Nori and I spent the last 2 months with our dog training club doing rally run throughs once a week. My girl plops into a down stay so I can look over the course, holds it like a trooper until it's her turn to go and then can't focus on me worth crap when she gets up.

She can actually do some approximation of most rally signs at even expert levels. We're working on backing up and things where a crisp heel position is important but she's got the gist and most mistakes are mine (clean pivots! JFC!!!). I think the problem is the whole "wait a long time, then do a whole bunch of complicated stuff for 5-10 minutes, then do nothing again" thing. This is Not Fun for her. She might be using up her attention powder and shot maintaining a highly focused down stay. Anyhow, as soon as she's free instead of being ready to work, she can't pay attention to me. She's snuffling for treat scraps off the floor and biting the leash.

It's embarrassing and frustrating. This is not a dog I have to drag on a leash in the real world and I'm hauling her away from scraps on the floor in front of Smart People Whose Respect I Would Like to Have. Ugh. I'm thinking hard about what's going on here but the hardest thing about it is that I don't think the one person who actually knows us and is sort of mentoring me actually gets what's going on. She thinks Nori's disrespecting me and I disagree. I think she's frustrated -- which is notably not the same thing. I'm trapped in my own head about it because I've got no one to talk to. This is a bit of a vent.

Next month (our club rotates topics monthly) I've signed up for a group that'll be workshopping bits of Control Unleashed together. I've just acquired the book and am speed reading ahead of next Monday's training. I'm hoping that will give me more vocabulary for our problems and better training exercises around the house. I'm going to stay the hell away from the run-throughs for a while so I can get some distance and think about it.

Sigh. Problem solving in dog training can be weirdly lonely. The dog can't use her words -- and hell neither can half the humans who want to help you.

Anyhow, we'll work through this, but I very much need to talk about it somewhere, so I'm trying it here.

#dogs #dogTraining #positiveReinforcement

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