Driving cross-country back to NOVA, invisible fence, Kikopup

WAAAAHHHH it has been waaaaaaayyyy too long since my last post. I do have a good reason though. lol. For the last couple months my husband and I have been packing up all our stuff to prepare for his deployment and so I can move back to VA to be with family during it. So all of our stuff got put in storage except for some clothes which I had to ship to VA and the dogs. :)
Then, after he left, my mom flew out to California and helped me drive 3,000 miles with my puppies to her house. I've been here about a week and have some downtime right now cause I'm still trying to find a job, so hopefully I'll be able to keep up with this blog a little more for the next several months.

Well, a lot has happened (obviously).
Where to begin? That's the only problem.

This is a video I was recommended by fellow trainers from Kikopup's channel on YouTube. It is about how to train a dog to stay behind an invisible barrier. I am using her methods to train my dogs how to use the Invisible Fence. (For those of you who may not know, it's the electrical fence underground that transmits to a collar that delivers an electric shock if the dog tries to go past it).

The "traditional" method of training them on the fence would be to put flags up where the fence is and then walk the dog to the barrier and yank them back yelling no. Repeat until the dog is so terrified you're going to yank on them that they don't go near the flags again. Yay! =/ Then you associate the yanking on the leash when they're near the flags with the beeping noise emitted by the collar. Then you take the protective cover off of the collar's prongs so that if the dog doesn't back up when they hear the beep, they get shocked. What I'm trying to do is get my dogs to learn the barrier using only positive reinforcement. They choose to stay on their side of the barrier because that's where all the good things are! Then, once they have that down and do not cross the flags, I'm going to associate the barrier with the beeping noise on the collar. And my hope is that they will never get shocked because they will know that the beeping noise indicates they're leaving their area and will choose to turn around. Worst case scenario, they may get shocked one time which will only reinforce their desire to remain on their side of the invisible barrier. The difficult thing is the barrier I'm training them on is HUGE. My parents have an enormous yard. So, in Kikopup's video, her barrier is minuscule in comparison and it's going to take me a bit longer to proof my dogs on it. Meaning, I still have to add in distractions! Which is in Kikopup's second video:

Harley is doing very well. I've gotten to the point where she is off-leash and will wander around inside the barrier while I am on the other side. Only occasionally does she cross the barrier, and even then it's usually only a foot and in an area we have not practiced as much. I will start adding in small distractions with her today with my eventual goal being to throw a ball across the barrier and her stopping at the flags and not going past them. Hah! That will take me a while. =/ I'd like to have both Harley and Ace perfect on the fence and wearing their collars in a week so I can actually get out of the house! I'm basically trapped here until I do. I am able to leave them in my bedroom for very short periods of time if I have to run buy dog food (which I did the other day) but I do want to get a job while I'm here and need to start going to business to inquire about openings soon. Also, it'd be nice to be able to open the door when they need to go out and not walk them on the leash. Although, for a while at first I'll probably be an overprotective mother and hover on the porch watching them to make sure that they don't shock themselves or something. Or get into fights with my parents' dogs.

Aside from the barrier training, I have a VERY long list of things I want to work on with them. I also have a very long list of books I want to read related to training.
I'll let you know what all of those are letter. Gotta leave you wanting more, right? Hah.

So once I have my dogs trained on the invisible fence, I will let you know how that went. I'd like to be able to post a follow-up video to Kikopup's showing how to combine her barrier training methods with an actual Invisible (electric) Fence and collar.

Well, gotta run do some training! :)
More later.
Thanks for pawsing!

Contest, Sit Means Sit, and more rambles

My pups' picture is in a contest for "Sit means Sit" best Action shot. So... please vote for it!

http://www.sitmeanssit.com/photo-contest/?photo=754


On that note though, I decided to look into the Sit Means Sit training program because a customer was gushing about how amazing it is and I wanted to see for myself what was so great about it. First, I hate the way the website is laid out. It's taking me forever to find anything regarding the training program's methodology and beliefs. Plus I had to register twice to get access to articles which is just plain annoying. And I just downloaded an article of theirs which explains why electronic collars are humane. Hmm... not sure I believe that one no matter what they say. I will admit that possibly they are not as awful as they used to be, but I still do not believe in using them. Dogs learn so much faster with purely positive reinforcement (though apparently people want to use the term progressive reinforcement now). Using positive/progressive reinforcement is enjoyable for the dog, it makes training fun, it helps create a better bond between dog and parent and helps stimulate their mind as well. Dogs trained with this method are - I won't say smarter- but better problem solvers, and dogs trained with the "traditional" method (choke chains, prong collars, shock collars, "dominate" the dog, etc) generally end up being very fearful of a lot of things, including the pet parent- plus, they end up being not very independent or mindful or happy-go-lucky or any of those kinds of things.

I just conferred with my area trainer and she was not a fan of their program either. And I read some more articles- and all of them had a plug for their electronic collar. I watched a video where they used an electronic collar on a 5 month old puppy in place of a clicker. They shocked the dog to mark a desirable behavior. One, that just sounds backwards, Two, why would ANYONE put an electronic collar on a 5 month old?, Three, although electronic collars may not be as bad as they used to, why would anyone substitute a collar for a clicker- clickers work wonderfully! If it aint broke, don't fix it.

I entered the contest though because I am somewhat competitive and it's for a $25 gift certificate to their store- and though they do sell electronic collars (ugh), they also sell normal toys and treats... and I could always use more of those. Seriously, I go through like a bag of treats a week! I guess that's what two 5 month old puppies will do to you. :P

That rabies shot really knocked them out. They slept most of yesterday. I was afraid that then they wouldn't be tired and wouldn't sleep through the night, but they did, thank goodness. I still have issues with that occasionally- seems like either Ace can't hold it all night, or he just wakes up and wants attention. So I decided to "test" him and not get out of bed to take him out if he wakes up and whines- to see if he'd have an accident or if he'd go back to sleep. So I tried it- the first night was awful he cried forever but I was hoping he was going through extinction and I just tried to go back to sleep. But now, he rarely ever wakes up anymore- or if he wakes up, he doesn't wake me up. So, I've come to the conclusion that on accident, I trained him to wake me up so that he would get to see me. Does that make sense? I think he just doesn't like to be without us and he realized that because whenever he'd cry I'd take him outside and he'd get to see me, he began crying just to see me not because he had to go outside. So, I extinguished that behavior and now I usually can go all night without having a puppy whine and bark and wake me up!

Man, I really went off track from the original topic of this post, but that's alright. Time to start reading Don't Shoot the Dog! I suppose. :)

Under the bridge... that's falling down

Today I taught my first classes. They weren't even technically mine, I was just covering for another trainer. I had a Puppy class's graduation, and the third week of a Beginner class to teach. I was so nervous! But I think it went pretty well, and I think it's easier this way instead of my first class being day one of a class when we have to give this big long speech about training, positive reinforcement and a bunch of other stuff. Plus, the customers didn't have to know that this was my first time so that helped. I was able to kind of pretend that I'd done this a million times and that helped me get through it without stumbling too much.

In the second class of the night, there were only two dogs: a Pug and a Jindo. We were supposed to learn "Down" which can be very difficult for many dogs to learn. My own dog, Harley, had a difficult time learning it. But none of the normal techniques (i.e. luring dog from a sit to down with a treat starting at their nose and bringing it to the floor, plus some variations on this technique) worked for either of the two dogs in the class so I had to use the bridge technique for both of them. This is when you sit on the floor with your legs together and knees bent to make a little bridge for the dog to go under. It's a lot easier with small dogs, but I was able to get the Jindo under my legs pretty successfully. The point of this technique is that they'll follow your hand/treat under your legs and you click and treat when they lie down. Your legs should be low enough that they can't just walk under your legs but not so high that they will refuse to go under them. Each time you should lower your legs a little bit until you hopefully get to the point where the dog will not want to go under your legs and will lie down next to them. It's kind of complicated and a bit hard to explain, and it is very difficult to fade from going under the legs to just using a simple hand gesture or verbal cue. But I was very proud of myself for remembering this technique because for my final exam during training, I had to teach a week 3 Beginner class and completely forgot about the bridge technique for one of the dogs in the class that was having a difficult time with "down."

Tomorrow I'm not teaching any classes but I'm teaching two more on Thursday- I can't remember which weeks but they're both Beginner classes I believe.

Whew what a day- I'm exhausted! Oh and one of the books I ordered- Don't Shoot the Dog! came in, so I'll try and start reading that soon.