Jedi is 18 weeks old today! He ran hard until about 8:30 last night when he finally crashed on the couch -- that's saying something for how worn out he was, because he'll generally go until well after 9:00. I gave Jedi another shot at sleeping in bed last night, figuring if he was super tired then the odds were stacked in my favor. He jumped down twice and was probably about one jump from going in his crate. He always jumped back up when called, though, and after the second time he settled in and ended up sticking around all night. I don't sleep as well with him in bed right now, I think just because I'm always checking to see if he's still there. As it becomes more routine I'm sure things will be fine.
Today was the second day of our puppy seminar with Ann Braue in Eau Claire. The format of the day was to work the puppies through stations, so this meant lots of work for the puppies today! We were paired with a partner as we went through the rotation with the object being that we could help be "watchers" and offer suggestions to our partners when Ann wasn't immediately available or watching. It also meant that our puppies would trade off and get some rest time so that they weren't working all day without any breaks. I actually thought this worked out really well. I paired with a junior handler named Anna and her super fun 13 week old border collie puppy, Journey. As a side note, in the future I'll remember not to set a puppy's ears at a seminar... I didn't think much of it because Jedi took to his braces so easily. I brought my supplies today (Anna said yesterday that she wanted to know how to do it, so I offered), we prepped before the seminar started, and we installed the braces during lunch. Poor Journey really struggled the last half of the day to accept her new ears, but thankfully she was playing again by the end with some help from Jedi's "bag o' fun."
Our day started by bringing out all of the puppies and playing "It's Yer Choice" (a Susan Garrett game that I like to do with my own classes). I've done plenty of food ignoring with Jedi, some as part of Silvia's class, but also just because I have open food dishes around when I work with him. I guess, though, that I haven't done much yet with putting food on the ground and asking him not to do anything. Jedi's struggle this morning, probably brought on because I was too slow in rewarding, was that he got very frustrated trying to figure out what he was supposed to "do" to get that food in front of him. So yes, he wasn't taking the food, but he was barking his head off and offering behaviors (namely, picking up the leash, since that's what we've been working on) because he didn't know what I wanted. I upped the frequency of reward and made it more clear what I was asking for by specifically playing with the food. We got to the point where I was able to put pieces on his paws and he left it. Good Jedi!
On to the stations! The plan was for "dog 1" of each pairing to start at a station, where we got 2.5 minutes to interact with whatever was there. There was time built in to play/engage with your dog at the start and finish of each session as well. I appreciate that Ann is such a proponent of play as relationship building and I think I'm going to make a shift and incorporate it into my own classes (pet people just balk at it for some reason). At the end of the 2.5 minutes, dog 1 moved on to the next station where they got another 2.5 minutes. After that we changed dogs and dog 2 went to that first station, then the second.
Anna and I started at the first station and Jedi was the second puppy in the rotation. The first station was essentially four-in. There was a shallow cardboard box (of decent size) and what I would call a rubber feed pan. I had Jedi go into both, which he did quite easily. The box was probably about as big as the one we started with, but it had higher sides so he did have to be thoughtful about picking up his feet. The feed pan was smaller, but still larger than the water dish that Jedi has progressed to stepping into. I'll be honest, we've already worked on pretty much all of the station exercises, so it was pretty easy to look like a brilliant puppy today.
Jedi was happy to move to the second station because it was one where we could use toys (many of the exercises were what I would classify as needing food to work through, but this gave us a good opportunity to transition back and forth). This station had a small FitPaws wobble board, which Jedi has seen before, but it also had a giant wobble board. Okay, it was probably only the size of an agility table, but it was the biggest one we've seen so far and it had a goodly amount of tip to it. There were sandbags propped on each corner to limit the tip at first, but I told the people front of us that they didn't need to put them back. My assumption was that Jedi would be fine with the full tip from the start and I was right. We played all sorts of fun tugging games on the wobble board and Jedi was not put off by the motion in the least.
Station three was a traffic cone. Ann showed us the finished product, which is that the dog should continue to circle the cone repeatedly in the desired direction. This is something I've had in the back of my mind but figured it's going to come up in Silvia's class eventually, so I've put it off. This is probably a station where a person could use food to shape a turn around the cone, but since Jedi already has the basic turn I opted to use a toy to let him play. We did some single turns, and some 1.5 turns where I threw the toy as he came around, and then I pretty much "lured" the multiple turns via the same fashion of doing spin & twirl. I would probably benefit from spending some time shaping this, but it might go faster now that Jedi at least understands the idea of going around the cone.
The fourth station was a PVC ladder. I did that cavaletti exercise with Jedi a while back using jumps all set together at 4" and he was pretty much like a bull in a china shop. I didn't know what to expect from this station since it's not specifically something we work on, but Jedi more or less acted like he does this one in his sleep. As we initially approached the station he just immediately went and trotted through the entire length of the ladder on his own. Well, okay then. We just spent the rest of the session going back and forth, back and forth, etc. I didn't even need to walk with him. Smart puppy.
Next up was Jedi's happiest time of the day!! The puppies needed a mental break, so we got to do restrained recalls! Ann spent some time talking about they whys and hows for anyone who is not familiar with these, but then we got to play. The dogs came out one at a time for their turn, but Jedi seemed to know instantly what was going on and started barking in his crate. This was the only time he barked all day, but recalls are exciting, don't you know!? I finally just got him out of his crate a few dogs ahead of his turn and hung out in the back. Once we started to walk towards the ring he was pulling like a freight train because he knew what we were doing. We did three turns right in a row -- First we did right, then left, then we did a turn where we "hid" the toy and didn't show it until right before the dog caught up with us (so it becomes a reward vs a lure). Ann remarked that she thought Jedi was running as fast as his legs could take him. Yup, he likes this one!
We squeezed in one more station rotation before lunch to get us halfway through everything. Station five was a hula hoop propped up and meant to simulate the opening of a tunnel or chute. The object was to send through and/or wait for the dog to offer to go through. Not a problem. Station six was a travel plank, so we practiced some two on/two off and Jedi did well, although during this exercise he was distracted by someone going crazy with a squeaker nearby. Also part of station six was the FitPaws donut. This is one of the only FitPaws pieces that I haven't acquired yet and Jedi has never played on one. He immediately offered to get on it with all four paws but this one was challenging! I ended up stabilizing it with my hand (it was in a stabilizing ring) so that he would be more successful. I bought a donut and the stabilizer ring before I left today, so now we can work on this one at home!
After lunch we got back to work on the stations. Station 7 was a large balance disc and two small balance discs. The general objective was interaction with the discs, but if you had a dog who was familiar with them it was to try to get the hind feet on the big disc and the front feet on the two smaller discs. They were all very under-inflated, so it wasn't terribly challenging, balance-wise. Jedi was offering all sorts of fun stuff so we just went with it. Station 8 was a plank raised on two cinder blocks that you were supposed to ask your dog to walk on and turn around. Jedi jumped up before I even asked and started going back and forth on his own. He slipped off once and lost a foot one other time, but in general he was really nimble at working the board.
Station 9 was a table with no base, so flat on the ground. Again, general interaction was encouraged, with the more advanced puppies moving to tugging in their table end position. Ann had demonstrated the difficulty in getting a dog to tug while maintaining a down, but pointed out how this builds value for that position. It was difficult, but Jedi finally got it and was able to keep playing in his down. This is something we will need to continue to work on! The 10th station had a FitPaws bone, so we did some side legs on it. It had practically no air in it, which actually made that one more difficult since Jedi didn't have much to prop up onto. We spent the majority of this station working with the paw pods. I can't tell you why, but we haven't spent a lot of time playing with our paw pods aside from basic targeting. Ann demonstrated four feet on and I decided to go for that. It took some work, but Jedi got it and Ann was super impressed. He did great at working hard to find the pods with his hind feet. Another thing that we should spend more time on.
Moving on to our final rotation, station 11 had a single jump standard (no bar). This was for your basic "one jump" exercises to encourage the dog to find the jump on their own and offer it. After watching Ann "re-demo" this one after our rotation I realize there is a lot more I could be doing to encourage more out of Jedi. I tend to sit next to the jump for this, but with Jedi that encourages him to try to interact with the jump (including "hugs" on the upright). Ann throws the food much further out and in various directions so the dog has to find his way back to the jump.
The final station was two broad jump boards that the dog was supposed to back through. So, Jedi has offered back up (beep, beep) since he was 8 weeks old, so this would be easy for us, yes? Uh, no. First of all, I have never had Jedi back up *between* two objects before, so I guess this blew his mind. Additionally, why would he back up when he could offer so many amazing things on these objects on either side of him? Of course, then there was also much frustration barking. Ann actually came over and spent a bit of time with us on this one. She knows that Jedi has a beep-beep, but she encouraged me to drop the verbal and go back to square one with shaping. The name of OUR game became "don't reward anything other than a foot stepping backwards." Eventually this extinguished the other behaviors and Jedi figured out what was being asked. That one was challenging for both of us!
We wrapped up the day with one more round of restrained recalls. They got two go's at it this time and we went in reverse order. This meant that Jedi had to wait a little longer for his turn since he was on the starting end in the morning, but he did better about being quiet this time. Oh, there was still barking, but it was better than the first time. He was, of course, thrilled to finally get his own turn and put in his usual zippy performance. Earlier in the day Ann had offered that one way to do this at home on your own is to toss a couple of treats away from you and then take off when the dog is busy eating them. I might have to give that a try, but the odds of Jedi finding food in the grass seems low, along with him caring about it when I have a toy. We'll have to give it a shot at least, since I don't have someone who can hold him regularly.
After the clinic wrapped up for the day we finally got the brothers out for the obligatory family photo. Oh my, that was entertaining. In addition to the fact that we were dealing with 4-month old puppies, we were dealing with TIRED 4-month old puppies. Because my phone sucks and half of the pictures end up blurry, I never got the "perfect" shot on my phone, but I think we did pretty well. Because I didn't know if I'd gotten anything decent, we finally asked someone to take a picture with us in as well, because at least then we could hold the puppies in place. Hopefully these pictures become easier to take as they get older. lol Jedi was actually really good and sat nicely through most of it. He was overly interested in the treats that Pam and Lisa had, though, which was pretty much the cause of him breaking when he did. Like he didn't eat enough over the weekend as it was! His belly looks downright portly this evening.
Jedi crashed harder than I've ever seen on the drive home. He started propped up on the water dish (his favorite position) and was soon sleeping under it. He didn't move one single time until I turned onto our street to go home. Since then, though, he's been a loon. I filled up both pools and he got himself thoroughly wet, and now he's been running around with Kizzy for the last hour or so. Hopefully that means that he'll sleep well tonight at least! I am incredibly proud of Jedi's performance this entire weekend. While there wasn't a lot that was "new" to either of us, it was a challenging and stimulating environment and he worked like a champ. Jedi stuck out this weekend, and in a good way. Before we left today, Ann complimented Jedi again and remarked that I am going to have a lot of fun with this puppy. I already am!
Jedi is 18 weeks old today! He ran hard until about 8:30 last night when he finally crashed on the couch -- that's saying something for how worn out he was, because he'll generally go until well after 9:00. I gave Jedi another shot at sleeping in bed last night, figuring if he was super tired then the odds were stacked in my favor. He jumped down twice and was probably about one jump from going in his crate. He always jumped back up when called, though, and after the second time he settled in and ended up sticking around all night. I don't sleep as well with him in bed right now, I think just because I'm always checking to see if he's still there. As it becomes more routine I'm sure things will be fine.
Today was the second day of our puppy seminar with Ann Braue in Eau Claire. The format of the day was to work the puppies through stations, so this meant lots of work for the puppies today! We were paired with a partner as we went through the rotation with the object being that we could help be "watchers" and offer suggestions to our partners when Ann wasn't immediately available or watching. It also meant that our puppies would trade off and get some rest time so that they weren't working all day without any breaks. I actually thought this worked out really well. I paired with a junior handler named Anna and her super fun 13 week old border collie puppy, Journey. As a side note, in the future I'll remember not to set a puppy's ears at a seminar... I didn't think much of it because Jedi took to his braces so easily. I brought my supplies today (Anna said yesterday that she wanted to know how to do it, so I offered), we prepped before the seminar started, and we installed the braces during lunch. Poor Journey really struggled the last half of the day to accept her new ears, but thankfully she was playing again by the end with some help from Jedi's "bag o' fun."
Our day started by bringing out all of the puppies and playing "It's Yer Choice" (a Susan Garrett game that I like to do with my own classes). I've done plenty of food ignoring with Jedi, some as part of Silvia's class, but also just because I have open food dishes around when I work with him. I guess, though, that I haven't done much yet with putting food on the ground and asking him not to do anything. Jedi's struggle this morning, probably brought on because I was too slow in rewarding, was that he got very frustrated trying to figure out what he was supposed to "do" to get that food in front of him. So yes, he wasn't taking the food, but he was barking his head off and offering behaviors (namely, picking up the leash, since that's what we've been working on) because he didn't know what I wanted. I upped the frequency of reward and made it more clear what I was asking for by specifically playing with the food. We got to the point where I was able to put pieces on his paws and he left it. Good Jedi!
On to the stations! The plan was for "dog 1" of each pairing to start at a station, where we got 2.5 minutes to interact with whatever was there. There was time built in to play/engage with your dog at the start and finish of each session as well. I appreciate that Ann is such a proponent of play as relationship building and I think I'm going to make a shift and incorporate it into my own classes (pet people just balk at it for some reason). At the end of the 2.5 minutes, dog 1 moved on to the next station where they got another 2.5 minutes. After that we changed dogs and dog 2 went to that first station, then the second.
Anna and I started at the first station and Jedi was the second puppy in the rotation. The first station was essentially four-in. There was a shallow cardboard box (of decent size) and what I would call a rubber feed pan. I had Jedi go into both, which he did quite easily. The box was probably about as big as the one we started with, but it had higher sides so he did have to be thoughtful about picking up his feet. The feed pan was smaller, but still larger than the water dish that Jedi has progressed to stepping into. I'll be honest, we've already worked on pretty much all of the station exercises, so it was pretty easy to look like a brilliant puppy today.
Jedi was happy to move to the second station because it was one where we could use toys (many of the exercises were what I would classify as needing food to work through, but this gave us a good opportunity to transition back and forth). This station had a small FitPaws wobble board, which Jedi has seen before, but it also had a giant wobble board. Okay, it was probably only the size of an agility table, but it was the biggest one we've seen so far and it had a goodly amount of tip to it. There were sandbags propped on each corner to limit the tip at first, but I told the people front of us that they didn't need to put them back. My assumption was that Jedi would be fine with the full tip from the start and I was right. We played all sorts of fun tugging games on the wobble board and Jedi was not put off by the motion in the least.
Station three was a traffic cone. Ann showed us the finished product, which is that the dog should continue to circle the cone repeatedly in the desired direction. This is something I've had in the back of my mind but figured it's going to come up in Silvia's class eventually, so I've put it off. This is probably a station where a person could use food to shape a turn around the cone, but since Jedi already has the basic turn I opted to use a toy to let him play. We did some single turns, and some 1.5 turns where I threw the toy as he came around, and then I pretty much "lured" the multiple turns via the same fashion of doing spin & twirl. I would probably benefit from spending some time shaping this, but it might go faster now that Jedi at least understands the idea of going around the cone.
The fourth station was a PVC ladder. I did that cavaletti exercise with Jedi a while back using jumps all set together at 4" and he was pretty much like a bull in a china shop. I didn't know what to expect from this station since it's not specifically something we work on, but Jedi more or less acted like he does this one in his sleep. As we initially approached the station he just immediately went and trotted through the entire length of the ladder on his own. Well, okay then. We just spent the rest of the session going back and forth, back and forth, etc. I didn't even need to walk with him. Smart puppy.
Next up was Jedi's happiest time of the day!! The puppies needed a mental break, so we got to do restrained recalls! Ann spent some time talking about they whys and hows for anyone who is not familiar with these, but then we got to play. The dogs came out one at a time for their turn, but Jedi seemed to know instantly what was going on and started barking in his crate. This was the only time he barked all day, but recalls are exciting, don't you know!? I finally just got him out of his crate a few dogs ahead of his turn and hung out in the back. Once we started to walk towards the ring he was pulling like a freight train because he knew what we were doing. We did three turns right in a row -- First we did right, then left, then we did a turn where we "hid" the toy and didn't show it until right before the dog caught up with us (so it becomes a reward vs a lure). Ann remarked that she thought Jedi was running as fast as his legs could take him. Yup, he likes this one!
We squeezed in one more station rotation before lunch to get us halfway through everything. Station five was a hula hoop propped up and meant to simulate the opening of a tunnel or chute. The object was to send through and/or wait for the dog to offer to go through. Not a problem. Station six was a travel plank, so we practiced some two on/two off and Jedi did well, although during this exercise he was distracted by someone going crazy with a squeaker nearby. Also part of station six was the FitPaws donut. This is one of the only FitPaws pieces that I haven't acquired yet and Jedi has never played on one. He immediately offered to get on it with all four paws but this one was challenging! I ended up stabilizing it with my hand (it was in a stabilizing ring) so that he would be more successful. I bought a donut and the stabilizer ring before I left today, so now we can work on this one at home!
After lunch we got back to work on the stations. Station 7 was a large balance disc and two small balance discs. The general objective was interaction with the discs, but if you had a dog who was familiar with them it was to try to get the hind feet on the big disc and the front feet on the two smaller discs. They were all very under-inflated, so it wasn't terribly challenging, balance-wise. Jedi was offering all sorts of fun stuff so we just went with it. Station 8 was a plank raised on two cinder blocks that you were supposed to ask your dog to walk on and turn around. Jedi jumped up before I even asked and started going back and forth on his own. He slipped off once and lost a foot one other time, but in general he was really nimble at working the board.
Station 9 was a table with no base, so flat on the ground. Again, general interaction was encouraged, with the more advanced puppies moving to tugging in their table end position. Ann had demonstrated the difficulty in getting a dog to tug while maintaining a down, but pointed out how this builds value for that position. It was difficult, but Jedi finally got it and was able to keep playing in his down. This is something we will need to continue to work on! The 10th station had a FitPaws bone, so we did some side legs on it. It had practically no air in it, which actually made that one more difficult since Jedi didn't have much to prop up onto. We spent the majority of this station working with the paw pods. I can't tell you why, but we haven't spent a lot of time playing with our paw pods aside from basic targeting. Ann demonstrated four feet on and I decided to go for that. It took some work, but Jedi got it and Ann was super impressed. He did great at working hard to find the pods with his hind feet. Another thing that we should spend more time on.
Moving on to our final rotation, station 11 had a single jump standard (no bar). This was for your basic "one jump" exercises to encourage the dog to find the jump on their own and offer it. After watching Ann "re-demo" this one after our rotation I realize there is a lot more I could be doing to encourage more out of Jedi. I tend to sit next to the jump for this, but with Jedi that encourages him to try to interact with the jump (including "hugs" on the upright). Ann throws the food much further out and in various directions so the dog has to find his way back to the jump.
The final station was two broad jump boards that the dog was supposed to back through. So, Jedi has offered back up (beep, beep) since he was 8 weeks old, so this would be easy for us, yes? Uh, no. First of all, I have never had Jedi back up *between* two objects before, so I guess this blew his mind. Additionally, why would he back up when he could offer so many amazing things on these objects on either side of him? Of course, then there was also much frustration barking. Ann actually came over and spent a bit of time with us on this one. She knows that Jedi has a beep-beep, but she encouraged me to drop the verbal and go back to square one with shaping. The name of OUR game became "don't reward anything other than a foot stepping backwards." Eventually this extinguished the other behaviors and Jedi figured out what was being asked. That one was challenging for both of us!
After the clinic wrapped up for the day we finally got the brothers out for the obligatory family photo. Oh my, that was entertaining. In addition to the fact that we were dealing with 4-month old puppies, we were dealing with TIRED 4-month old puppies. Because my phone sucks and half of the pictures end up blurry, I never got the "perfect" shot on my phone, but I think we did pretty well. Because I didn't know if I'd gotten anything decent, we finally asked someone to take a picture with us in as well, because at least then we could hold the puppies in place. Hopefully these pictures become easier to take as they get older. lol Jedi was actually really good and sat nicely through most of it. He was overly interested in the treats that Pam and Lisa had, though, which was pretty much the cause of him breaking when he did. Like he didn't eat enough over the weekend as it was! His belly looks downright portly this evening.
Jedi crashed harder than I've ever seen on the drive home. He started propped up on the water dish (his favorite position) and was soon sleeping under it. He didn't move one single time until I turned onto our street to go home. Since then, though, he's been a loon. I filled up both pools and he got himself thoroughly wet, and now he's been running around with Kizzy for the last hour or so. Hopefully that means that he'll sleep well tonight at least! I am incredibly proud of Jedi's performance this entire weekend. While there wasn't a lot that was "new" to either of us, it was a challenging and stimulating environment and he worked like a champ. Jedi stuck out this weekend, and in a good way. Before we left today, Ann complimented Jedi again and remarked that I am going to have a lot of fun with this puppy. I already am!
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