The whole week is a total writeoff as we do the llama show and sleeeeep after it. Stitch gets to do the puppy thing - Scuba, who can jump the dog fence with ease, gets to stay in a crate all day, Stitch, who can't jump the dog fence (yet) has access to her crate, the dog room, and, through the dog doors, the dog yard. I don't think she uses the yard much, because when we come home at night, she's a maniac. She has the rips every night, racing around the house with her tail on the ground, crashing into things, and she and Scuba wrestle and tug well past the regular bedtime.

Mostly what she gets worked on is a bunch of tired people sitting on the couch stuffing supper in their mouths and telling her she isn't welcome to browse off our plates. A necessary lesson, and she doesn't take it personally. She makes the rounds of each person, checks twice with the least adamant ones, then runs off to find a toy.

We start this morning with Eye Contact - fantastic. I won't mark it passed because we use X10 to get up to it, but then she gives me three in a row of 30 seconds each, very solid, no glancing away or whining. WHEEE!!

Since she's doing so well at that, I ask for Sit Stay. Same results. We do 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, then 30 seconds three times with no fussing at all. FanTAStic.

That went so well we go for some moving behaviours - Sit, Down, Back Up, Take A Bow, Princess Paw, Sore Paw - here she gives me a couple of nose swipes from her trick class. We'll have to distinguish sooner or later between Back Up, Down, and Take A Bow, these are overlapping quite a bit. Also Sit and Sore Paw, and Down and Princess Paw. I'm using a cue for Princess which is my two index fingers crossing each other, followed by her crossing her front legs in the same direction. Very cute. Draws AAAWWWWs everywhere.

At supper we test SitStay and Watch. 30 seconds each. I use one extra "chch" cue when she glances down at about 10 seconds on the Watch. For the SitStay, 1 cue to Sit, voice and hand cue to Stay and she's very steady. So exciting!

Then we do some work on pivoting right with eye contact. Still hasn't quite got the ability to walk and watch and chew gum at the same time. Maybe if I try just walking... Within a 10' space, I walk veeerrrryyy slowly back and forth. If she's on the left side, click. If she makes contact, click. If she swings too far in front of me or starts going around me clockwise, I pivot slowly left. This makes her correct herself - basically following me through the beginning of the Swing Finish - and when she's back in Heel position, I start walking forward again. Maybe helped a bit on the Eye Contact problem. Looking at it strictly as a Heeling exercise, WOW!

One distracted training session today. A year ago I bought a little-kid plastic skateboard, thinking it would be solider and less-rolly than Scuba's real one. Well, not. It's just as wide, but it's only about 18" long, made of noisy plastic. It rolls just as much, if not more, and it's too short to be stable, so the least amount of pressure that isn't dead centre flips it up, and it lands with a huge plastic bang, frequently turning over. I try shaping her to put paws on it, but when the first paw scoots and flips it, she won't do it again until I lure it. We go through the whole meal with her telling me she doesn't want to touch it and me trying all different ways of holding it so it won't move too much. Eventually she decides she CAN put her feet on it, and I almost don't hold it. Then she gives the skateboard Sore Paw - touches it with her paw without putting any weight on it. That solves all her problems. She can touch it and get a click, and the thing won't flip. Soon I'm clicking for her moving it, which she does almost with a fingertip - pushing it back and forth, but still no weight on it.So, as far as teaching her to ride a skateboard, useless. For pushing through a problem, thinking of alternate solutions, not being scared of strange clattery moving things, good stuff.

Her eye's better and we go back to the Trick class. She's a different puppy tonight. She's not afraid of the big noisy things with lights going by on the street nearby. She's eager to get into the building - to the point that I have to back up five times to remind her about the loose leash. And she pees on cue before we go in. Last week she was MUCH too disconcerted to think about peeing.

I hold her on my lap while the big dogs play, but this time she thinks she'd be OK on the floor. There's a honking big Golden and a young Dane - I think she's better off on my lap. All the dogs come to visit her, though, and she enjoys greeting them. When they lose interest I put her down but keep her on leash. She watches for a bit, then turns and gives me eye contact, so we work on Watch a bit, with Sit and Down and Sore Paw and Princess Paw. She doesn't have trouble with any of these.

The first trick of the night is the bow - she remembers it and is totally willing to give it to me - great, in the company of these dogs that she was afraid of last week. She does it on voice cue and on a hand signal, which is a swish out to the side with my right hand - a mini bow on my part.

I put down a carpet sample, and she shows me that she can do Go To Mat here as well, in spite of it being a strange place, strange circumstances, and a totally different Mat from the one we've been training on. Clever puppy!

Then each student is presented with a box of Kleenex. We're to take a tissue out, hold it in our hands, and see if we can get the dog to target it, then to target it on the ground, then in the box, and finally work to see if we can get them to pull the tissue out of the box. I'm a little nervous - we haven't worked on any retrieving since (last week?) when I screwed her up and she quit on me several times. We start with one tissue. Or, as a friend of mine said later, "Portuguese Water Dog Heaven!". She started mouthing it and it was soon a soggy ball and we got a new one. I put it on the floor - she was picking it up. On top of that, it was difficult to spit out or drop, so I was able to take it from her several times. Then I started working on the tissue in the box. Oh dear, they're in there pretty solid, I don't know if my widdle bootsy will be able to get one...

Within a minute, she's ripping out tissues - rip click treat rip click treat rip click treat - soon we're surrounded by an immense and growing pile of loose tissues, she's ripping them out of the box as fast as she can, and I'm laughing so hard I can't breathe. I clean up the tissues and we work on retrieving a cute little basket instead.

We move on to the paw-over-the-nose routine. I put a bit of tape on her nose and get about a minute of enthusiastic pawing, after which she pretty much ignores it.

Fun class.

She wakes up with a red, swollen, goopy eye. We go to the vet and get some prescription eye stuff. It looks considerably better in four hours, thank goodness. We train once, starting with the right turn with contact. She's OK. Not as good as we left off yesterday, but better than we had before that. I'm tired and don't want to discuss it (and dizzy from all that pivoting). We finish up with some SitStays. We start at 5 seconds and work up to a good solid 20 seconds and two 30 second Stays at about 15'. A short workout, but a good one. I can hardly keep from laughing while we're doing the SitStays - she looks like the alien puppet Alf, with her big fuzzy head, her long shaved muzzle, and her two little bottom canines sticking up from totally naked lower gums. To make it worse, she's still sitting sloppy - on her tail, with her back legs tossed wherever they land out to the side - like puppet legs. Dear little Tat.

There's something to be said for this not having time to train business. I'm training more this week than I did last week! Or maybe I'm just using the puppy to avoid "real" work, like packing for the show and finishing costumes and getting my kerflushinner gelding to walk a plank. (My training partner and I have been through about 20 different ways to explain this to him. She's suggested I put a poster of a llama walking a plank on the barn wall and let him study it in quiet moments. I think we're getting a little giddy. 7 days until the show.)

We did some testing this morning. Down and Sit, no food anywhere, on one cue from 10' away - brilliant response. Stand from Sit, no food, one cue - I used a hand signal. The work on backing up that we did yesterday really lightened her rear end, she popped right up and stayed there (not a Stay, but indicated that she wasn't going to drop right back into the Sit).

A few days ago on the Levels list, "Nita" wrote that she'd had a really nice success at something she'd thought her dog would "never, never, never" do. I'm finding that that's staying with me and becoming part of my training life. As in "That kerflushinner gelding is Never, Never, Never going to walk a plank!" Or "Stitch is NNN going to keep eye contact on an about turn!" Just saying it helps me focus my attention on the behaviour and the fact that I need another way to explain it.

She holds contact when I pivot left. When I pivot right, she looks at the ground. OK, I start to pivot right. As soon as she looks at the ground, I "get lost" - start pivoting left. She has to realize I'm lost, and start coming with me to the left, which means she automatically grabs contact again. Click for contact, and start to the right again. She drops her eyes, I escape to the left. X6, and suddenly she's got it. She's holding contact so hard at one point she jumps sideways to hold on. Hmmm - interesting, she doesn't know she can walk sideways in this direction, though the other direction was no trouble at all. Well, she's figuring it out now. Thanks, Nita!

I try the go-around-pole from 4' on one cue only, but she's not quite listening to the cue yet. I have to step closer twice before she realizes what I'm asking. Then she whips around - in fact she whips around twice before she realizes that I clicked and she can come get her kibble.

Wow, she's whipping off Level 3 MUCH faster than I thought we would! Wow!

We start with some testing this morning. She nails the Finish - holding contact while I pivot left. Then Go To Mat from 5' away. She lies down automatically and stays there without fussing for 1 minute (AMAZING!). We try for the right about turn with contact, but she can't do that yet without looking at the floor to see if I dropped anything without clicking first...

We the 30-second, 20' SitStay, and she does very well up to 20 seconds, then comes over to visit.

She gets the Front Ray diagram with no trouble, 3 out of 4, then 7/8.

Nose targets 4 articles without a second thought.

I signal toward her paw target and she trots purposefully out to whomp it.

And she does the Down from Sit and Sit from Stand from 10' - then I realize we need to do that with no treats around, so we'll try that later. So she's passed 5 of the Level 3 behaviours. What a good pup. Next week in the parking lot at class we'll try the Level 1 On The Road stuff.

We're going to need a shaped trick, and she's not picking up on the lured Stand very well. I like to teach most things three different ways to be sure the dog and I are talking about the same thing at the same time, so I think I'll use Back Up for my shaped trick and, as a byproduct, use it to teach her to Stand.

I sit on the couch and click any backwards motion of any paw. This was a 10-click behaviour for Song, a 5-minute behaviour for Scuba. Am I getting worse? We use 200 kibbles to begin. I get a lot of extraneous movement. She turns her head to her right and any backwards motion is accompanied by sidestepping. I ignore this X50, then start weeding it out. I put the kibble in my right hand, feed from my right, and stop clicking the worst sidesteps. X50 and the head-swing is mostly gone, along with most of the sidestepping. We work on any backwards motion, no headswing or sidestep X50. With the final 50, I wait for two paws backwards. I get some headswing and sidestepping, but not much and they're easy to beat now. Next session I'll try to mobilize her back paws.

We have her first puppy manners class this afternoon. We arrive 20 minutes early, which gives me time to do a little Loose Leash Walking in the parking lot before anyone else arrives. She's much more relaxed about the cars on the nearby street now that she can see them in daylight. I give her a kibble every time she looks at me and in 3 minutes she's blase about the cars. She really doesn't need work on LLW, she's doing great.

At least until the next puppy arrives. It's a Lab about the same age, so taller, but the owner has it sitting near her. Stitch is very excited about it and NOW we need to work on LLW. We're perfectly situated between the two cars - if she gives me a loose lead, I walk out from between them so she can see the puppy. When the leash tightens, I back up so she can't see it. Four times is enough to convince her that she needs to keep it loose.

More puppies come - ShihTzus this time, and smaller than Stitch. Many more puppies, but it only takes three backups to remind her to give me LL. I'm sure the other owners think I'm unfriendly, but I'm standing back where Stitch has a good chance to win, and she's winning.

I also have time to talk her into getting in the car and into her crate on her own. I've replaced her tiny overgrown crate with a soft-side crate that will be the right size for her as an adult, which gives me a chance to lean into it and wrestle with her ever time she gets into it, then ask her to come out and try it again.

The instructor comes and we go inside. Stitch and I wait until the smaller dogs are in, then go in with a few backups. We find our chair from the earlier class and I sit down. Stitch watches the other dogs, but comes back to give me Contact and Sit very quickly. Then we turn all the pups loose to play. The Lab tries bullying the ShihTzus, then latches on to the instructor's Pyr puppy. The ShihTzus talk to each other, and that's perfect as it gives Stitch a chance to meet and greet on her own terms without drawing too much unwanted attention. She focuses mostly on the people, getting cuddles all around. She's much more relaxed than she was in the previous class. I'm pleased at her behaviour with the smaller pups. She makes some errors, but in general she's gentle with them and slower when she's near them.

The class does some Zen, then Sit, then LLW. Stitch has all this stuff down pat, but what I'm impressed with is her calmness and her ability to concentrate. The leash is loose between exercises, and if the instructor spends any time demonstrating, Stitch lies down and calmly surveys her fellow students, glancing at me occasionally to make sure I'm not interested in paying for anything.

She's settled in very well. This is the second time she's been in this venue and she's very comfortable now. Her ears are back where they belong (the first class, she had them pulled back), and her tail is wagging.

When the majority of puppies leave, I turn her loose with the Pyr puppy, which is younger but the same height and much heavier, and which stood up well to the rough play of the Lab. I'm a bit concerned about her ability to handle this, mentally. I reckon without thinking about the design of each puppy. The Pyr never gets near her. Soon they're playing with the Pyr plodding sedately around the room waiting for her small attacks, and Stitch zooming and dive-bombing him.

When we go back out to the car, she hops into the car and her crate as if she's been doing it every day of her life. She's totally quiet on the way home (she may be unconscious - she's done a lot of learning today!). A very successful day.

We've been sidetracked by the vertical paw-target and tricks and sore gums. As I've got little time to train this week, we're going to concentrate on Levels skills. We're done Level 2.

We start with standing Eye Contact and bmove quickly to alternately turning to the left and to the right. She's very good to the left, following me all the way around. A bit more trouble to the right. She starts out watching me aswe turn, looks down for a step or two, back up, down again. I'm going slowly and clicking when she's looking at me. This isn't the way I usually teach it. Usually I just turn and click for finding me again, and let the dog figure out that it's easier to hold on than to keep losing me. I wonder why I'm doing it this way? Maybe tomorrow we'll try it the old way. At any rate, nice job. I'd pass the turn to the left, and ask for a bitmore work if I were judging the right turn.

We work the Front Ray diagram - no problem, by the third click she's finding the exact centre and holding it. Several times, while I was waiting to make sure she'd decided on that position (I don't want to click for finding it in the middle of her bopping madly around, I made that mistake with Scuba and it took me several weeks to get her to hold a Front, she sat, in what I would consider a half-point-off Front for being a snitch too far out.

I put a stool upside down and ask her to go around it. It takes X10 for her to figure out what the heck I'm talking about, then I get back to about 5' away while she goes around it. I'm using Get By and Away as cues. I always guess correctly that she's going to go around, but not always correctly as to the direction she's going to go.

OK, I lied about not doing duration behaviours. She's working brilliantly, so we move over to a dogbed and see if we can get some duration, working toward the 1-minute stay. Yowzah! She's glued to the dogbed! I count to 10, she stays on the bed and I toss her a handful. I count to 20, same result. And 30, and 40, and 50, and 60. That's pretty darn good!

I get her a little pink paw target and put it on the rug. She's got that right away from 4' away. X30 - the only mistake she makes is that once she picks it up instead of whomping it. Another 20 with me tossing the reward over THERE and moving the target to HERE while she's snarfing the treat. Very funny the first time - she turns back, whomps the carpet where the target used to be, then starts backing up thinking she can't see it because she's standing over it. Then she starts swinging her head back and forth trying to find it. Finally she spots a speck that might be a treat (it isn't) and runs over to it. While she's there, she finally sees the target. She stares at it for a second - wait, wasn't I looking for something pink? - then startles and runs over and dives on it. Can't fool her after that!

And that's her breakfast, and we're done.

Apparently just saying I don't have time to work makes me want to work. I train three llamas, make a costume, and get two puppy sessions in. I'm pooped!

I spend a few minutes working Stitch on Go To Mat, getting her up to 60 seconds again with no trouble. Then I invite Scuba to come over and start working them both. I ask Scuba to Sit, click her, toss one to Stitch. Ask Scuba to Down, click her, toss one to Stitch. X10, then I ask Scuba for 2 behaviours and toss one to Stitch. We work up to 10 for Scuba, 1 for Stitch. I thought this would be a tough thing to explain, but somewhere in there the "duration" lecture seems to have sunk in. Stitch totally understands that the way to get treats is to stay on the mat, and that what's happening with Scuba really doesn't have anything to do with her. Some of the treats I toss at her bounce off and land on the floor, and she won't even get off to get them. Scuba, on the other hand, is really sharp, especially when she realizes that Stitch gets an extra every time Scuba misses a cue! I call this the Default Dog method - Stitch gets every single treat - except the ones that Scuba earns. Worked a charm for Scuba with Song, but I thought it would be another couple of weeks, if not months, before Stitch would be able to play it.

Had a brilliant day with the llamas, too.

Next week is going to be pretty sparse. We're getting ready for a big llama show and I've got a ton of training to do, as well as show secretary stuff, costumes to make and organize, etc. I'm feeling the pressure already - too much to do, not enough energy to do it. We'll both be lucky if I get one session a day in, but given the state of her teeth, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I need an easy day so we work on some of her homework from her Tricks class. We start with trying to lure her to roll over. I can get her over on one hip without too much trouble, but any further and she's convinced I want her to leap into a stand. This rapidly exceeds "easy" so we move on to resting her head. I can't reach the floor, so I lure her to rest her muzzle in my cupped hand. ShaZAM. The 4th time I lure it, she knows what she's doing. X30 and she's got it on a voice cue or on presentation of my hand. Scuba's got this trick with the cue of "Are you precious?" so that's what I use for Stitch.

Next we try a bow. I've been avoiding this, thinking that Sit and Down and Stand are enough position behaviours for a baby. She's even faster this time. The third time I start to lure it, she assumes the position before I get there. "Take a bow". X30 and she's not ready to do it totally on a voice cue, but she easily responds to a hand cue and holds the position while I hand her 15 individual kibbles. Fun meal.

A very light breakfast and we go to class for the first time this evening. There are five adults and large puppies, and Stitch. They start with a play period, for which Stitch is quite comfortable to stand on me and watch. She looks like she's riding a roller coaster - she really really wants to visit//she really really wants everybody to stay over THERE//she really really wants to visit. She sniffs a couple of dogs from my lap, and I'm careful not to let them come any closer than her nose. Then the class begins and the other dogs go to their own places in the room. Stitch is more comfortable with the larger dogs over THERE and not moving around so much. I've brought a freeze-dried wiener (five years in a freezer'll do that), but she's happy working for her kibble.

Soon she's comfortable enough to get off me. I put her on the floor and let her look at the dogs. Every time she glances back at me, she gets a couple of kibbles. Otherwise I leave her alone to watch them. Periodically she loses her nerve and comes back to put paws up and get a cuddle. Then she goes back out to the end of the leash to watch. After a few minutes she comes in and starts working. I've never seen her ears pulled back before, and she's trying to pay attention to what I'm doing with the kibble and at the same time keep an ear on what's happening behind her. Again, periodically she can't stand it any more and has to turn and watch. She can give me the behaviours she's good at already - Sit, Down, Sore Paw, Princess Paw, Target, Watch - but she was reluctant to think hard enough to attempt to learn anything new. What bothered her most was the odd large bark. She's been listening to Scuba. When Scuba barks, it's a good idea for Stitch to listen and respond appropriately ("appropriately" generally meaning to get away from Scuba or something Scuba wants). When one of these dogs barks, she can't see anything she should get away from, which is worrying her a bit.

I take her outside to pee but she can't - every time she starts to assume the position, a car goes by on the dark street nearby and startles her.

In general, she handles the class very well, but I'm glad I was there to introduce her to a new situation and not expecting her to learn any new behaviours. That would have been asking for too much.

After the other dogs leave, the instructor and I sit and chat for another hour while I toss one handful of kibble after another out onto the floor. That soon gets her delving into odd corners! By the time the second hour is up, she's much more comfortable. There's a puppy class starting on Saturday. This one is a Click & Trick class. We could finish this class and accomplish what I want, but we're going to switch to the baby class where I think she'll be more comfortable.

I often say "The best thing about clicker training is... " and it's always something different. I'm having the same trouble with the puppy. "My favourite thing to train her is..." A few days ago it was retrieving. Now we're working on the Eye Contact and positioning with the Get Lost game and the two diagrams. Her contact is lovely, solid - as always with my own dogs, I could sink into her eyes. Pity people who see only dominance in eye contact!

This morning she figured out how to walk and hold contact at the same time as I pivot. She's better counterclockwise than clockwise, where she occasionally forgets and runs around me. She's self-correcting, though, knows she's looking for my face, and loves to work the motion games.

Now we're going out - she's making her vet clinic debut. There'll be lots of cookies and cuddles and people who will back off if I tell them to.

Well, that's the theory, anyway. The trip goes very well except for one incident. She rides well in the crate in the car - one 30 second whine and one 5 second yap. We get out of the car and have some kibble, walk up the steps and have some kibble, go in the door and have some kibble. Meet people one at time with Stitch making the overtures. She's thrilled to meet people and have cuddles. She does Sit and Down and Sore Paw on the scale (22 pounds, all of it leg). She does Sit and Down on the examining table, and lies on her side with her head down. She's not thrilled to have the otoscope inserted in her ears, or the thermometer, but I hold her head still and it isn't a wrestle. Lots of kibble for the shot, and a good cuddle with the vet. Back out in the waiting room for more cuddles with staff and everybody asks her for Sit and Down and Sore Paw and Princess Paw and she gets about three meals' worth of treats. We're winding up, and some - excuse me - BOZO walks in with an adult dog, lets the leash go, and the dog rushes over to Stitch. The dog isn't aggressive but stands over her. Stitch can't decide whether she's more excited or more submissive, and winds up spinning and peeing with me frantically trying to snag her. Finally I get her and they hustle the bozo and her dog into an examining room. I stay long enough to calm Stitch down, ask for a few more behaviours, and let staff members feed her some more, but I really want to get out of there before the other dog comes out of the examining room.

Tomorrow night we have Stitch's first puppy class. I'm going to go early so I can take my time getting into the building and find a corner where I can keep her calm when the other dogs come in.

I don't want to do too much at supper - there isn't much of it since she had so much this afternoon, and I don't want to push her after this afternoon. I put her on the grooming table and go through her repetoire again, including a show stack, then lay her down on her side and spend some time getting her used to the nail grinder. A bit more exciting than just cutting her toenails, but it's old and noisy. The feel of it on her toenails doesn't bother her. I'll get the grinders overhauled before I try it again, but it went very well.

She has her first adult tooth today. One top incisor, with the next one just under the skin surface, hovering like some huge archaeological artifact waiting to be discovered.
I don't want that quitting thing to happen again. I gave her the last meal free. She now has 3 puppy incisors left. Her gums are swollen and so red they look like a sunburn. I can feel the heat from them when I pet her face.

Since she's a moving kind of dog, we do some moving. I start on the Front Ray and Bullseye. Her Eye Contact is excellent, she gives me 10 seconds as a matter of course. I take two handfuls of kibble, and we work on the Front Ray diagram X 30. Very nice. She's stopping rarely off my shoulder and when I do nothing but continue to stare at the floor in front of me, she immediately pops forward so she can see my eyes. With the next two handfuls, we work on the Bullseye. Also excellent. X20 and she's within a foot of my toes. We alternate, one handful for the rays, one for the bullseye. When she's 95% hitting a half-point-off Front, I start tossing every third kibble between my legs. That straightens her out as well, and when we're done, we've had no frustration, no quitting, the odd grunt when something didn't work as she wanted it to but no whining. She's really in the game, and she hit 4 perfect fronts.

Back to chewing on everything.

We do another session on the grooming table. She remembers Paws Up, and lets my lay her down on her side on the table with no fuss. One kibble at a time, I shave her muzzle. She's perfect. She keeps her head down, lifting it only to take a treat. I take the opportunity to cut a billionth of an inch off her toenails. A bit of fuss over this, but it's very difficult to fuss and keep your head down at the same time. After 10 kibbles she's not fussing any more.
She's making more of a mess now than she ever did as a baby. She's got every toy she ever had disembowelled and gathered in the living room with stray bits of paper, a couple of leashes, and a few dish towels. The only time she stops chewing is when she's asleep. Scuba doesn't need a cue any more, she just sighs, picks up the fluff and puts it in the garbage.

What goes up, must come down.

We start breakfast with a very nice 8-second Eye Contact X5. Then the Paw Target X10. Then the leather dumbell. She starts right where we left off. She holds it for 10 seconds. I can take my hand off it, put my hand back on it, we both hold it. Excellent.

I hand it to her, take my hand off it, move my hand out of sight, back, and hold it with her again. Excellent. She's about 70% on this. 30% of the time she drops it before I get back to it. Excellent.

When we hit 80%, I decide not to pick it up when she drops it. She's really into this. She drops it, I sit and stare at it. She waits for me to pick it up, then grabs it. Drops it. Grabs it. Drops it. Grabs it. When she's holding it, 10% of the time I can actually move my hand slowly back to it and take it from her. Ee hah.

So we do this for a while, and then she tells me that working with a 10% success rate is not her idea of how to have breakfast. "Out of the blue", "suddenly", she quits. She goes to her paw target and whacks it five or six times. No response. She lies down. No response. She offers me Princess Paw. No response. She gives an absolutely FABulous 46-second Stare (I counted). No response. She walks to the door and looks back at me. No response. I offer her the dumbell and she stares at the door.

I can hear a phantom instructor yelling "Don't let her get away with that, she's blowing you off!" Fortunately the noise is drowned out by how clearly Stitch is saying that she tried and tried and what she was trying didn't work, she's frustrated and she doesn't know what to do about it. I wait for several minutes while she stares at the door. Then I flick the dumbell and she glances at it, so I start back at the very beginning. Click for a glance. Click for a glance. Click for a look. Click for a step toward it. Click for walking to it. Click for lowering her head. X20 and she's back in the game, but I keep the game simple, just clicking for picking it up.

We finish up with Sit, Down, Sore Paw and Princess Paw. Easy stuff to help her confidence. She's happy, I'm happy.

I don't get to train her the next meal. Two loud, jerky, squealing, energetic, normal kids - one 4, one 6 - land in our living room.

The kids start out excited and a bit scared. The puppy starts out excited and a bit scared. She pretends she's sitting and looking at me but she's reallly just sticking with me because the kids are so far from her idea of normal. She's not hiding behind me, but she's careful to keep me beside her so she can escape if she needs to.

I put Stitch's entire meal in a bucket where the kids can reach it. They're not familiar with dogs and can't bring themselves to feed Scuba, let alone the pup, but that also means the closest they're going to come to touching her is to jab at the air a foot over her head. I feed her a few kibbles for looking at the kids, or for looking at me, or for sitting, or anything else she does that's anywhere close to reasonable. Then, because the kids won't hand her any food, I start dropping the food on the floor, one piece at a time. The kids pick up on this and start doing it too. The kids are tossing it near me, and I'm judiciously tossing it closer and closer to the kids. Stitch is snatching the food off the floor. She dives into a Down with her face on top of each kibble, then looks for the next piece. If it takes too long getting there, she retreats to a safer place closer to me. The kids squeal each time she approaches them.

Soon Stitch is slowing down her snatching and leaping, and the kids' squealing is getting quieter. As they all become more comfortable with the idea of each other, I start hand-feeding her kibble, which turns her face away from the kids, and they get brave enough to start petting her.

When the meal is done, Stitch is standing normally between me and the kids, wagging her tail and plucking any stray kibbles off the rug, and the kids are talking quietly, petting her calmly, and letting her sniff their hands. Excellent session!

Woo hoo, I'm getting excited about retrieving again. As if having her eventually get 438 objects to me isn't enough!

We start breakfast with X10 on her paw target. It's as high as I can get it on the couch. She's been dreaming about it - she whomps it the first five times with both front paws in a dive, then settles down to the one-paw swipe. One-paw is not as accurate as both, and I wait until she actually hits the target before clicking.

Then on to the hold. She's been dreaming about this, too. She begins by giving me good solid 3-second holds with no fussing at all. I have someone coming in half an hour, and her understanding is exciting, so I'm shoveling the food into her by the handful. This also seems to make an impression on her.

3 seconds X30, then I start letting her take the weight of it. This causes some indecision, but amazingly, she spits it out when she feels the weight but immediately grabs it again and holds while I let her have the weight. I'm not moving my hand away, an observer wouldn't be able to tell that I've released it, so when she drops it it doesn't fall. X5. Then she grasps the concept and holds it while I let her have all the weight. X10. She shows a little confusion by chin-bumping the initial take again, but the hold is solid. X20. We're well over 80% success, so I open my hand so an observer could tell I wasn't holding the dumbell. X30, and we're up to 70% on this as well. Wow.

And Wow again. At supper, we start with the leather dumbell again. She still has a few chin-bumps before biting it, but when she bites it, she's over 80% holding it. X10, then I start releasing the weight. X10 at 80%, and actually let go. She drops it the first few times, then holds it firmly. I start doing variations of an 8-second hold - we hold it together for 3 seconds, she holds it alone for 3, then together again for 2 seconds; or 1 second together, 4 alone, 3 together. She's GREAT.

Then I move the dumbell around, to my left, to my right, up high, down low, so she has to move to take it. This is harder for her, she goes back to the chin-bump. X20 and she's got it. Next I hand it to her when she's standing and ask her to sit while holding it. That's like walking and chewing gum at the same time, but X 20 and she's got that too.

We switch to the wooden dumbell. There's no apparent difference in her reaction to the wood than to the leather. X20. We switch to the metal dumbell. X5 to get used to it, then no difference with that either.

To finish the meal, we do the paw target X10. Wow.

We go out to the agility equipment for lunch. As usual, she gallops up the contact trainer and looks for kibble at the bottom of the contact. X10. Then we move to the dogwalk that she fell off yesterday. She runs up it with no trouble. She's going so fast she frequently passes kibble I've left along the horizontal surface. X20. When I call her away from the dogwalk, she comes away nicely, but if I don't pay attention she gallops back over to the contact trainer.

I have to walk by the teeter on the way back into the house, so I stop there. I don't have any jumps set up to block the tilt. Hmm, what can I do that won't screw her up too badly? I get her to commit all four feet to walking up it, then call her back down. X10. That's five different ramps she'll commit to. Then I put a handful of kibble at the bottom of the tipped contact, pick her up, and hold her securely at the fulcrum with her paws just resting on the board. I let it tip very, very slowly, then release her and lure her down the board to the contact kibble. She's not exceptionally happy about this. By the third time, however, her paws are working while the board is tipping, trying to get away to run down the board to the contact. It occurs to me (better late than never) that I'm backchaining the teeter. First she learned the bottom contact (on the contact trainer, and practised it again on the dogwalk) and to run the board. Now she's learning the tilt. When she's got that, I can add the up contact that she already knows, put them together and have the entire teeter. Maybe. Not a way I've done it before, but we'll see how it goes.

To a casual observer, her retrieve may not appear much better than it was two weeks ago, but in Life in general, there's been a huge change. I've been thinking for weeks that I really ought to start negotiating a trade deal with her - where I trade anything she brings me for a cookie or a toy - especially as she starts teething and can't take a step without having something in her mouth. And because I'm lazy I haven't bothered starting yet. The last few days, all on her own, she's started bringing me things. My shoes. Empty pop cans. Mitts. Dishtowels. Socks. Toys. Measuring cups. Leashes. My purse. A telephone. And she seems pleased when I admire them and take them away from her. I always give her a cuddle or a wrestle if I don't have a kibble available. Still, I'm quite astonished at how cheerfully she hands me these treasures.
We start supper by working her paw target up to 18". She gets a little sloppy, sometimes hitting the target, sometimes the couch, but she definitely knows the job and just needs some practise in getting her paw up that high. Target X30.

Then, after all that talk about not actively teaching her to hold rather than just bring, I chicken out. I take the leather dumbell. I hold it at muzzle-height and ask for some duration.

If this was my first clicker dog, if I didn't have a TON of faith in The Force, this would be a serious problem. This is a DO-SOMETHING dog. She doesn't like to sit and do nothing. Where I had a nice 2-second hold, I now get an iffy 1-second hold. She tries holding it in her lips instead of in her mouth. She tries chin-bumping. My, she's very good at chin-bumping. She can chin-bump the dumbell 12 times in between bites. She tries holding it by the end. She tries paw-targeting it. She whines. She lies down. She lies down and gives me Princess Paw. Finally I start sitting back, crossing my arms, and looking at the ceiling when she lies down. Three of those and she gets the message that I'm DEFINITELY not paying for lying down.

So, at the beginning we have a good 2-second hold every time I present the dumbell. After 20, we have a poor 1-second hold one in 5 times I present it. But I have faith. This is NOT my first clicker dog. We keep working. Suddenly she tries a good hold. I let it go for 3 seconds, click it. The light at the end of the tunnel. (My computer will say, in a dolorous voice, The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of a fast-approaching train.)

At the end of the meal, we have a good 3 second hold every 1.5 times I present the dumbell. I'm hard-pressed to define "a good hold". She takes it firmly in her mouth, locks eyes with me, and just seems to settle back into her body. When she does this, I can loosen my grip on the dumbell and let her hold the weight of it a bit. She certainly isn't ready for me to let go of it, but she felt the weight of it several times without letting go. A good session with a noticeable improvement.

This morning I add a 5' stock whip to her pile of retrieve articles. She leaves it until last, then brings it back with no trouble - well, she makes the decision with no trouble. She quickly decides to pick it up (x3 to let her know), then tries to bring it, trips over it, lands on her nose, goes back, picks it up with it trailing out between her legs, tries to lift it and herself, etc. The point being, she immediately tries to bring it to me. And eventually it lands at my feet. I don't really believe in jackpotting, but I confess I'm jackpotting if I can grab something before it hits the ground - since I'm not holding items in hand and having her hold them with me, every time I move my hand toward her, she thinks she's being rewarded, so she drops the item. I caught 6 of them this round, and gave her all the kibble I had in my other hand each time. Her lifts are getting more secure, and her carries are getting longer. I'm not sure it's going to work, but after breakfast she brought me two things I didn't want her taking outside. Usually when I call her she drops what she's carrying. I love to watch her lift the FlexiLead. I've left the cord out several inches. She lifts it by the snap, and it swings so hard her head rocks with it, but that doesn't seem to bother her. Sometimes I wait too long to click for a carry and she decides that the article she was carrying isn't paying off so she searches for another one.

Then I put out her target spot on the floor. Wee hah, she doesn't even THINK of retrieving it, just whomps it thoroughly with both front feet. X20 around the room, then I pick it up and show her the upright one on the couch. She's busy playing with my hand. Hmmm. I lure her around until she's facing it, ask for a Sit Stay, then tap the target. Oh! Whomp! X20, then I raise it to 6", no problem.

I spend the rest of the day training llamas for a jump-off. The day seems to be holding its breath waiting for snow, so for supper we go outside and play on agility equipment. Stitch doesn't run right for the contact trainer, but holds Eye Contact as I get the clicker and kibble ready (ee hah!). As soon as she realizes I'm walking toward the trainer, she gallops up it. I barely get some kibble on the top in time, then drop a few at the bottom of the ramp for the contact. X10 with great speed and enthusiasm.

I have the two dogwalk ramps flat on the ground (they were forming a backup chute for llamas - lots of work to do this month!). I start clicking her for stepping on them. At first she thinks I'm paying for stomping them with her front feet. After each click I put that kibble a few inches further down the length of the board, and take her back over to the contact trainer a few times until she figures out I'm paying for walking the boards. X30. I think there's not enough difference between the board and the ground, especially with the grass being fairly long.

I attach the ramps back on the dogwalk at about 24" off the ground and start clicking and luring her up them that way. She gets halfway up and bails a dozen times. Finally I straddle the horizontal part of the dogwalk facing down the ramp. That does it, she keeps coming all the way up. I skoosh backwards the length of the board and get off in time to lure her down to the ground. To my surprise, at that point she turns right around and runs the dogwalk! I have to really hustle to get the kibble on the down contact. Holy cow! And again. Now I'm out of food and I go back toward the house to get some more. Twinkie runs the dogwalk parallel with me. I wasn't expecting this, I had called her away from it before I started for the house. I don't realize she's on it until she's in the middle of it. She catches me looking at her, looks back at me, and falls off onto her back on the lawn. Oh garf, the end of an agility career, woe is me, alack, alas. I give her a cuddle and make sure she's OK, after which she runs back to the beginning and runs the dogwalk again. Tough little bird! This time when I'm done, I make sure she's with me when I head back.

Very good breakfast. First we go to the grooming table and practise Sit and Paws Up X10. No problem. When I grab her elbows to lift her up, she stays standing calmly with her paws on my knees. On the table we practise Stand, Sit, Down, Sore Paw, Princess Paw, and show stacking. She can't quite remember the cues for the tricks, but everything else is excellent.

Then I lay her down on her side. I do this manually. Up to now, she's been fussing a bit before she realizes I'm trying to lay her down, but this time she just rolls down and stays down. X10 for Head Down, great. Then I pick up the nail clippers and do her nails. 16 nails, 16 clicks. Ee hah I can cut her nails! I know, I did it before, but this is without a lot of puppy fussing, talking her into it, etc, I just lay her down and cut her nails. I'm thrilled.

Then we go to the parlour and I dump out her retrieve bucket. I add one more thing - a gardening kneepad. She brings everything back, the kneepad last. I start something new - it still takes two or three clicks before any particular item gets from the pile to me but now, when I pick the item up, I put it back in the bucket and give her a kibble. After the third one, she watches me put each thing in the bucket and waits for the kibble. I think it helps. Her holds are getting longer and longer, the items are getting back to me more smoothly. Another new thing - I only click if she's facing me with the item in her mouth. Next time, I hope I can click only if the item is in her mouth and she's walking toward me.

I approached Scuba from the other direction - a little bit of how-to-bring-it and a lot of how-to-hold-it. That was a totally successful way to teach the retrieve. I'm just doing Stitch another way to see if it's as successful. So far, I'm happy with it.

Finally, I get out her touch spot. She's really into it. We work it X20, she's thoroughly stomping both front feet onto it no matter where I put it. So I get some duct tape (the Trainer's Friend) and tape it to the upright part of the couch about 3" off the floor. She can't find it. I have to get the second spot and lead her across the floor and up to it. This is a little tougher than I anticipated. X30 to get her from the floor to the vertical surface and offering to hit it without me drawing her attention to it each time.

Her retrieve pile - collar; dumbells in wood, leather, metal; nail clippers, 4 clickers and a bug clicker, pen, felt pen, hairbrush, roll of dimes, toothbrush, scissors, Flexi, book of matches, bracelet, harness ring, tennis ball, roll of VetWrap, toy head, knee pad.

The red circle stuck on the couch is her vertical paw target.

Wow, what a much better idea to find a behaviour glitch and work on overcoming it than my usual - sit around alternately ignoring it and grumbling about it for weeks, months or years until I'm thoroughly upset about it. Scuba, Stitch and I go for a walk. Scuba chases cats, grackles, ducks, smells hare trail, gallops hither and yon. Stitch does too... or not. It takes hitting the end of the leash three times before she whaps herself in the forehead and remembers Loose Leash Walking. In the beginning I hand her a dozen kibbles at once for keeping it loose. She thinks this is swell. Maybe this is puppy's idea of self-control Heaven - she gets to explore, run, trot, sniff, jump on Scuba, and get kibble by the handful all at the same time, and all she has to for it is remember to be within 4 or 5 feet of me. Pretty quickly she's trotting brilliantly along, attacking Scuba whenever she gets close enough, attacking me when she can't stand it anymore, and generally looking really good. I have a hard time remembering to Yes her when the leash is loose rather than when the leash is loose and she's looking at me, but I eventually get it.

She looks very good. I don't know how a puppy with hocks and feet bigger than my car can trot smoothly. A small miracle.

You're not seriously going to leave me in here, are you? Excuse me, it's the middle of the morning. Prime play time. Are you stupid? I want out of here. ARE YOU INSANE? ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? LET ME OUT OF THIS CRATE! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! THERE ARE 800 NUMBERS FOR THIS SORT OF ABUSE! I DEMAND A LAWYE

**SHADDAP!**

No fair. *sigh*



Communication. Isn't it a wonderful thing?!

GLITCH. Well, that's what training and testing is for, finding glitches. I went into town again but this time I took Stitch AND Scuba. Better behaviour in the crate in the car - she only whined for a minute before she was quiet. MUCH worse behaviour on leash. I didn't take her out of the car in town, but going to and from the car at home was AWFUL. She totally forgot about the leash in her enthusiasm for running after Scuba. Argh. Tomorrow we're going to work on that.

ShaZAM! I have to go into town to run errands, so I take Stitch. I put her in a crate that fit her a month ago, with a handful of kibble. There's a little fussing, and I'm hoping I will be able to carry her around in a pet store a bit without her having a heart attack.

We get to the store, and I carry her in. She has a tiny quiver. I find an empty aisle and put her down. She turns to look at me, c/t. She looks harder, c/t. Hey, wait a second here, my puppy is WORKING. I ask her to Sit, she does. Down, she does. Princess Paw, yes. Sore Paw, yes. We start walking. I didn't think it was possible to be totally excited about looking at new things and totally keeping the leash loose at the same time, but that's what I'm getting. LOTS of clicks, lots of exploring. We walk from aisle to aisle, she's checking in, getting clicks. We stop every now and then and do more Sit and Down. The only time the leash tightens is when she goes ripping off after a person BUT the tightening is light and very brief - more an "oops, I thought YOU'd like to chase those kids too!" rather than any attempt to make me go in that direction. She DOES get to meet some people, and likes that very much. She has one moment with them when she thinks maybe it would be more fun to go off down the... oh, we're staying? How about I give you a Sit way over here? So she gets clicked for a couple more Sits and Downs, then she decides they're OK again and goes visiting. We walk on a loose lead out of the store. Wow! WAY more than I expected. Ee hah!

We get out of the car once more in a huge parking lot and go for a loose leash walk, very nice, and do some more Sit and Down. Tiny crate whining on the way home.

Her teeth are driving us both crazy. I took away her Humpy Dumpy doll, which was using up some of her energy. She's now focused her mouth on her dogbed. More socially acceptable, but damper. She's doing that sucky-mouth thing where she holds it in her mouth and moves her tongue. She kneads with her paws like a kitten while she's doing this. When I'm reading, she sits on the couch beside me and I massage her swollen gums and her tiny little teeth.

We work on her paw target. She remembers it right away and runs to it anywhere in the room - up to 12' away. I've run the gamut on voice cues - Hit? Too close to Sit and Stitch. Punch? Also too close to Stitch, and I'm using ChCh to get her attention. Stomp, I guess. I start using it, and move back until I'm up two stairs in the dining room while she's running into the parlour to Stomp.

Next I try holding it vertically. She tries to bite it twice, then starts punching it. I move it around, this side of her, that side. I toss the kibbles here and there so her angles are different when she approaches it. X30. Next I put her down the steps and put the target on the first step. This is a no-brainer. X30. If I pass Radio Shack today, I think I'll look for a doorbell device that I can put on a board for her to ring. Then someday in the distant future when she can actually reach it, she can push a door button.

Then we work the Get Lost game again. Much better today. First I click simple contact X30. Then I start turning. When I turn, she looks down, follows, stops, looks back up 50% of the time. The rest of the time, she drops her head and beetles around to meet me on the other side as she did yesterday. OK, I need to explain this better.

When she starts to go around me clockwise, I turn counterclockwise and always stop with her standing bewildered off my right shoulder. Huh? What happened there? I was supposed to be staring at mom's face?! Then she started correcting herself again, stepping counterclockwise to find my face. CLICK! We do that X100 - clockwise turn, click for finding my face; clockwise turn oops counterclockwise, click for correcting and finding my face; counterclockwise turn, click for following and finding my face. At the end of the hundred, she's walked and watched (which is the point I'm trying to make) maybe 8 times. And she's much more confident that she needs to find my face, and find it from the front. Good session.

Supper takes 24 minutes. I was so astonished when Scuba, my first from-scratch clicker dog, could work for 20 minutes at this age. Now I take it for granted. She was totally In The Game the whole time, and not ready to quit when the food ran out.

When I was cleaning up this afternoon, I found the container with her retrieving objects. 23 objects. Pen, marking pen, harness ring, clickers, head of a dead stuffed toy, VetWrap, FlexiLead, toothbrush, book of matches, roll of dimes, bracelet. Well, let's see what she's made of. I dump the whole bucket out 8' away from my chair. It takes 10 clicks to convince her I'm not paying for Stomping. Suddenly she remembers. Wow! Something - maturity? thinking about it? duration work in other behaviours? - has made her vastly better at retrieving! She carries the objects much further before dropping them, and when she drops them, she knows what her mistake was. 39 clicks get all 23 objects back in my bucket (don't get hysterical, *I* am putting them in the bucket when she drops them close enough for me to reach them). Then I take out the wooden dumbell and we work X30 on hold. It usually takes her two spits before she holds, but then the hold is at least 3 seconds, and quiet. Brilliant.

Then I dump the bucket again. 23 items retrieved in 34 clicks this time. The harness ring, which was very difficult for her to pick up and to hold last time, presents no difficulty this time. I've left about 3" of line sticking out on the Flexi. She's picking the Flexi up by the line, and it's swinging back and forth so hard it makes her head swing, but that doesn't bother her either. Good puppy!

I've got 50 kibbles left. Remembering the trouble she had thinking I wanted the retrieve articles stomped, I bring out her pink spot again. 2 tries at taking it out of my hand, then she starts Stomping it. Soon I'm hiding it on the floor anywhere I can reach - a circle of about 6'. When she eats her treat and looks up, the spot is gone. She has to look for it. When she finds it, she gallops to it and whomps it with both front paws, just to be sure.

Why would anybody train any other way?

I divide lunch in half. We start on the targets. Second-from-smallest target lid she remembers right away, stomping it decisively from anywhere in the room. X10. I put the little pink lid on top of it, planning on working that setup X10, but she stomps it so hard she sends the pink lid spinning across the floor, then stomps it twice before it stops. So I take the other one away and we work pink X20. Then I get a pair of scissors and cut the pink lid into two plastic coins, one 2" across and one slightly smaller.

Bummer. I put the larger coin down and she picks it up. Tosses it around. Spits it out, catches it, chews it. I let her work on it. Eventually (fortunately before it's totally dead) she drops it and starts searching the room for something to do, whining. Finally she comes back and accidentally touches it with a paw, c/t. OH, YEAH! Stomp. Stomp, stomp, stomp. I have a problem now. Whether she's going to mouth it or stomp it, she approaches it with her head down. It's so small I can't tell whether her foot is touching it or not. I put it on the rug in the dining room and I sit 2 steps down in the parlour. That's better, I can see it now, but me sitting below her floor unsettles her. She stands on the coin and offers me bows and a down that has her chin plastered to the coin. 20 more clicks and she's back to clean stomping. Maybe next time I'll put it on a semi-vertical surface.

Then we try the Get Lost game we did so poorly at several weeks ago. She's much better at it now. She makes excellent eye contact with me standing up, and there's no hesitation. As I turn, she turns with me. We have a problem, though. She remembers that she thinks the point of the game is to turn circles faster than I turn circles. She doesn't think about watching me as she turns. On the good side, when she thinks she's gone far enough, she grabs contact again. Argh.

I move close to a wall, and turn very slightly. As she starts to go around, I step into the wall, blocking her, and click when she looks up to see why I won't let her play the game the way she knows she should be playing it. X50, and she's still not quite watching me as she comes around, but she's correcting herself when she goes too far. Stationary contact remains excellent.

When we reach the end of the meal, we've got 30% correct responses. Next time I teach this, I'll wait for 10 seconds of good contact before I try turning.


How to stay humble about the amazing progress of your puppy. This is Stitch helping with the laundry, a job that Scuba could do in her sleep.

EE HAH! We finish off Level Two this morning! I put her on the floor, sit down in my grooming-table chair, and ask her to Watch. She gives me Paws Up and Sit, but her eyes never waver, and she does it on one cue.

Upward and onward! We start on Down from Sit at 10' - she can probably do this right now with a Stay, but that's pretty complicated, so I stand on the opposite side of a baby gate and we work very quickly up to 6', then add Sit from Stand. X20.

Vet's coming this afternoon to give her another shot, we'll try the stranger hand Zen then.

We try Scent. Argh. I take 4 kibbles, show them to her, then "hide" them under a tiny plastic cup. Duh. She wouldn't THINK of knocking over a plastic cup just because there was food in it. At least not in the middle of working for her breakfast. I show her again, rest the lip on the kibble - nothing works. Finally I put kibble in one hand, cage it loosely with my fingers up, and show her that hand and an empty one. OK, she knows where the kibble is, but she still doesn't want to dig for it. Zen at its finest! I'm always amused by people who say they can't teach obedience because it will interfere with conformation. EVERYTHING we teach or ask for is compromised by something else. Down interferes with Sit. Zen interferes with Touch. And, as I find out in a minute, Nose Target interferes with Paw Target...

So for today, Scent is a bust. We move on to target. She's got a pretty good handle on Nose Target, and I made an error with Song and Scuba that I want to avoid with Stitch - I didn't differentiate between face targets and paw targets. I just pointed the dog at something and let her figure out what to hit it with. That's a problem for door-opening buttons and agility contacts, among other things. I was working gobacks with Song once, sending her back to whack a ring standard with her paw. My mind was drifting. Suddenly I realized that we'd veered several feet to the right and she was heading straight for the ring ROPE between the standards. My vision of her whacking the rope, bringing the entire ring down on her head, and never doing gobacks again interfered with my mouth, so I could only watch in horror as as she pulled back that huge paw - hesitated a moment, then reached out and BIT the rope. At any rate, Stitch is going to have a separate cue for paw and nose.

If I can figure out how to teach her paw target. I have a little pink plastic lid. I put her on the table and show her the lid. She gets no click for nosing it, biting it, bunting it. She loses interest in it. Put the lid in front of her and cue Down. Sure enough, she touches it with her paw on the way down. I put it on her right and cue Princess. She touches it again. I cue Sit and hold it where her Sore Paw will hit it. Great. Unfortunately she has no clue that the clicks are for touching the lid. In fact she seems convinced that I'm deliberately making her behaviours more difficult and she starts actively avoiding the lid. Argh.

The art of training is being able to break things down into tiny segments and explain them to the dog. English doesn't work (I've tried).

As we're on our way to the parlor to try again, I think of Go To Mat - a behaviour which requires her to put her paws on something. Now, I'm the Rubbermaid Queen. I have a billion and a half plastic containers of 8000 different sizes, and they all have lids.

We start with a tub lid. Perfect. The plastic makes a nice contrast to the carpet, the lid is big enough that she doesn't try to pick it up (more than once), and the next thing she thinks of is Go To Mat. It takes her 10 to realize that I don't need her entire body on the lid. Now she's giving me a two-front-feet lid stomp. Good.

I pick up the first lid and put down a slightly smaller one. She has to sniff each one before she can stomp it, but after that we get good solid stomping immediately. There are 6 steps in between the tub lid and the tiny pink lid, and there she draws the line. She's going to retrieve the pink lid. Argh.

Another brainwave. I back up to the previous lid and she stomps it with no problem. Then I put the pink lid ON the previous lid, and we finish the meal brilliantly. Training is so much fun!

We're a bit big for our britches at lunch. She passes the stranger-Zen from Level 3, then I test her on a bunch of other things. She cheerfully fails the Down and Sit cues from 10' away, the Distance work, the Down Stay and Sit Stay, and the Stand from Sit. By the time we're done, she's offering me Down no matter what I ask for. Whee. She does eliminate on cue, but even I have to admit the test for this is more a test of the observational skills of the trainer than it is of the dog. Still, she knew why she was there and she DID the behaviour.

Then we go back to the foot target. She tries to retrieve the next-to-smallest lid, we work X20 to get the paw stomp again. Then X50 to solidify it, then I add the pink lid on top of the other one. She tries to retrieve the pink one. Fortunately she puts her paws on it before she tries to pick it up (it looks a bit like a 3 Stooges routine), so I've got lots of time to click her before her mouth hits. By the time we've used up lunch, she's working 70% paw targeting the little pink lid no matter where I put it in the room, though if I get it more than 10' away, she'd rather hit it on her way to lying down on it. Good session.