Late midmorning she decides she can pee outside whether she really has to or not. Two reasons this is important to me - first because I have dog doors. This means I don't get to moniter their output all the time. It's only good management to be able to tell what that output is when you need to. Second because I hope she'll replace Scuba as a service dog as she approaches retirement age (can this be possible? Why, Scuba's only 8 weeks... months... dang, years!), and for that she'll need to know in her soul that she goes when I tell her to as she may not have an opportunity later. Anyway, away she goes, and we start training.

I'm always excited when I discover a new training law. Here's another one. Never go for duration with a really hungry puppy. I'm asking for 2 seconds of Eye Contact, and she can't do it. She flicks onto my eyes, then she whines, Stands, Downs, Sits, gives me both paw tricks, paws me, yelps. I stop asking for duration. We do simple Eye Contact X20, and we get up to 3 seconds, but I invent a new kibble-delivery system too - 1 kibble for 1 second, 2 kibbles for 2 seconds, 8 kibbles for 3 seconds.

Then we do some puppy pushups - Sit, Down, Stand. I notice that in her eagerness she's sitting from Down almost immediately, so I start cueing Sit from Down. This goes very well. We do pushups X30, including Sit from Down AND doubles - that is, Sit, Sit, Down, Sit, Down, Down, Sit, Stand, etc - and she's hitting about 90% accuracy. And I know I'm not just guessing right because once in a while she starts to give me the wrong behaviour, startles, and gives me the right one. We switch to puppy pushups X50 with Princess Paw, Sore Paw, and hand target added, and the accuracy stays up there.

The food's starting to kick in. We finish the session with Eye Contact X 50, and we manage to get up to 4 seconds.

When I ask her to go out at lunchtime, she runs out and pees. Then she comes in and puts Paws Up on my chair by the grooming table. We play 300-kibble Eye Contact. 300-peck Eye Contact would be 1 second, c/t, 2 seconds, c/t, 3 seconds, c/t etc. 300-kb Eye Contact is 1 second, c/t, 2 seconds, c/tt, 3 seconds, c/ttt, 4 seconds, c/tttt etc. I don't know how many reps we do, but we go through 200 kibbles, at the end of which she's giving me a 70% solid 8 seconds. There's obviously some terrible nutritional deficiency from that one missed meal, as she's totally focused but having trouble concentrating.

At one point I switch to side-down on the table to get her to stop bobbing - she looks like one of those car-window dogs.

We spend the last 50 on puppy pushups - Stand, Sit, Down, Princess Paw and Sore Paw. She's got the the standard cues down 95%, Sit from Down is at 80%. I'm starting to switch her from the hand signal Stand to a voice cue, so I give the voice cue, then the signal. She hasn't actually anticipated the signal yet but she's getting very light - obviously READY to Stand when she's heard the cue. And once standing, she's very solid. I can move her feet, hold her tail, lure her weight forward.

All the work we're doing on the table is with the kibble on the table beside her. Even this morning, she never thinks to reach for the food beside her.

Poor Scuba. I let her watch the morning session. She gives me Sit and Stare throughout. At lunch, I feel sorry for her so I take a dozen of her kibbles to the table. Every time I take a new handful for Stitch, I toss one to Scuba. Not fair, won't do that again. While Stitch is having trouble looking at me for 8 seconds to get 8 kibbles, Scuba stares at me for half an hour for four. And every voice cue I give Stitch, Scuba responds to. She doesn't even have the same voice cues, but there she is, the old bag, doing puppy pushups.

Supper continues lunch. Her concentration and ability to be still is increasing. We start with Eye Contact. She gives me 70% correct on 12 seconds, 90% on 10 seconds. To her credit, when she blows it, she's not leaving or wandering off, she's just thinking she should be offering something else besides. So she lies down. Or sits. Or swings her paws. She watches while she's offering these other behaviours, but she glances down to make sure the table's still there when she lies down, so I'm not counting that. She's doing pushups so fast I finally tell her Down. That helps. There's another trick to it - if she's going to keep watching for a long time, she slowly moves her head back. She reminds me of an ancient librarian slowly tilting her head to see through her bifocals. 150X Watch. I'm starting to use the cue.

That leaves 100X for pushups. It's so exciting to see her responding to all these cues!

Exactly how far is one expected to go in puppyproofing a room? I let her into the computer room the other day (mostly I'm using a laptop in the living room). There was a little suspicious rustling and I went to look - I had four llama fleeces in bags that were ready to enter in a show next month. One of them didn't survive.

Yes, that one was my fault. No question. What puppy could resist an entire plastic bag full of hair? BUT this afternoon she looked like she had her cheek glued to the kitchen cabinet. Huh? Then I realized - she had a drawer pull firmly in her molars. Eating the drawer pulls? NOT my fault!

I'm annoyed with myself about the fuss I made over her Stand. As a trainer, I should know better. As a person, I'm surprisingly relieved that it's behind us. Breakfast is brief and I get sidetracked - one of the best and worst things about clicker training is the danger of constantly being sidetracked by offered behaviours. Since the table worked so well for teaching her duration for the Stand, I decide to start her there for Eye Contact as well. Work X20 on Paws Up. She remembers and jumps her front paws to my knees immediately, and needs very little reinforcement for me reaching for her body before she stands up and lets me reach. Then I pick her up, put her on the table, ask her to Down and start clicking Eye Contact. The fourth time she offers it, she crosses her left front paw over her right. I click the Eye Contact. She takes the kibble and immediately crosses her paws again. This is, incidentally, NOT the Sore Paw paw, which is her right. It's a totally spontaneous new behaviour. Well, what can I do? I abandon Eye Contact and click Princess Paw X20. Then some visitors come and she gets the rest of breakfast free.

For lunch we work again on Paws Up, then on Princess Paw. Then I give her a bath. She stands in the tub much more quietly than last time, doesn't try to get out at all. Whines a bit near the end. Now I know why dogs don't get treated much in the middle of a bath - the kibble gets wet and soapy and yucky. Then I put her on the table and dry her with the dryer. Again, she handles it very well. Gets a little antsy when I dry her neck and buries her face in my neck - doesn't feel bad enough to refuse the food, though. She holds that position until I'm done. Again, I don't dry her head, but that's a real grown-up thing to expect.

Apparently I'm not the only one in the family who can have hissy fits. She's going to bed with no supper tonight. Our routine is that Scuba gets the dog dishes, I feed Scuba, then Stitch goes out to pee, and then we work. Tonight she jogs to the door, runs outside, turns around and sits down, staring at me. I tell her to go on about her business. She stares at me, then she gets up and comes in the dog door. I call her back and tell her to go outside. She wags her tail and runs off to the grooming table where we've been training for the last few days.

Nyuh uh, short and furry, that's not the way life works. I go sit down and do some work at the computer. This annoys her. This Is Not The Way Things Are Supposed To Happen. She does Paws Up on me, but I'm working at the computer. She Sits and Stares. She Downs. She Princess Paws. She Paws Up and whines. She barks at me. This is not her little puppy "what's happening" yap, this is as close as she can get to a full-fledged get-off-that-chair-and-feed-me! bark. I work at the computer. Sometime later, when she's lying down (no doubt feeling Put Upon), I ask her to go outside again. Once again she runs out the door, turns and sits, then runs back in the dog door. Hoky doky. So here I am working at the computer again, after which I'll ask her one more time to go outside. If she goes, she'll get her bedtime cookie. If she doesn't, she'll go to bed hungry. And probably yap until the cows come home, and probably have to get up to pee in the middle of the night. I thought this might be because of her scissored feet, but she's been outside playing on them all day, so that's no excuse.

I give Stitch a hand signal to Stand, then my admonishing-finger stay signal. She Stands up and remains standing.

Then I fix her feet a bit, give her a voice cue to stay, and she stays in the Stand for 10 seconds. Wowzers. What a silly thing to be so excited about!

To celebrate, we start working on Paws Up. Bending over is very difficult for me. Scuba stands up with her paws on me on cue so I can put her collar on. All this bending over to pick up Stitch is killing me. And, like most puppies, when I reach to pick her up, she leans away. We have to do something about this, and soon. I sit on a chair next to the grooming table, and lure her to jump her front feet up on my knees (yes, I'm teaching my puppy to jump on me). Once she's up, I click and treat her for leaving her paws up while I hold her ribcage/elbows as if I'm going to pick her up. Paws Up and stay up X 50.

Finally I pick her up and put her on the grooming table. We do a few Sit-Down-Stand, and a couple of Sore Paws. She offers me Sore Paw several times while she's lying down and we play with that for a while because it leaves her lying with crossed paws - the Princess look.

I spend 30 trying to lure her over onto her side, but she can't get past her elbow. It's sitting there holding her upright. Finally I give up and roll her off it onto her side. Immediately she remembers to relax her neck and rest her head on the table. I play with her feet X20, then figure, as long as I'm here, I might as well do something useful, so I get my scissors and see if I can get them near her feet with her relaxed. X20, and I can, so I start scissoring one hairy front paw. It takes 30 to keep her relaxed while I do it, but by the time we run out of kibble, she's got one very large front paw, and one remaining humongous great whomping front paw. I'll do the other one at supper.

Scuba was very touch-sensitive as a puppy. It took months to get her to accept me scissoring her body coat, and she's still not happy having me work on her feet. She'll stay while I pet her with my foot, but only under command, never voluntarily. My Giant Schnauzers have all been much calmer about touch, and I'm thrilled to see the puppy is more relaxed as well. Not to mention that even a week ago I wouldn't have put money on her lying on a table so I could scissor her toes.


I was there and I STILL don't believe it. She's 16 weeks old, she's lying on her side on the grooming table with a few kibbles near her front paws. I've just finished scissoring her feet. She's totally relaxed but not sleeping. Just for Heaven's sake don't tell her this behaviour leads to toenail cutting...

Great breakfast session. I put her on the grooming table and she immediately plunks her paws into a Stand, and right away we get up to 13 seconds. Not to say I just wait 13 seconds, but we go up two seconds at a time and arrive at 13 with no errors. She's so relaxed about Stand that she's starting to looking out the window at the birds and catalogue the grooming equipment on the wall in front of her. Probably not what I'd want from a competition Stand, but considering how hysterical I was about the whole thing last week, I'll be happy to take this. Stand X 30, giving her about 5 kibbles for each of the longer ones.

I put her on the floor and we get up to 7 seconds with no whining. I don't push it and she doesn't whine. Good. Then we try Sit-Down-SorePaw cues. Sit is very good, Down is good but she's popping up the instant her elbows hit the floor, and she has a little trouble remembering SorePaw - makes me wonder why I was so hysterical about that too. I guess I was just having a hysterical week. She may be popping up from the Down because we're working on a tile floor in the dog room. At this point I have two choices, I can go for decent downs - but I choose the other one. I start cueing Sit from Down as she pops up. Fun. X20.

We finish off the session back on the grooming table. I lay her down on her side, pet her tummy and Yes and feed her while she relaxes. Three weeks ago I'm sure I couldn't have imagined her lying down quietly on her side on a grooming table. Pretty soon I'm petting her tummy to GET her to relax and only feeding her when her neck is loose and her head is on the table. Wow.

Stand and lie down on the table, relaxing Fun for lunch. Another Stand session on the grooming table, up to 15 seconds with no indication of stress. Then I lay her down on her opposite side and reward relaxation again. She quickly understands she's being rewarded for not holding her neck stiff. I move on to playing with her feet. That takes a little more effort, and she doesn't get to the point where she can relax the underneath back leg, but the rest turn out well. Front legs are totally relaxed, even while I tweak her toenails. I put her on the floor and do 7 seconds of Stand again, and then move to Sit and Down and SorePaw. Excellent session.

We work entirely on the table at supper. After she demonstrates a very strong 20 second Stand in a freestack facing my right, I turn her toward me and we do X30 on Sit-Stand-Down. She's not spontaneously Standing or Sitting from Down, but easily goes into them with a small hand motion. Down from Sit or Stand, and Sit from Stand is excellent.

Then I put her on her left side on the table again. She certainly remembers that this is a position to relax in. Her front legs are still limp, and her back legs are much looser than before.

I shaved Scuba this morning. When I was vacuuming the dog room, Stitch - the puppy who was afraid of almost everything last week - chewed on the hose and let me vacuum her. Looked back when her hair went up the nozzle, but then went right on chewing and wagging.

Breakfast goes very well. We do 250X Stand, most from a distance of at least 3'. 25% of the time she's freezing in place as the thought hits her, which results in some pretty silly poses. 50% of the time she's deliberately stomping at least one foot - sometimes all four - into a position she likes and thinks will get her the kibble. From a show POV, it looks pretty good, but that's just a passing comment. I'm not paying any attention to HOW she's standing when I'm rewarding Stand, just if her butt's up, her feet are down, and she's not whining. 3' away we can get 5 seconds with no trouble at all. In anything approaching a front position, we can't do 3 seconds without whining and fidgeting. She offers Sit four times, always when she's in front position. Now I can lure her backwards into a stand. Not pretty, but it means her body is calming down - her back end is connecting to her front end. It certainly wasn't three days ago.

I need to understand in teaching future behaviours that learning one thing will blow other things temporarily out of her brain. From Sit she still remembers the Down cue, but from Stand she hasn't got a clue what Sit means. Either I'm spouting Latin, or it's a trick to get her out of Stand. That's OK, I'm working on Stand right now. Am I going to have to do the Eye Contact from 3' away as well? I better get new glasses.

Whining is boring. And it will NOT continue throughout her lifetime. I HATE whining. For lunch we do 100 Stands. I can lure her backward into a Stand, or have her offer them, tell her Stay, walk 20' out and back, stay gone for 10 seconds, and she remains Standing. Quietly. Calmly. BUT if I walk out, turn and face her and stand still myself, she starts whining again. I think she'll be an engineer when she grows up, not a philosopher - she needs to know the flow rate and diameter of the pipe, none of this "I Stand, Therefore I Am" nonsense for her. I use the cue about 90 times. I am so totally bored with whining. With Standing. With saying "OutSTANDing".

Then we switch to Eye Contact. She's forgotten Eye Contact. She stares at my left hand, stares at my right hand, lies down, stands, and doesn't think of making eye contact until she starts whining. I click eye contact with whining X20. She remembers Eye Contact. Now I need to get rid of the whining, and I'm no longer afraid she's going to give up or wander off, so I decide to let the whining extinguish. I sit with her in front of me, staring at me, whining. I put my hands out to either side (if she thinks she's doing Zen at the same time, she's got slightly less chance of whining). I close my eyes and sit there, inert. She whines. She whines harder. She prowls and whines. She barks at me. Finally she shuts up for a second. I open my eyes. She's looking at me. I say YES and shovel three kibbles into her mouth. She looks at me again, Yes, 3 kibbles. She starts to whine, I close my eyes, she carries on. And on. And on. Finally shuts up. I open my eyes. She's looking at my feet. I wait. She whines, I close my eyes. After awhile she shuts up again and when I open my eyes she's looking at me. Yes, kibble.

150 kibbles. Maybe 80 yesses. She's quieter at the end than at the beginning. I'm very glad I have a blog to write or I think I would watch TV instead of training the puppy. I CANNOT abide whining. We Will Live Through This.

Otherwise she's perfect.


And it's nice for me as a trainer - or at least as a human being - to see her, like a force of nature, going on with her life in spite of my hissy fits. She does what makes the click happen and she gets her kibble. She chases her tail. She gets her cuddles. She bites my wrist. She jumps up on her daddy. She wrestles with Scuba, rolls in the snow, chews on the furniture, and has the good manners to behave as if she doesn't notice me sitting in the corner tearing my hair and gnashing my teeth.

Supper - I'm starting to think again. Again. I need to get her out from front position where SHE can think about what's happening. I put her on the grooming table. I get her looking at my right hand as she would in a show stack. I lure her into a stand. I hold her tail up with my left hand, and I give her the cue Outstanding... and then I count out loud.

All this does the job. She assumes the position and stays there. I work up to 12 seconds while she stands slowly wagging her tail. She doesn't whine, she doesn't stamp her feet, she doesn't swing her head, she just stands. As the time gets longer, the treats get bigger - at 12 seconds, she gets to eat 10 kibbles from out of my hand.

Then we start from 1 second again with me NOT holding her tail, and counting more quietly. No problem. Finally I put her on the floor, don't hold her tail, and count almost silently. It takes us a little longer to get past 5 seconds, but we get up to 10 before we stop.

Then we do a little Sit-Down-SorePaw-Stand. She mostly remembers the cues tonight.

To finish the evening, Stitch, Scuba and I play a little game where I cue Scuba to Sit and Down and Stand, and if Stitch happens to be in the right position, she gets a kibble too. She gets a lot of kibble.

It's a little scary. Scuba weights 42 lbs and gets 1 cup of food twice a day. Stitch weighs 16 lbs and gets 1 cup 3 times a day.

My name is Sue A. and I'm a traditional trainer.

Obviously *I* do better with moving exercises than with stationary ones as well. She isn't getting Stand. She understands the butt-in-the-air part, but I'm getting dancing and whining and head-swinging, sitting, downing, Sore Paw. She's fine if I click for the butt up, but the more I try for duration, the less Stand I'm getting.

I can HEAR her frustration building. I HATE whining. It makes me want to strangle her. I can FEEL my frustration building, I want to smack her and scream "NO, DAMMIT, STAND!" Useful thoughts - NOT.

Yesterday (not written down) all I did was putter with her and prove that she doesn't really understand this. I woke up this morning for the first time not being excited about what she'll learn today.

We start with Sit, Down, and Sore Paw. All on cue, very nice.

I dig up Scuba's old water-trial bag and looked for a puppy-size bumper. No luck - 7 adult-size bumpers. OK, what the heck. We spend X30 on the bumper. It has a short thick rope attached. This is new retrieving - where to hold it isn't obvious. She can't wrap her mouth around the bumper. Holding the rope isn't particularly satisfactory as after the first few targets, I'm only clicking the motion of the bumper, and moving the rope doesn't move the bumper. Finally she figures out that if she grabs the knot tying the rope to the bumper, or the end of the bumper with the rope tied to it, it will move and she'll get the click. She gradually moves it across the floor and gets a jackpot when I can get it, then I toss it out again. I should be thinking about next September at her first water trial, but I'm still crabby about the Stand.

I notice that she has a very nice, durable, quiet Stand while I'm fussing with the kibble, getting the next handful. The phone rings. When I come back I may be smarter than I was when I left. I put the clicker in my pocket, thinking, it's just making her frantic to offer me things, when what I want is her NOT offering me anything, just standing there (just bloody stand there, how hard IS it?!). So, I put the clicker away. As I do this, she stands quietly watching me (she's STANDING, ARRGGHH), so I say Yes and give her a kibble. She continues to stand there, so I say Yes and give her a kibble. Her body language gets subtly calmer. So does mine. She starts offering me Eye Contact as she's standing. We work through 150 quiet Stands. After the first 50, I notice I'm waiting for 2 seconds before saying Yes. After 100, I notice several times she twitches as though she were going to move a paw, but doesn't. She's starting to think about standing quietly.

For lunch we're going to spread kibbles all over the living room and have a Puppy Pickup Party with wrestling and tugging.

OK, I'm back. Thank goodness. We had a wrestle and a play and got her back to being a puppy. In MY mind, at least. I'm sure SHE was always pretty sure who she was.

She CAN pick up the big bumper, which is amazing, considering what a mouthful it is even for Scuba. I remember it took Scuba quite a while to figure out how to swim with her mouth open this far without swallowing the lake.

Two things Stitch has started doing today that she didn't know before - if she loses a kibble and I gesture toward it, she's following the motion of my hand toward the kibble. And when she's carrying something in her mouth, she's started thinking it might be fun to parade it near me. This is a very common and fun thing Portuguese Water Dogs are prone to - "It's an oven mitt, isn't it grand!" While they're parading it, they growl subtly until you notice them, then fiercely. This is the beginning of the dog's invitation to play and I love it about them.
Examining Stand

Supper - now that I'm back to training and thinking rather than just pouting and reacting, we're doing better. I've been explaining the Stand to people today as something which requires the dog's centre of gravity to swing backwards - and this leads me to notice that when I'm handing her kibbles, I'm an inch or so short of her mouth, which forces her to jump forward to get them. Which swings her centre of gravity forward. Duh. I start handing her the kibbles half an inch further back than she expects them. Her weight settles back. Suddenly her feet are very calm. We work on this X100. Then I add the clicker, and lose the stability. She starts dancing, flicking her head, and whining again. I put the clicker away and go back to voice, X50.

With me sitting right in front of her, she can give me 3 solid seconds of Stand before she starts whining. On impulse, I signal a Stay as I did for Sit and Down, and walk 10' away and back. She stands solid, quiet and calm. We do this X20, results are perfect. Settle her weight back, lose the clicker, and get further away from her. OK, if that's what she needs to figure this out, that's what I'll give her. And a bath, and a cuddle.

For breakfast, 10X Sore Paw, and 190X standing. Again we work through the couldn't-be-that-easy part. Towards the end I think it might be easier to teach her to stand by teaching her to back up - when a dog backs up, her body naturally shifts weight to remain standing. Baby puppies, unfortunately, are too wiggly. If I try to lure her to back up, she plants her bottom and rolls over it onto her back. If I lure her forward first, THEN back, she gets it once in a while. I try shaping her by clicking any foot moving backward, but at the same time as her front foot moves back, her butt drops into a sit, so I go back to just clicking her for standing. If I hand her the kibbles, I get a steadier stand than if I toss them, but if I toss them so she can run get them and come back to stand, I get less subliminal whining, so I go back and forth from one to the other
Stand as a duration behaviour

Another meal - 195X stand, 5X Sore Paw. With Scuba I frequently measure the difficulty of a behaviour in time or number of clicks. Getting the TV remote off the table near Ron's chair, for instance, was a 5-minute behaviour. Turning the pedals on an exercise bike was a 20-click behaviour. Notice, if you will, that Stand is now up near 600, and we don't have it well enough to add a cue yet. This isn't Stitch being "stupid" - Stand is a difficult thing for dogs to figure out. We have the same trouble with stand that we have with Eye Contact, it's a duration behaviour and she assumes if she doesn't get a click immediately, she should try something else. So by working on standing, I hope I'm teaching her to have a little more patience and trust her previous behaviour to make the click happen. At the end of the meal, we can usually get up to 3 seconds with 4 on the floor, head up, and no whining. In between spins, dancing - at one point she plants her back feet and waltzes her front feet back and forth, back and forth, swinging her head. That would make a great trick. But I stick with the Stand.

She's doing Sore Paw very well, but hasn't quite got it on cue yet. It takes her one click before she remembers what the words mean.

Supper - 5X Sore Paw, coming along nicely, she remembers it with a tiny lure off centre. Stand 195X, I WAS going to be bored with Stand, but tonight she gets it. OK, she wants something, I have to do something, look around, touch the table leg, go left, go right, left, right, le FREEZE! I GET IT! FREEZE! FREEZE!

Very exciting stuff (maybe I don't get out enough, but *I* am excited). We get to 5 second freezes in standing position (incidentally, with 5 second Eye Contact, better than we did when we were working on Eye Contact!). When she forgets and Sits, she stays sitting for 2 seconds, then jumps up and freezes. Sometimes she freezes in a very nice show stance, sometimes stretched out like a German Shepherd, and sometimes all scrunched up with her head just off the ground, peeking up from under her bangs. But she's Standing, and she's doing it deliberately. Tomorrow I'll start using a cue. Scuba's is Outstanding - out being her back-up cue, then standing to keep her on her feet. And because she never did hear the difference between Sit and Stand. And it constantly reminds me that I think it's outstanding that she stands on cue!

This morning we start at the top of the list again. She aces the crate, goes in on cue. I'm reminded of sheep penning - doesn't count if she goes halfway in and I whop her on the butt with the door! Then SitStay and DownStay - not good enough to pass the Level yet, but within 3 kibbles I can tell her, walk 20' away and come back. The problem on the SitStay is she thinks she'll follow me. The DownStay problem is she wants to sit up to meet me as I come back. We practise X20. Excellent.

Next, Zen. She's terrific at this. She Drama Queens the cue again, so we spend X20 working on getting her closer and quietly watching or ignoring the kibble rather than running to the other side of the room and dramatically pretending she isn't now nor ever has been on the same planet. Then (watch this, she's great at this!) I turn a dog dish over, give the cue, and put the treat on the dish.

And she runs over and tries to grab it. Argh.

So we work X20 on Dog Dish Zen. Why did I put it on the dog dish? The point of this exercise is to put the treat on something at eye level. Now, the upside-down dog dish is too low, but OTOH the coffee table and the couch are too high. As soon as she realizes we're Zenning the dog dish, she's over on the other side of the room again, but by the time we're done, she's doing a brilliant, calm 5 seconds off my hand and 10 seconds off the dog dish.

Which reminds me, we're using dog dish Zen in real life. When I feed the dogs (on the odd occasion when they both get a meal in an actual DISH instead of in training), I feed Scuba first: "This is for Scuba", and Stitch sits eagerly while I put Scuba's dish down. Then: "This is for Stitch" and she holds her sit while I put her dish down. Also she's figured out that Sit and Stare at daddy is a better bet than trying to grab stuff off his plate.

My living room looks like I run a day care. Right now she's playing with a plastic measuring cup and a metal measuring cup, carrying them around, tossing them, chasing them, wrestling with them. In the future I'll be needing her to pick up anything I point her at, so I'm trying to introduce her to a vast variety of tastes and textures. Also in the middle of all her junk is an unplugged electric cord, with which we're playing Electric Cord Zen. If she starts to put her mouth on it, I give her the Zen cue, then a cuddle if she asks for one. Usually she just veers off and aims for something else.

Exams for lunch. My kids are in college, the dog should be doing exams as well. We start with SitStay and DownStay. One voice cue to stay, and my index finger in "admonish" position, and she does both stays brilliantly, feet still, waiting patiently for me to return.

I put the basket out in the middle of the floor, use a voice cue to go around it, and she pops right on around it. We go downstairs and she runs around the pool-cue stand before I get closer than 5' to it.

Back upstairs. I put her mat in a part of the kitchen where it's never been before, go get the puppy. I ask her to Sit, c/t, then tell her to Go To Mat. She runs right to it and lies down.

I try Hand Zen and Zen with the kibble on the upside down dog dish, no trouble at all, so I try it on the coffee table too. Pretty silly, she lies down when I give the cue, and then she can't see the food on the coffee table - but she could see it on the dog dish and she was certainly capable of seeing it there.

Two more for today. We go outside in the snow, and on out to the barn. Her one "mild distraction" for the one minute loose leash turns out to be one feral cat, two Muscovy ducks, three llamas, and tri-species delicious poop smells. She does great, although I could have done without her sucking the goose poop off the floor.

I haven't got anybody to help me with the Come, and I can't get her to stay in the barn while I walk 40' away outside. It might work if I tried to get her to stay outside, but it's bloody cold and windy and her poor little butt is shaved, so I dumped a handful of kibble on the floor just inside the door, ran outside and across the yard, and waited for her to finish the food, then called her. She galloped over to me across the yard. What a pretty sight!!

We had a little bit of lunch left, so we worked on a less enthusiastic paw-lift. I think we'll call it "Sore Paw" - oh, poor puppy, do you have a sore paw?

So only four Level 2 behaviours left - we have to get the trick on cue, teach her to Stand, and get the Eye Contact up to 10 seconds. She's 14 weeks old. What an amazing thing is clicker training. What an amazing person is my baby Stitch.

Supper's easy - 20X Sore Paw, then 180X standing. She works through superstitiously turning her head, pointing east, touching a chair, being on the rug, being on the tile, being close to me, being far from me. Standing - naw, couldn't be THAT easy! I start clicking for her butt not being on the ground, but by the end of the session, I'm clicking 4 quiet feet, butt up, and head raised.

After being afraid to go down the basement stairs yesterday, Stitch gallops down them this morning, runs over and flings herself down on the blanket. Go To Mat. I can't help but think about all the years I wasted on traditional training, weeks and weeks of trying to get a puppy to go up and down the kerflushinner stairs. Weeks and weeks.

We work Go To Mat X20, me telling her the name. Then we do some Watch Me X20 (I have no voice cue for this yet. I want it to be a default behaviour - and Heaven knows, it is! - but I also want to be able to ask for it as we get to the point where I can ask her to look at something else and then at me. But I won't introduce the cue until she's got a good 10-second grip on my eyes.

Then random Sit, Down, Go To Mat. The Go To Mat cue still requires a moment of thought now and then, but Sit and Down are EXCELLENT. X30 with no errors.

We move on to one of those huge tennis balls. It's 8' away and it takes her 10 kibbles to find it, but once she's got it, she's hitting it with her nose, her paw, and even trying to pick it up, which is pretty funny because it's bigger than her head.

I move a pool-cue-stand out into the middle of the room. It takes 7 clicks for her to realize I'm paying for going around the stand. During those 7, she tries throwing that blasted paw at me, going to mat, retrieving a dryer sheet (I'm the world's best housekeeper), but none of them work. Once she's got going around, she's got it. I'm not asking for once direction, just go around from wherever she is. And I can control where she starts to go around by where I toss the previous kibble.

We work on Zen with cue. I show her a treat, say No, and start to put my hand down near her. She spins and goes to lie down on her mat. Drama queen! Then I put a few kibbles on the floor and cover them with my foot. That takes her a few tries, then she won't come near my hand OR the kibble on the floor until I click and move them toward her.

When we're done she stands at the bottom of the stairs demanding that I keep working. When it's obvious that I'm not coming back, she gallops up the stairs, tripping on her huge paws halfway up and falling back two steps. This doesn't bother her at all. Happy tail.

All the skills that she's learning are nothing without this most important default: trust me. If you're scared I'll explain it to you. If you're in trouble, I'll get you out of it. I'm very happy with her progress in this area.

And while I'm on the subject of trust, I smacked her yesterday. I was sitting down and leaned down to talk to her. She jumped up and scraped those nasty puppy teeth on my nose and cheek. Reflex action - ACH! and both my open hands clapped her face between them. Not hard by any means, but, with the voice correction, a definite bad result to her actions. I think I was a bit overboard (I was surprised, and those teeth HURT) on my response, but I call her over and she's more than willing to come, happy, hand-wrestling, but won't point her nose toward my face within a foot of my face. Great response to my over-reaction!

Hard to think that a week ago Level Two looked REALLY hard. Tonight it looks totally do-able, we just need practise on THIS and THAT. So I resolve to start at the top of the list and run down the tests. The method of testing isn't to train today until I get a behaviour happening, then "test" for it and declare it done. The method of testing is to walk fairly cold into a situation, ask for the behaviour and get it.

So she's EXCELLENT at going in her crate, we'll start with that. We go to her crate, I ask her to get in, she Sits and Stares, Downs, whines, and throws her paws at me. Plan B. Obviously she knows to get in her crate when the circumstances are correct (get the cookie, dogs go outside, into crate, give cookie). I shape her to go into the crate. This takes 4 kibbles for her to figure out what I want, then it's tough to keep her out long enough to tell her to get in. Several times when she's out I ask for a Sit or Down.

We go to the kitchen, on the tile floor - we've only done Sit and Down cues on carpet so far. No problem at all, she's 100% on the cues. We work X30 each on SitStay and DownStay. SitStay is excellent, but in the middle of her Downstays she realizes she's 3' from the gate blocking the basement stairs and has to get up several times to try to get through the gate. Can you believe she was scared of the stairs yesterday? The distraction of the gate means we have to work at only about half the distance we've got on the SitStay.

Then I put out the basket the dog dishes stay in. She immediately goes around it. Holy cow. We spend the rest of supper going around the basket. She's doing so well that I start using cues - Away for counterclockwise circles, Get By for clockwise circles. A couple of times I give a cue just as she's thinking of wandering back to the gate, but she gives a little startle and goes back to her circle.

Finally I'm finished my paperwork. Ron's watching TV in the living room, I haven't vacuumed the fibre off the rug in the dining room yet, it snowed so it's too cold to go out to the screen room. We'll have to go down to the basement to work. Uh oh, a whole new situation to be scared of!

OTOH, I'm really happy - she doesn't take one look at the stairs and go away. She lies down, looks at me, and whines to tell me she needs me to explain them to her. As I did with the upstairs stairs, I sit partway down blocking her view of all but the first two. Shape her to come up to the cliff, then try luring her down to the first step. Nyuh uh. The kibble is the same colour as the rug. So I put her dish up, and she starts to lean down, put one foot over the edge. When she's got the first step, I move down one and keep going. These are good stairs for teaching puppies - they're totally enclosed, and they have two 90 degree right angle turns with wider parts. Pretty soon she's all the way down. I expect her to be scared of the basement, too, but no, she starts exploring immediately.

I sit down and start from scratch, waiting for Eye Contact. This isn't easy, she's busy exploring with her eyes. She thinks Sit in position would be a good idea but takes a minute to get around to the Stare part. We get 5 seconds almost immediately. There's a shop vac sitting 8' away from my chair, so I shape her to target it. Sure, that's a quickie. Then I shape her to go around it. She thinks that's fun, she has to go under the hose and jump over the hose and at one point she asks if I'd like her to retrieve the wire.

We go out into another part of the basement, this is also no big deal. We find a soggy old soccer ball and I shape her to target it. Soon she's bopping it all over the room with her nose.

Scuba's lying on a discarded blanket and I'm out of kibble, so I move my hand over the blanket and ask her to Go To Mat. She does. I get goose bumps and then I give her a big cuddle.

Then she runs right up the stairs. Up is easier than down.

I'm not happy with her Eye Contact. Of course any sane human being would be thrilled to have a 13 wo puppy who likes to Sit and Stare at them, especially since it's a default behaviour that she does, for instance, when we're eating, rather than jumping up and stealing our food. Nevertheless, I'm not happy with it. She's a DO SOMETHING dog, and she doesn't really excel at sitting around - not entirely true. She's not good at sitting around when she feels that she's in a position to be shaped to do something. So when we work on Eye Contact (especially since I taught her that kerflushinner trick), she wants to Down, turn her head, retrieve something, or throw those blasted paws at me.

So we start with just click-for-contact X30. Then we start doing 300-peck contact. We have to start over about 10 times, but we eventually get up to 6 seconds (maybe I should move my decimal - what we're really working on is 3.00-peck contact). It's been a while since I tried the Get Lost game, so I stand up and try it. She still has no clue. She wanders off. She comes back. She stares at my hand. She whines. She Downs. She throws paws. A couple of times she runs all the way around me, but she still can't find my eyes.

Welcome yet again to the Flat Forehead School Of Dog Training. I do most of my training sitting on the couch. Then I stand up so I can turn away from her. DUH. I need a transition... AHA! I get my walker and sit on it. Now my face is halfway between couch-height and standing-height, and my front (knees slightly bent) is noticeably different from my back, even from puppy-height. And DUH she gets it right away. GREAT eye contact. We do straight Contact X20, then from the 21st, I turn around. AND SHE COMES WHIPPING AROUND, LOOKS UP AND GRABS MY EYES IMMEDIATELY. Duh. By the time I run out of lunch kibble, she's doing Contact X3, turn, Contact X3, turn. She isn't holding my eyes when she's coming around, but she's at least starting her turn as soon as I start mine, and finding me immediately when I stop. Duh.

Then for several meals I need to get a life, so it's a matter of just flinging food dishes at the dogs. While I'm outside talking to one of my 4-H kids, Scuba jumps the barrier from kitchen to dining room - which is OK - and Stitch knocks the barrier down and follows her - which is not, because one of the things in the dining room is a full bag of nice clean llama fleece. Wow, she spread it out about 2" deep all over the rug!

She spends the rest of her day piling 6 squeaky toys, 2 empty Diet Coke cans, my Palm holder, two llama lead ropes, 3 meters of Velcro, a 5' longe whip, three large boots, four mixed socks, a towel, a DVD box and the mat she finally got out from under the coffee table on the rug beside the computer, tossing them as far as she can, then gathering them up again. I may not have previously appreciated how much puppy energy is used up by thinking when we're actively training. Ron just mentioned getting a huge hamster wheel.

I can't say I'm quite as cheerful about her new trick this morning. Throwing a front paw out in front of her from the Sit and Down has blown Sit and Down right out of her head. I've thought before that she needs motion behaviours to counteract the stress of stationary behaviours, but it's never been so obvious. I start with the trick. She remembers it right away, so that by the third click I'm adding a cue - I raise MY right foot, she raises hers. Very cute. X20. Then I ask her Sit. She can't. I ask her to Down. She can't. She punches me in the knee with both front feet. She lies down, kicks her back legs out behind her, and raises both front paws off the ground. This can't be easy, but it isn't what I'm looking for. She whines. She barks at me. She looks like she's going to dislocate her elbows, she's throwing them at me so hard. Argh.

I lure a Sit X 5. She can't offer me another one. I lure another one, then rapidfire X20, putting the kibbles right in her mouth so she doesn't have a chance to get up. Then I lure five more. She STILL can't offer me one. Another rapidfire X20, and finally she can offer me a Sit. Only 50% of the offerings are Sits, though, the rest are salutes. I keep remembering Bob Bailey saying "Don't be afraid to let it extinguish", but I am - I don't want her doing that frustrated barking thing, and I don't want her to give up and walk away. We'll keep working on getting our groove back, not do salutes ANY MORE for a while, and reinforce Sit a billion times. THEN we'll let the salute extinguish, if we still need to. Argh.

Perhaps I also shouldn't have taught her to pick up the measuring cup. She took it off the couch after breakfast, spent several minutes doing the 4-foot pounce on it, growling furiously, and now she's got it wrapped up in a mat and she's trying to pull the mat out from under the coffee table. Why doesn't everybody have a puppy?

After lunch I feel better. We start on the contact trainer, where she runs both ramps looking for the treats at the bottom. In fact, when we go outside I always ask her to pee before we start, but today she gallops right on over and up the ramp before I have time to say anything. 20X down contacts.

Then we come in to the screen room. She runs to the mat and plunks herself down on it, obviously expecting a click, so we do 20X Go To Mat, with me telling her the cue. Then we do 20X Sit, then 20X Down. Then we start playing a cue game. I tell her Go To Mat c/t, then say her name and drop a kibble between my feet, than randomly ask for Sit, or Down, or Go To Mat again. I shouldn't be using the mat cue yet, she generally has to think about it for a second before she does it - wait, wait, I know those words, hang on, oh, YEAH! - but with the three cues, she's about 95% accurate. Ee hah.

Then we do Watch X20, she has trouble remembering Watch. She offers her salute several times, then remembers and we get up to 5 seconds.

There are 15 kibbles left, so we do some retrieving. We get holds of various items up to 5 seconds.

FINALLY back to "real" "work". I think the hardest part of Level Two with a new dog is not getting the behaviours, but getting the behaviours ON CUE. Stitch uses my words as a clue, sometimes, but not yet as a cue most of the time. Reading over what she knows about Level Two and what she doesn't, I see that it's time for her to "get a clue". I've evaluated the L2 behaviours thus: a 0 we haven't even touched; 1 we've tried but not worked on; 2 we've worked on, 3 just needs tidying to pass.

3 - Come (40', 2 cues)

3 - Crate (enter, door close/open)

3 - Handling (ears, tail, paws)

3 - Leash (60 secs, standing still)

2 - Distance (2' around pole)

2 - Go To Mat (5', 2 cues)

2 - Target (end of stick)

2 - Watch (10 secs, 2 cues)

2 - Zen (5 secs off hand, 10 secs off platform)

2 - Sit (1 cue, no treats)

2 - Down (1 cue, no treats)

1 - DownStay (20' out and back)

1 - SitStay (20' out and back)

0 - Stand (2 cues only - eeuuww)

0 - Trick (choice)

Well, now that I've written it out, it looks like we've actually been accomplishing something. For breakfast, we work on Go To Mat. I need to get this on cue, and I need to get distance with me standing up, not just sitting down. I put down the dog bed and right away I can start using the cue (Hit The Rack) as she's running to it and flinging herself down on it. She's showing the same distance problem she has with the retrieve articles - if she's within 3', she remembers what to do until I stop. If she's further away than that, she might continue to do it, she might go mat diving for stray treats, or she might start offering me other behaviours. Sometimes I toss the treats on the bed, sometimes I toss them on the floor so she has to get off to get them, then get back on to get another click. When I toss them on the floor, I try to get them around the 3' mark to help her extend her remember-distance. And while I'm doing this, I'm walking around the room. It's a pretty small room, but I can get 7' away in one direction, 4' away in another. It doesn't matter to her where I am, it only matters how far she is from the mat.

Then we work on Sit and Down. Around the house I'm using the Sit cue too often and occasionally getting a stare - huh? You talking to me? I've got to stop doing that. Duh! As she's still not thinking about the voice as an important part of the event, I'm putting my voice up - paark IT - for Sit, and giving her a big ol' deep Texas Daaooowwwnn. Her default Sit has almost taken over the Down, so we work only on Down first. When she's offering it well, I start walking around the room with it as well, and getting some duration. Not bad. 7' away is no big deal - as with the mat, it doesn't really matter where I am when she's doing the behaviour - and we get up to 3 seconds on holding the down. Then we add the Sit. I meant to go for distance and duration on that as well, but end up doing random voice cues instead. 80% correct.

I start the lunch session by asking for Sits and Down before I mention lunch or get the kibble. It takes us a moment to understand we're doing something - she Sits brilliantly but I'm obviously doing a lot of body language cueing with my voice cue to Down - I notice this because when I ask for Down she jumps up out of the Sit and bomps my nose with her skull. When I can see again, I ask without bending down. She's obviously responding to the cues and getting 95% of them right. I reward her with cuddle-wrestles.

Then I get the kibble. We do a few more Sits and Downs, then start working on the SitStay and DownStay. To my amazement, she figures this out right away. I use 15 kibbles on each behaviour, and I get all the way from the middle of the living room to the other side of the kitchen and back. Not out of sight, but a good 20' away. Stitch is calm and secure with the idea that she's doing what I'm asking. For the first time I'm looking at being able to work on MANY behaviours with one meal as we tidy up instead of teaching from scratch. I get a driving whip, show her the butt, and we work 20X targeting, and I tell her that she has to touch the very end of it to make the click. She's mouthing it, but definitely going readily for the end. Then we go out and work on Go To Mat. Again, at 3' she remembers what she's doing. At 5' she forgets and offers other behaviours. At 4' I see some definite responses to the cue - we were, we were, uh, I KNOW we were doing something... "Hit The Rack!" OH YEAH! We were hitting the rack!

Then we do some retrieves with the leather dumbell, clicking for duration on the hold, and get her picking it up and up to 3 seconds of sitting or standing in one place holding it. Then we do some hold-in-hand, where we both hold it and I click her quiet mouth. Not so much duration here, still clicking for 1 second after the third chomp, but it's mouthing now and not releasing.

Finally, we try a trick. I ask Scuba to stand facing me, and lure Stitch to go under her, then around in front of her, and under her again. We do 20 of these. I can't really shape it unless I use a chair or something instead of Scuba. Scuba would very happily go to mat for an hour while I worked the puppy, but standing still and letting the puppy be shaped for running in and out of her legs is beyond even Scuba. Stitch cheerfully follows the lure, even when I back it off to just a gesture, but I can't say she's ready to volunteer any of it. So a very productive lunch!

During the afternoon we have to drive back out in the field. She actually jumps into the truck cab. I didn't think she could do that. I certainly wasn't ready for it!

And fun for supper. First we show off our great Sit and Down cues for daddy, then we show him our SitStay and DownStay. She's a brilliant showoff, and I'm amazed at how that one day of intensive effort on the importance of cues has had such an effect on her understanding.

Then we do some retrieving of random articles from around my chair - toenail clippers, a small pair of scissors, a ball of llama yarn (this one went a little too well), a clicker, and a dishtowel. She's not quite as good at retrieving in the living room as she is in the screen room, but close. The dishtowel's hard, she's never been asked to pick up something like this before. It takes 13 clicks for targeting before she thinks about picking it up.

Then we try something brand new. The standard way to teach a dog to put her paw over her nose is to put a piece of tape on her nose and click the motion to get it off. I tried this with my Giant Schnauzer - it was a total failure. She wound up offering me behaviours like barking, backing up, and retrieving - with a large yellow Post-It Note over each eye - and never did think of pawing them off. It works much better with Stitch, although after about 5 clicks for pawing she decides she might be better off doing the Sit and Stare routine. When she gets back to pawing, she isn't anywhere near her nose, but she's giving me a pretty good stretchy sieg-heil salute, so I'm clicking that. She's mostly right-pawed, but capable of doing it with either paw. At one point she's lying down and she offers it with both paws at once, which happens about 4" off the floor and looks rather like she's diving. Makes my stomach muscles hurt just looking at it. She keeps offering the salute after I take the tape off her nose, so we spend the rest of supper on it. My baby has a trick! I don't yet know what the trick is, exactly, but it's there. One of the best things about clicker training is that you can get a behaviour, see where it takes you, and not name it until something really cute hits you. Scuba shows which paw is white. Stitch's white paw is her left, so she might be showing which paw is black. Or she might be saluting. Or voting. Or showing me her poor sore paw which will require me to shoot her. But whatever it is, it's a trick, and it's her first

OK, I'm definitely getting bored with sitting in the car. For breakfast, she sits to have her collar put on, runs out on a loose lead to the car, puts her paws up to get in, then whizzes around the front seat area eating kibble off the floor, the hump, the console, the seats, the cup holders, the door handles, and isn't thrilled to leave when I get out. I want to get back to training STUFF!

At noon we take (people) lunch out to the field. She runs as before out to the car, paws up to get boosted in, and immediately starts vacuuming kibble. I start the car. She doesn't appear to notice, she's too busy buzzing around digging kibble out from under the seats. I toss a little more on the floor and put it in gear. No biggie. Apparently the problem has to do with BEING in the car rather than WHAT the car is doing. We go bumping out into the field over ruts and bumps. When she's eaten all the kibble, she sits up on the seat and watches the scenery go by.

While the guys are eating, we go for a little walk. She avoids a gopher hole when she gets a sniff of it. Then a tractor bucket bangs and she tucks her tail and runs away from me - about 15'. When I call her name, she turns around like "Oh, hi, mom! Didn't see you there!" and comes running right back, all happy. We go sit back in the car and she rechecks it, her tail up, and then we drive back to the yard. Little farmer dog. It really makes me feel good that she comes to me when she's scared.

She has a bath. I have trouble keeping the water warm, and I get some distress yapping when it's coolish, but when it's warm she's OK with the whole idea. We have a cuddle with a big fluffy towel and then I put her on the grooming table. A handful of kibble spread around the table lets me use the dryer on one side of her. Then I dry her front legs, and another handful finishes her off. Scuba wasn't this good about the dryer when she was 8 months old. Stitch looks very cute, except for her wet head, which I didn't dry.

Breakfast in the car, engine not running. No distress yapping, which is an improvement. Some shivering, stiff body/legs, moderate whining. We have a good long cuddle, petting until she's loose and relaxed, then it takes a minute to decide to eat off the console, but eating off the seat is fine. When she's on the seat and I pet her, she trusts that I'm not going to grab her and drag her anywhere. When I DO pick her up to deposit her on the floor, she's stiff and can't find the food that's right underneath her, but she does remember how to get back up on the seat. She's very happy when I open the door and invite her onto the driver's seat to get out.

Lunch: I'm glad I'm not using this session to demonstrate "scared puppy". She runs with me into the front hall, sits on cue to get her collar on, trots cheerfully out to the car and puts her paws up on the running board so I can boost her in. She runs enthusiastically all over the front floor, up onto the seats, over the console, back down onto the floor where, having cleaned up all the food, she starts hauling garbage out from under the front seats. When I get out, she can't remember how to get across the console, but eventually decides she can walk over the hump to the pedals so I can get her out - a trip she took 6 times when there was a single kibble hiding under the gas pedal. I lift her down and we come back in the house.

Isn't clicker training great? How many jobs let you take a day and a half off, sit in your car for 20 minutes three times a day playing video games, and call it work? Well, come to think of it, that pretty much describes my life as a soccer mom...

She has supper in the car, she's totally comfortable on the floor, cleans up everything, cleans all the food off the passenger seat - but can't jump up on seat by herself. Up on the couch, yes, up on the contact trainer, yes, up on the car seat, nope, that's too hard. When I boost her up, she sits on the seat she just cleaned wondering whether she can turn around or not. Finally she turns around and eats the food on the console, then jumps back down on the floor where she's more comfortable. Once she's there again, I replenish the food on the console and she still can't get up on the seat to eat it. Strange and mysterious are ways of the puppy brain! When I get out she comes over the hump with no trouble at all.

3/4 of breakfast is spent on down contacts. I've run the gamut on what behaviour I want on down contacts - I don't like 2-on-2-off, it looks freaky in the small of the back. I don't like stopping for a sit or down on the contact, it works great until the dog comes down the A-frame at speed. Scuba's been through it all with me changing my mind every season and has no idea what to do with a contact. I've decided I'm going to get the dog thinking about the spot where the ramp meets the ground, then over the year I'll move that spot out from the ramp a bit. So I start by putting 2 kibbles on the ground right at the bottom of each ramp. The first 10 times I also put 2 on the platform between the ramps.

Once she's going up and down, my only job is to make sure the kibble fairy only leaves kibbles in the spot when the puppy comes down a ramp, NOT when she dekes around the trainer and runs over on the grass. We get her looking at the kibble-spot without much loss of speed over the ramps.

The remaining 50 kibbles are spent on a quiet hold on the wooden dumbell. What a clever puppy.

The vacuum's running while I'm writing this. A month ago it didn't mean anything. Two weeks ago it was too scary to be in the room with. Today she can hand-wrestle me, attack Scuba carrying a toy, and solicit pets from the vacuumer, but she's not QUITE comfortable with it yet. Her playing is over the top, much more growling and barky than normal. Still, she can lie down, scratch her ear, wander over and watch the machine going back and forth, go get a drink of water and come back to lie near Scuba.

For an hour while I'm working on the computer, I put a leash on her, bring her up on the couch for a cuddle, then require her to lie on the couch beside me while I'm working. When she's quiet, I stop for a minute now and then and pet her and talk to her. She yaps half-heartedly for five minutes about the unfairness of this situation, then stops and simply lies there looking around. After a while she falls asleep. She wakes up several times during the hour, whimpers briefly without yapping, shuts up, gets a cuddle, and goes back to sleep.

Early afternoon we have to go drive around in the field again. She rides on the passenger seat. She yaps a bit, but settles when I pet her. After a bit she only whimpers when we start up after we've been stopped for a while. At one point I get out of the truck and leave her in by herself for a couple of minutes. When I come back she's got her front paws on the centre console and her back paws on the seat, and from there she can't get up or down. She looks pathetic. If she knew she could, she could gallavant all over the cab, but she doesn't know that yet. I put her front paws back on the seat and she's happy to lie down while we go back to the yard.

3/4 of lunch is spent working on Sit and Down. We do 30X Sit, using our cue "Park It" the last 25 times. Then we move to Down. My goodness gracious, we have produced an EXCELLENT default Sit over the last week! It takes 10X luring, and then another 28 clicks before she's confidently offering Downs, and another 10 before I can confidently start using the cue. Then another 50 Downs. Then I start randomly asking for Sit and Down. She's figured out that she doesn't have to Sit first in order to lie down, but she starts forgetting about her butt. We could catch a very nice bow, but that would only confuse both of us and I ignore the bows and wait for Downs. We've got another quarter of the meal to go when she starts gagging, so we run outside and forget about the rest of lunch.

I feed her supper in the truck cab. The truck engine is not running. I put some on the console between the seats, some on the floor on the passenger side, some on the passenger seat, and some in my hand. I sit in the driver's seat. I put her on the seat, and she crouches for two minutes while I feed her from my hand. She's OK to eat what I offer her. Then I play a game on my Palm and ignore her. Another minute of just sitting there, then she starts leaning closer and closer to the console and finally decides she can probably eat the food on it. Then she eats the food on the seat, and then she's feeling pretty good, so I pick her up and put her on the floor. She appears to think the floor is a chute into a shark tank, but once she's down there she quickly eats the food. I'm still playing my game, and after a minute of thinking about it, she climbs from the floor onto the seat. I continue playing for another 10 minutes, petting her and talking to her occasionally. She lies down on the seat, yaps a few times, then whines intermittently. When she's been quiet for a while, I get out of the truck, and she decides she can climb over the console into the driver's seat so I can lift her out.

I think about how this fear of vehicles could build up if I didn't do the right thing with it, or if she never went anywhere but to the vet because "she's afraid to ride in the car". Anytime I see any kind of fear or refusal, I have to automatically balance it out. "My dog doesn't eat in cars" means she'll be fed in cars until she's comfortable with it. "My dog won't let me hold her paws" means that what we'll be working on until it's second nature to her.

Wheee! Our new agility contact trainer arrived!




We spend lunch on the trainer. This is a 4X4' platform about 3' high, with a 4X8 sheet of plywood forming a ramp off one side, and a 14" wide plank forming a ramp off the other side. Yellow contact zones painted at the bottom of both ramps. I start by standing with my toes tucked under the big ramp, facing the ramp. Stitch wants to come find my eyes (aha, our first real use for the Get Lost game!) but this BOARD is in the way. She doesn't really trust it enough to get on it, but she REALLY wants to find my face, so she puts her front feet on it, c/t. And again, and again, and pretty soon I'm tossing the treats onto the ramp, where they roll down, and sometimes she wants to catch them before they hit the bottom, and once in a while a treat will get stuck half-way down the ramp, and before she knows it, she's on the platform at the top. I click her there a couple of times, then turn my body so she starts coming down the ramp. Up and down, up and down, Pretty soon it's no big deal.

Then I come around to the small ramp side. She jumps off the platform once, so I start planting kibbles on the ramp to make sure she goes up it, then planting them to make sure she comes down it as well. OK, she's got it. She starts (as you can see) running the ramps to get to the platform. How often do you get to play Queen Of The Universe and get paid for it at the same time? This is a GREAT game!

We spend all of breakfast on Eye Contact. The rest of Level Two seems doable but we're having trouble getting past 5 seconds of Contact without a hand glance or whining. Be the time breakfast is over, she's more convinced that this is the right thing to do. She spends a lot of the first part of the session wandering off to see if something else might be easier than 1 second of Contact, so we spend a lot of kibble on merely finding my eyes. And how many BILLIONS of people have I told NOT to start turning until the dog is VERY VERY good at simple Contact? My forehead is getting sore with all these DUHs.

This morning as I sit at the computer, Stitch comes running in from outside with a medium-sized fuzzy toy in her mouth. She puts paws up on my leg and shoves the toy in my hand, accompanied by immense growling. Another milestone. We've played tug with toys a lot, but I have to have the toy first and offer it to her. This is the first time she's asked ME to play with HER toy.

Another milestone. She's starting to realize that being petted may be better than wrapping her mouth around my hand. And I can't pet and be bitten at the same time. So she's beginning to approach me offering her back or hips rather than her mouth. My baby's growing up!

Interesting breakfast. She's back up to snuff, ready and eager to work and totally in the game. She retrieves everything immediately, several objects get back to me with just one click. The harness ring is no trouble at all. This morning I've added the nail clippers to my pile of retrievables. She runs right out to it, I click but she picks it up anyway and brings it halfway back before she bothers dropping it and coming to get her kibble. Then I try with the tennis ball, thinking I'll click for pushing it around, but she picks it up right away as well. When did my baby get so big?

Then the tennis ball rolls under a chair. She's uncomfortable being under the chair and can't organize herself to pick up the ball under there. I click her a lot just for being under there. At one point she stands out from under the chair and actually puts her mouth on the chair leg rather than go under and get the ball, so we quit on the ball.

Then we do some work on Down. We've pretty much eliminated the downing when I'm asking for Sit, and it takes her 6 clicks to start offering down. By 10, she's either responding to the Down cue or I'm getting very good at predicting it.

To end the session, we try the Get Lost game again. I stand up to click 10X for Eye Contact before getting into the game. At 6, she startles and runs around me, to give me Sit and Stare at the back of my head. Oi. OK, she's got the moving-around part, but is having some trouble with the find-my-eyes part. If I say her name, or do nothing for a while, she'll try several positions, then glance up, see my eyes, and give me eyelock, but it's like Oh, hi! What are you doing up there? Like she's given up trying to figure out what part of running around me is going to make the click and has decided to go with Sit and Stare instead. Half the fun of clicker training is looking into their brains, and this is definitely a response I've never seen before. I'm doing Contact X 10, then turn from Contact and wait. She's coming right around and finding Contact again about 60% of the time. It's the 40% that's so interesting. Still, much better than last week. I think I'll leave this another few days and let it percolate.

Lunch is silly time. I put out each of her dumbells and a few other objects, which she brings back right away (don't think that she's actually retrieving yet, she runs to the object, picks it up, turns back toward me with it, and then either drops it or gets clicked for holding it and THEN drops it. Then she has to pick it up again and bring it a little closer, then she gets clicked for holding it again. Most of these objects now are coming back to me regularly with only a click halfway back and another click when she arrives). Then I put out her stainless steel puppy dish - about 8" in diameter and 1.5" tall. She clearly asks if I'm insane. This is a DISH. It's for EATING OUT OF. It takes 18 clicks for targeting it before she thinks to pick it up, and 30 before she gets it most of the way back to me. A difficult concept. We finish the retrieving portion of our program with the pen and collar.

Then I put a large stuffed dog, known as Leroy, on her towel and see if I can get her to Go To Mat on Leroy. Another difficult concept. All her normal objects are turning into working objects. Very strange. And Leroy is lying on her towel, so how is SHE supposed to lie there? 20 clicks before she sits on the towel beside Leroy. Two more and she's lying down. Another 10 to glue the idea into her head, and I move Leroy to the other side of the room withOUT the towel. With much apparent relief she flops down on the towel, but I'm neither looking in that direction nor clicking her for it. She gets up, prowls around, and finally arrives at Leroy's nose. C/T C/T and she starts running back to Leroy. She walks around Leroy, she bumps his ears with her nose, finally she steps completely OVER Leroy. She gets clicked for all of these and then starts JUMPING over Leroy's back from one side to the other. Too bad we're not working on jumping! Finally she lies down beside Leroy, and we click that X10.

Then I move Leroy again, and she's on him like a dirty shirt. He's barely hit the ground when she lands in a Down beside him. Leroy has become Leroy The Miracle Dispenser.

At one point during all this she spies the tennis ball under the chair and tries targeting it a couple of times.

Then we come back in the house, she wanders around for a minute, then pees on the floor. ARGH! YOU BAD PUPPY! WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH... oh, I've shut the door to the dog room so she can't get outside. Duh. NEXT week I'll try to remember to hang a bell on the door and teach her to ring it to get the door to open. That's a lie. Such is the state of my housekeeping that Song's bell is still hanging on the doorknob. Song, who died at the age of 10 years nearly 5 months ago. However, next week I'll hope to get around to teaching Stitch to use it.

We spend 4 X 10 minutes in the afternoon taking blueburs out of her coat. These are the tiniest, stickiest burs I've ever known. I patrol the yard twice a week for the plants, but the dogs always seem to be able to find more. At any rate, she has one bout of interminable whining/fussing/yapping. I try to wait it out but it doesn't stop, so I put her down and she goes outside to pee. Then she comes back and wants up again so we go back to work. She's much better at this skin/hair/body manipulation than Scuba was as a pup. Am I a better trainer, am I paying attention to this because Scuba wasn't good at it, or is this just a dog with different priorities? I dunno. I'm grateful for it, though. 40 minutes of de-burring a puppy with no training and no patience would have been total hell.

Another milestone. To add to our pile of retrieving items, I take to the screen room tonight a book of matches, car keys, a small rolled-up elastic bandage, and a wrapped roll of dimes. Also the dish with her supper, Leroy, and a leash and collar so we can go out and check on llamas when we're done. On the way out, I drop the leash and collar. Rather than go back in the house to get Scuba to pick them up, I sit down and click Stitch to bring them to me. Her first real Service Dog service! Then she retrieves everything else. It's a flurry of retrieving. If anything hits the floor within 5' of me, she picks it up and works it back to me. If it lands further than 5' out, she needs a few beginning clicks to build up her security to go that far away to get it. Surely, if it's that far away, I wouldn't be interested in it anyway? Wow, what a day. What a week.

I have popcorn for breakfast (sue me). She's ditzy about this too. After a month of default Sit and Stare, she tries to jump up and grab the bag. When that doesn't work, she jumps up trying to intercept every piece I offer to Scuba. It takes her 8 reps before she figures out that the only way to get it is Sit and Stare. She definitely doesn't have both oars in the water this morning!

Having no wish to spend the day rowing in a circle, I take the rest of the day off. We've accomplished a lot in the last few days, we deserve it. While I'm not training, it occurs to me that it's been several days since we had an accident, and I'm leaving her loose with Scuba in the puppy part of the house while I'm outside doing chores.

Poor showing at breakfast. We start with Eye Contact, she can't give me more than 2 seconds without glancing at my right hand. I switch the clicker to my right and the kibble to my left, and we manage to get up to 4 seconds before she starts whining and moves immediately to yelping at me. I get 10 Eye Contact for 1 second rapidfire, and we move on.

I toss out each of the three dumbells and she brings each of them back on two clicks immediately. On the second throw of the metal one, she brings it back, sits, and holds it while I sit thinking about what to do about my jaw on the floor. Finally my brain returns and I click, but I could just as easily have reached out and touched it. Woohoo!

The other objects - toothbrush, clicker, pen, felt pen, small Flexilead, collar - she doesn't do as well on. With the dumbells I could toss them and she'd run out to pick them up, so I could afford to wait to click her turning towards me with the db in her mouth. With the other objects I can't afford that. If I don't click her initial approach, she turns away and lies down. She had to get up to pee twice during the night and I think either she's tired or she's not feeling well. She seems sluggish and mildly disinterested (though to outward appearance she seems to be well into working the click. I just get a feeling of general minor unwellness). If I give her 10X for the approach, she's able to go on from there to pick up the object and eventually get it back to me. The harness ring is last, I'm not expecting much at all, but today she treats it like everything else - 10X for the approach, then she picks it up and starts bringing it back. And we leave it at that.

For lunch I provide an old toothbrush, a tiny hairbrush, a clicker, a metal harness ring, a nylon collar, a big felt pen, a regular pen, and the three different dumbells. I put them out one at a time and resolve to click five times for looking at each one, then see if I can get her to pick them up. I start with the three dumbells, she runs out and picks up each one and brings it at least halfway back to me. When each one is close enough for me to pick up, I toss it back out. The second time it comes back, I switch to the next item. I don't get to the five-count on anything before she's picked it up and started it back toward me, and none take more than seven clicks to get back the first time and three the second time. Except the harness ring. This is the smallest item, and the flattest. It takes 18 clicks to get her to pick it up the first time. Even then, her pickups are tentative and shallow. She frequently forgets what we were doing and tries lying down or going to her towel. And she whines a bit. I end the ring session with ten rapidfire clicks for noticing it or approaching it, then go back to the dumbells for one more round.


For Pete's sake, CLICK! Am I supposed to walk around with this stupid thing in my mouth all DAY?

We have an early supper. I catch her when she's passing-out tired, asleep in the living room. We go to the dog room where I've put a piece of rubber-backed carpet on the grooming table. We spend 20 kibbles relaxing on the grooming table and doing puppy pushups - Sit, Down, Sit, Down, turn around, Down, Sit, Down. We have a little snuggle and a lick. Then we spned 15 on show stacking and 5 on hand Zen.

Then I ask her to lie down, and turn the clippers on. I lay the clippers on the table in front of her and feed her. The carpet does a good job of

Ron's sitting in his big chair watching TV. She just snatched an entire hamburger patty off his plate. She really IS a Portuguese Water Dog! Fortunately for her training, Scuba then stole it from HER. Now she's mad, prowling and growling.

ahem. The carpet does a good job of cushioning the sound and vibration of the clipper running and she can even rest her throat on the clipper to reach the kibbles. Then I hold one back leg and shave it, a bit at a time. In between her toes tickles, but she tries hard to sit still, and I do the tidying with scissors. Roll her onto the other hip and do the other foot, one kibble at a time. At one point I sit back and look at this 12 wo puppy lying calming on my grooming table, a handful of kibble 8" away on the table, while I shave her toes. Awesome.

Her muzzle's tougher. We have to work first on lying down and letting me hold her head. When I can do that, I scissor the goober-hair out of the inside corners of her eyes and along the top of her muzzle. Then I start petting her muzzle with the sides of the clipper. Finally I can shave her chin, give her kibble, shave one side, kibble, shave the other side, kibble, tidy up, kibble. And still she's lying calmly on the table. Unbelievable.

There are 12 kibbles left, so I turn on the dryer and spend 4 telling her the noise is no big deal. 3 trying to keep one safety hand on her, one feeding hand in front of her, and one hand just tapping her back with the air from the dryer. She glances back at it each time, but doesn't have an opinion, so the remaining 5 I blow her jacket back and give her kibbles one at a time without holding her. Oh my goodness!

I've got a low barrier between the kitchen and the bathroom. This gives us lots of opportunity to practise something for each dog. For Stitch, not to jump up on barriers. It doesn't get you through the barrier, and I don't come back across until you're Sitting and Staring. She's got this down pat as a default. For Scuba, more reinforcement of the IDEA of barrier - a low table, a leash stretched across, an imaginary line - no matter what it is, you can't cross it.

I want to totally change the subject. I'm so excited about retrieving I think I'm going to push her too hard.

We go to the dog room. I put her on the grooming table. This is a pretty scary event, she crouches down and hangs on to the table. I start feeding her one kibble at a time. After 20, I lure her into a stand, keep feeding, and start placing her feet, holding her tail, and stretching her up in a show stack. She remembers not to move her feet and does very well with this, so we start working a bit on more dynamic show stacking. This is a bit harder, she's still a bit unsure of the table and would like to stay right in the middle of it, thanks, but she manages to start swinging from right to left with her front paws while leaving her back paws stacked.

Then I ask her to lie down. Can't do it. OK, I pick her up, fold up her legs, and put her back on the table in a down. Start feeding her again. Oh, hey, this feels safer than standing up! She can do this! When her tail starts wagging as she waits for each piece of kibble, I lure a stand again. That's easy. Then a down. That's easy too! Of course she could do it before, silly. She just didn't feel like it at the time...

Since she's feeling pretty good about the whole experience, I turn on the clippers (2-speed, on low) and start petting her with them as we finish up her breakfast. No trouble at all. She glances back at the clippers once or twice, then shrugs and gets on with breakfast.

When we run out of kibble, I get a spoonful of peanut butter and spread it on one corner of the table. When she's well engaged in it, I start shaving her butt again, and down her back legs. No problem whatsoever until we run out of peanut butter, then she starts whining, but still not fussing about the clippers. I wait until she quiet for a moment, turn the clippers off, pick her up, have a snuggle, and put her down. I've done a very bad job of clipping, but a very good job of her first real grooming.

Having a naked rear end is considerable more traumatic than having it shaved. It's several minutes before she realizes she can walk with no hair on her back legs.

Scuba jumps up and polishes the table.

I have to drive Ron out to the field so I take Stitch. Ron drives out and I cuddle her. When we get there, we go for a walk on lead, run around and giggle a bit, then she sits in my lap while I drive back to the yard. Not entirely comfortable, but much more relaxed this time. It's nice to see something that needs to be more clearly explained, and then see the puppy believing the explanation.
Working two dogs at once

The three of us invent a great game for lunch. Scuba, as I've said before, has a poor understanding of Sit (MY version means planting the butt and leaving it and the feet in the same place for as long as necessary. HER version means planting her butt until she gets tired of it and lies down, or thinks it might be better to offer me something else). So I put Stitch's towel across the room on my left, and Scuba on a Sit-Stay on my right. Then we play 300-peck stays, only in this case it's 300-kibble stays. When both are in position, I toss a kibble at Stitch. If Scuba remains in position, I take a kibble from her bucket and give it to her. If Stitch is back in position, 2 kibbles. If Scuba's still in position, 2 kibbles. If Stitch is back in position, 3 kibbles. If Scuba's still in position, 3 kibbles. And so on. I toss or give the kibbles one at a time, so giving 3 takes three times longer than giving one, thus we increase the stay time by one kibble each round. Once, after chasing a kibble which bounces too close to Scuba, Stitch forgets what makes the kibble happen, sits beside Scuba and offers Sit and Stare. I feed Scuba one kibble at a time until Stitch runs back to her towel and lies down, then we go on with the game.

The most interesting part of this whole meal was that it's Scuba who restarts the count EVERY TIME.

Woo hoo! At supper I finally let myself go back to retrieving. She runs to and picks up the wooden dumbell, leather dumbell, metal dumbell, pen, and 1/3 cup metal measuring cup. Interesting - tonight the metal dumbell is just another dumbell, but the pen takes her some time to figure out. Once she works out that she can pick it up by hooking the right-side canines under it and then toss it back to hold it behind ALL the canines, she's comfortable with it.

Tonight I can afford to let her drop the articles a few times to be sure I'm clicking her for a solid hold and not for flinging or dropping. She sticks with it, picking each item up again if she drops it before I click. What a great day!

Thirteen weeks old. And to celebrate, we go out the screen room and work on retrieving. I have three dumbells, wood, leather, and metal. My plan is to do a bit of gripping with each of them, then take each and shape her to touch it in various parts of the room. We start with the wooden one, the one we've worked with previously. Her grip is surprisingly good. No chewing, and only minor mouthing.

I tease her with it a bit, then toss it off to one side about 4' away from me. Her towel from yesterday is still on the floor. This causes some confusion. She climbs on it, lies down, and waits a moment. Then she tries Sit and Stare, which doesn't work either. Then she starts touching the dumbell. I toss the treats all around the room, and she's running right back to target the db. I start clicking only for bumping it, moving it around the floor. Around the 15th bump, she picks it up. Oh my! A few false starts where I have to go back to clicking the bump, and I can afford to wait to click only when she picks it up. The holding gets solider and solider. The first time, it takes her 11 clicks to get the db from the other side of the room to where I can touch it - she picks it up, turns toward me, gets the click, drops it, chases down the treat, runs back to pick it up again. When she's only taking 5 clicks to bring it into range, I switch to the leather db.

She does even better with the leather. I start with it in hand. She sniffs it, then starts gripping it as if it's the wooden one but tastes better. I toss it across the room, and she brings it back in 4 clicks. We do that x7, then switch to the metal one.

I don't do the metal one in hand, just toss it and start shaping. This is more difficult. It takes her 25 clicks to pick it up. At one point it's a bit too close to her towel and she lies on the towel nudging it and trying to pick it up. The third time I can reach it, she's brought it back in 3 clicks, and she does that twice more before we stop. Wow!

We have 10 more kibbles to work eye contact.

I'm desperate to work on retrieving again but superstitiously don't want to do anything to disturb the memory of this WONDERFUL lunch. So I take a tennis ball out to the screen room. It froze last night and the fishpond pump is floating and making a very strange noise. She's very distracted, and I think she might decide to be frightened of it in a minute.

I make some noises and get a glance, click that, make more noises, rapidfire some clicks for looking in my direction, then start waiting for Eye Contact. She forgets all about the pump noise and gets into the Game.

We spend a couple of minutes on the towel. She knows it's a mat now.

I roll the ball away from me, she runs after it and bunts it with her nose. I click that, and she rolls it all over the floor. She's having a great time, but I'm getting bored, so I put a pen down. She targets the pen twice, and the third time picks it up. Holy cow. Within five clicks of me putting it down, she has brought it back to me. I toss it again. It takes two clicks to get it back. Then I put the leather dumbell down again, and she 2-clicks that back to me again and again. Once she sits with it in her mouth and I take it from her. Holy cow. Then I put out a small Flexi lead. She can't figure out how to pick this up (I'm sure she could if it was supposed to be on the couch!) but knocks it around a lot. Then we work on the pen again a bit, and we quit. Holy cow.

I have two dreams about her. One is of her as a service dog, picking up everything we come across. The second is of her as a bumblebee, her tail going around like the propeller of a helicopter, as, head down, she buzzes through life.

My family is happy - good harvest coming in. I'm miserable - allergies, can't think, can't walk, can't stay awake. No actual training for several days.

This has, however, given me a chance to sit back and observe the puppy as a person, rather than a training subject. What a fascinating person! She rollicks through life. Oops, can't eat the pen? OK, I'll eat the stuffy monkey. Whee, free food! Whatcha got? Can I have it? Wait, wait, I gotta RUUUUUNNNN. Ooh, I found a piece of paper! It's crinkly! What? Go out? I'm sleepy, can you carry me? Are you watching me? I'm watching YOU! Look out, I'm a TIGER.

Exhausting just thinking about it, really. Hard to be depressed with that kind of life going on around you.

Remember the fear period I was looking for? Here it is. She loves people up close and in familiar settings, but people at a distance are a little scary (just for sec, until they resolve into People - oh! You're a People! Good!)

Strange places have become strange. I take both dogs up to the bathroom to hang while I have a bath. This is hard for her. At first I think she might be just bored with no toys to play with, then I realize that the whining is because she's in a strange place. I talk to her and she finally settles down on my clothes and has a nap. Then when the water cools off some (I need a hot bath to ease the pain in my muscles) I hold her and lie back down in the water. A little more anxious whining, but her body language is fairly relaxed. More reaction to being in a strange situation than any opinion of the water. After a while I put her in the bath. It's deep enough to float her feet just off the bottom. I hold her chin to be sure she doesn't drop it into the water, which stabilizes her. To my surprise, she hangs motionless in the water as if I was holding her.

She smells better when she's dry.

When we go for a walk, I ask her to Park It and she plants her butt securely to the floor and jams her muzzle into the collar. Remember the bucking and kicking under the same circumstances last week?

This morning I drive around the yard to make sure the grain dryers are working, so I take her with me. Hmmm. Not the same, riding in a truck cab in a crate, and riding in a truck cab sitting on the seat. I end up holding her in my lap, wound up under my arm with her little puppy muzzle under my ear, whining a little. When I'm done, we sit in the car until she relaxes. So from now on the dogs get fed in a different room of the house, or a different vehicle, every meal.

I'm so grateful that I can see her fear as a step in her growth, rather than a misbehaving temper. What Scuba learned from being treated like this is that if she's frightened of something, she can come to me and I'll make it safe.

We've added to the night ritual. I get two dog cookies, and the girls run to the back door. When they've both peed outside, they run in, straight into their crates, spin and wait for their cookies. Goodnight, little princess.

Reality slaps me in the face this morning. I've been sloppy AGAIN, and she's had a whole day to think about it. If she offers me Sit and I click right away, great, it was a Sit. If she offers me Sit and I DON'T click right away, it was obviously a Down. I notice another little thing I've been missing. When she offers me a Sit, and I click right away, she stays sitting until I toss the treat. But I toss the treat fairly close to her (because she's still a baby and if I toss it far away, she can't usually find it). That means she can leave her butt on the ground and just squooge her front end over to get the treat. In some circles, a butt on the ground and a squooged front is called... um... oh yeah, a DOWN. Duh. So I've been rewarding her for a Down when she Downs, and rewarding her for a Sit AND a Down when she Sits. Duh. Grrr. Whap on the forehead.

There are now 200 kibbles in a meal. So we spend the first half JUST on Sit, and I'm careful to have her commit to an actual Sit before I click, and then I toss the treat as close as I can while still far enough away that she has to get up to get it. I have completely abandoned the Sit and Down cues. She's had a fair idea of what they mean, but she's confused about EXACTLY what they mean today, so they're out for now. Once she's getting seriously into Sit, we start 300-peck Sit Stays. We get up to 7 seconds fairly consistently. I start the count from the beginning for breaking the Sit and offering me a Down. She never breaks the Sit to get up. The difference between Sit and Down is something I never paid attention to with Scuba, and it's about the only thing keeping her out of the obedience ring, so I'm resolved to teach Stitch that Go To Mat means do what you want on the mat, but Sit and Down are separate and distinct events.

We spend the second half of the meal on holding the dumbell. At first I click only the mouth coming over the bar, not looking for duration, simply clicking the dumbell hitting the correct place in her mouth without the tongue showing. When we've got that I start asking for duration. Another little while and I think maybe I'm getting a chain of BITE off HOLD c/t. BITE off HOLD c/t. I go back to clicking the initial bite, which eliminates the "off" part and we start getting some decent actual holds with a good grip. Then she puts the bar too far back in her mouth and starts getting a couple of chews on it instead of a hold. Man, somebody said we're not driving Fords anymore, but this little squirt is a Harrier jet waiting to happen.

The next meal we start on Go To Mat, but this time I use a bath towel folded up instead of the dog bed. Isn't it cool to be working with operant conditioning? That means the dog is really REALLY trying to figure out what makes the click happen and get it done, so I can see that there is pretty much ZERO correlation in her mind between the dog bed and the towel. Granted I put it in a far corner of the room, but I'm prepared to shape the whole thing - and that's what I have to do. It takes 40 kibbles to get her standing on the towel. Then she tries sitting near the towel. Then she thinks maybe this DOES have something to do with the dog bed, so she goes back up the stairs where the dog bed was two days ago. Then she comes back and stares at the towel. Then she does Sit and Stare at me. And I start back at the beginning. Thank you for looking at the towel, for walking toward the towel, for being near the towel, for touching the towel, and this time she gets it. We do ten more successfully.

Then we go to eye Contact with me sitting. If I toss the treat to the floor off to the side, she's coming back to the centre, right off my knees, indicating that she's thinking about centring on my face, which is what she was missing a few days ago when we worked on the Get Lost game. This is nice.

We get up to 8 seconds of Contact very nicely, when "suddenly" she starts barking at me when the count gets to 4. Which makes me think back about what was actually happening between 4 and 8 before. Geez, she was whining. And the whining worked, so now she's barking. So I have to back up to the one count and restart the count if she whines. It takes 8 clicks to get rid of the barking and another 11 to get rid of the whining.

She can have her supper in peace. I think that's about all the humble I can take for today.

I've got a cold, so we took the day off from training. Then I felt guilty, so I had to notice what was going on anyway. I went to the door with her when I noticed her waking up and after each meal, and managed to get through another day without an accident (interesting how we humans always label these "if I was paying attention this never would have happened, but I couldn't be bothered so it did" incidents "accidents", as if they were completely unpreventable!).

I noticed that she now sits glued to the floor while I put Scuba's dish down, and remains sitting while I put Stitch's dish down. Good. Everybody has their own living-with priorities, and two of mine are not running out the front door, and not leaping all over me when I'm trying to put a dish down.

I cleaned her ears again, let's just say she's not totally ready to allow this yet, but her ears had to be cleaned. By the time I was half done, she was lying quietly. It's more about being confined than about me poking in her ears.

Another she-goes-to-bed-better-when... she goes to bed better when she hasn't just finished a meal. She feels really GOOD after a meal and wants to rip, roar, and tear. I want to go to sleep after a meal, so this is not an intuitive situation for me.

She also walks better on lead when she hasn't just finished eating, but she CAN get the rips and still keep the leash loose. I think I mentioned that before. She's doing brilliantly with the loose leash thing.

Her first countersurfing incident. She has a big soft stuffed dog bigger than she is. Tonight she cases the joint, then carefully pulls it off the coffee table. My little girl is growing up! It falls right on top of her, so she kills it with a lot of noise.

She spends a good part of the day gagging. Crickets are apparently pretty bony on the outside.

She jumps up twice this morning to look at my breakfast. I put her down twice, after which she resorts to Sit and Stare, which also gets her nothing but OTOH doesn't get her removed, either.

We go outside and spend half of breakfast going around a pole. I want to shape it, which goes well except for the grass (we have grass! First time in five years! Summer was rainy). She can't hear the kibble hitting the ground, and even if she sees it land, she has an awful time finding it and digging it out of the grass. Next time I'll put the pole on a mat, or use a toilet plunger in the house. Anyway, she gets clicked for turning her head, moving in the right direction, being behind the pole, and coming around the pole back toward me. I'm "cheating" by adding a bit of luring - I'm trying to toss the kibble to land slightly closer to where I want her than she was each time. By the end of the session, she still needs that lead-in to get her started, but once she's approaching the pole, she goes around it by herself. I'm being very careful not to mention the pole itself to her, or reward her for interacting with it in any way. I made that mistake with Scuba, and it took me months to get her to stop whapping the pole.

Thinking, alright, the little turnip has had half her breakfast, she should be slowing down a bit, I put her in the screen room and took Scuba out on the lawn to do some weaving. Oops, big mistake. Stitch yapped and tried repeatedly to come through the screen door. This is where people say "I can't even LOOK at my other dog without this dog getting hysterical!"

So we spend the second half of breakfast working both of them. Scuba lies down on my right, about 3' away from me, on the floor. I put Stitch's mat about 4' away on my left. First I work Stitch until she's running to the mat and lying down on it. Then every third bit of kibble I toss to Scuba. It takes Stitch 4 kibbles to realize what's happening, then she runs off the mat over to Scuba. At this point I give Scuba another five kibbles, one at a time, then just sit and do nothing. Stitch sniffs around, tries Sit, Down, Stare, and finally runs back to the mat. C/T. Two more and she's lying down on it again. I start doing 300-peck mat. I have to restart the count twice. When I get up to about 8 seconds, I start giving Scuba a kibble now and then. This is really hard on Stitch, she thinks about coming off the mat frequently, but holds her Down. We get up to 15 seconds, with me feeding Scuba about every 5 seconds, before we run out of breakfast.

Why isn't simplest thing ever simple? Does it count if she hangs her nose off the mat? Yes. Does it count if she's touching the floor with a paw? No. Does it count if she's jerking while thinking about getting off? Yes. Does it count if she's whining? No. Decisions, decisions.

I can't put it off any longer. Lunch goes to cutting toenails. I start with being allowed to hold her head. This is a biggie for her. She yelps, tries to back out, wiggles, uses her teeth (but gently). I back up. Hold skull, C/T. Hold skull C/T. Hold skull fondle ears c/t. Hold muzzle c/t. Hold muzzle c/t. Hold muzzle c/t. Hmmm, this might be worth putting up with after all... Hold muzzle c/t. Hold skull c/t. Hold head c/t. Hold head lift lips c/t. By now she's into it, and immediately I can lift her upper lip and pull down the lower one to look at her incisors, a show dog trick.

Then I lie her down in my lap. Hold front paw c/t. Hold front paw c/t. Hold front paw play with toenails c/t. Hold front paw put nail clipper on nail c/t. Hold front paw cut nail c/t. No big deal. Get all 4 nails done and move to the next paw. Woops, this one's a bit more sensitive. She wants to leave. Nope. Yes, I DO! Nope. But if you stay, you get kibble. Oh well, OK. Then she doesn't want me to hold her paw. Yes, I will. No, you WON'T. Yes, I will. But if you let me, you get kibble. Man, you're pushing your luck, but OK. Then she settles down. One treat for letting me tweak each nail, then another for letting me cut it.

She draws the line at her back feet. She's doing the dying-puppy yelp and definitely planning on leaving. I stop thinking about nails, turn her upside down in my arms and just hold her until she settles. Then we have a little hand-wrestle. Then I go back to the paws and cut the nails without any trouble, one treat per nail.

While we're at it, I clean her ears, which she puts up with without comment. This is going so well I'm inspired and, much to her dismay, I do Scuba's nails too.

Stitch and I go out to the screen room for supper. We start with Contact X 20. I'm obviously being a sloppy clicker, because she gets a 1-second eye lock, then looks at my food hand. I concentrate on waiting out the hand-glance and starting my count when she comes back to my eyes. We get up to 4 seconds.

Next, the dumbell. Again, I've been sloppy. She pushes the dumbell out of her mouth with the back of her tongue, which pushes the tip out between her teeth. Unfortunately, I notice tonight that I'm clicking her tongue tip, which means I'm clicking her for starting to spit out the db. Duh. She's so FAST! So I really, really pay attention to clicking a quiet mouth and NO tongue (sounds like interviewing your daughter's first boyfriend... ). Occasionally I had to wait through six bites before I got the quiet mouth.

Next I put her mat up TWO stairs into the greenhouse, and I sit 10' away at the far side of the screen room. Three clicks to get her to the mat. She BOUNDS up the stairs and PLUNKS herself dramatically down on the mat. Now, I can play two different games at the same time - she runs to the mat, I add the Hit The Rack cue, click and toss the kibble on the mat. Then we play the Come game. I call her name. She looks at me like, are you sure? I thought this was about the mat? but then she comes galloping over to me. I click and drop the treat on the floor at my feet. She eats it, then tries Sit and Down. What next? I cue Hit The Rack! She looks over at the mat, then gallops back and flings herself on it again. How fun! We play this double game X 30.

Now she's nearly full. I try playing Get Lost again. She's obviously been thinking about what went wrong overnight. She's still not good at it - overshooting or not coming far enough around, and swinging very wide - but she's a lot better than she was yesterday. We do that X 5, have a little wrestle, and come back in.

That was quite an amazing day. And her toenails are cut! Maybe tomorrow I'll have the nerve to start shaving her back legs... or maybe not.

An interesting morning. We start with the dumbell in hand. This goes very well, we have a pretty consistent 3-second hold and occasionally up to 6 seconds. She's much steadier with the clicker.

Then I put it on the floor. Arghh! The default Down is back, and brings his friend Go To Mat. She lies down on the dumbell. She sits near it. She sits ON it. She covers it with her paws. I start WAY back, with her looking at it, and click X 30 for approaching it, BEFORE she has a chance to do anything with it. Finally I let her approach it and she targets it with her nose. Three of those and we quit.

We move on to the Get Lost game. She finds my eyes with no trouble at all, even with me standing. Contact X 10, then I get contact and turn my back on her. She runs 270 degrees around me, plunks her butt down and stares at my ear. Huh? What's THAT about? I turn my back on her, and she runs 270 degrees in the other direction, Sits and stares at my back again. I try getting hysterical, and she's running joyfully to answer, but keeps overshooting. Finally she Downs behind me and puts her head down with a little sigh. OK, I'm slow, but I get there eventually. I sit down and do some easy stationary eye contact. She's very happy to do it.

I've never seen this problem before. Maybe I just need to remember that she's 12 weeks old and my eyes are 5' above hers. At any rate, we'll give this a week or so of sitting and standing Contact before I try turning around again.

We end the session with random Sit and Down by voice cue. 15 reps, 1 error. Holy cow, this is one smart puppy!

When we come back in the house, Ron's in the living room in his farmer clothes, with a pair of work gloves stuffed in his back pocket. She aims for them and with a mighty leap, she hits the back of his knee, falls on her back and bumps her head.

Not much more training today. I took my llama team out for a 3-hour drive around the farm - a very productive afternoon but about an hour past MY stamina limit. Stitch and I go for a walk to see the guys running the big truck, auger and tractor - lots of noise, and a person she's never seen before. The leash is loose all the way out. She doesn't mind the noise, but when she sees the stranger IN the noise, she Sits and watches the situation. I giggle at her and tell her what a good time we're having. Then she decides she can giggle at the stranger and jump up on him. Partly I wish I could get her out to meet a lot of people right now. Part of me thinks this is a good time for her to stay home and work on her confidence and trust in private.

The most common comment on her when anyone meets her is "Wow, her tail sure works!" It reminds me of a propeller with the tips painted - all you can see is the white blur on the end.

Tonight she figures out how to jump on the couch. She's been here before but it was by accident. Tonight she jumps up five times in a row - and gets put back down five times in a row, as she's jumping up because I'm eating. Nice try, small and persistent!

Scuba's finding it very difficult to do her job. Every time she picks up something, Stitch is right there wanting to wrestle with it. I tell Scuba that if she keeps rolling her eyes, they'll grow that way...

Half of breakfast we spend playing the Get Lost game. I've never before asked for eye contact with me standing up (though she's given it to me when I'm doing dish Zen), but that takes her about 2 seconds to figure out. We do Contact X 10, then Contact and I turn my back on her. Hmm, what to do, what to do? We do this in the kitchen. I've set it up so I can see her shadow. She looks left and right. She lies down, she sits up, she whimpers, looks left and right, whimpers, lies down. I get hysterical. STITCH! WHERE'S MY PUPPY? and she comes around to give me eye contact. Contact X 10 and I turn my back on her again. Again she can't think what to do so I have a fit again and she finds me. Contact X 10, I turn my back, and she comes around on her own to give me Contact again. Ee hah! Contact X 5, and then I turn and she comes around automatically 4 more times.

Now that she's getting OLD and her legs are stretching about an inch a day, I'm thinking about Training Level 2, so I take a dog bed out into the screen room. We've done Go To Mat in the living room, but nowhere else. I put the mat down 4 feet from my chair. It takes her 5 clicks to find it, 2 to get on it, 1 more to lie down on it. Then she's really into it. No matter where I toss the treat, she grabs it and runs right back to lie down on her mat, so I start using the cue Hit The Rack. Small problem at first (Oh, gosh, she's BROKE now!) - she's so responsive to my voice that when I give the cue as she's climbing on the mat, she stops to look at me. I do nothing more and she finishes the job. The third time I say it, she keeps going. By the 10th time, I think she's responding to the cue a bit.

Then I put the bed 8 feet away, in a corner between two chairs, and change where I'm sitting. That's another 10 clicks to find it and lie on it - she goes back to the first spot several times, and also tries lying down on the floor near the mat, but neither of those behaviours produces a click so she keeps thinking until she remembers the whole thing.

Then I drape the bed over the step up to the greenhouse and sit in a different chair. I think this'll be harder than putting it in the corner, but she's got the idea now. 3 clicks to find it, climb onto it, and lie down. No attempts to go back to either of the previous locations, and no attempt to lie on the floor. That finishes her breakfast. I'm glad she's needing more food now, but I wish her stomach was ten times bigger!



Oh! It's Hit The Rack no matter WHERE the rack is! I get it!




Even when it's on stairs!

We spend lunch going for a walk. I click occasionally for a loose lead, but it isn't really necessary. She's walking with me wherever I go. If she meets the leash when she's ahead of me, she stops to wait for it to loosen before going on.

We walk by Rapid Fire again. I'm very pleased that THIS time when she's at the fence and he comes over and leans his head down to see what she is, she has the sense to back up a couple of steps. She's not afraid of the situation, more like "Wow, that's a big guy! Any sensible puppy would stay out from under HIM!" OTOH, maybe she's just getting farsighted...

For supper we have the BEST session ever! I've been working the dumbell with just my voice. While it's been going OK, she's not getting the quiet-mouth-on-the-bar as well as I expected. Tonight I use a clicker - harder to have the dumbell and food in one hand and the clicker in the other, but I have to be careful to keep the clicker away from her ears. She IMMEDIATELY figures out the quiet mouth and longer hold. When she makes a mistake and lets go of the bar, she startles and grabs it again. She's looking up into my eyes when she's gripping it well.

Then we do Park It (Sit). She's racing around the room to grab the flying treats and then rushing back to plant her little butt again. I use the cue X 30 with no errors. Then I signal for a Down twice, and she has that. I use the cue X 15. Then I work Park X 5 and Down X 5, using only the voice cue to tell her what I want. We run through them four times with maybe 3 mistakes in the whole bunch. Wow!

When the food's all gone, she wants to stay in the screen room and keep working. She doesn't come in until I turn out the light. She feels pretty good with her tummy full. She attacks her dog dish. When it's dead enough, she chases and catches her tail, but it was a bigger opponent than she'd planned on. Her tail rolls her upside down and dumps her in the dog dish.

No accidents in the house all day, and she runs into her crate for a cookie and goes to sleep without a whimper. What a great day!