She’s a Superstar!

Posted on November 16, 2017 by upwarddogmom

Well, maybe Ziva’s not really quite a Superstar yet, but I think she could be. She has really taken to Rally training, and she catches on so quickly to new commands. She is also pretty food-driven which definitely helps. And she is fast, and nimble. She’s a good size for this — the bigger dogs seem to struggle more to do quick turns, and the smaller ones seem harder to lure with food. At 50 lbs and a lotto energy Ziva seems like a natural. I, on the other hand, still struggle with some basic stuff. Like hand eye coordination, or saying things at the right moment. But … I’m getting better, I think.

For the past couple of weeks Ziva has spent the day of class at Doggie Daycare. I drop her off at about 7 am, and then I arrive at around 5 and take her for a little break outside. We walk around the grassy area so she gets a pottie break, and then I give her a small snack and some water at the car. We also practice our leash work for a few minutes, walking back and forth in the parking lot — she’s always pretty excited at this point and it helps her to focus. She loves daycare. She loves the people who work here, and she has some doggie friends in the group so it’s really good socialization. (One of the dogs from Rally class is also in Daycare on these days.) It also gets a lot of energy out of her, so that when it’s Rally Class time, she can focus a bit more easily. Generally speaking , anyway! But she really seems to need that little period of down time to wind down between Daycare and Rally. When we get back inside the building before class, I usually do some CR massage, and that definitely helped last night.

We’ve got a lot to work on in the next couple of weeks. Our next class isn’t until after Thanksgiving, so that’s plenty of time to improve on what we have learned so far. We got a “Perfect” from Tecla, our trainer, last night on our heeling exercise called “find the leg,” but then we learned to expand on it and I flubbed a little. As I said, I’m the one who needs the most practice here. But so far, here’s what we’ve learned and what we’re practicing:

“Find the leg”: the dog is in Sit, the trainer says Heel, steps left leg back, and moves treat in hand around and behind to the left leg, steps left leg forward, and with hand at hip the dogs ends up next to you, and gets the treat at the left hip.
Extended “Find the leg”: Same as above, except the dog gets reward when the trainer’s left leg is still back, then when the left leg is parallel to right, and then when left leg is forward.
Stand: There are 2 versions, one from a moving position and one from a Sit. From moving, you basically put the treat in the dog’s face and take one step back. When the dog steps forward, she stops when her nose bumps into your hand to get the treat you say “Stand” and then “Yes!” From a sit is a little tougher. You still stick the treat in the dog’s face, but this time you move it under their chin, and in their effort to get it they invariably stand up. At this point we just say “Yes!” instead of naming it as Stand. Once we get it down consistently I think then we will be naming it. (Tecla’s really good about training things so that the dog does not get confused, and can progress to the next step easily.)
“Suicide” spins: Anyone who has played any kind of sports in the past 50 years must remember “suicides,” where you race from one cone to another, touch the ground and race back to the first cone. Well, in this exercise, you hold a treat in your hand and lead the dog quickly to the second cone, and then whip your hand around so the dog spins around to get the treat, As soon as she spins you say “Yes!” and give her the treat. Ziva loves this one. (Yeah, she’s that teammate — the one who loves suicides!) And she’s so good at it that Tecla told me I need to go faster, and also further. So Sue’s getting her exercise on this one, for sure!
Modified suicide spins: This time you do sets of 4, and randomly in that set you wait till the dog completes the spin and then command “Sit.” You have to mix it up so they don’t anticipate it coming say, on the third time. (Because they totally will.) You then also do this exercise with Down.
Focus when moving: She also really likes this one, and I am trying to harness that enthusiasm. She can be a little snappy for the treat in this exercise, which I asked Tecla about last night. The snappiness means she is very driven, so I don’t want to diminish that drive. But, to be honest, it can really hurt sometimes! The advice was to get a thin, sturdy glove — like a golf glove, or a wide receiver glove — and try not to pull my hand back when I’ve giving her the treat. I’m sure I am pulling back sometimes in anticipation, but that’s really a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ziva’s doing pretty well with this one, and has improved from the start when she used to jump up. So I’m confident we get this under control. It’s another example of me learning what I need to do. Which, let’s be honest, is about 90% of dog obedience training.
Trainer walks around: Put the dog in Sit, transfer leash to left hand, and walk around the dog (leading with right foot). Dog should stay seated, trainer stands to right of dog and gives reward. Also do this with Down.

So. If you wonder how we get to this, it’s a lot of work, but totally worth it:

In our next class, we’ll get to try doing an actual Rally course — that should be interesting! I have a feeling Ziva will once again do great, and I am the one who will be flubbing it up. I just googled “Rally novice signs” and it turns out that this is, like, a whole “thing”: You can even buy Rally course signs on etsy: rally novice signs. Watching videos on Rally, I always wondered how people understoodd so well what they are supposed to be doing with those turns and spins, and it seems that people buy these signs and study them. It’s always amazing to me how many things there are in the world that have their own culture and following.

Maybe Ziva has found her place.

Fine motor skills, and focus

Posted on October 29, 2017 by upwarddogmom

We started training on “Focus” on Friday, and it’s a lot harder (for me) than you would think. As with most of our training, Ziva has caught on pretty quickly, and it’s me who has a hard time learning. Jokes about “old dogs learning new tricks” aside, I think there is something in the adage. Ziva has that innocence that kindergarteners posses. When I was in graduate school, my prof asked us one night: “Who here knows how to sing?” And predictably, about 2 out of 20 hands went up. The rest of us thought “dear god, is she going to make me sing???” But then she said, “What do you think would happen if you ask a group of kindergarteners ‘who knows how to sing?” Over time we learn to hold back — I say “I don’t know how to sing” because I’m not very good at it, not because I don’t know how.

I think adults can learn a lot of new things — I’ve taken French lessons as an adult. I’m teaching myself to play the ukelele (no, really, I am!) But I have no doubt it’s taking me longer to learn that, just like it’s taking me longer to learn some of this handling business because I totally over think everything. As I described in the last post, to teach “Focus,” the dog sits at your left, you have their food in your right pocket. You take a handful out with your right hand, transfer it at waist level to your left hand. When the dogs you in the eye, you say a very hearty “Yes!” and left your left hand to your left eye and then down to the front of the dog — just enough in front of their mouth that they have to reach out just a tiny bit.

This very patient face will tell you that it has taken some time for me to master this process:

Ziva sits, looking up at the camera It has taken me some time to get the timing down of all the hand transfer of treats. Not to mention the actual giving of treat to mouth. We are supposed to be using their food, so since Ziva eats kibble I figured that would be pretty easy. If you read back to the early posts of Obedience 1 class, we fed her kibble from our hand for many weeks as a way to build the bond and reinforce behavior. The difference is that then we could feed a handful, whereas in this training, it is one piece per “Yes!” Our trainer suggested a couple of different brands of food that have larger sized kibble (and softer too). But to be honest they are out of our process range. So we tried with the little kibble, and guess what? It went flying everywhere.

Two sizes of kibble are shown, one much larger than the other I went to a PetValu store and asked about kibble sizes, and we are very happy to have found a kibble for large breed dogs, which has larger-sized pieces. It may seem like a silly thing, but look at the difference in the sizes here, and imagine trying to gracefully give one piece at a time. You have a small handful of food in your palm, and you manuever one piece to hold between your thumb and first finger, in order to give to the dog. And if you drop a piece, the dog is not supposed to eat it, because all the food is supposed to come from your hand. This poor dog was so patient with me when one of the little pieces of kibble would go flying and I would tell her no. I have nothing against small kibble, but my fingers just could not hold onto these things while I was trying to remember to transfer at waist level, hold up to my eye and then down to her mouth.

But we’ve been working on this for a couple of days now and we both seem to be getting it. I’m definitely much smoother with my part (thanks, large kibble!, and she understands the rules. She doesn’t get any other treats right now — not training treats, even. So we have been mostly playing in the backyard rather than going on long walks, because I can’t really do much bridging if we see other dogs. We’ve been doing a ton of fetch and tug in the yard, and so far that seems to be getting enough energy out of her (along with so)me short walks around the block when it’s not high dog-traffic time.) I’m going to work not his for a couple more days in the kitchen, and then our next challenge is to set a baseline of how long it takes to eat a meal’s worth. Say, 4 minutes. Then we go someplace else — maybe just the back yard, or the front yard — and then see if we can get it done in 4 minutes. The goal is that she can focus on me no matter what other distractions are out there. And so, while at first I was annoyed that a cat walked through the room when we were trying to do our training, or some other interruption happened, now I see that’s all part of the process. We start with the little distractions and build, build, build.

Zika’s focus is getting stringer and stronger. Meanwhile, my fine motor skills have never been better!

A day at the beach (actually, a week!)

Posted on September 13, 2017 by upwarddogmom

photo credit: Kim Johnston

It’s been quite an eventful few days for Ziva (and for us). We’re spending the week at Oak Island, North Carolina, in a beach house a few hundred yards from the beach. It’s been a wonderful, exhausting week for everyone. My brother and his family, including two large dogs, are about half a mile down the beach from us so we’ve seen them quite a bit. I was initially quite worried that Ziva would be afraid of the waves, but she went into the water with just a little coaxing — not so deep that she can’t keep her feet on the ground, which is okay with me. But she is not afraid of the waves crashing and doesn’t mind getting splashed. Her favorite thing though, seems to be running through the pools of water — and wrestling with her cousin Murphy. She’s still working on controlling her excitement, but for the most part she is doing much better than I expected.

The week didn’t start out so carefree — with Hurricane Irma demolishing much of the Caribbean while we were making our travel plans, we were preparing ourselves for the possibility of canceling our trip, or at the very least cutting it short. Fortunately for us, the weather missed us for the most part, with just one rainy day so far. The trip itself took forever. We both ended up working later on Friday than we had hoped, so didn’t get nearly as much done the night before the trip. That meant a lot of hurrying around on Saturday morning, and despite taking her for a long walk, Ziva started to get worked up about all the activity. Every time I took bags out to the car, she whined and scratched at the door. My brother mentioned they had give one of their dogs benadryl before a trip and it helped knock him out. I used to give our previous dog benadryl for itchy skin and it would make him sleepy too, so I thought it might be a good idea for Ziva and help her stay calm on the 7 hour drive. Wrong! It turns out a small percentage of dogs have the opposite reaction. So instead of lying down and going to sleep, she whined and barked and pawed at the crate. For the entire ride. No that’s not right — there was one long spell of about 70 minutes near the end, when she must have just exhausted herself, because she curled up and slept. But then she popped up again. Ziva is pretty good about letting us know when she has to go out, and she was acting like this throughout the trip. So we kept making stops, where she would indeed pee — but just a little. So I don’t know if the benadryl made her feel like she had to pee? Anyway, she will never, ever have benadryl again, that’s for sure.

Ziva lies sleeping in her crate Once at the house, she has settled in pretty well. We brought her crate inside, and she sleeps in there at night — by her choice. We have not put her in there or shut the door. Although yesterday, after a morning of romping in the surf with her cousins, we were back at the house for lunch. And I realized Ziva was being very quite — I found her curled up on our bed, where she stayed for the next 2 hours. This has been such a great time for her — she has gotten more exercise this week than ever before with us, anyway. She’s been wearing a harness and we keep her on a 30 foot leash. The beach is not very crowded, so we can usually just let her run on the leash — the water, out of the water, back in again.

It’s been a challenge for us to keep up with our training, but we’ve been trying. We have a nice quiet road behind our house and I try to take Ziva for a walk there every morning, so we can work on our leash work. It’s a challenge because there are so many scents, and people, and sometimes dogs. I’m sure the people who see us think I’m nutty, with my “yield to me, follow me.” But I really do not care. Likewise, when she barks at another dog — because she still often does — I know that she is so much better than she used to be, and I don’t care what you think. But, to be fair, this is a very dog friendly place, and no one seems put off by her sometimes barking. Everyone has their dog on a leash, and while Ziva barks at them they give me a wave, a smile, and a nod.

Ziva and Murphy stand next to each other on the beach

photo credit: Kim Johnston

Generally, I can distract Ziva with the water. If she is barking at a dog up the beach, and call her over to the surf. She runs in, runs to me, then sees the dog again and barks. Repeat. It’s been great for her to spend time with my brother’s dogs — both get a long great with other dogs, and Murphy at 9 months already 80 pounds. Murphy and Ziva romp and wrestle and play nicely — for the most part. Yesterday after noon, Ziva got so excited, she started in on her old ways of getting too ramped up and playing too aggressively. Play started getting too rough, and my niece and I decided they needed a little apart time. Which they were fine with. They were still near each other by a few feet, but not in wrestling distance. Ziva even went and found a shady place. So I still have to keep an eye on her adrenaline in a situation like that. She still doesn’t always know how to turn it down when she starts to get too excited. But for the most part, Ziva and Murphy play very nicely together, and that’s been a great experience for her.

I’ll try to post again this week — I really thought I would have more quiet time, but it’s been hard until now to have more than a few minutes where Ziva is not needing attention. I think she is settling in now, though. This is her first big trip away from home, and its understandable that she would be restless. All the exercise is finally paying off though, and she is able to be in the house and calm. In fact, as I write, she’s in her crate, sleeping away. I’ll have to rouse her to go the beach soon.

Our little graduate

Posted on September 1, 2017 by upwarddogmom

Ok, ok, I fell a little behind with my posting. Life comes at you fast, as they say. I work in education, and summer disappeared and the Fall term arrived with a vengeance. So now that we have a few minutes to catch our breath, I’ll try to catch you up: We passed our Obedience 2 test!

Ziva sits looking up at Sue, who is holding her certificate I cannot tell you how thrilled I was. She did great — I had a couple of flubs, but the trainer had faith in Ziva and let me redo when I messed things up a bit. He knew it was my nerves making me stumble on my words, I’m sure. Because on all the tests where it was totally on her, she did great! For example, when she had to sit and stay in place while I walked back about 6 feet, and the trainer came walking by, tossing a frisbee — she stayed in place! She had to do several commands, and I won’t list them all here unless you comment that you want to know more. But I will tell you about the elusive “Here!” command, because that was a great success.

You can see in the photo that she is wearing a harness. We did that because in learning the “Here” command, we realize that she has developed her boundary ~~corruption~~ correction so well, that any tug on her collar would make her stop. The boundary correction exercise helps her learn where the end of the leash is, so that she will not lunge and pull. To teach this, you let the dog roam around, and the second they get to the end of the leash you give it a quick pop, say a very excited “Yes!!! What a good girl!!” and reward with food. Ziva picked this up really quickly, which is great, but that meant some complication when learning “Here.” In this exercise, the trainer held her on a very long leash (30 ft), then I love on Ziva and get her a little excited, run about 20 feet away, turn, and call “Ziva! Here!” Once she reaches me, I give her high reward food (chicken) and put her short leash on.

The first time we tried this, Ziva started to run in my general direction but then felt the tug on her collar and stopped. She was really confused. So it was suggested that we try it with a harness. We have purchased a few different types of harnesses to get the right one for her. We have a Kurgo one that I really like, but it s a little complicated to put on her, and she gets so excited that it’s an ordeal. I have hopes she will get used to it. But meanwhile I found the one she’s wearing in the photo online, which is a “step in” model. Even getting her to “step in” is not a simple task, but it is easier than trying to get the other one over her head. But this one’s lightweight, mesh, and she seems very comfortable in it.

I enlisted my friend Amy one day during the week before the Saturday test. We went to a local park and used the tennis court to practice “Here.” The first couple of tries were less than stellar, but as I’ve seen before with Ziva, very soon something “clicked” and she started running right to me. It was a hot day, and there kids and dogs around, so it was really a test for her concentration. Ziva still reacts quite strongly to other dogs, and so when a man came walking along right by the tennis courts, we had to take a break. Once they were out of site though, Ziva was able to get back to work.

So! When it came test time, she was a star! I have such a wonderful memory of that moment when I turned and said “Ziva! Here!” and she came at me at full speed. Straight to me, despite there being other dogs and people in the room, with a look of pure joy on her face. It’s a good thing the trainer had her on a very long leash, because I don’t think he expected her to be quite as fast as she is. She is fast. I really hope that some day we can do agility, because she loves to run, and I think she would be great at it. But, we’ve got some more obedience to work on before we get to her listening to my commands for an entire course. But racing from one side of the room straight to me is an excellent start. And if you met her a year ago, you’d understand just how far we have come.

We have much to keep working on, so we’re taking a little break from the Obedience classes. But we’re still going to go to Pack to Basics and Behavior Modification classes for a while. The only really frustrating thing for me right now continues to be her reactiveness with other dogs. Until she understands that she does not need to bark at every new dog she encounters, we’ve got work to do. My goal is to get her to a point where we can go to public places and have her ignore other dogs. I don’t necessarily expect her to be friendly to every dog she sees, but just to ignore them, understanding that we’re a team, and we’re ok. She’s getting there. And so am I.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Posted on August 8, 2017 by upwarddogmom

I know, I know — I missed you too!

I didn’t realize how long it has been since I last blogged. It’s been an incredibly busy couple of weeks, and included a week away from home for me. While I was at a conference in Colorado, Ziva stayed at home and my wife kept the home fires burning. No mean feat when it involves working a very physical full-time job and then taking care of our lively girl. But they did a good job taking care of each other, and I missed them both terribly.

My flight home on Friday was delayed by weather, and I got in so late that we didn’t make it to our Saturday morning Obedience class. I felt bad missing it, but I let them know on Friday afternoon while I was sitting in the Denver airport that it was looking doubtful, and they said no problem. So I tried to keep working on what we have been learning, in preparation for our final test. Ziva has been doing pretty well with the sit and stay and the down and stay (better with the down and stay). She will have to do both for a minute while I leave the room in order to pass the test! We also need to do “watch me” with her making eye contact when I give that command.

We’re doing pretty well with those, and every walk we’re making progress on the leash work. She is still always so excited to be out for a walk that I do a lot of corrections for the first 10 minutes or so. And this is after about 5-10 minutes of behavioral down inside in the hallway, and then 5-10 minutes of “yield to me, follow me” in front of the house. A walk with her is no small commitment but it is so worth it — her entire disposition is so much better after a walk. She’s both more relaxed and attentive, if you can imagine that.

So then we finally made it to class again last Saturday. And I was kind of a mess.

One of the reasons I have enjoyed this training experience with Ziva is that is has also been very eye-opening for me and my own behaviors. As in, what stresses me, and what do I worry about? Because I was worried about a lot of things on Saturday morning and it slowly started to manifest itself in things going wrong. For one thing, I felt behind on being ready with her training treats (hot dog) and having everything ready for Saturday morning. Which included having given Ziva a chance to ride in the new car. Which I totally had planned to do at some point in the week, but the week came and the week went, and Ziva had not been in the new car. And Friday night I was looking for straps to lash the crate in the back (it’s a Honda HR-V and I love it, btw), and where the heck are all the straps? Well, I had two good ones and thought I had it strapped down well enough.

So Saturday morning I loaded Ziva in the crate, hoping that being in the same crate but in a new car was no big deal. But is was kind of a big deal. I have a picture but I’m not going to post it because it looks bad. We had left the house for about 5 minutes when she flung herself to one side and the crate fell over on its side. She was fine, and actually seemed pretty relaxed — she probably had more room with it on its’ side — but it was wobbly and I didn’t want to get on the highway with it like that. So, I pulled over and got the crate upright and strapped it down again.

And Ziva was not liking the new orientation of the crate. It was different. Which is stressful. Which winds her up.

So I’m driving and saying “Can you get easy?” and Ziva is barking and barking and pawing at the side of the crate. (But it stayed strapped down — yay for that!) We were now running a little late and got to the parking lot with enough time for me to gather my things and give her a quick potty break so she could pee. But then we stepped inside the building, and I said “Sit!” Have you seen that cartoon where the dog is squatting and the owner is saying “No no no! I said Sit !” Yeah, well, Ziva squatted and pooped right inside the doorway. I was completely confused about what to do. I didn’t have any bags, I didn’t want to go back out to parking lot and get one from the pole where they provide them because I was afraid someone would come in and step in it. I was just … Ack! What to do???!!

The walls in this part of the building are only shoulder high so I tried to get the attention of one of the assistants on the other side of the building to get me a poop bag, but lo and behold the person who saw me was Tecla herself. And as I explained “Well, she pooped and the crate fell over and the new car and …” Tecla said “shh shh shh. Look how tight your leash is.” And indeed I look down at my hand and I’m pulling the leash tight. And dear Ziva is just standing there putting up with it. I relaxed my grip and Tecla said she would have someone clean it up, and sent me on to the Pack to Basics room. And Ziva, not having been there for a couple of weeks, did great. She was excited but behaved herself. She trotted around the room at double time, but she didn’t get into any trouble.

And then she did very well for the rest of the morning as well — as usual, in Obedience class it was on me to correct behaviors. The class we missed was kind of an important one — recall and “name game.” Ziva knows her name really well, but she needs to know her name really really well. Like, say her name and her whips around kind of well. And recall. well, that is not really a strength for her, but is one of the tings I really hope to get out of this training. Because if you say to her “Ziva, come!” She will come about 50% of the time. Or 0.05% of the time if there are distractions nearby.

So we are essentially 1 week behind on this but have been trying to catch up. I get home from work, we go for a walk, and then we practice, practice, practice. Our final class — and test — is this Saturday. This is an intense week of training for us. I’m even taking a day of annual leave and enlisting a friend to help us get up to speed on these things! I know we can do it, if I just keep calm, loosen up that leash, and have fun with it. She is such a sweet girl, and she’s so happy when you give her a command, she completes it, and you give her lots of praise. Next month it will be one year since she came to our family, and I cannot believe how much we have learned in that time.

A tale of a tail

Posted on July 5, 2017 by upwarddogmom

Ziva seemed very excited to be back at the Training academy. We did some socialization and behavior modification work, then took a quick break in the car with water and snacks before we went back in for Obedience 2 class. Next week I guess I need to pack TWO peanut butter sandwiches ….

We had a great day at our first Obedience 2 class on Saturday. It is a very small class — only 4 dogs, and two trainers! It’s almost like getting a personal training session. Ziva did really well with the new commands we’re learning: verbal and visual cues for sit and down, and for “watch me.” Previously we just did sit and down with leash pressure, but she picked up on the verbal cues very quickly. She also did really well with “Watch me,” which is something that had been suggested to us at the very beginning of her days with us as a way to get her to stop paying attention to other dogs. It was never successful then, and low these many months later we know that would never have worked with her adrenaline so high. So it’s really a case of understanding each dog’s personality and temperament, and knowing what will work, when — and what won’t. I guess there are levels of dog reactiveness? And if you have one at the level of Ziva when we got her, you need someone who specializes in it, not just someone who kind of just does it along with a lot of other things.

I also learned something new about dog communication on Saturday. Most of the other dogs in this class were in Obedience 1 with us, and Ziva knows them and doesn’t react when she sees them. We don’t do leash greetings in class, but we sit or stand just a few feet apart, and after having done 30 minutes of Pack to Basics, and an hour of Behavior Modification, Ziva has been just fine to ignore the other dogs lying a few feet away. So I was really taken off guard when she suddenly started barking and pulling on the leash towards Lucy Lu, a dog with whom she had been very friendly for the past 7 weeks.

Lucy Lu is young — only about 8 months old — large, white and fluffy. I knew her breed at some point, but I’ve forgotten. I just tried to google that up, as my 93-year old Dad would say, but am not coming up with the right breed. She has long, white, shaggy fur and looks kind of like an all white English Sheepdog. Except she’s not, and she also didn’t have long shaggy fur on Saturday, because she had been to the groomer. She had very short hair, and a little pompom at the tip of her tail, which was kind freaking Ziva out. My first thought was: “Why wouldn’t she recognize this was Lucy Lu? She knows her smell.” But the trainer explained that it wasn’t that she didn’t recognize her, it was that she didn’t know how to read that tail! It was only then that I noticed that the poof of hair at the tip was bobbing all around. Of course Ziva got stressed, and of course her initial reaction was to get excited.

So that was definitely a “teachable moment” — for me! I was being pretty relaxed, not really being aware of the dog near me, because Ziva “knew” her. But I really needed to be aware of the environment there as well, which on this day included Lucy Lu’s tail.

But once we got Ziva settled back down again, class went off perfectly. So much so that I decided to take Ziva in to the offie with me on Monday. I’m trying to get her into as many new environments as I can, all the time working on our leash work and our relaxation methods. Monday July 3rd was pretty dead in my office, since so many folks opted for an extra long weekend with the 4th of July holiday on Tuesday. I had gotten my boss’s okay to bring in Ziva, and made sure it was also okay with my colleagues, since we now work in a totally open office space. There would only be 4 of us on Monday in this large room, but we do try to be respectful of each other in there. They all said “Bring her in!” So I did.

Ziva lies on the office floor, panting Well, she did okay. We only lasted about 4 hours, but that was kinda what I expected. It was a very hot day, and we went on a very long walk before we got to the office, but she was still pretty excited to be in a new place. I brought lots of things from home, like a blanket for her to lie on, but as you can see from the picture, she didn’t lie on it. She also was not very interested in her usual bully sticks. She would lie down for a few minutes, and then she would start whining. I also brought in the nose work equipment, and we entertained everyone a few times by doing “Find.” She did better than I expected, to be honest! It just wasn’t enough to wear out her brain. But, she did cheer up a lot of people who were working in an office when most of their friends were at the beach or by the pool! She’s a long way from being a “therapy” dog, since although she loves to meet new people, one stroke from a new person sets her into a joyful squirm. But that’s just who she is right now. And I love her for it.

And all of these new adventures and experiences help to make her more relaxed at home, as well. I know that as time goes on, she will be able to expand her relaxation to new places. But for now, well, remember in the early posts when I wrote about how she would scare the bejeesus out of the cats because she would race towards them? Well, The cats definitely approve of the “new and improved” version of Ziva, even if she’s not sure what’s going on with them:

Ziva on the couch with a cat on her back

Juliet is the shyer, more skittish one of the two cats. But when Ziva is calm, she loves to come over and rub against her.

Hitting the wall

Posted on June 30, 2017 by upwarddogmom

In the weeks since we finished Obedience 1 Class, it’s felt a little bit like we hit a plateau. Going on our walks, Ziva seemed to consistently challenge the “With me” command, constantly trying to walk ahead of me rather than by my side. We have a neighbor up the street with a couple of dogs who sometimes bark from behind a wooden privacy fence, and that has set her off at the start of walks so that she doesn’t seem to be able to keep herself under control. It had started to feel like we just can’t get past this challenge.

Neighborhood walks have also become a little stressful since one of our little canine friends, Peggy, was attacked by a loose dog while on her walk. Peggy was fortunately only bruised, and the loose dog was collected by animal control. But it made me nervous, and I started carrying a stick with me. I should probably still carry it, but I found that I had too many things in my hands. I’ve just gotten to the point where I can hold the leash, put my hand in my pouch for treats, reach for the spray bottle of water/vinegar, and keep an eye out for dogs/squirrels/cats/bunnies. So then I started to feel stressed about not having a stick.

But yesterday we had just the best walk. It was short, but doing behavioral down Ziva calmed herself before we left the house, and immediately she sat down when we went out the front door. Then she did a very nice “With me” down the street, with just a few corrections. I kept telling her what a good girl she was, she kept glancing up at me, so then I kept giving her treats. It really was pretty much textbook good walking. And what made me even happier was how happy she seemed to be. Because sometimes she lets me know how frustrated she is that I’m not walking faster, or that I keep stopping to get her lined up beside me. (How? She talks to me! Or rather, she talks back to me. She definitely has that vocal German Shepherd gene in her mix.) But yesterday she just seemed so happy. So when we got back home, we played in the backyard for a long time, and she kept bringing the tennis ball to me — another new thing (usually she needs a lot of coaxing to bring it and drop it).

A tired dog is a good dog, and a good dog is a happy dog. Tomorrow we begin Obedience 2 classes, and while a few days I ago I was starting to feel a little stressed about it and thinking we’re not making any more progress, now I’m back to looking forward to learning new things with Ziva and helping her reach her full potential — whatever that may be! Maybe I was stressing her out, and then she was stressing me out, which then made me stress her out even more. But she can be such a big love bug, I really just need to breath deeply, and remember this face:

ZIva lying on the bed

Before we get too ahead of ourselves ….

Posted on June 23, 2017 by upwarddogmom

My original plan was to post about Ziva’s wonderful progress last week, graduating from Basic Obedience 1 and also getting a certificate for completing the Intro to Nosework class. And I’ll still get to that, but not before letting you know I was just reminded that, at somewhere around 18 months old, she still has a lot of puppy left in her. So when I was vacuuming, and she was being sooooooo good, I probably should have been suspicious. I thought she was just lying in her bed waiting for me to finish the hallway. But no, she had grabbed a baseball cap that I had found on the floor of the hall closet. In my mission to finish vacuuming I tossed the cap next to me when I found it, rather than putting it back on the shelf where it belonged. And at some point Queen Z came up beside me, took the cap, and proceeded to give it an “extra” distressed look:

A yellow baseball cap that has been chewed on the bill It’s been a while since she chewed anything, so I guess I had this coming. (I still need to catch you up on “What Ziva Ate While Her Moms Were in Scotland,” but that’s an entirely separate post!)

So yes, it’s stops and starts. But mostly starts. And with the starts come milestones like this one:

Ziva lying down behind her Obedience certificate And this one:

Ziva's certificate if Achievement for completing Nosework class Just the fact that Ziva could be in a room full of strange dogs long enough to complete these classes still amazes me. She still has her moments, of course. During the final Obedience class we somehow ended up being positioned between the two most restless dogs in the class, and Ziva struggled at times to ignore them. But working as a team, we got through it. And if you can read the tagline on these certificates, it reads “Obedience through relationship.” What I have learned in the past 8 months is not just how to train my dog but how to read my dog. So, at the beginning of the class, when I realized who we had on either side of us, I certainly had a moment of “oh no!” But the difference between now and 8 months ago is that I felt confident that I could anticipate a problem before it happened. And when Ziva started to pay too much attention to one of these dogs, I took her a couple of steps away and redirected her and had her lie down back in the original spot. And at this point, that is all she needs. But we have to work together on this. I have to anticipate, and she has to obey.

In a week we start Basic Obedience 2. I cannot wait!

Plenty of praise and payment

Posted on May 21, 2017 by upwarddogmom

Whenever I tell someone that we’re not doing “purely positive” training with Ziva, I’m always afraid it sounds like we’re being really mean. But the truth is that she gets more praise and reward than any animal I have ever had, because we are spending so much more time consciously training her than any animal I have ever had.

During the 7 weeks that we are in Basic Obedience 101 class, we’re feeding Ziva her morning and evening meals from our hand. She gets food when she looks at me. She also gets tons of crazy praise. Because when we are trying to reinforce positive behaviors, the praise needs to be effusive — consider this: You finish a project at work and your boss notices. But she says “Oh. Thanks” rather than “Fantastic job! You’re awesome. Well done!” Obviously as silly as it may sound, the second version is more meaningful to you. Same thing here. Here’s a quick video of me feeding Ziva this way. Thankfully we’re only doing this for 7 weeks, because it is pretty time consuming. I thought I was doing enough by having Ziva wait for a minute after I placed her food bowl down, but our trainer said (to the class in general, because I guess this must be a common misconception), “Making your dog wait 1 minute for an entire bowl of food is not making her work for it. That’s like telling you to sit still and you’ll get a million dollars. That’s what a bowl of food is worth to your dog.”

I won’t lie and tell you that we do this for every single meal. Life happens, and sometimes I’m in a rush to get out the door, and I do put her food in the bowl. But I would say about 90% of the time we do the hand feeding right now. Here’s a quick video:

What kept us going

Posted on May 18, 2017 by upwarddogmom

Reading that first post, you might reasonably surmise that we had lost our minds. I can just hear some readers muttering “That’s just crazy. Why didn’t they just give the dog back?” Well, maybe it was the sad story of how she was almost euthanized. But mostly, it was because even through all the ramped up energy, she showed us again and again how smart and trainable she was. I have never met a dog who looked so deeply at me and seemed to be waiting for me to tell it what to do. We believed she could be trained to be a better companion, but just felt completely overwhelmed and out of our depth. And the days started to get slightly better as Ziva began to understand our routine of daily life. She began to see that yes, we left her in the house, but yes, we always came back. We always used the same phrase:

Ziva is on the couch sleeping with her head resting on a blue scarf

I managed to go on a quick trip to the grocery store, and when I got back and she settled down again, I realized Ziva had dragged my scarf to the sofa while I was gone. She didn’t chew it, but seemed to take good care of it.

“You stay here and take care of the house,”

and she started to be less manic when we left. It still took time time for her settle down when we returned home, but she would turn it down for short periods of time.

So those moments kept us going. She would sit on command but it was all she could do to stay still. We kept trying to walk her but it was so incredibly difficult to see another dog, or even other people. She would bounce as if she had springs in her legs and jump on anyone she met. The cats were still in hiding, mostly, slinking down the hallway when she finally closed her eyes, because if Ziva saw either one on the other side of the baby gate she would launch herself in their direction. As Zeke, the bolder cat, began to stand his ground a little bit more each time, we saw that Ziva was not in “prey mode,” but was just so freaking excited to see the cats that it was entirely overwhelming. These bits of progress, and the insight into her spirit when she finally settled down at night kept us going through the all the madness. She destroyed several t.v. remotes, a cell phone screen, and too many random things in the living room to count. She was wired and she was bored — until she crashed at night. She still slept in a crate in our bedroom at night, and went in quite willingly. She usually settled down once the lights were out and slept all night. This gave the cats the freedom to roam the house at night, and I think it gave them the confidence to stand up to Ziva over time.

Ziva lies on the bed with her head tilted back To the question of “Why didn’t they just give the dog back?” That just really never entered my mind. If we also had children, or different jobs that took all our time, maybe we would have considered this option. But she just won our hearts, and despite a few stressed out conversations, it never got to “It’s me or the dog” because, well, belly rubs. Belly rubs are Ziva’s kryptonite.

We agreed to try a new trainer and see if we could get a handle on what was going on, and get Ziva to reach the occasional moments when she could just “chill.” After doing a little more research on the suggestions from the rescue group, I called one of the trainers, described the situation, and signed up for Basic Obedience 101. It went … not smoothly.

To be continued …