Muffit and Tatum love to play. Sometimes Tatum overdoes it and Muffit wants to go hide, though…
But if Muffit hides in the crate, Tatum just follows him in!
Give that girl a cigarette!
PlayTag Archives
WW – Can’t Stop Playing
Making The Bed Is Hard
Sometimes making the bed is just a hard thing to do. Especially with these three helpers. They mean well… okay, they mean to play. 
But they are sweet and very much fun, they make bed making quite exciting!
With these three helpers I sure don’t need any alcohol rehab to get me through the day.. but I might need dog rehab. LOL.
Unfortunately Tatum now thinks that making the bed is a cue to play. But I can’t resist her, and then can’t resist the rest of the dogs joining in. Sometimes all six dogs are on the bed playing. I just have to scoot them all out into the hallway and close the door in order to actually do any bed making, but it’s fun, nonetheless!
DOCNA Agility This Weekend
Well, I think I’m deciding to take Muffit with tomorrow to agility. It’s DOCNA, will be laid back, he’ll get some good exposure, and if he gets stressed I will call my husband to come and get him. I love this picture of Muffit and Tatum running in the back yard.
It’s going to be a long weekend with a couple of long days. Now I’m thinking I should have entered only one day instead of both. I am going to be doing a lot of AKC and USDAA trials this year, and flyball tournaments, and so I am going to have to cut back on the other venues. I do like DOCNA, though. It’s a lot of fun and they have good courses. And I use it for training… and the dogs just have fun. So we’ll see how it goes.
Always Snag a Training Opportunity
I’m working from home today.. sitting on the couch upstairs, doing my thing.. and the Husband comes up from the basement and plops Tatum, and her toy, into the living room and closes the baby gate.
The rest of the dogs are snoozing comfortably, but not our crazy Tatum Tot girl. Nope.. she starts whipping the toy around, killing it, and running around the front room.
Well.. it’s just about break time right? And it’s always a good idea to snag a training opportunity!
Tatum is not too hot on toys so, I think, I gotta encourage this. And none of the other dogs are playing with her… so I gotta encourage her playing with me. So I set the laptop down and get on the floor with her. She loves it when I drag the toy around and she chases it… so we did that. And she got a hold of the knot in the middle (it’s a rope toy) and gave me a good game of tug! This is great! She is not a big tugger though she has the potential to be. So we tugged and chased… then went in the bedroom for some more, and she got all squiggly and runny so we went into the back yard and ran around there too for a while!
I do want to grab any opportunity I can to get her to play tug with a toy. And a real dog toy.. not my clothes or hands or plastic bottles or any other thing that she really shouldn’t have. And so I think it was a success!
Now back to work… oh I’d rather play with Tatum some more!
Fortunately we have no mesothelioma here so we can just keep playing!
Angel and Tatum
Is this the cutest picture or what? Okay maybe not in the whole entire world, but still I love it. Tatum loves to play. Angel loves to play too, but since she’s been getting older she’s been slowing down so she doesn’t run around like she used to. But she still likes to play and I caught this shot of them playing in the back yard. No office furniture to jump around in the yard! Though I’m sure Tatum would chew it up if it were out there.
Anyway… today it’s gorgeous outside, sunshine, and hopefully it’ll get up into the 50s. Me, Chase, Tatum and Muffit are going to go out to flyball practice in a bit. I can’t wait to see how Muffit does with the people and dogs. I hope he’s okay!
Oh and did I mention I got a free foldable wire dog crate on Friday? My friends and I went to lunch and on the way back we drove by a yard with some stuff out front, one was a dog crate. We stopped, and there was a big FREE sign on it! I was thrilled. It’s even a double door, which I love! And the perfect size for Muffit. Even Tatum fits in it fine.
I love free!
Beautiful Lucy
Lucy is our beautiful smooth collie girl. She does seem to be slowing down… with her cancer diagnosis and all. But she got to chew on a Kong a lot today, and carry it around and guard it, and guarding is one of her favorite things. Though she doesn’t like it quite as much as Levi does.
Lucy is doing okay. I watch her closely now and I think that her low energy is because of her cancer. But my husband says she is still the same. I just wonder. I worry about her every day. Monday I am taking her to the holistic vet to see what she can do, if anything, and get her opinion.
The rest of the dogs are doing well. I took Muffit and Tatum to Sugarhouse Park today for a walk. I haven’t taken Muffit out until now because he was sick. He’s done with his meds now and he is much happier, he is even enticing Tatum to play. He wants to play with Chase, too, but Chase isn’t ready yet. Having yet another new dog in the house has thrown Chase out of whack, but Chase is doing well and he hasn’t instigated any fights, which is nice. And we are helping him and making the other dogs respect his space, which is good and will help Chase adjust.
I’m please to say that Muffit ignored the people we walked by, sniffed everything, and seemed very well adjusted.
Fortunately we don’t need any eca stack around here to lose weight, but I am cutting down Tony’s food as he is a bit chubby now. And Muffit gets a lot to eat, since he is still too skinny.
Muffit is Better
Well good news, after a couple of days on the new meds Muffit is much better already. His breathing sounds clear, no more snuffling and no more major green nasal discharge! Yay! He is eating well, and starting to play, too. Still a bit low on energy but that will come.
I’ve started him on the clicker and he doesn’t quite understand yet, but he will soon. We’ll start with what he knows, sits and downs, and add the mat work. Tatum really liked starting with the Mat.
So the days go by, we wonder what to feel and do about Lucy, and we just plug along.
Shaping with the Clicker
One of the core training techniques with clicker training is called shaping, or free shaping. There is also micro-shaping which is amazing to watch, and the clicker expo had a presenter… Alexandra Kurland who clicks with horses. And in a nutshell, she shapes the horses to carry their bodies, with a rider, so that their heads are down and their balances is better so that they will not damage their spines.
My definition of shaping is something like this: you watch a dog, and when she does something you want, you click. So if you want to shape a turn to the left (this is in the clicker books, I think) if the dog even slightly moves her head to the left, or even looks to the left, you click and treat. The dog will then be wondering what caused that click, and will move around trying different things. This dog will need to be clicker savvy first, though, and throw out behaviors to see what gets the reward.
Eventually the dog will figure out that turning her head to the left gets a click and treat. Then you up the ante, you stop clicking the head moving to the left, and the dog will try more, and move to the left, maybe even step, and you click treat that.
That is basically what shaping is. Micro-shaping would be clicking the slightest muscle movement, or twitch, on the dog’s left side.
This can take a long time in the beginning and takes a lot of patience. In example, Tatum is not a big offerer of behavior. Lucy, Levi and Chase dance all over the place wondering what it is I want from them and will mark. Tatum isn’t that savvy yet. But I had a perch box out today, and when she would sniff the box, I would click and throw a treat on it.
What I eventually want of her is to stand on the box with her front feet, and move her back end around it. But we start very, very slow. Eventually she put one foot on the box, yay! That is what I wanted, so click and treat. I pushed her off in play to get her drive up, and she came right back, put one foot up… click treat.. she put the other foot up… click treat! We were getting there!
Tatum is not very animated, so with micro-shaping what I need to do with her is just click any movement. To get her used to offering. So if she is just standing there, and I am just sitting there waiting for her to do something, if she moves her head or nose or muscle, I click and treat, to get that movement going.
This is the beginning. You can get a dog to do a perfect heel pattern as you move along with clicker training. Amazing stuff! And I did have to see it in action to really understand it! You increase with small steps. The more clicker savvy the dog becomes, the more behaviors the dog offers, the faster it goes.
And it is amazing to watch the process. Amazing!
