Tandem Walking

I would really like to eventually be able to walk all three dogs at the same time, in an orderly and calm manner. First I'm working on teaching them to walk in pairs, and today I worked with Bibb and Lily.

I don't have a split leash, so I experimented with different ways of holding two leashes. It seemed to work the best to have Lily on the outside, since Bibb wants to get closer to me when he's unsure about things. I had to play a bit with leash configuration, but I finally settled on running Bibb's leash through Lily's collar (they all wear martingales), so that I could control how close they were to each other with one hand, and control Lily with the other hand. We walked several ovals in the alley to try it out. It's definitely going to take some work to teach them to walk together, but there were some stretches where they did really well. It was also awesome to stop and have them both sit automatically and right next to each other. Hopefully, the Netta/Bibb pair will work out as well. I'm not even going to attempt the Netta/Lily pair until both of them are working well with Bibb.

Training Schedules

Although there has been some training that I haven't blogged about, the truth is that I've been much too lax in working with the dogs for the last few months. Ideally, I would work with each of them every day, but in the failure to meet that goal I haven't worked with any of them. So I've decided to schedule one dog per day, so that at least they each get worked with twice a week.

Monday: Netta
Tuesday: Lily
Wednesday: Bibb
Thursday: Netta
Friday: Lily
Saturday: Bibb
Sunday: Free

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Today I worked with Lily. She remembered walking figure-eights and other patterns, and it didn't take her too long to be paying attention to me. We didn't work on anything else.

Lily's Conformation Photos, Session 1

Lily had an advantage over the other dogs since I've worked on the stand with her before. Even so, I was impressed by how well she did. I placed her feet and then she stood completely still, even without holding treats in front of her nose. Her alert expression is great!



With her, I mostly just need to work on getting myself out of the picture, and providing better lighting and background.

Busy Busy

I had family visit last weekend, so between preparing for that and then recovering afterward, I haven't done much training. There certainly wasn't time to work on loose leash walking, but I did work in some clicker training during feeding time.

It just takes a few minutes per dog to use part of a meal as rewards for clicker training. It adds up pretty quickly, especially if you do it every day.

I've been working on the down with all of the dogs. With Lily, I had already captured the behavior previously (taking her into a small room, letting her get bored, and clicking any time she lay down). It's now one of the behaviors she tries when trying to figure out what will get a click. Now I'm working on attaching the cue "down" to the behavior.

Since Netta hadn't already learned that lying down was a behavior that could get her a click, I used luring to teach it to her. I held a treat over her head until she sat, and then moved it towards the ground to encourage her to lie down. Well, that's how it's supposed to work, but I've never had a dog actually lie down on the first try. Instead, I used shaping in addition to luring. So, at first, all she had to do was tilt her head down a bit when the treat went by, and I clicked her for it. I gradually required more and more movement, until finally she was lying down every time I put my hand on the ground. I got this far in a single lesson that was less than five minutes long. Now I'm working on fading the hand signal, with the eventual goal that she'll lie down with just a small gesture. After that, I'll add the verbal cue.

One really nice result of this training is that when I go out to visit Netta, often she will lie down instead of jumping all over me. I make sure to always give her extra attention if she sits or lies down, and ignore her if she jumps up.

Bibb is less food motivated than the girls, but he loves petting even more than Netta, if that's possible. So he gets pets as well as food as a reward. I did the luring and shaping the down with him, too, although in his case it only took a couple of repetitions before he was throwing himself to the ground before I could even start to lure. He's a very quick study, and the easiest dog I've ever worked with.

Ovals Not Enough

Lily is far more intense than the other dogs, and she has many years of practicing bad habits on leash, so I expected the circuit work to go slower with her. We've been working on it for about two weeks, and it really hasn't done much to calm her. She has a very tough neck, and hardly seems to notice that the leash is tight most of the time. I noticed today that she always forged ahead at the same place on the oval, despite walking mostly on a loose leash for the rest of it. That's when I realized that she's merely practicing bad habits on the oval, and if I keep doing everything the same she's not going to get any better. So I switched to figure-eights, still in the same area. I focused on walking my pattern, not on Lily, so I tripped over her a few times. It didn't take long for her to be paying more attention to me than she ever has. Even when I went back to the oval pattern for a few rounds, she stayed intent on staying by my side. I stopped after a few rounds, because I wanted to end on a high note.

In hindsight, I should have figured this out earlier. She's a herding breed, and needs far more to keep her mind occupied than most dogs. I'll keep doing interesting patterns for the next several training sessions, and see how that translates into general loose leash walking for her.

Meet Lily

Lily is a five-year-old Australian Cattle Dog, or so her former owners claimed. She has a lighter build than the show ACDs, but perhaps she's from the unregistered lines that were heavily imported to the United States. Or maybe she's just a mutt.

When she was three, Lily's owners decided to sell her for $50 because they were moving out of state and didn't want to take her. She had no formal training, but they had managed to instill a pretty good recall. They had tried to breed her a few times, but it was never successfull. I had her spayed soon after buying her.

Lily is energetic with a strong prey drive. The day after I got her, she flushed a deer in the woods and tore the leash right out of my hands to chase it. Several minutes later I managed to work my way ahead of their path, and she was still hot on the heels of that deer. Fortunately, Lily was tired enough that I was able to catch her.

Current Training
She has learned sit, stay, and crate training thoroughly. Her recall is generally excellent, unless she is in prey mode. Her biggest challenge is loose leash walking. I have tried several different methods, but so far none of them have made much difference.

Training Goals

My big goal is to get her consistently walking on a loose leash. Secondary goals are to get her reliable on stay, come, and down, so that she can be evaluated for herding training. In the long term, I would like to train her in either herding or tracking.