Cabin Fever Is Here Again

Now I remember why I remodeled the basement - winter is nasty.  It's dark, all the time.  It's wet, all the time.  It's cold and wet and dark.  I would like to see the sun again!  It's dark when I go to work and dark when I get home and then it gets darker.  It has rained/drizzled for days and days.  I can't remember how long!  That's a long time.  

So it was good to get out of the house tonight with Dhali and go shopping at Runnings again.  We just wandered around and eventually bought some puppy food which conveniently was both on sale and something I needed to get.  Dhali was good, which I sort of just expect from him now.  He got to meet some people, a man and woman that asked to pet him.  He was soooo good.  He sits right down and snuggles up to them and then he wanted them to rub his belly.  He thought the man's cowboy boots smelled really, really good.  LOL!  The check out girl remembered him from one of his first visits when he was a puppy.  They are pretty nice to us there :)  Some of the customers are surprised to see a dog in the store - I had one weird reaction from a woman when Dhali was a tiny baby and I was carrying him, but the store employees are all pretty relaxed about seeing us in the store.

It was nice to be able to walk around in the light and not be rained on.  I am starting to feel like I live in a dark shoe box with two furry WWF fighters.  Bitey games are fun, but not when they go on for hours.  If you have somewhere to take your dog weekly and train - well you are lucky!   It's going to be a long winter of cabin fever for us.

In Runnings we did some 'look at that' Control Unleashed sort of stuff.  I don't really understand the whole game, but Dhali was looking at weird stuff and then I would say, 'yes!' and give him a treat.  Then he was offering looking at weird stuff (tractor parts, chicken feeders, hoses, other farm stuff that I don't recognize) to get his treat, so I think he is starting to understand the game.  We've worked on the beginning steps at home, which are sort of boring and Dhali gets too into it and wants to run at the object or do something like hit it with his paw. 

I made the mistake of wandering into the brush department.  Dhali LOVES brushes, brooms, sweepers, anything with bristles.  He was trying to pick out his favorite one and then he found one he liked and tried to carry it away!  I would have bought it, but it was almost $20 and he has a ton of toys already.  I would like to find a cheaper one, that he likes, to use as a playtime/training toy.  Also, a smaller one would be good too :P

One thing that is good about the rain and mud - Dhali has learned to wait.  I taught him the same way I taught Tibby (and she has a pretty good wait).  After he gets his paws washed off in the bathtub I let him jump out and then I dry him off.  Then he has to wait while I open the door, shut off the light, walk out of the door and walk around the corner.  Then I come back and release him with 'okay'.  He runs out of the bathroom like a shot!  Very cute.  We worked up to all those steps - he gets his feet washed a lot, so lots of practice!  The next step is to lengthen the time I'm out of sight and then I come back and leave and come back and leave - 'ya know proofing stuff.  He's generalized this to other things too - like waiting while Catty drinks her milk snack and then getting released to clean up after her.  

I was drying his feet tonight after a wash off and a tooth popped out of his mouth!  It was a big side tooth.  It just shot right out on to the floor!  His canines are still all there and I wish they would fall out already!  They look so weird.  He doesn't seem to be bothered by his teeth at all - chews bully sticks, bites on Tibby and tugs the same.  I try to be careful when we are playing that the toy doesn't get caught on his teeth.  I don't want him to stop tugging or associate pain with tugging!  

Happy Rad Tech week!  I celebrated with my co-workers today and we had a potluck.  I brought Cha Siu Bao - Chinese barbecued pork.  It cooked slowly all last night and the puppies thought they needed to check on it multiple times during the night.  I swear, Dhali woke me up and I let him out of the bedroom and he ran directly to the oven and stared at it.  I also made the regular recipe for the buns, but I pretzel-ized them.  OMG!  I love pretzel buns now and they are so easy to make!

This time next month we will be getting ready for Dhali's first real dog show!  Very exciting!  If you are in St. Cloud Dec. 8th or 9th come and visit us!    

Chase Game!

I thought you might like to see how we play chase.  This is Tibby's favorite game!  Just playing the video gets her excited LOL!!  It's pretty hard to run faster than Tibby :)

Falling From Heaven

I'm trying something new with Tibby's crate training.  We've done Crate Games and that didn't give me the results that I wanted.  As Loretta and Silvia and all the smart people say, "You have to have something to control, before you can control it."  Or something like that!!

What I want - my Long Term Goal:  Tibby will relax in her crate while I walk a course.

So I want her to LOVE her crate.  So I started thinking - how can I make her love her crate?  Well, why should she love her crate?  I would need to create an amazing record of rewarding in her crate.  The crate should be a place that rains treats!  A magical place!

So this is the set up - Manners Minder on top of the crate.  Covered crate - because I don't want her to depend on me for the rewards or my location.  I want her to ignore me.  Right now when she is in the crate, she gets excited and looks to me for her reward.  Well, why wouldn't she?  That's how we have always played the game! 

The biggest problem we have is when I walk away from the crate.  Tibby gets UPSET.  I guess I would get upset if someone walked away with my paycheck and I didn't understand why.  Now if they walked away and left me with a lotto machine that was spitting out quarters, I might not be so upset.  'Cause hey! I might win big!

So anyway.  Right now I have the door open.  Tibby can choose to go in or not.  She can choose to stay in or not.  I walk around doing stuff around the house, going into another room, ect. and so far she doesn't care what I do.  She likes the Manners Minder ;) 

I have been slowly adding duration i.e. waiting longer between button pushes and random times.  The hard part now is - When to start closing the door?  AND  Now how do I get her out of the crate - to end a training session?  I don't want her to have access to THIS crate all the time, because what if she goes in and I'm not paying attention/not home and she doesn't get rewarded?  I think this would dilute the crate's reward power.   Do I just call her out of it and go play?  Or stop rewarding and wait until she comes out?

I am open to ideas and suggestions!

Waiting.  I'm giving her a mixture of cooked hotdogs and sausages with kibble mixed in.  I use the kibble so I know when a reward falls out.  It goes clink, clink, but hotdogs are silent.

"Oh magical treat maker, make treats rain on me!"

"Hey!  It worked!"

"Again?"

Tibby and Catty Crate Games

One of the games in our Recallers course is Crate Games.  I have been having a problem with Tibby chasing after Catty all the time when we are training.  She gets excited and takes it out on Catty.  Chasing her, rolling her over, mouthing her head.  If you were getting that kind of treatment would you keep coming around?  Catty does.  She won't leave us alone!!!  Catty follows us where ever we are training.  So great.  A distraction.  Trying to work through that. 

Here is a little clip of our crate games.  I made a whole bunch of mistakes, but that's part of the learning process, I guess.  Hope you guys find it more interesting than the Recallers people did.

My finally solution for Catty is to keep her in the crate while we are training.  She seems happy in there as long as she can watch us.  And this way she doesn't get mauled when Tibby is excited.  I put some treats into the crate for Catty, but she didn't eat them.  She's not too 'smart'.  But I still love her.

Chicken Meet My Mouth!

Hollee Roller adventure continues.........

"Ah, I think I've got this!  Just a little fling to the left and all the chicken will be MINE!!!  Bwahhahhah!"

"Oooohh Nooo!"

"I see you chicken.  You can't hide down there forever."

"O yeah, this works much better.  munch, munch, slobber, lick, munch.  Mmmm chickie, yum."

O Hollee Roller

"Hollee Roller why won't you give me my chicken!?!  All day I have been waiting for my chicken...."

"Please?  A little help?  Human with fingers?  Help me...."

"Take that! *bite! bite!*"

"Cooooome back Hollee Roller!"

"I've got you now!  But you still have my chicken.  *sigh*  Now what?"

To be continued.......

Run and Skip (Jumps)

Tibby and I tried the the extension exercise on some land that my Dad owns. I would love to use it for agility, however I didn't realize 2 things 1 - My Dad took down part of the fence 2 - There are a lot of loose dogs around in this area. Apparently when you bring out a few jumps all the dogs come running. Nothing happened. I managed the environment and Tibby stuck with me.





In other news....I really like the Recallers course. Tibby is learning a ton and I think we are making a lot of progress. At least she thinks I have good treats. She's doing good with the crate on the road too - I took her to my parent's house tonight and she did great in the wire crate. She has the sitting to get the the door open down pat.

There are 2 other Tibetan Terriers in the Recallers course. I always like to see how other Tibetan Terriers train, because....well, TTs aren't like other dogs! It's nice to see your breed in a class learning the same things.


I had a really weird day at work (involving me calling a code for the 2nd time in my life and projectile vomit, not fun), so it was nice to spend time playing games with Tibby. I roped my Mom into playing the Call Once game and the Kids In the Hallway game with us. My Mom thinks it's so much fun. She likes to see Tibby learning things. :)

Recallers Course

I signed up for the Susan Garrett Recallers course.  So far I have been very impressed.  I signed up at the Brilliant level - my budget couldn't handle the Inner Circle ($1000+!!!!).  As it is, the dog walk will have to wait until spring.  BUT last night I had a great reminder of WHY I'm taking this course. 

Last night I was carrying in a big box with a new crate (so we could play crate games).  Tibby jumped over a baby gate, ran between my legs and out the door.  Then she dashed out the open garage door and onto the driveway.  I was very, very lucky that there weren't any dogs or people walking by.  I KNOW that she would have been gone in a second.  She was excited that I was home, so she did come back, but I could tell that she was looking around and thinking about running farther.  This is bad.  My house isn't very far from a street.  Not a busy street, but still dangerous.

I would rather pay to have Tibby learn a recall, than pay to have her fixed up if she gets hit by a car.  Or worse.

This is where we keep track of all our training.  I want to decorate it with some pictures of Tibby.  I'll show you when I get done with it.  I'm also printing out all of the games, so I can re-read them and take them on the road for practice.  It's only when I'm in the middle of a game that I have questions about it. 

The calendar where I'm keeping track of our training.  I know I can keep track of things with the 'big picture' in front of me.  I have a past history of not journaling very well, but I can do a calendar.

The course doesn't start until Monday, but there are pre-games to play. 

One of those games is crate games.

The new crate.  I took the crate pad out.  It was too fluffy for crate games.  I put the crate in the spare bed room, because there aren't as many distractions (and I had the space there).  I can't wait until the basement is done - all that beautiful space for running around.  It's SO CLOSE to being done......but not quite yet.  Although (totallya tangent) I learned how to take out a light fixture and change it out for a new one.  It's not that hard!

The treats I used for our first crate game.

Meatballs, kielbasa, ham, hot dog, cheese (dill jack, ooo fancy).

Susan said to use the highest value.  Here it is!

Tibby did AMAZING.  I can't wait to see how she does tomorrow.  We worked all the way through steps 1-3.  We only played for 30 mins (not 1 hour like the video says), because I felt like Tibby had eaten a lot of treats and she probably needed to get a drink.  I didn't want the treats to start to lose their value. 

I was surprised how well Tibby did with the crate games.  She went in the crate to start the game, stayed in the crate when she was supposed to and exited the crate when she was released.  She turned right around and went back into the crate.

I was especially amazed at how quickly and willingly she figured the game out, because her only other experiences with a wire crate have been very negative.  Wish I had known about crate games when I brought her home!  My vet told me to put Tibby in the crate, leave her there and wait until she stopped barking.  We tried that twice, but after 2 1/2 hours of her barking without stopping the first time and her peeing on herself/acting scared when I opened the crate door the 2nd time I didn't try crate training again.  The last time I put her in a wire crate was at a foundation agility class - she had a 'panic attack' - frantic clawing at the bars/shaking/barking/drooling.

I think the baby steps I've taken with the travel crate have probably helped. 

Later on I found her sitting in the crate (good girl!) and waiting to be released.  What a smart pup!!!

Ultimate Wobble Board

Tibby jumps up into the hammock when I'm rocking in it.  She does it all the time, but I've never been able to catch her doing it.  A few weeks ago I was picking up her toys and I threw her green tug into the hammock.  The next thing I knew Tibby was in the hammock too!  Then I had go get the camera and recreate it :-)  She likes her toys. She has pretty good balance!

Tennis Ball Training

Tibby has never loved tennis balls. They were one of the first toys I bought her, because my childhood dog, Jessie, always loved them and we had fun playing fetch together. However, Jessie was a senior rescue and she was never able to learn to fetch outside. I have been trying from day one with Tibby to do lots of fetching inside and outside. Of course, the weather hasn't cooperated. Remember winter? Maybe that's why Jessie never learned to fetch outside?

Anyway, up until the end of Jan. it didn't really matter if it was -30 or 75 degrees outside. Tibby didn't like tennis balls!! Ewwww they're fuzzy! Or maybe her mouth was too small? Well, now she likes them! Yay! I mean really how was she going to be a flyball dog if she couldn't fetch a tennis ball?!? Just kidding, the nearest flyball club/team is 3 hours away. Agility I will drive for. Flyball maybe not. I don't think Tibby could handle all the dogs running near her. But who knows? She surprises me all the time. Like now she loves tennis balls.

Video of Tibby 'fetching' tennis balls. Yeah we're working on that.....

Unrolling Rug Game

I saw this game on another bloggers post Champion of My Heart Treibball Basics and the video of the dogs at the Winter Treibball Games.  So that is what it is supposed to look like and here is how Tibby did with the game.  For the first one I was using sour cream and onion chips which apparently outrank turkey ham, which I used in the 2nd video.  She was eager to get the chips, but ho hum about the ham.  Funny girl.

1st attempt


2nd Attempt with a bigger rug.

Introducing Objects

Last night I wanted to train something new with Tibby, so I put different objects down on the floor and Tibby interacted with them.  Last night I used a green flower pot, a glass chicken and a big wooden chicken. 

  In Feb. I'm taking Tibby to get her pictures taken and I would like her to pose with different props.  My goal was to get Tibby to put both paws up on the green flower pot and then to have her bow.  In 3 sessions she got it.  I was surprised at how quickly Tibby can guess what I want. 

 Clicker training is amazing!

I made a video today of Tibby with the flower pot and also how she acts when I introduce a new object: a tea pot.  The tea pot was a challenge for her, because it made noise when she touched it.  I am trying to get her used to the idea of making noise. 

2nd Foundations Agility Class

Last weeks class was canceled because of snow, so this was our 2nd class.  It went by way too fast.
 First of all, we got lost on the way there- it was dark, snowy and my GPS obviously hates me.  We left at 4:45pm and got there at 6:32pm.  Class started at 6:30pm, but I was hoping to get there early so Tibby could calm down and get use to the space again.  Maybe at our next class.  
Everyone was practicing with their touch targets when we arrived.  Tibby is very good at this now.  I started treating her on the target last week.  She has started to paw and bow on the target.  She can find the target when it is more than 8 feet away and if the target is behind her.  One thing I wanted to ask in class and forgot to:  When you run with your dog toward the target and you are going to run past the target, but you want the dog to stop at the target, When do you say target?  When you start to run?  When you are close to the target?
Then we worked on having the dog go to the mat.  I started this a tiny bit with Tibby last week, so she did pretty good.  EVEN WITH ALL THE DISTRACTIONS!  Tibby gets distracted very easily.  My Mom says she has ADD.  She really likes people and dogs and oooo dirt and oooo lawn chairs and oooo more people and.....  Of course I get distracted easily too, so together well....there is a video this week that I'm not terribly excited to show off.
Then we worked on hand touches.  Tibby can do this, but she only wanted to do it for about 30 seconds.  So I had her do some of her tricks, take a bow, spin, high five.  Good proofing practice. 
Then we did the wobble board.  It was Tibby's first time on a wobble board, but she eats all of her meals on a rocker board, so the movement didn't scare her (too much). 
Then we did the Susan Garrett Ready 123 game.  Tibby was so happy - we got to RUN!  She did good with this game.  It only took her 2 or 3 times before she figured out: eye contact = run.  She wasn't interested in her toy or treats, so I rewarded with just running!
Then we did something which I didn't completely understand, because Bella's (the goldendoodle) Mom asked me if Tibby gets snow balls in her feet, while the instructor was explaining the game.  Argh!  I missed the instructions!  By the way, yes Tibby does get snowballs in her feet and I have started to spray a little Pam on her feet before we go on long hikes.  It seems to work.
The game was something about working the dog on both sides of your body and going through the uprights of a jump.

During the class, when the instructor was explaining something or another team was doing an exercise I worked with Tibby on eye contact, relaxing and doing her tricks.  It kept her occupied 78% of the time. I was very surprised with how much eye contact and concentration I got from her.  A bunch of times (for several minutes each time) she lay down at my feet with her back to the rest of the group.  And then she would stare at me.  Yay! 

I had fun and Tibby had fun.  She has a tummy full of hot dogs.  100% successful class!

Now the horrible video.  My Mom had the camera.  She couldn't tape when Tibby was doing her wobble board or when Tibby was concentrating on me - Nooooo she had to tape us with me zoned out and lost and Tibby wild and crazy.  I was trying to figure out what we were doing.  While also keeping Tibby moving and most importantly NOT letting her STOMP on the Papillons.  Why oh why couldn't she tape it when Tibby and I finally figured out what was going on and we went through the uprights!?!? 

Week One Progress
1st Foundations Agility Class