New Sue Ailsby books (yay!!!), and training on a roll

4 months 3 weeks 1 day old

So after many many months of impatiently waiting, I have finally received Sue Ailsby's Training Levels: Steps to Success and so far am very very happy with the two books. They come some 10 years after she wrote the original Training Levels (which are available free online here), and while in many respects they are similar to the originals, there are some big changes and improvements. One of the main changes is instead of the 7 levels of the original Levels, there are now only 4 in the new books. The books are divided into Level 1-2 and 3-4, and are quite small (would likely fit into my handbag which is nice) and are ringbound, which means they stay open when you want them to - great for referring to whilst training. The one trade off with the small size of the book is a slightly smaller font, about which there has been a small amount of complaint. I can just manage it, but I could see reading for hours would give me a headache. Sue is currently working on bringing it out on Kindle, which will help older eyes and those with visual impairments.

The first book of the two books by Sue Ailsby.
Her current dog Syn is on the cover, the photo
from when she was just a tiny puppy. I must admit,
despite the work involved, I miss those first couple
weeks of tiny fluffy puppy-ness.

I read my way carefully through all the introduction stuff - all quite different from the introduction into the original levels. There is so much important information on dog training there to remember, it's a goldmine. One of the most important things she says is...

"Train the dog that shows up", ie, don't waste time worrying that the dog is doing everything wrong, or is completely hyper, or isn't interested in the silly retrieving game you keep wanting to play with them..... just get on with accepting the dog that is in front of you at that very moment, and work with what they bring to the training sessions.

So I'm thrilled about the new books. I quickly went through Level 1 of the New Levels (NL), and apart from some of what are called the comeafters, which are kind of like bonus points and extra proofing, we passed it all fine - although we do have some occasional barking problems with zen. The books are written with such humor and understanding of the subject matter, I can understand now why they were such a huge job for Sue. She has poured her heart into those books. For anyone who wants to take their dogs into dogsports, or as a working dog, or just as a pleasant pet... the books are a truly excellent choice for an operant conditioning based training system.

I then moved ahead and trained what I had been intending to train next in the Original Levels (OL), a behaviour called 'distance'. This is where the dog goes out from your side, circles around some sort of post/pole/object, then comes back to you. I decided to add a traditional finish to it too, so I taught that myself, which was incredibly easy. Distance too was so very easy. After the much harder 'Under' cue we have been working on, this was taught in a matter of minutes. I was pretty thrilled, I have to say. Knightley is really starting to understand what I want from him, and is enjoying the training. Also, learning new things seems to really tire him out, so that's a good bonus!

The barking issues are continuing still, sigh, but I have decided to put him in his fabric crate in another room when he can't be quiet when my husband and I are eating in the same room as him. Hopefully he might learn. Either way, it means that it reduces his overall barking, and the less he barks, the less he will bark. He even barks when we are doing some shaping work, and I don't click when he expects a click. His barks are so often from frustration and a desire for attention. In the shaping situation he does stop barking fairly quickly and work out what he needs to do to get another click. I wish he shut up in the other situations, but he seems to get something out of barking. It definitely is true when they say most barking is self-reinforcing!

Still, despite the barking, some leash biting, and some rough mouthing when excited, he is doing very well and starting to learn like a sponge. I am proud of my puppy!

Is your puppy biting, nipping or mouthing?

11 weeks 5 days old

So this will just be a fairly quick one. It's a crazy time at night as I just got up to take Knightley out to go "looloo" which is the cue I am training for him to do his number 1. I think we are close to him being able to comfortably sleep through the night though, so that'll be nice for me.                                                            

Anyway, I said I would write a post on puppy nipping, as we have virtually completely eradicated it, after dealing with a very very nippy puppy for a few weeks. As Knightley is a Golden Retriever he is genetically predisposed to want to have things in his mouth - something that is great for his future career as a assistance dog, but not so great for while he is a puppy and those things are our hands and clothes!

We tried the high pitched "owww!" method and then ignored when he nipped, it may have worked briefly, but eventually if anything he found it exciting. Walking away didn't work - he would follow biting at our ankles and jeans, making more holes in them. We tried putting him in his exercise pen when he got nippy to calm down, but as soon as we let him out he would get back to eating us. I tried shaping him not to eat me, but the success of that wasn't helped by the fact he is not a food motivated dog. So we had tried many of the accepted techniques with no success.

Then I decided to try the tether method. When he started nipping painfully I took him to a tether point (a cheap but strong leash attached to a strong anchor point, in this case the baby/pet gate, impossible for him to pull down). I had his favourite treats, some roast chicken. I stroked him everywhere, around his face, collar, everything. Of course, very quickly he started nipping. As soon as I felt painful tooth contact I quietly said "Ah!" and quickly walked away about 3 metres where I stood facing away from him. I paused for maybe 5 seconds, then returned, and continued praising him and feeding him bits of chicken so long as there was no painful tooth contact. As soon as there was, I repeated it. I then worked on touching his ears, feet, mouth area... everywhere that is usually touchy. Then I started dangling my sleeves, jean legs... anything that would usually tempt him and doing the same thing.

Over about 5 days of doing 3 short sessions daily there was a huge huge change. The biggest change was in those first sessions, I could see him get the message so quickly. I found everyone in the family needs to do this for him to get the message that no nipping is a universal requirement. He still does it a bit when really excited... but he was like nipping 95% of the time you tried to touch his mouth area or collar and it's maybe 5% now. A huge difference.

He was still grabbing his leash occasionally, despite me doing the same thing with his leash.... so on the advice of the guy at his recent puppy pre-school (will post about that too soon!) I put some bug repellant spray on it. There has been one bite since! I feel a bit bad I wasn't able to stop it with more positive methods, but at least it wasn't aversive *coming from me*, which is what matters to me personally. If he doesn't associate it with me, our relationship is intact.

Anyway, if you are having puppy nipping problems, give this tether technique a go. I still put him in his exercise pen to calm down if he gets excited and I think he may start to want to nip. It is best to avoid a nipping mindset if you can, that way he will learn faster that human skin is delicate. Oh - and make sure you have lots of dog toys around, sometimes when he's being a bit of a pain all he needs is some exercise with a good play. Practice training him via the tether, have calm down times to avoid those nipping moods, and have play times to burn excess energy and you can avoid the worst of puppy nipping - trust me! It's certainly worth the work. Those puppy teeth sure are sharp!!!