Training Azza (2)

Azza's free shaping is proceeding at a blistering pace.

Four days ago, I introduced her to a cardboard box. I managed to get her to sit on top of it.

Two days ago, I put the same box on the floor, but open side up. After many dozens of treats that rewarded the most minute of motions, she actually put her front paw in the box and held it there for a big jackpot.

That same night I introduced her to a metal 2x2 weave pole base. No poles, just the metal. She had to be lured the first couple of times but quickly figured out that I was rewarding her for walking over the metal bar. I threw the treats forward on the ground...amazingly, I had to show her the treats quite a few times at first because she wasn't used to this mode of reward.

Well, tonight we started with the 2x2 weave pole base with poles. Sure, I know that she is far too young to actually weave. But this dog needs to have these activities broken down into very small pieces. Besides, the metal and the plastic are the kinds of things that normally trigger her fear response. So the more time she spends being rewarded around them, the better.

In just half a dozen clicks, she was running through the poles to get a treat I threw forward on the ground, running back to me to set up again. Running! I managed to step back about three feet and she still ran through the poles away from me...the click only comes after she is through the poles and the treat is thrown forward of her head after the click. So she is performing a completely alien behavior around formerly scary things in anticipation of the reward that is to come. The power of positive training!

At one point I even nudged the metal base with my foot, causing it to make a scraping sound on the tile floor. A couple of days ago she would have run away from this new, scary noise. Tonight she ignored it and continued to play this fun game.

Just this alone would constitute a huge success in her training.

But there is more! I pulled the box out again and after perhaps 20 clicks, she actually put both front paws in it! This was accomplished by pure free shaping. I would reward her smallest paw lift, then paw touch on the edge, then paw movement towards the inside of the box, then paw landing inside the box. She was gaining confidence with each click and reward.

For the coup de grace, I cheated a bit and lured her, and she put all four paws in the box then sat down in it! Of course she got a huge jackpot and that was the end of that session.

Her loose lead behavior is coming along very nicely. We still struggle with recall in some contexts; in others, it is very quick and happy. She can calmly wait for treats while the other dogs get theirs first (she has to be reminded to "wait!" but she doesn't move a muscle!). She runs to the door when I pick up her collar and leash. Her "drop it!" still needs a hand on the scruff to remind her but she is getting faster and better at dropping the cherished item on her own (as opposed to my prying open her jaws and extracting it, which I am perfectly willing to do).

She's certainly a training challenge, and for that reason it is very satisfying to see her start to have a good time with the training. Work and play should become the same thing for her.

Blog News

What a milestone! I've had more than 10,000 page views on the blog! It's been about five years since I started it, but this has never been a high-volume site. The hits really started going up once I started posting about our agility classes. There are anomalies such as the 60 hits on my post on Ladies' Kingdom. I suspect that many of those hits are from web searches on that phrase, and my little essay is probably not what those folks expected. And I can't help but think that some of these hits are being made by people that lack the best intentions (Big Brother is always watching you in Saudi Arabia).

Anyway, here's a tip o' the fedora to the agility community!

Training Azza

Azza: I want that toy! Mimi: Get your own damn toy! Harry: ...zzzz....

 I've been focusing on recall and loose lead walking with Azza since those are things she will need all of her life. But Azza's training continues to get more complex as I discover things I like and don't like in her behavior.

Her housetraining is nearly complete although I don't let her spend too much time out of my sight. But that is for other reasons, not out of fear that she is going to pee on my expensive carpet. 

On the relatively benign side of things, Azza charges towards people who pass us on the golf course exercise path. It is 10 or 12 feet wide so she does make a clear effort to move towards them. I detect no aggression, only puppy exuberance. But that behavior is utterly incompatible with life in this camp (she jumps on the wrong Saudi and she's gone and perhaps me too). So I've been teaching her that as soon as we see someone coming within about 20 feet of us (from any direction), she is to come back and sit by my side, and hold the sit until released, while getting lots and lots of treats. I specifically try to treat her when she looks at the person then immediately looks back at me. She's getting really good at this and will quickly move from a position in front of me (where I prefer my dogs to walk) into a sitting heel position by my side (facing the same direction as me). Often the only command I have to give now is "Azza, come!" My goal is to eventually get her to continue to move past these walkers and runners but for now, having her sit is just fine.

Since she likes to tug, she needs to learn the rules of tug. They are three: I initiate and end the game. She doesn't grab the toy in my hand unless invited to do so. She drops the toy on command. Having a solid "drop it" has proven extremely useful with the terriers so I started there. I do have to hold her scruff (hold, not shake) but a few seconds of waiting and she drops the toy. I immediately present it back to her with a "get it!" command as reward for dropping it. This training is going very well. She will even tug outside.

I hope to build in a fetch behavior since she likes to tug so much (bring the toy back to me and we'll tug some more) and am playing around with that but only casually, not with any focus at this time. I prefer that she and I just play without too many rules and restrictions.

Her bite inhibition with me is pretty good now. She clearly knows when her teeth grab finger instead of bear. Even Harry sometimes makes a mistake. But Azza will need a bit more training in this area.

She's got a few behaviors that are not so benign. A few nights ago, I realized that I forgot to put her fish oil capsules in her dinner bowl. She is growing so fast that her skin is flaky. So she gets four fish oil capsules a day. Anyway, as I bent down to toss them in her bowl, she freaked out and tried to attack me, growling and snarling and lunging at me. Whoa nellie!! Cujo rears her head at only 14 weeks.

I've never had a dog that was that aggressive about guarding. And I definitely don't like that behavior. I need to be able to extract things from my dogs' mouths, including bones and their food bowls, whenever I want.

As a result, I've been handfeeding Azza at least one of her meals each day (messy but effective) and I randomly touch her back and shoulders while she's eating. Tonight I was able to pick up her food bowl while she was eating and put it back down immediately and she didn't do anything. I will continue to work this for quite a while.

Azza also has some major fear issues: parked cars, trash bags shaken out to be put in the can, me coming down the stairs with an armful of laundry (it's the laundry, not me), machines that make noise, dogs barking in the distance, unexpected non-food objects in familiar places, workers in yellow jumpsuits (Upul pointed that out and I have since confirmed it with my own observations)...the list goes on and on. She nearly had a heart attack when I opened the dishwasher for the first time in her presence.

I'm working on teaching her a wide variety of replacement behaviors, mostly tricks such as nose touch to hand, spins, go through my legs. I work on those when she is not stressed but I have not done enough repetitions to make these things accessible to her when she is freaking out. I noticed that it helps when passing scary things like parked cars to use the happiest, highest pitched voice I can make to tell her to "come!" So I'm learning a lot too. She's much softer than the terriers and is challenging me to soften up my own handling and training.

But the real push in this area is to get her to investigate new objects, not flee from them in fear. So tonight I introduced her to free shaping with the clicker. I figured she was operant so the main hurdle would be her fear of the new objects. I started with a cone. It took much longer than I thought but she did put her nose on the base and on the top. Then I put a small board down in order to get her to put a paw on it. Wow! Was this a surprising training session! She did just about everything she could to NOT touch the board. If I nudged it by accident, she would scoot a few feet away and we'd almost have to start over again. But I did get her to nose touch it in different places.

In contrast, Mimi will nearly come unglued in her attempts to get in, on, through, under, paw on, paws in, mouth on whatever I put in front of her if she knows that I have clicker in hand. 

Azza is going to see random contents from of all sorts of drawers and cabinets and closets over the next few weeks, and she will get rewarded for anything she does with these objects. I am hopeful since it is clear that she is a smart dog and learns quickly.

In my opinion, these behaviors are a product of her living feral for those early weeks. It makes sense for a feral puppy with few defenses to stay away from anything that doesn't look like food. These behaviors were already in place when I got her so I suspect it will take some time and patience to move her to a new space.

But hey, she and Harry and Mimi went on their first morning walk together two mornings ago. It was a bit chaotic but I'd say that progress is being made!

Agility in KSA Week 17

The handlers are all doing so great that I figured it was once again time to challenge them a bit. So I designed a Snooker course for last week's agility class.

Designing short sequences to train specific things is not that difficult and I am never at a loss for ideas there. But I have never designed a Snooker course. It was a bit harder than it looks, especially when you factor in our equipment limitations here. It took me eight attempts to draft up a reasonable idea on paper then further tweaking in the course designer software. And we had to tweak it just a bit more when we set it up. A real learning experience for me.

I didn't actually research the exact specifications for a USDAA Novice Snooker course, although I know the rules of the game because I played it fairly often. So when you look at my course map below, you will probably find more than one thing that violates the rules for course design for this game. But, when I look around, I don't see anybody else here who has played USDAA Snooker but me, so as long as the course was runnable for our little group but still challenging, it would be fine.

I decided to go with a four-red-jump course to maximize their chances of success. I also explained the timing rules to them but we did not enforce opening and closing times, only recorded the total time in case of point ties. I also told them that I would allow them to make some errors not normally allowed (refusals for the most part) but that taking obstacles in the wrong order would get them whistled off.

I appointed a chute fluffer, a timer, and a scribe for every run. I was the judge calling points for all runs but my own (MH called points for me and Mimi). I even made up some score sheets. And finally, I scrounged through my supply of dog toys and brought prizes for the highest scoring student of each round (MH and I played for points but not for prizes).

So here's the course that I made.

 We had time to play three rounds and thankfully three different students won each round! They were all quite skeptical in the beginning when I explained the rules but got into it fairly quickly and a couple of them were clearly trying to be strategic and competitive! It was great fun, especially when I challenged them all to try something completely different for their third run through the course.

Some of them might very well end up back in the real world with their dogs already infected with the agility bug, and I'm trying my best to give them confidence to successfully pursue it.

Dog Obedience in Dhahran

I may never get used to my infamy amongst the expats in camp. When I am introduced to someone, they nearly always pause for a second then say "Oh! You're the 'Dog Lady'... or the 'Dog Teacher' or the 'Dog Whisperer' (which I totally hate) or my favorite, the 'Dog Guru'."

When you're running the only dog training show in town, word does get around.

Because I have a big trip planned for May on dates that fall right in the middle of the next session of Community Education classes, I'm not teaching the Basic Obedience class during April-June. All of the folks at the Community Ed office emailed me to say how much my class would be missed!

The current obedience class finishes up next week. While it is a tremendously fun experience to teach each eight-week course, I am always a bit relieved when I am done because I have my weekends back. And I am resolved to spend a bit more time out of camp than I usually do.

I have been reading and researching new ideas for the obedience class and am slowly incorporating many of them, to the betterment of the class. For example, for the weeks 6 and 7 classes, I hauled an agility tunnel and tunnel bags to class. This is actually almost as much work as hauling all of the gear to the agility class because the obedience class is held in a large, air-conditioned room that is up two flights of stairs!! Piling stuff on the crate dolly is not a solution--no handicap access ramps in Saudi Arabia. I have to carry all that stuff up to the room.

Since the primary pool of new agility participants will come from my obedience class, I figured, why not give them a tiny taste of agility (the tunnel is the obvious choice) and at the same time give myself a chance to evaluate them and their dogs with a critical eye?

All of the dogs loved the new experience, which means their handlers loved it too. I even had two handlers successfully send their dog to the tunnel this afternoon!

I also switched up the curriculum so that I introduce some behaviors earlier so that they get lots of reinforcement over the duration of the class. As a result, the dogs are doing extremely well with loose lead walking, one of the most common problems people have with their dogs.

The best part is when the handlers tell me how much better their dogs are behaving at home or on walks. As always, it makes me proud of the time and effort they are putting in to training their dog. And it makes me feel good that I helped them get there.

Azza

Azza at about 11 weeks of age.

Meet Azza. I've had her for a month, and she's about 12 and a half weeks old now, give or take a week.

Back before the Saudis got religion, the Arabs used to name their girl children after plants and animals. Azza means "young gazelle."

 Azza is a "desert dog." What a desert dog actually is depends on who you are talking to but they are often mixed with saluki or canaan, the former a hunting sight hound with folded ears and the latter a desert herding breed with prick ears. Desert dogs can come in any color combo depending on what was mixed in (doberman, lab, golden, GSD, pit bull, etc.) but a common color pattern for the generic "desert dog" with probable saluki origins is orange or gold on top and white below with white accents, like Azza. I've never seen a "desert dog" with a lot of coat.

Azza the day I brought her home. She's about 8 weeks old here.

 Most desert dogs are pretty leggy and lean, although if they have a lot of lab or pit bull in them they can be chunky. Azza's saluki roots give her that leggy, streamlined look and almond-shaped eye holes (her eyes themselves are round like any other dog).

Azza exhausted at last.

So far I'm pretty sure she doesn't have any solid bones but is instead made of cooked noodles. I've never seen such a flexible, floppy dog. Her tail is even more amazing. Whip thin, she appears to have a lot of control over it, holding it high and curved over her back when happy. But it flies around like a wet string when she gets the zoomies.

Harry doesn't actually hate her. As long as she behaves herself, he tolerates her well. They are sharing a quiet moment in the morning sun.

I've been curious about these dogs ever since I saw them. Most of them are aggressive and often bite people. They maintain huge bubbles of space around themselves and rarely tolerate touching by strangers. And unfortunately, most of the people on camp that have one of these dogs don't have a clue about how to manage them. They can't be walked. They have to be locked up when people come over. I wondered if a consistent program of positive training and socialization begun at a very early age would make a difference. So I've been keeping an eye out for a very young desert dog.

About a month ago, Azza landed in my lap. She came from a litter whelped by a feral desert dog who lives at one of the private Aramco beaches.

Azza and Kinky playing. He starts it as often as she does!

The switch in her brain may flip in a few months and she could turn into psychotic desert dog, but for now she's proving to be a challenging but very rewarding training experiment.

Upul's comment upon seeing her was classic: "Ma'am, she's going to be big!" I hope so. How can I say I am a dog trainer if I don't spend some time, truly dedicated and focused time, training something besides a smooth fox terrier (as much as I love them)? Yes, I'm even thinking about agility!

What?

Nothing like a nap in the sun! When I see tableaux like this, I really do hope she doesn't turn into Cujo in a few months. Oh yes, Azza's touching Mimi, who's in turn touching Harry.

Azza gets along well with Mimi and Kinky. Tsingy ignores her. Harry hates her but he has so far applied extremely appropriate discipline when she annoys him. Pesty puppy won't get the message so I let him manage it his way (he's chomped her four times but so far no damage--and he gave her plenty of advanced warning each time!).

Azza and Mimi like to play very rough but I allow it...for now. Mimi seems to enjoy having another dog to play with although she is far from her puppy days.

Azza is all feet and legs right now. I know she looks half-starved but that's how these saluki-desert dogs develop. Really, I'm stuffing her with food!

Looks ferocious and it is pretty rough but they seem to both have excellent bite inhibition.

Azza's training program so far includes sitting to have the leash removed and not running wild until released, loose lead walking, sitting on verbal or hand command, sitting when people pass us while walking, stay, recall, name game, waiting for other dogs to get treats, not jumping on things or me ("off"), pooping and peeing on a schedule (my schedule, that is) and not in the house, bite inhibition during play, and tugging games. She hasn't shown much love for the hand touch game but I'm working on that. She loves all kinds of toys and it's easy to get a three-way game going with Harry on one tug, Azza on another, and Mimi playing fetch with a third toy. I can growl in her face and she'll growl back and tug harder! I love feisty dogs!

For now, I think Azza has a nice home with us.

Lost in Translation

I received this via email. The back story might be concocted after the fact but it sure is consistent with the photo and how things generally work in this part of the world.

A new fuel tanker arrives on location somewhere in the Middle East. The HSE manager tells the Pakistani fleet supervisor to ensure that the tanker is clearly labeled “Diesel Fuel” and “No Smoking” in Arabic. This is what he got.