We discovered Jamie, owner of a company called Training Wheels, through a kennel that had no room to board Mischa. The man on the phone said that she boards dogs at her home, and, desperate to find a place for Mischa to stay during a weekend when we'd be away, I called her. All three of us loved her, and we were delighted when she mentioned that she offers in-home training sessions. When we got her, Mischa was too old for puppy training classes (her lack of composure around other dogs made us suspect she wouldn't be all that attentive anyway), and an in-home session seemed like just the thing to help Mischa become accustomed to the cats.
 |
| Showing off "down" (though she did this when I said "sit"...) |
Ed and I both did a lot of reading and research on dog training before getting Mischa, but despite all of that we wouldn't have made a fraction of the progress we have now without Jamie's help. She came about once a week for four or five weeks in a row, and now we call her on an as-needed basis. In between sessions, she gives us homework and we practice with Mischa, who, as it turns out, is quite sharp. With Jamie's help, Mischa knows how to come, sit, lie down, and go into her crate at bedtime. She makes eye contact with us when we say her name (very important, because if we can't get her attention we can't get her to do anything - more on that later), and can even resist taking treats off the floor when she's not supposed to, provided we are watching and she knows she will get one in exchange for good behavior, that is. She still pulls occasionally on the leash, but this has gotten much, much better. Currently, we are working on two additional skills: ringing a bell hung from the doorknob when she needs to go out, and going to her "spot," her bed downstairs, when we tell her to.
 |
| Pressing the metal tab in the middle makes the click. |
Jamie and I both have the same educational philosophy, as it turns out. We both believe that learners internalize lessons best when they figure things out for themselves, with as little guidance from the instructor as possible. For dogs, this is called shaping. It takes a little longer initially, but Jamie feels that dogs retain what they learn much better when they work out what they're supposed to do instead of being shown how or forced into it. Key to this is using a clicker, something I initially thought was silly and have now come to view as indispensable. The clicker, as you may have guessed, makes a clicking sound when it is pressed. First, we taught Mischa to associate the clicking sound with food by giving her a treat each time we clicked. Now, each time she does something we like during a training session, she gets a click for immediate feedback, which is great because sometimes it takes a second to dig a treat out.
To teach Mischa to lie on her bed when she hears "go to your spot," Jamie positioned herself on the other side of the bed from Mischa with treats and the clicker. Mischa, of course, came toward her in hopes of getting a treat, and each time Mischa's paws hit the bed, Jamie clicked and rewarded her with a treat. First, Mischa had to get only her front paws on the bed for a click. Once she had that down, Jamie upped the ante by withholding clicks/treats until Mischa had all four paws on the bed. Then Jamie moved, standing on the same side of the bed as Mischa but very near the it with the clicker in hand. Mischa knows that when she sees a person watching her expectantly with the clicker and treats, she will be rewarded if she does the right thing. She just has to figure out what that is. She tried everything she could think of to get the treat: sitting, lying down, making eye contact, whining. Finally, she sat on the bed accidentally and Jamie clicked and gave her a bunch of treats. This happened again and agin - the hesitation and random attempts until Mischa accidentally came into contact with the bed - until suddenly she started to make the connection between the first drill and the second one. She started to go to the bed more and more regularly. When she'd gotten that down, Jamie withheld treats until Mischa sat on the bed. Then she had to lie on it.
 |
| In her spotted spot |
This morning, Ed and I started adding the command to the behavior, and Ed moved farther and farther from the bed. Mischa was doing great until he was giving the command from out of the room, and then it got a little too hard. So, as we have learned to do, we made it much easier (Ed came back into the room and stood nearer to the bed) so that Mischa would succeed and we could end the session on a high note. Jamie says this is important, and I can understand why.
It will be wonderful when Mischa has learned to go to her "spot" on command. She is often anxious when she sees people on the sidewalk outside and drives us nuts with her barking. This will be a way for us to communicate to her that everything is OK and to remove her from the scary sight simultaneously. It will also be useful when she goes after one of the cats, though it's going to take a lot of repetition to get her to follow the command when she is excited or nervous. Fortunately, Mischa loves training and we find it fun as well.
The tricky thing about huskies, of course, is that they have pretty selective attention spans. Currently, Mischa sometimes prefers, particularly when we are outside, to pay attention to everything but us, meaning that she doesn't do anything we ask her to because she genuinely can't hear us. I've tried giving the leash little yanks, calling her name, poking her shoulder, and squatting down so that I am in her field of vision, and she ignores me and looks right over my shoulder. Ed and I aren't sure whether she'll gradually learn that she's supposed to listen to us or whether this is so ingrained in her because of her breed that we're fighting a losing battle. I suppose we'll find out. In the meantime, though, we'll keep plugging away.
No comments:
Post a Comment