Seminar with Ken and Kathy
It’s June and the weather is even warmer. We had about 29° C today (84 F), wich is very warm when you live in Norway. I unfortunatly spent most of the day in the car, as we drove north to buy our new car (a Toyota Yaris Verso). It was very warm this weekend as well, but we spent it indoors, listening to Ken Ramirez and Kathy Sdao who gave a seminar on many interesting subjects. The best thing about seminars is that you get a lot of inspiration to do what you pretty much have known for a long time you should be doing. Kathy held a good lecture about counter-conditioning for dog-dog aggression. It made me see why I have failed some times in the past and gave me inspiration to try it at home. We have to female dogs that really don’t get along. I have no hope in getting them to accept each other (one of them is 11 years old), but the conflict has made Missy bark every time some one walks out the front door. I would really like to try counter-conditioning, but as Kathy pointed out, you need to make sure that you do it right. If I’m starting this project, I need to make sure that no one uses that door when I’m not around to feed Missy. I also have to do training sessions where we plan the door opening. She should get all her food (her raw food is the best food she knows) during these sessions (she can have kibble when we do other training). It’s also very important that the food comes after she hears the door (about a second later).
Another thing I want to try at home is Ken Ramirez’s concept training. I want to teach Pi modifier ques such as left and right (not left and right as a behavior, but as a concept that can be used with many differend behaviors). It was also very cool to hear about dogs doing mimicry, but I think that will have to wait… We had dinner with Ken and Kathy on Saturday night and we had some interesting discussions about how to add cues (Clicker trainers here often want to add the cue as the dog performs the behavior, but Kathy agreed with me that it’s more effective to give the cue just before the dog offers the behavior).
After the seminar yesterday, we wen’t to a nice beach where Pi had her first experience with going in the water. She was not reluctant to go in the water at all and she seemed to enjoy it a lot. I hope that we can go swimming with the dogs tomorrow if the weather is still warm. I havn’t done a lot of training today. We did recalls with Pi and she was really good. Missy got a session with some obedience and some double box training. She is still knocking a lot of bars, but I think she does some really nice things as well.
