I often bring Albee to work with me. (I work at a college.) He spends most of the day sleeping on the little couch in my office, or under my desk. I often let him follow me to the bathroom, to coworkers' offices, etc. He is off-leash during these little excursions down the hall, and we've done a lot of work on waiting until released before running up and greeting people, recalling away from exciting petting people, etc.

One place I don't bring him is into the computer lab where the water bubbler is. I used to bring him in, but I didn't want his presence to bother the students using the lab, so I spent some time teaching him to do long down-stays in the hallway. I put him in a chair at first to "anchor" him, since otherwise he'd break his stay when I went out of sight. After some practice with that, he graduated to down-stays on the floor.

A couple of times, though, he broke his stays and went into the lab, always because one of my student workers called to him in a high-pitched, squealing voice. I found myself getting unreasonably mad at him for this, even though I should've been scolding my student workers instead. But since a) there are a ton of them, and it's easier to train one dog than dozens of students, and b) I want him to be able to hold a stay despite squealing, and c) I want him to understand the concept of "don't come into the lab", not just "stay where I put you," and, most importantly, d) I do not want to get mad at my dog, especially for expecting him to do something I haven't taught him to do, I decided I needed a new training plan.

So I did a bit of boundary training. I took him to the lab doorway. I walked in, leaving him waiting outside. I released him, then clicked before he could enter the lab and tossed a treat behind him. He ate it and approached again, and again I clicked before his feet crossed the threshold and tossed the treat behind him. We played this game for a while, with me gradually increasing the distractions and resetting him when he crossed the boundary. He grasped it pretty quickly, although we spent another handful of sessions proofing the behavior so that he understood that he is not supposed to cross the threshold no matter what. He's not 100% there, but he's pretty darned good at this point.

I am sad that I got grumpy with him, but I am pleased that I managed to nip it in the bud and teach him what I actually did want him to do. (It makes me more sympathetic to my clients, too!)

On Sunday afternoon I took Albee outside with me while I hung up the laundry. The neighbors were out in their fenced yard with their two yappy-barky dogs, so Albee ran over to visit them. This behavior normally makes me cross with him, but this time I had a brainstorm. I pulled out the banana I'd brought out with me, walked over to the fence, and got his attention, then gave him a bite of banana. I asked him to sit and gave him banana.

Then I started to move away from the fence. I called his name, and he ran over to me to get his bite of banana. As he was eating it, I released him and told him to go back over to the fence and dogs. He LOVED this game, and was brilliant about coming away from the fence to me for the first time ever. I was so overjoyed that he was actually recalling away from barking, bouncing dogs that I let it go on a little too long and he got too excited and couldn't come away anymore. Even so, it was a HUGE breakthrough for us.

Spurred by this miraculous discovery, I started brainstorming how I could manufacture situations like this in which to practice. Certainly I can keep practicing with the neighbor dogs, but how can I translate this game to when we're out and about in the world?

Today after work, the perfect opportunity arose. Albee and I were out behind my building when he suddenly went stiff and frozen. "Oh no," I thought, "He sees a dog!" But then my trainer brain kicked in, and I loosened the leash (the other dog was far away, so no chance Albee could get himself into trouble) and busted out the banana I'd been carrying in my back pocket for just such a situation. I walked up to Albee and fed him a chunk of banana. That snapped him right out of his dog-staring reverie, and he started throwing behaviors at me: sit, swivel into heel. I asked him to look at the dog, then called his name and rewarded him mightily for turning back to me. I gradually increased the distance he had to come to get to me (as much as I could on a 6' leash!). The dog and its owner then walked out of sight behind a building. Albee was being an angel and I had plenty of banana left, so he and I speed-walked the opposite way around the building and caught sight of them as they came around. We continued playing "stare at the dog, then recall back to me" as the dog meandered in and out of view. The one and only time Albee barked was when the dog and its handler both ran to chase a squirrel, and even then it was just one little half-hearted bark as he was turning back to me.

It probably sounds silly to any of you who haven't owned a reactive dog, but this was a huge, huge, huge breakthrough for us. Albee's learned to be SO good around almost every distraction - squirrels, little kids, squealing college students, even other dogs in class settings - but other dogs outdoors are his kryptonite. I've been really struggling to figure out how to help him translate his in-class skills to outdoors, but it's so hard to set up training situations without recruiting friends to walk their dogs around aimlessly while I work.

Lessons I've learned:

1. Albee does a lot better when he has work to do. Having a concrete rule structure and a task to focus on really helps him ignore distractions. Just doing loose-leash walking or voluntary attention wasn't cutting it; he needs more engaging activities, and he needs me to engage him 100% in the work.

2. I need to use the big guns. Albee's not very foodie; he'll now eat lesser treats outdoors (he wouldn't eat at all around any kind of distraction when he first came to us), even around distractions, but there's no way he's eating that crap when there's a dog in view. I need to bring a banana with me every time we go out, and I need to practice getting it out and into his face quickly.

3. Keep the damned leash loose. One of my goals for this summer is to read Click to Calm (which I bought a year ago but haven't had time to read yet) and work some of the exercises with Albee. I need strategies for how to bail out of situations that are too much for Albee without having to bodily drag him away, which triggers his frustrated barking and rearing.

I am walking on sunshine! It may still be a long way away, but I've now seen that there is, in fact, a light at the end of our tunnel.

Lest you get the idea that I think about nothing but dog training, here's a post about my other semi-obsessive hobby: knitting.

In the last year or two, I've taken up lace knitting. Partly it's because I am easily bored and always looking for a new challenge; partly because I think it's pretty. It's an odd choice for someone who never wore a scrap of lace in her life, but it is terribly fun to knit.

Today I found a blog called The Panopticon, in which a man named Franklin translates patterns out of old Victorian craft books and adds snarky commentary. If you're a knitter, especially a lace knitter, it's pretty hilarious.

In a recent post, Franklin writes about knitting miniature lace on size 00000 needles (those are 1mm thick) to use as an inset in a doll's dress he's sewing. At one point he writes:

"My antique five-aughts have blunt ends. I'm looking to play with some modern five-aughts and see if they have pointed ends. Pointy ends are a boon when you're trying to work a double-decrease. Fooling about with blunt-ended fine needles has kicked up my appreciation of 19th-century knitters another couple notches. I've seen photos of those women operating these things with gloved hands, which I think helps to explain the widespread Victorian notion of female hysteria."

Cue me cracking up at my desk. I am so with you, Franklin!

(Is it wrong that this made me want to immediately acquire some 00000 needles and knit some teeny-tiny lace, just for ha has? I would say I need a self-help group, but I don't see this as a problem at all.)

I've decided that I need to spend more time just playing with my dog. He's got fantastic self control, so I can relax my standards on that (hard for me!) and just focus on having fun with him. To that end, mid-morning today I brought Albee outside onto the lawn next to my office and did some playing with him with the wombat-on-a-string. He was a bit lethargic (still tired from day care yesterday), but engaged in the game and had fun chasing and tugging it. (Several students watched us from a distance, laughing.)

In the middle of our game, one of the Deans appeared with her toy poodle on a flexi-lead. She blithely let him toddle right over to us, despite my saying, "My dog tends to be too exuberant for most small dogs." Sure enough, he stared and started to get wound up (pulling forward, stiffening, bending his front elbows a bit in preparation for bouncing) and the little dog gave him some fearsome bared teeth. I moved him away, which (of course) made him start barking. Once we'd gotten about 15' away, though, I pulled out the toy - and he actually played with me! It was pretty amazing.

After he lost interest in playing with the toy, we went for a brief walk. We ran into one of my dog-loving coworkers, an older man. He came up and tried to greet Albee by leaning over and reaching toward him, which made Albee tuck his tail and dart backwards. I let Albee eat treats out of my hand, then put some treats in my colleague's hand and let Albee eat them out of there. Albee allowed the guy to pet him while I fed him treats, although his tail stayed droopy.

When my colleague stopped petting him, I asked Albee to "go touch," a behavior I taught him over Easter weekend when he was acting skittish around my dad. He rapidly learned that he could approach, nose-touch the scary person, and then turn to me for a treat. As soon as I asked him to play this game, Albee's tail flew back up into the air and started wagging. He loved it! (My colleague thought it was a hoot, too.) My colleague even did some more petting of Albee, and his tail stayed in the air. Huzzah!

I like the "go touch" behavior better than having the stranger feed the nervous dog because I think luring can lead a dog to get closer than they're actually comfortable. Once they realize they've gotten too close to the scary person, they get scared and either flee or try to get the person to back off. By shaping the dog the choice to get close without using a food lure, the dog is fully cognizant of what he's doing and is constantly making the choice to go closer on his own in order to earn the reward.

One of the things my KPA instructor, Carolyn Barney, said quite a bit is "Don't lure fear." At first I thought, "That's weird." But I'm now in full agreement with her statement. Better to let the dog make the choice as he's comfortable doing so than to put him in an uncomfortable position.

Lest you all think my bond with my dog is broken, let me report that I love him as much as ever and have been having a blast training and playing with him lately. Sure, I have frustrated moments, but as a trainer I need to remember to take those opportunities to take a break and assess how I can change the situation to help Albee understand what I need from him in that moment. I'm slooooowly getting better at it. Baby steps.

This weekend both transversely and I were extraordinarily busy and out of the house almost all weekend, so I had to squeeze in as much exercise and mental stimulation as I could for poor Albee (and the birds) during the brief times when I was home. The flirt pole is always my go-to toy for quick, high-intensity exercise that gets Albee's tongue hanging out and sides heaving, so I took that out and did some play-training.

Since the flirt pole is one of the very few things Albee gets really excited about, I've been using it to build energy into some of his position change behaviors and to help him listen, think, and follow cues even while in high-excitement mode. I started out months ago by asking him to lie down, then rewarding him by releasing him to chase the flirt pole. He got so good at this that I can call out "Down!" while he's chasing the toy at top speed, and he will slam down onto the ground. I was quite pleased with myself (and him, naturally)!

Within the last few weeks, I've been working on sit. Albee got so good at down that for a while whenever I called out any cue he would slam into a down. I went back to kindergarten and stopped the play before asking him to sit. After a few reps, the lightbulb went on and he became quite good at responding correctly to either cue while chasing the flirt pole.

Yesterday, to give him a bit more mental challenge while he got his physical exercise, I added a third position cue into the mix: stand (my cue for "stop where you are" is "Wait," so I used that to get him to stop out of motion). Again, I slowed down the play the first few couple of times I asked for a stand, but very quickly he was stopping out of motion on my cue. I was really proud of how quickly he caught on!

I recently read this blog post about how certain kinds of exercise cause over-arousal in dogs, and how that over-arousal can cause hormonal changes that stay in the dog's body for days. I think the post has a lot of truth and good information in it, but I also think it's incredibly important for dogs to learn to get aroused and calm themselves down, and also to be able to focus and work in an aroused state. I certainly don't think it's a good idea to get a dog over-aroused and then try to train him, any more than I think it's a good idea to take your dog to the off-leash dog park to practice basic recall exercises: it's too much too soon. But one can start by getting a dog a bit excited and asking him to work with that level of stress in his system, and then gradually increase it.

I've been wrestling with this idea lately, since so many of my clients have adolescent dogs with more energy than they know what to do with. Many of them are also busy people, often with young kids, who need ways to burn off that doggy energy without spending hours doing it. I often recommend using a flirt pole, since it's an easy way to get a dog panting without spending an hour doing it or leaving your yard. However, I know firsthand how aroused chasing a flirt pole can make a dog. So what's more important: burning off that energy (in a way that's realistic for the family to manage), or keeping the dog from getting over-aroused?

Back to Albee and his weekend: I did some shaping later that evening for more brain work, and he was a rock star. He wanted to keep going even after I ended the session. It was pretty grueling for both of us to become a good shaper and shapee, but it's made such a huge difference in our relationship and in both of our lives. I adore having a problem-solving dog. I love having a frustration-tolerant dog. And I am ecstatic about having a dog who loves to be trained and to work with me.

I always feel a bit forlorn after finishing a knitting project. It's like I'm missing a piece of myself.

As you may have guessed, I finished the shawl I started at ClickerExpo a couple weeks ago. I'd better hit the yarn store and pick up the yarn for my next project ASAP. ;)

I am an avid reader of Susan Garrett's blog, newsletter, and any of her other writing or videos that I can get my hands on.

In one of her recent blog posts, she talked about using the Premack Principle to transfer value from behaviors the dog really wants to do into behaviors the dog isn't as keen on doing. Reading this caused a huge lightbulb moment for me. I've known about the Premack Principle for years (basically, you can use a behavior the trainee wants to do more to reinforce a behavior the trainee wants to do less, e.g. "Eat your broccoli before you get to eat dessert"), but I never really thought about the value transfer aspect until Susan Garrett spelled it out for me. Of course, that's how positive training works! If you do what I want you to do, you get to engage in a behavior you enjoy (eating tasty food, playing with a toy, etc). Soon enough, just like Pavlov's dogs, the act of doing the trained behavior elicits the happy feelings associated with eating food or toy play. (Sure enough, Albee's tail wags each time he does one of his cued behaviors.)

And what association am I trying to change right now? Albee's discomfort with riding in the car, of course! So I broke out the Premack Principle in a major way: I put his car harness (his doggy seatbelt) on EVERY time we go outside. I ask him to jump in the car and lie down before we go for a walk, dump the compost, play with the flirt pole, etc. If we're doing an activity in the yard, like playing flirt pole, I'll ask him to jump in the car and lie down many times during the play session and reward him by releasing him to chase me and the flirt pole.

I continued using some of his meals for car training, too: jump in the car, get a bite of food and get released to jump out. Over several sessions of this, he went from refusing to eat in the car (so I fed him the first couple of bites after releasing him from the car) to jumping in quickly on cue and lying down unprompted. He will now eat in the car while it is moving, and does minimal or no drooling (resulting in damp lips or a few drops on the seat, but not long, viscous drool strings hanging from his face).

I'll keep working on it, of course, but I'm immensely relieved at his progress!

Albee has, on and off, exhibited fearful behavior toward men. It's mild but obvious - shying away when they try to touch him, keeping his distance, turning his head away as they lean over him. He doesn't do it with all men - a couple of my coworkers are solidly in his group of Happy People - but he does it with certain men, even some of those he sees often, who don't loom or get in his space, who have fed or tossed him treats on multiple occasions. The men he's afraid of don't look alike or smell alike (as far as I can tell), so I can't figure out why he's afraid of them.

This week he's been doing some shying away from men, so I'm doing some counter-conditioning work with him. When he shies away from a man, I start shaping him to voluntarily go touch the man with his nose and return to me for a treat. If he'll allow the man to pet him, I feed a constant stream of treats while he's being petted. So far he's been warming up to the men we've encountered pretty quickly and turning back into his happy-go-lucky, I-love-everyone self.


Then there's the car. A few weeks ago, something happened - I don't know what - and ever since then, Albee's been stressed during car rides. He drools, he won't eat in the car, he was hesitant to get in the car or even approach the car, and now he droops his tail when I get out his car harness. Yikes. To get him comfortable with the car again, I've been making jumping into the car a predictor of awesome things: he now has to jump into the car before we go on a walk in the woods, before we play with the flirt pole, etc. (Thank you, Susan Garrett for that idea! Hello, Premack!)

I've also started feeding his meals in the car: I open the car door and cue him to jump in. He does, and I offer him his food dish. The first time he jumps in, he usually refuses to eat, so I remove the dish and release him to get out. He then seems to understand that we're playing a game, so he turns around and jumps back in voluntarily and eats a couple bites of food. I then remove the dish and release him, and he jumps out and then back in. Repeat until the meal is finished. Sometimes he'll stop voluntarily jumping in when there's still a bite or two in the bowl, so I let him eat that bite on the ground next to the car.

He's still not entirely comfortable in the car - this morning we played the above game, and he continued to eat while I clipped him in, shut the door, walked around and got in the car and turned it on, but he stopped eating during the drive. However, he happily finished his meal immediately after I let him out of the car, which he wouldn't have done a week ago. So we're getting there.

8. Room, by Emma Donoghue (fiction, audiobook)
I read and loved Emma Donoghue's novels in high school and college, so I was excited to read this one. It's a sweet (but also horrifying) story with a completely compelling 5-year-old narrator. The audiobook reader is absolutely fantastic. Highly recommended.

9. Crossed, by Ally Condie (YAF, dystopian fantasy)
The sequel to Matched. This one was pretty dull, and took me forever to get through. I probably won't read the third one.