Posts Tagged ‘dog training’
Asher Interviewed
An idea was born through the miracle of modern technology and the wickedly wild unveiling of ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence answering questions with increasing believability. Maybe Chatbots could ask questions, too. Add to that idea the greatest new invention ever achieved, the ability to translate barking to text.
Asher was willing to participate in the bizarre experiment to see if it could work. He donned the high-tech brain wave reader and entered into a conversation with a computer that produced the following:
AI: Mr. Asher, can you hear me through the headgear?
Asher: Whoof!
AI: Somebody needs to turn on the translator.
Asher: You can call me Ash for short. This thing itches.
AI: It works! Okay, Ash, what do you think of your new home?
Asher: I think I could get used to this. These two hoomans seem like they like me. I think one is called, “What?” and the other one answers to, “You ready yet?”
AI: Do you think you will be able to train them?
Asher: Oh, yeah. I’ve got them going to a class in the big city where they practice and practice figuring out how to react to my every need. It’s wild because as they do their drills I get to eat non-stop treats. It can be exhausting but I’m able to take a nap while they pilot the go-fast machine back to our house.
AI: Are you getting used to all those acres of forest and field?
Asher: In fits and starts. Sometimes they free me from that dang leash and I can race after the tree rats that run rampant. The hoomans get all excited about it and try to convince me they’re called “skwerls.” The backyard is good for zooming but the hill tends to tire me out sooner than I like. If I don’t keep running the hoomans tend to take me back in the house. Not that it’s bad in there. Every time I roll a ball under the furniture they just give me a new one. I’ve got so many squeaky things to chomp on stashed around the place, I’ll never be able to destroy them all.
AI: Sounds like you are living a life of luxury.
Asher: Oh, it’s not all bully sticks and squeaking toys. The hoomans are outside every day working on something and their progress gets so pathetic I can’t help myself but help them out. Digging up diseased bushes? I can help dig. Planting new plants? I can dig those up, too. Cutting out dead branches? Oooh, I can chew ’em to bits.
AI: Our batteries are running low. Is there anything you want your humans to understand before we have to shut down the translator?
Asher: I’m sorry I chewed up both pads and both covers you guys put in my crate and the cool tapestry you had draped over it, too. It’s just… well, somethin’ has to give. When I get all riled up, I do what I do best… chew.
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City School
We are enrolled in a dog obedience training series with Asher in St. Paul, MN. The guy gets a dose of the big city every Thursday and he seems more than capable of coping with sidewalks and city streets.
Asher showed no hesitation about adjusting to the city latrines that looked nothing like the trees and bushes he has become accustomed to at home. We are so proud of him.
The hour-long class has probably six other dogs and owners for Asher to ignore while we are trying to listen to the instructor and then practice the routines. It’s a misnomer to call it a dog obedience class because it is really a “hooman” obedience class teaching the time-tested tricks for establishing one-word commands.
You can lure a dog into the desired behavior with food but if you state the command while luring, that is a bribe. They don’t learn from a bribe.
Timing is everything. Commands are to be stated only once. If you repeat it, they tune it out. Successful responses to commands are met by a friendly “Yes!” and then a reward treat is given. For Cyndie and me, the chaos in the training room and the multiple repetitions of exercises lead to forgetting the command or repeating the command, taking too long to serve the treat, and too frequently forgetting the “Yes!”
Asher seems to be learning in spite of our inconsistencies.
The hour is rather exhausting for all of us.
The car ride home is pretty quiet.
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Telling Trail
Our darling puppy was up to mischief while I was showering yesterday. When I opened the curtain I discovered a trail of evidence strewn across the floor. Somebody was nosing around in a waste basket where they weren’t supposed to be. Who would do such a thing?
Well, our little troublemaker wasn’t smart about hiding his tracks. Asher left behind a critical piece of evidence that gave away his presence.
On Monday, it will be three weeks since we brought home our adopted pup. Cyndie shared a graphic with me that refers to a general 3/3/3 guideline of the adjustment period for a dog after adoption. Three days to decompress/three weeks to learn our routine/three months to start to feel at home.
I didn’t really notice Asher needing to decompress during those first days, but I did wonder what he must be thinking about the change. He is definitely learning our routine and adjusting to it very well, for the most part. There have been several times when he has tested our boundaries. In a couple of months, he will feel at home and hopefully by that time he will have accepted all the boundaries we established.
Today, I am on another kind of trail. I will be joining some of my cycling friends for a ride on the Dakota Rail Regional Trail, heading west out of Wayzata. I need to get serious about putting in saddle time in advance of my annual expedition on the Tour of Minnesota which happens in the middle of June.
In just a couple of blinks, June will be here. I hope the ground dries up enough by then that I will be able to mow the areas I’ve been skipping because they’re too wet.
Here’s hoping the smoke from Canadian wildfires won’t make breathing difficult for bicycling today. I rarely find myself riding with friends at the beginning of my cycling season and I’m looking forward to the chance to visit with folks while pedaling along.
At least we finally have a weekend with pleasant weather to be outdoors without a raincoat.
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Daily Improving
Our new dog, Asher, is making great strides in learning the routines and commands we are trying to teach him. Keeping him off our bed is not 100% yet, but he is overcoming the urge to jump up more than he is giving in to it. One thing that helps clarify this rule is that neither Cyndie nor I hesitate to correct him. He definitely understands we don’t want him up on the bed, but he just can’t help himself from trying when his desire reaches irrepressible levels.
Yesterday, we successfully navigated two walks without ever tethering him with a leash. He pushed the limits of our comfort a couple of times by trotting off the path despite our commands to keep him close, but the excursions were short-lived and he did run back to us when we amped up our excitement about having him return.
That was very rewarding, especially when comparing the anxiety over the possibility of him dissing us entirely and disappearing. On the third walk of the day, he lost the off-leash privilege by ignoring our calls to return for far too long and heading a worrisome distance off our property into the neighboring woods. The leash is more for our peace of mind than punishment to him.
I don’t know if he perceives it that way or not.
We also had good success playing with him in the backyard while unleashed. He loves retrieving felt squeaky balls.
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Big puppy energy in the house gets a little unnerving but outside on the back hill, he tires relatively quickly and his zoomies soon become walking after balls that we toss for him. That’s the point we are confident in the likelihood of him napping for a while after we get inside.
With Asher learning more every day, we are feeling very optimistic about how well he will eventually fit in with us to become the loyal and well-behaved dog we want him to be, for both our sakes.
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Passing Thoughts
Since we are in the middle of training our new dog, I am immersed in the process of addressing issues in a timely manner. Both reward and admonishment must be delivered closely enough to the given behavior to imprint the lessons intended.
What if society were able to”train” unethical judges and politicians to behave by administering timely consequences for their unethical or criminal behaviors? Unfortunately, our system of justice moves excruciatingly slowly and seems to barely offer results commensurate with the transgressions.
Imprudent judges and politicians behave? Hah! Who am I trying to kid?
What if people simply behaved ethically because it is the right thing to do? Yeah, that’s just a passing thought.
Another passing thought came to me after I heard the umpteenth claim of being subjected to a witch hunt. How many times might one claim “witch hunt” before they start considering if they might actually be a witch? At this point, I’m leaning toward a certain person likely being a witch.
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Relatively Damp
Am I prone to understatement? Not always. Sometimes I go to the other extreme. My natural inclination is to be contrarian, so instead of titling this post, “Soaking !#@$ Wet,” I settled on a genteel descriptor for current conditions. The ground around here is actually wetter than an entirely saturated sponge this morning.
I’m sure the trees are soaking this up with glee. Buds are sprouting from every stem and branch and noticeably increasing the hues of green emerging by the day.
Yesterday’s World Labyrinth Day event brought ten visitors to Wintervale, six of whom are family, four friends, plus a small dog. After some stutter-starts at the meeting of dogs, Asher settled into a wonderful acceptance of all the activity, people, and the one pet unfamiliar to him in his new home. All signs continue to hint that we will find success soon in Asher developing into the pet we are hoping he will become for us.
As long as he refrains from putting his nose on the kitchen counter, then his paws, and reaching for an unfinished scone on a plate, or shredding the cover of the pad in his crate, or getting back up on the living room couch again, or failing to recognize we are speaking to him and directing commands his way for compliance.
He appears to be relatively willing to suppress his natural instincts and behave exactly as we desire at all times.
Hah!
Yeah, we got this.
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Playing Balls
Not just one ball. Asher was holding one ball in his mouth while kicking another one around like he was in a game of soccer. I think he would be pretty good at futsal. The video below has a quality problem between 18-28 seconds. I apologize for my inability to solve the glitch. It plays fine on my computer but something must be failing during the upload.
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I am thrilled that Asher can catch almost every throw I send his way, that is when he doesn’t have another ball already clenched in his jaws. We are going to have a lot of fun sporting around together.
Yesterday afternoon, I let go of his leash and let it drag in the grass as we killed some time in the backyard. I’m happy to see that he is showing promising signs of not being a flight risk when outside without being tethered. We will get a little bolder about experimenting with him once his identification tag arrives. If he takes off for one of our neighbor’s properties, we don’t want him to have the appearance of being a stray.
We’ve only had him here since Monday, so he won’t be familiar to folks around here yet.
Some of them may have heard a new bark resonating in our valley. We think we’ve discovered a trigger that upsets him. He doesn’t like being tied on a short leash. Even though we were near him, he yelped until we fixed the situation. He was more satisfied being loose in the house and watching us through the windows than finding himself tied near us outside.
I got the labyrinth mowed using the push mower and also did some other cutting with the new zero-turn mower. Navigating slopes did not go well for me. I need to start cutting differently than I used to.
The landscape is ready for World Labyrinth Day tomorrow (Saturday). Cyndie will be baking treats today in preparation. The only thing left to make it a perfect day is out of our control: The weather. Hopefully, the 50/50 chance of precipitation will be in our favor until later in the afternoon.
While mowing the pathway of our north loop trail, I came upon a pheasant standing fully exposed in broad daylight. He calmly walked away from me as the tractor approached him for about 5-10 yards before turning and heading into the brush for cover.
I learned it is impossible to take a hand off one of the steering levers to take a picture while the mower is still rolling along. Playing ball with Asher is much easier for me than steering a zero-turn mower.
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Finding Fun
I wish I could say it’s all fun and games having a new “teen” pup that has found himself in an unfamiliar environment. At times Asher behaves like a big goof, but he is also a product of having needed to fend for himself to find food to eat in his earliest days. Left unchecked, he quickly resorts to searching for anything edible. Asher’s body is long and that means that when he stands on his hind legs, he is tall.
Nothing on our counters is safe from his reach, and at this point, he has not learned any self-control that would keep him from taking ill-advised risks to reach potentially edible rewards. We are being tested on every decision we make. To free ourselves from being constantly on guard, we have to think ahead and put up timely barriers to confine Asher to a safe space when we can’t be giving our full attention to his activities.
Still, there has been plenty of fun to be had.
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He is proving to be a good on-leash walker and only chewed through the leash one time while Cyndie was distracted with digging up invasive garlic mustard plants. He played well on the zip line in the backyard and rolled around in smelly leaves on one of our walks.
While on the phone to register ourselves as the owners who adopted Ash, Cyndie learned the paperwork indicated the dog was given his name because he was found on Ash Road. Ash R. I like that we will be going with the name, Asher.
The other names most often used yesterday were, Down and No.
Cyndie made great progress in teaching Asher to stay until she says he can release. We want to teach him that we go through the door first and then he can follow, and that exercise will go much more smoothly when he understands and obeys the “Stay!” command from which we could proceed.
Meanwhile, the horses are having fun because we have been opening up the hay field to them again during the daytime.
They had been confined to the paddocks for a few weeks awaiting the fields to get dryer and the grass to get taller. On the occasion of their first tall grass on Monday, they barely stepped through the gate before stopping to graze. Yesterday, I noticed they were walking a little further in, but it wasn’t all about grazing. They showed an interest in taking some serious naps in the grass under the bright sunshine.
My presence with the chainsaw didn’t ruffle them one bit. I needed to cut up a large dead limb that had fallen from the ailing willow tree in the small paddock. While I had the saw out, there were three fallen trees across trails in the woods and one other leaner in the woods between the house and the shop that I was able to clean up. Then it was time to unload new hay bales and stack them in the hay shed.
It was fun to get some productive work done between the sessions of fun with Mr. Hey-Play-With-Me-Some-More.
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Training Begins
First of all, yesterday’s antics dealing with our first day introducing Asher to our house and property were more tiring than I’m used to lately. Thankfully, it was all good. Asher’s energy is overflowing with playfulness and happy curiosity. Our reference for every situation quickly defaults to the way Delilah behaved differently. We discovered several things that Asher wants to do that Delilah never showed any interest in, like getting up on our bed.
The couch was allowed at his foster home.
We are leaning toward discouraging couch access and hope to hold out entirely against allowing him on our bed. Both Cyndie and I are wrestling over our tendency to refer to Asher with feminine pronouns after our ten years with Delilah. Maybe we should just switch to the non-binary alternatives.
He showed normal curiosity about our explorations on the trails in our woods. We very quickly discovered his ability to dig is magnitudes beyond what we were used to with Delilah. Three quick strokes created a massive canyon in the dirt. Asher dug up several old bones that Delilah had buried in and around the outdoor kennel.
Pulled from his usual surroundings to a world where every sight and sound was brand new, we were unsuccessful in even coming close to getting him to process and obey a “STAY!” command. Asher did great on the zip line in the backyard. He LOVES to play ball and is a great catcher. He got me laughing over the way he would nudge the ball with his nose so it would roll to me as a way to get me to play with him.
Ash showed little in the way of interest in the horses. They were more curious about the new canine leading us around than he was about them. Our treks through the woods revealed several new tree tops that have broken off and fallen to the ground. Yesterday was very windy. Today we may need to learn whether Asher is bothered by the noise a chainsaw makes.
The foster mom warned us he is not a fan of the vacuum.
Whether we intend it or not, training is already underway. It will be a contest to see if Asher is training us more than we are training him. The official obedience classes don’t start for a couple of weeks. Helping him to master the “STAY!” command before then would be a big surprise.
Last night before we retired to our bedroom, we heard a couple of snores coming from his crate. A wonderful end to a super first day.
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Various Snippets
There are days –I bet you have them, too— when there isn’t one main story of the moment to tell. Just random tidbits that may, or may not, be related. Snippets.
Starting Thursday after work last week, Cyndie and I had a goal to get a lot done in preparation for World Labyrinth Day the following Saturday. I had it in mind to relocate a cold compost pile to a low spot we are building up. I told Cyndie it would just be 4-6 wheelbarrow loads. It turned out to be double that.
While huffing the loaded wheelbarrow up to the dump spot, I saw the stack of 15 pallets waiting to be stowed. By the end of Friday, we had built the fenced courtyard for the chicken coop, raked the round pen with the ATV, put the cover on the gazebo, raked, pruned, hung hammocks and a dozen other small simultaneous tasks.
It occurred to me that the number of spring chores we accomplished felt equivalent to annual Work weekend at Wildwood, except instead of a full community of six families, it was just Cyndie and me.
During one of my passes by the paddock that Friday, I stopped to take a picture of Hunter taking a serious full-sleep nap. I thought it was funny that in his complete unconsciousness, his relaxed lips produced a pearly white smile.
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As soon as I set down my tools and pulled out my camera at the fence, Cayenne walked up to meet me. Dezirea was quick to follow suit.
Yesterday, I was walking Delilah past the chicken coop when she reacted with unwanted interest in the chicks milling around inside their fence. I decided to try an exercise of getting her to lay down right next to their enclosure in calm submission.
The plan was to get her to engage directly with me, and disregard the (incredibly enticing) chicks. It was comical watching her struggle against her insatiable predator urge. This exercise will take a LOT of repetition if we have any hope of ever lulling her into a state of being able to regard the chickens as “friends, not food.”
Back to thinking about Wildwood again, while walking Delilah through the woods near the house, I paused to search for signs of our transplanted trillium blooming.
For the last several years, while up at the lake place for Memorial work weekend, we have collected samples of the trillium that carpet the forest floor around the property and brought them home to plant as ‘starters’ in hopes of replicating a similar display here.
We always plant them in sets of three in a triangle shape to help keep track of our success ratio. The results have been pretty good.
If you look closely at the image, there is a non-flowering trillium just behind and to the right of the lone blossom commanding all the attention.
It will be a thrilling sight when we finally find evidence of new sprouts from spreading rhizomes showing up among our original groups of three.
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Relative Something 