the_wanlorn | Adventures in Dog Training

Nothing makes it so clear that my practical skills lag behind my theoretical knowledge as trying to train Grem to do weird shit. He's so smart, my clicks are just not precise enough for him to figure out what I want.

(I am not looking for advice unless like this is your day job; I'm just complaining/bragging.)

He'll willingly put his paws on the scratch board, sure. But he hasn't even tried to scratch it. I've showed him what I want, he's watched Saoirse do it, so we've tried modeling. I've tried shaping a scratch, but lol. lmao, even.

Saoirse, meanwhile, figured it out in about ten minutes. Two training sessions, and she'll scratch it with one paw multiple times in a row for a treat. Most of her front paw nails are so much shorter than they were, thank god. Now we're going to work on both paws, like she's digging.

Meanwhile, Grem is like, u want me to stand on it, rite??? Rite??? Just stand here???

No, dog, no. Please just scratch it. Please.

Also it is incredibly frustrating to get advice from people on nail trimming like I've never heard of dog training before. Especially people who think balanced training is valid. Like, jfc.

I know how to teach a dog to let me clip their nails, but Grem had osteomyelitis in his front ulnas. Which means the vet that he hates has spent a significant amount of time touching his paws to manipulate his legs, which obviously hurt.

Which means the process of going from "don't touch my paws" to "ugh fine" is so much slower, and to be quite frank, it is not high on my list of priorities right now. A scratch board is fine if he ever figures out I want him to scratch it. jfc.

I absolutely despise getting unasked for advice that boils down to "I think you're too stupid to know this", explicitly or not. And like, I don't care if it wasn't consciously meant that way! Intention does not matter in this case! Because this is not like a reasonable level of reaction in me, this is instant, knee-jerk fury that eclipses rationality. Like jfc.

Anyway. Hi, how is everyone?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When I did clicker training chicken camp, I thought I'd picked a simple final project: train my hen to follow a blue ball on an extension wand, and get her to go through an obstacle course in that way, instead of chaining behaviors.

Unbeknownst to me, but beknownst pretty quickly, I learned she had a phobia of the blue ball.

So I had to spend half my training time defusing her phobia.

(Userpic is of ButtMeringue, my other chicken camp hen; it was Piper with the phobia.)

What a gorgeous hen!

And yeah, it's not easy, is it??? I'm working on some consent-based classical conditioning with Grem and it's so slow going. Partially because his opinion is that hands are always meant for petting and he gets way over excited when a hand is near him, so like getting him calm enough to get treats every time his paw is near said hand is a Process in and of itself.

I love having a friendly dog that loves attention, but I never realized how easy to train my dogs that were/are more focused on me, specifically, were. It's like. Saoirse just wants to make me happy. Grem just wants me to pet him. uno?

Tell me more about your chicken adventures! Why did you do the camp? And was it fun? It's something I've been considering just to get my clicker game more on point lmao.

My aunt loves dogs and has been a puppy raiser and does some dog training, so she wanted to learn clicker training, and she wanted me to come along and keep her company. So I did it too, because it sounded interesting.

It's pretty intense, and my energy levels weren't quite up for it, and it was going on right in the middle of an intense LiveJournal vs. Dreamwidth drama (the one where forcing a binary gender choice for LJ signup was as far as the staging server, and the only chance of getting it not applied was a user rebellion; the person who leaked it was putting their job at risk).

I hit a point where my brain felt like it was tender to the touch and adding more new ideas was going to give me a fever; that's a problem I have with intensely concentrated classes.

It was otherwise very fun, and I learned a lot! I also had the benefit of already knowing how to speak Chicken. This became relevant at the point when a flock of crows landed outside, someone said "Danger from the sky!" (in Chicken) and the bird that someone was running through a course deviated from the plan and flew off the table. Everyone else was mystified as to why it happened. (There are only a few distinct translatable words in Chicken, but a lot of variety to the noises. "Danger from the sky" is one of the distinct words, although it can sound a lot like the word for "if you mess with my eggs I will mess you the fuck up" and you mostly know which one it is by whether the chicken saying it is an angry pancake puffed up and clucking rhythmically who has started screaming at you, or whether they're looking up and running for shelter.)

At the time I went, a lot of them were retired battery hens, but a few were specifically raised, and those are more responsive generally. Chickens are much faster than dogs.

Sky danger warning in ducks is a whistle noise and they all sink down to the ground and eyeball the sky. I'm sure it has to do with their respective escape strategies compared to chickens.

Part of me is like "it makes no sense that chickens are faster than dogs!!" and the rest of me is like "except for how it makes perfect sense"

I am impressed af. I can't even get Pen to stop pulling. I don't know where all of my dog training skill and patience went. The scratch pad thing would be so useful since I've quicked Meatball too many times for the peanut butter on the wall distraction to work any more and Penny just won't let me handle her feet. Thankfully her nails stay worn down with the ball fetching required for household sanity.

I mean, I can't get Grem to stop chasing the cats, so like. I'm basically taking small wins with Saoirse to buoy up my big fails with Grem lmao. (Also don't even get me started on my extreme housetraining fuckups with him. It's one of those things were I know exactly what the issue is, and exactly how to fix it, but my executives, they are dysfunctioning too much to dedicate myself to fixing it permanently right now.)

alt: black dogs are untrainable, tan dogs are the best babies? Unclear, needs further study.

(Also, if you're planning on getting a scratch board or making one or whatever, you should know that until they really figure it out, their nails make a chalkboard screech noise on it. Enough so that I almost quit because I couldn't handle it. So awful.)

Oh god, I hear you on the house training. We are further complicated by the fact that I'm fairly sure Pen has a touch of spay incontinence based on the sleep peeing. I've got meds for her but haven't started them just yet. But I feel like the constant getting me or J up at 3 am to go out has to stop, for all that it's a good and recent improvement on her just going in the house.

Ah, gotcha. The noise and smell is a reason I haven't further pursued the Dremmel method.

On the plus, Penny has a good recall that Meatball just doesn't.

Why is house training so fucking hard? I mean, I know why, that's a rhetorical question but ugh.

Grem is great nine times out of ten as long as I take him out immediately after he wakes up from a nap. But god, nighttime/morning? Horrible. He doesn't wake me up he just pisses on the bedroom floor and in the morning I have to pee first and he's like SORRY GOTTA PEE TOO and I'm just like no :( pls stop :( you are literally going outside in under 30 seconds :(

And I know the solution is to crate him but he hates his crate and crate training has/is going horribly. Sigh. I suddenly understand why the baby of the family gets to run wild and the older siblings are all >:(

Adventures in Dog Training

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject