shape up

I sure hope that Lupa has as many lives as a cat… yesterday afternoon Carm had the dogs out while he cleaned off the truck, only keeping ½ an eye on the beasts. When he was done, he called the dogs. Adia came but no sign of Lupa. That's because she was trapped in the POND!!! Struggling to get out!!! Carm ran down to drag her out but luckily she was able to get out herself. He whisked her into the house where I gave her a hot bath and a blow dry… 

I hope it scared her… cause it sure scared us!

It was probably the darn beaver that got her out on the ice…

This morning the sun came out for a few hours. The blessed bright sky was a welcome sight. I’m not sure how many hours of sunshine we’ve had so far in 2023 but I don’t think it’s many. I looked all over the internet but couldn’t find a site that reported this information.

In the last three days I’ve done some free-shaping with Lupa… it’s going slowly but I think she started to catch on today. My aim is for her to take something in her mouth and carry it for me. The first day she wouldn’t engage with the toy and was only interested in sniffing out the treats or pawing at my hands, but eventually I got her to turn her head to the left fairly consistently.

Keep in mind that free-shaping is done with only the click to mark the behaviour and no luring or guiding. To start, I clicked when her eyes looked away from me for the tiniest of seconds, building second by second, glance by glance. It’s a leap when the dog realizes that it’s action is what triggers the click. It’s fun to see the gears turning and even more fun once they figure out to keep trying behaviours to get the click. 

Today the lightbulb went on and she was able to pick up the toy for a second or two. Hurrah! There were times when she laid down in front of me and barked, an obvious sign of frustration. I made sure we ended on a good note.

It’s hard not to compare her with Spike - in his prime he was the master of this game - but I’m probably not remembering the first few times when he was learning. I have to remember to train the dog that’s in front of me and not a distant memory of a dog that is no longer present. (cue tiny pricks in my eyes).

Big snow storm bearing down on us for tomorrow night into Friday…

Awesome!

“a bright and sunny morning”

“Creole black-eyed peas”