food and toys

I'm not hungry--I just finished my dinner--but I have this craving for something really rich. Like, for instance, pound cake, vanilla pudding, hot fudge sauce, and a couple of maraschino cherries. Or apple crisp with creme anglaise.

(There must be a dog in the yard--the Ts are barking great big Intruder Alert barks.)

I found this great new dog training site: http://levels.nybble.net. I've been on the e-mail list for quite a while. It was put together by Sue Ailsby, who created the Training Levels concept, which is a program of sensible dog training organized into a series of levels that build on each other. You can go as far as you want, up through all 7 levels for a super-dog, or just 2 or 3 for a nice companion dog. It's clicker-based, which I also like. I'm not a champion clicker-trainer, but I like the concept of encouraging the dog to learn and think for itself, and of the human and dog working as partners rather than adversaries. I like it much better than the leash-pop method, though it can seem slower.

At any rate, this new site is set up to help you track your progress. You enter a profile of your dog, and then you can enter training sessions, tests, muse about your progress in a journal, pull up a "scoreboard" that lets you see easily where you and your dog are, what you've accomplished and what you still have to do. It's really really nice. It's in beta at the moment, and I imagine that in the future you'll be able to post a picture of your dog with the profile, interact with other registered members, and lots of other stuff.

For someone working alone like me, it's a wonderful tool, but I can imagine that it would be an equally good tool for someone teaching an obedience class. It would be a good way of assigning homework, and, given that a lot of people drop out of obedience class after 2 or 3 sessions even after they've paid $75 or more, it might actually foster retention through sort of friendly competition, as students could see the progress of their classmates. The scoreboard would also be a positive reinforcement for students as they pass the tests involved in completing a level and see the column being filled in with green.

The Ts need to complete two more tests to finish Level 2: go out 2 feet and go around a pole, and go to mat from 5 feet out. Go to mat is one of those things I don't think I'll ever use--in the advanced levels, the dog goes to the mat from 10 feet out and lies quietly for 30 minutes. In other words, it's a way to get your dog out from under your feet while you're doing something else. My variation on that is to tell them to "settle," which means, unsurprisingly, settle down somewhere--on the couch, in your crate, I dont care, just stop being wild and silly. It also seems to double the down-stay, so I don't quite see the point.

On the other hand--one does want to finish the level!

You'd think the go around a pole would be even less useful, but in fact, it's a precursor to both go-outs and directionals--you point and tell the dog to go that-a-way--which is used in obedience and agility, but can also be used for things like "the shoes I want you to bring me are over that-a-way." And teaching the go around the pole is also a good shaping exercise for both you and the dog--i.e., you set your pole or cone or toilet bowl plunger on the floor and "shape" the dog to go around it by giving a click and treat for each approximate, successive movement in that direction. For example, looking at it, taking a step toward it, turning the head toward it. Eventually the dog will have figured out that the behavior you want is for him to go out and go around the pole. Weird, mom, but okay, just keep handing out the treats. And darn if I know what verbal cue to attach to it, but I guess I can deal with that when the time comes.

I'm not exactly not knitting--I've got a sweater underway with a chunky weight (size 10 needles) wool/alpaca yarn from Knit Piks that I'm working on when I take the Ts out. But yes, it does leave me with--what--5 unfinished pairs of socks? There's not quite enough to photograph yet, but when there is I'll post a photo.