Greetings from smoky Montana. *cough, cough*
Pozy got mail today.
What fun it is to learn to communicate with a whole new being.
I hope your Monday is/has been awesome.
What's Up, Buttercup?
A Wildflower Update — yay! Georgia and Patty send us this answer to the question of, What’s Up, Buttercup?
“We really enjoyed the visit from Penny, Caleb and the kids (and especially Zeus).
I loved that they were up for doing the Novice Tricks title. One quick run through and then doing it twice for me (the Evaluator) and now Zeus can add TKN behind his name. Buttercup has been busy working on her Intermediate tricks title. We're doing the agility teeter and learning to close a drawer. If there are any other Wildflower parents that would like to submit videos of their dog doing tricks. I would be happy to evaluate them for the Buttercup Challenge (and the AKC title) free of charge. Send me the Youtube link and I'll send you the signed paperwork to submit. If you need online assistance in training your puppy to do tricks, I made some videos on how to train tricks for the Leonberger Club of America. Here is the LINK You can click on the complete list of tricks in the upper left hand corner of the video.
The Buttercup Challenge has spread to other breeds. Here is Buttercup's classmate from Puppy Kindergarten showing us his 'Get in a Box' and 'Sit'. Tumbo and his Rhodesian Ridgeback littermates are also taking the Buttercup Challenge!
YOU CAN DO IT TOO!!!
Buttercup has definitely met one hundred new people and had one hundred new experiences in her first hundred days (actually 85 days :-). She's confident, bold and friendly. My friend came over with her four nephews and nieces and Buttercup ate up the attention.
Buttercup is getting along more and more with the older dogs. At first they really didn't want much to do with her. Now they play tug and keep-away and she respects when they tell her they've had enough of her mouth full of razor blades. They're very sweet together. This is the scene I wake up to in the morning (taken from me in bed :-)
I pulled out Buttercup's blanket that she came home with and she smelled it and got really excited. I know she recognized the smells that it carried. She nuzzled it and sniffed and sniffed. We also started working on Scent Work and she's been finding treats hidden around the house with the cue "Find it!".
Buttercup has a definite preference in toys. She loves toys that rattle. Patty bought her a cow with a rattle in it. It is her new favorite. She also likes squeakers a lot and has perfected the squeaker vibrato and the sueEAK when she bites down hard. She plays the snake like a xylophone! You can always get her to come running by squeaking a toy.
She now weighs 21.8 pounds and has an appointment on Monday for the single Parvo shot and titer from the DAP she received two weeks ago. I really had a hard time finding a single CPV-2 and ended up ordering it online and then having my vet administer it.
She's a healthy vibrant puppy and we love her to death. She makes us laugh every day.”
Great photos, great report — thank you so so much for enjoying Buttercup, making her life fun and interesting, and keeping us all updated.
On that happy note — please have a fun and interesting day!
Lesson from the Kitchen Faucet
We have been in the midst of a reconstruction project for 14 months since a failed dishwasher repair caused extensive water damage to the house. Demonstrating that disasters come with opportunity, a kitchen remodel has been underway.
I queried people about what I should consider for my new kitchen and got so many great ideas; my agility coach, Wendy, was the one who told me about a touch faucet. She was spot on because it is life changing. You simply touch the faucet and it turns on — touch again and it turns off.
Who knew?!
After months and months of washing dishes in the bathtub, the new sink and fancy faucet were installed — in the wrong countertops originally, but hey — it was progress (sort of).
The light on the faucet — blue means cold water and it turns red when hot. Fancy!
It took me a bit to get used to the faucet but soon I was a pro, touching it on and off like I had invented the thing.
And then — months later (not exaggerating) — the correct countertops were installed.
White countertops vs. black — quite different. Also, Pozy is standing on one of her beds to do this.
However, the touch feature of the faucet was suddenly not functional.
I knew this — and yet I touched.
Over and over and over.
Touch — nothing.
Touch — nada.
Even after I had used the handle to turn the water on, I would still touch it five seconds later in a vain attempt to shut the water off!
This went on for DAYS and DAYS.
It blew my mind.
The touch feature of the faucet is reinforcing to me in two ways: water flows but it is also fun, especially in the beginning. Those two things — water and fun — combined to create a behavior that was persistent and difficult to stop.
I did eventually learn to stop touching the faucet but only after days and days of no response. In other words, the faucet eventually extinguished my intrusive touching behavior by ignoring me.
RUDE.
I bet you can see where this is going.
If what we want is persistent and well-established behavior from a dog (or a human), we need to be a touch faucet, providing reliable and consistent reinforcers over time for the specific behaviors we desire. If we can do this, we will get behavior so ingrained and automatic that lack of usual reinforcers won’t matter — the dog, like me, will just keep touching.
Although strongly established behavior is persistent, even during/after periods of no primary reinforcers, for behavior to strongly persist outside my home faucet, I must also have a history of touching other faucets and getting water. I don’t, and so I rarely try to turn on other faucets by touching them.
Think show ring, Friends. The dog needs to touch faucets in other places — successfully — to make sure the behavior doesn’t just happen at home.
If a faucet can train a human to perform a behavior over and over and over — even in the absence of a reinforcer — just think what a smart human can do with a dog.
But what this also means is if the behavior we want from a dog is not happening, it is a training failure — not a dog failure. We clearly have not been enough like a well-functioning touch faucet.
It really is that simple.
Finally, consider this — if my touch faucet had only worked half the time and/or if it had sometimes shocked/scared me when I touched the wrong place, my touch-the-faucet habit would have been very different and so would my feelings about the faucet.
In fact, I am pretty darn sure I would just use the handle.