Tuesday, December 21, 2010

I Passed My First Agility Trial - and I Celebrate!

Hi Everyone,

Good news, good news.

Last Friday I ran my first agility trial, despite Linda's thinking that perhaps I wasn't ready. Well, what does she know. I passed! My first try! Yay me.

(Actually, I think I may have been the only one in the novice level -- 4 of us -- to pass!) Yay me!

My final score was only 10 points off: 5 off for not touching the white contact on the A-frame, and 5 off for stopping to investigate some delicious smell in the middle of the field. That's a "Very Good" score. Yay me!

Unfortunately, no one filmed my historic run. 

 The next day I decided to celebrate, so during the long walk we took, I found a really delicious pile of poop and had a good roll in it. Delightful!

Look at that coating!

Another view. I can't fathom what's "ick" about it.

Unfortunately, there is definitely something wrong with how humans appreciate vintage poop. I get home and get marched right up to the bathtub.

All that fragrance...down the drain. :(


Now I smell like passion fruit and mango. Now THAT's "yuck"!!!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

A VERY Cold Day

Winter has hit like the proverbial lion. It is cold and windy today, and I am happy to say that I am warm and cozy in my dog sweater. Honey doesn't need a sweater, as she has tons of fur. But I get shaved regularly, and, to tell you the truth...I am cold!




Because of the weather, agility was canceled on Friday, which was unfortunate, because I was scheduled to do my first agility trial. Now I will have to wait for another time.

My big problem is, of course, going out to pee. I don't want to, but I have to. What do I do????

Saturday, December 4, 2010

In the Beginning, Part 2.

Today was a  nice lazy day. Yesterday, of course, was the agility group, which I love, and I had a great time. Linda brought with "Profiteroles" for the group to celebrate the success of my obedience test the week before.

We came home exhausted, especially Linda, who could barely stay awake for dinner, and then fell asleep on the sofa!

Today my friend, Minnie, came over with Tamar, and we all went to the field for a nice run. I also rolled in the dirt -- such fun. Just too bad it wasn't really stinky. I love stinky!

Minnie and Me

 Anyways, today I will tell you how it ended up that I am still at this house.

As you may recall, I was found in Feb. 2008, and Linda promised her husband that, like three other little black dogs that she had found before, she would find me another home too. And she really thought she would. Little did she know, that I had a PLAN.

My plan was to be so damn cute, that she would not be able to let me go. First of all, I showed her how smart I was, and how I could learn stuff really quickly.

Second, I made sure that I was really entertaining! The thing that really amused her was that I would take a ball in my mouth, throw it, and then run after it and catch it. I am a self-entertaining dog! I could tell she was enchanted. Also many people told her how cute I am, and asked how she could possible give me up?

(I know this video doesn't look very impressive, but you can get the idea.)


I knew my PLAN had worked when some people actually took an interest in taking me...but she told them she would think about it. Mwahahah!

So now we had to convince HIM! Her husband was,back, it's already March, and he's starting to bug her about "How long is it taking you to find a home for that dog?" He's sitting with Linda on the couch, and  I get the tennis ball and do that throw-catch-throw catch thing. And then she starts about...having two dogs isn't much more work than one, it's company for Honey, he's so cute...and before you know it, we have convinced him that I was to stay! Yipeeeee!!!

Once that was decided, though, it was time to do the formal adoption. So off we went to the vet. Before you know it I had gained a microchip, and lost some private parts (I won't go into that...!) I also got stuck with needles against rabies, distemper, parvo and whatever else they think might get me! They named me "Pepper" because I am so full of pep and verve...and it's a nice condiment alongside "Honey."  

And that is how I became a part of the family.

A sofa, a blanket and my bone. Heaven!


See you all again,

Pepper

Friday, December 3, 2010

Treats

Hi again,

Today I want to talk about one of my most favorite things in the world. TREATS.

One of the principles of clicker-training is to give lots of clicks fast and furiously. Which means the treats also come fast and furious, as every click means a treat!

The question is what is the best, most convenient treat to use. Regular dog kibble, besides being boring, dry and hard to swallow quickly (need to be ready for the next treat!), is way too big. It doesn't take long to click through an entire meal.

Linda tried experimenting with lots of different things and here are my comments on her attempts:

  • Dog kibble, as I said, boring, hard, too big
  • Pieces of yellow cheese: easy to cut small, but then they stick to each other and it takes her an age to peel off the piece and give it to me
  • A homemade recipe of liver, flour, eggs, peanut butter, and more: Tasty a good potential, but too crumbly in the final judgement.  Maybe more experimenting will turn up a decent recipe

The liver paste, before and after baking

Cutting the baked product into little treats

  • Roast chicken: nice, but not enough, and the family eats it up
  • Cat kibble: nice teeny little bits, but a bit hard and takes time to chew, or else I swallow and sometimes choke
  • And the winner is....
The best so far is hot dog. What can be bad? She takes one hot dog, cuts it lengthwise into 4-6 strips, and then cross-wise into about 25 slices. That's 100-150 treat bits per 1 hot dog!


Cutting up a hot dog. Some of the pieces on the left are actually a bit large, and she later got busy with the knife on them some more.

That's a lot of training for one hot dog too! Some hot dog brands are very moist, so she spreads them on a pan and puts them into a low oven to dry out a bit (not into leather, mind you!) Then they are stored in the freezer, and handfuls get transferred into the treat cup as needed. Then she throws in a small handful of cat kibble. As it sits with the hot dogs, it picks up some moisture, so there is a bit of a mix and the treats are not boring. Sometimes she adds in little pieces of smelly cheese, especially cheese that is sitting in a sandwich in a backpack for a day (her daughter sometimes doesn't eat her lunch!)

The best treat mix! Hot dogs, cat kibble, and old cheese.  The cheese is nice and smelly. Yum!

So there you have it. As you can see, I can eat lots and lots of those bits without ruining my figure.

And now it is time for another short clicker-training session, so I will sign off until tomorrow.

Shabat shalom, and happy Hanukah,

Pepper

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Clicker Training

Hi again,

Today I will tell you what I know about "clicker training."

A CLICKER is a little contraption that makes a little sharp sound when it is pressed. The entire point of the clicker is to tell the dog (me) EXACTLY the moment he has done something good. You know, the problem with a lot of training is that the dog really doesn't understand EXACTLY what he did that got him the treat. The Clicker is like an instant camera-shot of the moment.

A Typical Clicker

Let's take teaching a dog to sit without a clicker. This is how it usually happens. The person says "sit" (which is at this point a meaningless sound to the dog) and pushes its butt down to the ground. Then says "good dog" and then gives a treat. By the time the treat goes into the dog's mouth (or even by the time the end of "good dog" comes out of the person's mouth), the dog may have already lifted his butt off the floor. So is the treat for touching the butt TO the floor, or lifting the butt OFF the floor? You see, it's confusing. And this is a simple procedure. After a whole bunch of times (many!!!) the dog will start to realize that if it hears the sound "sit" and puts its butt on the floor, it will get a treat.

With a clicker, the sound goes off the INSTANT the butt hits the floor. The dog knows that that is the motion that will give him a treat (because he has earlier associated the sound of the click with a treat to come.) Voila! Instant communication! 

Another aspect of clicker training is using SHAPING. Shaping means that the dog uses its brain to figure out what the desired behavior is. So at the beginning, it may take a while to get the behavior formed, but later on, because the dog is using his brain, things happen really fast. So to shape a SIT, the trainer waits until the dog sits by itself. Then clicks and treats (C/T). The dog is ecstatic and wants another treat. At this point, it may not realize what it was exactly. Maybe while it was sitting, it was also thinking about a steak. So it thinks about a steak again, and nothing happens. Obviously this was not the behavior. He walks away. Nothing. He comes back. Nothing. He stops to think and sits down (CLICK! - C/T)) to do it. OK! The sit may be the magic behavior. The dogs gets up and sits down again. (C/T!!) That's it!!! He does it again and again! At this point, he begins to hear the word "SIT". So now, when he hears SIT he sits, and viola C/T!

Actually, this is a bit simplified, since shaping also means not waiting for the dog to do the actual "perfect" motion, but even a bit into the motion gets a click (i.e. just lowering the butt a bit will get a click, but later on the butt needs to be closer and closer to the floor to earn the C/T.)

OK. That is the principle. There comes a time when obeying "SIT" doesn't yield a treat each time. But you never know when, so it is in the dog's best interest to sit every time he hears the word "SIT." You never know!

Well, many people have written about clicker training, and I am certainly no expert and don't mean to give instructions on the whole concept. What I like about it is that the clicks and treats come fast and furiously, the sessions are generally short (just a few minutes, so I don't get bored and tired) but occur frequently during the day (makes life interesting, and I get treats all day)!

Here is the link to a little 7-day mini-course on getting started in clicker training from the Canis Clickertraining Academy.  Also here is a link to a place in Israel, Anima,  where we went to a seminar on clicker training last summer. If you Google, there are tons of sites on clicker-training.

Also, someone asked about training their kids, so here is an article on that.

Take care,
Pepper

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Agility

Hi again!

Yesterday (Tuesday)  I had a fun afternoon, because we (the Agility group) gave a demonstration of the sport to a group of dog handlers of the Israeli Prison Service. It was great to have an extra meet in the middle of the week. Wish it would happen more often.

So this brings me to Agility, and today I will tell you all about it.

Agility is a dog sport where you get to run around an obstacle course without a leash, jumping over things, running along dog walks and A-frames, running through tunnels and sleeves, and stuff like that. It is really fun, and being the energetic dog that I am, I love, love, love it!


When I first joined the family in Feb. 2008, Honey was already pretty advanced in agility. She had passed her basic obedience, and a novice agility exam. Every Friday and Tuesday, there was training, and Linda took me along too. Of course, I didn't know anything at that point, even how to walk heel and come when called, and all that, so most of the time I just watched. But I can tell you, I knew one day I would just l-o-v-e to do agility.

Here is a little film of Honey running her first qualifying novice run. (You can tell it is novice, since there is no slalom obstacle - also called weave poles.) And here is the second that she qualified in. Sorry the quality isn't that great. But that's all I've got.

A dog must pass two novice runs to be able to go up to level A.

HOWEVER, before a dog can do agility, they have to be OBEDIENT. Which I wasn't.  So Linda enrolled me in an obedience course. Don't forget, I was a street dog. I hadn't been educated. This was in the summer of 2008. It was ten lessons, and right after that, I started to learn basic agility. It didn't take me long to pick up the idea.

Due to no fault of my own, I didn't get a chance to do obedience test for a long time, and then the first one (summer 2010) I failed because I ran away in the middle (there was something interesting to look at), and the second time (October 2010), I failed because I rolled in the grass right in the middle of the heel without leash. (It smelled good...I couldn't resist it!) So, believe it or not, I finally passed just this past Friday (Nov. 26, 2010). Yippee!!!

Now that I've got that test under my belt, I can start trying to qualify in novice trials. Usually a dog needs to pass two novice trials before he can start practicing in the "advanced" agility group. 

Despite that, I am already practicing Agility with the advanced group, and doing a pretty good job of it, if I do say so myself. I know I am not there because I am a genius (although I think I am), but because they need Linda to help teach the basic classes. So I kind of got bumped "up." So sometimes I am not so sure where to run, but it takes practice to "develop good teamwork with the handler" (I read that somewhere). Actually, they say that the dog NEVER makes a mistake, it's ALWAYS the handler's fault. So there!

Because I am a little dog, some of the obstacles have to be set lower (the jumps and the wall, e.g.), which is a pain, because I am always waiting for the other dogs (there are about 6 others who practice with me) to finish before I get my chance. I wish some other mini dogs would join the group!

One of these days I'll get someone to take a film of me doing a course, and you'll see what a great dog I am. I hate to brag, but I will be much better than Honey. Believe it or not, she told me that she really doesn't like agility all that much, can you believe it? and she would rather just sit at the side and watch. She just does it cuz there's some hot dog at the end!  Well, yeah, that's a good reason. But I would do it even without the hot dog!

You are invited to come watch the agility group (and me, of course!) in action every Friday afternoon at the SportKef area in Rishon le Zion. (Call first, just to make sure, and of course if it rains, there's no meet.) Here's the link to the Agility Israel Group.

All my love,
Pepper

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

In the Beginning

My earliest days will remain a secret and can never be revealed. The most I can say is that I was born sometime in 2007. Probably early in the year.

In February 2008, I was wandering around a shopping center in the Shikun HaMizrach in Rishon le Zion, Israel. I was hungry and thirsty and a scruffy mess. I remember this lady walking by with a dog. Our eyes met, and for a moment I had this hopeful feeling that she could see what a great little doggie I was, but at the end she just kept going. Rats. But the next day, she came by again, and this time after asking around and hearing from the guard at the entrance that I had been here for over a week, she looped the end of the dog's leash over my head and I walked home with them.

First thing she gave me some food and water. You can imagine how hungry and thirsty I was. Then she put a leash on me again, and took me in her car to a vet. She asked the vet to look for a my-crow-chip or something, which he didn't find. I remember him looking at my ears and saying that they looked awfully swollen and maybe I would need treatment for hematoma! (That happens when a dog has itchy ears, and shakes his head so much that the blood collects in the ear flaps. Ewww!)


Did I mention that I was rather scruffy? Well, I was a real mess. I was just a mass of tangles and mats. Anyways, she takes me back home and gets out a pair of scissors to try to trim off the mats, but she couldn't even get the point of the scissors through my fur. That's how bad I was!


This is me when she just found me...what a mess!


She ended up calling a groomer to come over and give me a haircut. I didn't really like the buzz of the clippers, but it was a relief getting rid of all that itchy mass of hair. And guess what, my ears were fine. The fur had been so matted on them that the vet thought it was my actual ears and not fur.

This is what I looked like after the haircut:


I am here a very naked dog. (Blush)

As I said, it was February, and naked dogs are not very warm, so Linda (being the creative person she is) threw together a little jacket for me from a pair of old leg warmers.




I'm not really fond of the pink color, but it was nice and cozy.

The lady's name was Linda. She told her husband (who wasn't thrilled, I could tell, about having another dog) that she would look for someone to adopt me. I liked this house and didn't really want to end up anywhere else. So I knew I would have to do something. As you can see, I am still here. So my plotting worked. But more about that another time.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Hi! My name is Pepper

Hi.

My name is Pepper.

I am a miniature poodle (or so they think; there might be some other stuff mixed in).

My regal pose!


A couple of years ago, I was lost, and a nice woman (I call her Mom, now) found me and adopted me. One day I will tell you about that. 

Today I live with in a house in Israel, with my family (mom, pop, some older kids, another dog, and a really stupid cat). 

I love people, love life, love food and love to play. I love my Mom most of all. One day I think I will try to superglue myself to her.
Honey, Mom (Linda) and Me!

Since I've been at this house, there is one special day every week (well, most weeks) were we (Mom, the other dog, and I) hop in the car (I love cars!) and go to this huge field where there is all sorts of neat equipment to jump and climb on and in. This is called "Agility." Agility has got to be one of the most fun things a dog can do (other than rolling in a dead animal, I guess). I love it! Mom loves taking me to Agility, because she says I have a lot more "drive" for it than Honey. (Honey is the other dog. She is kind of wimpy, and doesn't like running around much.)

Mom also loves teaching me other things. I love learning lots of new tricks. My favorite one is where I bring her a tissue when she sneezes. I also know how to pick up my toys and put them in my toy basket, and I can pick up clothespins off the ground when she drops them when she is hanging wet clothes up on lines outside.

Here's the tissue trick:


Now mom wants to teach me "Canine Freestyle." This is where the dog and their human do moves together to music.

Here's a link to a really famous Freestyle team - Carolyn Scott and Rookie, the golden retriever, and here's one to  Kate and Gin (border collie) at he finals of Britain's Got Talent, 2008.

Canine Freestyle is really complicated. And I think it's really going to be a big adventure to learn it. So that is why I have started this dog blog. I hope you will enjoy my adventure with me.

Please stay tuned for more posts!

All my love,

Pepper