Wait ’til you see this! Clara and I are halfway through our 1000 treats for Madeline Clark Gabriel’s 1,000 Treat Challenge and I couldn’t be more pleased with our progress.
The behavior I chose for Clara’s 1000 treats and structured training is Relax from Sue Ailsby’s Training Levels, Level 2. As of this writing, we have had 14 sessions over 22 days, and used up 450 treats.
Clara is pretty relaxed!
Sorry for the drab colors in the photos; I’ll do better for our grand finale when we hit 1000 treats.
Clara can lie down on a mat and immediately be still without trying a bunch of behaviors first.
She will be moderately relaxed (not expecting a puddle of floppy dog yet). But no more quivering on the knife edge of expectancy. Things to look for: relaxation of facial muscles, especially in forehead. Slower respiration. Quiet tail. A shifted hip, if it is maintained that way and not just quickly offered.
Clara can maintain this moderately relaxed state on her mat for one minute.
Optional but hopefully: she can do this without staring at me.
We missed several days in the last couple of weeks, first because Clara had an acute GI problem (she’s fine now), then because I wasn’t feeling well and was too grumpy for these long sessions. But I am extremely pleased with our progress.
In the video this time I show a series of stills extracted from the video about a minute apart, and you can actually see Clara melting down into relaxation in time lapse. I am frankly amazed! Even while the session was going on I didn’t know we were doing that well! She settles down within 10 seconds of our beginning the session (no more throwing behaviors), and she is also cooling it with the eye contact. She is still looking at me, but is much more relaxed about it as far as I can tell (I’m making a point to not return eye contact).
Sometime in the last handful of sessions, Clara has started to get it about relaxing.
By the way, I don’t show it in the video, but Summer, in the crate, is getting some treats too. Having here right there may make it a little harder for Clara, but when we’re going through these periods where she is getting the lion’s share of my attention, I just have to do something for my other dogs.
I’m not going to film again until we get to 1000 treats. Since we have achieved my initial goals I am adding three more:
I would like the momentary excitement when she gets a treat to lessen.
I would like to see her brow unfurrow. That’s the last visible tightness in her body.
And while we’re at it, I would love it if she would close her eyes. I think it’s within our reach.
A little love fest after the session
Here are some other folks who are writing about or filming the challenge:
One of the very cool things about Sue Ailsby’s Training Levels is that they are extremely structured but also completely individualizable.
The Levels provide a method of learning to communicate with your dog and teach her concepts, in the guise of being a handbook of training behaviors. But within this step-by-step method are a multitude of opportunities for the human to think through the benefits of a particular behavior for her own situation and environment.
A lot of these opportunities are in the final steps of the behavior and the “Comeafters.” Because I was involved in the production of the books, I recall that one of Sue’s or Lynn’s ideas for what to call the Comeafters was “Making it Your Own.” That has stuck with me.
I’ve learned to pay close attention to those opportunities, rather than breezing through and checking them off since I am already using some (possibly half-assed) application of them. In this post I am sharing two examples of planned, trained, individualized Levels behaviors that I’m pretty proud of.
Clara during her funny ear period already knew to lie down to get me to throw the ball
Level 2 Down Step 5: Default Down
A default behavior is one that the animal does automatically in some situation, but the term is really an arbitrary distinction. Default behaviors are cued just like every other behavior we train dogs to do. It’s just that the cues don’t come from our self-centered little mouths. They come from the environment, or sometimes from an action we take part in. I figure it’s all the same to the dog, or actually, the environmental ones are probably easier than trying to figure out the nuances of human speech and hand signals.
For example, although we work on this a lot, I could probably think of half a dozen situations where Zani would respond incorrectly to a verbal cue for a Sit. Verbal cues are really hard for her. But if I plunk her in front of an agility jump, she is not going to misunderstand and down or stand instead. The agility jump is a very clear cue.
Back to the down. Sue suggests a default down in the presence of kids and older people, when the human is talking on the phone, etc. Well, my feral dog Clara will probably not be in the proximity of children enough times in her whole life to train a default down, so that one is out. But since she is a bouncy jouncy easily aroused dog at home, down is a wonderful thing, and the more cues for it, the better.
I wrote a whole post on one of Clara’s cues for down: Get Out of My Face: Teaching an Incompatible Behavior. In the post and video I describe and show how I trained Clara to lie down whenever I bend over or squat, instead of mugging my face. Worked a charm. And you can see another one in this post/video: Play with Your Dog: For Research. Clara knows to lie down to start our game with the flirt pole. She does the same with tug.
But Clara has yet another default down now. The way my house is laid out, I have two steps down into my den from the kitchen. Clara is in the den almost all the time. I have a gate across the top of the stairs. That means that those two stairs are favorite lounging and hangout areas for all the dogs.
Clara, being the high energy dog that she is (that’s putting it nicely) naturally leaps up and crowds up onto the stairs in front of the gate whenever I try to descend into the den. This is yet another situation in which I just need her to back off a bit. So I trained her to lie down on the den floor when I enter. One of the criteria is that it has to be on the concrete floor; not on the steps. That’s an easy distinction since the steps are elevated and carpeted. So we have a special verbal cue for this: “Concrete!” But I expanded this to a default behavior also. I wanted her to down whenever I came into the den. (If you are starting to think I have some sort of queen complex, you just don’t know this dog.) So the cue for that is my hand on the gate handle. Sweet!
Funny thing is, I haven’t thought up a practical default down for either of my other two dogs in training. They are much less, uh, demanding than Clara. But something will come to my attention sooner or later, I’m sure, since Sue has invited me to think about it.
Level 2 Focus Step 5: Use focus as proof that the dog is In The Game (think of a place you could use eye contact in your life)
OK, it’s Summer’s turn. This Step could have been an easy pass for Summer. I’ve been reinforcing extended eye contact for years with this dog. (In this video from four years ago she does flawless 30 seconds, then 40 seconds of eye contact. It’s right at the beginning.) There are a number of situations in which I already ask for it: going out any door being prime among them. She looks at me before I open the door, and reorients and looks at me again after we go through. She generally holds eye contact when I cue Zen. She stares at me for extended periods whenever she wants something, as well. I could have just marked that Step off.
But I try not to treat the Levels as something to race through, even though I like checking off boxes as much as the next person. So I held off and thought about it. Then the other day I noticed something. I taught Summer a puppy fetch a couple of years ago. Summer had zero retrieve instinct and I shaped it with patient coaching from Marge Rogers of Rewarded Behavior Continues. This is not a formal retrieve of any sort and certainly not a Levels retrieve. We don’t have a hold or any finesse with the delivery. It’s just a trick. But it’s relevant here.
This trick was the first thing I trained Summer while having a plate of food on the floor. I got into the habit of doing the plate thing for that behavior and not many others. And lo and behold, the other day I realized that not only was the plate of food part of the cue for the behavior, but she was drifting towards retrieving to the plate instead of me! How helpful of her to position herself closer to the food, to save me all that reaching around!
I experimented with moving the plate around, or eliminating it altogether, and found that she looked for it when she came back with the toy. So I quit using the plate for a while and got us back on track. But Summer is a great “food starer” and even after she delivered the toy, she would continue looking at my pocket or wherever the food was.
(By the way, for some dogs, the Manners Minder, a remote control treat dispenser, would be a great way to approach the food staring. Unfortunately, Summer is afraid of the grinding noise the MM makes when it jams, and since I can’t get it to jam on cue, I can’t desensitize her to it.)
That’s when I got the bright idea. This is one of Summer’s favorite behaviors. Sue says “Use Watch to tell your dog you’re about to do something, so pay attention now!” My throwing the toy definitely qualifies as “doing something,” and it’s something she really likes. So how about if I wait for or ask for eye contact before throwing the toy? Each time! In theory, the cue for the fetch would provide tertiary reinforcement for the eye contact, since the fetch is so fun for her.
So we started off. I learned right away that this was difficult for her. Apparently what she had been doing before when I cued–sniffing around, still thinking about food, had gotten the tertiary reinforcement. When I waited for eye contact before throwing, she could do it a couple of times, but it was spotty, and her enthusiasm for the trick went down. Oh oh. So I took the fetch out entirely. We had several days of sessions where I just asked for eye contact, marked and threw the treat, then waited for eye contact as she trotted back to me. Now we were on the right track! Turns out that when trotting up to me, Summer was most often looking elsewhere than my eyes. Even though in so many other situations, including competition heeling, she did look me in the eye.
Summer had already learned that eye contact was highly reinforceable in this situation
I had worked eye contact in so many situations, but here was a new one.
Only after we had a good start on building her new behavior: looking at my face when she approached me, did I start asking for the fetch again. I would intersperse the two behaviors. Most often I would reinforce the eye contact on approach directly with a treat, but once every three or four times I would ask for the fetch instead. After she got used to the alternation, this worked great.
Thanks, YouTube, for the best featured image from the video being one where she is looking at my hand!
Summer’s enthusiasim for the trick has returned, and she gives me eye contact to get me to do it. I think this is probably empowering for her as well. She knows the key to “make” me throw the toy. What do you think?
Bonus question: no prizes except fame and glory, but does anybody see the superstitious behaviors in the part of the video when I am in the rocking chair and we are working on eye contact alone? There are two separate ones. They fade as I start to mark the eye contact earlier.
I would love to hear about your dogs’ default behaviors. Got any interesting ones?
Poor Clara had her yearly vet visit this past week. She is my feral dog, and although I have two socialization sessions with her every week and she is making great progress, I have not worked with her at the vet. Going to the vet is graduate school, and she’s just to 7th grade or so.
So what do you do when you have to put your dog in a situation for which they are not ready to be comfortable? What I did was take lots of food for distractions and get through it as fast as possible.
For Clara, getting shots or other procedures that cause a bit of pain is not the problem. Being in a building with other people and dogs in close proximity, and being handled and restrained by strangers is. This is by far the most frightened she has ever been at the vet’s, probably because Continue reading “Dog Facial Expressions: Stress”
The behavior I chose for Clara is Relax from Sue Ailsby’s Training Levels, Level 2. As of this writing, we have had 10 sessions over 7 days, and used up 285 treats. We’re making great progress.
To review my goals from last time:
Clara can lie down on a mat and immediately be still without trying a bunch of behaviors first.
She will be moderately relaxed (not expecting a puddle of floppy dog yet). But no more quivering on the knife edge of expectancy. Things to look for: relaxation of facial muscles, especially in forehead. Slower respiration. Quiet tail. A shifted hip, if it is maintained that way and not just quickly offered.
Clara can maintain this moderately relaxed state on her mat for one minute.
Optional but hopefully: she can do this without staring at me.
Here, one week in, we have all but the first. Our biggest hurdle is the very beginning when she first gets on the mat. Reinforced habits of attention die hard! But I think her progress is great.
To answer a reader’s question: I should have mentioned this the first time. What am I doing while this is going on? I have my head slightly averted and am looking off into the distance. I’m breathing evenly, have slightly droopy eyes, and I try to make slow, relaxed movements when I do move. I am not looking back at her. It looked like it in the first video since she stared at my face the whole time but honest, I have not looked into her eyes even once!
Speaking of staring at the face, here is a really nice resource for teaching relaxation on a mat that starts off with a way to get the dog to look down instead of looking at you. The beginning part didn’t work for me since Clara turned into the Wild Gobbler (I just couldn’t get those treats down slowly and calmly enough and it triggered the whole throwing behaviors thing again), but the rest of it is similar to what we are doing. It is a really nice protocol. Nan Arthur of Whole Dog Training’s Relax on a Mat.
Interesting results of our training are leaking into real life. Now when Clara notices me watching her, she slows her tail, which is cute. As I show in the movie, she can now take a relaxed position in her crate, even when another dog is doing some active training right next to her. Also, she is definitely less aroused immediately after a session. I was going to film how quickly she goes from zero to 60 after being released, but today for the first time she didn’t do it! She just stood up, mugged my face a couple of times (losing that behavior would be too much to ask at this point), then solicited some petting. Yeah!
We still have a long way to go. I know Clara is not relaxed. She is lying quietly on her side. But what a start! And now I think we’re approaching the part where she gets bored to death, and I can watch for little relaxations. I’m already able to watch her more, now that she isn’t staring at me all the time. My job this week will be to start noticing all the little things. What are her tells? Since she’s got a short coat and bare belly it’s easy to watch her breathing. I’ve gotten a few sighs, and some slowdowns of her breath. I have noticed small relaxations in her back haunches. Sometimes her tail, instead of stopping stiffly, relaxes a bit. Maybe you good observers out there can give me some hints.
Here are some other folks who are writing about or filming the challenge:
A knowledgeable Internet friend gently let me know a few things about the origin of Errorless Learning that I had incorrect in my earlier post. She was generous with her time and patient with my learning curve. These misconceptions affected some of my conclusions as well. I’m letting my earlier article stand, since there is still much in there that I think is worthwhile and accurate. But I’m linking them and I hope anyone who read it will read this as well.
Mine were common misconceptions. Up until today, the Wikipedia article on errorless learning, along with quite a few other posts and articles, attributed the term to Herbert Terrace and cited his experiments with pigeons as the beginning of its usage, as did I. But in 1963, behaviorists, psychologists, and educators had been discussing errorless learning for 30 years.
Errorless learning was an instructional design introduced by B.F. Skinner in the 1930s. There was controversy at the time, and following, about whether errors were necessary in learning a behavior. Jesus Rosales-Ruiz summarized the approach from Skinner’s 1968 book The Technology of Teaching as follows:
“In [Skinner’s] system, errors are not necessary for learning to occur. Errors are not a function of learning or vice-versa nor are they blamed on the learner. Errors are a function of poor analysis of behavior, a poorly designed shaping program, moving too fast from step to step in the program, and the lack of the prerequisite behavior necessary for success in the program” (Rosales-Ruiz, 2007).
It helps to know that Skinner was responding to the then-famous 1898 Thorndike paper called “Trial and Error Learning” which posited that learning was a slow and laborious process. Skinner’s response was that it didn’t have to be–with proper planning, the teacher could grease the skids for the learner and learning could be achieved through “trial” only. Hence “errorless learning.”
Skinner’s system has been summarized really well elsewhere so I’m not going to go into it at length in this post. I may later, since it seems overshadowed by Terrace’s work and is fascinating. My friend summed it up as an anti-lumping program: through good planning make the correct behavior so easy as to be almost inevitable, slice the desired behavior/s thinly and maintain a very high rate of reinforcement. This method is highly humane, in contrast to what I was objecting to in my other post. But it’s more than “setting the animal up for success” as we think of it in a general way. As I understand it, it entails much more planning and prompting than we usually see, even in clicker training these days.
Terrace’s work, on which I based my objections in the other post, was an example of how low the error rate could be pushed down with extreme planning and control of the environment and training. I still maintain that the level of control he maintained with pigeons in the lab would be not only unfeasible but some aspects actually undesirable in our home environments. And I maintain, if not skepticism, an appreciation of the challenges inherent in teaching a later conflicting behavior if one behavior were taught with controls similar to Terrace’s, and especially with the number of repetitions. However, these concerns cancel out. If we can’t attain the control and terrifically low rate of error Terrace got in the first place, we aren’t going to have the problems that Marsh and Johnson‘s pigeons had in learning a conflicting behavior.
Geikie, a greater sulfur-crested cockatoo, in a color discrimination session with a high rate of reinforcement
Another astute reader questioned the logic of saying that the design of the experiment defined the concept or the term (thanks Margery!). Turned out she was right on target, since the concept and the name predated the experiments. Not only that, but the educational work she described doing herself in her comment on the original post is directly related to the early learning methods for humans that Skinner worked on. Which were also very humane, pleasant, and natural for the learner.
The Method vs the Term
Which brings me back to one of my original gripes. The term itself. But first I can now say what is good about the term. It refers to the fact that a subject does not need to make errors to learn a behavior.
What I don’t like about the term remains: it is inaccurate and unattainable for lots of behaviors for most of us in real world training. Jesus Rosales Ruiz writes in a piece that discusses errorless learning in a positive way,
“At each step of the program, the learner has a reasonablechance of success….Good shaping is characterized by high rates of reinforcement and low use of extinction.” (emphasis mine)
Dr. Rosales Ruiz trains in an academic setting, but also in the real world. “Reasonable chance” of success is not 100%. And “low use of extinction” is not 0%. These are much friendlier terms for the average trainer. But as my friend reminds me, if we treat the term “errorless” as an ideal and put our mind and heart into setting the animal up to succeed as much as possible, we will get really good training.
The Rosales Ruiz article is available as a download in this post in Mary Hunter’s great blog. It is a must-read.
I have a final objection to the term, not the method. It is probably the most important of all that I have said.
I don’t like it because it can make people feel bad, and thereby discourage them. Approaching zero errors requires not only great control over the learning environment, but great skill, which many of us don’t have. For literal people, the term itself, coupled with the amazingly low error rate in Terrace’s article that is always cited, can make the whole concept daunting and unapproachable.
In my other post I suggested a couple of candidate behaviors for errorless learning; behaviors for which there is no potential conflicting opposite behavior, such as scent work like a diabetic alert. There is another obvious candidate in the dog world: house training. We really would prefer no mistakes, and hardly anybody anymore would say that is is important that the dog have an accident in the house and be punished for it for their understanding to become complete. It’s a great example. However, I know several people who thought they were utter failures because they failed to live up to the “no accidents” and errorless approach that is written about in at least one puppy book, including dire predictions of terrible things that will happen if there are errors.
Is Summer’s use of a pee pad in error?
Which brings me to my final point. If the role/goal of the teacher is to set the student up for success and make the desired behavior the easiest and most likely, shouldn’t the term itself focus on success and not errors? Also, Skinner himself said that it was about the teaching, not the learning. I would never have written any of these rants if the term had been something Enhanced Chances of Success Teaching instead of Errorless Learning. But I doubt if the whole educational world is going to change its nomenclature just for me.
The Wikipedia article has been amended to begin with Skinner’s role in errorless learning and now has several references for that. However, the bulk of the article is still about Terrace’s work, which is actually just one of the many offshoots. Skinner’s method and the discussions from the 1930s on need to be the focus. It would be great if somebody who knows about that history, or wants to read up on it, would further edit the article.
Madeline Clark Gabriel of Baby Safe Dog Training has a brilliant idea. She proposes to set aside 1,000 treats and train one behavior with planning and intent. I love this because I tend to be a little unfocused in training and pass out treats for good behaviors, cute behaviors, behaviors I vaguely like, etc. Madeline points out that a great thing about this Challenge is that it will be helpful to people (like me) who are profligate with their treats, and also to folks who are dubious about the whole food thing and tend to be stingy. What if every trainer took 1,000 treats, really concentrated, and spent them wisely on one behavior? I think the results would be wonderful!
First, congratulations to the winners of the contest and all those who entered. The top three scorers with prizes were:
Marjorie MacKay with 12 correct
Ines Gaschot with 10 correct
Monica Upton with 9 correct
I will be contacting you three about the books very soon. Congratulations!
Three others, Barbara Bacci, Sharon Wachsler and P. Hodge also got 9 correct, but I received Monica’s entry first.
Carol Nottenburg tied for first with 12 right but exempted herself from prizes.
There were seven competitors in all, and two others who sent in entries but weren’t competing for prizes.
Apology
Now, before you look at the labeled photos below, I must apologize.
If I trained my dogs like I created this contest, they would leave the room.
I know now that I set the criteria way too high for it to be fun for most people. In the spirit of my blog, I’ll tell you what happened. There is a cognitive bias known as the Curse of Knowledge. Please go look at the definition; it’s brief and well explained. In short it means that the person with information (often the teacher) is unable to put herself mentally in the place of the person without the knowledge (often the student). The information in her head seems obvious and ubiquitous and she can’t imagine not knowing it.
I believe most good teachers are good at least in part because they can surmount the Curse of Knowledge. But I succumbed to it bigtime in setting up this contest.
For starters, I knew all those photos very well, knew what was cropped out, and of course know and observe Summer all the time. I knew that it would be hard and that some of the photos are downright misleading/impossible, but I didn’t get just how hard and demoralizing it would be. I couldn’t put myself in the place of the person looking at the photos without the context that I have. Also I got to know the photos so well in working with them that I knew them all. Keeping them all in your head at once would make the contest much easier.
Second, I didn’t try taking the test myself or get a volunteer. That’s a remedy for the Curse of Knowledge. If I had gotten a volunteer I would also have realized immediately that the mechanics of the contest were very bad. To do a matching game with any sort of fluency, you really need to be able to see all the photos and all the descriptions at once. I wonder how many people looked at the first 2 or 3 and just quit since there was not a comfortable way to do it? Ideally to do the contest online it should have been set up with some kind of Java script where you could move photo icons around and try different matches with the descriptions, and have more of it visible at one time.
If I were to participate in this kind of test and take it seriously, I would have printed out all the photos on a color printer, cut them up separately, then done the same with the descriptions. But golly, that’s a whole lot of work. Did anybody do that? Even if you were the type of person who enjoys this particular type of puzzle, just the work entailed to get the puzzle ready would be off putting.
Yesterday I sat down with a friend and watched her try and I felt like banging my head against the wall. We quit after three. This could have been really fun, if I had had, say, 12 or 15 photos, with the descriptions scrambled but visible on the same page. A challenge, but doable. I hate it that I used up all these great photos this way; it’ll be a while before I can do another one and make it right.
Also I think many of the stress photos were too similar. Add to that that Summer sometimes looks stressed when playing or asking me for something, and that she can look almost relaxed when stressed (see below), well, I’m sorry. I think those photos make for really interesting discussion, but they are lousy for a contest.
Finally, true confessions, I was too enamored of the photos. I did reduce the number from 43 (!) to 31 on the advice of my friend Marge, but I just loved looking at all those different faces of my dog so much that I didn’t set better criteria for inclusion. No doubt she would have told me the same thing again if I had asked after my cuts, but I didn’t give her a chance. Too many varmint pics! Too much thunder! Mea culpa.
Discussing a Few Photos
The two photos that I thought would be almost impossible to get (and I think no one did get them right) were #16 Asking to Train and #19 Playing with Zani. In #16 Summer looks very worried; in full blown appeasement. But that’s how she acts sometimes when she wants something.
Almost everybody guessed that #27 was asking to train. In that one Summer is sitting on a mat staring at me. Not a bad guess, since lots of our dogs do that I think when they want something. But what she wanted, in my experience, was for Cricket not to be there. We were already training. And #19 is is a pretty anxious face for a “playing” dog. I didn’t really expect anybody to get that one. But there is a hint in the cropped version; you can barely tell she may be in a play bow. From the two play pics, you might get the sense that Summer is not very fun for another dog to play with. According to Zani and Clara, you would be right.
So there are just a few of the ones I knew almost no one could get. Again, great discussion material but not good contest material!
I think #7 is an interesting study (most people got it). Summer was on her mat at a particular fairgrounds for the first time and she was very stressed. Her expression is a bit similar to some of the ones where she is having a good time, but the “tell” is that the corners of her mouth (commissures) are very stretched back, and also her ears are pinned back. She was stress panting but you can’t really tell that from the photo.
The “Has been fussed at” photo, #3, was taken after she had pulled a bunch of books off the bookshelf and probably chewed some if I recall. If you look closely I think you can see that she is much younger in this photo than in all the rest. I was too, smile. I manage things better now with younger dogs, and I teach them the difference between my stuff and theirs, rather than leaving temptation like that around too early in the game. Yes, that could have been a “shaming” photo. But like most of those, the shame would be mostly on me. And I have never published it until now.
Photos
Below in the gallery I’ve juxtaposed the cropped photos with the photos they were cropped from, and put the correct labels on them. (At the bottom of this post there is also an answer key without the pics.) I intend to make some sort of permanent quiz version of this, or maybe divide it into two to make it more doable, as an online body language study.
Kudos to the stalwarts who made a submission, and my thanks for everybody’s patience with me. Some of you may have been fairly irritated about the whole thing.
1
Found a varmint ( turtle)
2
Summer in typical predator mode
3
Has been fussed at
4
Looking for a varmint ( rat or possum)
5
First time she saw a TV
6
Waiting to check the back yard
7
At the fairgrounds on her mat at a dog show
8
On a fun outing
9
During a thunderstorm
10
Immediately after fence fight with new neighbor dog
11
My mom has her arm around her
12
Just a photoshoot in the back yard
13
On a road trip in hot weather
14
During a thunderstorm
15
Guarding a Nylabone
16
Asking to train
17
On a fun outing
18
Home from vet after serious illness
19
Playing with Zani
20
After a varmint hunt
21
Playing with Zani
22
Looking for a varmint (squirrel, rat, or possum)
23
Watching petals float through the air
24
At the agility field
25
Found a varmint ( possum)
26
Late in day at agility trial
27
Sitting uncomfortably close to another dog
28
Being held in my arms
29
In costume
30
Being petted
31
Doing agility sequence
Bonus video: Here is a video taken during an event similar to Photo #1: Summer found a turtle. It’s only a minute long, and gives a sense of her excitement about and passion for turtles. (The turtle was on the other side of a chain length fence and not harmed.) Stay on until the end to hear her vocalizations. Sounds like she is cussing at the turtle.
Here’s the contest key:
First time she saw a TV 5
In costume 29
Looking for a varmint (squirrel, rat, possum, or turtle) 2
Looking for a varmint (squirrel, rat, possum, or turtle) 22
Looking for a varmint (squirrel, rat, possum, or turtle) 4
Found a varmint (squirrel, rat, possum, or turtle) 1
Found a varmint (squirrel, rat, possum, or turtle) 25
After a varmint hunt 20
Sitting uncomfortably close to another dog 27
Has been fussed at 3
Late in day at agility trial 26
At the agility field 24
Watching petals float through the air 23
My mom has her arm around her 11
Playing with Zani 19
Playing with Zani 21
Guarding a Nylabone 15
Being held in my arms 28
During a thunderstorm 9
During a thunderstorm 14
Home from vet after serious illness 18
Asking to train 16
Doing agility sequence 31
Just a photoshoot in the back yard 12
On a road trip in hot weather 13
Waiting to check the back yard 6
Immediately after fence fight with new neighbor dog 10
