Look at That! (Round 1)

Today, I had my Mom pick Mia up from my house and once I got off of work I headed over to her house to do some training with Mia.

For the "Look at that" exercise we needed to start with a dog that she likes. I enlisted the help of my Mom and her terrier-mix Emma. Mia and I positioned ourselves in the doorway to the bathroom. There is another doorway (to my old room) directly across from the bathroom. I had my Mom walk into and out of sight. Every time they were about to come into sight I cued Mia with "Look!" and a point and clicked as soon as she looked at Emma. We did two sets of about 20 trials and Mia seemed to be getting the idea of the whole thing. At the end, I took Emma for a 15 minute walk as a thank you for being such a good sport!

Oh yeah...by the way. Meet Mia's new auntie (my Mom's new puppy, Pipi):

"I iz a cute Crestie mix with one ear up and one down."

Reactive Dogs Class #4

Whew...it has been quite a long time since I last posted! We have had a lot going on. I started and finished my last undergraduate semester and graduated on December 18. We had a great Christmas. In January I started a new job as a behavior therapist for kids with developmental disabilities (primarily Autism) and I am loving it. Lily turned 1 two weeks ago (and is still as much a puppy as ever).

Mia has improved leaps and bounds in agility she is constantly raising the bar with what I can expect from her. She now tackles the A-Frame like she's been doing it for years with no help whatsoever. Some days it's hard to keep her off of it!

Most notably, we finally got to start a reactive dogs class with the local vet behaviorist. It is held at the same facility we have agility classes. It has really helped me in the past to document her training so I can look back at it so I will be posting a lot more often now (hopefully!).

Mia has been doing very well. Each class she surprises me with how well she does. Yesterday was our fourth class. The other dogs in the class are not anywhere near as reactive as Mia is. I think there has only been one bark in the entire class that was not Mia or on command. We worked on three exercises: Look at that, on-off games, and parallel walking.

Mia is not at the point where she can play "Look at that" with the other dogs yet so we worked on desensitizing her to the sounds of jingling collars and other dogs barking (on command) when it was our turn.

Mia also wasn't comfortable enough to really get excited/aroused enough to truly work on the on-off exercise.

She, again, wasn't ready to do the parallel walking exercise so instead we worked on her looking at the other dogs (one at a time) from across the room. We rewarded anything that was appropriate (prolonged eye contact, sits, sniffing the ground, vacuuming the ground, shaking, looking at the other dog, looking back at me/the vet). One thing that is highly reinforcing to Mia is me being near her so we toyed with using that as a reinforcer. If she started to make noise or bark I would say "oops" (not as a correction but more as a marker word) and walk a few feet away. When she did something appropriate I would come back. It seemed to help. By the end of our turn she was (most of the time) looking calmly at a dog about 15 feet away and then back at me without a sound!

While the other dogs were doing the parallel walking exercise they came very close to the barrier that Mia and I were behind. I fed her continually when they walked close to us (she couldn't see them but could hear them) and she didn't make a peep (this is still quite an accomplishment for her!).

Looking forward to next week!

Mia on Easter (2010)

Lazy Momma: Trip to Chicago

So Mom has been very, very lazy lately but we have been so busy! We went to Chicago for 5 days and well...Lily has taken up A LOT of Mom's time lately. Mom is still trying to give me lots of extra snuggles and kisses and attention but she's not trying hard enough!

We went to visit my Pomeranian buddies, Parker, Jack Jack, and Bebe Belle, and their Momma, my Auntie Katie, in Chicagoland last week. We had tons of fun! I rode on the airplane under the seat in front of Momma in my airplane bag. I was a very good girl in my bag. I never make a sound and people are always very surprised to hear that "there's a dog in there???"




While in Chicago we were very busy. I spent two days working at Parker's Pets (my buddy Parker's store):

It was pretty stressful for me so the second day I even had to go in the bathroom for a while. I did get some yummy doggy ice cream and a bully stick in there to keep me busy though.

We also went for walks and I got to meet two other puppies that we know from Dogster, Rondo and Gretta. Parker, Jack, and Bebe's grandma is doggy sitting for them while their Mom is in Bulgaria. Rondo, is a black and tan long haired Miniature Dachsund and, Gretta, is a Cocker Spaniel. I didn't like them at first but I got used to them after a bit. Here's a picture of us all:

Left to Right: Mia, Parker, Rondo, Bebe Belle, Gretta, Jack-Jack

It was nice having alone time with Mommy without Lily trying to get in the middle of us. I was so relaxed on the first night that I laid in bed like this:

We had a great time and lots of great food (dog and human alike). My favorite were the yummy bison ribs and Mommy's favorite was a yummy chicken dish at Mity Nice Grill.

We are all exhausted tonight so that is all for now. I'll try to bug Mom so that she'll post about today's agility class tomorrow!

Crazy, Crazy Day

Today was a pretty crazy day. Lily's first puppy class started today and is an hour before Mia's. I packed everything up really early and we left about 30 minutes early to make sure we had time to set up before class started. I also brought my Mom along just in case.

It's an hour drive out to the boonies where our trainer lives and has her training facility. The plan was for Lily to ride in a crate in the car and Mia to ride in the back seat next to her. Lily REALLY did not want to be in the crate and absolutely would not stop whining and barking. She was so stressed that she knocked the crate over on to little 9 lb Mia. I had to pull over and get Mia out from under it. Lily's crate was all wet on the inside from her drooling so I decided to just let her sit in my Mom's lap. The rest of the drive was much calmer.

We arrived 20 minutes early and went inside to set up. The plan was to have Mia in a covered crate because I knew she would be freaking out and barking a lot with all of the strange (and large) new dogs there. I put her in the crate before the first dog came in so she didn't even get to see him. She barked quite a bit during the class but usually only when one of the other dogs barked. She actually did a little better than I thought she would.

Things went pretty smoothly until my Mom took Mia out of the crate while I was across the room and one of the "new" dogs was still in the room. She had a total meltdown (I wasn't really surprised because of how stressed she was from being in a crate for an hour when she could hear other dogs barking and moving around). It took about 10 minutes for her to calm down once the dog left. She couldn't even concentrate on me enough to have her turn on the first run we did. By her second turn she was happy and wagging her tail. She went on to do better than any of the other dogs in class.

We worked a lot on serpentine again and added dogwalk, weaves, and tunnels.

Mia did really well and didn't have much trouble with it at all. She was very enthusiastic. Although she wasn't thrilled about the dogwalk she did it on leash with just a little encouragement.

Next week we have to miss class because we will be in Chicago. It'll be a nice little break for Mia and I to spend some extra time together.

4th of July

Mommy didn't work on Thursday so I didn't get to go over to Nana's and Nana was a bit upset. Mommy decided that she would drop me off at Nana's while she went with Daddy and Lily to their party.

I got tons of Nana cuddle time and got to play with Emma and Kiba for a bit!

I am a little jealous that Lily got to see my Auntie Lauren but their dog, Max, would have scared me so I think it was for the best!

Lily and I have been playing more and more. She knows how to get me to chase her and I have to admit it's a little bit fun.

Mia and Her Mat

Mia here...Just a quick update today because Mom has a zillion videos to watch for her summer school class. Fun!

She decided that she doesn't want to lug my bed around everywhere when we're proofing and eventually to agility trials (if that happens) so she decided to get me a smaller, lighter, cheaper mat.

Mia on her mat.

Mom bought it this morning and so far we've done three 5-10 minute training sessions with it. Mom was very excited when she got it out the third time and I ran over and slammed myself down on it. Apparently, that's a very good thing! I'm definitely getting the hang of it though and tonight we will start doing the Protocol for Relaxation on it instead of just on the floor.

Also on the to-do list for this weekend are working more on my finger targeting (something Mom has been LAZY on for the last several months) and Leave It. We might even go on some extra walks to see if we can find any kitties to practice looking at.

Hopefully Momma will get enough done this weekend that we can get some video of our training sessions!

Belated Birthday Present and First Day of Relaxation Protocol

Back in October I went to the H.H. Backer pet industry trade show in Chicago, Illinois. I bought Mia a leather "Choke Free" harness with the intention to have my Mom (Mia's Nana) do some decorative beading on it. We both kept putting it off but I finally got off my butt and ordered the beads I wanted a few weeks ago. My Mom finished the harness on Sunday and it turned out beautifully!

In other news, Mia would like me to report that the first day of Dr. Overall's Protocol for Relaxation was spectacularly easy, boring, and tasty! She kept looking at me like I was doing some sort of crazy dance but was happy to be getting lots of treats!

I have to be at work early so that's all for now!

Agility Class: May 31, 2009

In agility class today we mostly worked on sequences with things set up at tricky angles. Most of the sequences were jump, tire, weave poles, tunnel, and then teeter or dog walk. Mia did pretty well but for some reason just did not want to do the tunnel today. At all. I think she only did it twice by herself without help from Rachel, which was very odd for her.

One of the dogs in our class is a Belgian Tervuren named Ritzy. She is absolutely gorgeous but is very, very nervous. When she gets worried she takes off and runs around the room. Each time she came close to us I would feed Mia little treats as long as she wasn't growling. By the end of the class instead of looking at Ritzy when she came near us, Mia, looked at me! Yay! Improvement!

I did end up bringing Mia's infamous bed to class. The whole point of bringing a bed or a mat is to help the dog relax because the dog is already conditioned to relax on the bed/mat at home. The bed helped a lot...maybe a little too much because towards the end of class Mia didn't want to get OUT of bed! We all ended up having a good laugh about it though.

First Private for Reactivity

On Friday morning, Mia and I had our first private with her trainer to work on her reactivity. She is very reactive to other dogs and cats (especially big dogs). It is a problem that I think I have let get away from us for far too long.

The first thing we worked on was counterconditioning Mia to the door opening and closing. Our trainer has a big training building on her property (with air conditioning!!) and Mia has learned that 90% of the time when the door opens a dog is either going to be coming in or going out. We noticed that she starts to react as soon as she hears the door start to creak. The plan was to drop a small handful of food on the ground right before the door creaks. We did several reps of this and then Rachel went and got one of her dogs, Glory.

While we were waiting for her to return, I worked with Mia on laying down on a mat (from now on I'll be bringing her bed to agility and privates to help her relax). We had barriers set up so that Mia could not see her. When Mia was calm we would have Glory appear from behind the barrier (or alternately, I would move the barrier out of the way so Mia could see her). She would get clicked and treated for looking at her. Unfortunately, Mia's threshold at the moment is pretty low so we didn't make a whole lot of headway.

Our homework for the next two weeks or so is to start Dr. Overall's Protocol for Relaxation and to work on more systematic desensitization with other dogs in more random situations (i.e. parked outside of the vet's office, the park, petsmart, etc.). She also reccommended scheduling a consult with a veterinary behaviorist that teaches a reactive dogs class at her facility. So we may do that depending on how things go.

We've got a long road ahead of us but it will be worth it! Tonight we went over to my parents' house for dinner and a movie. Mia is always excited to go over there.

Rained Out

This morning we didn't get to go back to the beach because it was raining. So we probably won't get to go until next weekend sometime.

The rain had cleared by about 7:00 p.m. so we decided to go on a bike ride with Mia. We have a route that we ride through the neighborhood behind our apartment complex that ends at a park. The ride to the park and back is about 4.5 miles. Unfortunately, we went during peak dog walking hours and Mia was really stressed out and barking a lot at the other dogs. So we've decided that until we work on her reactivity we're going to have to stick to trails only (during the evenings at least) and steer clear of the neighborhoods.

Chase and I still got a good workout and she had fun when there weren't any dogs or cats around!

Getting ready to take off from the park.

Sniffing around at the park.

Must sniff this patch of long grass.

Resting while we put away the bikes.

Fun times!

Mia's Monday Adventures

Mia goes over to my parents' house on days that I work to play and hang out with them. When she came home as a puppy I still lived with my parents. After about a year we moved out. My parents are really attached to her and like having her around so she gets to go over there about four days a week. They are retired so they are home with her most of the time and she also gets to run around and play with Emma (a terrier mix) and Kiba (a Corgi/Husky mix).

My younger sister, Mia's Auntie Jill, has been taking a class at a local community college this semester. My mom drives her to class and has been taking Mia with her. We have good family friends that live near the college so my mom usually goes over there to see them while Jillian is in class.

My mom's friend's mom, Hazel, is in the very late stages of Alzheimer's. A few weeks ago she was in a nursing home because she wasn't able to eat or drink anything (she has since come home but gone downhill again). My mom took Mia with her to visit her in the nursing home because they have always had a special bond.

When they arrived, Hazel, was slumped over in her chair. She was not responding to anything anyone was saying to her or anything going on around her. My Mom put Mia in her lap and she sat up, alert, and started petting her. After a while, my Mom picked Mia up and Hazel reached for her. So Mia spent a little while longer in her lap. Mia also got to visit with some other ladies who saw her and wanted to say hi. She did amazingly well with them too! My mom even said that Mia did not seem very nervous, if she was at all!

Needless to say, I was thrilled with how well she did. I have always thought she would make a great therapy dog (if we could just get over this darned reactiveness) and this has kind of given me a kick in the butt to get her into some behavioral privates. Hopefully, sometime in the (near) future she will earn her CGC and we will get certified with a therapy dog organization. I have done a lot of research on therapy dogs for my psychology classes and am so happy that therapy dog work is getting so popular. I am hoping that I can find a way to work dogs into my graduate research work (either in a nursing home or college/dorm setting).

This past Monday, Mia, got to go on her first boat ride! The same family friends live on a lake and have a Pontoon boat! Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures. I wish my Mom had thought to take some with her cell phone but oh well!

Mia and her Nana.

Kiba (Husky/Corgi mix)

Emma (Terrier mix; she had a skin infection at the time but this is
the best picture I have of her because she is afraid of the camera.)

Agility: May 3, 2009

Tonight in agility our focus was working on getting the dogs "out," away from us.

Our trainer started us off by giving each of us a cone (or in Mia's case a little bucket because we ran out of cones!) and having us lure our dog around the cone and then click and treat:

Once they mastered that we added in a jump:

After the mastered one jump and around the cone we added the next jump:

Once they had mastered the two jumps we added in a front cross so that they ended up on our right side:

Eventually at the end of class we had progressed to this:

Each week I become even more amazed at what Mia is capable of. She is highly motivated by me running with her. She started to shut down a little and get the "dazed" look that she used to all the time when we first started agility when we were working on things where I wasn't running with her today. As soon as we progressed to some of the later steps where I running with her again she lit up and started running like a crazy lady. She could really care less about treats as long as I'm running with her.

Hopefully next week we'll work some more on the A-frame and teeter! Now that she's conquered the A-frame (well, at least twice on leash) the last fear we need to get her over is the teeter. We've even made considerable progress with that in the last few weeks.

I am also looking forward to starting her behavioral privates in a few weeks to work on her reactiveness around other dogs/cats. My long-term goal is to get her therapy dog certified so we can visit nursing homes.

That's all for now. Mia has officially crashed in her bed:

Mia the Chihuahua

Hi, I'm Kaitlin and will be mostly talking about my pup, Mia, on this blog. I am a college student majoring in psychology and minoring in Spanish. I will graduate in December 2009 and then I will be off to graduate school. I hope to eventually do some kind of therapy (possibly animal assisted therapy) in the future.

Mia is a spunky, little 3 year old red sable long haired Chihuahua. I adopted her on June 30, 2006 when she was 10 weeks old. Her favorite activities include sleeping, eating, playing with her best buddies Emma and Kiba, going on walks and to the beach, and AGILITY! We have been doing agility for almost a year now. We started on June 14, 2008. She absolutely loves it! Mia has some problems with her reactivness and is very afraid of most other dogs so it took her a while to warm up to the classroom setting. The first several months she barked a lot and was very, very nervous with the other dogs around. In the past few months she has blossomed and I am thrilled with the progress we have made.

This summer we are planning to work on her reactiveness with our trainer with the goal of her eventually passing the CGC test and getting her therapy dog certification.

That's all for now. I'll post a few my favorite puppy pictures of her!

Mia on her way home for the first time (11 weeks).

Precious Mia (3 1/2 months old)

Mia's first bath (11 weeks old).