Day 23 (10/03/17): nose work, grocery store, playing with Cai

Terra was still tired out all morning and afternoon from her long play session with Beedo yesterday.

I added a half portion of chicken liver and pork kidney to her breakfast. I had to mince it and mix well with the ground chicken meat to get her to eat them. She left a few pieces at the bottom of the bowl once she had eaten all the chicken meat. Cai didn't want the organs either.

I took her to the grocery store. First we walked around the sidewalk at the perimeter of the shopping center. She was happy to explore but was slightly overwhelmed by all the new - she would sometimes walk in a circle around me to look at everything. She did not react at all to the cars driving by at 45 mph. (She has never reacted to traffic.) Then we sat down at a table a little ways from the entrance to the grocery store. We watched people going back and forth for an hour. (Okay, I was on the phone for much of that.) She mostly laid at my feet. Once a man walked by very close, and she didn't react as she hadn't noticed him coming. Later a woman passed at the same distance, but Terra saw her approach and the woman made eye contact. Terra stood up and hid behind my chair.

Two young women approached and asked to say hello. I held up the "stop" signal, then said that she's shy and if they stood over there (about ten feet away) and called her, she might choose to come over. They did, and she went up to them almost immediately! She went right into the personal space of the woman standing a tad closer, and licked her face and turned herself sideways to her. When the second woman leaned in closer, Terra sniffed her hand and then backed toward the first woman. I think the combination of two new people was too much for her, and she had already identified the first woman as friendly and safe. After a little more petting from the first one, she returned to me with a happy wag. Yay!

After dinner, I left her and Cai in the kitchen as I took the boarding dog out to potty. I heard Cai's play sounds coming through the window and was very confused. I walked in to find them both making happy faces. I put the boarding dog away, and turned around to find this!!

I had not seen that coming! Cai had been making a few affiliative gestures toward Terra, like doing a slow hip check when she was lying down, but I didn't expect to see full on play so soon.

I let them play for a few minutes, then removed Cai when he seemed to be tiring out. Mostly Terra toned down her play when he would correct her, but she clearly still wanted to continue when he was ready to chill. I gave her a new toy from Auntie Sherry, then she alternated chewing on a bully stick, smoked beef bone, dental chew, and the ladder to my loft bed.

We got some good training time in today. We did 3 short nose work sessions, still doing IYC with treats in one hand and the hot tin in the other, and rewarding the dog for putting their nose near the tin. She definitely gets the idea, though she still sometimes gets distracted by the treats. At first I was using itty bitty pieces of chicken so that she wouldn't spend a lot of time chewing - she thoroughly chews even the tiniest treats, like Tiny Zukes or even pea-sized bits of cooked chicken. But a lot of them were dropping onto the floor, so I switched to the Bark Pouch. She was much more motivated then! Also made more mistakes due to the allure of "berrylicious peanut butter." The downside was that I got some licking of the tin, since she would put her nose to it before she had finished licking and swallowing the goop on her tongue. We'll do a few more sessions at least of step 1 before we progress.

We practiced with the mat, and while she is going straight to the mat after every reset toss, she will keep walking rather than stopping on top of it. She then loops and goes to it again. I'll continue with putting multiple treats down on the mat and see if it clicks... Maybe a raised platform would be better, but I don't have one big enough!

We had a nice session of nose touch to target fingers and tossing the reward away. I need to focus on creating clean loops and short sessions to build a good work ethic, as her tendency to do a loop around the room every few reps slows everything down.

So sleepy.

She often sleeps with her eyes slightly open and the third eyelid showing. Creepy.