Steady as she goes!

• Firstly, you should read this so you know what these posts are all about.
• The first day with Ike
• Day 2 of training.
• Day 3 of training.
• Day 4 of training.
• Day 5 and 6 of training.
• Day 7 of training.
• Day 8 of training.
• Day 9 of training.
• Day 10 of training.

Today continued to be a very good and positive day. It posed major challenges for both Ike and I but we both tackled them head on and the results were very promising.

I have yet to satisfactorily resolve the issue that I have written about for the past week in relation to the dogs spending at lunch time and this is something that I am quite nervous about for the long term. It still requires work but I have a few ideas that may help over the next day or so.

Because of the confidence issues that Ike experiences I have to be particularly careful about correcting him when he’s distracted or when he makes work errors. These issues are always manageable and have never put me in harm’s way so I am not particularly worried about them however his distraction has increased quite a bit in the past day, The trainer is quite satisfied though as he is of the belief that this demonstrates an improvement in the dogs comfort and confidence. He also has suggested that I can begin to firm up on the corrections that I need to give in a few days to rain back the dog’s attention so it’s focused on me more and not on the hundreds of distractions that can potentially grab his focus. As I say, I’m very aware of Ike’s tendency to lose confidence so although the distraction level can sometimes be frustrating I’m quite happy to give him whatever time and space he needs at the start to help him get past this. I also understand that this may be required when I begin after care when I return home with the dog and it may even happen from time to time in the future when situations cause the dog’s confidence to temporarily drop or waver. There is always one issue with a dog that is as technical and as hard working as a dog such as Ike. I’m just fortunate it’s something that is actually reasonably easy to diagnose and resolve.

The walk this morning was in Cork city again. I had asked to work through some really wide paths to ensure I was able to rely on the dog to guide me around areas where I had no land marks and to ensure I was able to give the dog the instruction that he required to determine the route he needed to take. As I said yesterday, this kind of environment is already quite disconcerting to me but yesterday it was ten times worse! The pats were very slippy so it was very hard to walk on them and confidently give commands to Ike. It was great though. Ike didn’t mind slowing right down. I had a few added issues with distractions but this is expected as I know that when their walking at such a slow speed it’s very hard for them not to get put off by more sights and smells as simply, they have more time to look! Once we got onto the busier paths of Patrick’s street though we were able to walk at a much more comfortable pace. I really let Ike speed up even when we were weaving around people and what were plenty of stationary objects. If there were plenty of them, I hadn’t a clue. It was lovely to walk through that kind of environment again while feeling the dog move left and right to avoided whatever it was that was in the way. Even after two weeks, I couldn’t have walked through that kind of environment so fast or so effectively using the Cain. It just isn’t possible. I won’t walk around areas like that so fast all the time depending on the volume of people and how well Ike and I know the place but this morning it was a very relaxing walk. We went over one crossing here though that I wasn’t particularly happy with but to be fair, it was a very flat crossing and it was probably very hard for Ike to recognise it. I’ll explain why in a moment. It wasn’t so bad though. It was just a very quiet pedestrian alley way anyway so it’s not vitally important. The next time we walk down Patrick’s street I’ll slow the dog right down and ensure he recognises it. As I’ve said before though, it’s a balancing act with Ike at the moment. Firstly and most importantly it’s vital that he enjoys his work so if something is just a technical mistake that doesn’t really cause any danger to me or Ike then I’ll do more harm than good reinforcing it at the moment. Secondly, if it is something that requires an immediate correction then it’s important that it’s followed with encouragement and praise for even the most mundane successes.

I’d like to pause for a second to explain why it’s so hard for a dog to assess road crossings on a road like Patrick’s street in Cork. Firstly, the dog is trained at a basic level to walk from A to B in a straight line with the exception of avoiding obstacles. A is the start of the straight line and B is the end. I.E. A is the start of a block or a road and B is the next down curb or the end of the block or road. This is what the dog tries to do in Patrick’s street. It stops at all the crossings to give me the handler time to ensure there is no traffic. The dog will not progress past this point until I issue the command to instruct him to keep going. In a street like this, there is no down curb and instead the crossing is denoted by a tactile marking the problem is the dog should not stop at every tactile marking as some denote crossing points to my right or left depending on what side the road is. For the dog to efficiently do this, it needs to have done this route quite a few times and should have stopped these defined crossing points. As the dog becomes more experienced it becomes a lot easier to determine these points even on roads they have not walked on before but at the start it’s really not very easy. In areas that I know it won’t be as difficult as in O’Connell Street in Dublin for example; I will be able to forewarn the dog on the approach to these crossing points therefore he knows that he should start looking out for them.

Ok. Back to the first walk. After Patrick’s street we cut through a reasonably large shop. It was great for Ike because he got to walk through a reasonably busy area and his mind needed to be much focused to weave in and out while following the shape of the isle. After this the walk was very uneventful. I should have probably slowed down a little more when walking through the side streets on the way back because the dog missed a few other very minor crossings. Again, they were crossings with just a tactile marker and no down curb but I think it was more that he was in a hurry to get back and he wasn’t concentrating as much as he could have been.

The afternoon walk was in a much quieter residential area. The objective of the walk was to avoided obstacles that required us to actually go onto the road to pass them. These are called off curb obstacles. When you walk up to one with the dog, it will stop so that you can prompt it to find the way. At this stage, it will bring you up to the edge of the curb. With some encouragement and a few specific commands you can then instruct the dog to navigate around this obstacle while allowing it to guide you onto the road for the minimum time it takes to pass the obstruction. These are very hard for the dog and again require practise however he did a great job. It didn’t help that the obstructions placed there held a lot of scents from other dogs so Ike was particularly interested in stopping for a bit of a sniff but again, this is something I will be able to prevent to a large extent over time when his confidence remains at a reasonable level. I felt sorry for poor Ike. He had an offal lot of work to do and the obstacles were regularly placed in strange configurations or in difficult areas to walk around. Still, he seemed to be ok with it. I walked into a branch of a tree that didn’t seem to have any leaves on it which was actually quite painful because that kind of branch seems to always be at just the right level to give you a good smack in the face In fairness to Ike, it’s not something Freddie could often avoided either. I think these trees that are on face level that don’t have leaves must be difficult for them to see so although we made the dog do it again, I wasn’t particularly bothered. It’s this type of thing I can forgive. I understand that the dog has a hard enough job to do and these branches that hang on face level are just a little too hard for them to see as they are just above their field of vision from what I’ve been told by various trainers. The one thing that I found on this walk was that Freddie required very little encouragement for finding the best way around these off curb obstacles. I fell back into my old habits of giving very unambiguous directions and commands. This is just something I have to constantly keep in mind. After eight years of doing it one way, I often find it hard to remember to revert to the really obvious hand signals and commands when working Ike. I know that Ike will pick up the subtle commands over time. It’s no reflection on him. I just need to remember that Ike doesn’t know me well enough just yet to know that when I move my hand a little I mean he should go straight on. Give me time. I am aware of it and it’s something I actively correct myself about so it will get better.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much it for Friday.