Posts from the ‘Montana’ category

September 16: The week in review

It was a lazy week – see above!

Actually a good week, although not a productive work week due to some domestic items … nothing bad just some things needing doing.

But as always, walks happen and the weather is gorgeous: cool, sunny, blustery Fall weather!

Emmett decided to move his kitchen bed to the office/sunroom, right behind my chair…

Lots of company while I was working, which I love! ***He moved the bed himself!!!

New things this week: a new leash which is thick and soft and I love it. So does Emmett – he took himself for a walk, he loved it so much :)

An orange long line as we begin proofing our recall with distractions. The distractions are deer, Auggie, squirrels and ??? Recall is perfect in the house and in the yard with no distractions so this is the next step.

Emmett is not fooled. He has more freedom on the long line than on leash, but he feels the weight and the one time he started after deer, I slowly applied pressure on the line as I called him. After that, he didn’t venture off the trail. But, this will take time and my plan is that it becomes habit on the long line, then I will use a lighter line which I’ll gradually shorten. I expect it will be Spring before the combination of his maturity and training is fully reliable in the face of wildlife or other very exciting distractions.

BUT, I am very pleased that he does not pull against the line or the leash. Occasionally he will lunge, but then stops. I have the long line as well as any leash attached to a harness so no neck stress. Trainers have differing opinions regarding using a harness. I am going with harness.

Emmett walks nicely on leash with the harness. In new places, he pulls against it, but I just stop. When he returns to me, on we go. We don’t walk when he is at the end of the leash and pulling – pulling gets him nowhere.

I do not do the change of direction thing. We have started some basic “walk to heel” but not at remote (EXCITING) locations. Walk to heel requires his focus on me and a specific position. We do that in the yard but it is too much for exciting places at the moment and right now, the exciting spots are for exploring with the only limits being not pulling and responding to attention noises from me.

Another benefit of working with a trainer and watching other trainers on YouTube is seeing and hearing that all takes time and every dog is unique, so I am working with where Emmett is: his maturity, attention span, experience as well as my own learning experience.

The orange line is very silky and does not get hung up on branches, rocks, grasses – YEA! It is also easy to see. So far, so good!

Auggie gets in on the action, also!

The vegetables took a decided turn to Fall: pie pumpkins! Delicata squash joined tomatoes and lemon cucumber plus cucumber slicers to make an Autumn vegetable “bouquet bowl”…

And that bouquet bowl made a nice backdrop to Saturday morning’s dough shaping…

…for Sunday morning’s Cranberry Sourdough.

Sunday morning in the woods…

And later at Wayfarer’s Park on Flathead Lake.

A Good Week!

Mid August: Emmett’s 6 month training progress

Today, Emmett is 6 months old by the calendar and tomorrow: 26 weeks since his birth. And just in case you don’t remember … my birthday is Thursday, August 16. I will (hopefully) celebrate 63 times around the sun :)

Mid August. While not the hottest summer in my Montana experience, this week had its heat challenges. But my window coverings and A/C won!!

That reading was Thursday when Kalispell hit 100F and set a record for the date. The previous record was 99F in 2003. And although the gauge shows 99.3, the temp did rise to 99.5 for a bit before starting to cool about 5:00 p.m. And because of the very low humidity here, plus the longer nights as we are 6 weeks past Summer Solstice … it takes all day to get to the peak and we have enough night time and lower sun angle, that it cools quickly if skies are clear. This week, the smoke prevented the 102-105 forecast but it also kept the nights warmer than forecast.

Still, compared to the mid-west, east and south … the heat here is certainly more manageable. The A/C units I have would not work as well other places. In fact, this year, I wrapped the exhaust hoses in duct wrap. AND, I added extra light/heat blocking on windows. Previous years I could maintain about 20-25 degrees cooler than outside, but WOW -31 degrees cooler = happy, happy Summers fambly!

Double coated Auggie feels the heat outside …

He does not object very much to my keeping him in when it is hot and smoky!

Emmett likes the cool of the house and the extra cool of the fan.

Summer time is the time for taking it easy with an afternoon chew. I had to laugh at Emmett taking his chew to the towel. We’d just come in from a round in the sprinkler. I’d used the towel to dry him off and then dropped it to do something else. When I came back, he was there … all the mess of the chew treat on the towel: Mr. Neat!

Some evenings, the smoke has cleared a bit and the last walk in the woods is beautiful:

And this morning, after a cool front passed through, it is clear and the forecast high is a relatively pleasant 81F.

We had a slow start to Sunday and enjoyed.

Training! We continue and the focus the last 2 weeks has been focus, as in focus on me. And also calm. Emmett is all about action and sometimes more about what he wants than what I want. Hence, working on focus and calm.

My local trainer referred me to Kikopup’s youtube channel. WOW! I have watched many of the videos and also purchased the “Weekly Puppy Insight’s” package. So much good info and ideas as well as step-by-step training.

Kikopup is Emily Larlham. The website and her business is Dogmantics . Her intro video says it all about who she is and how she trains:

One of the videos that I’ve trained from for helping Emmett calm is this “chin rest” video.

The takeaway is that Emily is PASSIONATE about positive reinforcement training aka Clicker Training. If you’ve thought that this method is a gimmick or not effective or ??? please watch at least the 2 videos above. Emily works with Karen Pryor’s philosophy as does my local trainer and also Laurie Luck (Smart Dog University whose videos have helped me also).

AND!!! If Emily and Laurie are not enough … check out this Instagram feed:

https://instagram.com/p/BgbqmYqgzb1/

Mary (17) and Secret (3), her Aussie Shepherd Service Dog for medical alert and Autism. Their relationship as well as what they do together is beyond awesome. Mary trained/trains Secret herself based on positive reinforcement/clicker training.

Mary, Emily, Laurie and my local trainer, Will are incredible resources and inspiration. Emmett and I (and Auggie) are having so much fun as we all work together.

Mid July: Auggie, Emmett, CSA Veg and Food, Scenery

This past week, Auggie turned 5 years old !!!

And Emmett turned 5 months old !!!

Emmett and Auggie do a bit better every day and playing not quite so rough. They both know I don’t like the rough stuff. When I walk over to have a few words, they immediately separate with that look of “What, we weren’t doing anything!!”. I stay out of it as long as possible. My primary concern is Emmett’s puppy brain going into overdrive and some accidental injury to Auggie.

Emmett is now 35 pounds and has his permanent teeth. I felt horrible a few days when I saw teeth emerging and his gums were swollen and bleeding – ouch. He didn’t whine, but every once in awhile I saw him kind of working his mouth. I believe they are all in now, thank goodness! And speaking of teeth … I have done “husbandry” training as well. Since I brought Emmett home, I regularly put my fingers along his gums and teeth, play with and clean ears, play with feet and generally put my hands over all of him. All of this to make sure that he is ok with being examined and for me to clean teeth, ears and trim nails … and take his temperature if necessary. He had nails trimmed at the breeders and I’ve been trimming them once a week, I’ve started cleaning his ears and now that he has his permanent teeth I’ll do a brush twice a week. (Auggie gets regular teeth, ear and nail upkeep also as I started when he was a kitten.)

Other training continues well. We are mostly working on all that he already knows – all useful stuff so just continuing to use it during daily life. All of the training has been part of play time all along and the current difference is I very randomly click treat and more often just praise. We mostly walk off leash, but I keep him on leash if we are out when Auggie is and then we practice loose leash walking. All very beginning stuff.

I’ve mentioned it before, but Will (trainer) has also reminded me that Emmett is very young and we are building bond, trust, behavior … over time. This is such a relief to me especially with leash walking and recall. Will told me to continue my turning and running with sing-song noises to distract Emmett from deer vs trying to teach a grown up come when Emmett is not ready and likely to ignore it. We build the recall over time as Emmett grows up.

Another good lesson for me came from Laurie Luck of Smart Dog University: Make your dog training more powerful . The gist is that using management as we train makes the training go faster and also contributes to less unwanted behavior that we later need to correct. An example is: put the shoes away! Teaching a puppy to leave shoes alone is not realistic. BUT, if he can’t get the shoes, he doesn’t learn to like the shoes and we don’t ultimately have to teach “leave shoes alone”. “Leave it” is another of the behaviors that takes some maturity. We are in the beginning stages of “Leave it” and so my management is to put things I want left alone out of Emmett’s reach. My other management is sometimes leashing Emmett in the house. I did this a lot for these past several weeks to allow he and Auggie to be together, but to be able to restrict Emmett from really rough stuff. It has worked much better than trying to step in or keeping them completely separate.

As always, I think I’m learning as much or more than Emmett! Although I still make mistakes and get annoyed with myself, overall, I am so happy with how we are all doing!

Weather wise, it got hot and dry and the local farmers are producing gorgeous vegetables!

The vibrant landscape is going to fade with upper 80 temps, some 90 and no rain … so I’ve been soaking in the color and clear air.

The weekly CSA box is getting better and better. Week 8 I added some extra cauliflower and broccoli…

About half, I roasted and of that 1/4 I ate as a side dish and 3/4 I pureed with tomatoes for a vegetable marinara … well, that’s what I call it. The roast vegetables add a bit of sweetness to the tomato sauce – I love the flavor as a base for soups as well as a pasta sauce.

The remainder of the broccoli and cauliflower, I riced and froze. I use the riced cauliflower in place of rice and the broccoli is great mixed with some grain and parmesan and stir fried.

This salad – an excellent combination that hit the flavor, crunch and fill me up buttons!

Yes. Behemoth 1 in place…

And as the note says, I used the sound dampening quilts instead of adding the bedroom unit. I did put the “boy’s room” unit in place. And since the above photo, I neatened up the look of the quilts by adding a tension rod so they hang behind the curtain.

An added benefit discovered on 4th of July … not only sound dampening, but the quilts made the bedroom much darker. This time of year it does not get dark until after 10 and is getting light again by 5 in the morning. The extra dark helps all of us settle and get to sleep at our normal, early hour.

Oh – Emmett slept through the fireworks. We had some practice with earlies, gun shots and thunder. Sometimes he would stop and look at me. I laughed and gave him a treat and praise and pretty soon he was not paying much attention to any of it. YEA!

Emmett likes to see what’s what … Auggie is unfazed and continues his lunch!

Oh, Emmett :) … fortunately, he does not mind a rinse off. He also likes to be toweled dry and it is giving us practice at feet: 1 at a time. He figured out the routine very quickly.

He also figured out that in front of the fan is a good place to be on a hot day!

This is my favorite scenery photo from the week. It was in my Instagram story and is saved in the highlights along with some other photos from Friday morning on my way to town to get my CSA box. As it gets hotter, I head to town at 6:00 a.m., pick up the box, grocery shop and head for home before it gets hot.

Week 9 CSA.

Auggie stays home and keeps an eye on things there.

Gorgeous sunrise, but the clouds meant that it did not cool Friday night :(

So, a relaxed morning at home vs a trip to the market for extras.

French toast made with my homemade cherry sourdough and topped with fresh sweet cherries made a good breakfast.

Emmett knows how to relax!

Mid July: 5 years for Auggie and 5 months for Emmett … Happy Days!

The week in review: Emmett, Auggie and Springtime in Montana

I thought about titling this post: What I learned this week.

Boy, I have a LOT to learn.

Earlier in the week on Instagram I wrote that Emmett was in the puppy equivalent of the terrible twos. In retrospect, I got lazy in my observations and training and so allowed the natural progression of boldness to take over rather than me working with it. It took a timeout (for me!) and some rehashing in my mind of what I was doing to shake this out, regroup and move forward.

Oh, and one overreaction to Emmett chasing some deer … not far and right back to me but it surprised me. I made the rookie mistake of repeating his name which only serves to teach him that he can ignore his name. *sigh*

So … future moments of “oh this looks far more interesting than you”, result in me turning, running and sing-songing happy sounds. Emmett follows. Yea – I AM the most fun!!

Still working on toning down the intensity of the Emmett-Auggie wrestling matches but it gets better every day – particularly inside. Emmett KNOWS he is not supposed to be too rough but sometimes puppy-brain gets the upper hand. But as I move to intervene, Emmett backs off and sits.

Leave it: I can now put a treat on the ground or in my open hand with the words leave it and Emmett leaves it, looks at me: click he gets the treat. We’ll work at this level with the treat closer and closer.

Down: so happy with down. Emmett does it when I ask to calm for Auggie interaction and has done it with public distraction.

Sit is solid.

We’ve practiced the leash lightly. Tomorrow a new harness arrives. Emmett grew out of the first, also out of his first collar!

For the record, Emmett was just under 8 pounds when I picked him up 8 weeks ago. Today he is 24 pounds.

Yes – Emmett has been part of the family Summers for 8 weeks! 8 weeks of fun and games and learning and joy.

Meanwhile: Operation Fuschia for the front porch

On a gorgeous Saturday afternoon

Emmett LOVES to help with the watering…

And we stop and smell the Lupins!!

A beautiful Sunday!

See you later!

Tuesday morning in the woods

In typical Montana fashion we’ve gone from having heat on to opening the house in the cool morning and closing it up against the heat. Heat, being hot according to me which is 70F and above. It is 81F as I write this at 5:00 p.m. ish.

But, this morning, it was a wonderful 51F with a light breeze. The light in the woods was stunning. The company was spectacular. I recorded some images and shared them in an Instagram Story this morning. I liked the photos so much, here they are on the blog. All iPhone.

Week 3 with Emmett: moving toward a new normal

I think the best summation of week 3 with Emmett would be that we are all feeling more comfortable. And also PROGRESS – progress on everything!

More comfortable with each other and with new routines.

Emmett’s training in a nutshell: Sit, the beginnings of a sit-stay, hand target, drop (drop whatever you have in your mouth), recall, down. Down was the trickiest. We started working on that on Thursday and it was just yesterday (Saturday) that we got completely there. Sit actually came from work with the breeder. And prior to this week Emmett had learned “go to your bed/mat”, “into your crate”. Outside there is a click treat for focus on me.

This form of training, called many things: operant conditioning, clicker (marker) training, positive reinforcement. I am so enthusiastic about how this works. I am not yelling “no”, all training happens as play, the communication is fast and incredible. In addition to the above tasks, I used click-treat to shape Emmett’s and Auggie’s behavior to more calm, have fun together, tone down the wrestling. If you’ve looked at my Instagram feed and especially my stories … it is pretty incredible how they are doing.

And of note: this method of training is used for athletics, autistic children and many other forms of teaching. There is a site: Tag Teaching

On my Wednesday story, I threw caution to the wind and posted that we’d had success with a schedule (all times approximate) that got us all fed, played with, walked … and me to my desk to work (showered and dressed!!) by 9:00.

This has stuck. I don’t watch the clock, but generally, an approximation worked all week and we continued through the weekend. Color me thrilled!

The little couch. Well, the first days – Yes! But then Emmett got bolder and wigglier and we had some days where it was Auggie and me and some days where it was Emmett and me.

This week, while he is still a bit wiggly, we had several “all together” mornings:

The Auggie and Emmett scene:

We also started working on being together on the front porch:

Ok.

The big deal: house training, i.e. potty training.

It is mostly happening outside.

But …

… when it doesn’t, it happens on the piddle pads.

I’d just bought a LOT of the pads for Bear before he died … I kept them. Thankfully!

Emmett got them immediately. He goes outside when we go out and when he goes inside it is generally because I am distracted and don’t get him out. But he goes right to the pads so I know he is aware that there are appropriate places to go. Making the jump to “asking” to go out … I am confident it will happen and meantime, I am not fussed about the use of the pads.

Not getting fussed, is a freeing part of the positive training approach. I don’t reward inside potty like I do outside, but there is no punishment for inside. Similarly, other behaviors that I don’t reward, I redirect and/or remove whatever from the environment. Because all of the learning is happening with play and fun, the subtle redirect and soft “no” is understood. All of this adds up to a happy and calm learning environment. HOO-RAH!

And in the woods:

It has been another happy, love-filled week with Auggie and Emmett.

I think that Auggie agrees that the “kid” is a wonderful heart healer and great addition to the family Summers