Last night and tonight, Stitch went into the crate just fine, got her cookie, and played possum until 3 hours after lights out. Then 10 minutes of whining, growing louder and louder, then half an hour of demand yapping while we lay in bed pretending she was going to stop. Finally I got up and let her outside. She rewarded this behaviour by grabbing a toy and asking if I’d like to play keepaway, so I stuffed her back in her crate and the rest of the night was quiet.
Tonight, she’s doing it again, except this time, after 3 minutes of preliminary whining, I got up, scolded all the way down the stairs, and whapped on her crate with a magazine. Now I’m sitting silently in the living room in the dark while she gives me 20 minutes of silence, then starts the obnoxious whining again.
Too bad it decided to be winter yesterday. I can’t even put her crate in the car.
OK, 3 crate-whaps and I get 45 minutes of quiet. I’m going to bed. If you were expecting better of me than crate-whapping at 3 AM, hey, sorry. I bet Stitch wasn’t expecting it either. I tried the Just Say No thing, but she was making too much noise to hear me.
A great supper, twice over. We start with scent discrimination. A couple of days ago in puppy class, I got several of my fellow students to scent four metal dumbbells for me. Tonight I put one down with my scent and Cheez Whiz on it. She runs right to it, she knows there’s special goo on it. X5, then I add a second one, she finds the right one X10. I add two more, she finds the right one X20.
I’m not asking her to retrieve. Partly because of her ugly tooth situation, partly because the dumbbells I’m using are Giant Schnauzer sized and she can barely hold the bar in her mouth. I AM asking her to put her mouth over the bar. So it goes like this: I do Go To Mat to the far side of the room. She trots over there and lies down (oooh, I LOVE that). I change the position of the three “neutral” articles, reCheez and rescent the right one, and put it near the rest. Call her. She runs over, sniffs all of them, then licks the CW off the right one. Then I click and reward X10 for putting her mouth on the right one. We run that set of events X10.
Then I stop reCheezing and just rescent my dumbell. This doesn’t bother her, she comes back to the articles and puts her mouth on the right one. Click X10, and send her back to Mat to start again. X10.
100 clicks for putting her mouth on the right article, about 97% accuracy.
I put the articles away and we try 101 Things To Do With A Box. I’ve tried it once before with a cardboard box, with poor results. This time I use an old plastic milk-bottle carton. It’s the same size as the cardboard box, but it has big and little holes in it, it’s heavier, and I can see through it.
Since she’s already tried it and didn’t understand it at all, I’m going to put some effort into really getting her into this silly game. X20 for looking at it and nose targeting it. X20 for putting one paw on it or the other. I decide I’m not paying for paws any more when she sticks one leg in a hole right up to the elbow. OK, I paid for it. Now she’s got the idea. X40 for playing 101. I get each paw in different holes, tipping the box, standing on the box, nose in different holes, mouth around different parts of the box. Clever little dude.