Today was sunny and warm. It's the type of day I love to be outside. As soon as I got up, Brad told me we had a Cooper's hawk in the back woods just about 6 feet from the back deck. It is sometimes known as a Chicken Hawk. It eats mostly songbirds and small mammals. We can see it from our bedroom. The hawk is building a nest that is large and looks like an eagles nest, kind of messy. Sometimes Cooper's Hawks use squirrel nests. Its been fun to watch the hawk today, coming and going bringing large twigs and sticks. They survive mostly on songbirds and live in wooded areas. Since we have a lot of bird feeders it makes sense that a Cooper would want to live near by. I will love watching it this spring. Soon there will be leaves on the trees and the nest will not be visible. His/her call is distinct with short notes that sound surprisingly like a squirrel call.
Yesterday I started working with Beeks on Clicker training. Let me just say that any machine is only as good as the operator. Beeks took right away to the idea of treats. He loved looking at me and getting treats. I first "loaded the clicker". This is where you get the dog to associate the clicker and the positive reward together. Operant conditioning is what they call it. I gave Beeks a treat and then clicked the clicker. I did this about 20 times. Mmmmmm 20 treats in a row. Then I clicked and waited for Beeks to look at me expecting a treat. Soon I started using a command word right after I clicked the clicker. He even did quite well with associating the click and the commands, sit and stay. I have to say that these were not issues before we started so I am not surprised that he did these well. So next I decided to take Beeks for his walk and use the Clicker training while we walked. This is where it gets tricky. I had read that I should only work with one command at a time. Cementing the clicker/behavior response until it is deeply associated. Not this operator, we were on a roll. Beeks was happy to go on his walk, and with treats being freely given. He was in dog heaven. He did quite well walking and eating as we went. Beeker has two behaviors that frequently give me trouble when we are out for a walk. One is "heel", and the other is "down". I worked on commands with Beeks while we walked the figure eight path. I chose this path because Beeks is familiar with this path and because there were multiple distractions to use while we were training. When ever Beeks would get a little ahead, not heeling, I would click and show him the treat and pull him back to a heel. Soon he was coming back to a heel when he heard the click and looked up at me, looking for a treat. This is where I didn't do so well. I kept getting confused as to the sequence of associations. Was I suppose to Click then give command, then treat? Or was I suppose to give the command,then click then give the treat? Here's the thing. Walking with Beeks using the clicker did work to give us a better walk. I found this out when later when Brad got home from work and we took both dogs out for a walk. On the second walk I didn't use the clicker. Beeks pulled on his lead and I was constantly pulling him back. It would have been easier to have the clicker to jog his memory back to the business at hand.
So where do I go from here? Everything worth having is worth working for. So, I will keep working to get Beeks to associate the clicker with my commands and then distinguish the clicker. This won't happen over night I know, I will first have to remember and practice the sequence. I'm hoping that Old dogs can learn new tricks.
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